RICE UNIVERSITY

By

Jonathan Neil Delavan

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

Master of Arts

APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE

Claire Fanger

Jeffrey Kripal Jeffrey Kripal (Apr 11, 2021 06:15 CDT)

Jeffrey Kripal

Niki Clements (Apr 10, 2021 17:47 CDT) Niki Clements

HOUSTON, TEXAS April 2021

ABSTRACT

Esoteric Techniques within the Works of New Monastic Teachers: An Analysis of Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr, and James Finley by

Jonathan Neil Delavan

New Monasticism is a concept that describes the phenomenon of agents and teachers emerging from religious institutions (e.g., monks and clergy) to teach a largely liberal and perennial spirituality to a diverse and globalized audience. Examples of these new monastic teachers include Richard Rohr (a Franciscan friar who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation to promote his brand of new monasticism), Cynthia Bourgeault (an Episcopal priest who teaches a perennialist sense of wisdom spirituality), and James Finley (a retired clinical psychologist who studied with Thomas Merton and teaches from Merton’s interreligious contemplation). All three attempt to contextualize their perennialist writings through discursive techniques common among past esoteric texts and teachers. However, these same new monastic authors have distanced themselves from the “esoteric” as a description of their teachings, arguing that their spiritualties are anything but “secretive, elitist, or obscured.” Can religious authors structure their teachings with elements common in esoteric literature while simultaneously rejecting the general nomenclature or concept of esotericism?

I argue that Rohr, Bourgeault, and Finley engage with a dynamic tension between employing esoteric techniques while denying a general understanding of the “esoteric” within their works. I will examine Bourgeault’s The Wisdom Way of Knowing (2003), Rohr’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (2001), and Finley’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere (1978) to demonstrate how this tension is reflected in each author’s early work. I will use the typology of esotericism created by Antoine Faivre (Access to Western Esotericism) and Kocku von Stuckrad (Western Esotericism and Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe) to identify the esoteric elements present with each of the three works above and their respective author’s teachings. My conclusion is that it is not only possible to participate with this tension on esotericism but that it is likely inherent within new monasticism in general, specifically with their shared goal for their teachings to improve the lives of individuals and the entire world.

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Acknowledgments

First of all, I want to thank my fellow graduates in my 2019-2021 MA in Religion cohort at Rice University: Antoinette “Toni” von dem Hagen, Shani Diouf, Brandon Wilson, and Connor J. Storck. Additionally, I would like to thank all the first, second, and third-year graduate students in the RELI Ph.D. program that I have had the pleasure to get to know and study alongside at Rice. Together, each of us entered this program or department with aspirations and unique perspectives, and I have learned so much from each of them. Moreover, we turned to each other through the ups and downs of our rigorous seminars and the MA program in particular. That support and camaraderie from my cohorts—both masters and doctoral—not only helped me endure the intensity of graduate studies in religion but made studying religion at Rice all the more pleasurable and considerably worthwhile. My time at the Department of Religion at Rice would not be the same without all of you there studying with me. To my wonderful professors: I wish to thank Dr. Niki Clements, who was the first to make me feel more at home at Rice and the classroom discussion table in her 19th-Century History & Methods course and her Foucault seminar. To Dr. John Stroup, whose many years of experience and sharp wit gave me much to ponder after his lectures, including his book Escape into the Future. To Dr. William Parsons, who modeled for me an incredible balance between academic rigor, empathic awareness, and “dad humor” (even if he leaned too heavily on the latter at times while leading class). To Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, whose profound wisdom and frequent insights into the field of humanities in general and the study of religion, in particular, continue to challenge my thinking and worldview for the better. To Dr. Brian Ogren, whose feedback on my thesis excerpts always pushed me to do better with my work. To my M.A. advisor, Dr. Claire Fanger, who always made an effort to hear me out during her busy schedule, was persistent in offering me constructive feedback about my writing or arguments and helped me to refine my thoughts more clearly all through the development of my thesis. And to all of the above who took my learning disabilities with great care and respect in every course I took with each of them. I would like to thank Lydia Westbrook for helping me and my fellow cohorts through every administrative step in our MA program—from before our orientation to our graduation—including going out of her way to help me during the early summer between my first and second years. I also want to give heartfelt gratitude to the authors being examined in this thesis—Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley—as well as a dear mentor of mine, Amanda Yoder; all four of whose work and character are a profound inspiration for me to pursue a higher degree in religious studies in the first place. Lastly, and certainly not in the least, I want to thank my family and friends outside of Rice who continuously supported me throughout my time in the Master of Arts in Religion program. Without them, none of what I have accomplished here at Rice would have been possible.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... i Acknowledgments...... ii Table of Contents ...... iii List of Figures ...... v List of Tables ...... vi Abbreviations ...... vii Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1. Short Biographies of the Three New Monastic Authors ...... 5 1.1.1. Fr. Richard Rohr ...... 5 1.1.2. Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault ...... 7 1.1.3. Dr. James Finley ...... 8 1.2. Thesis Statement: New Monasticism as Esoteric ...... 9 Chapter 2 Defining Esoteric Characteristics ...... 12 2.1. Faivre’s Elements of Esotericism ...... 14 2.2. Stuckrad’s Esoteric Discourses ...... 20 Chapter 3 Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Wisdom Way of Knowing ...... 26 3.1. Defining “Wisdom” ...... 26 3.2. History of Wisdom in the Western Traditions ...... 30 3.3. Major Elements of Wisdom ...... 34 3.4. Chapter Conclusion ...... 39 Chapter 4 Richard Rohr’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective ...... 41 4.1. Why Use The Enneagram within the Christian Church? ...... 41 4.2. Enneagram Fundamentals relevant to Rohr and Ebert ...... 44 4.3. A Sketch of the Enneagram’s Esoteric History ...... 48 4.4. Unpacking Rohr’s Justification of the Enneagram...... 54 4.4.1. The Debate over the Enneagram within Roman Catholicism ...... 54 4.4.2. The Enneagram as Spiritual Direction & Tool for Transformation ...... 56 4.4.3. Egoic Maturity as Important to Salvation ...... 60 4.5. Chapter Conclusion ...... 62 iii

Chapter 5 James Finley’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere ...... 65 5.1. Why Finley Reflects on Thomas Merton ...... 65 5.2. The False Self and the True Self ...... 68 5.3. What is “True Prayer”? ...... 71 5.4. Revealing What Is Hidden in Merton’s Spirituality ...... 73 5.5. Chapter Conclusion ...... 77 Chapter 6 Do These Authors Engage in Esoteric Discourses? ...... 79 6.1. The Commonalities between All Three Authors ...... 79 6.2. Gottfried Arnold’s “Gnosis” as Esoteric ...... 81 6.3. Have These Authors Engaged in Esoteric Discourses? ...... 83 Appendix ...... 86 References ...... 89

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List of Figures

FIGURE 4.1: The Enneagram Diagram ...... 44

FIGURE 4.2: The Directional Flows of Integration & Disintegration within the Enneagram as depicted by Christopher L. Heuertz ...... 45

FIGURE 4.3: Rohr's and Ebert's version of the Enneagram’s directional flow described as “Arrows” pointing to the “False Consolation” (Disintegration) of each number/type ...... 46

FIGURE 4.4: The Three Centers of the Enneagram ...... 47

FIGURE 4.5: Lull’s Diagram representing the Nine Names of God...... 51

FIGURE 4.6: Lull’s Diagram representing the Nine Relative Principles that define the “nearness” and “difference” between God and creation ...... 52

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List of Tables

TABLE 1: A consolidation of key traits, common behaviors, and theological associations with each of the nine Enneagram types according to Rohr and Ebert (2001) ...... 87

TABLE 2: A consolidation of symbolic, social, and Christological associations with each of the nine Enneagram types according to Rohr and Ebert (2001)...... 88

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Abbreviations

SBNR Spiritual but Not Religious

CAC Center for Action and Contemplation

BCE Before Common Era

CE Common Era i.e. id est: “that is; that is to say; in other words” e.g. exemplī grātiā: “for example; such as” b. Born in [Year] d. Died in [Year] c. circa

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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of modern globalization, monks, theologians, and clergy from the various religious traditions (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity) have increasingly attempted to engage their targeted audiences in a manner that both acknowledges the inter-faith dialogues developing between Western and Eastern traditions and honors the doctrines or theologies of their respective tradition. Some historical examples of this include Thomas Merton

(1915-1968), who sought to revitalize Christian monasticism and spirituality by engaging with

Zen Buddhist masters in East Asia, and Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926), who has written several books extolling the virtues of Buddhist philosophy for the everyday life of anyone regardless of their religious or cultural identity—all while finding common ground with religious leaders of different traditions. Moreover, both of these examples have become well-known for incorporating social activism as an essential element of their monastic lives. They have often left their respective cloisters to speak publicly against wars and ongoing injustices in the world or extol their monastic-based spirituality to various audiences worldwide. Similar to Merton and

Thích Nhất Hạnh, we have religious leaders emerging from customarily conservative and rigid structures within established religions (i.e., monastic orders) to evangelize for a spirituality that both transcends and includes the orthodoxy of those religions, which typically appeals to religiously-minded audiences and the “Spiritual but Not Religious” (SBNR) demographic. A pair of authors and interspiritual advocates, Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko, have attempted to encapsulate this ongoing phenomenon with a concept called “new monasticism.”

1

McEntee and Bucko describe new monasticism as “opening up a vision which cuts across humanity’s wisdom and religious traditions, bringing us into the midst of something new, a revelatory impulse of the Spirit that as of yet has no [particular] home. While embedded within our wisdom and religious traditions, it is beholden to none, and encompasses modern scientific and psychological truths, sociological and cultural insights, and political and economic realities.”1 Although the above description makes it sound like another New Age movement, the authors are clear that new monasticism is trying to be different despite the notable overlaps.2

This differentiation away from a typical New Age attitude is demonstrated in their clarifications around the words “new” and “monastic” within their typology.

The term monastic denotes for the authors “a complete commitment to the transformative journey […] This is a journey which takes us into the fullness of our humanity, allowing divinity to flower within us in increasing degrees of love, compassion, joy, sorrow, and wisdom.”3 Elsewhere, they describe new monasticism on the whole as “an orientation in life, a commitment that asks us to bring every aspect of our lives into a living relationship with God, with the Spirit, with the Buddha Nature-Mind, with one’s deepest self. It is a life lived with That

Which Is, Ultimate Reality, consciously at the center of everything one does.”4 Hence, someone can be considered “monastic” when they center their spirituality on their commitment to this spiritual ideal of transformation and orientation to a spiritually-sentient metaphysics, regardless of whether that person is an ordained monk or an unschooled, SBNR seeker. For many religious teachers of this vein, this spiritual journey towards transformation posits personal growth as both

1 McEntee and Bucko, The New Monasticism, xx. 2 “[Our manifesto on new monasticism] hopes to distinguish itself from many New Age spiritualties corrupted with shallow and narcissistic tendencies, humbly placing itself in partnership and collaborative discernment with our time-honored religious traditions,” McEntee and Bucko, xx, brackets added. 3 McEntee and Bucko, xxi, brackets added. 4 McEntee and Bucko, xxvi. 2

the drive and goal for individual seekers of new monasticism that, in turn, contributes to the gradual and positive transformation of communities or entire societies. Thus, spiritual transformation in both individuals and communities ultimately helps to benefit all of humanity in the end for these teachers of new monasticism.

Also, “By new, [McEntee and Bucko] refer to the phenomenon of living out this spiritual vocation in the world. This means that one’s spiritual journey is inextricably linked to the day-to- day reality of most people’s lives—and in an evolutionary sense, to moving our human family into greater depth and maturity.”5 In other words, this concept is new to traditional religions and monastic orders that retain the prominence of a spiritual life separated from earthly concerns as much as it is to the modern SBNR crowd that often shies away from conventional institutions of religion for being too religious. Furthermore, a new monastic spirituality does not require anyone to enter a monastery, to seclude themselves away from society, in order to participate; on the contrary, such a spirituality encourages its adherents to embrace the ordinariness and daily life of the typical layperson as the very environment within which to live out their spiritual journeys.

Additionally, these spiritualties are significantly defined by the degree of interreligious adaptation they incorporate into their religious paradigms. As McEntee and Bucko explain,

“New monastics may find themselves using tools and techniques from varying religious traditions, not in a haphazard, idiosyncratic way, but in a way that emerges through inner guidance, led by the Spirit and in discernment with their mentors and community. They may find that they no longer belong to one tradition but have become an inner experiment of the merging of various streams of wisdom and emergent, revelatory understandings.”6 Such interreligious integration is possible because of a framework that the authors refer to as interspirituality that

5 McEntee and Bucko, xxi, bolding added. 6 McEntee and Bucko, xxii. 3

“plants us firmly outside of a fundamentalist adherence to our own particular religious tradition or spiritual path, demanding that we take seriously the revelations, realizations, and contemplative gifts of all authentic wisdom and religious traditions, as well as insights from science, ecology, art, culture and sociology.”7 Again, religious leaders and seekers deemed as new monastics are willing to situate their native religion and culture alongside other religions and cultural forms of knowledge to honor the shared wisdom they see flowing through all of them. This mindset common among new monastics means they frequently consider themselves perennialists or are given the label by outside observers of their teachings.

Lastly, a collection of spiritual or meditative practices are frequently embedded within a new monastic spirituality. Thus, for McEntee and Bucko, “New monasticism is also a discipline, a certain ascetical way of being that allows us to reorient ourselves by making all that we are available to the Divine, so the work of transformation can happen.”8 These practices—often highly personal for each seeker—are employed in service of the seeker’s spiritual transformation. Subsequently, as we saw with the historical examples above, many new monastics incorporate political activism and social justice as a core element of their contemplative praxis. The authors quote Andrew Harvey to elaborate on this typical attitude in new monastic thought: “‘Sacred activism is the fusion of the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice, creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing.’ […] In this grand sense, the new monastic is always an activist and an agent for social change. He or she is always engaged in vocation, in building of the Kingdom of Heaven, in completing the world one friendship and one institution

7 McEntee and Bucko, xxiii. 8 McEntee and Bucko, xxvi. 4

at a time.”9 Once more, social (or sacred) activism becomes another avenue that nurtures within the new monastic seeker their commitment to spiritual transformation while simultaneously blending the once rigid separation between the monastic cloister and the political realities in contemporary societies.

