Carol Jackson, a member of the The Future of Wisdom Northeast Wisdom Study Group, shares her work bringing her experience with the enneagram to Bruno Barnhart’s book. Looking specifically at his exploration of nonduality and Christianity, Carol focuses on what…
Dear Wisdom Community, I feel like I am caught in what a member of my Law of Three group called “a Parable”. I wonder if others might be called to meet me here in service of, oh, maybe nothing less…
In January of this year, twenty-two of us gathered in Bethlehem PA, for a Law of Three as Spiritual Practice Wisdom School. We came together from Colorado, Indiana, Florida, Toronto, Vermont, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Held in a rhythm of a…
For my beautifully steadfast mother, Adele Teague: Thank you for helping me cross over the many arduous death-wombs that could have swallowed me whole (Jeremiah 1:5). Death comes to us all. It’s the great equalizer. No, it is the…
On my way to Ohio last weekend I had a layover in Philadelphia. My first flight had been delayed and with about 12 minutes to get from E terminal to B terminal, I got off the plane and took off…
What follows is an article on the Desert Fathers and Mothers retreat that Cynthia Bourgeault led in Tucson Arizona in the winter of 2018. Beautifully crafted by Jo Taylor for the Northeast Wisdom website, with experiential notes from Heather Ruce’s…
With extraordinary joy and gratitude I offer these words of welcome to the wonderful feast now laid before you: the complete video archive of our groundbreaking Thomas Keating interspiritual celebration, which took place at the Aspen Chapel last July 13…
For Wisdom: this is an experiential piece I penned on what I refer to as the phenomenon of “contemplative homelessness.” As a longtime social justice advocate, I remain highly cognizant that it may arouse resistances in some readers, which it…
This past September Sarah and I planned a contemplative retreat for our two-week stay at a cottage in Maine. This was an experiment, to see if we could use recordings from Cynthia’s Wisdom Schools, plus Centering Prayer, readings, movement, and…
Last November, nearly a year ago now, a large number of us gathered at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, NY to participate in Cynthia Bourgeault’s retreat on Centering Prayer and Nondual Consciousness, “From Narrative Self to Witnessing Self: Crossing the…
How I have come to use this methodology? What might it offer to you? “The Consent of Advent,” a virtual Advent retreat, will begin on Sunday December 1 and continue through Christmas Day December 25, 2019. This is an innovative…
Dear Wisdom Friends, As many of you know, one of my longstanding priorities has been to encourage a creative and empowered next generation of Wisdom teachers. A lineage only survives into the future to the extent that the wingspan of…
Presence. Sadness. As I was gathering my belongings to make the trip back home at the end of the retreat “Reclaiming the Mystical Heart of Christianity: How Centering Prayer Can Deepen Your Experience of God,” I felt a deep sadness.…
…To be “a bit braver in the next hour…” ~ G.I.Gurdjieff At the Claymont Society for Continuous Education, in Charles Town W Va, October 28 through November 3, 2019, an extraordinary dialogue between two giants of vision and exquisite sight–G.I.…
Three Wisdom retreats in six weeks. The first was Teilhard and Gurdjieff in Conversation at Claymont, followed by a six-day silent Centering Prayer retreat in Hartford, and then back to Claymont to attend a reprise of the Teilhard and Gurdjieff…
Dear Wisdom Friends, Our FOURTH annual Maine Wisdom InGathering is now officially open for registration. The dates are May 30 through June 5, 2020. Mark it on your calendar! Once again we are delighted to offer a relaxed, affordable, family-friendly…
Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade gets underway, it feels like an appropriate moment to share one of my earlier essays, which is still to my mind one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was originally published…
Between August and November 2019, The Center for Action and Contemplation sponsored an online Introductory Wisdom School course based on Cynthia Bourgeault’s Intro Wisdom School at Kanuga, originally filmed by Robbin Brent. The CAC created a 14 week Wisdom eCourse…
This is Part II of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began with “Part I. The Light Within” posted Sunday January 12, 2020. Cynthia introduced the series with this message: “Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade…
This is Part III of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020. Cynthia introduced the series with this message: “Dear Wisdom Friends, As the new decade gets underway, it feels like an…
This is Part IV of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with two posts weekly, Sundays and Wednesdays, during the season of Epiphany. You are invited to share your responses in…
This is Part V of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with posts every Sunday and Wednesday during the season of Epiphany. Please share your reflections in the Comments section below.…
Between August and November 2019, The Center for Action and Contemplation sponsored an online Introductory Wisdom School course based on Cynthia Bourgeault’s Intro Wisdom School at Kanuga, originally filmed by Robbin Brent. The CAC created a 14 week Wisdom eCourse…
