From the soil of deep belonging can spring the sprouts of new creation.
From the kinship of soulful belonging in the bosom of God can we bear our divine becoming.
From the mercy of wombful belonging can enfold great care and capacity to be with pain.
From the vulnerability of authentic belonging in grief together can emerge deep healing.
From the ground of deep belonging can grow our glorious and holy longings, arising from wholeness rather than lack and loss.
Read MoreMercy in a wombful sense is a glorious way of meeting grief.
A wombful mercy springs forth not from power over, but arises from the depths of sacred Origin. The ever-present beginning-ing that is always happening.
A wombful mercy embraces our grief and holds it in the compassion of deep empathy—with us in the midst of it, from inside the womb. It remains and releases in response to what is embodied here and now. It is able to hold and let go, in the blessedly ripe and right time.
A wombful mercy evokes a more feminine way of meeting pain and dejection, less concerned with fixing or trying to absolve, it stays with us as long as we need in great care.
A wombful mercy is creative and illuminative. It gives birth to new life and wonderous conceptions.
A wombful mercy is communal, helping give birth to a new sense of ourselves. It lets go of “shoulds” for ourselves and others, freeing us into the fullness of our unique, authentic being in divine creativity—held together in communion,
How might you welcome and embody wombful mercy today and this week?
Read MoreIn this series, we have been considering how we might participate in adventing—which is to say, actively engaging in the arrival of Christ Consciousness in this season. As Christmas is upon us, the time for birth may be drawing near.
Do you feel them? The contractions of a world in the early pangs of labor?
We all have our personal journey in the ways we bear and bring forth the divine in our lives. Individually, we might be more than ready for the birth to come. Or, we could still be in a place of early gestation. Perhaps we continue to wait for the gift of a new inner conception. The calendar says it’s time, yet we may be living in barrenness or miscarriage.
Sometimes, in the passage toward birth and new life, it will feel like death.
Wherever you are in this rite unfolding, we are all, at the same time—in this time, participating in a collective natal arrival. Christ Consciousness is not a possession to be attained by some but a flow of divine being we open up to and move with. And the current is growing. The tide is rising in a global awakening. A cosmic imperative for the advent of a new divine initiation.
Do you see them? The angels among the expanse of stars in the sky twinkling with the celestial light of proclamation?
For unto us is born a savior, in the cities and stables of every part of the earth. In the fields and in the forests. There is no need to journey to Bethlehem, for Christ comes in ubiquity. She is all around us and before us. They are beside us and beyond.
Do you hear them? The voices of spirit declaring across the land: we are making all things new.
I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people. The divine life is born among you. Lo, behold, it is within you!
Come, taste and see.
Come, come with haste.
Read More“In the humanity which is begotten today, the Word prolongs the unending act of God’s own birth; and by virtue of God’s immersion in the world’s womb, the great waters of the kingdom of matter have, without even a ripple, been imbued with life. The immense host which is the universe is made flesh.”
—Teilhard de Chardin
The question of consciousness is one of the enduring mysteries of both science and spirituality. Certainly no one has all of the answers about it, and we carry conscious and unconscious assumptions about its nature, particularly depending on our religious upbringing and cultural background.
Many of our presuppositions about the nature of consciousness, especially in the heavily-Platonic-influenced Christian tradition, are rooted in a separation of matter and spirit. Without going into the long philosophical and theological history of this split, it will suffice to say that this orientation is a more traditionally masculine and dualistic approach. As such, consciousness is often separated—implicitly and explicitly—into the realm of spirit and immateriality, detached from the physical.
The more feminine principle of life does not split knowing and being, awareness and presence, mind and body. It does not privilege the experience of reality from the objective and removed perspective, but rather lives enmeshed in the manifest, through the energy of imbued presence in the midst of the substance of things. Things like the trees, the soil, the cat, the baby crying, the dirty toilet, the grief of loss, the joy of delight, the lack of sleep, the sick, the hurt, and the pearls of irritation. And everything else that is alive and dead, growing and composting, here and now. All that has been and is yet to come.
This is where our consciousness lives while we’re on this earth. And it is not only present in our mental recognition and reflective human awareness.
We are learning more about the consciousness of animals, plants, and even fungi. While the nature of these other forms of awareness is still somewhat undetermined and being further discovered, we are seeing our human-centric assumptions and dominator-attitude dismantling more and more. Escaping the confines of materiality (and spirituality rooted in similar fundamental assumptions, even when they are in opposition to it), we can come to not only see but also experience how all of life is animated in spirit. There is a mystical, fundamental—perhaps even quantum—presence of spirit/energy/consciousness in all things. This is the Cosmic Christ.