Keeping these aspects of new monasticism in mind, I will be considering three spiritual teachers alive today who each, in their own way, contribute to and evangelize the new monastic approach to spirituality. They are Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley.

These three teachers of contemplation—often referred to as “modern-day mystics” by commentators—have written several books, spoken at numerous conferences, and led spiritual retreats worldwide on topics directly relevant to new monasticism, which they all continue to do to this day. Additionally, all three developed their early religious formation through a Christian monastic order or denomination within the United States, contributing to the dynamism between traditional orthodoxy and new monasticism within their teachings. In the following section below, we will briefly look at each teacher’s background to situate their unique contributions to new monasticism and contemplative spirituality.

1.1 Short Biographies of the Three New Monastic Authors

1.1.1 Fr. Richard Rohr10

Richard Rohr, OFM, is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and the Founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The CAC was founded in 1987 by Rohr in an effort to integrate the need for spiritually-minded action and

9 McEntee and Bucko, xxii, italics added. 10 See https://wiki2.org/en/Richard_Rohr for a summary of his life, ministry, major publications, and notable critics. 5

contemplative living in modern society.11 Through the CAC, Rohr, along with Bourgeault and

Finley, began a two-year “para-seminary” program called “The Living School,” where a small faculty of contemplative teachers guides students through mystical texts, spiritual concepts, and contemplative practices that are encouraged to be incorporated into the students’ everyday lives.12 As of 2019, the current Living School faculty includes Fr. Rohr, Rev. Bourgeault, Dr.

Finley, Dr. Barbara Holmes, and Brian McLaren, with Rohr as the program's Academic Dean.

As a new monastic teacher, Rohr typically lectures on incarnational mysticism, Franciscan spirituality, non-dual consciousness, worldview models, Jungian concepts, Spiral Dynamics, Ken

Wilber’s Integral Theory, and contemplative activism on pressing social issues in the West. He has written thirty-three original books on his contemplative spirituality during his career thus far.

Some of his most recently published books include The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten

Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe (2019) and a revised edition of a

2001 work titled The Wisdom Pattern: Order–Disorder–Reorder (2020).

As for Rohr himself, he was born in 1943 into a family of German Catholics living in

Kansas. Inspired in part by his mother’s devotion to the Catholic faith, Rohr entered a Catholic seminary early in his life. He joined the Franciscans in 1961 and was later ordained into the

Roman Catholic priesthood in 1970. After being assigned to Cincinnati as a young friar, Rohr started the New Jerusalem Community in the same city in 1971 that became a body of about three hundred lay members. He attempted to create a “para-monastery” within the urban setting for seekers of a contemplative Christianity. Rohr left the New Jerusalem Community when he was reassigned to Albuquerque in 1986, where he started up the Center for Action and

11 See https://cac.org/about/who-we-are/ 12 See https://cac.org/living-school/living-school-welcome/ 6

Contemplation as a continuation of his work in his earlier organization but on a more global scale.

Andreas Ebert (b. 1952)—the co-author of the work by Rohr we will explore in Chapter

5 below—is a German and Lutheran pastor of St. Luke’s Church in Munich and is the Director of the St. Martin Spiritual Center am Glockenback that is also based in Munich.

1.1.2 Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault13

Cynthia Bourgeault (b. 1947) is an Episcopal priest, retreat leader, writer, and spiritual teacher living on Eagle Island in Maine. She has been a long-time advocate of the meditative practice of Centering Prayer and has worked closely with fellow teachers and colleagues, including Thomas Keating, Bruno Barnhart, and Rohr. Bourgeault has actively participated in numerous inter-spiritual dialogues and events with luminaries and leaders such as A.H. Almaas,

Kabir Helminski, Swami Atmarupananda, and Rami Shapiro. She is a member of the Global

Peace Initiative for Women Contemplative Council and recipient of the 2014 Contemplative

Voices award from Shalem Institute. She is also a founding Director of both The Contemplative

Society and the Aspen Wisdom School as well as a faculty member of The Living School with the Center for Action and Contemplation—alongside Rohr, Finley, Holmes, and McLaren. She continues to contribute to The Contemplative Society in her role as a Principal Teacher and advisor within the organization.

In 1972, Cynthia Bourgeault earned a Ph.D. in English, Medieval Studies, and

Musicology at the University of Pennsylvania. She started her spiritual journey by being trained as a medievalist and was later ordained within the Episcopal Church; however, her pursuit for truths that addressed the inconsistencies present within mainstream Christianity drove her to

13 See https://www.contemplative.org/cynthia-bourgeault/ and https://cynthiabourgeault.org/ 7

study esoteric texts and the mystical strain of Catholic monasticism.14 She frequently teaches on contemplative practices particular to Christianity—such as chanting the Psalms, lectio divina, and Centering Prayer as inspired by The Cloud of Unknowing manuscript15—along with obscure

Christian and Western Esoteric doctrines. In addition to writing several books on Christian contemplation and contemplative practices, Bourgeault has also authored or contributed to numerous articles on the Christian Wisdom path in publications such as Parabola Magazine,

Gnosis Magazine, and Sewanee Theological Review. Her latest publication is a book titled Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm (2020).

1.1.3 Dr. James Finley16

In 1961, at the age of eighteen, James Finley (b. 1943) lived as a novice monk at the

Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He entered the abbey at such a young age to honor his sense of a spiritual vocation and to escape the chronic traumatization he experienced at the hand of his abusive father throughout his childhood. After living there for five and a half years as a novice of the world-famous interreligious contemplative and political activist Thomas Merton, he left the abbey in 1967 to pursue a doctorate in psychology from

Fuller Theological Seminary—earning his master of education from St. John College and a bachelor of arts in English Literature beforehand. Finley went on to practice clinical psychology in California for several years, and he now teaches from his home in Santa Monica, CA.

He started his contemplative teaching with his reflections on Merton’s spirituality in a

1978 monograph titled Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. He would go on to lead spiritual retreats,

14 See Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, xix-xxii, to read how she chronicles her religious journey from childhood up till the publication of her book—diving into esoteric texts when her institutional teachings failed to adequately explain or live out the transformation she sought after. 15 See Cynthia Bourgeault, Chanting the Psalms: A Practical Guide with Instructional CD (Boulder, CO: New Seeds Books, 2006) & Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2016) for prominent examples of her praxis-focused monographs. 16 See https://jamesfinley.org/ 8

give conference lectures, and become a core faculty member of The Living School program at the Center for Action and Contemplation. His teachings often bring to bear a unique confluence of his years as a contemplative practitioner, a clinical psychologist, a disciple of Merton’s interreligiosity between mystical Christianity and Zen Buddhism, his personal experiences of trauma, and the spiritual healing of that trauma. Finley has only published three monographs so far, including the named work above. The other two books are The Contemplative Heart (2000) and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God (2004). Even so, he has recorded several of his conference lectures and discussions in audio and video formats for seekers to digest at their leisure.17

1.2 Thesis Statement: New Monasticism as Esoteric

All three of these spiritual teachers fit neatly into the new monasticism paradigm outlined earlier. As such, all three also attempt to incorporate an interspiritual or perennial worldview into their teachings. However, this perennialist or interspiritual perspective is not unique to new monastics alone. Before “new monasticism” as a concept was coined, the field of study within the history of religions called Esotericism has studied a vast array of historical texts and teachers that promoted a similar perennialism. Examples of well-known esotericists or esoteric movements include ancient Hermetism, Christian Kabbalists, Giovanni Pico of Renaissance

Florence, Rosicrucianism, and Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. A common element among these examples of esotericism is their assertion that a unifying, transcendent truth of humanity or reality is expressed in various religious traditions and cultures. Moreover, the esoteric teacher or movement names this transcending truth and teaches others how they can

17 See https://jamesfinley.org/audio/, https://jamesfinley.org/online-courses/, https://jamesfinley.org/blog/, and https://cac.org/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics/ for examples of several audio and video recordings of his teachings. 9

access this truth for themselves, often going beyond the conventional religious and societal norms in the process. The seeker is often promised by the esoteric teacher or movement a transformation in their perception of reality or of their very human nature.

However, despite the notable parallels between new monastics and esotericists, the authors we will be examining in this thesis—Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley—have all distanced themselves from the word “esoteric” and the popular concepts associated with the adjective (e.g., secretive, elitist, scandalous, obscured knowledge, heady knowledge, and the like). Be that as it may, I will argue that all three have incorporated discursive characteristics and spiritual concepts common in past esoteric literature despite their insistence on differentiating their teachings from the “esoteric.” In other words, Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley have—either knowingly or intuitively—written their works and delivered their teachings in such a way as to be considered esoteric-like while simultaneously making remarks that their teachings are not esoteric. Put differently, can these authors engage in elements of esotericism while also denying the “esoteric” in their teachings? My thesis will answer this question by affirming this dynamic tension between the engagement and the renunciation of esotericism within their respective works.

* * * * *

In the following chapter (Chapter 2), I will consider the approaches of Antoine Faivre and Kocku von Stuckrad—two distinguished scholars of Western Esotericism—to the study and conceptualization of “esotericism” by which to measure the potential merits of esoteric qualities within the works of our three authors. Afterward, the next three chapters will examine a single work of the authors in question: Chapter 3 will look at Cynthia Bourgeault and her early perennial work, The Wisdom Way of Knowing (2003); Chapter 4 will look at Richard Rohr and his book on the Enneagram as a spiritual tool, titled The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

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(2001) and co-authored by Andreas Ebert; and Chapter 5 will look at James Finley and his first published work, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere (1978). The final chapter (6) will conclude the thesis by comparing and contrasting these three authors’ usage of esoteric characteristics as outlined by Faivre and Stuckrad.

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Chapter 2

DEFINING ESOTERIC CHARACTERISTICS

The broad New Age movement can be seen as an example of contemporary attempts to create esoteric discourses or materials. A typical leader or sect that embraces the “New Age” moniker often situates their teachings within a context of revealing a higher knowledge of reality or a bigger picture of the universe we live in. Moreover, this higher knowledge or bigger picture needs to be revealed because it has remained hidden from humanity, whether by pure ignorance or by malignant forces, either human or spiritual. Additionally, these teachings often reference the doctrines and sayings of previous and existing religions and their respective spiritual figures to justify their brand of spirituality further. These three elements are popular yet vague features associated with “esoteric” movements of the past.18 Likewise, new monasticism represents attempts by spiritual leaders and seekers alike to merge the traditional and modern forms of religious knowing—to reconcile monastic paradigms with today’s scientific and progressive worldviews—into a new spirituality accessible to anyone and everyone in the twenty-first century. Consequently, many of these new monastic teachers end up utilizing discursive techniques that religious studies scholars have called “esoteric”—including the three aspects mentioned above—to ground their interspiritual teachings within a perennial framework of truth or wisdom across time and traditions.

The authors we will be examining here—Rohr, Bourgeault, and Finley—are contemporary examples of spiritual teachers firmly within the new monastic vein. Moreover, all

18 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, and Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, and Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. 12

three have drawn on esoteric aspects or the broader field of esotericism to argue for deeper (or higher) truths that are equally embedded within Christianity as a whole and reflected within other religious traditions as well as the secular sciences. For them, the esoteric qualities of these universal truths can be found in nearly any religious tradition provided that a seeker has “eyes that see” and “ears that hear” this deep truth. In other words, the key to develop the spiritual perception that can experience and thus truly know these truths is by cultivating a life and practice of contemplation. For all three authors, Christian monasticism served as the primary vehicle through which they learned of, practice, and ultimately experienced the contemplative life and the deeper truths of spirituality that such a life made possible for them. Because all three expereienced these contemplative truths within a traditional Christian institution—that of monasticism—they identify the monastic orders and other marginalized sects both within and outside of Christianity as carriers of these truths. Hence, these truths were both perceived and preserved by esoteric means in the underground rivers of conventional religions—historical models of esoteric perspectives within religious traditions.

Accordingly, Rohr, Bourgeault, and Finley draw upon esoteric sources, practices, and instruction—each in their own ways and in varying degrees of explicitness. Although all three try to some extent to distance themselves and their teachings from the conventional assumptions around the word “esoteric” (e.g., how “esoteric” often denotes a secretive, elitist, or scandalous knowledge as serialized in historical fictions like The Da Vinci Code), all three, nevertheless, adopt several esoteric qualities into their teachings to one extent or another.

This thesis will attempt to examine an early yet comprehensive work by Bourgeault,

Rohr, and Finley respectively using the analytical framework of esoteric discourse as discussed by Antoine Favre and Kocku von Stuckrad to determine if these authors and their works are

13

indeed modern examples of esoteric treatises within a new monastic form of Christianity. Before taking a look at each author’s work, we need to consider the key elements of esoteric and discursive frameworks in the following segment. In other words, we need to define some parameters around what constitutes a religious discourse “esoteric” by contemporary standards.

2.1 Faivre’s Elements of Esotericism

Antoine Faivre is well known for advancing the study of esoteric movements within

European history by identifying prominent themes that were common among past esoteric groups. Even so, Faivre first needed to anchor the concept of “esotericism” onto observable phenomena within the broad history of religion. In one of his seminal works, Access to Western

Esotericism, Faivre considers the inherent vagueness reflected in the term’s etymology and the likely resolution:

The lexical content of the word “esotericism” is slight. (“Eso” means “inside” and “ter” implies an opposition.) Like any word rather empty of meaning in itself, “esotericism” has shown it can be inflated, permeated, and semantically overdetermined. Still, it is by no means its etymology that must be queried but rather its function, which calls forth a bundle of attitudes and an ensemble of discourses. The question for us is whether these attitudes and these discourses permit the observer, i.e., the esoterologist, to circumscribe a possible field of study. […] Rather than a specific genre, it is a form of thought, the nature of which we have to try to capture on the basis of the currents which exemplify it.19

Thus, it is far more effective to consider identifying and studying “esoteric” discourses in terms of their expression rather than as a rigid caste or as offshoots of the religious “other” apropos its mainstream origins. He defined these particular attitudes or discourses as a “form of thought”

(forme de pensée) composed of four essential elements common among esoteric discourses in

European history, adding two additional characteristics common in the field of esotericism but not essential elements to the categorization. The four primary components of Faivre’s

19 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 4, brackets and emphasis added. 14

esotericism are correspondences, living nature, imagination and mediation, and the experience of transmutation—all four of which are necessary for Faivre to consider any religious discourse esoteric. The two secondary components are the praxis of the concordance and transmission.

