A Bigger Picture

Throughout the pandemic, I took a crash course in Christianity’s Wisdom tradition with Cynthia Bourgeault … participating in almost every online class she teaches. Cynthia is an Episcopal Priest, writer, retreat facilitator, and mystic. I chose her above other offerings because I suspected she would stretch me. I was right! I continue to be challenged to put into practice and bear the fruits of what I am learning.

During a Time of Searching

I was first introduced to Cynthia twenty to twenty-five years ago when I read her book, Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart. It was a time of searching … trying to find something in Christianity that aligned with my 1999 mystical experience of Divine Love … something beyond the harshness of traditional theology. In addition to Cynthia’s, I was graced at that time with several books by women authors who validated my spiritual way of being and knowing.  

I recognized myself in a comment Cynthia wrote in the introduction to her book … “a certain capacity for ‘out of the box’ thinking seems to be a necessary prerequisite for being attracted to Wisdom in the first place.” I felt a resonance when she noted that her book would “speak mostly to those who search for deeper meaning in their life and who feel there are missing pieces in the belief system they grew up with.”

I felt a kinship with Jesus’ band of immediate followers. They recognized him as a “master of Wisdom.” Drawing on an ancient and timeless teaching of transformation, he encouraged them to be receptive to higher/deeper meaning.

I had not encountered these perspectives in my 50-some years of involvement in the church nor in my seminary studies. It was refreshing to find them at a time when I questioned whether or not the Christian path was viable for me. As I read, I often exclaimed, “Yes, yes, yes” as I highlighted significant passages. Such a relief to be introduced to a stream of Christianity that resonated with my soul.

Now, some twenty-five years after that first reading, I plunged into Cynthia’s classes with unbridled excitement. I came to see that my previous reading had barely scratched the surface of my understanding of Wisdom. To this day, I am challenged as I dig deeper into this path of wholeness in body, mind, and heart.

Knowing with more of you

…means developing a higher state of consciousness by balancing your three centers of awareness … your intellect, your emotions, and your body. When we are balanced harmoniously, we are most alive and The Divine is most present and available to us.

Each of us tends to be stronger in one of these centers than in the others.

• I am strongest in my Emotional/Heart Center. Compassion and empathy can serve as motivators to take action to address social inequities. And painful emotions can send you into a tailspin. Mine had been doing that since March and the end of the pandemic lockdown. I had been uncomfortably unbalanced for months. I struggled to find balance and then on New Year’s Eve, it finally began to emerge.
• It was my Body/Moving Center that finally helped me name the emotion plaguing me. In my last blog post, “An Unfolding Process” I shared this process of sensation-based naming:
  • By turning my awareness toward what I thought might be grief or depression,
  • By studying how that registered in my body,
  • By noticing if my bodily experience said “yes” to those words as a precise description of my state
  • The word “sorrow” and then “chronic sorrow” emerged as the word(s) that fit my experience
  • This felt sense of rightness brought an immediate sense of relief.

• My Mind/Intellectual Center is my weakest center. Writing about my emotional process and bodily sensations/perceptions engages my Mind/Intellectual Center. I feel most fully alive in the writing process. It brings me back into balance.

When the field of vision has been unified, the inner being comes to rest, and the inner peaceableness flows into the outer world as harmony and compassion.

~Cynthia Bourgeault

Contemplative Writing as a Spiritual Practice

For me, contemplative writing is a spiritual practice. Many years ago I was gifted with discovering this way that works for me. It takes me deeper. It helps me understand new perspectives and concepts and how they apply to my life or fit with my life experience. It helps me discern new directions I am being called to explore or engage in. It helps me make sense of my emotions, especially puzzling dark ones.

While I don’t enjoy experiencing painful feelings, I don’t fear them. I am in awe of the process, the message they reveal, and the treasure on the other side. Experience has taught me to trust the process.

Writing this post revealed how writing brings me into balance … a new understanding.

Sharing My Writing as a Calling

I experience sharing myself authentically and vulnerably through writing as a calling … not to garner sympathy for the painful moments in my life … but to highlight the transformational process at work. Sharing myself authentically and vulnerably seems to be what you, my readers, value most as evidenced by your comments chronicled on my home page.

I did almost no vulnerable sharing during these months following the end of the lockdown. I was so out of balance, I withdrew in many ways.

The real mark of personal authenticity is not how intensely we can express our feelings but how honestly we can look at where we are coming from and spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agendas that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today.

~Cynthia Bourgeault

So, during these long months of disequilibrium, I wrote to search for its origin and to spot my personal agendas. It wasn’t necessary for me to share here the confusion and angst. Sharing at that level would have been of no value to anyone. I waited until all the pieces fell together. Then I was ready to be more open.  

Writing and sharing authentically and vulnerably brings me back to equanimity and serenity … states of being especially challenging for my personality type. The process challenges me to expose my small self formed to adapt to life. Once seen and admitted to, my adaptations hold less power to block access to my greater True Self … the woman I was created to be.  Contemplative writing serves as a tool that brings me to my True Self. Sharing it with you is my way of normalizing the ongoing journey of transformation upon which we are all called to embark.

 As we learn to open ourselves deeply to this mysterious Source, help will always come, for the Source ‘leans and harkens toward us’ with a tenderness of love that is both the medium and the message  

~Cynthia Bourgeault and John Donne