Interested in earthy, contemplative spirituality? Check out our Celtic Spirituality School!
Mystical togetherness
with Luke Healy
How does togetherness incarnate God’s presence? How might community become a place of mystical encounter? Join us as we explore spiral dynamics, Luke’s story of falling apart and being put back together, and what it really means to experience “we.”
Luke Healy is the co-founder of the Integral Christian Network, where they seek to make mystical experiences of God accessible to the individual and to people in community. Learn more about their work at https://www.integralchristiannetwork.org.
This is part of our new Spiritual Wanderlust podcast series, where we explore the deepest human longings and what it means to be human. Learn more at www.spiritualwanderlust.org
TAGS
Integral Christianity
Spiral Dynamics
Evolutionary spirituality
Integrative consciousness
Mysticism
Spiritual transformation
Community
Spiritual ego
Fundamentalism
Progressiveness
Renaissance art
Classicalism
Greco-Roman
Movements in art
Impressionists
Spiral dynamics
Traditionalism
Modernism
Post-modernism
Spirituality
Mysticism
Contemplation
Embodiment
Collective consciousness
Presence
Richard Rau
Paul Smith
Rumi (Sufi poet)
Luke Healy
Mother Teresa
Gandhi
Bonnie Badenoch
BOOKS
Americana (And The Act Of Getting Over It.)
00;00;07;03 - 00;00;35;27
Kelly Deutsch
Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves but here will follow those longings within our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers, embodiment experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science, along with a healthy dash of mischief.
00;00;36;10 - 00;00;43;14
Kelly Deutsch
Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.
00;00;54;11 - 00;01;20;17
Kelly Deutsch
Hello, everyone. Kelly Deutsch here. And today I have joining me Luke Healy. Lucas Be, co-founder of the Integral Christian Network, where they do a lot of really interesting things. And I'm excited to talk to them. It has a lot to do with things like today, sharding and spiral dynamics and some of those things that I think a lot of us find a little baffling and inaccessible.
00;01;20;17 - 00;01;31;08
Kelly Deutsch
So I'm excited to pick Luke's brain today about what this means, what it has to do with the contemplative life and mysticism and growing in each of our journeys. So, Luke, I'm excited to have you here.
00;01;31;20 - 00;01;33;23
Luke Healy
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Kelly. It's great to be here.
00;01;34;00 - 00;01;44;05
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Let me start our conversation just by asking, how did you first come across this world of integral Christianity and how is it different? What makes it distinct?
00;01;45;03 - 00;02;12;04
Luke Healy
Yeah, I, I came across it in a few different ways, one of which primarily is through Richard Rau, who's a big proponent of integral theory and Christian integral Christianity. Also exposure to spiral dynamics through the liturgies and kind of just started the rabbit trail there, learning about this sort of way of seeing the world of understanding this, this field, that's that it can be a little esoteric, like you said, a little, little confusing.
00;02;12;04 - 00;02;17;19
Luke Healy
There's a lot to it. So yeah, happy to be able to talk about it and dove into it a little bit.
00;02;18;05 - 00;02;28;29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. So how For the person who's never heard of Integral Christianity or Spiral Dynamics or any of these folks, how would you explain that to just a layperson on the street?
00;02;29;09 - 00;02;52;14
Luke Healy
Yeah, definitely. I think a good way to maybe initially start or open the doors is, is it's really kind of two things about it, at least in the way that I understand it. One is that it's evolutionary. So we are looking at faith and spirituality and really integral encompasses more than that. But our focus is in that area not just looking back, but how are we going forward.
00;02;52;26 - 00;03;07;07
Luke Healy
Now, one of the things few of the things that Jesus said is I have much more to teach you, but you're not ready for it yet. Or Jesus said We will do greater say greater things or that, you know, it's good for me to leave so the Spirit can come. So, so what is this sort of forward movement?
00;03;08;13 - 00;03;32;27
Luke Healy
What what does faith look like now and going forward into the future? So much of religion and spirituality can get caught in looking back and studying and learning about the past and you know what what was it like in Jesus times and finding documents and all that stuff, good and important to write. But the I think the the goal and the focus is to bring it to the now and where things going forward here, how is how is life evolving?
00;03;32;27 - 00;03;51;11
Luke Healy
How is spirituality, how spirituality evolving? How is consciousness evolving? And that's what in Chicago theory kind of really speaks to and maps that out in a lot of different ways. And then along with being evolutionary, it's also integrative. So we're not just like, oh, let's leave all that behind, right? The past is the past. That's that's charged for it ahead.
00;03;51;29 - 00;04;19;25
Luke Healy
We really want to own the best of what's come before living in an integrated consciousness with the sort of previous or past structures of consciousness, these ways of being these these practices, all these things that we've learned that that is the beauty and goodness of tradition. And then integrating also wisdom from other traditions and not just spirituality and religion, but from science, from systems, theories, from health from really everything, right?
00;04;19;26 - 00;04;43;21
Luke Healy
That that the more that we can integrate and bring into our worldview, to our consciousness, to our way of being the more complete that will be, the more holistic will be. So crucially, we're also integrating all of our ways of being and knowing. So not just in our mind, but really in our in our body and in those other structures of consciousness.
00;04;43;21 - 00;04;51;27
Luke Healy
So that's getting more into to some of the consciousness stuff. But that's maybe a good initial point, right? It's it's evolutionary and it's also integrative.
00;04;52;07 - 00;04;55;06
Kelly Deutsch
Hmm. Yeah. So the, the transcendent include.
