Awakening Your Spiritual Core: the Inner Field Within
Developing Spiritual Awareness Between Body, Earth, and Spirit
Beyond all the theories and philosophies, I believe we are ultimately searching to connect with the very core of the human experience, asking those fundamental questions about what moves us, what breathes through us, what gives our lives meaning. We long to touch that living force within, the energy that animates us, flows through us, and connects us to the greater field of life.
This force is not separate from us… it is us. It is the animating presence that gives rise to all life. The challenge is not only to nurture it, but to live from this place of coherence. In doing so, we rediscover a deeper sense of belonging, not only to the Earth, but to the vastness that holds it all.
To awaken the spiritual core is to remember what has always been true:
We are not isolated beings reaching for spirit, we are spirit, reaching for awareness.
Awakening brings the meeting of spirit and matter within us, the embodiment of spirit. I remind myself that practice is not about striving outward, but rooting inward, allowing the sacred to move through our actions, choices, and relationships. Then life begins to feel less like something to manage, and more like something to inhabit fully.
Awakening the spiritual core also means shifting our attention from outer distraction to inner truth. The modern world constantly pulls us outward, into the swirl of tasks, emails, and plans. And yet, something always calls me back. It never demands anything grand, only attention, and the willingness to pause long enough to feel it.
I’ve come to see this pause as a daily practice of coming home to myself. No ceremony required, just a quiet turning inward, with intention.
There is also the power of direct experience. Practices such as Ritual Postures, meditation, mindfulness, prayer, and connecting with nature can open this awareness. This awakening is not a distant goal or a special state reserved for a few. It is the natural pulse of being alive. Beneath all the noise, we are already connected — to each other, to the Earth, to the unseen current that moves through everything.
Awakening our spiritual core is not about becoming something new; it is about remembering what has always been living inside us. This idea of core awakening is not some esoteric philosophy, it is reclaiming the full spectrum of the human experience.
And when we live from that place, rooted, embodied, and awake, the whole world seems to breathe with us.
“We are not isolated beings reaching for spirit — we are spirit, reaching for awareness.”
The name “CUYA” carries with it both history and vision. Rooted in our origins as the Cuyamungue Institute, it now also serves as an acronym — C.U.Y.A. — a guiding symbol that unites our mission:
C — Consciousness: The field of shared awareness that arises in Collective Presence, where the “We” awakens beyond the “I” – moving from the “Me to the We.”
U — Unity: Our alignment with the Cycles of Nature and the rhythms of the cosmos, reminding us that we are woven into a greater fabric of reality. This sense of unity reminds us that our awareness is the shared consciousness that connects all living beings.
Y — Your Awakening: The inner journey of Embodiment and Wisdom, where through direct experience the body remembers. At the CUYA Institute, this awakening is nurtured through Ritual Body Postures and ecstatic trance, where the body itself becomes the doorway to wisdom, presence, and transformation.
A — Ancestral Wisdom: Roots. Our connection to Sacred Lineage, honoring those who walked before us and rooting us in belonging and continuity. Our founder, anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman looked to some of the oldest, most authentic ancestral records we have — the world’s collection of early and indigenous art — and decoded selected artifacts as embodied “ritual instructions.”
Together, the Four Pathways of C.U.Y.A. — Consciousness, Unity, Your Awakening, and Ancestral Wisdom — form a single tapestry of practice. They remind us that awakening is not an abstract idea but something we live: through the body in Your Awakening, through nature’s cycles in Unity, through community in shared Consciousness, and through the guidance of Ancestral Wisdom.
- …. CONTINUE