This is crucial to our spirituality because it anchors our sense of where we find God, where we look for the divine. If we are searching for heaven in an entirely removed realm, and expecting spirit to appear only in an ethereal ghostly haze—an immaterial, faint external object—we will continue to disembody and disconnect from “earthly” things (which is tellingly often used as a pejorative). And in so doing we will further doom the earth.
The Christ principle in its most cosmic sense is rooted in the immanence and immediacy of the divine in materiality. In and through the physical, which is not divorced from spirit. Christ is the divine incarnated, enfleshed, and somatized. So Christ Consciousness is the living, embodied awareness from the divine entwined and present in us, coming in the energy and knowing through our very material element of being. This is God-With-Us, Emmanuel in the heart of matter, in the deepest substance of all things.
Read MoreThis advent season, we are not waiting for Christ’s birth 2000 years ago. We are adventing Christ today through owning our own birthing journey as a rite of passage into our divine participation.
Giving birth is a feminine process, though it is not limited only to females or those physically capable. It is a mystical process we are all capable of in our spiritual womb. To do so, we embrace the Great Mother and receive our own impregnation with new life.
In this mystical journey, the new life growing is our own divine becoming—Christ Consciousness within and among us—expressed in many forms
Read MoreGrowing up in church, advent was my favorite time of the year. I loved the music, the pageantry, the decorations, the candles, and the sense of waiting and preparing for something wonderful.
Looking back, I think to a large degree what made it so special was that it tapped into the quiet longing I had deep within me. Not just for Christmas Day, which, while always a delight, did not fulfil the longing with material gifts and family time. I craved a deeper communion. It was more truly a longing for a real experience of Emmanuel, God-With-Us.
It wasn’t until many years later I learned “advent” did not mean “to wait.” As I evolved through the early stages of my faith, I have had many of these somewhat embarrassing “epiphanies.” I have called them “fundie moments,” when I suddenly realize what I was taught isn’t true at all, but was a subtle or not-so-subtle indoctrination to particular (usually limiting) teaching or belief.
Of course, “advent” actually means “arrival.” We only come to think it’s about waiting if we don’t believe the arrival has occurred yet. Sure, Jesus came 2000 years ago, but much of traditional Christianity is still waiting for Christ to come again. For their longings to be met in thee tonight. To know and see God here and now. And still so many wait.
In years past, we have entered this season in ICN as a time of being mystical mothers, bearing the divine and growing up into our Christ-being.
What would it look like to truly live into the arrival? If we turn advent into an action rather than a season. This year, how about we advent Christ on earth today?
Read MoreMindfulness has become one of the most prevalent spiritual practices in the modern world today. It’s now being taught and applied in businesses and schools, reaching beyond the usual confines of religious and spiritual settings.
There is so much of current society that thrives on distraction, entertainment, and other forms of numbing consciousness. And we don’t want to live mindless lives. We are craving a more substantive experience of everyday life and reality. In response to pervasive anxiety, detachment, and anger, we want to be more calm, engaged, and peaceful. We want to be able to be more fully present in who we truly are throughout the moments of our days.
Mindfulness is a wonderful practice that can help us greatly in this regard. While there are many forms of the practice, most teach a process of conscious observing, noticing, and focused attention. It is a practice of self-regulation that helps us cultivate an orientation of curiosity, openness, acceptance toward life. And it is great, insofar as it goes.
Read More“Oh God, how can I help? What can we do?”
From the common prayer of “God, help me” we started with in last week’s article, we move from focus on ourselves into care and attention on the world, with our neighbors, in the moment right before us now.
From our inquiries of how we might live in resonance and wisdom from divine presence, we then respond to act with/in spirit consciousness.
For Whole-Body Mystical Presencing is not just about sensing or feeling divine spirit alive in us at any and all times. It is also about transforming how we live in each and every moment.
"My being is God, not by some simple participation but by a true transformation of my being." – Catherine of Genoa
Read More“God, help me!”
This might be the most common prayer there is and has been. I would guess most everyone reading this has prayed it at some point. Perhaps in a moment of desperation, perhaps in a time of childlike simplicity, perhaps this morning. Sometimes it’s not even said in words, but just a silent reaching out to the beyond. Even those who don’t believe in God have still been found to offer up this prayer in their darkest moments.
Asking for help is one of the most fundamentally human things we can do. And asking God for help is when we reach beyond what we are capable of, beyond what anyone else can do for us, beyond what would seem in the scope of possibility.
Some don’t believe in an interventionist God. And if we’re talking about Zeus casting lightning bolts down to smite the wicked, we have enough evidence to probably agree.
As we practice Whole-Body Mystical Presencing—which is a practice to enter the everyday reality of Christ consciousness, a moment-to-moment permeation of divine spirit—God is already here in our midst and within us at any and all times. Intervention is most often what we do as God’s presence in action, which will be the focus of next week’s article.
Read More
