Cynthia Bourgeault

Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader. She is the original creator of the Wisdom School and has been organizing and teaching schools since 1999. Founding director of the British Columbia-based Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School, she has now returned home to the East Coast to divide her time between Wisdom teaching, writing, and solitude at her small hermitage on Eagle Island in Maine. To find out what Cynthia's up to, you can view her master teaching calendar.

Hold Fast the Hope

Cynthia Bourgeault | December 22, 2021

Hold fast the hope, friends. Despite everything being broadcast to us announcing a season of grim and impending planetary lockdown, I simply cannot bring myself to believe that this is […]

Constraint and the Common Good

Cynthia Bourgeault | September 4, 2021

From everything I’ve said so far about flow systems and keeping the infrastructure rolling, you may get the idea that any form of constraint is an intrinsic obstacle to the […]

Reimagining the Common Good: The Common Good as One, Part 2

Cynthia Bourgeault | September 1, 2021

For prior blogs in this series exploring the common good and the potential of an emerging Integral structure of consciousness, please refer to the links included below this post. This […]

Reimagining the Common Good: The Common Good as One, Part 1

Cynthia Bourgeault | August 30, 2021

The third aspect to note about the common good as it manifests in the Integral structure of consciousness is that it is, well, good. It is not just virtuous, righteous, […]

Autopoiesis: A Blog Series on the Common Good

Cynthia Bourgeault | August 17, 2021

The second major shift as we approach the question of the common good through the Integral structure of consciousness is, I believe, that we will increasingly understand it as an […]

The Common Good from an Evolutionary Perspective: A Blog Series on the Common Good

Cynthia Bourgeault | August 16, 2021

The following provides further reflections on the “Civics for Wisdom Students” theme, as introduced in the prior post EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THE COMMON GOOD: The Beginnings of a Wisdom Inquiry So […]

A Wisdom Reading List

Cynthia Bourgeault | July 20, 2021

There are rich currents flowing through the Wisdom stream, so it’s hard to offer a “one size fits all” reading list. Some people will be more drawn to the esoteric […]

Evolutionary Theory and the Common Good: The Beginnings of a Wisdom Inquiry

Cynthia Bourgeault | June 27, 2021

One of the more surprising revelations to grow out of our winter’s pilot “Civics for Wisdom Students” project has been the growing realization that while our Constitution pays lips service […]

Enstasy: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson XIV

Cynthia Bourgeault | May 23, 2021

The term “ecstasy” comes from the Greek ec-stasis, “standing outside of oneself.” Its opposite is “ENSTASY,” a term I first encountered in Valentin Tomberg’s profound discussion of the subject in Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 309-311). It means centering in oneself: becoming fiercely, alertly coiled within one’s own “I Am” presence, such that one becomes a center of gravitation in one’s own right.

Go Beyond the Mind: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson XIII

Cynthia Bourgeault | May 18, 2021

When I say that the ability to access and sustain the Integral structure of consciousness is developmental, I mean just that: it is fundamentally a question of physiology, rather than of moral virtue or mystical yearning. We cannot think, pray, meditate, or conceptualize our way to it. It is fundamentally a matter of preparing the entire body to receive it. To e