Part Four: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing
Think of a time when you felt really alive. What did that feel like in your body? What brought it about?
Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
I have always felt drawn and a bit intrigued by that statement. What is abundant life?
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Part Three: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing
We have our everyday “ordinary” consciousness, and then we have times when we move into other states of elevated or “more spiritual” consciousness.
Whole-Body Mystical Presencing is a practice to help us to shift from having these peak/peek experiences of mystical awareness we remember or look forward to, and create a new everyday/every moment experience of enlivened consciousness. This “continuously renewed immediacy” is a regular attunement that begins to move our everyday consciousness, our “default” state of being, into a new reality. Into a new way of being.
But it doesn’t happen just by realizing this or learning this concept. We have to re-train and re-pattern our “ordinary” consciousness.
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What, in the World, is Holy Spirit?
Part Four
When we define spirit as awakened consciousness, we can then see there are many avenues to it. A sudden transforming experience, as we see in Acts. We see the slow work of contemplative prayer in mystics down through the ages. The Enlightenment found in Eastern traditions. Some Eastern traditions transmit spirit-awakening in a way similar to what Jesus, Paul, and Peter did.
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What, in the World, is Holy Spirit?
Part Three
What comes to your mind when you see, hear, or say the word "spirit"? Spirit personified as a shadowy, mystical presence? A vague, mysterious force in the universe? God at work everywhere? The third person of the Trinity?
What comes to my mind after considering this for several years is the amazing, still mysterious, single word: "consciousness." God's spirit as Consciousness Beyond Us, Beside Us, and Being Us. We are that divine consciousness, localized and encased in a human body.
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What, in the World, is Holy Spirit?
Part Two
In the recent Coronation of King Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of "the anointing of the spirit." I wondered what came to mind in the millions of people listening in. Did it mean Charles was not just a religious man but also a "spiritual" one? And then, what is a "spiritual" person? It must have something to do with "spirit!" So, back to what spirit means in progressive, evolving, integral Christianity.
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Part One – The Bible and Holy Spirit
For the vast majority of Christian groups in the word, the "Holy Spirit" is considered the third person of the Trinity of God consisting of "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." Holy Spirit is referred to as "the Lord, the Giver of Life" in the Nicene Creed, summarizing several key beliefs held by many Christian denominations.
When Jesus was baptized, he saw "the spirit of God descending upon him like a dove." Christian artists throughout the centuries have used this symbol to represent the holy spirit, though it has little connection to the experience it is meant to describe.
Read MorePart Six: Waking Up to Oneness
The further we travel on this integral Oneness journey, the more perspectives we have. Each of the Three Faces of God and our Four Centers of spiritual knowing provides us with a deeper and different way of seeing and knowing – ways we were never conscious of before.
At ever deepening levels we can journey into a more evolved consciousness.
Read MorePart Five: Waking Up to Oneness
In his book, Working with Oneness, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Ph.D. and Sufi mystic, writes, "Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived."
This is our call at ICN – "to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done."
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