Returning

With two people in the family who are at high risk from Covid, my pandemic bubble has been slow to burst. After four years of having to sit out most gatherings, it was with great joy that I found myself able to attend two on-the-ground wisdom schools this past May: 

• the Holding Our Planet retreat from May 8-13, held at the beautiful Ignatius Jesuit Centre in Guelph, Ontario and led by Cynthia Bourgeault;

• an Ottawa Wisdom School from May 23-25, held at the Galilee Retreat Centre in Arnprior, Ontario, and led by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo.

These two rich experiences, so close together, after such a long hiatus, continue to work on me as I try to integrate them into my body, heart and practice. Although I had longed to be together with other wisdom students again, I also found something emerging at these gatherings that felt hard to bear, like staring at the sun, and sometimes even made me turn away. This was confusing, at times overwhelming, and something I’m still trying to understand.

In Guelph, Cynthia led about 60 of us through teachings on how we can bring skilful means to the challenges facing our planet. We learned that we are called to work out of human qualities such as impartiality, vigilance, and metis, which can emerge out of a deepening three-centred awareness (see here for a video excerpt of Cynthia’s teaching on metis). We also learned about spiritual substances such as faith, hope, and forgiveness, that are independent of external circumstances, and that we can offer as nutrients for our fearful and fragmented world. 

The teachings were reinforced with sacred movements, conscious work, chant and inner exercises, all led by experienced Wisdom practitioners. We worked on keeping within our atmospheres, individually and collectively, and experiencing our bodies as wombs of God’s mercy. Everything supported us in keeping a collected state. 

The urge to turn away 

There were moments in Guelph when the collectedness felt almost painfully intense to me. It was on the movements floor that I especially noticed this. Heather Ruce led our group of mostly beginners through challenging Gurdjieff movements, such as Dance of a Dead Dervish.  As I jostled around in the files and rows, everything seemed to reflect back to me my insecurities and judgments of myself and others. During the group sharing afterwards, many people shared similar experiences of discomfort and insecurity.  

At the same time, no one left the dance floor.

At one point, after a challenging set of movements where we often lost our way, the group dissolved into laughter and chatting. Heather called over the noise – “Notice the urge to chat!” 

Maybe we did, because after the next series of movements, we stayed collected, and held ourselves in silence. Wow – it felt as though someone had turned up the dimmer on a light bulb. Like the energy we had previously been spilling out was now being held in our bodies, and in the room. Something new and collective, but chosen rather than imposed, made itself known.

This experience was reinforced for me on the final day, when the two movements classes each performed as an offering to the other. Under an intense May sun, we stood in a grassy field and did our best to perform the movements we had just learned. 

As one group completed their movements, there was an intense feeling of collected energy. Then the audience impulsively applauded, and the energy dissipated. 

Before the next group started, Heather invited us to refrain from applause.  When the movements ended, we held the tension in silence. Again, that intense collectedness, more than any one of us, but requiring all of us, came through like heat. At times I could feel my body quivering like the “drop of mercury” in Rumi’s poem.

For me, it was in this RETURN to collectedness that something new was created. Not necessarily when things went well, but when we got off course, NOTICED this, and then CHOSE to turn back into group presence. I recognized that this deeper aliveness was what I had longed for, and my body gave me a definite “yes, I want more of this.” Yet another part of me wanted to flee the experience. I felt caught in the irony of experiencing what I wanted, while seeing the habitual part of me turn away.

Knowing with more of myself 

At the Ottawa Wisdom School, Marcella guided almost 30 of us through the foundations of three-centred awareness. She taught about the three centres, and led us through practices such as body prayers, chanting and sacred movements to deepen our moving and emotional centres.

Although we focused on the building blocks of wisdom work, the retreat didn’t seem at all like a return to basics after Cynthia’s teachings in Guelph. Rather, it felt as though we were somehow riding the ripples of the Guelph retreat. Though it was a different group of people, and many of us had never met, there was an immediate sense of collectedness and readiness, with very little lost energy. Marcella spoke of how each wisdom school benefits from the conscious work of previous ones, rather than starting from scratch. I wondered if the work of those who came before us had raised the water level for everyone, making it easier for the collective work to proceed.

On the first evening, Marcella invited each of us to share the desire that had brought us here. After my experience in Guelph—the response of my body to the Gurdjieff movements, and the almost unbearable intensification of presence—I felt sure that I was being shown the need for a deepening embodiment, a strengthening of my physical container, and this was what I shared.

Yet I soon saw how little I understand about what’s at work in me. During a teaching on the emotional centre, Marcella spontaneously invited us to offer a body prayer to one of the beautiful modern icons on display outside the meeting room. I stood before an icon of the virgin and child, their cheeks pressed together while their eyes held mine, and bowed while chanting “Lord have mercy.” 

Something jolted in my heart, surprising me. Immediately my inner self turned away, this time from an unbearable tenderness. Why was this? 

Marcella began each session with body prayer and chant, moving us repeatedly deeper than our thinking centres and into our hearts and bodies. At the start of each session, she would remind us of the core of the wisdom path: “Wisdom is not about knowing MORE, it’s about knowing WITH MORE of ourselves.” 

As we returned again and again to this mantra, I felt the resonance growing deeper in myself. Suddenly a petulant inner voice spoke up in frustration: “I don’t want to know with MORE of myself. I want to know with ALL of myself!” I felt that there was no bottom to my longing, and only ALL would do. 

At the same time, as in Guelph, I felt unprepared to bear the very thing I wanted. The collected energy we were creating felt like more than I could stand. A familiar part of me wanted to flee into comfort and distraction. 

I recently came across this quote from Thomas Keating in Reflections on the Unknowable (p. 158): 

“God knows us through and through and still loves us infinitely. Although we are being sustained on the physiological level, biophysics tells us that the body itself has to evolve in certain ways to sustain intelligence, and then to sustain divine communications. We are not ready to receive the enormous reality of God without preparation in which all the elements of our human nature collaborate. God is working with the obstacles in us with extraordinary gentleness, tenderness, firmness, and patience.”

Maybe it’s not for me to decide, or even know, where God is working in me. God knows the obstacles better than I do. But I long to get out of God’s way.  

My hope now is to learn to BEAR this increased collectedness, to stay with it, on my own and with others. To see where I turn away, and then gently turn back. The image I often see is of an axe throwing off sparks as it’s held to a spinning grindstone, with myself as the axe. I must choose this movement, and be willing to hold myself there. 

Until something new does emerge.

About Kerri P:

Kerri has been following Cynthia’s wisdom teachings for the past decade and has participated in a number of Wisdom Schools. She is especially drawn to a deepening experience of three-centred knowing, and how this intersects with human purpose. She is a student of the Christian contemplative tradition, a 2017 “sendee” of Richard Rohr’s Living School, and a grateful participant in offerings from the Wisdom Waypoints community, including book circles and companioning circles.

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