00;04;56;05 - 00;05;22;00
Luke Healy
Yeah. Yeah. To some extent we could talk about that a little bit more to that. The transcendent and include can also get us maybe a little bit too much into a linear projection, which, which is also I think some of the reason some people have some dissonance with spiral dynamics or with integral theory. And that's why the integrative part is so important because we're not saying, well, you know, those those indigenous people back then they were naive and they didn't have the knowledge that we have today.
00;05;22;00 - 00;05;48;12
Luke Healy
They didn't know about the universe since. Right. So we need to transcend that. And all will include some of the things, right? As sort of a token gesture. But actually an integrative integral theory really does more than include it actually embodies and present, creates or brings forth those those ways of knowing, those ways of being in ourselves. We're actually bringing them those latent ways of knowing and being that are within all of us.
00;05;49;00 - 00;05;53;27
Luke Healy
We're bringing them to bear again in our in our life and in our ways of being.
00;05;54;01 - 00;05;56;10
Kelly Deutsch
So Can you give me an example of that?
00;05;57;07 - 00;06;22;07
Luke Healy
Yeah, exactly. So one of the things as we speak to kind of move into this more embodied, holistic consciousness is to recognize that we all have a magical structure of consciousness within us. This way of knowing and being that's a little more enchanted. Right? And especially in Western culture, where we're so in our heads and we we have all these ways of knowing and learning and we, we study and we get it all and it's all up here, right?
00;06;22;15 - 00;06;42;24
Luke Healy
And maybe some spirituality we bring in the heart, right? We want to want to be loving and we incorporate that. But but a lot of it's kind of that hard up, but actually deeper down in our, in our innermost being or our womb, as Jesus called it, when he said, from your wombs will flow rivers of living. Water is the depths, the ground of our being, what we call our spiritual womb.
00;06;43;04 - 00;07;13;27
Luke Healy
And in that space, in that deep, intuitive place of wisdom and unity and wholeness is another way of being is another reality that we can learn to sort of tap into and into it and live from a little bit more so. So one example of that is intuition, right? We the more that we kind of get in tune with that, the more that we start to to know things that we don't we didn't learn about.
00;07;14;02 - 00;07;37;19
Luke Healy
Right. We didn't study did well. And now we're getting into some intuition and how people feel about that. But that's one way that those things are actually deep within us. That way of knowing, that way of being intuition being one example that that the more that we kind of embody and in practice into, the more that that becomes a felt reality in how we how we think or how we know.
00;07;37;20 - 00;07;42;06
Luke Healy
Right. That's not just up here, but is more embodied within us.
00;07;42;15 - 00;08;08;06
Kelly Deutsch
Hmm. Can you tell me a story either from your life or some from someone who has discovered integral Christianity and what what changed? You know, like, what difference does it make to think about that form of, I don't know, what would you say instead of transcendent include just embodying and in a holistic way, all that you find to be good, true and beautiful?
00;08;08;16 - 00;08;42;03
Luke Healy
Yeah. I mean, integrating it. It's it's so transformative. It's so healing, really, actually. A lot of people come into to integral theory through the maps and through the understanding of how here's how we can kind of get the lay of the land, understand kind of where we've been and where we're going. And, and that's great. And we kind of understand it on a cognitive level, and it helps us see things outside of sort of the flatland of the polarizing duality of everything is conservative or progressive or everything is, you know, old or new or we get into those dual systems.
00;08;42;21 - 00;09;04;13
Luke Healy
And I think that's part of the contemplative path, right, where we're trying to sort of move beyond that dualistic way of being into more of a non-Jewish space. But in, in through that, it it's not just how we learn about that and know that, but how do we really embody it and engage in it. And so, I mean, I hear stories all the time of people who join our space groups.
00;09;04;13 - 00;09;30;01
Luke Healy
And in this this way of of being is so healing. And it's holistic and it's integrated because because we can get so easily trapped in that that mental space that that that place, that where we're just trying to know more and more and more and it actually becomes imperialistic where our mind is controlling us. That's where we're driven by needing to know more and, and learn and learn and learn.
00;09;30;01 - 00;09;46;25
Luke Healy
I know that's that's part of my own journey. I, I just read hundreds and hundreds of books trying to find the answer. Right? Trying to learn more to know. And, and really finally coming to the end of my mind and realizing that, that I'd have to, I'd have to go deeper and I'd have to also move out into the relational space.
00;09;46;25 - 00;10;15;15
Luke Healy
I couldn't do it all on my own. Individualistic, silly, but that it had to be with others and through others. So I mean, yeah, there's there's so many stories of people who join their groups and have come into this different way of sort of practicing a spirituality that is more embodied, that's more relational, and that it's more co-creative because we're drawing on those in our resources and discovering new ways that we can transform the way that we're living and loving and, and being in the world.
00;10;16;00 - 00;10;22;08
Kelly Deutsch
Hmm. How did that shift happen? For you? I mean, if I remember incorrectly or you were five.
00;10;22;21 - 00;10;24;06
Luke Healy
Yeah. Yeah. Any game for life.
00;10;24;14 - 00;10;38;21
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so just naturally oriented towards more heady existence in the world. So how did that transition happen for you and what did that look and feel like? And I mean, did others notice that transition happening in you?
00;10;39;21 - 00;11;06;01
Luke Healy
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question and a long story. I'll try to keep it somewhat short, but I in my early years, had a a early childhood trauma that that led me. My coping strategy was to retreat to my head. So that's kind of how I moved into the five space I thought. Or if I just figured everything out and didn't make any mistakes, I wouldn't get attacked or I couldn't feel any more pain and I'd be safe.