Correspondences refer to worldviews that define reality as being represented and experienced on multiple levels or dimensions (e.g., between the visible and invisible realms of the cosmos); moreover, these different realms of reality can readily intersect or influence one another. However, the relationship between these realms of reality is not causal but rather referential: “Symbolic and real correspondences (there is no room for abstractions here!) are said to exist among all parts of the universe, both seen and unseen. (‘As above so below.’) We find again here the ancient idea of microcosm and macrocosm or, if preferred, the principle of universal interdependence.”20 A good example is the theory of Forms in Platonic thought, where objects, concepts, even souls in the material world—i.e., particulars—are flawed reflections of their ideal source or unchanging Form beyond our realm of space, time, and materiality. There is a relationship between the particulars in our world and their ideal Forms, but that relationship is not causal. Neither the particular nor its Form is the direct cause of the other; rather, their relationship remains referential in the matter of the particular being a reflection or an attempt to reflect its Form within our perceivable universe. Hence, “Everything is a sign; everything conceals and exudes mystery; every object hides a secret,” within a typical esoteric discourse.21

Faivre distinguishes two general types of correspondences: the correspondences within nature

(e.g., astrology) and the correspondences between the cosmos or history and sacred texts (e.g.,

20 Faivre, 10. 21 Faivre, 10. 15

the kabbalah). Furthermore, he concedes that the element of correspondences is also present in many philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions that are not necessarily “esoteric.”22

Living nature connotes that reality or the cosmos is permeated by living energy or complex beings evident to those with esoteric knowledge. In other words, the cosmos or nature are, through the lens of living nature, “Multilayered, rich in potential revelations of every kind, it must be read like a book. The word magia, so important in the Renaissance imaginary, truly calls forth that idea of a Nature, seen, known, and experienced as essentially alive in all its parts, often inhabited and traversed by a light or a hidden fire circulating through it.”23 The concept of ch’i or prana in Eastern traditions is a good comparison to make with this esoteric concept. Ch’i (in

Chinese culture) or prana (in Hindu traditions) are understood as the life force or energy flowing through all living things. They cannot be seen or measured through scientific techniques, yet its presence can be felt and even manipulated through religious and cultural practices such as meditation, yoga, and acupuncture.

Next, Faivre considers mediation and imagination to be so complementary of each other as to constitute each half of the same third element of esoteric discourses. “The idea of correspondence presumes already a form of imagination inclined to reveal and use mediations of all kinds, such as rituals, symbolic images, mandalas, [or] intermediary spirits. […] It is the imagination that allows the use of these intermediaries, symbols, and images to develop a gnosis, to penetrate the hieroglyphs of Nature, to put the theory of correspondences into active practice and to uncover, to see, and to know the mediating entities between Nature and the divine

22 “But neither correspondences nor concordism necessarily mean ‘esotericism.’ Such are found present also in many philosophical or religious current where each more or less delimits the nature of its own networks of analogy and similitude. This principle is equally at work in the procedures of divination, poetry, and sorcery, but the latter, nonetheless, are not synonymous,” Faivre, 11. 23 Faivre, 11. 16

world.”24 Put succinctly, an esoteric truth is primarily revealed to seekers through the mediation of spiritual entities, rituals, imagery, or authorities, yet the seeker is expected to have grasped the symbolic language or imagination that both contains this knowledge and is the means by which to decode or interpret such mediations. Moreover, this reliance on mediations and their interpretations is a potential distinction of the esoteric from its mystical counterparts. Whereas the mystic typically seeks to eliminate religious intermediaries or symbology as an obstacle between themselves and the divine, the esoterist is far more likely to embrace the symbology and mediators that take shape in their mind’s eye. In other words, the typical esoterist “prefers to sojourn on Jacob’s ladder where angles (and doubtless other entities as well) climb up and down, rather than to climb to the top and beyond [as a typical mystic would strive towards]. The distinction is merely a practical one. Indeed, there is sometimes a great deal of esotericism in a mystic like Saint Hildegard, and we not an acute mystical tendency in many a theosopher, e.g.,

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.”25 This attempt at a distinction by Faivre between esoteric and mystical discourses or practices is relevant for our discussion in the following chapters as

Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley will all incorporate traditional Christian mysticism with esoteric concepts or tools.

Lastly, the experience of transmutation defines both the goal and the consequences of seeking esoteric knowledge. Faivre considers terms like “transmutation” and “metamorphosis” as pertinent synonyms to this goal and process. “It consists in allowing no separation between knowledge (gnosis) and inner experience, or intellectual activity and active imagination if we

24 Faivre, 12, italics and brackets added. 25 Faivre, 12, brackets added. Theosophy is considered a strain of esoteric thought in the West with its Christian variant attributed to Jakob Böhme and a later nineteenth-century new religious movement called the Theosophical Society started by Helena Blavatsky—another well-known historical figure within the study of Esotericism. 17

want to turn lead into silver or silver into gold.”26 In other words, the seeker undergoes an inner transformation or metamorphosis through the process of inheriting this perfected knowledge in both practice and study. The alchemical corpus within esoteric circles of the Renaissance period is referenced by Faivre as an example of this transmutation in both its language and practice.

Additionally, he points out the similarities between this experience of transmutation and the three phases of the traditional mystic’s path of purgation, illumination, and then unification with the divine. Again, the line between esotericism and mysticism are both similar yet divergent.

The first of the two secondary characteristics of esoteric discourse for Faivre is the practice of concordance. This aspect strives to establish an unbroken lineage of an esoteric truth from the distant past into the contemporary age. “This shows up in a consistent tendency to try to establish common denominators between two different traditions or even more, among all traditions, in the hope of obtaining an illumination, a gnosis, of superior quality. […] it concerns individual at least as much as collective illumination and manifests the will not only to eliminate some differences or to uncover harmonies among diverse religious traditions, but to acquire above all a gnosis embracing diverse traditions and melding them in a single crucible.”27 In other words, the practice of concordance in an esoteric discourse attempts to create a particular philosophia perennis of higher knowledge (gnosis) that ties together several—if not all— religious traditions into a single, unifying truth that transcends all of them yet is contained in part within all of them. An excellent example of the practice of concordance in action is the perennialist doctrine at the core of Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, whose core doctrine is best summarized in the following line: “THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.” Moreover, this

26 Faivre, 13. 27 Faivre, 14, brackets added. 18

will become most apparent in the examination of the esoteric qualities in Bourgeault’s The

Wisdom Way of Knowing in the next chapter.

The latter secondary characteristic of esoteric discourses is the transmission or initiation through masters that essentially combines the earlier elements of mediation and transmutation by explicitly outlining both the means (mediation) and the process (transmutation) of the seeker’s journey within an esoteric framework. For Faivre, an “Emphasis on transmission implies that an esoteric teaching can or must be transmitted from master to disciple following a preestablished channel, respecting a previously marked path.”28 Hence, a prominence placed on transmission within an esoteric discourse demonstrates the impossibility for an initiate or novice to initiate him/herself into the truth or the transformation process and must go through a master or an authentic tradition to do so. A good example of this can be gleaned from Rohr’s discussion on using the Enneagram with his emphasis on seeking a master of the esoteric framework— either in person or through a master’s book—to avoid potential mishandling of the Enneagram’s spiritual truths, which will be examined in Chapter 4.

All six characteristics of esotericism, as defined by Antoine Faivre, will be useful in analyzing the teachings of Rohr, Bourgeault, and Finley throughout this thesis. However, it is important to note the significant drawback of this typology as caused by his methodology. As

Stuckrad points out, “Faivre mainly drew on Renaissance Hermeticism, philosophy of nature,

Christian Kabbalah and Protestant theosophy to generate his taxonomy,”29 excluding from his research and methodology several crucial aspects, philosophies, and religions relevant to the ancient world, the middle ages, and our contemporary period. As serious as this critique of

Faivre is, his typology is still worthwhile to employ with the three new monastic teachers in

28 Faivre, 14, italics added. 29 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 5. 19

question because much of their teachings are grounded within a Christian-based theosophy that is similar to those Faivre analyzed for his study of Western Esotericism. Nevertheless, to help compensate for the shortcomings in Faivre’s taxonomy, Kocku von Stuckrad’s approach to analyze esoteric discourses will also be considered.

2.2 Stuckrad’s Esoteric Discourses

In his 2010 work Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe:

Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities, Stuckrad attempts to both critique the shortcomings of esoteric research thus far as well as to provide his feasible solution to these problems. He argues for “a model of esotericism that is capable of describing the dynamic and processuality of identity formation, as well as the discursive transfers between religions and societal systems, including the academy.”30 In an earlier publication, he also stated that a concept of esotericism is needed that “illustrates not only continuities, but also the dynamics and processes of forming identities. Such a concept must involve the discursive transfer between the individual areas of

European culture, especially religion, natural science, philosophy, literature and art.”31 This approach incorporates methods of analysis that takes into account societal factors as a core aspect of esoteric discourse. In contrast to the earlier methods that are constrained to studying historical texts and past thinkers, Stuckrad’s analytical framework is also capable of investigating contemporary expressions of esoteric discourses.

Utilizing the analytical tools championed by Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu,

Stuckrad incorporates discourse, discourse formations, and field into his framework’s toolbox.

Discourse is defined “as the totality of thought systems that interact with societal systems in

30 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 59. 31 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 9. 20

manifold ways.”32 Expanding the term further, discursive formations “conceptualize the impact of a mutual dependency between systems of interpreting the world and processes of institutionalization and materialization.”33 This term highlights the reality that discourses are not contained in a vacuum, but rather are themselves practices and dialogues that, in turn, shape non- discursive elements and vice-versa. Stuckrad further elaborates these terms by describing discourses as not identical with tradition, “but instead represent the social organization of tradition, opinion and knowledge.”34 This brings us to the term field: “a social arena within which struggles or maneuvers take place over specific resources and the access to them.”35 Just as thought systems and philosophies are not formed in complete isolation, so too are the agents who advocate their discourse not espousing in separated silos. As such, fields of discourse are formed around common interests or challenges relevant to the time and culture in which they take place. However, historically speaking, these fields of discourse are often rhetorical battlefields within religious denominations rather than inter-religion exchanges. As Stuckrad illustrates regarding a field within religious traditions as well as between them:

The boundaries often run not between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but much more clearly between Platonists and Aristotelians, between scholasticism and nominalism, or between literal interpretations of the Bible and mystical or esoteric vision. There are intensive exchanges between Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions, which often bear little relation to their original religious purpose.36

Whether describing a debate within a given religion or an inter-spiritual dialogue, the language used to define field highlights the competitive nature of zero-sum debates as agents vie for what Bourdieu would describe as capital within their field. This capital, according to

Bourdieu, can be acquired or utilized within four categories: economic capital (any form of

32 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 4. 33 Stuckrad 2010, 4-5. 34 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 6. 35 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 5. 36 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 7. 21

monetary worth), social capital (various kinds of valued relationships), cultural capital

(legitimated knowledge), and symbolic capital (such as prestige and social honor).37 Despite the differentiation between these four categories, each type of capital can be exchanged for one of the other capitals listed. For example, a scholar can use their cultural capital in exchange for economic capital through the selling of a book or tutoring students directly for the compensation of a salary. Another example includes a patron who donates his economic and social capital to promote the cultural capital of a favored philosopher for the chance that both of them can earn symbolic, social, and even economic capital in return for their respective investments (i.e., patronages). Such maneuverings within the field of discursive formations have occurred throughout history, including works and thinkers that are considered esoteric.

Furthermore, Stuckrad emphasizes two interconnected elements that are often capitalized within esoteric discourses: secrecy and claims to higher or perfect knowledge. “It is a common feature of many discrete societies that members enjoy access to superior, exclusive, and elitist knowledge, which means an increase of social, cultural, and symbolic capital.”38 Elsewhere, he argues that “the pivotal point of all esoteric traditions are claims to ‘real’ or absolute knowledge and the means of making this knowledge available.”39 In other words, establishing claims to a vision of truth that can serve as a master-key for answering the most important questions of humanity (e.g., what is the purpose of life?) is made all the more valuable when it is accessible behind a veil of secrecy or a particular set of practices. Such secrecy can be created through the use of a unique lexicon deciphered only to worthy initiates, or an oral tradition passed down through selective recipients, or simply to those with “ears that listen” to the hidden truth of the message being delivered. However, secrecy in esoteric discourse becomes fulfilled through the

37 See Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 58. 38 Stuckrad 2010, 58. 39 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 10. 22

eventual revelation of what has been kept hidden. “Claims of superior or perfect knowledge are thus often intrinsically linked to a discourse of secrecy, but not because esoteric truths are restricted to an ‘inner circle’ of specialists or initiates, but because the dialectic of concealment and revelation is a structural element of secretive discourses.”40 This fulfillment through revelation, as mentioned earlier, not only creates forms of capital within the field but also brings to mind how the revelation is both disclosed and authenticated.

For Stuckrad, “What makes a discourse esoteric is the rhetoric of a hidden truth, which can be unveiled in a specific way and established contrary to other interpretations of the universe and history—often that of the institutionalised majority.”41 This particular aspect highlights that secrecy paired with particular methods of revelation or authentication are core elements that distinguish a discourse as esoteric. For this framework, it is acutely suitable to look at two particular modes of gaining access to perfect knowledge: mediation and personal experience (which are quite similar to Faivre’s understanding of these terms). Mediation is considered an avenue or medium through which such higher knowledge is transmitted and validated. Such revelations have often been through mythological entities like gods, goddesses, and angles; by visionary human agents like Zoroaster, Moses, and Jesus; or by constructing genealogies or establishing a philosophia perennis that demonstrate the knowledge’s long lineage and authenticity. Individual experiences can further validate claims of mediation or even be central to it. Think of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus having a personal encounter of the risen Christ within the Book of Acts: the individual experience of Paul coincided with the mediation through the divine figure of Christ that Paul would go on to cite multiple times as the

40 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 56. 41 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 10, emphasis added. 23

source of his higher knowledge in his epistles as well as the cause for his apostleship within the early church.

