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Holding Our Planet at Garrison Institute NY
November 12, 2023 - November 17, 2023
This teaching retreat will be aimed at mature contemplatives of all spiritual pathways who are deeply concerned about the global crisis (cultural, ecological) imperiling our continued human existence on the planet and who wish to deepen their capacity to bring “skillful means” to the situation: forbearance, strength, compassion, right timing, spiritual generativity, and personal mettle.
Daily teaching will be augmented by sustained work in core spiritual practices: the generation of necessary spiritual “nutrients” (such as faith, hope, trust, love); imaginal exchange, “cosmic dialysis” (a.k.a., tonglen), “prayer with moxie,” surrender, non-identification.
Practices will draw from the classic repertory of the contemplative spiritual traditions as well as imaginal exercises emerging from the Gurdjieff work, first pioneered in Paris as he and his group held the line for the planet during the darkest days of the Nazi occupation.
The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D., teaches from the Christian contemplative tradition with an interspiritual breadth and a distinctly Gurdjieffian flavor. A longtime student of Fr. Thomas Keating, she is the author of more than a dozen books and the founder of an international network of contemplative Wisdom Schools. She has been honored by the Watkins Review as one of the one hundred most influential living spiritual teachers of our times.