Spiritual Bypassing through Knowing and Unknowing

Part Three: Finding Reality through Knowing and Not Knowing

There are many promises out there that this path or practice will allow you to live in a perpetual state of bliss while achieving all of your goals and becoming rich and thin in the process. However, the spiritual path is not always pretty, especially when it comes to our shadow.

We all have a shadow self. By “shadow,” I simply mean that which we cannot see. That which is in the dark because we have unconsciously hidden it from ourselves.

It is generally made up of the parts of ourselves we believe are unacceptable. It is not that they are really unacceptable. We just think they are — and bury them. I did that with being

Paul SmithJuly 23, 2022Spiritual Bypassing, Unknowing, spiritual knowingComment

Holding Knowing with the Open Hands of Unknowing

Part Two: Finding Reality through Knowing and Not Knowing

Three Kinds of Knowing and Their Shadows

To become genuinely grown-up and mature on our spiritual journey, we need all three kinds of knowing — healthy ordinary knowing, mystical spiritual knowing, and deep unknowing in our lives. This is because each form is limited without the others. There is a shadow or limiting side to all three.

Paul SmithJuly 16, 2022Unknowing, spiritual knowing, Shadow, Construct Aware Comment

The Beauty of Unknowing

Part One: Discovering Reality through Knowing and Not Knowing

Paul SmithJuly 9, 2022spiritual knowing, Unknowing, DiscernmentComment

Shoot the Dove!

Spirit as Consciousness in the Bible

During New Testament times, both in Jewish and other spiritual traditions, doves were very much associated with God and God’s Spirit. Early Christians began depicting Spirit almost exclusively as a dove. It is a beautiful symbol for those who are aware of this meaning. For others, not so much.

I was teaching a group of several hundred progressive Catholics who had gathered in Santa Barbara. Before my first talk, a man came up to me and said, “I hear you are going to talk about the Trinity. I hope you don’t tell us again that God is two men and a bird.” I smiled and said, “I hope I don’t either.” In this essay, I am suggesting we not only shoot the dove for those who don’t find it meaningful, but also update what we mean by “the Holy Spirit.”

PracticePaul SmithMarch 8, 2020Mystical, practice, spiritual knowing Comments

In the Creation Business with God

Divine Human Cocreation

Writing of the work of God in continually creating an ever-evolving creation Meister Eckhart said: “St. Augustine says, ‘What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.’ We shall therefore speak of this birth, of how it may take place in us. —Meister Eckhart (1260–1327)

COCREATION

Yes, let’s speak of this divine-human birthing that goes on in and through us. In the business world, co-creation is a strategy that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome. It is a form of collaborative innovation where ideas are shared and improved together, rather than kept to oneself.

Add God to that definition and you have Spiritual Cocreation—partnering with God in the continuing creation of reality. Let’s see what Jesus, the Apostle Paul, Ken Wilber, and Richard Rohr have to say about this.

PracticePaul SmithFebruary 2, 2020Cocreation, spiritual knowing, Mystical Comment

A Meditation on Womb Wisdom – Five Gifts

MysticismVivien ClaireJanuary 26, 2020spiritual knowing, Gut Path, wombComment

Listening to Your Sacred Body

Spiritual Knowing: Part Six – Discovering Your Mystical Language (2)

“When the somatic and vital worlds are invited to participate in spiritual life, one’s sense of identity becomes permeable to not only transcendent but also immanent spiritual sources, turning body and world into sacred realities that can be appreciated as fundamental for human and perhaps even cosmic evolution.”

—Jorge Ferrer

In Whole-Body Mystical Awakening we are doing just that—inviting our bodily and energetic worlds to join in our spiritual life.

In Part 1 we explored inviting our heart and mind to participate in our spiritual life. The mystical language of the heart is the deep feelings that flow from our heart space. The mystical language of the head is the deeper thoughts, words, and images than come from a mind cleared of its usual constant chatter. Now we explore the mystical language of the other two centers of spiritual knowing—our gut’s vital energy and our feet’s energetic embodiment in the physical cosmos.

Mysticism, PracticePaul Smith & Luke HealyJanuary 19, 2020Gut Path, Feet, spiritual knowing Comments

Mystical Intelligence

Spiritual Knowing: Part Four – Developmental Learning

When I was in school, I decided to try my hand at the drums. I say “hand” fairly literally, as I could never get myself to play two rhythms at once. I could hold a beat though—as long as it was just one beat. My band director mercifully put me on the big bass drum and I pounded away with the single count in my head. It’s the same reason I failed at the piano. Two hands doing different things at the same time? Not for me. Throw the feet in there as well on a drum set? Forget about it.

I would claim that I just wasn’t very musical. Until later in high school when I picked up a trumpet and found something I could do pretty well—after some practice naturally. With the encouragement of my friends and a kind teacher, I also discovered that I had a half-decent singing voice. My shower-voice had fooled me, for I was certainly not a soloist. Rather, I had a nice blending voice for duets and harmonies.

You may not think you’re a mystic because you don’t have visions or ecstatic trances. Maybe you think you’re just not a very mystical person because of your history of one-sided prayers. There’s a pretty good chance you’re probably not Mozart—or you would know by now. But you’ve almost certainly got a little music in you. . . .

MysticismLuke HealyJanuary 5, 2020spiritual knowing, developmentComment

Spiritual Knowing—Then and Now

Part One: Spiritual Gifts as Windows of Wisdom

What is the goal of the Whole Body Mystical Awakening practices that Integral Christian Network advocate? Is it just to have mystical experiences? Or feel peace and bliss? The reason to do Whole Body Mystical Awakening is far bigger than just these things. Any reading of the Bible and the foundational writings of many spiritual traditions will find a stream of mystical experiences providing unique knowing, guidance, encouragement, and transformative transcendence. As Paul describes in detail, these mystical experiences often happened with one another in the early gatherings of Christians. They have continued down through history in the writings of the mystics.

These mystical experiences seem to take the three primary forms of (1) personal presences or guides (including God and Jesus), (2) gifts, and (3) transcendence or union with God. We’ve written several articles about guides recently, which you can read here. Next week we will explore transcendence. This week, let’s look at spiritual gifts from the standpoint of their function back then in the Bible and how they are emerging in today’s understanding.

MysticismPaul SmithDecember 1, 2019spiritual knowing Comment