In the podcast series Imaginal Inspirations, David Lorimer talks to Cynthia Bourgeault about the experiences, people, and books that have shaped her life and work.
Imaginal Inspirations is hosted by David Lorimer, Program Director of the Scientific and Medical Network and Chair of the Galileo Commission, an academic movement dedicated to expanding the evidence base of a science of consciousness. Imaginal cells are responsible for the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly, which is the Greek symbol for the soul. These cells are dormant in the caterpillar but at a critical point of development they create the new form and structure which becomes the butterfly.
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In this video interview Cynthia Bourgeault joins Garrison Institute founder Jonathan F.P. Rose for a conversation on the common good. Cynthia has worked extensively on understanding the common good and its importance within the fabric of our communities, and how each of us can act towards it. Find Cynthia’s related blog posts linked below.
This live webinar was recorded May 25, 2022. See more details on the Garrison Institute website here.
“…faith is never blind; it is a different way of seeing.”
– Cynthia Bourgeault
Posts in the ‘Common Good’ blog series by Cynthia Bourgeault:
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THE COMMON GOOD: The Beginnings of a Wisdom Inquiry
THE COMMON GOOD from an Evolutionary Perspective
Autopoiesis: A Continuing Blog Series on the COMMON GOOD
REIMAGINING THE COMMON GOOD: The Common Good as Good, Part 1
REIMAGINING THE COMMON GOOD: The Common Good as Good, Part 2
Constraint and the COMMON GOOD
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In this podcast interview with Len Edgerly, host of the Kindle Chronicles, Cynthia Bourgeault shares what she has been doing and considering through the Pandemic shutdown period, and what is on her heart and mind as the opportunities for on-the-ground gatherings return.
“Really I’ve been flying blind, more than I have ever been flying blind before, just responding moment to moment to what’s needed…”
– Cynthia Bourgeault
Referenced in Cynthia’s interview:
For Cynthia’s recent address to Wisdom Community watch here.
Mystical Courage: Commentaries on Selected Contemplative Exercises by G.I. Gurdjieff available here
Cynthia’s Civics for Wisdom Students series of reflections starts here.
Introductory Wisdom School, hosted online by CAC
Find Kindle Chronicles here.
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Photo by Maksim Romashkin from Pexels
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The video below is generously shared by the American Teilhard Association (ATA), recorded at their annual general meeting on June 12, 2021. The ATA explores and builds on the life and work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and aims to make his visionary thinking more widely available. To learn more, or to become a member of the ATA, please visit their website at teilharddechardin.org
In this virtual keynote address to the ATA annual meeting, Cynthia Bourgeault offers an illuminating and instructive overview of Teilhard’s emphasis on ‘personalization’ as an inherent and intensifying quality of consciousness in the evolutionary process toward a convergent unity.
“… the more relationship, the more complexity, the stronger the flow of consciousness. For Teilhard, consciousness, relationship, and the personal are an unbreakable triad. Each implies the other and cannot be sustained apart from the other.
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Cynthia shares how Teilhard’s potent understanding of the ‘Hyper-Personal’ aligns with the emerging Integral structure, as described by Jean Gebser in his book The Ever Present Origin. The complementary perspectives of these two visionary 20th century thinkers leverage each other and point the way toward a renewed confidence in the maturity. . .
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Help flows to us of its own volition…It doesn’t help the cosmos for a human being to fall apart and die and give up. The fact that we’re here at all is a consecration and we are sacred simply from the fact of being born. Because we have this chance to be a conscious pixel in form, and everything that ever brought anything to existence wants this little pixel to flourish.
~ Cynthia Bourgeault, BATGAP interview, Feb 2021
Watch this lively and wide-ranging conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault and Rich Archer, host of Buddha at the Gas Pump (BATGAP), recorded live on February 6, 2021.
Included in the topics they explore:
Cynthia illuminates aspects of the Imaginal Realm and other key insights from her most recent book
Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm
How the work of showing up in ‘the laboratory of our lives’ impacts structures of awakening consciousness
Reflections on forgiveness and love, as well as suffering, confusion, and pain as conditions that contribute to transformative new arisings
And much more… (full topic outline available on BATGAP here)
A spiritual seeker that doesn’t dare to screw up is. . .
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On Monday December 21, 2020 Cynthia Bourgeault sat down with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo on zoom to have a conversation about the work of Jean Gebser. This conversation came into being through the desire to share with the larger Wisdom Community how the Gebser teaching has come ‘toward us from the future’ for such a time as this. This 2020 year has held THREE new teachings for our Wisdom Community…each a seeming surprise and each coming with a particular heft and leavening call. First the Azize practices arrived in Spring (right after the COVID 19 shut down); second, Cynthia’s Eye of the Heart Imaginal teaching arrived in book form and in a Wisdom school in summer, and now this fall the Jean Gebser teaching has arrived. Cynthia shares with us how all 3 teachings have ‘come to us from the future’ and that as Wisdom Seekers our hearts have been prepared for each of these teachings.
