Taking Christianity back from Institutional Religion

Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives—and What Might - Part Two

The challenge today for culturally creative followers of Jesus is to wrestle the heart of Christianity from the powerful grip of institutional religion. We need to take Christianity back from the theology and practices of institutional religion including what is commonly referred to as “worship.”

Many postmodern or integral “post” Christians no longer identify or connect with a religious group or church. Many also have mixed feelings about using the word “Christian.” For some it can carry too much baggage. However, they may not yet have given up on Jesus or a core reality of deep spirituality experienced in their native tongue of Christianity. But often the traditional churches no longer tap into that reality for them.

What do they do with what today we traditionally refer to as “worship”? Where do they go to experience this? They may have even given up on the whole idea, since the very word “’worship” may also carry cultural baggage and bad memories. For many, it may even be too difficult to think in those terms. Underneath the baggage, worship is a deep human longing for something transcendent, something worth devoting ourselves to. Everyone has this need in some way or another.

PracticePaul SmithOctober 20, 2019worshipComment

Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives —and What Might - Part One

WHAT IS A CULTURAL CREATIVE?

In The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson, the authors introduce the term "Cultural Creatives" to describe a large segment in Western society who since about 1985 have developed beyond the standard paradigm of progressives versus conservatives. In 2001, Ray and Anderson claimed to have found 50 million adult Americans (slightly over one quarter of the adult population) who could be identified as belonging to this group. They estimated an additional 80–90 million “cultural creatives” exist in Europe. Those numbers have almost certainly increased since then.

The Awakening by Kimberly Kirk

Here are some of the characteristics Ray and Sherry Anderson found in cultural creatives:

PracticePaul SmithOctober 13, 2019worship Comment

Gazing at Jesus in the Devotional Visionary Realm

Opening to your Spiritual Guides Part 2

The experience of devotion to Jesus in the mystical visionary realm is the doorway to accessing your own spiritual messengers. Others, such as Cynthia Bourgeault call the mystical visionary realm “the imaginal realm.” Ken Wilber calls it “subtle consciousness.” I prefer “visionary realm” because that is the language the New Testament uses, and the word “vision” is commonly understood today in the mystical sense of seeing things that are not in the physical realm.

Visions include the sensed presence of another spiritual being, a picture, thought, feeling, bodily sensation, or an intuition that arises from your luminous interior. These can range from a fleeting moment to a dramatic journey in a deep trance state.

We find visions throughout the Bible and some specifically occurring in in what the New Testament refers three times to as a “trance” state. Christianity’s most vital originating moments occurred in a series of mystical visions by . . . .

Guides, MysticismPaul SmithOctober 6, 2019Jesus, Heart Path, Mystical, subtle realm Comments

Jesus and Danu: My Personal Presences of Divinity

I have to admit, when I first read Paul Smith talking about spiritual guides, I was a little put off. My spirituality had become a little too sophisticated for something so New Age-y as that. Ok maybe Jesus. I mean, sure I had a relationship with him early on in my faith, and if I was honest with myself, I still often felt his presence—when I happened to think about him being with me. Or was that just my imagination? And that “personal relationship” buddy Jesus stuff, wasn’t that all a little, immature?

In the course of evolving forward, we all need to go through processes of differentiating and integrating, of transcending and including. As I disentangled myself from a limited, narrow evangelicalism, I was left with many triggers and scars. Many of them still remain, but I was fortunate enough to also have had some pretty powerful experiences of God that always stayed with me. Navigating through what was real and what wasn’t was a difficult task, especially without knowing where to find guidance. Many people end up throwing everything out, and for many of them that may be the best thing to do, at least for awhile.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t get . . . .

GuidesLuke HealySeptember 29, 2019Jesus, WeSpace, Mystical, subtle realmComment

Opening to Your Spiritual Guides

Ten of us were having a lovely conversation after dinner with well-known, brilliant Christian teacher and author. We were sharing childhood stories and she said she had a make-believe friend that was her closest companion in her early years. His name was Luke and she pretended he was Luke, the Gospel writer. I asked her why and she said because he said that was who he was. My ears and heart perked up. I said, “What if you dropped the “make-believe” and “pretended” and considered that he really was that Luke. What if he was one of your spiritual guides? You certainly followed in his footsteps as a teacher and author!” There was silence around the table as everyone waited for her response—and probably a little shocked at my audacity to suggest such a far-out thing to this famous person. She smiled, and I don’t know if she ever pursued it. It is certainly not the norm in her academic setting that anyone would consider such a thing.

