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.

The Baton Has Been Passed: Now Can We Run With It? Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson IX

Cynthia Bourgeault | January 27, 2021

The Baton Has Been Passed. Can We Now Run With It? No, dear friends, I didn’t send you off on a wild goose chase to immerse yourself in 450 pages […]

Integral as Theotokos: A Western Take on Origin: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson VIII

Cynthia Bourgeault | January 22, 2021

Gebser names his book The Ever Present Origin, and Origin is indeed the center point around which everything else in his in his magisterial teaching revolves. But his vision of Origin […]

Practice: As We Enter the Feast of Epiphany

Cynthia Bourgeault | January 7, 2021

Dear Wisdom Friends, As we enter this Feast of Epiphany, celebrating the arrival of Holy Wisdom at the stable, I invite you all to join me over the next twenty-four […]

What Integral is Not: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson VII

Cynthia Bourgeault | December 29, 2020

Sometimes I wish we could all just declare a temporary moratorium on the term “Integral!!!” What Gebser intended when he chose that name for his emerging fifth structure of consciousness […]

The Mythic and Magic Structures: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson VI

Cynthia Bourgeault | December 11, 2020

I know that a number of you, in growing awareness of the of the blind spots and shadow elements in the mental structure of consciousness, have been casting a fond […]

The Deficient Mental Structure: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson V

Cynthia Bourgeault | December 6, 2020

Structures of consciousness have their own life cycles. When a new structure bursts definitively onto the stage of history, it is typically at its most vital and creative, filled with […]

The Perspectival Mainspring: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson IV

Cynthia Bourgeault | December 3, 2020

All structures of consciousness have at their center of gravity, a core value or “moral mainspring” around which all else is ordered. Often unstated and even unrecognized, it nonetheless establishes […]

The View from the Periscope: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson III

Cynthia Bourgeault | November 27, 2020

Gebser’s brilliant unpacking of the structures of consciousness in terms of PERSPECTIVE (as it is understood in the art world rather than in philosophy) gives us a powerful new visual […]

Unperspectival, Perspectival, Aperspectival: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson II

Cynthia Bourgeault | November 24, 2020

Jean Gebser’s cultural home base was the world of art. He was a personal friend of Pablo Picasso’s, and examples culled from art history dot the landscape of his The […]

Stages Versus Structures: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson I

Cynthia Bourgeault | November 18, 2020

The introduction to this series, entitled An Invitation to Begin the Healing Work, was posted November 10, 2020, and is an invitation to dive in together with the work of […]