Advent coming toward us!
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Spiritual Mettle and the Good Company of the Holy: A conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault
Cynthia joins Terry Patten to explore what it is to live and imagine from the “eye of the heart” in a seemingly apocalyptic world. They reflect on how each of them is relating to death and also discovering new strength and guidance by keeping the company of saints, sages, and our courageous ancestors — one of the most important spiritual fruits of awakening into the “imaginal realm.” Cynthia suggests we aspire to “live the laws of the next world,” like those who began building great cathedrals they knew they wouldn’t live to see completed.
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Are we all just irrelevant specs? Does our life actually have meaning? Listen to Cynthia Bourgeault discuss her newest book, Eye of the Heart, on the latest goop Podcast.
Eye of the Heart investigates the mystical depths of the imaginal realm.—an energetic realm well known to the mystical traditions but often forgotten in our own times. Though invisible to the physical eye, it is clearly perceptible through the eye of the heart.
The imaginal realm has long been associated with the personal world of dreams, prophecy, and oracles, and it also points toward a higher vision of our human purpose that is both evolutionary and collective. Roger Lipsey, author Gurdjieff Reconsidered, writes, “Eye of the Heart is an immensely original piece of thinking, feeling, writing. There is nothing like it. It opens new terrain, plants new seeds, starts them on their way toward the light.” In this unique book, Cynthia opens up our hearts to the imaginal realm, speaking to those of us with a lifelong longing for oneness with God.
Eye of the Heart is available now from Shambhala Publications. Listen to Cynthia unpack this mystical wisdom in the podcast episode A Different Way to Live Virtuously. . .
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Cynthia Bourgeault presents “Oneness: The Secret Embrace,” Thomas Keating’s final gift to the world, as expressed through the poetry of his later years. This is the first of three Zoom calls held April 30 – May 2, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, sponsored by Contemplative Outreach of South Africa and Contemplative Outreach International, with support from The Trust for the Meditation Process. Cynthia deftly and gracefully presents an evolved view of the being and theology of Fr. Thomas through a review of eight poems from the book, The Secret Embrace. These profound and personal poems capture some of Fr. Thomas’ emerging and final vision — a state of consciousness/selfhood, oneness among the religions and oneness in our fragile and embattled world.
This video has a pause for Centering Prayer, where more than 2,000 people prayed in silence together from over 59 countries, the largest gathering of the worldwide Contemplative Outreach community to date.
The video recordings of these sessions, held on April 30, May 1, and May 2 2020, can be found here:
Session 1 – April 30, 2020
Session 2 – May 1, 2020
Session 3 – May 2, 2020
Session 1 includes a. . .
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Cynthia participated in the 24th Annual Festival of Faiths, filmed in Louisville at the Kentucky Center for the Arts Bomhard Theater, April 25-27, 2019. Both of Cynthia’s sessions are now available to watch on YouTube.
The Festival of Faiths is a sustained series of annual events and programs, whose mission is to promote interfaith understanding, cooperation, and action through exploring how the different participating faith traditions address a common issue, topic or theme. The theme for 2019 was Sacred Cosmos: Faith and Science.
“Christian Spiritual Practice with Cynthia Bourgeault: Contemplation as Luminous Seeing”
“Being Is Not Something You Are… with Cynthia Bourgeault”
You can also enjoy watching all of the 2019 sessions through the Festival of Faiths YouTube channel.
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When people gather in silence, a deeper kind of collective, synergistic, numinous knowing unfolds. And that’s the only knowing that’s worth a damn, particularly when you’re working with the infinite.
~ Cynthia Bourgeault
On February 25, 2019 Cynthia was interviewed for a podcast on the Encountering Silence website, hosted by Carl McColman with Cassidy Hall and Kevin Johnson. These recording are available in two parts, as Episodes 58 and 59: Encountering the Heart of Silence: A Conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault (Parts One and Two). You will find all the links to these podcasts at the end of this post. All thanks to Cynthia and to the folks at Encountering Silence for this delightful interview!
Encountering Silence describes the interview in this way:
“Cynthia shares how her love for silence originated with her early education in Quaker schools, where she recognized silence as a “liturgical expression and mode of divine communion.” There she discovered silence not merely as the absence of noise, but as a sacred container of presence. For her, after a long meandering journey from Christian Science to Episcopal ordination, she became (in her words) a “Trappist junkie” as she began to study centering prayer. . .
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