Reflections

From my running “missing bag” saga, some of you may have gotten the impression that my recent teaching adventure in Scotland and Ireland was a bit arduous. Not in the least! It was in fact it was one of the most stunning high points of my entire teaching career, if not of my entire life.

In this continuation of my last post, I want to offer a couple of additional examples of my “Four Voices” method at work, along with some further reflections and a bit of fine-tuning. While the overall process tends to unfold along “Law of Three” ley lines, as described in my earlier post, every conversation turns up a slightly different alignment of the players and a slightly different way of weighing the evidence. Here are a couple of variations...

“Jesus’s real purpose in this sacrifice was to wager his own life against his core conviction that love is stronger than death, and that the laying down of self which is the essence of this love leads not to death, but to life.”

On April 17, 2013, as thousands of eager runners rushed past Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver BC for the annual Sun Run, inside listeners sat hushed and still as Cynthia Bourgeault delivered a riveting and powerful Palm Sunday sermon.

On November 8th 2013, Cynthia Bourgeault provided a presentation on “Jesus and Sacred Wisdom” at the Moravian Seminary Couillard Lectures. This lecture has been video recorded and is available for viewing.

During our ten days as official guests of the Central Monastic Body of Bhutan, we had private audiences with monastic and political leaders (including the director of the Institute for Bhutan Studies, and three of the five Eminences who direct the affairs of the Central Monastic Body.)

When I was thinking about presenting the President’s Report to this year’s AGM the theme that kept coming to me was gratitude. There is so much that I am grateful for and thought beneficial to share.

Sojourners has an important interview this month with Cynthia Bourgeault. Here are four excerpts from the interview. But the whole thing is well worth reading.

We would like to share with you a this wonderfully descriptive poem by recent Wisdom School participant Faye Cox, that so creatively captures our Teacher, Cynthia Bourgeault. Red Hat’s in Town Careful, you might miss her in a crowd neither tall nor fashionable obvious, imposing – in no way whatsoever. A small force, a trim tab with the impact of a mighty wind stirred by a butterfly wing. Shifting the foundations of empire is not an easy job – given, not taken, received

This is the season of holy waiting as we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Christ Light – the season of mystery as the infinite touches the finite. I am writing this from a little waterfront cabin not far from Sooke. Tomorrow I will be joined by 11 others for a TCS sponsored 5-day Meditation Intensive.

From my many years in the Gurdjieff Work, I knew that the enneagram is primarily about lines of force (much more than about personality typing), and specifically, about the subtle but profound interaction of the Law of Seven and the Law of Three.

Excerpt: The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity – By Cynthia Bourgeault Published by Shambhala Publications , July 9 2013. Introduction: My first challenge in writing this book will be to persuade you that there is anything here worth considering at all. With so many urgent practical issues facing spiritual humanity, why waste time with the Trinity, a doctrine that most of the world (and even much of Christianity) re

The role of a conscious human being is to provide the phenomenal earth world with energies which otherwise would not be effectively transmitted to the creations and units which make up our world. Just as right balance and interaction of energies bring unity, Being appears when harmony and equilibrium replace chaotic imbalance. Being is the universe under God’s eye.

Two weeks before our long-awaited Calgary Wisdom School last April, Mother Nature surprised us with a challenging gift: two feet of heavy, thick Alberta snow!

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.

This post was originally published in Christopher Page’s blog, In A Spacious Place. Additionally, this was originally posted at 10 seperate reflections from the retreat. During our site migration, we have condensed these posts into one for ease of reading and use.

Cynthia Bourgeault Commenting on Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence – chapter 7 – “Voluntary Attention”

As we celebrate this season of mystery, and at the end of a year which seems to have dissolved into tragic chaos, it is good to reaffirm the spiritual reality in which we journey. Here are words from Cynthia Bourgeault’s Sounds True Audio Learning Course “Encountering the Wisdom Jesus,” 2005 in which she calls us back to the heart of the spiritual life.

The horror of Friday, December 14, 2012 stands as yet one more reminder, if we need reminding, that there are forces at work in the world over which we have no control. Terrible things happen to people who have done nothing to deserve the devastation that has invaded their lives.

This poem was written in honor of Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and mystic… Original posting on Becky’s blog . On the last day of a week-long Wisdom School with Cynthia in Valle Crucis, North Carolina, we celebrated the Eucharist in an apple barn. Our time in Wisdom School was modeled after the Benedictine Monastic order, and we spent our days praying and working alone and together and honoring the sacred silence in the evenings. The retreat center at Valle