About
This retreat was recorded live in 2002 at Glenairley, Sooke, BC, and revised and re-released in 2014. This purchase includes an MP3 audio download (approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes) and three supporting documents: Boehme for Beginners by Cynthia Bourgeault (Gnosis Magazine, Fall 1997), Boehme Quotes, and Boehme for Beginners: Approximate Transcript by Jeffrey Ediger. In this teaching, Cynthia Bourgeault introduces the life and vision of Jacob Boehme, the 17th-century German shoemaker and mystic whose unitive vision reshaped Christian contemplative thought. Gazing at a pewter dish sparkling in the sun, Boehme was swept into a firestorm of divine revelation. Out of this experience he developed a unified metaphysic in which cosmology and psychology reinforce one another on the path of transformation. Cynthia explores Boehme’s conviction that will, desire, and even anguish are not obstacles but raw materials through which divine life emerges. “Desire is the ground of somethingness,” Boehme taught — a truth that calls us to forgive, embrace, and transform the darker moments of the journey as essential to God’s unfolding. Key themes in this course include Centering Prayer and surrender, levels of awareness, the supersensual life, Boehme’s cosmology, the resigned will, flow and constriction, friction and darkness as path, and the inner ground of liberty and peace. Cynthia Bourgeault is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, and internationally known retreat leader. She is the author of numerous books, including The Wisdom Jesus and Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, and is recognized for her pioneering work in integrating the Christian contemplative path with other global streams of wisdom.