00;11;06;01 - 00;11;33;12
Luke Healy
So that was that was the initial part. And then through my faith journey, I knew that I needed to move back into my heart, to rediscover my emotions, to reconnect to that space in me. And I did that in my twenties. And through that, of course, being a five, I was still in my head. I was I was reading, I was studying, I was following the footnotes because I was I was also kind of dissatisfied with the state of affairs of religion and much of institutional Christianity as I had experienced it and as I had grown up.
00;11;33;12 - 00;12;01;21
Luke Healy
And so I was reading the mystics and reading just all these all these different places that that no one told me about, that no one, you know, recommended in those days, especially not in my evangelical camps, and I'd follow those footnotes and found more mystics and really moved into that experiential to say, oh, there's this divine immediacy, there's this presence here that that went beyond learning about concepts that went beyond just knowing more and more.
00;12;02;13 - 00;12;27;22
Luke Healy
And as I read, read and read and read and read, eventually it got to a point where I realized that I'm not going to not going to find this in a book. There's a beautiful story that I really love that was this from the Sufi poet Rumi. And some people may be familiar with Shams. To us was Rumi is dear, beloved and confidant and a teacher.
00;12;28;01 - 00;12;48;04
Luke Healy
When they first met, Rumi was around a well with a number of his students and and Shams just kind of strolled into the middle of the gathering, walked up to the well and pushed the stack of books down into the well. And no one knew who this guy was. And everyone kind of the students all freaked out. And Rumi looked at him and and he said, you've lived too long on borrowed awareness.
00;12;48;28 - 00;13;14;16
Luke Healy
And that was the catalyst for Rumi's transformation and awakening. So when I read that story, that really struck me as well. I realized that I was trying to find our own awareness in my mind, and I needed to own my own awareness. I needed to deepen into that mystical way of being and knowing and living within myself, but again, not just within myself, also with others.
00;13;14;16 - 00;13;31;01
Luke Healy
I had a pretty clear message from God that said, you can't go any further alone. And so that was a movement into the relational space, into seeking. I've always sought community, but finding deeper, mystical community.
00;13;31;14 - 00;13;36;05
Kelly Deutsch
Mm hmm. Yeah. So how did you go about finding that that mystical community?
00;13;37;13 - 00;14;03;24
Luke Healy
Yeah, well, I tried different things throughout the years and kind of corresponding to that inward journey. I I first thought, well, if we just change the way we're doing things at church, churches and great institutional religion, well, that's just that's, that's, that's changed the forms, right? That's let's get a new system in here that's rearrange things and and that's that will, that will fix that, that will, that will get community how it's supposed to be, right?
00;14;03;24 - 00;14;30;08
Luke Healy
So I, I dabbled in the house church movement and missional church and some of the, the sort of post evangelical things of the, of the nineties and early 2000s and eventually I got into starting a new monastic intentional community which was, you know, really kind of trying to go back to the roots of early Christianity, living in common, sharing everything, moving to the deserted places of the empire and, you know, doing, doing life together.
00;14;30;22 - 00;14;54;12
Luke Healy
And that was good. It was also a very spiritually ego boosting you know, we're doing it the right way. We're doing the way it should be. And that led me into a dark night, into a period of death of my spiritual ego and a loss of life, trying to create the beloved community to create the way things should be from my own space of, oh, this is what it looks like, this is how we do it.
00;14;54;12 - 00;15;17;26
Luke Healy
That's that's reorganize in this way. And, and, and yeah, that was about eight years in that space and in this sort of re reawakening rediscovering. When I, when I came out of that process, I, I thought, well, okay, where, where do I find people? Where are the others? And. And so it was kind of finding the mass, right?
00;15;17;26 - 00;15;43;12
Luke Healy
Finding the conceptual framework. This new and integral seemed to point to something that, that recognized some deeper realities, that recognize some ways of seeing the world that that resonated with where I was and felt like I was the God was evolving me into so I found Paul Smith, who wrote the book In Truth or Christianity, looked him up on a website, found out he actually was a pastor of a church for 49 years.
00;15;43;12 - 00;16;04;25
Luke Healy
In the in the town that I grew up in. But I wasn't ready to meet him yet. So it was after all of this journey for myself that I met him and we just connected instantly, had this mystical resonance and a really spiritual soulmates. And from there, actually at our first meeting, he said it can be kind of lonely in this space.
00;16;04;25 - 00;16;25;08
Luke Healy
And I said, Yeah, well, what if it doesn't have to be? So that's one of my, my gathering. I've always been a gathering as one of my archetypes. And so we have this great tool of the Internet and ways of finding people out there who who share similar resonances and ways of, of seeking to, to be mystics and together in unique ways.
00;16;25;08 - 00;16;42;26
Luke Healy
So well, not live together, but connect in this way now. So, so that, that's kind of how that started. That's how intricate Christian networks started was to just sort of gather, gather together some of this evolutionary and integrative approach to Christianity.
00;16;43;13 - 00;16;44;14
Kelly Deutsch
Hmm. Mm hmm.
00;16;47;01 - 00;17;15;00
Kelly Deutsch
There's a lot in your story that I resonate with, and I think a lot of people listening will resonate with that dissatisfaction or something. Was amiss in the way that we were experiencing religion, spirituality, whatever it was. Yeah. Thinking that we were then doing it the right way, which is interesting because a lot of us, I think a lot of people will swing more progressive and be like, Now I'm doing it right, you know?
