A three-part blog series by Cynthia Bourgeault   As many of you know, I have been breaking ground on a new book on the Imaginal Realm. While “breaking ground” may be a bit of an overstatement, I at least have a few rough sketches on the drawing board, which in the spirit of the season (thanksgiving and anticipation), I thought I’d throw out to you as trailers. These preliminary sketches have been shaped into three blogs; what final shape they will assume remains to be seen, but you can at least get a glimpse of what’s capturing my creative imagination these days. Enjoy!   What Is the Imaginal Realm? It’s all too easy when exploring topics as inherently elusive as the imaginal realm to stray into abstraction. Many of the world’s sacred traditions (though not all) acknowledge something roughly analogous to what I am here calling imaginal reality; the temptation is to launch into a scholarly or technical comparison of these various systems. Is the imaginal “the same” as the Platonic “intelligible universe?” The Hindu “subtle” level of consciousness? The bardo realms of Buddhism? Maybe yes, maybe no. That work of scholarly refinement I leave to others. What I want

Continue reading...

“I would like to attend your Spiritual Direction Training program, Marcella, but your program is located in Bethlehem, PA and I live in Georgia. I urge you to kindly consider creating a distance option for your program, that would allow others like myself who want a spiritual direction training program that incorporates the teachings and practices of a Wisdom Way of Knowing, to attend your program.” This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting as I finished up my last days of the Claymont Movement Wisdom School in March of 2016. This request came from one of my Wisdom colleagues who had been on the Movements floor with me all week and had overheard me talking about incorporating some Wisdom practices into the Moravian Theological Seminary Spiritual Direction program that I co-direct with my colleague Barb Martell. The request landed deep and wide within; a call bell of stillness and alertness ensued. I was intrigued. I responded to her request “Wow, I have not thought of creating a Wisdom infused distance option for our Spiritual Direction training program. Let me take this into my prayer, discuss it with my co director and the seminary, and get back to you!” This ‘out

Continue reading...

Here is a wonderful new blog post from Dr. Rudy Hwa -- an emeritus professor of Physics at the University of Oregon as well one of my one of my senior Wisdom Students, both chronologically (we’ve been traveling this path together for nearly two decades now) and in his recognized eldership in both the scientific and Wisdom communities. This delightful blog seamlessly weaves together his scientific rigor with his passion for music. It's a delight and a privilege to share it with you here. ~ Cynthia At a symposium held many years ago on a day between the performances of the third and fourth operas of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the musical director of the Ring said in answer to a question about Wagner: “Music without Wagner is like physics without Einstein.” That statement struck such a chord in me that I have been exploring its implications ever-since. As a physicist I know Einstein’s work more than I do about the works of Wagner and Teilhard. But my love for music, especially for Wagner’s operas, and my journey in spirituality put me at a place where I can enjoy a panoramic view of all three. My words to describe that view,

Continue reading...

It is now closing in on the 2nd anniversary of my transfer of private documents into the Beatrice Bruteau archive at Emory University’s Pitts Library. My prior article for Northeast Wisdom titled Beatrice Bruteau Archive to Reside at Emory University published October 27, 2016 articulated the unexpectedly complicated yet highly rewarding process of procuring Beatrice’s works for the preservation of her legacy. Since her ideas have once more gained traction through the immeasurable inspirations of luminaries as Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault and Sr. Ilia Delio, it may once again be of some value (no matter how limited) in calling attention to how priceless this collection is. As her most immediate disciple and unofficial caretaker over the last year of her life, I absorbed a great deal from Beatrice about the unadulterated power of intentionally channeled presence. Our lineage-transmission process was anchored in a non-hierarchal indwelling of radically subjective love. It was one in which I was instructed to unbind discursive reason and an over-reliance on cognition, in order to make the dynamic boundary crossing over into who she was and what she experienced. This quantum leap into the beginnings of an “I-I” relationship were only first made possible by Beatrice acting

Continue reading...

Where are all the young people? This is a question that I have often heard asked among participants at their first Wisdom School. Mostly those who have been pursuing Wisdom for a longer time stop asking the question because they have become so used to seeing the sea of gray-haired folks who usually attend Wisdom events. So, where are all the young people…? While I don’t necessarily have a definitive answer to the question, I do have a recent experience that I’d like to share that may shed some light on the question. The event was my son’s wedding at which I was asked to officiate. I was just coming off my Mary Magdalene and Conscious Love Wisdom School, so for weeks I had been deeply considering the nature and dynamism of love and its central place in an awakened life. The question that confronted me as I approached the wedding was whether I would simply recycle a more traditional and conventional ceremony or take the risk of enacting a Wisdom ritual that attempted to take into account the deeper dimensions of love. While it would be one thing to present this Wisdom liturgy at a Wisdom School, I wondered

Continue reading...