As an initiate of divine mystery and an activist for spiritual intelligence, there’s logic in my approach. Since science still can’t record much of the subtle and complex body data that I track, nor how to organize a person’s thinking around it, my spiritual tools and practices are more of an art. How can we trust it? How is the information that I share to be considered valuable? The success of any teaching is in whether people 1) claim a benefit, 2) choose to practice the ideas and tools, 3) want to replicate the teaching beyond the teacher. I hope in teaching Ensouled A Course in Blessed Initiations and Instructions for Body and Soul to help demystify and coalesce the more subtle body knowledge of spiritual intelligence with the help, feedback and wisdom of peers. 

I’ve glimpsed some of the great wonders of the world in the dance of body and soul in Africa, America. India, Europe, and Australia. I’ve witnessed people of every ilk ensoul life with enviable beauty as they synch up to the moving world. Such soulfulness is revelatory. Our dances, music, and languages are medicinal in the greater ecosystem. When we power up our creative pleasure fields more than humans benefit.  All we need is to join the dance as Thomas Merton said in New Seeds of Contemplation.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

Forget the “how”. The general dance is How-less, bigger than a single mind, body, heart, and spirit. This general dance is unendingly relational, born of Intelligence that is magnificently inter-bodied, inter-specied, inter-stellar, and inter-playful. 

Spiritual texts across religions center around an Inspired Source loving and playing in concert with the world. We only need to tap into the awareness, emotion, and physical sensation of our relationship to this fundamental consciousness[1], in order for the unbroken wholeness of body and soul to dance us into Love.

Here are some guideposts that help me dance the dance.

Love is the bottom line. Ask for it! Go for broke on this. Ask and Keep Asking for Big Love. It makes everything work. As soon as you ask, accept everything as your answer. Trust exactly how love is offered, big or little, and from whatever source.

You’re a physical partner in reality. You and I co-create life. When one person suffers I do. When one person rejoices you do. Justice is the tension of good physical partnering. The question is how to partner when powerless over others, how to stay connected, take care of myself, learn and change? Fortunately, partnering is ensouled. Love and purpose guide us.

My purpose is at work even if you don’t know it! Webster defines soul as “that which is believed to give life, a person’s deeply felt moral and emotional nature, the ability of a person to feel kindness and sympathy for others, to appreciate beauty and art, etc.” You are linked up to a giant GPS system helping you navigate what, where, and with whom you want to learn to dance. With soul is tuned in and honored, life is a dance.

Being ensouled is physical! Human art, ritual, prayer, and sport allows us to break through the inertia of daily survival into our higher self. These methods awaken us to what lies beyond fear and fatigue. Without them, we get disorganized, go out of sync, or worse. Wise teachers say, “those who do not dance do not know what comes to pass.”[2] How you are in your body affects your soul.

Forget integration, authenticity and being good. This isn’t sustainable. Humans are designed to be human, to fear and transcend fear, to change, to be anxious and filled with grace. Instead, relax and honor higher intelligence as greater than self. Follow this spiritual intelligence. Don’t try to be it. Swim in it. Let it take you for a ride.

Trauma won’t destroy soul. Meister Eckhart said, “The soul loves the body.” I believe that Soul is eternal and can’t be abandoned or lost. However, it’s perfectly sensible for a soul to feel disturbed under threat. Are we safe enough to ensoul our body, to shine brightly in the face of a threat that could kill us? The treasures of soul may need to go offline to avert bodily suffering until we have the tools, support, and just and loving community we need.

Body and soul carry history. Written history focuses on those with power, wealth, and societal rights. Other forms document the generational wisdom of the ordinary, the poor, the undocumented, the kids and the women, the oddballs, the everyday humans, and creatures. There are markers in our DNA. There is body memory in the oral and artistic lineages of cultural practices. Mystics clue into other sources as well, like the Akashic records. Just because things are not written down does not make them absent. Sacred Dance is not absent. The Divine Feminine is not absent. The resources in our memory rise when it is time.

Institutions don’t legislate soul. Institutions are abstract forms designed to influence and maintain canons of practice. Living mercy, love, beauty and innovation spring from organic founts. Institutions can shape us but they can’t understand us. Consequently, we regularly skirt our institutional instructions to find places that bless the particularity of our genetic, gendered, purpose-driven personality. Institutions, being inhuman, therefore do best when they serve humanity and not “structure for structure’s sake.”

Something Bigger is required. We don’t have to look far. Any person I love is enough. Earth is enough. Humanity is enough. To cultivate healthy, ensouled lives that are aligned with Mother Earth, current generations will resist asking for every material thing we want. Refusing to be kings and queens we will become a garden. This won’t be deprivation, just a new focus on something more wonderful as we grow soul through art, sport, and beautiful skillsets, disciplines that lay the groundwork for purpose, regrow imagination, regulate energy, and bond us with one another. The call for returning to spiritual intelligence is to

1. Bless the body, breathe, and relish sensations.
2. Reach for and draw down the Arts of Love, Peace, Joy, Happiness, Good Health, Grace, and Ease.
3. Refuse to denounce any soul or any aspect of life.
4. Encourage each person to cultivate their chosen art or skillset.
5. Support for each person a spirit team to further curiosity, adventure, beauty, joy, and fun.
6. Affirm that life depends on each person in a beautiful way.
7. Share in following, leading, blending, releasing and reconnecting. Locking anyone into one dynamic drains life.

Would you like more purpose? More joy? Would you like to be of service in a new way? Are you interested in how to best stay true to body and soul? Do you want to be a great soul? Would you like soul not to be a problem or absence but to know your soul as satisfied? 

To register for Ensouled! A Course for Body and Soul send a check to Cynthia Winton-Henry at 339 Broadway #215, Alameda, CA 94501 or through PayPal here.

• Get a monthly module with a document and a video, and access community body wisdom in a closed facebook group  with one coaching session the year-long curriculum for $185
• add four one-to-one sessions for $360 (this is the curriculum cost185 plus 65/per session, my lowest session rate
• or join a monthly online zoom group where I offer an hour of coaching at $55/month, no cost for materials.

[1] Judith Blackstone, Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness Sounds True, p33.

[2] Hymn of Jesus, Apocryphal Acts of John.