Would you consider such a thing?

GuidesPaul SmithSeptember 22, 2019WeSpace, Mystical, subtle realm Comment

Participatory Mystical Awakening

Discovering and Practicing Mysticism – Part Two

So, how do we practice mysticism?

Once we’ve cleared up some of the common misperceptions about mysticism, we find that we can approach mysticism from a trans-rational perspective, believing that it is real and something we participate in, experienced in connection to our Higher Self, and deeply connective to others. You can read more in depth about those distinctions in Part One.

Getting past some of those mental hurdles, we now can step into our participatory practice. This is a co-creative process that we engage in with our whole being. While mystical experience can be received in many different forms and ways, we can practice our active engagement into the process by cultivating mystical awareness, learning to sense emergent mystical realities, then interplay dynamically with them and one another in convergent communion.

Mysticism, PracticeLuke HealySeptember 15, 2019practice, Transmission, Prayer, Heart Path, Jesus, WeSpace, MysticalComment

Can Anyone Be a Mystic?

Discovering and Practicing Mysticism – Part One

Pew research from 2009 revealed that 49% of Americans say they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as a “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening.” 10 years later, that number is most likely higher. It has been climbing up steadily from only 22% in 1962. The numbers may be even higher considering that many may have had such experiences but wouldn’t want to put the term “religious” on it for a variety of reasons.

Have you had a mystical experience?

MysticismLuke HealySeptember 8, 2019Mystical, practice, Heart Path, subtle realm Comments

The Drama Triangle: When Groups Go Wrong

Getting Back to Heart Connections

Sometimes we shy away from group settings because they can be quite messy. Who hasn’t sat in a group and experienced it devolving into something painful? We’d like to believe that spiritual groups devoted to love and prayer don’t have this problem, but we all know that isn’t the case.

This quite often comes from a drama with three different roles that we and others tend to play. This is called the Drama Triangle which reveals dysfunctional interaction originally described by Stephen Karpman. I learned this from him in a workshop forty years ago. It has served me greatly to explain the cycles and patterns of behavior I saw unfold in so many groups and conversations. It also indicated what we should do to get off the Drama Triangle! There are more nuanced approaches for the professional, but I will give the basics here.

WeSpacePaul SmithSeptember 1, 2019practice, Heart Path, WeSpaceComment

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Why We Need the “We” – Part Three

We are experiencing a great convergence in humanity today. As the world evolves further and further technologically and scientifically, the space is shrinking. Globalization is bringing people together in new ways both profound and troubling. This external convergence is absolutely heightening the need for greater evolution and convergence in our interior spaces: our morality, our values, our education, our empathy, and certainly our spirituality.

When there is a strong convergence, two ranges of outcome are possible: A horrible crash or a beautiful communion.

WeSpace, Evolution, PracticeLuke HealyAugust 25, 2019evolution, WeSpace, TeilhardComment

Evolving Collective Spiritual Practice

Why We Need the “We” – Part Two

Last week we explored the shift from shoulder-to-shoulder to heart-to-heart, focusing specifically on practice with just one other person. This week we’re going to broaden that out to a community context. Not only do we need to expand our spiritual practice beyond the confines of individualism, but we desperately need to evolve how we gather and practice together.

We also emphasized the importance of the need to further reflect oneness in our spiritual practice. If we seek the experience of oneness with all, and with one other person, what would it look like to seek this experience in a group? And wouldn’t such a group practice be reflective of a more evolved approach to our spiritual gatherings?

How do we get there?

Let’s start with a very simple picture. Imagine a group of people sitting in rows of chairs (or pews) looking up at a person on a stage. Now picture a circle of chairs with people sitting, facing one another. What difference do you feel? Where in your body do you feel it? Stay there for a moment.

Now picture a glowing heart radiating from each person in the circle. See the spiritual energy and love flowing out of them. As the waves expand out, everyone’s spiritual energy fields are overlapping and engaging with one other, creating a palpable collective field where love, wisdom, encouragement, and much more can emerge. Is this a spiritual reality?

WeSpace, Evolution, PracticeLuke HealyAugust 18, 2019practice, evolution, WeSpace, Mystical, Heart PathComment