A 5-Day Silent Retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault

The Evolution of Thomas Keating’s Teachings on the Evolution of Consciousness

In this eagerly awaited Centering Prayer teaching retreat, Centering Prayer master teacher Cynthia Bourgeault continues her groundbreaking exploration of the late teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating, this year focusing on “the evolution of Thomas Keating’s teaching on the evolution of consciousness.”

Over a period of nearly forty years Thomas’ understanding of human consciousness steadily grew: from his signature teaching in the 1980s, heavily influenced by the philosopher Ken Wilber, through his paradigm-shattering encounter with the contemporary Christian mystic Bernadette Roberts, to his own increasingly integrated and unique vision of Christian Non-Duality as a kind of “flowing oneness.” As Thomas fully embraced his own nondual awakening, he began to write and see from a perspective rarely attained in the Christian mystical tradition, significantly “growing” the Christian spiritual roadmap while planting the seeds to bring our own practice of Centering Prayer to the next level.

Through teaching, dialogue, guided meditations —but mostly through the practice of Centering Prayer itself —Cynthia will explore how Thomas charts this new course; and more important, what his maturing insights have to offer our own continuing spiritual evolution today. This is quintessentially a teaching retreat, inviting the full engagement of both mind and heart. We will be exploring the insights of some of the spiritual giants of our time—Ken Wilber, Bernadette Roberts, Jean Gebser— as well as some of the most sublime and challenging writings of “late Thomas,” including selections from his Reflections of the Unknowable, That We May Be One, and The Secret Embrace. We will embrace these teachings however, from within the milieu of Centering Prayer: not as an academic exercise but as the articulation of something most of us have already tasted and verified in our hearts.

The retreat will have a Centering Prayer focus, but committed practitioners of any form of sitting meditation are welcome and will find themselves at home. Aside from the specific times of teaching and dialogue, the retreat and all meals will be conducted in silence.

Register Here

Event Details

When: March 17 – 21, 2027

Where: In person at Garrison Institute, 14 Mary’s Way, Route 9D, Garrison, NY 10524

Cost: $750 – $1,010

Registration: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/event/5-day-retreat-with-reverend-cynthia-bourgeault-2027/

This event is organized and operated solely by Garrison Institute. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

Advent Book Circle – The Wisdom Way of Knowing with Paula Pryce

Mark Advent with collective contemplative prayer and discussion based on Cynthia’s book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing.

Event Details

When: Four sessions: Wednesdays, November 25, December 2, 9, & 16 at 7:30 PM PCT, Vancouver, BC time (9:30 PM EST)

Where: In person at St. Helen’s Anglican Church, 4405 W. 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC Canada

Registration: Contact Paula Pryce to rsvp: ppryce@bu.edu

This event is organized and operated solely by Paula Pryce. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

Advent Lectio & Visio Divina on the Gospel of Thomas

Yeshua says,

Whoever drinks what flows

from my mouth,

Will come to be as I am

And I also will come

To be as they are,

So that what is hidden

May be manifest.

(Gospel of Thomas, Logion 108)

Join one or all of these Advent gatherings on Zoom on Tuesdays from December 1 – 15. In our 1 hour and 15 minute group we will practice Lectio and Visio Divina, with icons of Mother Mary, on a Logion from the Gospel of Thomas particularly RIPE for Advent.

Icon by William Hart McNichols

Register Here

Event Details

When: Tuesday, December 15, 2026 from 11:00am – 12:15pm ET

Where: Online, Zoom

Cost: $15 per session

Registration: https://www.marcellak-g.com/event-details/advent-lectio-visio-divina-on-the-gospel-of-thomas-2026-12-01-11-00

Facilitator: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo is a Wisdom Leader, Spiritual Director and Mom.

This event is organized and operated solely by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

Advent Lectio & Visio Divina on the Gospel of Thomas

Yeshua says,

Whoever drinks what flows

from my mouth,

Will come to be as I am

And I also will come

To be as they are,

So that what is hidden

May be manifest.

(Gospel of Thomas, Logion 108)

Join one or all of these Advent gatherings on Zoom on Tuesdays from December 1 – 15. In our 1 hour and 15 minute group we will practice Lectio and Visio Divina, with icons of Mother Mary, on a Logion from the Gospel of Thomas particularly RIPE for Advent.

Icon by William Hart McNichols

Register Here

Event Details

When: Tuesday, December 8, 2026 from 11:00am – 12:15pm ET (Also offered on December 15, from 11:00am – 12:15pm ET)

Where: Online, Zoom

Cost: $15 per session or All three sessions for $40

Registration: https://www.marcellak-g.com/event-details/advent-lectio-visio-divina-on-the-gospel-of-thomas-2026-12-01-11-00

Facilitator: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo is a Wisdom Leader, Spiritual Director and Mom.

