Wisdom Practices
The Wisdom practices I share with people are contemplation, attunement & compassionate inquiry.
I also offer ways of engaging the arts in these practices.
Contemplation
Contemplation is the heart of the Wisdom tradition. It’s the practice of opening and surrendering to the immediacy and action of the Living Presence of Spirit.
Contemplation makes us increasingly tender receivers of the outpouring love of the Source of Being. This ultimately changes the way we perceive.
In brightening our consciousness and increasing our capacity for bearing love, contemplation is the crucible of personal and collective transformation.
Contemplation is a practice, a gift, and, ultimately, a way of being.
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Surrender ~ yielding into the Presence of Spirit ~ is the heart of contemplation. Surrender isn’t so much an action we choose, as one we allow. Ultimately, it’s a spontaneous response to the impact of the tremendous beauty of Divine Presence, a gift of grace.
We can dispose ourselves to surrender by not entering contemplation with an end in mind, by renouncing expectation, not because expectation is bad or wrong but because, here, it’s redundant; anticipation of the Presence of Spirit blinds us to the already-hereness of this Presence. Disposing ourselves to surrender is less like letting go and more like letting be.
Attunement
Attunement involves gathering our attention and subtlelizing our sense-perception so we’re able to feel the resonance of our being with the Source of Being.
Somatic meditation practices help us consciously engage and balance our three centres of intelligence - sensation, emotion, and thought. This increases our inner coherence and configures our attention differently, refining our receptivity to the Living Presence of Spirit.
Devotional practices are ways of consciously opening to the Living Presence and consciously abiding in this divine love.
Attunement practices include sensing exercises, sacred movement, chanting, sacred reading (lectio/visio divina), divination and contemplative art-making.
Attunement practices render us more sensitive and receptive to the illumination and guidance of divine intelligence ~ grace.
Compassionate
Inquiry
Compassionate inquiry is the process of consciously illuminating and alchemizing our psychoemotional experience, relaxing the knot of our egoic identity so that energy is freed to flow in loving exchange with Spirit.
Compassionate inquiry is not aimed at rejecting or dissolving our egoic identity but recognizing the inherent patterning, vulnerability and suffering of this identity as the raw material of our transformation and the threshold of spiritual realization.
Embracing our vulnerability and consciously engaging our suffering transforms these experiences into fonts of love and wisdom.
Compassionate inquiry can include self-observation, self-reflection and emotional alchemy (often referred to as emotional processing).