Attend an intimate online Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault, imbued with the vibrant stillness of Holy Isle in Scotland, and journey with a small group of students through Fr. Thomas Keating’s enigmatic spiritual masterpiece The Secret Embrace. These eight koan-like poems, written mostly in his final years, capture the spiritual wisdom of his lifetime.
The course follows Fr. Keating’s deepening transformation, from a young contemplative monk to his late-in-life lived expression of Christian non-duality, which Cynthia describes as “Flowing Oneness”—cradled in a dynamic, ever unfolding dance with the Divine in both the manifest and unmanifest. Working with the poems, one feels increasingly able to touch Fr. Keating’s sublime mystical vision, even as Cynthia reminds us that there is no hurry or rush toward some imagined spiritual summit. “The ladder of spiritual progress,” she notes “is not a ladder. Do your work. Build a strong container as you open to the Divine and see what the Divine does with you.”
The course features a thorough guided exploration of each poem, but it doesn’t end there. Once all the poems have received their individual reading and study, the collective comes together to create a dynamic Lectio Divina featuring a canonical reading of all eight poems in sequence. This novel artform, created by Fr. Keating’s nephew and filmmaker Peter Jones, weaves an immersive web of Fr. Keating’s words, inviting the listener to drop-in and fully enter the mystical ambience of The Secret Embrace. Hovering in the subtle energetic connection between Fr. Keating’s timeless words and the sacred energy of place so powerfully present on Holy Isle, Cynthia encourages students to transmute what has been received as an offering on behalf of the entire world.
This course is perfect for Wisdom students wanting to explore themes from Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic, mentored by the author herself. It will also be a resource for those wanting to navigate the space between silence and service in this world, as both Fr. Keating and Cynthia Bourgeault help us understand that contemplative life is not to be used as flight from life but rather a practice of inner readiness and receptivity to become more supple, stable, and able to respond skillfully to what is needed.
Entering the Secret Embrace is an on-demand, self-guided course available to begin immediately. The course will be found in your Wisdom Waypoints My Account with lifetime access.