This event is organized and operated solely by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

Advent Lectio & Visio Divina on the Gospel of Thomas

Yeshua says,

Whoever drinks what flows

from my mouth,

Will come to be as I am

And I also will come

To be as they are,

So that what is hidden

May be manifest.

(Gospel of Thomas, Logion 108)

Join one or all of these Advent gatherings on Zoom on Tuesdays from December 1 – 15. In our 1 hour and 15 minute group we will practice Lectio and Visio Divina, with icons of Mother Mary, on a Logion from the Gospel of Thomas particularly RIPE for Advent.

Icon by William Hart McNichols

Register Here

Event Details

When: Tuesday, December 1, 2026 from 11:00am – 12:15pm ET (Also offered on December 8 and 15, from 11:00am – 12:15pm ET)

Where: Online, Zoom

Cost: $15 per session or All three sessions for $40

Registration: https://www.marcellak-g.com/event-details/advent-lectio-visio-divina-on-the-gospel-of-thomas-2026-12-01-11-00

Facilitator: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo is a Wisdom Leader, Spiritual Director and Mom.

This event is organized and operated solely by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

A Letter From the Chair of the Board: “What We Tend Together”

Dear Wisdom Community,

I live in a cove tucked into the gentle embrace of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. We raised our children here and joined in a Halloween tradition of trick or treating where costumed adults and children would pile into the back of a few pickup trucks and visit nearby neighbors who were expecting us. I was always struck that it seemed as fun for the older neighbors as it was for us. Especially for Ruth and Nancy who would decorate their house, put on their disguises, play spooky music, and jump out from behind the door, making us all scream in delight. It was a time in the year where we interacted with neighbors we often didn’t see.

We got a group text this week from two young mothers who are ready to revive the tradition and asked if they could bring their young ones trick or treating this year. The response from all of us ‘old timers’, whose children are now grown, was an enthusiastic YES! We are ready to host the new little ones being birthed and raised in our midst.

There are so many ways we join this dance of giving and receiving. We are given endless opportunities to tend and invest in one another. Sometimes Wisdom Waypoints feels like a neighborhood to me. Often it is a place of intimate gatherings where we are drawn together by a shared hunger for this mystical Christian lineage. We receive our daily bread as we gather to meditate, to chant, to participate in Lectio and Visio Divina and to deeply engage in Cynthia’s books and courses.

We also find ourselves exploring new forms of connection that evolve as we listen to your needs and what supports you and your communities in this shared work:

We are increasing our small-group offerings to support formation in this lineage and hosting gatherings for postholders to resource one another in this work.
On our website you can now locate each other more easily by pulling up our global practice circles map and finding a local or virtual group to join.
During Advent we will be offering a free weekly Wisdom accompaniment—a writing, video teaching from Cynthia, and live practice invitations—to aid in deepening into the season.
We will be hosting an in-person Wisdom School in 2027 for those yearning to be together and taste the rhythms of prayer and work.

Please join us as we continue to invest in this lineage transmission which anchors us in the mystical Christian way, guided by the Benedictine tradition, and deeply informed by the body of work and practices disseminated through G.I. Gurdjieff. We are grateful to Cynthia Bourgeault and her continued teaching and guidance.

Thank you for being our collaborators and global neighbors in this work. Please consider supporting us with your end of year giving. Every gift we receive from you amplifies our capacity to participate in what is being birthed and nurtured.

With a full and grateful heart,

Jeanine Siler Jones, Board Chair

The Christ Incarnate

Hello Cynthia,

I am ordained as an ELCA and currently retired. I first I read your book. “Wisdom Jesus” about a decade ago. I have always been a spiritual seeker and studied with some Buddhist meditation teachers and a shaman. I could never fully accept my denominations views on Jesus. I am rereading your book now and have purchased more. The one question I have is you refer to the God entity that incarnated as Jesus rather than Christ. I have always viewed Jesus as the man that the Christ incarnated into. I would love your thoughts on this.

Hello,

It’s really difficult to respond to your question in traditional theological categories, which attempt to set up fine, nuanced distinctions without any awareness of the Ray of Creation, which furnishes the grand metaphysical roadmap on which all these names find their rightful homes. In World 1, the undifferentiated, endless ineffable Godhead, the “name” is as yet formless, carried as pure seed in what Jacob Boehme calls the “sciential”—the hidden purpose as yet to be revealed. In World 3, the primordial Trinity, he is the second person, second force, “Agios Ischyros” in the great Trisagion prayer, the backbone of all that is to be. In world 6, he is Logos, the fundamental template. In world 12 he is “Son,” the perfect image of what the divine fullness looks and feels like when compressed into finite and human form; in world 24 he is Christ, that logoic inner seed that will incarnate in world 48 into the man, Jesus—just as you have spoken. There is nothing wrong in what you have observed, it’s just a bit partial, like a theological flower cut off from the living sap flowing through it from world to world, to world: always that same sap, that same flowing, self-manifesting love, only manifesting at different degrees of density and fixity. The scale of this love, flowing forward like a river from from the unspoken heart for eternity, simply staggers the mind. Christ and Jesus are simply two-way stations on that same river. It is the same river, always and everywhere.

