Once a month for April, May, and June of 2022, Wisdom Waypoints invited participants to gather online with one of our community leaders, for some basic instruction and practice time together. We called these sessions a COLLECTIVE PAUSE for WISDOM PRACTICE Mini-Series.
You can find the recordings to these session below, as well as related resources.
If you would like to make an offering to help support our offerings such as community practice sessions like this, please use the button below, or download our mail-in form here.
Thank you to our practice series leaders, Heather Ruce, Marcella Kraybill-Greggo, and Elizabeth Combs, and to all who participated and donated to these sessions!
“It’s very, very simple. You sit, either in a chair or on a prayer stool or mat, and allow your heart to open toward that invisible but always present Origin of all that exists. It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice.”
Cynthia Bourgeault
Embodiment Practice with Heather Ruce
As Heather explains, these embodiment practices are intended to focus the intelligence of our moving center. Working with the moving center is essential for ‘knowing with more of ourselves’ on the spiritual path.
Click here for RECORDING and EMBODIMENT RESOURCES from Heather’s session
As Heather explains, these embodiment practices are intended to focus the intelligence of our moving center – which is often the center we have most lost our connection with. Working with the moving center is essential for ‘knowing with more of ourselves’ on the spiritual path.
Practices shared by Heather:
(3:36) Wholeness in Motion – full description and sequence outlined here.
(13:23) Working with Sensation – guided embodiment practice and reading.
(34:00) Vocabulary for working with Sensation – view here.
(38:15) Gurdjieff Movement #39 – full description and sequence outlined here.
(48:50) Question about developing moving center as daily practice
Quote read by Heather:
“First, sensing requires that you be attentive in a new way, which I referred to as “gentle attention.” This type of attention is neither forced nor tense, but an open attention. Gentle attention is different from our normal focused attention, which is often at-tension. Usually, focused attention is a contracting movement that focuses and narrows the field of consciousness. Gentle attention by contrast, is characterized by expanding my awareness. Thus, while we are developing our ability to sense, we simultaneously develop the ability to practice gentle, open attention. We direct attention intentionally rather than having it directed by outer life and accidental shocks from the environment. Directing our attention helps to ground us by connecting the mind with the body. When we are grounded, we experience our living existence and receive new impressions. You may find that the body enjoys being sensed.
Second, through sensing, we encounter energies within the body of which we were previously unaware. Thus, we are more conscious of our bodies and more able to experience it’s intelligence. Usually, as I stated above, the body uses automatic energy for organizing itself and we remain unconscious of it. However, with sensing, we have the opportunity to consciously participate in the experience of this special sensitive energy that is called up by being attentive, but without modifying it or trying to control it. The word “participate“ has a special meaning here… Participation is an advanced method of self-observation and self-study.
Third, the effect of sensing, or in the beginning, simply directing our attention to a particular part of the body, has a definite effect on the intellectual center. It curtails daydreams, fantasies, and other useless patterns of associative thinking, without the necessity of stopping my thoughts. Later, when I am more experienced with sensing, it gives me an instantaneous means of self-observation. It bypasses the associative mind and immediately gives me increased impressions of myself. In other words, the mind’s ordinary associative function cannot truly partake of the present moment. It is busy encoding impressions that have already occurred, rather than being able to experience them newly. Sensing gets around this continuous referencing of the past by giving a person raw impressions of [them]self in the moment.” Russell Schreiber, Gurdjieff’s Transformational Psychology, pp. 82-83
About Heather Ruce
Heather Ruce dedicates her life to the Christian Wisdom and Contemplative path, seeking to wake up and be a conscious servant. She brings the teachings of this path to those in search of living water, offering wisdom spiritual direction, circles, and retreats. She lives in San Diego, CA with her husband Charlie. She has been a life long seeker and an active participant in the Wisdom community since 2012 and is a member of the WWP Council.
You can find more about Heather on her Wisdom Postholder profile here, and her website heatherruce.com
Gospel of Thomas Lectio Divina with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Marcella leads an online Lectio Divina session based in sensation, working with movement practices and passages from the Gospel of Thomas.
Click here for RECORDING and GOSPEL OF THOMAS LECTIO DIVINA RESOURCES from Marcella’s session
Marcella shares the following in this practice session:
Chant with Gestures:
(11:00) You the One, One in All, Say I am, I am You.
