Is There a Better Way to Pray?

The difference between traditional prayer, Centering Prayer, and Integral Prayer

Prayer may be one of the oldest and longstanding traditions in all of humanity. Long before written history, humans were praying to the divine for help, guidance, and a change in the present circumstances in their lives.

But what does prayer look like for Christians today? As our views of God evolve, do we still feel comfortable asking for help and talking to God? Some do, some don’t. Some are confused or maybe even embarrassed about what they find themselves uttering below their breath in prayer—or maybe they’ve given all that up as childish or mythical.

Is there more? Is there a better way to pray?

Let’s look at a few common forms of prayer for Christians today to set the stage for how our understanding and practice of prayer might continue to evolve.

PracticePaul SmithJune 28, 2020Integral Prayer, Contemplation Comments

Erotic Spirituality

Part Six: Christianity and Sexuality

She exclaimed, “Kiss me—full on the mouth!
For your love is better than wine.”
He replied, “You are tall and supple, like the palm tree,
and your full breasts are like sweet clusters of dates.I’m going to climb that palm tree! I’m going to caress its fruit!”
She murmured back, “Breathe on my garden, fill the air with spice fragrance.
Oh, let my lover enter his garden! Yes, let him eat the fine, ripe fruits.”
So, he took me home with him for a festive meal, but his eyes feasted on me!
—Song of Solomon

Imagine an R rated book in the Bible! Scholars agree that the Song of Songs (or Solomon) is, first of all, an erotic love poem. It is passionate poetry about human relationships and sexuality. After all, there isn’t even a single mention of God in the entire book.

Mystics and saints down through the ages also tell us that it is an image of the passionate love God has for us. A beautiful and relatable metaphor for the passion and intimacy the depth of divine-human connection that we should strive after.

So which is it? Both of course! The energy of Eros—one of the strongest forces in the human body—is a powerful and sacred force of attraction that draws us forward, beyond ourselves into a union with another human and with God.

Paul SmithJune 21, 2020Ecstasy, Eros Comments

Should We “Follow Our Bliss?”

Part 4: Ecstasy Deepening into Bliss

“Follow your bliss”

Joseph Campbell famously said, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” He went on to say, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Nowadays many, maybe especially religious people, see this as a sort of new age platitude. Whether it’s seen as flippant hedonism or unrealistic idealism, bliss is often thought of as something outside of the normal experience of life. A moment here or there if you’re lucky. But to follow your bliss? That is selfish individualism and not really how life works, right?

But my own experience these last few decades has been one of bliss, one of “the rapture of being alive.” I believe it is possible for us to live everyday in this state. Let’s explore how that might actually be possible.

MysticismPaul SmithJune 14, 2020Ecstasy, Bliss Comments

Embodied Mystical Solidarity

Luke HealyJune 7, 2020 Comments

Crossing the Barriers to Ecstasy

Part Three: Cultivating Ecstatic Emergence

Today is Pentecost Sunday in the Christian Liturgical calendar, often called the birthday of the church. If there is one descriptive word we could give to the first Pentecost, it would be “ecstatic.” If the church was, indeed, born in an outpouring of ecstatic joy that looked to onlookers like drunken behavior — times have changed!

Sacred ecstasy has not only been dismissed in past centuries, it continues to be impeded by a number of barriers and hurdles in our culture and religious traditions. This presence of energetic ecstasy is not a pursuit of happy feelings or wild behavior, but a vital experience and aspect of consciousness necessary for our spiritual evolution into greater liberation and enlightenment.

But many of us may feel blocked or have a hard time moving into this experience. Why is that? Here are four of the ways that the sacred ecstatic is being minimized or dismissed today in many, if not most Christian circles.

MysticismPaul SmithMay 31, 2020Ecstasy Comments

Why So Glum?

Part Two: Christianity as an Ecstatic Tradition

In the last few decades, there have been thousands of studies and hundreds of books published with the goal of increasing happiness and helping people lead more satisfying lives. More people are in therapy, support groups, and mentoring relationships than ever before.

So why aren’t we happier? Self-reported measures of happiness have stayed stagnant for over the 40 years they have been researched. We don’t seem to be getting any happier, despite all our efforts. Most people would settle for just feeling a little better and don’t even consider the possibility of something even more significant such as ecstasy.