00;17;15;11 - 00;17;32;09
Kelly Deutsch
And it's funny because I, I think we can be just as fundamentalists, whether we're conservative or we can become fundamentalists, liberals, we can be fundamentalists, contemplative, you know, like are you doing your 20 minutes every day? You know, like, oh, you're not, huh? You know, whatever.
00;17;32;18 - 00;17;34;18
Luke Healy
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00;17;34;21 - 00;17;35;13
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah.
00;17;37;20 - 00;18;01;18
Kelly Deutsch
If you're open to sharing, how. How did that. What popped the bubble as far as, you know, spiritual ego? I mean, I did the same thing, and I it it took my life falling apart to actually realize how much I relied on all of the, like, structures. Like, look, I'm I'm a nun. I'm praying 4 hours a day. I'm like, heaven.
00;18;01;18 - 00;18;19;05
Kelly Deutsch
Cool, Archbishop. Some people from the Vatican over for dinner and like, we're talking with all the cool people in the crowd. And it it took all of that being stripped away for me to realize how much I depended on those things. And praying for 4 hours a day and being this joyful servant to make me feel like I was a good person.
00;18;19;17 - 00;18;19;26
Luke Healy
Yeah.
00;18;21;09 - 00;18;25;14
Kelly Deutsch
Curious how how that happens for you, how much you're open to share.
00;18;25;14 - 00;18;55;18
Luke Healy
Yeah, of course. No, I was I was in the new monastic community, and we were living in a very underserved community, very violent, very, very, very difficult neighborhood, difficult circumstance. We were living in the upstairs of this big old stone church building and ten of us living with one bathroom and now married couples and singles. And it was it was a thing, but but, you know, yeah, we were we were we were doing what we were supposed to are urban farming.
00;18;55;18 - 00;19;30;10
Luke Healy
We were, you know, kind of getting into this new way of of it all. And, and and underneath that. Yeah, it just it it was like, you know, it's shadow. It's so we don't see it when we're in the midst of it, right? It's not present conscious to us, but it's this, this underlying drive to find value, to find meaning and worth and really to maybe to be considered worthy of love or to be thinking that where we're serving God in the way that we need to, that that's what God commands requires of us.
00;19;30;21 - 00;20;06;23
Luke Healy
I think I think for myself, it was it was sort of an idealistic passion. I, I always felt like in my life, and that's one of the great gifts that traditional Christianity and religion I think gave to me. And that's part of the healthy integrating and including is to recognize and say, you know, there's a real devotion and passion that came with my upbringing in an evangelical Christianity for all of its many flaws and faults it it left me no illusion about what life is and what life isn't.
00;20;07;13 - 00;20;25;17
Luke Healy
And so I may have really, you know, dove into the spiritual ego thing, but at least I've been in the corporate ladder and do the career thing. And, you know, that can be great and fine and whatever. Not trying to be idealistic about that either, but it charged I think it charged me with this sense of I'm not here just to to make money.
00;20;25;17 - 00;20;46;06
Luke Healy
I'm not here on this earth just to you know, exist and be present to I think to or to start down says it's always better to be more conscious than less. And so it in those early forms it wasn't very conscious, but it did have that passion that I remember praying as a teenager, okay, god, whatever it takes, whatever it takes.
00;20;46;19 - 00;20;55;23
Luke Healy
And and being also somewhat aware that that I have no idea what what how God's going to hear this prayer and it's beyond what I can know, right?
00;20;55;24 - 00;20;58;02
Kelly Deutsch
There's this that's a prayer.
00;20;59;06 - 00;21;23;04
Luke Healy
It's a very dangerous prayer, right? Yeah. This evolutionary God beyond God, right? I don't even know what what that's going to be. It's going to be the breakdown of my whole faith system and way of seeing and understanding myself. Yeah. So it just, it just through that passion. I mean, I was so committed to that community thinking that we were, we were, you know, I was finally living the way that we were meant to live.
00;21;23;04 - 00;21;43;02
Luke Healy
I would never would have left. I was so, you know, loyal and committed and, and God basically had to say, your time here is done. Like, like, I mean, it was a pressure cooker. It puts you in an environment where, yeah, you're forced to face your shadow a lot more than you you would if you're just kind of living alone or even with, with, with family, man.
00;21;43;06 - 00;22;11;15
Luke Healy
So, yeah, I mean, it was sort of a both a gradual unfolding through conflict. I mean, and you're striving you're trying to make it work. You're trying to be and then all of a sudden it just kind of cracks open. It just kind of whether it's through the falling apart or through. I mean, in this case, our community, we we bought an old school bus and then a school bus painted it green and drove across the country for a big fun trip visiting national parks and things.
00;22;11;15 - 00;22;39;04
Luke Healy
And that was like the super intense pressure cooker that it kind of caused it all to explode and really see ourselves and face to face some of those those harsh realities. Of course, it took years for me to kind of process and unfold all of that after leaving the community. But yeah, it was a blessing. I mean, it was a good thing to to go through that and recognize like, oh, this is this was just kind of a new fundamentalism, right?
00;22;39;17 - 00;23;00;24
Luke Healy
A little more progressive or enlightened or, you know, but but we, we had that superiority and that's why I push back on the transcend and include language from earlier because it's so easily can get into that, that superiority. Right? Oh, we're going to we're going to transcend that. That lower stage, that way of being. That is where we're we're much we're much beyond that now.