St John the Evangelist, 17th century Iran, courtesy Getty Museum This is Part VI of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with posts every Sunday and Wednesday…
This is Part VII of an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that began on Sunday January 12, 2020, with posts every Sunday and Wednesday during the season of Epiphany. Look for the last post Wednesday, February 5th; and…
photo courtesy pxfuel This is the last in an eight-part Northeast Wisdom Home Page Blog series that Cynthia prepared from what she calls “one of the best things I have ever written.” It began on Sunday…
In December I travelled to the Claymont Society for Continuous Education—the West Virginia home of a community based on the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff—for Cynthia’s week-long retreat “Mr. Gurdjieff, Meet Mr. Teilhard!” The teachings were supplemented by daily practice of…
Dear Wisdom friends: Here is my own recommendation for inner work during this time of profound planetary readjustment. I will send you a fuller explanation as soon as I can, but the internet system has gone very wonky out here…
This post follows quickly on the heels of “Pandemic Homework”, Cynthia’s previous post and her own “recommendation for inner work during this time of profound planetary readjustment.” It is the “fuller explanation” promised in that post, which contains four points…
This blog was adapted from a sermon given at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, BC, Canada on March 15, 2020, the Third Sunday in Lent. It drew from Exodus 17:1-7 (Moses + the Water from the Rock) and John 4:5-42…
As I expected, I am receiving plenty of raised cyber-eyebrows about the third instruction in Pandemic Homework to: radically decrease or discontinue altogether your use of internet technology to support social distancing. photo courtesy of Bill…
“Keep within! And when they say, ‘Look here’ or ‘look there is Christ,’ go not forth….” This beautiful gem of Quaker wisdom, set to music by Paulette Meier and well loved by many of you around the Wisdom network, encapsulates…
For most of March and April, as many of you know, I have been hanging out here on the edge of the known universe on Eagle Island, taking the time to renew my flagging hermit skills. What little technology I…
In May of 2020, Allen Bourque spoke with Laura Ruth on behalf of the Northeast Wisdom website, to talk about how his three decades of work in the Taoist tradition interfaces with his love of the Christian Wisdom tradition. Allen,…
Okay, y’all, God help me, here goes…Please note I am not speaking ex cathedra here, from my post as a Wisdom leader, but as a fellow human being speaking my own truth… **************************** PANDEMIC AT PENTECOST – A personal letter…
“‘How strange Africa is,’ thought the boy. “He was sitting in a bar very much like the other bars he had seen along the narrow streets of Tangier. Some men were smoking from a gigantic pipe that they passed from…
What follows is a recent portrait of Bob Sabath, offered through his invitation to us to practice with him, and through sharing the heart of his experience in a recent practice circle. In September of 2019, Bob joined the Wisdom…
Yesterday, my feet hit the dirt road that leads to the trail to White Rocks and Hunger Mountain as the dogs tumbled out and my sister rose from the stone wall which was our meeting point. The morning cool, clear;…
My heart is filled with gratitude and reverence for the sixteen plucky souls who accepted the invitation to join me for a tiny, on the ground Wisdom School in Stonington this past September 6-10. Officially we broke ground on my…
Well, the oasis of grace miraculously opened, and now it’s time to roll up our collective sleeves and get on with the healing work! I know that my own first assignment has something to do with helping to expose—and hopefully…
What follows are statements made by Cynthia, heard with my own ears, in her presence. They are pieces of the whole, containing the whole, grouped together in their shared resonance. During 2019 Sarah and I attended five Wisdom Schools. During…
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 Jean Gebser, seen first through the eyes of Jeremy Johnson…
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 Ever-Present Origin, illustrating almost every significant point he makes. It’s…
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 tool with which to begin to see where we’re pinned.…
I discovered last year that Brother David Steindl-Rast, a spiritual mentor that I have long admired, and my father lived together in a tiny trailer near Boulder, Co in the mid-70s. At that point, global warming and the climate crisis…
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 yardstick by which value is measured and priorities are…
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 powerful constellating energy and psychic force. It will quickly establish…
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 glance toward indigenous cultures, which seem to offer counterbalancing strengths…
In this post Bill Espinosa shares from the Wisdom Practice Circle in Virginia where they chose to read together a piece of Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee’s current writing and act upon his suggestion that we can all make a particular offering of…
The Jesus Prayer has been part of my practice for a number of years now, and recently it has taken a deeper dive into the body with the introduction of Gurdjieff’s Lord have Mercy exercise. The practice moves into sensing…