As Christians, do we think our Christianity makes us a lot happier? What about ecstatic? Unfortunately, most Christians will have a similar answer there. The author of Sacred Ecstasy, Bradford Keeney, says, “It is vitally important to acknowledge how spiritual ways too often and too quickly become emotion-less, motion-less, sense-less, heart-less, body-less, soul-less, spirit-less, mystery-less, and divine-less as they devolve from ecstatic embodiment to the abstract discourse of talking heads and the routines of ritual guardians.”

I want to focus on this deep, expansive, happiness and joy we call ecstasy, and how we might discover it once again in our Christian spirituality. Let’s begin by looking at how the Christian tradition began in riots of joy and mystical events of ecstasy—and then changed down through the centuries, sometimes evolving, sometimes regressing.

MysticismPaul SmithMay 24, 2020Ecstasy Comment

Taking the Lid Off God

Part One: Awakening Spiritual Energy and Ecstasy

As we have explored spiritual energy, it’s now time to consider the common outflow and experience of the presence of this energy: ecstasy. This powerful word often causes strong reactions in a variety of ways. Especially for us as respectable, well-mannered Westerners it might sound a little . . . extreme. It may arise apprehension, or maybe even discouragement as an unrealistic experience to hope for. Perhaps you feel perfectly satisfied with a quieter, more contemplative spirituality and ecstatic spiritual energy sounds a little too “out there.”

That may be your path and that’s ok. But it may also be only half of the story.

Spiritual practices of contemplative stillness are ultimately meant to bring us into a place of intimacy with the deep divine, into union with God, into a state of new life and being. The felt experience of this will often not be one of stillness, but be filled with energy, ecstasy, and bliss. We will find ourselves not just in the quiet, but in the experience, presence, and union with God beyond, beside, and being us.

Are experience, presence, and union with God the primary intentions of Christian spirituality? If so, is our spiritual practice leading us toward that realization? Could it be possible that our attachment to stillness is repressing the flow of spiritual energy which can be our awakening into the wholeness of integrated, embodied Christian mysticism?

MysticismLuke Healy & Paul SmithMay 17, 2020Ecstasy, spiritual energy Comment

Loving Evolution Together

Spiritual Energy Part 4

“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other, so that the world may come to being. This is no metaphor; and it is much more than poetry.”
–Teilhard de Chardin

As we awaken to the spiritual energy within us, we find ourselves drawn more and more to the radial energetic dynamic, the drawing forward and further. This is no solo affair or hero’s journey. This radial energy “bundles.” It draws us together. It is the antithesis to the fragmentation, separation, and loneliness so pervasive today.

This attraction is not only for companionship but for the discovery and mutual expression of the evolving realities that are emerging in our midst. They more easily arise and can be discovered in a collective context. Even more, the community itself, the combining of energies, is instrumental to this movement forward.

The Social Action of Mysticism

Spiritual Energy Part 3

Mysticism is often seen in duality as an opposite to social action. There is the life of prayer and contemplation, alone in the closet, removed from the world. And then there are those who go out and get things done, help people, and change things.

Even if you don’t believe that harsh framing, perhaps you sometimes find yourself asking, “How can I navel gaze when the world is on fire? Shouldn’t I be doing something about it?”

So let’s consider it this way: How do you put out a fire?

Do you throw nearby cups of water onto the flames? No, you need more force than that, more resources. You need to connect down into the deeper source of continual water flow.

EvolutionLuke HealyMay 3, 2020spiritual energy, Teilhard Comment

Welcoming Embodied Christ Energy

Spiritual Energy Part 2

In part one, we explored living in the energy of Christ. Christ is the Christian symbol of the divine reality present in incarnation, in the whole of the material world. For us, this is an invitation to welcome a new reality of experiencing spiritual energy at the contact point between spirit and matter within ourselves. This is living in awakened consciousness in tune with the embodied presence of our physical being. This was the promise to the first followers of Jesus:

“You will receive energy when spirit (consciousness) comes upon you” (Acts 1:8).

And this is still something we can experience today, even more so! So how can we welcome this reality into our lives today?

Notice first the passive nature of this process at the start. It is primarily something we receive. It comes upon us by experiencing Christ in an inner experience or a personal transmission from another. After we welcome and receive it, then we begin to cultivate and share in it!

Practice, MysticismLuke HealyApril 26, 2020spiritual energy Comments