Another crucial aspect in esoteric discourses for Stuckrad is the concept of Otherness or the construction of differences between groups. He sees this Otherness as having been played out throughout religious history.

Once there is a majority, deviant minorities develop, and moreover both through the exclusion of the “Other” on the part of the majority, as well as through the conscious tendency of the minority towards its own constructions of meaning. Those claims of making “actual knowledge” individually accessible has sharpened this encounter. Many manifestations of esotericism form a spectrum of deviant religious options, be these Christian ‘heresies’, or polytheistic and pantheistic models that dissent from a monotheistic world-view.42

Essentially, both sides of the discursive divide create the differentiation between the established majority and the offshoot minorities. Those in the majority use the language of Otherness to decry those in the minority as “heretics” or “deviants” to diminish both their legitimacy and their threat to the established order; contrarily, those who identify in an esoteric minority extol their differences from the majority as the very grounds of their authenticity. In other words, many who engage in esoteric discourse proclaim their otherness from institutionalized religion through their claims to hidden or actual knowledge accessible through mediations and experiences available outside the acceptable practices and doctrines of the majority religion. Stuckrad demonstrates this cycle of Otherness with the rise of Christianity within the ancient Roman Empire. At first, early forms of Christianity were regarded as deviant from the majority that observed Greco-

Roman religion and culture. As Christianity grew into a majority, it began to legitimize itself by incorporating Greco-Roman law and philosophy into its tradition and by demarcating its official doctrines from other sects. After it became the only legitimate majority by becoming the sole

42 Stuckrad 2005, 10-11, emphasis added. 24

state religion of the empire, the Christian Church institutionalized the practice of Otherness by actively rooting out minority doctrines and practices it deemed heretical to its established order.43

In summary, Kocku von Stuckrad defines esoteric discourse in Western culture to be “an analytical framework that helps to identify genealogies of identities in a pluralistic competition of knowledge.”44 He cautions his readers not to take his interpretation as a definition of esotericism, but rather as a framework of analysis within that field of study. In fact, Stuckrad understands definitions as tools of interpretation that “should not be used essentially.”45

* * * * *

We will revisit both Stuckrad and Faivre as we examine The Wisdom Way of Knowing:

Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart by Cynthia Bourgeault (Chapter 3), The

Enneagram: A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr (Chapter 4), and then Merton’s Palace of

Nowhere by James Finley (Chapter 5) in the following chapters.

43 See Footnote 20 in Stuckrad 2005, 11, for his own description of this cycle in early Christianity. 44 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 64. 45 Stuckrad 2005, Western Esotericism, 9-10. 25

Chapter 3

CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT’S THE WISDOM WAY OF KNOWING

3.1 Defining “Wisdom”

Bourgeault defines Wisdom (in this sense, always capitalized) as “a precise and comprehensive science of spiritual transformation that has existed since the headwaters of the great world religions and is, in fact, their common ground.”46 Part of this Wisdom is that it contains both theory and practice. Theory, for Bourgeault, is “a unified cosmology—in other words, a comprehensive vision of our human purpose and destiny,” while practice refers to “a systematic training for growing into that purpose.”47 Put simply, Bourgeault’s definition reflects a perennialist mindset of a universal truth that threads its presence throughout every perception of the divine; one that can be identified in the blueprints of a unified cosmology and experienced through disciplined, concrete actions (e.g., meditations, a monastery’s ora et labora [“prayer and work”] framework, a hermeneutics of scriptures, and others) developed within a particular religion and culture.

Later on, she breaks down her concept of Wisdom into four points.48 First, Wisdom is a reference to a precise lineage of spiritual knowledge as opposed to a subjective understanding of truth as expressed in the generalized usage of (lower-cased) wisdom. Second, Wisdom reflects an ancient tradition that is involved with multiple religions and spiritual paths and is therefore

46 Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, xvi-xvii. 47 Both definitions are given in Bourgeault, xvii. 48 See Bourgeault, 4, for her description of these four aspects of Wisdom. 26

not the explicit property or doctrine of any one religion, past or present. Third, it has existed

“from time immemorial” through various Wisdom schools in different cultures and eras. For example, this perennial Wisdom has been expressed by different spiritual leaders, mystics, and communities throughout Christianity’s long and turbulent history, emerging in different flashpoints in differing cultures and times within the global presence of the same religion.49 And fourth, Wisdom has been an undercurrent in the flow of human history. Even when these overt flashpoints of Wisdom are violently suppressed or simply ignored by reactionary forces of the time, its influence continues in one form or another in that “undercurrent of history” until another generation rediscovers it.

Right from the outset, we see Bourgeault claiming that there is a higher or more perfect knowledge pervading human history. Moreover, she seems to be drawing in a plethora of religious traditions that she identifies with Wisdom, like various fingers pointing to the same moon. Before going into details, she already evokes a perennialist presence of this Wisdom as a primary factor of its timeless universality—applicable to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Next, we shall see how Bourgeault understands this Wisdom is to be internalized in an explicit spirit.

In contrast to the concept of knowledge as information or data writ large, Bourgeault describes Wisdom as being “state-dependent.” In other words, to receive and practice Wisdom requires the entirety of one’s being—mind, heart, and body—to be receptive of Wisdom’s messages for transformation to take root in one’s life. It is not a simple matter of memorization or the like, but more akin to the concept of metánoia—to change how one thinks or perceives entirely.50 Bourgeault references The Mind of God by Paul Davies to drive this point home:

“What [Davies] is really describing is not ‘mystical’ vision—which is typically spontaneous,

49 This will be explored in greater detail below in the next segment, History of Wisdom in the Western Tradition (pp. 28-23), which will outline Bourgeault’s attempt to construct a lose genealogy of Wisdom in Western history. 50 Metánoia is a Greek word that translates as “a profound, spiritual transformation or conversion.” 27

ecstatic, and ineffable—but a lucid and objective way of seeing that is ultimately visionary… a

‘science of the imagination’… within the Wisdom tradition.”51 Exactly how one can incorporate this Wisdom into the entirety of one’s being can vary between religious traditions; what is essential is that the given set of practices gears one’s growth towards engaging all of the disciple’s faculties—that mind, heart, and body trifecta—to that state where Wisdom can finally be perceived and lived out from. No one tradition has a wholesale advantage over the other religious traditions since Wisdom can be found in the depths of each; for as she observes, “It’s remarkable how, no matter which spiritual path you pursue, the nuts and bolts of transformation wind up looking pretty much the same.”52 Therefore, the process of achieving the state by which one can best perceive Wisdom is ultimately uniform across traditions—only the minutiae of the varying Wisdom practices (e.g., diction, motions, perspectives, deities, certain emphasizes made or neglected, and so on) are what makes them different from each other.

All in all, Bourgeault claims that the Wisdom cosmology is vivid, spacious, and remarkably contemporary. Furthermore, she considers Wisdom to be the container that preserves the missing pieces that became lost to the West over the course of history. More specifically, the lost cosmology of Wisdom has been preserved within mystical and esoteric circles, but, as she clarifies, “that is not because Wisdom is itself esoteric, only because a certain capacity for ‘out of the box’ thinking seems to be a necessary prerequisite for being attracted to Wisdom in the first place.”53 Inferring further, she tells the reader that,

These truths [of Wisdom] are not esoteric or occult in the usual sense of the terms; they are not hidden from sight. In the Christian West they are strewn liberally throughout the entire sacred tradition… But to read the clues, it is first necessary to bring the heart and

51 Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, 8. 52 Bourgeault, xvii. 53 Bourgeault, xix. 28

mind and body into balance, to awaken. Then the One can be known—not in a flash of mystical vision but in the clarity of unitive seeing.54

Such clarity from tracing the clues left behind within Western traditions, she warns, does come with a price: “It doesn’t happen apart from complete vulnerability and self-giving” within the intimacy of the Divine Lover.55

Bourgeault’s push and pull motion around the term “esoteric” is noteworthy to discuss here. On the one hand, she rejects the usual notion of “esoteric knowledge” as acquiring an ineffable intelligence of reality to a worthy few,56 claiming that such knowledge or Wisdom is pervasive throughout sacred traditions and hence accessible to anyone seeking them. On the other hand, she seems to affirm that it does require esoteric thinking—a capacity for out-of-box thinking—and a set of esoteric practices—ones that “bring the heart and mind and body into balance, to awaken”—in order to identify the sheer multitude of Wisdom’s underlying presence.

We have already identified earlier that Bourgeault has made claims to higher knowledge in the definition of Wisdom; now, we see Bourgeault incorporating two other aspects of Stuckrad’s concept of esotericism: particular methods to reveal hidden truth and contrasting this approach to the established order. As mentioned earlier, this particular method only requires an orientation towards awakening the entirety of one’s being. Meanwhile, adopting an out-of-the-box thinking infers an Othering process from institutionalized modes of thinking—i.e., the very “box” one must think outside of—that can be enforced in religious, cultural, or even secular societies.57 To

54 Bourgeault, 9. 55 Bourgeault, 10. 56 “It is a common feature of many discrete societies that members [of an esoteric sect] enjoy access to superior, exclusive, and elitist knowledge…” Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 58. 57 Throughout her book, Bourgeault often gives scathing commentary on the lack of purpose, structure, or meaning our secularized, materialist, post-modern world provides for the common person. “Most of the readers of this book, I assume, will be citizens of the ‘privileged’ First World nations… But what does this privilege really translate into in terms of satisfaction and quality of life? Beneath the surface of our well-being, a malaise—perhaps even a crisis of meaning—has long been brewing. For all our affluence, stress and anxiety seem to be higher than ever, family life is 29

recognize Wisdom requires letting go of old patterns of thought and begin inching towards a new way to think, perceive, and understand what it means to live a human life in this universe that certain practices can help the seeker to realize more fully. In other words, it requires a commitment to a transformative journey from old worldviews towards a new spirituality of life common in new monastic circles.

3.2 History of Wisdom in the Western Traditions

Next, we will review Bourgeault’s attempt to loosely construct the lineage of Wisdom in the West, which is another familiar concept in esoteric discourse for both Faivre and Stuckrad.

She will spend a significant portion of her book outlining the known sources of Wisdom within the religious traditions of the West, as well as some reasons why Western traditions drove the

Wisdom path of transformation into esoteric and mystical currents over the centuries.

She begins her genealogy of Wisdom in the West with the ancient Israelites’ exile in

Babylon. Referencing the Jewish literature created around or after this exile—namely the book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and some of the later psalms—she notes how these scriptural texts reflect a more philosophical and mystical perspective over the more ethics-and-action orientation of earlier Jewish texts. Bourgeault credits this transformation of scriptural literature to the exposure of the Jewish Diaspora to Ancient Near East schools of

Wisdom, which were primarily centered in Babylon during their biblical exile.

Jumping ahead several centuries, Bourgeault recognizes the emergence and ministry of

Jesus as the second great encounter of Wisdom for the ancient Israelites. She notes through the

in disarray, and the rushing to keep up leaves us empty and exhausted. The Old Testament prophet Haggai sounds like he could be speaking directly to us in these words, which are more than two thousand years old: ‘So now… think; take stock; what do you really want? You eat but still hunger; you drink but still thirst; you clothe yourselves but can’t get warm, and your wages run out through the holes in your pockets,’” Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, 3-4. 30

Gospel accounts how “Those who could recognize him saw him for what he was: a moshel meshalim, a master of Wisdom, teaching a science of transformation that was both ancient and timeless.”58 In essence, those who met Jesus personally and recognized him as a master of

Wisdom from a single encounter did so because they were able to tap into “a participative knowledge, a recognition from deep within;” those who rejected him did so because they could not or would not recognize him or his message with their deeper faculties.59 Although she admits that it remains speculation whether the historical Jesus came from one or more Wisdom schools of his era, she asserts that, at the very least, his teaching and life embodied Wisdom perfectly.

Skipping ahead a few more centuries, Bourgeault identifies the fourth century CE in early church history as the watershed timeframe when the Wisdom way of Jesus began to fade from collective memory as fixed doctrines and static creeds increasingly defined the young faith.

Firstly, Bourgeault brands the Desert Fathers and Mothers of this era as the first “official”

Wisdom school of Christianity. Afterward, she isolates the doctrinal debate between Augustine of Hippo and Pelagius as the “death knell” moment of Wisdom in early Christianity.60 Without trying to over simplify this theological dispute, she remarks that Augustine’s doctrine of Original

Sin carried the day over Pelagius’ arguments for theosis—“divinization,” the full realization of the divine image and likeness within humanity—in the institutional church, and with that

“defeat,” Wisdom in the Christian West went underground or beyond Christendom.

