I have a sense to share something. I recoil a bit at doing this, for fear of seeming narcissistic, or even just bringing attention to myself. But if it helps anyone else on this path, I will throw it out there. I feel the great nudge — or little “ping” — to let the fingers fly over the keyboard and see what comes out.

#1: I was doing a ‘quick run’ before picking up my three daughters from school one day. I had a tight time limit. I was running on a trail when suddenly I saw a dark, shimmering, shining glisten in the grass. I froze, foot in midair practically. I took some fearful steps back, realizing it was a big, fat, black snake — long as can be — all the way across the trail. I tried to go around it on one side but it was full of briars. I went the other way and sure enough there was another, even bigger black snake curled up on that side. More fear washed over me. I was trapped on all sides and not able to move forward. The panic of having to pick up my kids on time was potent! I tried to find a very long stick I could use to tickle its tail and help it move along, but she/he was frozen just as much as I was, and there was no stick to be grabbed.

I took a deep breath. I relaxed my posture. I totally surrendered my agenda and let go of the kid pick-up time. The instant that I truly got there and released my panic and fear — I kid you not — the big, beautiful black snake slithered right on along. The path opened. I laughed, continued to run, and made it to my kids’ pick-up time.

#2: This happens to me almost daily now. I am not exaggerating. There are many times when I need to be somewhere — like picking up the kids from school, or getting to the hospital where I work — and I need to be ‘on time.’ I do the house rush-around and find myself in the car. In the car, I let go of time requirements. I tell myself, and believe: I am in the car now. I will get there when I do, and I will not hurry or rush — because that feels terrible and doesn’t help. I do not even look at the clock, because at this point it serves no purpose; I will arrive at some point. Then I try to drop into my relaxed, meditative, “chanty” state — three-centered awareness state, whatever you want to call it — and I arrive where I am going. Here is the trippy part: when I arrive, I am NEVER late, and sometimes am even five minutes early. It is like a time warp occurs. I find it so interesting and SO fun to play with. I am in awe and wonder every time it happens, which is becoming the norm.

#3: Similarly with daily chores and tasks. I kid you not, there are about 50 literal tasks I must accomplish most days — for our children, my husband, myself, work, friends, church, the garden, the cars, the hamster, the dog, the hermit crabs, the bees, etc. When I am in checklist mode, getting stuff done, I get flustered, frustrated, and very overwhelmed. My brain fries and I break down in tears. Every single time. The list is just too long and impossible to accomplish in full while also being patient and present with my daughters and husband. When I do not make a list, and I truly, deeply trust that all the important stuff will get done, I do not get overwhelmed. I do not get tired. Everything gets done beautifully and without struggle. It’s like I just let go and let something — God, mercy, the conscious circle, x — carry me along and move me where I need to go. I interact with people and let some other force move through me. It just goes. And it gets done. Yes, I still have my freak-out moments — then I cry, welcome the freak-out, and talk it out with my loved ones. But it is all in the letting go, the surrendered state and trust. I have been really focusing on trusting — truly trusting — this whole wisdom process, God. When I do that, it all really does flow. And to be fair, I have lowered some standards. I try to strike the balance between a comfortable, clean, neat home and everything being “perfectly” in order all of the time. The kids’ rooms are slightly unorganized, there are laundry piles and plenty of dog hair and dust. But I ask myself often: what is really important?

#4: Another example — at work. When I need to make a phone call to a patient who is having a problem, or I need to schedule a patient for a PET scan and I know the schedule is booked out eight weeks but the patient really needs it much sooner and the doctor is adamant they get scheduled — I ground myself. I tap into the open state, the chanty state, the World 24 state, the imaginal realm, or a three-centered state, etc. And the phone call goes better than I ever could have planned. For example, the PET scan just happens to have an opening on the perfect date at the perfect time, or the patient on the phone has already had the conflict resolved. It really boggles my mind, makes me laugh, and puts me in a state of awe. It is different than just ‘being a good listener.’ I try to be open, grounded, and heart-centered, and let that radiate out. I don’t know — I cannot put it into words. I try not to be attached to a particular outcome. I literally say to myself, in my mind, I am here and I am giving [patient’s name] all of my attention.

