Dear wisdom friends,

By now the word is out that I am officially stepping back from active duty as a core faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation. As a newly minted “faculty emeritus,” I will no longer actively teach in the Living School or be a regular presence at CAC symposia and conferences. My course material will continue to factor prominently in the Living School curriculum for the foreseeable future, and the expectation is that I will keep a hand in with occasional special teachings and presentations.

I want to make very clear to all that this decision to step back is motivated neither by ill health nor ill will. Entirely au contraire, it rests squarely on both of these rather remarkable graces: of a still robust health, and dear, trusted friends at the CAC who have given both support and wise encouragement to what the Quakers would call a “leading”—a strong inner prompt to accept a new invitation. In this time of global upheaval I have found ...

How wonderful, that, here we are, discussing “Chapter Nine: The Passion,” “Chapter Ten: The Crucifixion and Its Aftermath,” and “Chapter Eleven: The Great Easter Fast” in The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. How poignant to be leaning into her writing about Holy Week and the fifty days following Easter—in the thick of it, right now. Ascension, May 13th, and Pentecost, yet to come. We remain. Abide in this quiet thin time of the year when the resurrected Jesus walked the earth visiting and teaching before his final departure as embodied form. Forty days, then ten. Time to pause, to hear what is waiting to come into birth from the absolute depths of us.  

Beginning with “the Passion as really the mysteries of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience (pg. 104), Cynthia walks us through the last days and death of Jesus with fresh eyes. In freely accepting his short and intense life, Jesus en-courages us to “make the passage into unitive life”:

Cynthia Bourgeault’s new book Mystical Courage: Commentaries on Selected Contemplative Exercises by G. I. Gurdjieff, as Compiled by Joseph Azize is available for purchase. This collection of six G.I. Gurdjieff exercises from Joseph Azize’s book Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises illuminated by Cynthia’s own commentaries for, in her words, “a broader spiritual audience…connecting the dots between the familiar world of Christian contemplation and the brave new world of Gurdjieffian metaphysics and nomenclature…” (pg. xi).

We Invite You to Order Your Copy Here

Cynthia worked these six exercises herself, with a small group of friends who have decades in the work, before bringing them to the larger Wisdom community for our collective work together—a suggested “pandemic homework” specifically gathered for these times.

In her introduction Cynthia speaks about the step in the Gurdjieff work that takes us beyond the pause and adaptations necessitated by the pandemic. She speaks about the opportunity when stopped in our tracks to lean “into the awkwardness of that ‘ ...

All of nature with its forms and creatures exist together and are interwoven with each other. They will be resolved back to their own proper origin, for the compositions of matter return to the original roots of their nature.

Those who have ears, let them hear this.

Everyone who begins to study and know their own states is well aware that our experience is a constant dying and rebirth. We must not be frightened as we come to see this, although it really is a terrifying thing that we have no power to keep hold of our own life; that it has to be renewed or given back to us by something that does not come from ourselves.

But even when we do see the helplessness with which we fall into oblivion, at that moment when we are most trying to hold onto ourselves, we must learn to trust that there is something that calls us back, and will call us back. And ...

We see that at Christ’s death the whole world entered upon a cosmic spring the harvest of which will be the remaking of our universes in newness and splendor. At the moment of Christ’s death the veil in the temple was rent in two from top to bottom, the veil that hung before the Holy of Holies. The veil of the temple represented the whole universe as it stands between God and man. At the moment when Christ’s act of redemption is consummated, the whole cosmos opens itself to the Godhead, bursts open for God like a flowerbud. The universe is no longer what it was before.

The Son of God tore open the whole world and made it transparent to God’s light. The transformation of the world is even now a reality.

Christ Is,
Christ Is
The Heart of the Heart of the world,
the Heart of the Heart of the world
Draw us deeper,
draw us ...

In stillness nailed
to hold all time, all change, all circumstance
in and to love’s embrace

Beloved One, creation longs to be held
in the great hands of your heart;
O let us know this now.
Into them we place these fragments, our lives,
that you may do with them as you wish.
Into them we also place this unconscious broken world.
We know that in You all will be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well.
Amen.

First Apostle

Now his body writhes in pain:
once it was my delight, now it is my sorrow.

Blood drains from arms that held me close,
now they are fixed and life has fled from flesh and bone.

As we take him from wood to earth,
all is silent, empty—
passion surrenders to another love
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Take Off Your Shoes
~ by Adwoa Lewis-Wilson

Take off your shoes,
In fact, remove all your coverings –
The cloak of achievement, adornments of knowledge,
              Every false veil of ‘self’.
For the place you stand is holy ground.
Here is where I will burn away all that is not real.
Here is where you remain aflame with my Spirit’s fire.

Take off your shoes,
Yes, all your coverings.
For here you have found the baptismal fount.
You may not enter this sanctuary other than naked,
                         Vulnerable
                              ...

The Wisdom Jesus asks us to gently question the Christianity of tradition, and turn towards the discovery of what it means right here and now to seek and find the Wisdom Jesus in our lives. To live the path and connect with the person who was called the Single One, Ihidaya, Master. We are being pointed to a path, an unfolding process. The Gospel of Thomas logion quoted on the first page indicates that to seek includes becoming troubled and confused before opening to wonder, sovereignty and rest. And this is all ok. It is real.

It is a path that relies on what Cynthia calls, “our own power of inner recognition” (pg. 3): an inner capacity that can perceive “through a raw immediacy of presence” within which we are able to connect with our “own direct knowingness…Out of this sovereignty is born—our own inner authority” (pg. 7).

“Recognition energy…is the capacity to ground truth a spiritual experience in our own being” (pg. 80).

  ...