In order to WeCreate, we have to do it together. We will not be able to create the necessary future unless it is coming from more than collections of efforts from singular individuals.
This is an extensive barrier we face, especially in modern society where so many of the systems we live and operate in exist to divide and isolate us. These systems feed the rampant egotism and narcissism that are the result of consumerism and materialism.
Read MoreThe beckoning we have opened up to these last weeks is our divine participation. To living a spirituality that embraces and engages in our divine being and becoming in this life, even today. Rather than heaven being a transcendent escape or deferred reality, we are invited to inhabit the realm of God here and now.
From the essence of the teachings of Jesus, we do this by abiding and attending.
Read MoreAs we overcome our transcendency bias in our understanding of God and practice of faith, we are invited into a new, evolving way of worship with a God who is always among and within us.
Read MoreOur divine transfiguration into our Christ being—our mystical becoming beyond individuality.
It calls forth new ways of living and enacting in the world, creating and co-generating the future together in loving evolution.
When we speak of the necessity of an evolution of consciousness in order to survive and thrive in the future, this is the way we come into it holistically.
Read MoreThe accompanying painting, rather than being called The Transfiguration, could be called a dramatic moment in Jesus’ very own WeSpace group! (Matt. 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) Like our WeSpace groups, this was a small group of followers of Jesus who shared their lives with one another. They also experienced the presence of God along with other spiritual guides.
At the Transfiguration, the most intense part of the mountain top meeting began as two-centuries-dead heroes of the Jewish tradition, Moses and Elijah, appeared in living, visionary color and sound. In their non-physical, but recognizable energy field forms, they were giving encouragement to Jesus. “They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Jesus needed some help about his upcoming crucifixion which was weighing heavily on him. Who better to encourage him than two dead guys?
Read MoreWhat is the purpose of our WeSpace groups? Why do we advocate Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practices?
At ICN, our stated purpose is “Gathering a global community of dedicated mystical practitioners for the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.”
We dedicate ourselves to our mystical practice because it takes us into the pathways of inhabiting and becoming this transformative presence in the world. Because it is how we become conscious participants in the divine, creative work of loving evolution.
Read MoreI (Paul) was twenty years old and very much a devoted follower of Jesus when I first realized a striking thing about Jesus that I had not grasped before. The first action Jesus took in his public ministry to heal and change his world was to gather a few others willing to follow him. He spent an extraordinary amount of time together with them as they shared their lives in radical ways. From that humble but dynamic beginning, we now have a world in which one-third of its 7.7 billion people claim to be his followers. His life and message of love, although not always followed, have made a radical, worldwide impact.
I decided I needed such a group in my life and asked six of my closest Christian friends if they would be willing to meet weekly to share our lives and pray for each other. Since that time over sixty years ago, I have always had such a group in my life. After seminary, I was called to pastor, for almost half a century the only church I would ever lead. The first thing I did was gather a few church members together in a small group that met weekly to share and pray. That multiplied until over 400 members of our congregation were meeting regularly in small groups which became the dynamic relational and spiritual center for our life together.
My (Luke) long passion for gathering has taken many forms throughout my life. Early on in my church life I was asking why our gatherings looked the way they did. I explored new forms such as house churches, new monastic intentional community, contemplative gatherings, and other ways of gathering small groups together. While traditional churches are shrinking, Christians still very much need to gather together. The spaces and ways need to keep evolving to serve the Christianity of the future.
We are seeking to do just that with Integral Christian Network. This movement invites followers of Jesus from around the world to meet primarily on the Internet via Zoom, for now. More local groups may develop in the future. In what we call “WeSpace groups,” anywhere from four to eight participants share their lives with one another and practice a form of meditative prayer together we call Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.
Read MoreA human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. – Albert Einstein
The mystics throughout the ages have attested to the illusion of separateness and the fundamental interconnectedness of life, that we are more than just separate individuals. Scientists are now saying the same thing, as our awareness of quantum reality has broken us out of the boxes of physical materialism and a Newtonian view of the world and universe.
More and more are waking up not only to this knowledge, but also to the experience of this freedom.
Read MoreIt is the nature of life to grow and evolve. So too, every group and community that is alive will go through change and growth. Unfortunately, many spiritual communities instead take a static approach to community life. They try to keep things the way they are, reinforcing the traditional patterns and set processes that bind the members to a repetitive cycle.
But if the spiritual community continues to evolve, it can be a synergistic process of personal growth and communal evolution working in tandem.
Let’s look at some natural phases of the process of community life and where that can lead us if we navigate them with wisdom and grace.
Read MoreAs we begin to awaken to the experience of our shared interiors, of the we-space that constitutes communal energy, mutual knowing, and interbeing on a mystical and very real level—that which is “in here” together—we expand beyond this limited story of individualism. We come into the experience of our intersubjective reality. This is where the subject of the sentence becomes plural: from I to We. Not just as a collection of separate parts, but a real and dynamic collective. How do we experience this?
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