#5: Adrienne and Karena, both age four. They both found the same rock at the same time and both thought it was theirs. Before wisdom work, these moments — when each kid truly believes she is the “correct” one — used to cause me a good amount of unease. I didn’t know who found the rock first. Who is correct? How do I fix this problem without an upset, mad kid in the end, or without encouraging one kid to “be nice and share”? With wisdom work, it seems to mend itself so effortlessly. In that moment with Adrienne and Karena, I kneeled down to be at their level, tried to turn on my three-centered awareness state, looked them each in the eyes, and asked them to tell me their side of the story. I asked them: what do you think we should do about it? Then I paused and let there be some silence for a few beats or more. And then, in that moment, Karena says, “You can have it,” and heads off to the slide. When I see or feel conflict, it’s a reminder to check in with my being and be very diligent about entering a three-centered awareness state. I try to let the conflict be a cue.

I share all this not because I have it figured out, but because I am in it, just like you. Moment by moment, staying open, and aware that something new is being born in me, in all of us. And, I am not able to do this all the time, I will be very clear about that, but when I am able to do it, I am amazed and delighted.

Author Mallory Heller: I work as a nurse with pregnant people. I am raising three daughters with Channing and our dog Moksha.

I have and wear many hats, perhaps too many: husband, father of three young boys, attorney, Wisdom student and circle facilitator, member of the recovery community, Benedictine Oblate, youth coach, wannabe urban farmer-poet, reggae dance party extraordinaire etc. If we are a multitude, and we are, each of my “I’s” has a hat.  Sometimes the hat wears me, sometimes I wear the hat. 

There are times when I feel a bit like the Mad Hatter, mercurial and spun about by the chaos of the outside world and my internal reactions to it, a slave to conditioning, to external forces, and instinctual drives. 

Work in this Wisdom lineage, has helped me find a different kind of hat, what Rumi calls “a cap to wear in both worlds.”  I can wear this cap on the earth plane and in the imaginal realm, or in Ray of Creation terms, world 48 and 24.  This Wisdom cap, has allowed me to see my “Mad Hatter” manifestations from a different place, without judgement (or less judgment) and attuned to sensation in the body.  It provides greater access to Conscience and teaches me to discern and skillfully wield the sword of yes and no.

*Some of my hats. Note the hat in the middle with a 24 and lighting bolt going connecting the higher and lower. This was a random “imaginal gift”, the 24 refers to mile 24 of the Twin Cities Marathon, but to me it is world 24.  

We are living in a restless, destabilizing and disturbing time. There is great risk, and great opportunity.  In this Wisdom work, I have learned that in the restlessness and disturbance there is a capacity for something more, for Wonder, Sovereignty, Rest and ultimately Hope. See Logion 2, Gospel of Thomas. 

Some of my most vivid memories as a child are of an overwhelming sense that the world would end in my lifetime. I sought and seek to prepare myself. I have come to understand that what I was sensing and feeling as a child was not the end of the world per se, but a new arising, that would come through and bring about a great upheaval on the planet and in my being. 

This Wisdom work has helped me see and understand that for a new heaven, a new earth, a new consciousness and for my own sacred individuality to come into being it requires a lawful but painful process of dying and rebirth on all levels, in all worlds, and in all times.  A daunting task, but this Wisdom work teaches the practical art/science needed for transformation and provides real help along the path.  

The upheaval I sensed as a child has borne itself out in my life and in our world in more ways that I can name here. This Wisdom work is helping to navigate in the moment, teaching that in the upheaval there is something sacred that becomes available that I can take into my being and give back.  I could list an endless stream of examples but below is a quick and dirty “field report”, from that field that Rumi writes about.  

Field Report:

* 2020 – 21 An intensification continues.  

– COVID and the Cave. We are cooped up by COVID. Working from my dark, cold basement.  It is like the Cave of St. George’s Dragon . . . A deep depression sets in, fear and rage too. A dark night of sorts. Centering Prayer and recovery meetings via zoom provide sustenance.

– The Twin Cities burn, but WE are not consumed. We watch a man’s life extinguished as the collective knee of our disorder is coldly pressed to his neck. How many black and brown bodies must be sacrificed on the so called altar of American freedom? “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”  My belly and my city Burn! There is smoke in the yard from the burning buildings blocks away. There are constant gun shots, it feels like the edge of a war zone. We all sleep in one bed that night (and still often do). I shoved the dresser in front of the bedroom door and kept the old deer hunting rifle at the ready. There are 100 fully armed national guard troops stationed in the parking lot of the rec center kitty corner from our house. Amidst that chaos there is something more that holds and sustains us. There is sobriety. We are burned but not consumed.