Bourgeault credits Benedictine monasticism as “the vessel” through which the spiritual practices developed by the Desert Fathers and Mothers were preserved. However, she makes a distinction between preserving the tools of Wisdom and preserving the truth of Wisdom as different; instances where Christian monks or nuns embodied the truth of Wisdom rather than

58 Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, 13. 59 Bourgeault, 13. 60 See Bourgeault, 17-18, for her full analysis of this debate. 31

only the forms of Wisdom practices were the exception rather than the norm for most monasteries. In contrast, Bourgeault argues that the Christian East, specifically Orthodox

Christianity, never lost its vision of theosis, so the decline of Wisdom never went as far within their monastic orders. Consequently, the truth of “Wisdom in the West ran off into the esoteric, where it became entangled in movements like the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, and hermeticism, which preserved bits and pieces of the whole, but in a secretive and often distorted manner.”61

Moreover, Bourgeault makes a curious comment about the “dark ages” of this period:

I have long suspected that the strange “black hole” one sometimes senses reading medieval European history—the mysterious energy around the search for the Holy Grail, courtly love,62 the Merovingian dynasty, and even the Crusades—measures the “event horizon” of Wisdom in the West as it seemingly collapsed in on itself, inaccessible and tantalizingly dangerous.63

She goes on to list several prominent Western mystics as moments when Wisdom made brief but profound appearances in the Western tradition: Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-c. 1327), Hildegard of

Bingen (1098-1179), Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), and, more recently, Valentin Tomberg (1900-

1973). Regarding the latter, Bourgeault proclaims Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot as having

“deservedly become the unofficial Bible of Christian Wisdom in the West.”64

While the Wisdom tradition was going underground in the West, Bourgeault credits

Sufism within Islam with a blossoming of mystical yearning. Among the long history of Islamic mysticism, Jalaluddin Rumi and Ibn al-‘Arabi are highlighted by Bourgeault as the most notable names from Sufism in regards to developing its manifestation of Wisdom. She emphasizes the

61 Bourgeault, 19-20. 62 In a later book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene (2010), Bourgeault reflects on the Cathars in the Kingdom of Languedoc and the flourishing of courtly love in twelfth-century France as natural expressions of the latent transforming powers in erotic love, which, in the context of the present book under discussion, is an example of a flashpoint of Wisdom in both Christian and European history—the former of which would be quelled by the Albigensian crusades instigated by the Catholic Church. See Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2010), pp. 199-201, for more information on both subjects from Bourgeault’s perspective. 63 Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, 20. 64 Bourgeault, 20. 32

historical coincidence that Islam had its golden age of spirituality simultaneously with the

Christian West’s spiritual “dark age.” Essentially, Wisdom’s presence in the West declined because the Christian Church as a whole had forsaken its hope for human perfection through theosis. She goes even further by boldly stating that “While it may be politically incorrect to say so, the case can be made from a Wisdom standpoint that Islam arose in part as a corrective to a series of wrong turns that had jeopardized Christianity’s ability to follow its own Wisdom master

[i.e., Jesus Christ] and hence to carry the torch of Wisdom into the world.”65 In light of this perspective, Bourgeault emphasizes Sufism as “the bridge between the Islamic and Christian worlds, which belong together as the two halves on one soul,” especially in a post-9/11 world.66

The final milestone of Cynthia Bourgeault’s genealogy in The Wisdom Way of Knowing is the Armenian esoteric teacher, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, whom she labels as the “patriarch” in the recovery of Wisdom in the modern West. Although much of Gurdjieff’s teachings have been intellectualized, Bourgeault assures her readers that his real influence has been far more subtle, “more at the level of a quiet tilling the ground of modern cultural consciousness until gradually the conditions have again become ripe for the emergence in our own time of genuine

Wisdom teaching and teachers.”67 A primary example of Gurdjieff’s subtle influence over the decades is the number of contemporary Wisdom teachers that have been influenced by his work, either in part or in its entirety. Bourgeault considers such modern examples to be Jacob

Needleman, Kabir Helminski, A. H. Almaas, Robin Amis, Bruno Barnhart, Murat Yagan, and

Lynn Baumann—the last of whom Bourgeault calls a dear friend and colleague. Despite coming from a variety of faith traditions, all those listed above have made their respective journeys to

65 Bourgeault, 21. 66 Bourgeault, 23. The inspiration for this book occurred within a few months after the events of 9/11, so the cultural and political context of the 9/11 aftermath in the United States are prominent in The Wisdom Way of Knowing. 67 Bourgeault, 24. 33

“that same inner wellspring, and they are all descendants and faithful lineage bearers of the common body of transformative knowledge that is Wisdom in the West.”68

3.3 Major Elements of Wisdom

Switching gears for this next section, we will examine how Cynthia Bourgeault advocates for a particular method to reveal the hidden presence of Wisdom for any seeker; thus, evoking a common element in esoteric discourse for Stuckrad. According to Bourgeault, a primary element of Wisdom teachings is three-centered knowing.69

In order to bring the whole human being to bear in this transformation that Wisdom demands, one’s mind, heart, and body are all expected to be engaged. The Wisdom tradition often refers to these aspects of the human being as the intelligence of the mind, the intelligence of the “moving center” (body), and the intelligence of the emotional center (heart). Despite using the phrase “emotional center,” Bourgeault is adamant that “emotions” in this sense is not referring to our personal affective life but, instead, is a contemporary expression for an ancient usage of the term “heart”—understood as a spiritual organ or antennae in ancient traditions that express our capacity to perceive the divine reality within our universe. These same centers of being can also be renamed into the respective dynamic forces: the intellectual center carries the denying force (i.e., the force that reasons, doubts, divides, makes fine discriminations), the

“moving center” carries the affirming force (i.e., the force that makes contact with another, embraces, reaches outward with inclusion), and the emotional center or spiritual heart carries the reconciling force (i.e., the connecting force that communicates between the mind and body or our inner realms with our physical world). “When a person is poised in all three centers,

68 Bourgeault, 24. 69 See Bourgeault, 27-40, that covers the aspects of “three-centered knowing” in detail. 34

balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness… we seem to come from a deeper, steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the words of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves.”70 The ability to be present to and from all three centers and dynamic forces is considered the ideal state (that particular method) in which one can receive and live out of Wisdom.

But what does it mean to be present in mind, body, and spirit? What does that even look like, and how does one get there? For starters, Bourgeault describes in detail how Wisdom traditions see the world as some variation of a two-tiered system between the physical universe and the spiritual cosmos with a mysterious intermediary realm connecting the two seamlessly.

She quotes Valentin Tomberg to demonstrate how this is expressed in today’s diction: “Modern science has come to understand that matter is only condensed energy… Sooner or later science will also discover that what it calls ‘energy’ is only condensed psychic force—which discovery will lead in the end to the establishment of the fact that all psychic force is the ‘condensation,’ purely and simply, of consciousness, i.e., spirit.”71 Bourgeault remarks that the unique contribution to Wisdom by Western traditions is the emphasis on this duality—reconciling the physical reality with the divine—that is rarely considered in many Eastern traditions that emphasize a unity with the divine to the rejection of the material world.72

However, when this worldview is brought down from the cosmos to the level of the individual person, the picture becomes a bit messier. Sacred tradition has always considered the human being as a mixtus orbis—a “mixed realm”—between the material world and the sacred or energetic world, and we are imbued with the “instincts” of both worlds. In contrast to traditional religions or spiritualties which tend to emphasize the spiritual tasks that liberate us from our

70 Bourgeault, 36. 71 Bourgeault, 45. 72 See Bourgeault, 51-53. 35

mortal realm, the Wisdom tradition presents a “dynamic alternative: that where we are is exactly where we belong and that our real purpose in the cosmos is fulfilled in the way that we move back and forth between these two planes of existence.” 73 Within our contemporary Western culture, which gives overwhelming prominence to the materialistic world, a more precise goal for Wisdom seekers is for each of us to become midwives of the Spirit within our lives—to make that daily commitment to the transformative journey of the spiritual life within our everyday lives as expressed in the generalized concept of new monasticism.

At this point, we see elements of Faivre’s definition of esotericism come into play already. Bourgeault sustains the characteristic of correspondence by affirming that the perspective gained by recognizing Wisdom is that the sacred realm and the profane world are actually interconnected—collapsed, in a way, on top of each other thanks in part to the reconciling force that Wisdom identifies. The living nature element is also reflected in

Bourgeault’s Wisdom tradition through Tomberg’s concept of “energy” as spirit, which is ultimately a living, dynamic energy that flows through our cosmos. This living energy becomes discernable to those that have maintained that three-centered knowing awareness and balance as expressed in various Wisdom schools, incorporating the combined elements of imagination

(knowledge of symbolic language and their appropriate application) and mediation (recognizing the presence of Wisdom in various traditions or spiritual teachers). Bourgeault will touch on the fourth element of the experience of transmutation (personal transformation through esoteric knowledge) in the Wisdom concepts of surrender and purity of heart.

A core aspect of how we become midwives of the Spirit, undergo this transformation of

Wisdom within our current culture, is through a robust understanding of surrender and freedom on a personal level. For Bourgeault, surrender “is not about outer capitulation but inner

73 Bourgeault, 54. 36

opening… Far from an act of spiritual cowardice, surrender is an act of spiritual power because it opens the heart directly to the more subtle realms of spiritual Wisdom and energy.”74 Surrender, in this context, forces us to consider what freedom and free will mean for the practitioner. In this regard, Bourgeault heavily relies upon Thomas Merton: “Real freedom, according to the spiritual teaching, does not mean ‘choice freedom’ but rather ‘spontaneity freedom…’”75 Quoting Merton directly, “The freedom that matters is the capacity to be in touch with that center [of our inherent divine likeness]. Because it is from that center that everything else comes.” In other words, understanding that our true freedom comes from acting out of our divine likeness or true self is possible when we surrender or open ourselves to the divine presence present throughout our reality, and vice versa—both are needed to fulfill the other in living out Wisdom.

Bourgeault’s book would be incomplete without concluding how one can cultivate such contemplative, inner stances that the Wisdom traditions demand. She spends one of her longest chapters discussing what it means to purify one’s spiritual heart or antennae in order to perceive our divine reality more clearly. In essence, Bourgeault connects the spiritual disciplines fostered by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Benedictine, and Orthodox monastic traditions with the training to still the wanderings of one’s thoughts and passions. “Basically, once the heart has mastered the art of staying still, it’s the same as with any reading skill: you build comprehension by learning to recognize the patterns.”76 Such practices can be done in various ways, as detailed in Bourgeault’s final chapter.77 Among the “tools of Wisdom,” Bourgeault’s list includes developing something akin to the monastic rhythm of ora et labora, getting in touch with neglected aspects of your three-center intelligences, regular meditative practices such as

74 Bourgeault, 72-73. 75 As quoted in Bourgeault, 77. 76 Bourgeault, 90-91. 77 See Bourgeault, 100-114. 37

Centering Prayer, partaking in sacred chanting, and incorporating lectio divina into your meditative practice. Most important of all, a seeker must cultivate an underlying attitude of surrender in anything listed above: “Without [surrender], all the other spiritual practices remain merely busywork. With it, even things that don’t seem spiritual are in fact spiritualized.”78 In order to nurture an attitude of surrender, Bourgeault suggests not to do anything in a state of inner bracing; for “Maintaining an open, inner gentleness, even in the face of perceived threat and reversal, immediately connects you with the whole multispectrum knowingness of your heart,” and in turn, the cosmic milieu.79

In other words, striving to maintain a purity of heart stance reflects the goal of transformation, the gradual realization of that goal, and the particular practices needed to continue its progress—the clearer one’s perception becomes, the more work one realizes that needs to continue. The nuances contained in this single concept also hearken back to Stuckrad’s emphasis on individual experience as a validation of attaining transformation for the practitioner.

Based on Bourgeault’s description, purity of heart requires the seeker to be aware of themselves and their progression, i.e., to have personal experiences. While she devalues the “mystical experiences” that are often intense yet momentary, Bourgeault would consider the state achieved through Wisdom practices as an experience of transformation that is both personal to the seeker and reflective of the universality of Wisdom traditions—the latter aspect touching on mediation as understood by Stuckrad.

78 Bourgeault, 110, brackets added. 79 Bourgeault, 111. 38

3.4 Chapter Conclusion

As we have seen, much of Cynthia Bourgeault’s work within The Wisdom Way of

Knowing resemble esoteric qualities reflected in the theories of Faivre and Stuckrad.

Additionally, however, we see Bourgeault distancing herself from the “esoteric” or “mystical” aspects of the spiritual journey when they seem to distract the seeker from the core tenants of the perennial Wisdom traditions. One the one hand, she does not shy away from utilizing esoteric sources within and outside the bounds of Christianity. And as I have noted above, she is comfortable to couch her teachings within discursive elements associated with previous esoteric teachings such as Gurdjieff and Tomberg. On the other hand, she neither glorifies the popular quality associated with “esoteric” circles80 nor does she explicitly describe her own teachings around Wisdom as esoteric in nature.81 These discreet applications of esoteric assets alongside overt passages distancing her teachings from the “esoteric” or “occult” create a tension in

Bourgeault’s work.

I would argue that Bourgeault considers this Wisdom she identifies to her readers as beyond the customary scope given to esotericism by the average SBNR seeker. Rather than relying on the term “esoteric” to give additional authority or appeal to her teaching, she acknowledges the unique role esotericism played in preserving or framing the truths of Wisdom within the broader historical and cultural streams present within Western civilization—but she ends the association there. For Bourgeault, even esotericism has its limitations in understanding and disseminating the truths she names Wisdom.

80 “Wisdom in the West ran off into the esoteric, where it became entangled in movements like the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, and hermeticism, which preserved bits and pieces of the whole, but in a secretive and often distorted manner,” Bourgeault, 19-20, emphasis added. 81 “These truths are not esoteric or occult in the usual sense of the terms; they are not hidden from sight. In the Christian West they are strewn liberally throughout the entire sacred tradition… But to read the clues, it is first necessary to bring the heart and mind and body into balance, to awaken. Then the One can be known—not in a flash of mystical vision but in the clarity of unitive seeing,” Bourgeault, 9, emphasis added. 39

Even so, she seems to parallel Faivre in terms of situating esotericism as a “form of thinking,” as a means to change one’s perception, more so than an explicit set of doctrines or writings. As we saw earlier, the moments when Bourgeault couches her thoughts on a monist reality between the sacred and material (correspondence), on the reframing of “energy” as the condensation of consciousness or psychical force (living nature), or the recurring emphasis on fostering one’s deepening into “unitive seeing” as essential to any spiritual journey (individual experiences) are her attempts to instill in her readers a capacity for an esoteric mindset—one that is grounded in the perception of the spiritual and the ability to live within the contemplative present. All of this is in service of the transformative journey that Wisdom encapsulates throughout human history and religious traditions for Bourgeault.

If any of this is “esoteric” for Bourgeault, it is so because these truths of Wisdom have been forgotten to one extant or another. Thus, the best way to recover what has been forgotten— what earlier generations have experienced but we are ignorant of today—is to change our perspective of reality, to polish our “hearts” as the spiritual antennas that gives us the capacity to both see this monist reality and then to live within it to the best of our ability as the mixtus orbis beings that we are. In other words, we need to transform ourselves through a daily commitment to contemplative practices and teachings shared among all the religious traditions and Wisdom schools in human history to make the “esoteric” known—an experiential reality in our everyday lives.

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Chapter 4

RICHARD ROHR’S THE ENNEAGRAM: A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

4.1 Why Use The Enneagram within the Christian Church?

Whereas Bourgeault’s discourse dealt with the broad strokes of perennial truth within

Western traditions, Richard Rohr and his co-author, Andreas Ebert, tackle the problems of modern religion within the Christian Church. In addressing the issues of contemporary

Christianity, I will demonstrate how Rohr and Ebert turn to esoteric elements—and the esoteric framework of the Enneagram specifically—in order to illustrate or translate the original Gospel message of Christianity for a post-modern audience.