00;23;00;24 - 00;23;19;28
Luke Healy
Right. And that's that can creep into actually actually more than creep in that can be present in a lot of of the integral world because we're looking at development we're looking at evolution. And and we can think of that very linearly especially if we're we're doing it primarily from our mental structure of consciousness.
00;23;19;28 - 00;23;44;15
Kelly Deutsch
So yeah. Yeah. Would you talk to me a little bit about that? Because I think any time we have a spiritual measuring stick, it can be very easy to feel superior and almost disdain it's not your past self. Other people who are in that and like or even just pity them, you know, like all those poor people who are way far back there.
00;23;44;15 - 00;24;04;19
Kelly Deutsch
I mean, I see that the people who I remember giving a talk once on mysticism to a church group and a girl came up afterwards and she's like, So I've been reading Theresa's interior Castle and I think I'm in the fifth mansion, but it might be the fourth. How can I tell the difference, you know? And I was like, Hmm, I wonder if this is maybe even the right question to be asking.
00;24;04;27 - 00;24;25;16
Kelly Deutsch
And I'm curious how you approach that in in spiral dynamics and integral Christianity, because I think it's very easy to be like, well, I, you know, this person's in teal, but I'm over, you know. Yeah, yeah. Both How do you approach that? And maybe also talking through what are some of these levels and is it even a question we should be asking what level we're in?
00;24;26;07 - 00;24;46;13
Luke Healy
Yeah, I mean, that's that's a great question. And that's it's kind of at the heart of integral theory or spiral dynamics there. For those of you who aren't familiar with spiral dynamics or part of inch book theory is called Growing Up, which is this idea of stages of consciousness, at least an integral theory as it's expressed by Ken Wilber, who's kind of the main popularizer of it.
00;24;46;24 - 00;25;10;13
Luke Healy
And it's that we go through these stages of growth and evolution. We grow up from sort of a tribal Well, Paul Smith writes about this to and kind of a warrior stage and the tribal stage, and then a modern stage, a postmodern stage and then an internal stage. Right. So it's kind of this this evolution energy movement. And and in each of those stages, there are things that are healthy and are things that are unhealthy.
00;25;10;13 - 00;25;27;03
Luke Healy
And then, you know, we have to grow and transcend and include is kind of the common narrative there. And and yet it can be helpful, right? It can be helpful, I think is a good starting place, especially, you know, there's a lot of nuance there. There's a lot of understanding and in and how we develop and grow as people.
00;25;28;02 - 00;25;52;13
Luke Healy
But but it is helpful to see that it's not all just kind of this flatland. Right? It's not all just that dualistic back and forth is it helps kind of make sense of, oh, well, there is sort of a path of movement here. There are stages of faith right? There's ways that we grow and evolve and and yeah, that the mind, the ego wants to wants to put ourselves at the highest stage right here.
00;25;52;13 - 00;26;11;17
Luke Healy
Maybe we'll have a little false humility and say, well, okay, I'm not quite up there to the ultraviolet place, but but I'm definitely t'l right. I'm in the second tier. You know, I'm not yeah. Or if or we just kind of just naturally recoil and reject against that hierarchical sort of understanding which which also makes sense. I can understand that too.
00;26;12;06 - 00;26;40;13
Luke Healy
Because because it can definitely come across that way in how it's presented. A lot of times one of the four can Wilbur actually was integral theory's roots are from Sridhar Bando in India with Integral Yoga and Ascension Webster, who is a Swiss German theologian well, not theologian, a cultural phenomena ologist and an historian and poet. And he talks about structures of consciousness, not stages of consciousness.
00;26;40;13 - 00;27;04;08
Luke Healy
And I was kind of alluding to that earlier and that we have we have grown up through these these ways of being and living and knowing as well as humanity. And over that time, it's not that we we transcend. And what what we came from is gone on, but that's still a part of us. It's still within us.
00;27;04;18 - 00;27;27;04
Luke Healy
And it becomes latent or overcome or shadowed and and really that's necessary because those previous structures, they become deficient, right? We have efficient forms of them, and then they become deficient. And so we have to find a new way of being and right now we're in the deficient mental. And I think that's really helpful and important to understand because we need to discover new ways of being.
00;27;27;04 - 00;27;53;28
Luke Healy
And that isn't just a transcendent leap into what's next. Oh, and then we'll figure out what to include after that. No, it actually comes about through integrating all of those previous structures of consciousness in us in embodied mystical access in Christian language, we call it integrating our divine participation our divine being. And so that's a whole other thread.
00;27;53;28 - 00;28;09;29
Luke Healy
But, but yeah. So I think it is helpful to, to, to get a lay of the land to, to get some maps and none of them are perfect. Right. And of them really explain everything. And all of them have lots of nuances that can easily get lost just like any grand, right? We can, we can type ourselves and get into a thing and oh, I'm there now.
00;28;09;29 - 00;28;24;00
Luke Healy
I know now I understand it, but the true teachers of it who get into the depth and wisdom of it, they'll say, well, okay, this is, this is what it's actually trying to point us toward. It's not trying to get us to to identify and do our type more and say, Oh, I'm a five, and now here's a meme about how I am.
00;28;24;00 - 00;28;33;00
Luke Healy
Right. But no, this is a way to understand ourselves, to see things more clearly with more wisdom, and hopefully maybe provide some paths of growth.
00;28;33;15 - 00;28;34;00
Kelly Deutsch
And.