– Lion eats man. A summer of tremendous violence. A young man is shot in the head on my block, other shootouts on my street.  My young sons learn to distinguish between the sound of fireworks and gunshots. There is a sense of deep and timeless solidarity that feeds us. This ain’t nothing new, it’s just a taste of what many have lived and do live with, but there is deep sadness at watching the human condition, my condition, as it is when “lion eats man”. . . we were created for more than this.

– The Eye of the Heart & Experiments with Cosmic Dialysis. A clear impression. I am listening to The Eye of the Heart audiobook, receiving an introduction to the Ray of the Creation and hearing Cynthia’s call for “all hands on deck,” while walking past National Guard troops with machine guns and armored vehicles guarding the Capital in St. Paul as I walk to work. My former ways of action and activism seem less potent.  They are still there, but I sense something more is needed I begin to experiment with a walking form of Cosmic Dialysis (Tonglen) in my Neighborhood. 

  *2022 – 24 – “Welcome to the Wisdom Community”- On the Ground Wisdom Schools

– A taste. I attend a mini-Wisdom School in Texas.  How can I leave home to do this work with a wife and small kids?  Perhaps I can bring it to Minnesota? I begin to experiment and coordinate small retreats locally. Help comes. Essence friends are found.

– A banquet feast. I sneak into my first Wisdom School at Claymont. I am new, I am nervous, but I feel at home. This is no cult. There is good food and good humans here.  First time with Movements – they are prayer and medicine like I have rarely ever tasted before. Cynthia tells me, “Welcome to the Wisdom Community.” I leave with my body and heart on fire with sensation.  When I get home, I tell my kids it was like Hogwarts . . . for misfit mystics. I long to return but know that my work is mostly local and at home for now.

–A local Wisdom Circle is born. I set out to find a local group. I trust my gnosis and help comes. Spirit directs me to reach out to some apparent strangers and almost immediately we begin working together as a Wisdom Circle. We are like the blind leading the blind, but our desire is pure, we receive higher help from the Wisdom Community and Beyond.  We weave a Web, or the Web weaves itself into us. I am gifted with the opportunity to attend additional Wisdom Schools; I bring back what I can. 

*2025 – 2026 – Warming Minnesota

– ICE descends on the Twin Cities. We have been hit hard before, but this is something different. There is more terror in the atmosphere. It is toxic. It takes tremendous Work to transmute the fear and rage, to stay sober.  We practice eating negative emotions and emanating something of a finer quality. We do what we can to help those who are targeted based on their skin color and accent, which include my wife and sons, we feed, we comfort, we march, we pray, and we watch. 

–Imaginal Assistance from the Wisdom Community.  We received a surge of imaginal assistance. The Wisdom Community at the winter gathering at Claymont has our back. We feel it, we know it. Like Gurdjieff “warming” Paris during the Nazi Occupation, the Wisdom Community worked to warm Minnesota from all corners of the country and Beyond.  It is a miracle that only two people are killed. I watch as many white people wrestle for the first time with the prospect of unchecked state violence being arbitrarily wielded against white bodies in America. The veil is lifted. The emperor wears no clothes. Perhaps it is true that “modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words”, a hard pill to swallow for many that have not been under its thumb before. 

–Whether I live or die. I wrestle with my response to the “surge” and turn to Howard Thurman’s, Jesus and the Disinherited, “[T]here are somethings that are worse than death. To deny one’s own integrity in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things . . . “until that center of [“not being killed”] is shifted, nothing real can happen.”  . . .  I hear Cynthia’s call, “all hands are needed on deck,” “whether I live or die I am the Lords” and “I am in the Ray of Creation and the Ray of Creation is in me.” 

–Grateful. I am grateful for this Work and this Wisdom Community making it accessible. There is now something growing in me and in our local group that is capable of truly remaining sober in this time and discerning how and when to act, with Metis and impartiality. There is a growing trust, a growing courage, a growing power and presence, that is not mine or ours alone, it is the Web, it is the Communion of Saints, the Conscious Circle of Humanity, it is Conscience itself, it is, Lord, Have Mercy, it is Grace.   

I take refuge in this field Mercy “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing”, and I wish to grow in being and understanding so that I may be a bridge, to skillfully wear the cap given to me to wear in at least two of the worlds (but I can confirm it also travels to world 96 and below).

Author: Daniel Marx, Obl. OSB, is a husband, father, attorney, Wisdom student and active in the Recovery Community. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife and three young sons where he co-facilitates a local Wisdom Circle working with the Christian Wisdom lineage of Cynthia Bourgeault. He also has a deep experiential reverence for the ancient Wisdom lineages of Africa and the Americas, including Egypt, the Maya, and the Seven Council Fires of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota.