Integral Prayer Part 7: WeSpace Prayer

The second movement of Integral prayer is the shift from praying to God to praying with God. This is moving into the relationship of prayer, not just talking to someone, but enjoying the silence of one another’s presence, and also speaking with one another.

Learning to pray with God-Beside-Us is the process of engagement with the personal face of God. This looks like learning to listen and interact with those in the invisible realm, like The Living Jesus, God’s motherly/fatherly presence, Mary, or other spiritual guides.

And it can also look like praying with the face of God-Beside-Us in all of us.

Prayer is a movement of connection between God and us. But when we realize that God is not just “out there” and discover the divine face within, we also begin to recognize that this inner face of God is not just in us, but is in other people as well. Of course it is! And not just as a nice thought or way of looking at others, but even a consciousness from which we can share and pray with together—the personal face of God-Beside-Us in and among one another!

When we can intentionally share in this awakened consciousness together with others, we are joining in the awakened field of mystical communion. This is prayer as a communal participation, not as a performance or modeling, but as an inter-subjective participation in our divine interbeing.

We call this WeSpace Prayer. And here are some dynamics of how we pray in this way.

WeSpace, PracticeLuke HealyAugust 15, 2020Integral Prayer, PrayerComment

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.

WeSpace Whole Body Mystical Awakening

“WeSpace” is a new form of spiritual practice and community that is on the forefront of the evolving spiritual landscape of today. Recognizing the hyper-individualization of not only Western society and American culture, but also the individualization of the interior experience of the forms spiritual practice, many are seeing the need for a higher, more evolved “WE.” Various forms are emerging in many different places to more intentionally engage in collective wisdom and interconnected healing.

If you’re familiar at all with Integral Christian Network, you’ve certainly heard us talk about WeSpace. It is the heart of . . . .

WeSpace, PracticeLuke HealyNovember 24, 2019MysticalComment

Gathered to the Transforming Heart of Jesus

Devotion for Cultural Creatives Part Four: Together

This is the final section of this six-part series that began with Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives—and What Might. We begin with a reminder about who cultural creatives are.

Paul Ray is co-author of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. He has been researching their values, lifestyles and beliefs for 25 years. He says that Cultural Creatives are the carrier population for the emerging wisdom culture:

Across the planet, they are innovators for the culture, not so much in technologies as in beliefs, worldviews, values and ways of life. They are the opinion leaders, and the participants in all the new social movements of the past 60 years who have time and again shaped others’ views, practices and adoptions of these new ways. Their Green values and lifestyles and their values of inner development both psychological and spiritual are the key to the emerging new culture. New Cultural Creatives surveys in Europe, Japan and the US all show the same trends.

The Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and about authenticity, self-actualization, spirituality, and self-expression.

Practice, WeSpacePaul SmithNovember 17, 2019worship, WeSpaceComment

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

From Shoulder-to-Shoulder to Heart-to-Heart

Why We Need the “We” – Part One

When you hear the words “spiritual practice,” what do you think of? Perhaps you picture someone meditating. Perhaps you picture a person doing yoga or tai chi. Perhaps you think of a rosary or prayer beads. Whatever it is you imagine, it is highly likely that your image is of a single, solitary figure at practice by himself/herself. If you pictured a group, kudos to you (although the title and picture in this post may have influenced you!).

Even so, the vast majority of our attention is still on the personal. In fact, most of our experiences of group spiritual practice or spiritual community are largely an individual experience. There are just other people around. It’s shoulder-to-shoulder practice.

There is certainly value to this. There is a sense of accountability. A sense of comradery. A side-by-side, working on this together comfort. But there can also be a strong sense of loneliness. An isolation when things aren’t going quite right. An over-orientation on the teacher/authority. A guilt and shame at not living up to the standard assumed by the group. And quite often, a failure to bring about any kind of social transformation.

Of course we need to practice alone. And certainly some spiritual practice must be tailored to our own individual needs and expressions at various points in our lives. But if this is primarily the only form our spiritual practice takes, then we are missing the vital component of shared, heart-to-heart spiritual practice.

Is it really vital? Would we even know if we’ve never experienced it?

WeSpaceLuke HealyAugust 11, 2019WeSpace, Heart Path Comments

Discovering Your Divine Voice

Practice, WeSpacePaul SmithJune 16, 2019subtle realm, practice, Transmission, WeSpace, MysticalComment