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

Discovering Your Mystical Language

Spiritual Knowing: Part Five — Mystical Awareness from Our Whole Body

“We cannot recognize God’s hand and voice in the world without a special sensitizing of the eyes and ears and of our soul (‘grace’) – that is, without a special sort of sense or super-sense.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Last week, we talked about how mystical intelligence is something that we can develop and cultivate. We do this by undertaking practices that awaken and engage our centers of spiritual knowing. Based on research from transpersonal psychologists, we have identified four major body centers of spiritual knowing, each with their own ways of sensing. To develop your intelligence in each of these areas, you can practice Whole-Body Mystical Awakening either by yourself or together with a group.

There are certainly other practices that engage with some of these centers, but most traditional mediation and prayer forms stay in the head, or some may also include the heart. Other body-practices that may involve scanning or movement most often stay in the physical realm, or keep the seat of awareness in the mind, perceiving the body. Very few seek to listen and know, including our body and gut as places of spiritual knowing together with the heart and the head.

MysticismLuke Healy & Paul SmithJanuary 12, 2020 Comment