How Do Mystics Pray?

Integral Prayer Part 9: The Flowing Dance of Integral Prayer

There was a time where I pretty much stopped praying altogether. The old ways and forms of prayer that I had done in my life just didn’t seem to fit anymore. I turned to meditation as my more primary form of spiritual practice and took refuge in the silence.

It’s not as if God was absent in this form. Nor were the exercises without their effects and value. In fact, I loved the silence. I found it so refreshing.

But part of me missed something, or perhaps, someone. I knew that God was in the silence, but was that the only place? Was this the only path to divine participation? Was it all about development of awareness and perception in my own individual spiritual training? And was God still an accessible, personal presence?

Both prayer and meditation are vital to our spiritual path, but like most conceptions that serve us, they really blossom when they open up to the wider expanse of possibility in the evolving unfolding of inclusivity and complexity. This is the integrative path, welcoming a freedom of movements through a broad range of potential expression.

This is prayer as a mystical dance with the divine.

You can dance with a few fundamental, basic steps, but you’ll flourish into the flair and flow of a beautiful, joyful dance when the whole repertoire of movement is available to you, even including a few surprising turns and improvisations.

Learning to Dance in Prayer

In this series, we’ve been looking at all the different parts of Integral Prayer and exploring the unique dynamics of each separate aspect. But the experiential reality of the mystical dance of embodied, awakened prayer is very often much more the experience of the inter-dynamic flow of the four centers and the Three Faces of God.

When we’re learning to dance, we have to slowly focus on each of the different steps. It can even be a little awkward at first for our body to get the feel for it. As we learn more steps, we begin to put them together to experience no longer just movements, but a dance.

And it’s ok to start by practicing the steps. In fact, that’s the best way to learn. Differentiation precedes integration. 

Then the more we practice, the more our feet, hips, arms, and whole body feel comfortable working together in the flow of cohesive and vibrant rhythm. So too with our four centers: heart, feet, spiritual womb, and head and three movements: into, with, and from.

Let us not forget: the point of the practicing is to be able to get out on the dance floor.

So how do we begin to put it all together? How do we find our combination of movements that become our own creative expression of the dance of mystical prayer? 

I’m not much of an actual dancer myself, though I love to get out on the dance floor with my wife. It’s not about what I look like to others, but the internal feel and inner experience of joy and freedom. And of course, the unifying experience of sharing that energy and expression with others.

Personal Expression

We don’t have to learn every dance but can gravitate toward the one that is singing to our soul at the moment.

This is the element of personal expression in our mystical prayer.

Perhaps you’re feeling drawn to your spiritual womb and need simply to remain in the embrace of generative holding. Or maybe today you’re feeling the pull of transcendence into the unitive embodiment of the great web. Or you want to simply rest in the loving heart space with Jesus.

All of these are possible and accessible. This freedom of movement brings an element of joy in the welcoming of a broad field. It gives us the ability to trust our own deepest intuitions about what is necessary for the moment, and where we are being called to focus. This is not giving ourselves over to the whims of our feelings or passing inclinations, but a trust in our inner compass to navigate better than locking ourselves into a narrow practice of a particular set of prescribed rituals.

There is great freedom in this flow of possibility to meet the needs of the moment, while still keeping in mind the benefit of healthy boundaries and commitment. Every dance still has its rules that make it what it is—while skilled dancers are still encouraged to break them from time to time, in the right ways. And sometimes, we do need to commit ourselves to a regularity of a specific form.

Especially for our individual practice, guided meditations can help us move into the experience of the movements, but we discover personal expression more by following the intuitive drawing of our spirit toward a pace of presence and movements in tune with our spirit consciousness in the moment.

But we don’t want to just be flailing our arms wildly. That is not a dance. Well, it can be your dance, I suppose. But especially as we move into collective expression, we tune more into the flow that is not just internal, but weaving and twirling among us.

Collective Expression

While it’s nice to dance alone in your house sometimes, it’s way more fun to join a group and engage in the collective energy and movement of one another. To take hands and join in the circle, into the larger flow.

Participating together with others also helps us get into the rhythm and energy of mystical movement better, just like dancing with a group encourages us to let loose a little more. We are heartened and emboldened by the collective, finding ourselves drawn into the field a little more easily.

In mystical prayer, this can often be the experience of participating in communion, a sharing in the intersubjective field in a way that unites us together with one another and with divine presence.

It can be a celebration and highlighting of each one in the dance, moving into the center not for attention, but for the focusing of energy and love into one another. This is a sort of interprayer that brings the relational connection and communication elements of prayer beyond the individual interior, and into the We.

This shared “We” helps bring our experience and understand of God out from beyond our own separate, individual perceptions. Just as when we spend time with a good friend among a group of others, we learn something new about that person through their eyes and see new aspects and expressions come forth from our friend in different ways.

Mystical prayer in collective expression can also at times flow into an experience of interbeing, a dissolving of the sense of our separate selves. Instead, discovering movements and expressions in sync with the field, in tune with the larger current somehow moving into and through the all.

These forms of collective expression are different from just practicing alongside others, where everyone is essentially doing their own thing internally. Sometimes we need the weight room to build up our strength, but dancing together is always more fun—and often just as good of a workout! 

When we enter into a dance with others, it’s best to have a similar framework, to come in with the expectation that we’re all doing the same dance—even if we have different movements in the expression. This creates the coherence to have a truly shared and communal mystical prayer.

Liberation into the Inter-Dynamic Flow

Our framework of the four centers and the three movements provide a helpful framework for the dance, but it is not the definitive or only formulation for moving into the dance of mystical prayer. By no means.

We offer these centers and movements as a broad field of possibility, with the centers including different types of mysticism and allowing for the various movements in encountering each of the Three Faces of God.

We believe it strikes a good balance between a field broad enough to encompass a healthy range of polarities, while still within a unified and accessible container.

But perhaps it can all still seem a little overwhelming, a little too much to grasp, or that it’s too hard to learn it all. That’s ok. Or maybe we find ourselves unsure exactly where to start.

The beauty of Integral Prayer is that we are able to give ourselves over to the dance, to allow ourselves to be the one being led. We don’t have to control the movements and the flow of the dance. Even as we are given freedom of expression and very much our own contribution in participation, we are carried along by the leading hand of the divine, emerging and arising into the delightfully unexpected and unforeseen dips and turns, into the joy of the dance.

How do mystics pray?

By taking the hand of God—the God-Beyond-Us, the God-Beside-Us, the God-Being-Us—and giving themselves over to the freedom of being led in the Grand Dance.

Have fun!

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