Why We Practice WeSpace & Whole-Body Mystical Awakening

What is the purpose of our WeSpace groups? Why do we advocate Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practices?

At ICN, our stated purpose is:

“Gathering a global community of dedicated mystical practitioners for the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.”

The world is transformed by transformed people.

This is no secret. If we think of the people who have made a major difference in our lives, of the people who have brought about loving evolutions in their parts of the world, we will see people with a radiance, an inner strength, an energy, and a presence of life.

Perhaps changing the world is a little too lofty for most of us. Maybe we simply want to try to become better people. More loving. More caring. We want to be that much more conscious and energetically present to those around us so that we might be more of a life-giving presence as well.

This is so much more than just a likable personality or a magnetic charisma. This is a way of living with vitality, with heart, with wisdom, and with presence that can inhabit any disposition and natural bent. But it doesn’t come automatically or easily most of the time. It takes a conscious effort and attention toward growth and development, especially through spiritual practice.

If it is holistic, we will find that we enjoy our spiritual practice. We’ll feel the thrill and exhilaration of discovering this expansion, integration, and freedom within and among us. And that will greatly affect how we live.

We dedicate ourselves to our mystical practice because it takes us into the pathways of inhabiting and becoming this transformative presence in the world. Because it is how we become conscious participants in the divine, creative work of loving evolution.

Sources & Roots

Whole-Body Mystical Awakening is a fully integrated practice encompassing integral systems, science, spiritual practice, and theology. It draws upon the models of Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness, neuroscience’s three brains, Ken Wilber’s three faces of spirit (my/Paul’s Three Faces of God), John Heron and Jorge Ferrer’s practices of embodied spiritual inquiry, and Raimon Panikkar’s understanding of Christ as the Christian symbol for all of reality. This is all correlated with WBMA in personal academic research and experience. In collaboration with each other and the ICN community, we have intentionally sourced from these primary streams of understanding and spiritual practice in formulating the basis and foundation of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.

“We-space” is a term that came out of the Integral community to describe the dynamic of our “shared interiors.” The “shared values, meaning, language, relationships, and cultural background” that make up a collective interior. Our inner worlds are not solely within ourselves but have a shared, communal aspect as well.

AN ACADEMIC DESCRIPTION OF A WESPACE GROUP:

“A primary ground for the practice of participatory-relational spirituality can be cultivated by collaborative peer-to-peer relations between persons engaged in fully embodied, multidimensional, transformative flourishing in and with their worlds.”
—Jorge Ferrer

Over time, more and more practices have arisen to consciously participate in these shared interiors. At ICN, we recognized the resonance of “we-space” with the mystical, relational connection Jesus had with his disciples in his life and after his resurrection. We felt the need for more dynamic and conscious experiences of the “We,” as we expressed in chapter one. We decided to adopt a unique spelling for our approach: “WeSpace.”

While our WeSpace and WBMA practices are based on today’s evolving, mystical, Integral Christianity, they also have their roots in the New Testament model of early Christian beginnings. This includes an understanding of “spiritual knowing” that arises from awakened consciousness, the experiences of Jesus with others in mystical awareness (Transfiguration, Emmaus), and the worship gatherings of the early church (Pentecost, I Cor 11-12, 14).

There are a number of mystical pathways and spiritual practices that can serve our transformation at various times in our lives. We believe, especially for this day and age now, there is a vital need for our growth and evolution to be integrative and holistic, to awaken in ways that are more embodied, more relational, and more generative.

Transformative Values of WeSpace

To move into a fuller consciousness of knowing, we must move beyond the confines of limiting ourselves to only our mental, cognitive processes.

Whole-Body Mystical Awakening engaged us in a process of moving into a state of embody-full-ment, of tuning into an energetic state of awareness from our centers—heart, spiritual womb, feet, and head. We call this “spiritual knowing,” but really all that means is that we are learning to know more fully, more holistically from our entire being. From all of our structures of consciousness within. From our divine identity through our entire, incarnated/embodied self as sources of wisdom, understanding, energy, presence, and more.

When we pray from each of these spaces, we are tuning into and participating with our awakened, divine being in new and profound ways. This also opens us up to new growing edges of learning from within our own bodies, learning new “mystical languages” as ways of speaking and transmitting from this Christ consciousness—the meeting point of divine and material reality as expressed in whom “we live, move, and have our being.”

RELATIONAL AWAKENING:
LOVING COMMUNION AMONG US

Integrating the relational field into our spiritual practice has the potential to expand our capacity and enhance the quality of our experience. Other people are not a distraction. The shared energy of focused engagement in WeSpace actually has a heightening effect. It moves us into a flow that transmits and energizes us in our practice. We are deeply supported by one another.

Entering into WeSpace helps move us into a new way of being that actively participates in the spiritual reality that we are not separate from one another. We can wake up to this reality much more readily and directly if our spiritual practice purposefully and directly invites us into the felt sense of this unity, the participatory experience of our deep engagement and spiritual interbeing with all others—the field of loving communion in our midst.

Engaging in WeSpace practice opens our hearts to one another and to the world in new ways. Our deepest charge as Christians is to love, and on the mystical level, the experience of deep heart connection infuses us with the energy of love that we carry in our hearts. In this way, our heart consciousness is expanded.

“Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)

When we pray with others who are also intentionally participating in their Christ consciousness, we share with one another in the reality of the human-divine connection. We offer strength, encouragement, and comfort to one another from this integrated and awakened state imbued with love. That love among us is deeply enriching, and it invites us to a more expansive field. Our embrace widens as we deepen and have greater openness to the source of more love to give to others.

In this relational field, we are also open to connecting deeper with spirit guides who can offer companionship, guidance, wisdom, and love. And they delight in inviting us onward into the terrain of emergent possibility, into further growth and greater reality.

EMERGENT AWAKENING:
MAKING ALL THINGS NEW

As we integrate our growing embodied awareness into a more holistic consciousness, and as we come together with others doing the same into a field of communion and interconnection, we can then find ourselves more actively participating in the generative field of co-creation.

This possibility comes about through the synergetic experience of coherence, the experiential participation in the flow of the divine field together. This is something like the collective resonance of a symphony playing together, in tune and on the same page—but playing without any sheet music. Sound impossible? In our previous paradigms, it would be (Jazz excluded!).

But now we are tapping into the generative power of emergence, the collective arising from the divine source that can spring forth in a co-creative field of discovery and open possibility. We are intentionally and regularly opening up to what is new, what is arising. We are learning an attunement to not what we already know but what we are about to know.

“When the spirit (consciousness) of truth comes, she will guide you into all truth. She will not speak on her own but will tell you what she has heard. She will speak forth.” (John 16:13)

Spirit or divine consciousness speaks forth to us so that we might speak forth to those around us (I Cor 14:5, 31). Learning to attune ourselves to the emergence of mystical knowing, both in the individual centers of spiritual knowing and from the group presences and energy fields, prepares us to sense what arises mystically from these sources. Including, but beyond our rational faculties, lie fuller wisdom and truth. In this deeper way of knowing, we can hear from God, Jesus, spiritual guides, and our own awakened consciousness in the mystical realm.

It’s vital to integrate in our spiritual practice receiving from the inflow—taking in spiritual nurture, support, and care—with the interflow of one another, and into the generative outflow of loving generativity. We become not just consumers in the world but makers of the new reality that is so desperately needed today.

When we welcome this expansive invitation, we are moving into the posture of receiving the words of spirit, the voices of higher and deeper consciousness ever-offering and ever-giving. We step into our role as enactors of evolution, co-creating with God in the divine unfolding of a better, more loving future for all.

The Effects of WeSpace & Whole-Body Mystical Awakening Practice

Here are some of the results we’ve seen from dedicating to these practices:

• We are becoming more integrated, holistic, and complete humans. We are awakening the radiant love and bliss in our heart, coming home to presence our bodies, and tapping into the fullness of our being and the wellspring of our divine identity. We are beginning to learn to participate in our divine nature. We are living more deeply into the experience of not being separate from God.

• We are becoming more deeply connected to one another in the reality of our interbeing, expanding our capacity for experience, love, and holding. We are awakening to the “We,” the intersubjective, interpersonal reality between us and all things, beyond the confining boundaries of our small selves. We are beginning to learn how to lovingly transmit and move among the interconnected space. We are living more deeply into the experience of not being separate from one another.

• We are becoming more open to the emergent and nascent reality that is pushing forth with great intensity in response to the dire need we find ourselves in at this time. We are awakening to the arising of the whispers of spirit within, among, and beyond us, calling us into greater wholeness and joy. We are beginning to learn how to recognize the beckoning of spirit into the birthing labor of what lies ahead. We are living more deeply into the experience of not being separate from the earth and all of expanding creation.

In these ways and more, we are discovering new ways of being that are more holistic, inclusive, expansive, and loving.

Many Christians and spiritual seekers around the world have spent years doing various forms of prayer and meditation that often connect primarily only to one or two of these areas but leave out other vital aspects of our being.

In WBMA practice, we find available endless wisdom and spiritual resources for our lives and for the world. This is a feast of spiritual help to nurture our lives over the long haul. You can practice it every day and never exhaust its limitless sources of energy and information.

These characteristics and qualities are further activated and even exponentially multiplied when we move into them in the relational field, in the WeSpace with others.

I (Paul) have researched a wide array of other spiritual practices and have found no other meditative prayer practice that encompasses in an embodied way such a broad array of resources and makes available to us the fullness of who we are and what we contain within. That is not to say that other practices cannot be helpful, and many may find it beneficial to continue to practice those in addition to WBMA.

WeSpace & WBMA are spiritual practices that can significantly expand our possibilities for growth and participation in the development of our consciousness. The wider embrace allows for a greater range of growth, in addition to the breadth of engagement in how we encounter the divine in each of the Three Faces of God.

While it may sound like a lot, we don’t need to feel burdened by doing it all at once. With the bigger field, at any time, we can gravitate toward the space we need to move in more deeply. We quite often will even be guided there by spirit. Through including the many facets of our being and reality, it also gives us a greater capacity to respond to our current state—individually and collectively—and meet it with the dynamic necessary for the present moment.

One step at a time, we are participating in our awakening. Spirit is beckoning onward, into the evolution of the world, together with the groanings of creation into greater liberation and freedom. Transmitting love and offering healing. Living into our participation in divine nature, becoming the body of Christ, given for all.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

1. Why do you engage in spiritual practice? What further integrations might be beckoning?

2. What aspect of WeSpace or Whole-Body Mystical Awakening is most appealing to you?

3. Have you experienced transformation through awakening more into embodiment, relationality, or emergence? What has that looked like in your life?