Communitarian Mysticism

Discussion

Allen Butcher:

"Communitarian mysticism involves the belief that people co-create their collective material-spiritual reality, as an intertwining of dualities or opposites, as in a partnership. The duality may result from the involvement with each other of the two genders, yet it can also be of any two or more people, regardless of how similar or different they are. This integration of two aspects of a duality into one entity is then called “partnership spirituality.”

The most important aspect of partnership spirituality is that it inherently affirms the ideal of equality or of egalitarianism as being one of our highest moral and ethical ideals. Equality is then recognized as another focus or affinity of the group of two or more people, along with their recognition of gifting and sharing in the material world as spiritual practices.

As a form of egalitarian culture, partnership spirituality affirms that women can never be equal with men in a society having a patriarchal religion. Yet neither is the answer a matriarchal religion, as both can concentrate power and become authoritarian. The need is for a partnership between women and men, or between any number of people of any gender, in a non-authoritarian culture practicing a participatory form of governance.

The power in a partnership is for the people involved to be able to tap into the intuitive and insightful energies of others in the group. Each one learning from and sharing with others as a matter of course results in a community. With experience, the strengths of each one helping to balance against the differences found in others will result in the collaborations being greater than the separate energies of the parts. Thus, partnership spirituality seeks the synergies inherent in a dynamic balance of opposites in a holistic pattern of multiple communitarian relationships.

Living in community with labor-gifting and labor-sharing as processes of mutual aid, balancing each person’s knowledge with the intuitive wisdom of others, results in the practice of material spirituality in the partnership culture. The resulting co-creation of community is then a manifestation of spiritual energies channeled into material reality through communitarian mysticism." (http://0350f21.netsolhost.com/WordPress/2013/07/02/communitarian-mysticism-material-spirituality-in-the-partnership-culture/)