00;28;34;09 - 00;28;35;26
Luke Healy
Continual transformation.
00;28;35;26 - 00;28;55;00
Kelly Deutsch
So yeah, I like that. Like a path of growth. And I also like the just thinking of it as a structure of consciousness, like things are just shifting because something was not working as well. The deficiency that like, okay, I've come to the end of what this can offer me. It seems in some ways anyway, it's becoming deficient.
00;28;56;04 - 00;29;05;28
Kelly Deutsch
And so I need, I need something else something new, something perhaps beyond what I've been living yeah.
00;29;05;28 - 00;29;25;25
Luke Healy
Well, Cynthia or Joe's been writing about this lately, and the metaphor she used was like rooms in a museum, right? You have these, these rooms of different eras and epics of of art creation, and each one has its value and its its beauty and its goodness. And you spend a little time in this room, and then you say, Oh, okay, things need to grow and evolve.
00;29;26;01 - 00;29;42;22
Luke Healy
There's new meaning that needs to come forth. There's new expressions and ways of grappling with the world and how we understand and how we how we become into reality. So I'm going to move into this room for a little bit. That room is still a part of the museum. It's still we still have access to it. We draw on it.
00;29;42;22 - 00;30;00;02
Luke Healy
There's there's qualities. There's, there's, there's techniques. There's right. We can overstretch the metaphor. But, but it's this sense of, of, of it all. It all belongs and it's all a part of things. And it, it is embedded and it informs our way of expression now.
00;30;00;16 - 00;30;27;09
Kelly Deutsch
Mm hmm. Yeah. That's a nice way of thinking. Of it, because you can see how, you know, let's say Renaissance art was informed by classical ism back kind of Greco-Roman, but also then how it would impact, you know, the next people that would come after the other movements in art, even if sometimes those movements were reactions to that one, you know, like the Impressionists or, you know, different people who were like, oh, we're going to leave that all behind.
00;30;27;09 - 00;30;40;00
Kelly Deutsch
But you still see how much that was included. You know, they were still all formed in that way. And that was an important stage for how wherever Art went. Yeah, that's an interesting analogy. Yeah.
00;30;42;17 - 00;31;08;10
Kelly Deutsch
If you had to give an example using either a fictional person, you know, Joe Schmo, or even just using a real person's life, whether it's like a Mother Teresa or a Gandhi or someone using those the colors of spiral dynamics, what that looks like at each stage, because I think that's what sometimes we get a little confused. I mean, same with anybody who's new to the any agram.
00;31;08;11 - 00;31;12;13
Kelly Deutsch
You're like, Wait, is it a seven, nine or is it a six? And now I tell them.
00;31;12;13 - 00;31;17;24
Luke Healy
Yeah, these people are using all these numbers. I know I'm not good at math, right or right. What are all these.
00;31;17;24 - 00;31;22;05
Kelly Deutsch
Colors, right? Like this blue teal orange. Yellow. I don't know.
00;31;22;14 - 00;31;42;28
Luke Healy
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll use myself, right? So in my I grew up in a traditional evangelical church, which was very blue or sometimes called amber. There's actually two colors. That's what makes it even more confusing with urban sprawl, dynamics, sprawl then people are a little more familiar with. So I'll go with that. So Blue is kind of that traditional stage.
00;31;43;17 - 00;31;45;22
Kelly Deutsch
Is that the first one? So in order, do they go in?
00;31;45;22 - 00;32;12;05
Luke Healy
That's not the first one, right? So some people equate it with sort of childhood growth and development. So it's the first stage of sort of this really base. I think it's beige and it's just sort of a you're a newborn infant in your area here. You are right. Undifferentiated reality gap circles of the archaic and actually that we won't go there and to make it more confusing, but we have the beige and then we start with with a tribal.
00;32;12;05 - 00;32;43;21
Luke Healy
Gosh, I got a refresher on my spiral dynamics of work in the Syrian world. But but the traditional is probably one that we identify a lot with a lot because it's 35 40% of of the U.S. or the western well more U.S. North America and that that is sort of the traditional understanding. You're your average everyday churchgoer, you know, strong value sets of, you know, patriotism or religion or this is yeah, it's more of a collectivist space where we.
00;32;43;28 - 00;33;03;25
Luke Healy
So so for me, it was growing up in that it's it's a very safe health healthy container. Right? Oh, I am given and here's the Bible. This is the source of wealth, of truth and knowledge. And I learned that. And I have my community and we're all very loving and connective and and also very insular and tribal and right you're either in or you're out and there's boundaries and and that's kind of that that blue stage.
00;33;04;06 - 00;33;23;13
Luke Healy
And it's also usually mixed with for me, it was mixed with a lot of modern, which is the next one up, which is the orange, which is kind of scientific rationalism. Right. Our our education system in the US is very modern, very you know, you're learning the scientific method and you're studying according to the Enlightenment rationalistic principles for the most part.
00;33;24;07 - 00;33;56;26
Luke Healy
So it's kind of this blend there. And then a lot of times you'll go off to it, maybe they get in high school or go off to college and they're learning about science and it's questioning how we have faith, right? How do I grapple and reconcile these stages and and that can maybe be a source of deconstruction sometimes or sometimes it's, it's the next stage of post-modernism or green that you go from beyond the sort of modern mental everything is as efficient and, and then, and then it's like, no, we need to care about the earth.