Bringing their combined years of Catholic pastoral-care experience to bear, they are

“both convinced that there is nothing on which people are so fixated on as on their self-image.”82

For them, a fundamental reason people today are turning away from contemporary Christianity in favor of other religions or atheism is that Christianity has become “translative” rather than transformative. In other words, many Christian Churches today are focused on culture war issues and supporting the status quo of society rather than leading people beyond their egos. An example will help illustrate this translative aspect of modern Christianity as Rohr would see it.

In the fictional TV drama of The Sopranos, the audience watches the main character—a

New Jersey-based Italian American mobster named Tony Soprano—attempt to balance two very divergent lives: one living an ordinary life of a father and husband of a Catholic, New England

82 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 26. 41

family; the other as the leader of a criminal organization. In the former, Tony attends Catholic mass with his family and does everything a “good Italian-American Catholic” typically does; in the latter, he leads and participates in corruption, extortion, scandals, murders, betrayals, and cover-ups—all of which are in direct contradiction with the very Gospel preached in the Catholic masses he regularly attends. This blatant yet rationalized hypocrisy between one’s professed identity and one’s actual lifestyle as represented in the character of Tony Soprano demonstrates the consequences of a translative religion rather than a truly transformative one. The Catholicism

Tony is exposed to in his daily life does not push him to recognize the inconsistencies between his life and the Gospel message of Christ as taught by the Church. Instead, we see a Church that keeps Tony comfortable in his identity as a Christian, but does not lead him to actually embody the radical teachings of love expressed in the New Testament Gospels.

Rohr, referencing the real-life example of “pro-lifers” in American politics, says as much in one of his “Daily Meditations” posted on the Center for Action and Contemplation website:

Because we Christians haven’t taken Jesus’ teaching and example seriously, much of the world refuses to take us seriously. “Christians love to talk of a new life,” critics say, “but the record shows that you are afraid to live in a new way—a way that is responsible, caring, and nonviolent. Even the common ‘pro-life movement’ is much more pro-birth than about caring for all life—black and brown lives, refugees, the poor, the sick, immigrants, LGBTQIA people, the environment.” In fact, many “pro-lifers” I know are the first in line to oppose any gun regulation.83

Rather than guiding parishioners to be transformative by living out the gospel message of Christ that would ask followers to care for the sick and poor, a translative orientation encourages believers to conflate the gospel message with their own egos, their social privileges, or their us- versus-them thinking that leads to movements that promote the suppression of minority rights and dignity to preserve their own sense of righteousness and “the world as it should be.” Thus,

83 Richard Rohr, “Nonviolence Works,” Theme: Nonviolence, Daily Meditations, August 22, 2019, accessed March 5, 2021, https://cac.org/nonviolence-works-2019-08-22/, para. 7. Rohr is quoting from Why Civil Resistance Works (2011), by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, within the cited block quote. 42

Christianity has failed to name and address the real evils of the modern world. As Rohr and Ebert explain in The Enneagram, “When religion is the conscience of society instead of its lapdog, culture is also healthy. We must acknowledge our part in the disintegration of Western civilization. If our culture has become soft and superficial, it is because religion did so first.”84

To use the above example, would the religious pro-life movement as we know it today be different if those leading it adopted a transformative understanding of Christianity instead of the translative or self-righteous one we see today?

In response to this modern crisis of runaway egos, Rohr and Ebert offer the Enneagram to their readers “as a very ancient Christian tool for the discernment of spirits, the struggle with our capital sin, our ‘false self,’ and the encounter with our True Self in God,”85 although the

Enneagram in the form they uphold it originates with the modern esoteric writer George

Ivanovich Gurdjieff (d. 1949) during the early twentieth century. The authors would later define the “discernment of spirits” as teaching people how to subtly discern the patterns of good and evil in the world and indirectly within an individual. They understand their vocation “is to teach people how to stay in the ‘middle’ and wait for that ‘Third Something’ called Gospel, a position that is always wiser and more healing than the usual alternatives of dualistic thinking,”86 and the

Enneagram is the tool through which Rohr and Ebert will teach their readers how to situate themselves into that transformative “middle” space.

The Enneagram itself has undergone several different renditions throughout its history as different people or communities adopt its framework into their worldview or culture. This will become more evident later as we explore how Rohr and Ebert trace their perspective on the

84 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, xvii. 85 Rohr and Ebert, xvi-xvii. 86 Rohr and Ebert, xxii. 43

Christian history of the spiritual tool.87 For now, it will be best to consider the Enneagram as it is most widely used today as a reference for further discussions.

4.2 Enneagram Fundamentals relevant to Rohr and Ebert

Named from the combination of two Greek words (ennea meaning “nine” and gramma meaning “sign” or “figure”), the typical Enneagram used today is composed of nine points dotted

88 along the circumference of a circle (see FIGURE 4.1). Each numbered point is forty degrees apart from each other and is numbered clockwise from one to nine with NINE at the twelve o’clock position. Each number—or

“type” as they are often referred to as— represents a classification defined by the community or practitioner utilizing it.

Consequently, the Enneagram numbers have been used in a variety of paradigms. For example, the nine numbers can represent FIGURE 4.1: The Enneagram Diagram personality types akin to the Myers-Briggs typology, or they can describe certain states of energy that influence a person’s spiritual equilibrium. An equilateral triangle connects points THREE, SIX, and NINE. The other points are connected by an irregular hexagram that can start at point ONE and connects through points

FOUR, TWO, EIGHT, FIVE, SEVEN, to connect back to ONE.

87 See A Sketch of the Enneagram’s Esoteric History section below on pages 48-53. 88 As pictured in Rohr and Ebert, 6. 44

These lines between the different numbered points give a visual reference to the dynamic flow between the different states or types that the numbers represent. Again, what FIGURE 4.2: The Directional Flows of Integration & Disintegration within the Enneagram as depicted by Christopher L. Heuertz these directional flows represent depends on the typology being used by the Enneagram’s users. For instance, another

Enneagram author, Christopher L. Heuertz, uses the directional flows to describe the process of integration as a person matures in their Enneagram type or disintegration as a person degenerates

89 into unhealthy habits or states of mind while under stress (see FIGURE 4.2). So if someone is a

FOUR on the Enneagram, that person would be in the process of integration by connecting with the energy or mental state of a healthy ONE; however, that same person would be in the process of disintegration by adopting the unhealthy energy or mental state of an immature TWO. The same directional flows apply to the equilateral triangle connecting NINE, THREE, and SIX. So if someone is a NINE on the Enneagram, that person would integrate towards THREE and disintegrate towards SIX. Rohr and Ebert use the terms of “True Consolation” and “False

90 Consolation” to describe these directional flows (See FIGURE 4.3).

89 As pictured in Christopher L. Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 65. 90 As pictured in Rohr and Ebert, 218. 45

FIGURE 4.3: Rohr's and Ebert's version of the Enneagram’s directional flow described as “Arrows” pointing to the “False Consolation” (Disintegration) of each number/type

The triangular numbers serve an additional function as the anchor points of the three centers of the Enneagram. Each center groups three types together that are considered to share the same energy or dispositions between them. Just like the classification of the nine types, how one defines these three centers various between paradigms and Enneagram teachers. One center comprises types EIGHT, NINE, ONE; another includes TWO, THREE, FOUR; and types FIVE, SIX,

SEVEN make up the third center. Types NINE, THREE, and SIX are considered the anchor points for the three centers because they are the most enmeshed with the center they anchor. This is because the other two types on either side of the anchor points—or the anchor point’s “wings”— reinforce the center’s energy on their anchor type since “every type also contains traits of both its neighbors.”91 The concept of the “wings”—the numbers to the immediate left and right of a

91 Rohr and Ebert, 40. 46

given type—is another route for energy to transition along the circumference of the Enneagram rather than solely through the connecting lines within the circle. For example, a type SEVEN is situated in one center, but it can also tap into the energy of a different center because one of its wings is EIGHT, which is in that other center. Likewise, a type TWO can tap into another center’s energy because ONE is one of its wings. Rohr and Ebert will incorporate wings into their teaching to demonstrate how the path to wholeness or personal transformation can be different for each type.

For Rohr and Ebert, the three centers represent the gut, heart, and head groupings of the

92 Enneagram types (see FIGURE 4.4) —similar to the concept of three-centered knowing as explained by Bourgeault earlier. The gut center encompasses types EIGHT, NINE, and ONE.

Incorporating the paradigm of other Enneagram teachers, Rohr and Ebert describe gut-types generally as people who react instinctively; they are often self-assertive and concerned with power and authority, who has it, and how they can be aligned with or battle against that power.

Gut-types typically project an air of strength while struggling with inner doubts and their harsh moral standards. The heart center includes types TWO, THREE, and FOUR. People of these types are described as primarily motivated by relationships—their standing within families and communities—with a close affinity to the subjective emotions of others. In other words, heart-type people FIGURE 4.4: The Three Centers of the Enneagram

92 As pictured in Rohr and Ebert, 36. The words in parentheses are labels for the same groupings that are used by other Enneagram teachers. 47

often define themselves and their usefulness in relation to those around them. The head center incorporates types FIVE, SIX, and SEVEN. Rohr and Ebert describe them as “top-heavy” because of their inclination towards getting lost in their minds as they interact with the external world.

Accordingly, head-types are known for being more socially withdrawn than the other two centers as they are more likely to see the world around them as a threat to escape or a puzzle to solve rather than a space to live within.

How Rohr and Ebert use the framework of the Enneagram as outlined above will be detailed further below, including their typology of the nine individual types.93 The next section will examine the spiritual lineage of the Enneagram as understood by both authors.

4.3 A Sketch of the Enneagram’s Esoteric History

Similar to the prominence of a spiritual genealogy of Wisdom by Bourgeault earlier,

Rohr and Ebert spend a significant time detailing an esoteric history of the Enneagram. However, the authors admit there is inadequate primary material regarding the Enneagram or its lineage; nevertheless, Rohr and Ebert have pieced together a plausible account of its historical evolution from ancient times into the 1990s. According to the authors, the diagram and framework of what we understand to be the Enneagram today were first introduced by George I. Gurdjieff in 1916, but he never disclosed the actual sources that inspired his development of it. A disciple of his,

J.G. Bennett, asserted that Gurdjieff learned the Enneagram from a community of Sufis in

Central Asia. Another adopter of Gurdjieff’s model, Óscar Ichazo, also cited Sufis as the source for the Enneagram after his time in Afghanistan during the 1950s; similarly, Ichazo also kept his sources a secret. Nevertheless, Rohr and Ebert go to great lengths to recount the esoteric legends

93 See The Enneagram as Spiritual Direction & Tool for Transformation section below on pages 56-60. 48

behind the Enneagram we have today and to update their readers regarding a discovery Ebert made since their book’s first publication in 1989.

The legend behind the Enneagram traces its origins as far back as the Ancient Near East, where it both influenced and was enriched by the many religious traditions present in the region.

Bennett suggests that the Magi (like those mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew) were one of the earliest preservers of the Enneagram’s secrets—likely because they were believed what we would consider to be priests, philosophers, astronomers, astrologists, theologians, and magicians in the Ancient Near East. The Enneagram’s legend attests that Pythagoras (c. 569-496 BCE) was initiated into the school of the Magi, which is how the Enneagram is first brought into the West.

The wisdom school of Pythagoras divided some of its students into an esoteric section where they would be taught the nine-number system of the Enneagram in regards to Pythagoras’s numerology. After Pythagoras, there is a thousand-year gap in the legend, yet it picks up again with the rise of Islam in the Near East. Specifically, the Sufi sects are credited with the reemergence and preservation of the Enneagram within their orders. Even though there is no physical record of the Enneagram being taught within Sufi texts, it is assumed that the

Enneagram was passed on from master to student strictly along oral lines—forbidden to be written down so that only those who were ready to hear its wisdom could use it. The legend ends in the early twentieth century with Gurdjieff learning the secrets of what will become the

Enneagram from a community of Sufis somewhere in Central Asia (as mentioned earlier) and bringing his esoteric knowledge to Western audiences with the Enneagram as part and parcel of his wisdom. The authors then quickly change gears to deliberate the possible Christian origins of the Enneagram.

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In 1995, Andreas Ebert discovered realized a numerological reference in Evagrius

Ponticus’ (345-399 CE) Philokalia could be mapped onto the Enneagram, suggesting that this hinted at an early Christia variant of the Enneagram—an hypothesis that makes it possible to locate the Enneagram within early Christianity and the broader Christian tradition. In January

1996, Ebert published his discovery in the Enneagram Monthly international journal.94 Later that year, the same journal published an essay by Lynn Quirolo,95 who argued the same hypothesis regarding Evagrius and his proto-Enneagram around the same time as Ebert. Additionally, Ebert further cites Jesuit Robert Ochs and German Benedictine Anselm Grün as other religious scholars who identified parallels between the Enneagram and the teachings of the fourth-century

Desert Fathers.

Evagrius—who was influenced by Origen, who, in turn, was influenced by Pythagorean thought and advocated for the allegorical interpretation of the Bible—developed a list of eight vices or distracting thoughts (or nine in one passage) that impeded the contemplative’s way to

God and passionless peace. These eight vices correspond to each of the fixations described in the

Enneagram except for SIX (fear). Additionally, Evagrius interpreted the number of 153 fish in

John 21:11 in reference to Pythagorean number theory that would symbolically represent the

Christian cosmology using a combination of a circle, triangle, square, and hexagon—comparable to the modern symbolic representation of the Enneagram.96 The authors believe Evagrius did not create the Enneagram as we know it today but instead came to understand a prototypical form of

94 Ebert, Andreas. “Are the Origins of the Enneagram Christian After All?” Enneagram Monthly, no. 11, Jan. 1996. 95 Quirolo, Lynn. “Pythagoras, Gurdjieff and the Enneagram.” Enneagram Monthly, no. 14 & 15, April & May 1996. http://www.enneagram-monthly.com/pythagoras-gurdjieff-and-the-enneagram.html. Accessed 14 Sept. 2020. It should be noted that Quirolo is a graduate of J. G. Bennett’s International Academy for Continuous Education in Sherborne, England. 96 See Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 10-13, or Quirolo, “Pythagoras, Gurdjieff and the Enneagram,” http://www.enneagram-monthly.com/pythagoras-gurdjieff-and-the-enneagram.html, for the collection of equations and geometrical shapes that visualize the numerology behind 153 into a diagram reminiscent of the Enneagram in FIGURE 1 above. 50

the Enneagram in how Gurdjieff saw it as a symbol of the order and dynamism of the cosmos.