Chant with Gestures, Based on Logion 1: (
(35:15) Yeshua, Yeshua, Leads us to life…Yeshua
GOSPEL OF THOMAS LOGIONS
Logion 5
Yeshua says,
Come to know the One
in the presence before you,
and everything hidden
from you will be revealed.
For there is nothing concealed
that will not be revealed,
and nothing buried
that will not be raised.
*****
Logion 1
I who write this am Thomas,
The Double, the Twin.
Yeshua, the Living Master spoke,
and his secret sayings I have
written down.
I assure you, whoever grasps their
meaning will not know the taste
of death.
*****
Logion 77
Yeshua says,
I am the light
shining upon all things.
I am the sum of everything,
for everything has come forth from me,
and towards me everything unfolds.
Split a piece of wood,
and there I am.
Pick up a stone
and you will find me there.
Gospel of Thomas Translations and Learning Opportunities:
Jean Yves-Leloup and Mark Mattison have easy-to-find, accessible translations
The Luminous Gospels by Bauman/Bourgeault
Samuel Zinner provides a translation as an appendix in his book The Gospel of Thomas in the Light of Early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Esoteric Trajectories
Gospel of Thomas Collection – online at the Gnostic Society Library
Spirituality and Practice eCourse: Gospel of Thomas with Cynthia Bourgeault
You can find information on Bill Redfield’s Gospel of Thomas programs here.
About Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Marcella Kraybill-Greggo offers her time as a Seminary Director of Spirituality Programming, a local Wisdom Community facilitator, a Spiritual Director and a mom. Marcella served as Clinical Director of the Seminary Counseling program for 15 years, is a licensed Social Worker, is trained as an Ignatian Exercises Director, and is trained as an InterPlay (embodiment) Facilitator. She lives in the Lehigh Valley, PA with her husband, daughter, and their Westie, Kiwi. She has been an active participant in the Wisdom community since 2013, both as student and teacher, assists in facilitating multiple Wisdom schools, regularly offers 3 – 8 month ‘Embodied Training in the Practices of Wisdom’, facilitates Law of Three Embodied Trainings and midwife groups, and loves all things embodied. She joined the Wisdom Waypoints Council in 2017 and is our Council Chair. Visit Marcella’s website here.
Wisdom Chant with Elizabeth Combs
Elizabeth guides various anchoring and sound exercises, then leads a number of simple chants. She encourages us all to find and use our voice through this very accessible Wisdom practice.
Click here for RECORDING and CHANT RESOURCES from Elizabeth’s session
Chants:
(17:55) Rooted and grounded in love.
(29:22) Surrender to the beauty, become a mighty kindness.
(36:26) Mercy is the warm-heartedness pulsing through all things.
(43:55) Rachem, Rachem, Rachem, Rachem, Oh Lord, have mercy.
(51:50) May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be well. May I peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.
May you…
May we…
May all…
Community Chant Sessions Online: Find details and Zoom link here.
Join with other community members for 30 minutes of Contemplative Chant Every Wednesday
2 pm PT/3 pm MT/4 pm CT/5 pm ET on Zoom
led by Susan Latimer and Elizabeth Combs
Chant Resources:
Find a video of Cynthia Bourgeault teaching about chant, as well as information and recordings by several wisdom chant makers under the Practice menu on the Wisdom Waypoints website here.
Chants by Elizabeth Combs:
Find original and traditional chants by Elizabeth Combs here.
About Elizabeth Combs
Elizabeth Combs is a mother, daughter, sister, and friend, who migrates between Bellingham WA and Winston-Salem NC. In addition to being one of Wisdom Waypoint’s primary Chant writers and leaders, Elizabeth serves as a Wisdom Mentor, Energy Medicine Practitioner, Vibrational Healer and Somatic Herbalist, maintaining a heart-centered distance wellness practice with clients all over Earth. Visit her website, Elizabeth Combs ~ Energy Medicine, to discover more about her training and the interdisciplinary studies and practices, plant craft, and ancestral healing with which Elizabeth goes deep to stimulate an embodied, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical healing and balancing.
Contact Elizabeth Combs:
Leave a message for Elizabeth here if you would like to be added to her list or in touch about her other offerings.