Live Online Course

We’ll begin with an introduction to the Wisdom tradition, seeing that, while it is not the same as religion, it has flowed through and been conveyed by the mystical lineages of that form. We’ll contemplate the deepest continuity of the Wisdom stream - living intimacy with Divine Presence - and the transformation of consciousness that makes this possible and is the inhering orientation of the Wisdom path.

Wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault suggests that we suffer a serious case of mistaken identity when we take our personalities to be the seat of our personhood and don’t see the much deeper dimension of our being - our participation in Divine Presence. The focus of our second gathering will be how we can collect, reconfigure and direct our attention so we can live beyond egoic insistence and within Presence. We’ll explore how we can cultivate coherence of being and greater receptivity to Presence through balancing our three-centres of intelligence and refining our sense-perception.

The Wisdom tradition maintains that the heart is an organ of spiritual perception that harmonizes our three centres of intelligence and makes it possible for us to perceive from wholeness rather than division. This is sometimes referred to as nondual awareness. It is the heart that resonates with both form and formlessness and makes exchange with Divine Presence and embodying Wisdom possible. In our third gathering we’ll turn to the heart and consider contemplation as the heart’s luminous seeing.  

Contemplation and heart perceptivity are kindled and illuminated in Silence. The movement to contemplation requires an apophatic capacity – sitting in Silence, in nonconceptual presence. Centering Prayer fosters this capacity, creating an inner ground of receptivity that allows for a deeper relational knowing of Divine Presence. In our fourth gathering we’ll learn the practice of Centering Prayer and consider this prayer and the silence of contemplation as crucibles of the transformation of our consciousness by love, toward love.

There’s lots said about “the ego,” including that it’s the enemy and that spirituality aims at its annihilation. In our fifth gathering we’ll regard our egoic structure of consciousness with kind discernment and consider how “having an ego” and “giving it up” are not sequential but simultaneous processes. We’ll consider our organic existence as the raw material of our transformation, the very conditions in which the seed of divine love within us can be nurtured and grow. And we’ll look at the conscious work that such nurturance entails such as fostering a stable witnessing presence, with Myriam the Migdala as our guide.

In this gathering we’ll turn to Yeshua as master of the transformation of consciousness required for the light and love of Divine Presence to flow through our finite form and materialize the Kingdom of Heaven, the next level of collective unity. We’ll contemplate two of Yeshua’s core teachings: metanoia - “going beyond the mind,” or “into the larger mind,” and kenosis - “self-emptying,” or “giving way to love,” responding to our inner resonance with Divine Presence rather than reacting to outer situations.

Cynthia Bourgeault describes the imaginal realm as “a sphere that is not less real, but more real than our so-called objective reality, and whose generative energy can change the course of events in the world.”  During this gathering we’ll deepen our understanding of the imaginal realm and how the practices we’ve been fostering up to this point raise the level of our being so we’re more able to entrain with the imaginal realm, moved within and by it, receptive to and inspired by its guidance.

In our final session, as we abide with the question, Where to from here? we’ll ponder the nature of the Wisdom path and the way in which the path provides the next step.