Shortly after Evagrius died in 399 CE, his devotees fled into Armenia, where his teachings are preserved to this day through Eastern Orthodox monks. It is here in the borderlands between

Christianity and Islam where the later influx of Sufism would also influence it. Thus, the likely source of the Enneagram being traced to the interaction between Gurdjieff and the Sufis he may have visited while in the region of Central Asia.

Another identified Christian influence of the Enneagram comes from Ramón Lull (1236-

1315). After becoming a member of the Third Order of the Franciscans, Lull made it his life’s goal to develop a language or system that could bridge between the three Abrahamic religions but was not dominated by any one of them, either. “Like Hans Küng in our day, he felt the monotheistic religions in particular were capable of developing a common world ethos to serve peace.”97 Lull saw the starting point for truth shared FIGURE4.5: Lull’s Diagram representing the Nine Names of God between the major religions of Europe as the nine names or absolute qualities of God that he distributes

98 clockwise around a circumference (see FIGURE 4.5).

In a second diagram, Lull repeats the circumference with nine qualities, but this time in groups of three connected by three separate triangles listing the relative principles that “characterize both the nearness and the difference between God and his creatures”99

100 (see FIGURE 4.6). Rohr and Ebert observe that these

97 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 15. 98 As pictured in Rohr and Ebert, 16. 99 Rohr and Ebert, 15. 100 As pictured in Rohr and Ebert, 17. 51

two figures make Lull’s closeness to the kabbalah—in FIGURE 4.6: Lull’s Diagram representing the Nine Relative Principles that define the terms of its tree of life symbology—and Sufi “nearness” and “difference” between God and creation mysticism—regarding Sufism’s ninety-nine names of

God—quite substantial. As with Evagrius, the authors assert that Lull’s creations are, in a way, proto-

Enneagrams. Moreover, “In the opinion of no less a scholar than Umberto Eco, Lull’s sketches are, after the

Cabbala, the second great European attempt to find a new language of faith.”101 However, Lull’s proto-

Enneagrams is quite different from what we see as “the

Enneagram” today as framed by Gurdjieff and his many disciples.

Turning to Gurdjieff, the authors argue that “It has been shown that [he] and his disciples were influenced by the teaching of the Desert Fathers and by Sufism.”102 Gurdjieff, claiming to have discovered it in Afghanistan and stressing its occult origins, described the Enneagram as a perpetuum mobile, or, in other words, as “A part of the dance and movement forms that he developed were based on the dynamic of the Enneagram.”103 The development of the Enneagram into its forms of fixation was the creation of Óscar Ichazo, who also claimed to have learned it in

Afghanistan from Sufi masters after first coming across it in Gurdjieff’s work. By the time

Ichazo started teaching in the United States in the 1970s, Esalen psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo had adopted and further developed Ichazo’s Enneagram. American Jesuits working with

Naranjo, most notably Father Robert Ochs, put the Enneagram through years of theological

101 Rohr and Ebert, 17. 102 Rohr and Ebert, 18. 103 Rohr and Ebert, 19. 52

analysis till deciding to adopt the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual counseling and retreats. Non- fictional books espousing the Enneagram started to become popular by the mid-1980s, and, following suite, the authors published the first edition of their book on the topic in 1989. As the authors have noted about the initial Enneagram craze of the mid-‘80s and into the ‘90s,

When we Americans got hold of [the Enneagram], what had to happen happened: the hidden wisdom was offered for mass consumption… Now that the secret is no longer a secret, we would like to contribute to presenting it so that it can be used appropriately and do the least possible damage. The “sleeping giant” has awakened, and his ancient wisdom is accessible to people looking for it.104

Thus the genealogical journey from Evagrius Ponticus to Rohr and Ebert was made seemingly complete, connecting its Ancient Near Eastern mythos to the model of psycho-spirituality that is taught today.

Similar to Bourgeault in her genealogy of Wisdom, Rohr and Ebert attempt to present their readers with a spiritual lineage of the Enneagram that reveal both its timeless wisdom and the Christian contributions to its development. Whether this genealogy is historically accurate by scholarly standards is less the point for Rohr and Ebert—even if they cite Ebert’s reading of

Evagrius as further evidence for its early Christian heritage. What matters for their targeted audience is building trust in the spiritual legacy of the Enneagram and the spiritual truths associated with it. As we shall see in the following section, their genealogy will serve as part of their unspoken validation for using the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual direction alongside

Christian doctrines.

104 Rohr and Ebert, 22-23, emphasis added. 53

4.4 Unpacking Rohr’s Justification of the Enneagram

4.4.1 The Debate over the Enneagram within Roman Catholicism

As we saw with Bourgeault earlier, Rohr and Ebert are not afraid to rely on legends or diverse mythos of the Enneagram to give their audience the credence of a long spiritual heritage that spans eras, cultures, and religions. These aspects touch on Faivre’s esoteric elements of mediation through reliance on spiritual genealogies, imagination through the continual evolution of the Enneagram’s symbolism through the succession of time and cultures, and the practice of concordance by emphasizing how different cultures or religions used the Enneagram to gain a perennial truth of humanity that undergirds the inherent wisdom in each of those traditions.

However, the authors’ account of the Enneagram’s mysterious origins and its storied developments contradicts the more recent pushbacks made against the use of the Enneagram by other figures within the Catholic Church.105 Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, in particular, derides the Enneagram as part of the reemergence of heretical Gnosticism within the broader

New Age movement in America. In his official response titled, “New Age is old Gnosticism,”106 he makes the Enneagram and the popular literature around it unfit and even dangerous for use by sincere Catholics seeking spiritual guidance. Thus, Archbishop Wenski considers the Enneagram and its teachers as offering a misleading account of the discernment of spirits—one of the primary goals our authors strive to teach their readers with this exact tool. This friction between the use or disuse of particular doctrines and practices between vested stakeholders is not unusual within the history of the Catholic Church, or any religious tradition for that matter, but it does

105 For an example: see Anna Abbott, “A Dangerous Practice,” The Catholic World Repot, 31 Jan. 2012, https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/01/31/a-dangerous-practice/, accessed 14 Sept. 2020, that references several contemporary Catholic authorities who denounce the Enneagram as dangerously delusional and therefore counter to the reality or primacy of a personal faith in Jesus Christ central to Catholicism. 106 See https://www.miamiarch.org/CatholicDiocese.php?op=Article_11210115817433 for the full online article of Archbishop Wenski’s response to the New Age movement and the Enneagram apropos of orthodox Catholic spirituality via the official website of the Archdiocese of Miami. 54

bring to mind Stuckrad’s emphasis on Otherness as a defining characteristic of esoteric discourse apropos institutionalized religions.

Although Rohr has never gone so far as to sever ties with the Catholic Church (he remains a Franciscan friar to this day after all), he has advocated for a degree of Otherness by describing his positioning as being “within the inner edge of the outer circumference” that is the institutional Church. He also describes this stance as keeping one foot on the inside while consciously placing the other foot outside it; thus, he straddles the line between Church insider and esoteric outsider that leaves him open to the truths found in both spheres of influence.

Rohr’s teaching of the Enneagram and its proper use by earnest seekers is best understood within this reference of straddling that boundary between established doctrines and esoteric teachings. Rather than conforming to the exclusionist approach endorsed by several of his peers and superiors within the Roman Catholic Church, Rohr—with the support of his co- author Ebert—adopts the very “Third Something” approach he calls his readers to embrace by infusing the Enneagram within a Christian contemplative framework, fusing esoteric perspectives with orthodox doctrines as well as ancient philosophy with modern psychology.

Holding the tension between these seemingly conflicting elements creates for Rohr and his readers a deeper perception—an esoteric awareness—of Jesus and his Gospel messages. In other words, interpreting the Enneagram (Faivre’s imagination) is a means by which to gain insight into (or revealing) the higher or perfected knowledge “hidden” in plain sight within the Gospel message of Christianity—all of which characterizes a discourse as esoteric for Stuckrad. Rohr and his students can achieve this by maintaining that degree of Otherness, by remaining “within the inner edge of the outer circumference,” despite the reflexive pushback generated by the conservative stakeholders within the Roman Catholic Church.

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Furthermore, maintaining this tension generated by keeping one foot inside the established order and one foot outside of it requires an active use of the “discernment of spirits.”

Much like a gymnast on a balance beam, how much one needs to lean towards the inside or the outside of the circumfrance changes by the circumstances involved—on a moment by moment basis. By extension, the Enneagram is neither strictly nor originally Christian in nature, but it can be incorporated into a Christian contemplation framework because it can help its users to better discern their own spiritual and psychological patterns. Hence, utilizing the Enneagram (from the outside) to help teach deeper Christian truths (on the inside) is not a hiderance or a corruption of the spiritual journey for Christians; on the contrary, for Rohr and Ebert as new monastic teachers, it is a useful asset that strengthens the wisdom found within and outside of the Christian

Church.

Other elements of esoteric discourse, as defined by Faivre and Stuckrad, will become apparent in the following sections examining how Rohr and Ebert use the Enneagram as a roadmap for personal transformations (i.e., Faivre’s transmutation and transmission through masters as well as Stuckrad’s individual experiences).

4.4.2 The Enneagram as Spiritual Direction & Tool for Transformation

The central question the Enneagram addresses for its seekers is, “Why in our encounter with life do we human beings so often keep running up against ourselves instead of making a breakthrough to God, to the Totally Other?”107 Put differently, spiritual guides who used this esoteric tool (supposedly since antiquity) wanted people to become aware of their default perceptions, prejudices, and habitual ways of thinking from their egocentric point of view. The

Enneagram works by refining our self-perception, holding up a mirror to our egoic selves, and

107 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 21. 56

revealing how those patterns or energies in life not only help us in some ways but ultimately harm us when left ignored. Put more bluntly, “If you don’t sense the whole thing [the Enneagram reveals about you] as somehow humiliating, you haven’t yet found your [Enneagram] number…

[as] The Enneagram uncovers the games we find ourselves tangled in.”108 Because all of us need help in recognizing and putting down our respective egoic personas, the Enneagram—along with an adept spiritual director or guru—serves as an exceptional method at revealing both our better natures and our shadow selves as two sides of the same coin—that is to say, the human person ultimately as mixtus orbis or a mixed being—through a process that mixes spiritual discernment with psychology. Exactly how the Enneagram helps a seeker uncover and begin addressing their egoic patterns will be explored in general later in this section.

To gain a deeper understanding of this human problem and how best to address it, Rohr and Ebert saw fit to reexamine the concept of “sin” within Christianity in light of the Enneagram framework. “These sins can be understood as emergency solutions that were used in the early childhood development of a person as a way of coming to terms with his or her environment.

They were necessary for survival.”109 However, the older we become, the more entrenched and dysfunctional such survival techniques become, creating new crises and tragedies of their own later in life. This insight reminds the authors of the concept of “root sins” that suggest what many consider as moral sins are instead the natural byproducts or consequences of more primal sins— whether theological or psychological in nature. This root sin within the Christian framework is our false or egoic selves separated from our divine image in God: “[Our root sin] actually becomes a very clear example and description of what the Tradition therefore meant by ‘original sin.’ We have abandoned our soul, our ‘soul child,’ for a false identity that is defended and

108 Rohr and Ebert, 24, brackets added. 109 Rohr and Ebert, 32. 57

deceitful, and so we are trapped.”110 Our goal, our responsibility to ourselves as sentient beings, is to do the soul work—a combination of spiritual direction and psychotherapy—necessary to redeem our egoic type as revealed by the Enneagram. This redemption does not usually mean eliminating our natural drives and inclinations; rather, it means redirecting or reframing such energies within us for the benefit of ourselves and others, catching ourselves before or when we go too far into our old destructive patterns, and gently collecting ourselves back into alignment with God’s likeness within us. Essentially, “Our gift is our sin sublimated and transformed by grace.”111 The authors elaborate this sentiment further by stating that “Anyone who discovers the power and truth of the Enneagram inevitably comes to a baffling conclusion: God makes use of our sins… The realization is at once a source of shame and freedom. For it is an experience of unconditional love, as we have probably never known it before.”112 Such is the supposed and often desired end goal of those who delve into the esoteric framework offered by the Enneagram and its teachers.

As appealing such a psycho-spiritual epiphany is for many a seeker, how someone goes about using the Enneagram as a guide towards this personal revelation is not straight forward— not even for Rohr and Ebert in their book on the very subject. Going forward, it will be helpful to keep in mind that concept of the discernment of spirits as teaching people how to subtly discern the patterns of good and evil within themselves and in the broader world. Hence, using the

Enneagram properly (as emphasized by Rohr and Ebert) in its spiritual capacity is to both awaken and practice a deep self-awareness that sees all aspects of one’s self—the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful—as a whole. Because of this holistic approach, Enneagram types are explained through stories, caricatures, and anecdotal accounts that captures the primary and

110 Rohr and Ebert, 45, brackets added. 111 Rohr and Ebert, 27. 112 Rohr and Ebert, 25. 58

most frequent characteristics exhibited by people who readily identify with that type. Often, these accounts are supported by testimonials or inferred references to historical figures or fictional characters to give a broader context of each type as well as the myriad of examples that exist.113

A general first step in using the Enneagram for novices of the tool is to read through the various accounts associated with each type while keeping one’s own life story and experiences in mind. As one reads along, there may be one or two types that seem close but does not quite fit how that person has experienced themselves or how others have described them in the past and present. Eventually, the disciple will come across the accounts of one type that strongly, if not resoundingly, describes them to a “T”—often embarrassingly so.114 Once the seeker identifies her/himself with one of the Enneagram types through their strong affiliation with the qualitative account given of that type, then the Enneagram teacher they are working with—either directly in a session or indirectly through the teacher’s materials on the Enneagram—will often point them towards psycho-spiritual practices and theories tailored to meet their specific combination of likely pitfalls and strengths as denotes their Enneagram number.115

This reliance on psychological narratives and personal experiences to flesh out each

Enneagram type reflects the subjective and qualitative nature of the process; hence, the need to exercise and develop one’s capacity for discernment—the ability to perceive through implicit insight and explicit understanding—for aspects of life that can only be seen with the mind’s eye or the “heart” as “the spirit’s eye” (referencing Bourgeault’s use of “heart” as one’s intuitive

113 See TABLE 1 & TABLE 2 in the APPENDIX below (pages 86-88) for a sample listing made by Rohr and Ebert of these associations and caricatures to demarcate one Enneagram type from another. 114 “If you don’t sense the whole thing [the Enneagram reveals about you] as somehow humiliating, you haven’t yet found your [Enneagram] number,” Rohr and Ebert, 24, brackets added. 115 See TABLE 1 below in the APPENDIX (page 87) for a quick reference for how Rohr and Ebert define the various fixations, weaknesses, strengths, and likely remedies associated with each of the nine Enneagram types. 59

organ attuned with the spiritual). As with any skill or tool, disciplined practice is needed to achieve a sense of familiarity with it, yet particularly with discernment, its intuitive or subjective quality requires practitioners to endure a sense of uncertainty or vagueness as if seeing through a glass darkly. Hence, the authors’ conviction to teach their students “how to stay in the ‘middle’

[of knowing and not knowing] and wait for that ‘Third Something,’ [of insight]” that comes part and parcel with any discernment processes.116 In this sense, the Enneagram can be seen like a set of training wheels or a tuning fork that helps novices and masters alike to better practice or calibrate their discernment of spirits as it applies to their respective egos or life experiences.

