Browse our full E-course catalog below:

This TCS Wisdom School led by Heather Ruce will focus on deepening presence in our three centers – intellectual, emotional, body.

We will embark on a journey of contemplation and action inspired by Mary’s role (and our own) as Theotokos–God-bearer.

From April 3rd to 6th 2023, The Contemplative Society hosted a Holy Week Silent Wisdom Retreat, facilitated by Heather Ruce at Bethlehem Retreat Centre. The video recording of this in-person and online retreat is now being offered as an E-Course. Holy Week is more than a series of events surrounding the final days of Jesus’s earthy life that we are to commemorate. We can enter this sacred week from the inside as a way of mutual accompaniment in which we are concurrently embodying the postures of Jesus and Mary Magdalene through this timeless passage through death. Under the conditions of deep silence—weaving in the transformative currents of surrender, three centered presence, attention, and recollection—we will open ourselves to the intense life giving energy of the Paschal Mystery available to us that we might emerge with the steadfast knowing that ‘Love is as strong as death’ and we too are called to be bearers of that Love. - This retreat E-Course immerses us into a ‘wisdom way of knowing’ through a daily rhythm of mindful walking, centering prayer, teaching, reflection, ritual, Gurdjieff Exercises and Movements, chanting, and contemplative free time embedded in the Great Silence.

Cynthia will offer an overview of her principal theological tenants and emergent thinking, drawing from her most recent book The Corner of Fourth and Nondual,  a title inspired by Thomas Merton’s famous moment of revelation ‘at the Corner of Fourth and Walnut.’  The book will be available for purchase at the event, or you can buy it from your favourite book seller.

This content is drawn from our online retreat with Ward Bauman hosted on Zoom, Feb 15-19, 2021. Ward Bauman leads us through coming to understand one of those most quoted and least understood Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart. The task of this retreat would be to balance Eckhart’s practice with his teaching, engaging in silence, listening with the ears of the heart, and together exploring his mystical works. 

This e-course retreat will be a deep immersion into working with trust in the way of the great saints and mystic, where trust is bestowed, flowing like a wellspring from teh heart of God. With the mystics looking over our shoulders, we will explore not only the spirituality but the actual practices that allow our hearts to access this hidden wellspring and draw on it skillfully to begin to rebuild trust, not only within our own lives, but within our shattered world. Note that we will be approaching the task from contemplative and esoteric reference points rather than therapeutic ones, so it is recommended that you have an established meditation practice and a willingness to offer yourself on this pathway of conscious service to the whole.