00;33;56;26 - 00;34;18;17
Luke Healy
We need to care about the planet. We need to, you know, be more community minded and be more kind of on the perhaps the progressive spectrum is one way to consider it politically at least. And that's that's the post-modern stage. I think when I was in the in the new monastic international community that was very post-modern, very green, kind of this this way of everything's egalitarian.
00;34;18;17 - 00;34;46;13
Luke Healy
And we're going to we're going to share everything in common. We're going to you know, we have these inequalities in our society and we need to go and and be with with the poor and save them. Right. Or be this incarnational presence and try to fix all of the wrongs of society and and so that's kind of those common stages of where a lot of our society is in spiral dynamics terms or kind of will vary and in travel stages yeah.
00;34;46;15 - 00;34;51;19
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. So what's beyond that? Like, what are we called to beyond orange? Blue. Green.
00;34;51;29 - 00;35;31;00
Luke Healy
Yeah. So so spiral dynamics are real. We're talking about the second tier. We move into yellow or, you know, a different, a different framework. And, and, and I think, again, for me, it's been a real corrective to connect to two different ways of thinking about that because I don't think it comes through transcending. Right? Oh, now I'm in this, I'm in this green post-modern space and it's, I'm seeing how it's fundamentalist some see oh another way that I'm just sort of, you know, boosting myself up and well, okay, I guess I better, you know, put on my back pack and keep going and jump to the next stage.
00;35;31;00 - 00;36;00;07
Luke Healy
Right. Well, okay, maybe, maybe a little bit. Right. But but I think it is more of this sense of, of seeking to integrate and not, not fly on ahead, but to say, okay, what, what is the wholeness of my being? What is it within me that makes me who I am, not just me, but us. Right. Another way of conceiving of these structures or stages so that they kind of from the they become more inclusive.
00;36;00;07 - 00;36;34;17
Luke Healy
And we're at each stage. At each stage. And so it unfolds into it's not just me now. It's my tribe. It's not just my tribe now. It's my nation. It's not just my nation, it's the world. And then it's like, well, it's not just the world, but actually, is it the universe? Well, yes, but but more in a way of of it becoming embodied within and through me in the the becoming of the body of Christ, the inter fusion of the divine, and the material in the very fibers of my body, of our body, of the collective body, of Christ.
00;36;34;26 - 00;36;55;00
Luke Healy
So it becomes a little more mystical. And that's why I want to kind of get away from the mapping of it and move more into the actual experiencing of that embodied consciousness. This that mystical divine participation, which is really the work that we do at intricate Christian networks, because understanding and learning can only take us so far. We need to move into practice as contemplative.
00;36;55;01 - 00;37;25;02
Luke Healy
No, but a lot of our traditional contemplative practices well, they, they were designed for a specific purpose, and they serve specific organs. And some of them are really great, really wonderful. And also, maybe there's other things that we need to integrate as well to have a holistic, embodied practice that might be a little more relational, that might also be a little more into the spaces that that maybe were evolving into.
00;37;25;05 - 00;37;25;15
Luke Healy
So.
00;37;25;24 - 00;37;29;02
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, what does that look like Yeah.
00;37;29;02 - 00;37;51;08
Luke Healy
So it in part is bringing more of the divine feminine into into our practice. A lot of our contemplative practices were developed, and we might call them patriarchal settings or, you know, monastic contexts that are a little more removed from life in the midst. And I remember I went to the living school at the Center for Action and Contemplation.
00;37;51;08 - 00;38;10;15
Luke Healy
That was a constant question. Right. Okay. This contemplation thing is great is 20 minutes. I've got a baby on my hip and I've got dinner on the stove and oh, I'm going to go sit down for 20 minutes. Right, okay. And silence and stillness, right? It's just, it, it's very good, it's very important. And I spent many years in those practices were very helpful.
00;38;11;20 - 00;38;59;01
Luke Healy
But as we're encountering life now and the way of the world and, and how we can be, you know, there's definitely something to be said for stepping back and removing ourselves and becoming more transparent and clear. And I'm definitely not trying to strawmen or pigeonhole contemplation, but there's also there's also ways that we're learning through and through different studies about about different ways of knowing about centers of spiritual knowing in our body, about embracing relationally embracing mystery, coming into more of our intuitive faculties and not just not just doing the stripping away and the silence and the removal of, you know, those nasty, pernicious thoughts, right, that we're trying to quiet and still, again, that's that's
00;38;59;01 - 00;39;24;17
Luke Healy
a bit of a straw man. So I apologize for that. But we're there's other ways, too, that we can move into an embrace and practice with one another. I mentioned relational. That's a big one, right? To not just be in our silent interior spaces alone, surrounded by others, but to actively engage and participate in our shared interior spaces, to move into the collective field of spiritual presence and energy with one another.
00;39;24;20 - 00;39;52;13
Luke Healy
You know, the more active, participatory way is one element of that. And then also to move into those deeper ways of knowing and being right. I mentioned the spiritual womb earlier that's a real embrace of a more feminine quality of of spiritual being and creativity that comes from that. The life creation becoming makers in the world to be people who are transforming society.
00;39;52;13 - 00;40;16;29
Luke Healy
And and our world needs that right now. World is going going in one direction. And and it's great to to kind of clear our own consciousness and come into a better place of peace. But there's also a call to, to become not just in our being, but in our becoming a presence in the world, making a new reality.
00;40;18;00 - 00;40;20;06
Luke Healy
So that's a little bit of it.
00;40;20;16 - 00;40;22;05
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah.
