Cynthia is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader. She divides her time between solitude at her seaside hermitage in Maine and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and Wisdom paths. Cynthia is a core faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation alongside fellow teachers and colleagues James Finley, Richard Rohr, Barbara Holmes, and Brian McLaren.

“See from nonduality, act from compassion.”

“When you remove judgment, what’s left is compassion, not indifference.”

“The demand for compassion remains unchanged throughout the realms.”

“Compassion is the only field that contains all the perspectives.”

“Attention and surrender need to be in balance. They are the joysticks you use to navigate the cosmos.”

“Attention can’t be divided. It is whole. It can only be expanded.”

“Freed from the subject-object mode, attention magically turns into awareness.”

“The true self cannot be attained with the attention in subject-object mode. You can only find your true self in a place beyond the mind.”

“Centering prayer is all about the configuration of your attention.”

“What you pay attention to you energize.”

“Keep within! The hidden pearl within is your magnetic center, your equanimity, the Wisdom Way that you are cultivating.”

“As you learn to sense your feelings instead of immediately jumping up in your head and story, try going lower, into your feet, and even lower into the earth. The stability and support of the earth. What will flow through you will be your agency. The light that comes in your darkness will be your own.”

“The head will never get the motions that the body gets naturally. Surrender, obedience, attention. You can’t do equanimity in your head!”

“You can’t move a plank you’re standing on!

Sensation will move more easily than emotion or story.”

“Dwell not in WHAT you are, but THAT you are. From divided awareness to expanded awareness, using the modality of sensation.”

“Identification is one of our most insidious leeches on presence.”

“With gathered attention and sensation, and turning off the dominance of the mind, you will see. The reward for seeing is more seeing.”

“Start building a nest where your witnessing presence can live.”

“See from nonduality, act from compassion.”

“Get to know what meets you.

There is a personal aspect to the universal laws.”

“Being a willing participant in the relational field is the thing. What we contribute is the power to see and reflect. Attune your being to see what’s happening in the field. Beware the “incomplete observation.” As soon as you make judgment, you are not seeing.”

“Imaginal seeing matches Imaginal selfhood.”

“We perceive wisdom entering from a higher level as the future.”

“The timeless wisdom that comes to us from another realm when we wake up is what we know as the future.”

“The future is not what lies ahead, but the larger dimensions of the whole. The outer layers of meaning. The past doesn’t cause the future, wholeness does.”

“Hold attention as a resonant field, pay attention to the patterns. The price of admission is your narrative self, which is grounded in time.”

“When you do conscious work, or any act of altruism, it is for the future.”

“Time is a measure of resistance. Replace duration with volume and depth.”

“Letting go is a powerful act. Letting be creates new worlds.”

“Don’t correct back to positivity if what you want is equanimity.”

“Kenosis and self-calming are opposite ends of the spectrum.”

“Conscious labor and intentional suffering are the joysticks we use to navigate the universe.”

“We derive our selfhood from the relational field. Nothing in the cosmos works in service to the individual.”

“Don’t watch the individual pieces, watch how they flow. The relational field has the properties, not each one of us.”

“Practices are not a means to get somewhere, but an expression of a relationship with something that is.”

“Health is in the quality and integrity of relationship. The drop is the ocean, not separated. The indwelling Divinity doesn’t replace you but suffuses you. So that what is hidden becomes manifest.”

“Align with the highest possible outcome when wrestling with judgment. Align with wholeness and love. Better than ‘choosing.’”

“All judgment not founded in love will be inaccurate. All negative perception is skewed.”

“True discernment happens in the Imaginal realm.”

“If the path is in front of you, and you’re not sure if it’s “true” — take the wager, do the work of transformation. It will be better than sleep, which is the alternative.”

“Limit the amount of spiritual information. Reach out and connect with your path. Avoid spiritual materialism.”

“Our job is to hold a post in the resonant field. Keep your attention in yourself. Keep within, don’t let your attention be scrambled. Don’t fall asleep. Look for opportunities to be present and give presence.”

‘The three centers of awareness need to be in dialogue in order for you to think and be.”

“Our talent, our gift, is our willingness to enter the reciprocal dance with whatever cards we’ve been dealt in this plane.”

“The fruits of the spirit are attained as we begin to live at a higher level of being.”

“Unbinding cleanses the lens of perception so we can see the abundance. To the extent that we touch and be in abundance in our own life, we become prophets of hope.”

“The deep surrender of self through Kenosis is the access path to abundance, not your will.”

“Imaginal causality is patterned. The heart is the instrument to read the patterns.”

“The three centers have to be online and balanced. Then we are able to maintain a stable access route to the higher information that’s always coming to us.”

“As you move into Imaginal causality, conscience takes the place of attraction and aversion as the mover of your being.”

“A conscious human being participates in the whole and generates the required radial energy through the transformed substance of their life.”

“What we call virtues or qualities in world 48 (our realm) are energy streams in world 24 (the Imaginal realm), subtle substances that are nutrients for our planet.”

“The fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) are alchemical byproducts of conscious work and intentional suffering. What flows out as these qualities is the fruit of an alchemy that goes on deep within our being, using our being as the raw material, in which who we are and our pleasures and self-maximization is somehow changed through conscious labor and intentional suffering.”