Navigating Natural Rhythms of Community

Phases of Group Development
Practicing Community – Part Thirteen

It is the nature of life to grow and evolve. So too, every group and community that is alive will go through change and growth. Unfortunately, many spiritual communities instead take a static approach to community life. They try to keep things the way they are, reinforcing the traditional patterns and set processes that bind the members to a repetitive cycle.

But if the spiritual community continues to evolve, it can be a synergistic process of personal growth and communal evolution working in tandem.

Let’s look at some natural phases of the process of community life and where that can lead us if we navigate them with wisdom and grace.

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Community, Practice, WeSpaceLuke HealyMystical Community, WeSpace, Evolution, DevelopmentComment
The New Architecture of Transformative Community

Last week, we considered the need for new structures and ways of coming together in spiritual community. Recognizing that many of the old forms are not equipped to handle the new wine of evolving spirit in this time of great change, we looked at our own personal place in the midst of these great transitions. Where are we meant to be? Where is spirit calling us to live and contribute with our unique gifts and presence?

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CommunityLuke HealyMystical CommunityComment
Do You Resonate When You Pray for Others?

A Prayer that Resonates

One of our core mystical practices in our WeSpace Groups is something we have called "Integral Prayer." That is admittedly a name that does not say much about what it actually is. We have had to keep putting a lot of energy into helping others understand what we mean by that terminology. In a long, wonderful conversation Luke and I had about this, Luke came up with a much more lively and descriptive name to help with that understanding — Resonating Prayer.

We can pray predictably, saying the routine words or affirmations of a religious ritual. Or we can pray in a resonating way. One of the dictionary meanings of "resonate" is "to affect or appeal in a personal or emotional way." Or "to strike a chord with." So we might say this is prayer that comes from deeply personal and vibrating, felt resonance within that seeks to strike a chord in another.

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PracticePaul SmithIntegral Prayer, practice, Transmission Comments
How to Awake to Oneness

Part Five: Waking Up to Oneness

In his book, Working with Oneness, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Ph.D. and Sufi mystic, writes, "Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived."

This is our call at ICN – "to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done."

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Mysticism, PracticePaul SmithOneness, Embodiment, ConsciousnessComment
Finding Oneness in Science

Part Three: Waking Up to Oneness

Nothing in the science of quantum physics proves a spiritual worldview of Oneness. However, when outstanding physicists and other scientists make comparable statements about the unity of creation, I believe that we should at least take note of these statements and seriously consider them. Let’s look at some of them.

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Paul SmithOneness, Science Comments
Other Traditions and Oneness

William James (1985 - 1910), founder of American psychology, in his classic text, The Varieties of Religious Experience, described Oneness and its relationship to mystical experiences in the following way:

“This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states, we both become one with the Absolute, and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, we find the same recurring note.”

The idea of Oneness, that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the universe, can be found in many of the world's philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to inwardly sense the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, things, and spiritual realities. This is a challenge to Western hyper-individualism and its tendency toward self-centered behavior.

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MysticismPaul SmithOneness, Union, transcendence Comment
Waking Up to Oneness

May they all be one, as you, Abba God, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us.
John 17: 21

Jesus said, "When you make the two one, you will become like the sons of man, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away."
 Gospel of Thomas, Saying 106 

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
Meister Eckhart

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MysticismPaul SmithOneness, Union, transcendence Comments