00;40;28;18 - 00;40;53;14
Kelly Deutsch
Is that something that you could share with us now? Is that like, I don't know I mean, I've I know you shared that these are the kinds of things that you do in your space groups and being able to enter into that relational space of spiritual presence. And I'm curious if that's something that can be shared just by a five minute practice or what your thoughts are on that.
00;40;53;20 - 00;41;15;09
Luke Healy
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So we're we're as we're encountering this now and people are watching, it's it's we're not actually in a relational space of of direct presence but we are because in some sense it's timeless and it's space. So maybe we've experienced that through the Internet on Zoom. Right. Well, I can feel present to you.
00;41;15;16 - 00;41;46;25
Luke Healy
I can connect with you in my heart in a way that I can feel energetically right now. Kelly, with you like we're sharing a space and maybe someone is listening starts to feel something in their heart. There's like this energy presence that comes, oh, okay. There's a reality here. There's there's something that's being co-created. There's a we space we call it a field of of energy, of love of, of, of a way of connecting into the reality that's not just stopping at these boundaries of our skin.
00;41;47;09 - 00;42;09;10
Luke Healy
And so we can really do that in any time, in any place. And we do that not primarily not through our mind, although we can go there. It's a little easier to access through the heart. But since we're not exactly in a relational context, let's do it through our feet. So our feet are as our fourth center of, of knowing our head of heart, our womb at our feet.
00;42;10;00 - 00;42;37;01
Luke Healy
And so if we just take a moment actually don't like to say take, let's receive a moment of moving our awareness down to our feet, maybe wiggle your toes, maybe feel the bottom of your feet against the floor. And it's crucial that we're not thinking about our feet from our head, but we're feeling from our feet. So really sense the bottom of your feet.
00;42;37;01 - 00;43;12;26
Luke Healy
It's okay if you're wearing shoes or if you're in a building that doesn't really matter if you can be barefoot in the grass, that's wonderful. But we can still connect to this reality. So feeling the bottom of your feet perhaps just begin to sense your roots coming out from the bottom of your feet, connecting to the earth this earth that we all share this material reality.
00;43;14;10 - 00;43;29;07
Luke Healy
And we can ground to that earth through our feet feeling our incarnated embodiment in this moment, in this time, in this place.
00;43;32;26 - 00;44;37;17
Luke Healy
And in that Earth energy is Christ energy the entire fusion of the divine in the material that is flowing through your body and through the earth. And so to also your body and my body and our bodies maybe then you can feel the interconnectedness of your roots with others does it matter where we are? Kelleys in Oregon and I'm in Kansas City and can feel perhaps an intermingling or with others that's probably enough for now.
00;44;40;06 - 00;44;40;14
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00;44;44;07 - 00;44;44;25
Kelly Deutsch
Thank you.
00;44;45;13 - 00;45;26;08
Luke Healy
So that's a it's a practice, right? So just like any practice you might be able to access it first time or maybe we've done it before, maybe we've done some grounding and other forms of practice, but intentionally moving our consciousness into that interconnected space, the more that we practice it and practice it in a group setting, in an act, in a relational field where that collective we space is present and dynamic, the more easily we're able because because the presence of the group actually increases our capacity to sense that and to move and to that.
00;45;26;16 - 00;45;51;16
Luke Healy
So it takes practice but it's surprisingly accessible. That's one of the things about this sort of embodied, mystical way of consciousness that we're practicing into in our groups is is that it's not it's not something that takes 20 or 30 years of practice. And maybe after that you'll have a mystical experience, right? Or maybe after that you'll transform your consciousness.
00;45;51;16 - 00;46;26;07
Luke Healy
No, we need the collective because the collective has this transmission that brings us into a new reality. So much faster than we would through years of practice. And also because we're moving into the embodied spaces, right? When we're trying to clear the mind with the mind yeah, that's another direction. But moving into the heart, moving into our feet and our embodiment, it's a much more imminent present reality that we can move into an access and which brings about transformation in a more direct and accessible way.
00;46;26;16 - 00;46;28;18
Luke Healy
We found true experience. Yeah.
00;46;29;09 - 00;46;56;04
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. That's so interesting. I, I find so many people who are like, Man, I just meditate so much better in a group, you know, it's so hard for me to do it alone. And I had another conversation with Bonnie Badenoch, who's a, an interpersonal neurobiologist, and so she was sharing. We basically talked about the neurobiology of presence, which was beautiful, but I mean, that was essentially the core of it was from how our very bodies are made and our nervous systems are wired.
00;46;56;13 - 00;47;21;15
Kelly Deutsch
We're made for coagulation, you know, and so that's I mean, in spiritual language, that's what helps us be present and why it's so much easier with other people because are very bodies and material that we're made of or wired to do that, like a tuning fork. You know, if you're very presence, that helps me be very present. If you're totally anxious, it's very easy for me to get pulled into that anxiety for sure.
00;47;21;15 - 00;47;42;14
Luke Healy
We not I mean, we you walk into a room, right? And you can feel kind of like, oh, there's something off here, right? Or, Oh, this place isn't safe for the right. We have these really subtle, perceptive intuitions, and we don't really give those credence in our society a lot of times. Right? We just kind of dismiss them or we haven't we haven't learned to develop those faculties, right?
00;47;42;14 - 00;47;45;21
Luke Healy
We don't we don't take those courses in school, unfortunately.
00;47;46;06 - 00;47;52;17
Kelly Deutsch
I know. Which I think is one of the reasons why I get so excited about all the developments in neurobiology and elevate.