Thanks, Cynthia

Imaginal Mysticism with Cynthia Bourgeault

How can the power of imagination transform ourselves and our world?

Join an event with Cynthia Bourgeault & Dr. Elizabeth Debold

Is our understanding of reality too limited? Can we tap the power of imagination to access different dimensions of the real? The modern mystic Cynthia Bourgeault would say yes, enthusiastically yes. She points to the work of philosopher and Islamic scholar Henry Corbin, who made an important distinction between the imagined and the imaginal. The imaginal world or Mundus Imaginalis was for him much more than arbitrary fantasy. He understood the imaginal as a transformative power, a unique human faculty, through which we can gain access to deeper and more subtle forms of reality. Following Corbin’s lead, Cynthia Bourgeault has researched deeply into the form of perception of the imaginal. For her, it is essential that we find access to these deeper, more subtle forms of knowing to deal with the crisis we are in as humanity.

About this imaginal perception she says in an interview with evolve: “We will not find the meaning that will allow us to pull us out of the crisis thrust upon us without beginning to widen the context of what human life really means. The spiritual traditions point to that bigger context, particularly when they access their own subtle teaching, which is the imaginal. In the broadest sense, the imaginal is the body of teaching and objective knowledge about human identity and direction that exists beyond sense perception and rationality. In other words, it is the body of objective knowledge, which draws on subtle, embodied capacities of understanding. That’s what we need to turn to. The culture has lost it. We have disowned the traditions that acknowledge collective human meaning.”

In this evolve LIVE! dialogue webinar we will explore together with Cynthia Bourgeault and the participants the nature of this subtle imaginal perception and why it is so meaningful in our time. The dialogue will open the space to try to move into the imaginal depth and co-creativity in our conversation itself.

Register Here

Event Details

When: Friday, November 27, 2026 from 12:00 – 3:00 PM ET

Where: Online

Cost: $28-$45, Scholarship available

Registration: https://www.evolve-world.org/programs/imaginal-mysticism

Contact for Organizer: https://www.evolve-world.org/contact-us

This event is organized and operated solely by Evolve World. Wisdom Waypoints is providing this listing for informational purposes only and is not responsible for policies, ticket sales, cancellations, or refunds.

Conscious Aging On the Wisdom Path – November Circle

***The November Conscious Aging On the Wisdom Path Wisdom Circle is now full. Stay tuned for future Conscious Aging On the Wisdom Path Wisdom Circle’s through our newsletter and Events page.

“Within the world’s Wisdom teachings, ‘conscious aging’ is not simply a polite euphemism but an active pathway of spiritual metamorphosis: in a sense, the capstone project of an entire life’s journey.” – Cynthia Bourgeault

What do we mean by the phrase ‘to age consciously’? How is Wisdom teaching and practice preparing and offering assistance to us as we age? What is it like to enter into this new territory; to ever so slowly begin to recognize the gentle descent of the mantle of Wisdom Eldership?

Join us for a 3-part Conscious Aging Wisdom Circle as we work in an intimate gathering with these questions. We will open the circle with a centering practice in preparation before diving into what arises as we begin the tending required for our journey with conscious aging and elderhood. There will be time for silence, listening, reflecting, and processing. The Wisdom Circle will be facilitated by Wisdom Waypoints Board Member Emeritus Laura Ruth.

Our work will be anchored in Cynthia’s teachings on conscious aging and becoming an elder with anticipation for her upcoming book, “Conscious Aging: Ten Spiritual Guidelines for Growing Old,” set to be released in March 2027.

Event Details

When: Fridays, November 6, 13 and 20, from 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET

Where: Online via Zoom

Cost: $40

Event Registration

The November Conscious Aging On the Wisdom Path Wisdom Circle is now full. Stay tuned for future Conscious Aging On the Wisdom Path Wisdom Circle’s through our newsletter and Events page.

A Centered Authority

Dear Cynthia,

I have heard you say in a lecture at https://wisdomwaypoints.org/courses/wisdom-jesus-encounters-disordered-world/ that the only way to combat evil is by authority, not Love. Love is not able to combat evil because it’s like showing your underbelly to evil. Can you provide more details on what kind/ type of authority is needed to combat evil? What form would this authority take? Thank you

Martha

Dear Martha,

Authority that is impartial.

Authority that is spacious.

Authority that is inwardly quiet and centered deep within its own ground.

Authority that it firm.

Authority that is kind.

Authority of the kind Jesus radiated when it was said of him, “He speaks as one with authority, not as one of the scribes or pharisees.”

Cynthia