However, as with any training wheels or tuning fork, it is meant to be used as needed and not meant to be used as a crutch for the rest of one’s life-long practice. Such a stance on the

Enneagram will be shown by the authors later in the chapter. In the meantime, we will be taking a closer look at how Rohr and Ebert unpack the nine Enneagram types for their readers.

4.4.3 Egoic Maturity as Important to Salvation

A crucial element of Rohr’s and Ebert’s teaching on the Enneagram is their conception of maturity as a kind of salvation from our dysfunctional selves in light of the Christianized

Enneagram. This process of revelation and redemption does not happen overnight or in a single moment. It is a spiritual and psychological journey that can take weeks, months, or even years to process all the Enneagram has to offer a person. In effect, the authors equate this journey with learning how to die to one’s false self before one actually dies. “For that to be possible, we have to be cleansed and purified. Our old self, our old Adam, our old Eve, must die. This really feels like death.”117 Otherwise, our work with the Enneagram will never be complete, and such a journey to die before one dies is excruciating for everyone. Therefore, central to the Enneagram

116 Rohr and Ebert, xxii. 117 Rohr and Ebert, 27. 60

for its seekers is the experience of transmutation (Faivre) that enables an inner metamorphosis of the seeker from their “old self” into their true self, as well as having tangible personal experiences (Stuckrad) that indicate for the seeker progression into the esoteric knowledge as revealed by the Enneagram. Without these two esoteric elements, the Enneagram would be, at best, dreary or, at worst, meaningless for its spiritual disciples.

However, the Enneagram itself is not meant to be a lifelong endeavor lest anyone becomes too attached to its methodology: “Once we have reached this depth of self-knowledge we can confidently put aside the tool.”118 In fact, the authors admit that “we don’t need to know the Enneagram. The Enneagram articulates something that spiritually mature people have always intuitively grasped and practiced.”119 Thus, Rohr and Ebert demonstrate their own lack of attachment to this esoteric tool for it is merely that, a tool, and nothing more; to confuse the

Enneagram for the end and not as a means to a higher-end is to misunderstand and misuse it all together, an outcome Rohr and Ebert want to avoid for their earnest readers.

This distancing from the Enneagram at the end—after spending hundreds of pages advocating for and detailing its use for sincere practitioners—is another expression of Otherness for Rohr. A primary reason for keeping a foot in both the inside and outside worlds of the

Church is to mitigate the all-too-human tendency to become attached to something or someone while seeking personal fulfillment. Attachment—often defined by Rohr as a synonym of

“addiction” in our modern language—is the very thing being revealed and dismantled by the

Enneagram for Rohr and Ebert. In other words, to become attached or perpetually dependent on the Enneagram is to fail in properly understanding the goal and utilizing the function of the

118 Rohr and Ebert, 24. 119 Rohr and Ebert, 41. 61

Enneagram altogether. Hence, the Enneagram, just like any tool, is meant to be put down once the work it was designed to do is done.

However, the work of maturity is never wholly done during our lifetime as no one can become perfect or whole during our time in this world. Because of this human limitation, for

Rohr and Ebert, the Enneagram can be used as a kind of reference material for a spiritual seeker to reference when they are “stuck” and then put down once their “stuckness” is resolved. This is a reason why the authors suggest to their readers to incorporate the Enneagram with an experienced spiritual director or mentor; being initiated into the Enneagram through a master of it can help practitioners deepen their use of it while offering guardrails by the master should they become too attached to it or a particular aspect of it. This use of spiritual masters of the

Enneagram reflects the esoteric element of transmission or initiation through masters as part of

Faivre’s definition, which Rohr and Ebert are participating in themselves by offering their expertise on the Enneagram to guide their readers on properly using the Enneagram. Even so, only one person has been described as a perfected human within Christian orthodoxy: Jesus

Christ.

4.5 Chapter Conclusion

Because Christ is the exemplar whom Christians strive to emulate, Rohr reframes the

Gospel message as a means of liberation from our unhealthy attachments to our egoic selves, our initial worldviews, and to pervasive world systems:

If we trust Christ, we no longer need to understand ourselves anymore as slaves of the law, as products of our parents, as victims of our environment, or as determined cogs in the machinery of the world. All of that is true in a sense, of course, but it’s not the final

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truth. We are no longer slaves; we are the sons or daughters of God who have been set free.120

These esoteric elements of personal transformation, as proclaimed in the Gospel message of Christianity, as revealed through the particular wisdom of the Enneagram, illustrate

“what Michael Pauen nicely phrased the ‘self-empowerment of the understanding subject’…”121 As we saw with Bourgeault earlier, Rohr’s blending of esoteric currents with orthodox Christology has created a new understanding of Christianity’s message for the twenty-first century. Consequently, Rohr has engaged in an esoteric discourse without betraying the core doctrines of Christianity (or the Catholic Church post-Vatican II for that matter); or better yet, he engaged in esoteric elements in order to reveal or translate the original Gospel message of Christ for a post-modern audience—refreshing the boldness with which the original hearers of Jesus and his apostles may have heard them in a way that resonates with Rohr’s contemporary readers.

Like Bourgeault, Rohr would consider himself a traditionalist as well as a radical of the Church. He likes to emphasize the original Latin definition of “radical” as radix, meaning “root,” whenever he brings up the word in his lectures or weekly devotionals.122

Thus, being a true radical means honoring the source from which a tradition was built upon; it is revolutionary by reforming or realigning a tradition with its origins. In similar fashion to well-known esotericists, Rohr seeks to draw people back to the radix of

Christianity—even when it touches upon a perennial source beyond historical

Christianity. He is not afraid of employing esoteric elements or tools (i.e., the

120 Rohr and Ebert, 248. 121 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 62, emphasis added. 122 For example, see Richard Rohr, “Becoming Pure in Heart,” Center for Action and Contemplation website, 11 May 2016, https://cac.org/becoming-pure-heart-2016-05-11/, accessed 19 Sept. 2020, where he begins his devotional with “True religion is radical; it cuts to the root (radix is Latin for root)” (par. 1). 63

Enneagram) to accomplish this mission so that others may be transformed by their experience with the radix of their likeness in God.

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Chapter 5

JAMES FINLEY’S MERTON’S PALACE OF NOWHERE

5.1 Why Finley Reflects on Thomas Merton

When James Finley was a young man, starting in his late teens, he spent five and a half years as a monk at the Trappist monastery in Kentucky named Our Lady of Gethsemani (also known as the Abbey of Gethsemani). Between 1961 and 1967, his novice master was Thomas

Merton, who was his spiritual director and mentored Finley within the abbey. Spending time with Merton during the final years of his life (unbeknownst to everyone that Merton would die only a year later in Thailand) became formational for Finley’s spiritual development. Years later, continuing his practices outside of the monastery, he was inspired to write this book about the spiritual insights he gleaned from Thomas Merton and his own spiritual experiences.

However, it was not merely his close affiliation with Merton that moved him to write about his spiritual insights. Finley also saw how Merton’s teachings reflected a truth greater than himself or even of Christianity alone, which is reminiscent of an esoteric perspective of truth.

Thomas Merton was certainly well-versed and firmly planted within the monastic Christian tradition—Finley assures his readers—yet even so, “His genius lies not in founding a new spirituality, nor in coining his own unique concepts, but in drawing forth unrecognized and unappreciated, yet vitally important, elements from various traditions. He brings these elements together in new configurations more meaningful to contemporary man.”123 Elaborating further,

123 Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 27, emphasis added. 65

Finley accentuates that “The spirituality of Thomas Merton centers upon the fact that the whole of spiritual life finds its fulfillment in bringing our entire life into a transforming, loving communion with the ineffable God.”124 This spirituality will serve as the foundation for Merton’s discourse around the “false self” and the “true self” he identifies in every human being. While

Merton did not coin either of these phrases, he has been credited for contributing to their increased use within theological discourses—as we have already seen earlier with Bourgeault and especially with Rohr and Ebert frequently using both terms in their discourses. Finley, himself, attests as much to this aspect of Thomas Merton’s spiritual legacy: “…a more specific purpose underlying [Merton’s Palace of Nowhere] is that of prayerfully exploring Merton’s critically important yet little-appreciated notion of the true self in God as opposed to the false self of egocentric desires.”125

It is essential to highlight the phrase “prayerfully exploring,” as it indicates Finley’s approach to spirituality. His method of explaining the ineffable is far less like an academic treatise and more akin to a Zen kōan—circling the edge of a religious mystery too profound for any amount of words without the personal, mystical experiences to accompany them. Rather than giving us clear definitions or graphical formulas by which to make clear distinctions between this and that (as our previous two authors were more inclined to do), Finley is comfortable giving us stories, parables, analogies, and metaphors that, on the surface, seem to make no logical sense, that is, until one allows the words to sink below the conscious level and into what Bourgeault would call the “heart.” As Finley prompts his readers in his book’s introduction:

We do not come to analyze Merton’s teaching, but rather to savor his words in that same intuitive receptivity in which his writings rose to consciousness from the depths of his own soul. Here we are not going to dissect Merton’s thought, but rather, as it were,

124 Finley, 23. 125 Finley, 22. 66

prayerfully roll his words over and over in our hands, trying to grasp now this, now that facet of light thrown into the darkness that surrounds the meeting place with God.126

This prayerful approach implies that the truth expressed in Merton’s writings cannot be grasped in a single reading, let alone be explicitly made known at the outset. It requires, for

Finley, a willingness on the part of the reader to accept a degree of “hidden-ness” with both

Merton and the deeper truths his thought points towards. As we have considered earlier, the premise of hidden yet higher knowledge embedded within a teaching is a common motif within esoteric discourses. These truths are not “hidden” in the sense that they are being obfuscated from unworthy seekers; rather, they are “hidden” because people do not have the knowledge— the hermeneutic framework or imaginal cipher—by which to recognize these truths when they stumble across them. For Finley, the often poetic and kōan-ic style of Merton’s writings reflect both the means by which these mystical truths can be realized as well as the impossibility for these truths to be expressed in words alone. The symbolic language employed by Finley and

Merton are not acting as gatekeepers to keep out the uninitiated but as the very medium through which a seeker must tangle with—akin to how, in Genesis, Jacob wrestled with an unidentified man before garnering his new name of “Israel” and then recognizing his intense match was with

God. With this understanding of “hidden-ness,” the required “knowledge” a disciple of Merton needs to adopt is a contemplative mindset often associated with Zen Buddhism that accepts the esoteric nature of truth that is beyond human understanding yet is inherent within the human experience that is faithful to a contemplative spirituality.

In the remainder of this chapter, I will draw on the main points and emphases that Finley routinely meditates upon within this work. Moreover, utilizing such a kōan-ic style in discussing the transcendent depths of Thomas Merton’s spirituality within the framework of monastic

126 Finley, 20-21. 67

Christianity and modern psychology already points to the esoteric elements present in Finley’s discourse—especially that element in Faivre’s list of adopting a symbolic language (imagination) to transmute higher or perfected knowledge to the seeker well-versed in such symbolic language.

5.2 The False Self and the True Self

When it comes to defining the true self and false self, neither Merton nor Finley give us any single or all-encompassing answer. Instead, Finley seems to repeat himself as he discusses aspects of either term; however, if considered carefully, each description offered is not rote repetition of earlier iterations but a subtle expansion of the terms. Like peeling the layers of an onion to get to another layer underneath, Finley tries to flesh out the multitude of aspects and depth that each term attempts to contain, which, taken altogether, would be too much to compress into singular definitions.

Put simply, the false self for Merton and Finley is the collection of perceptions about ourselves that we believe to be “us” but are not all that we are in light of the Christian revelation.

This term is often used by others as a synonym for our “worldly self”—the self that sees our material life as the only “real” thing of our common reality. Finely, elsewhere, has also used this term to describe how people often mistake themselves to be “nothing more than the things that are done unto us” to explain how people who have traumatic experiences also struggle to develop a psychologically or spiritually healthy sense of self or self-esteem. On a deeper level,

“the false self does not face or even acknowledge the darkness within. … The false self, like a ruling despot, demands unquestioning obedience. Everything must be kept moving in an endless cult of domination and exploitation.”127 In this sense, the false self is that aspect of people that is generated in part by the circumstances and environment they are exposed to that also takes on a

127 Finley, 30. 68

life of its own within our respective psyches. In Freudian terms, it can be considered the dysfunctional manifestations of the ego and superego in human consciousness.

How our false selves deny our various shadows or embrace a distorted ego and superego can take on many forms. The false self can be the internalized biases of our native culture (e.g., the extreme nationalism, racism, and religiosity of white supremacists), or it could be the series of fixations as revealed by the Enneagram—as emphasized by Rohr and Ebert earlier (e.g., the morally perfectionist, ideal momma’s-boy of Rohr’s story in the previous chapter). Additionally, the false self can be the persona that forsakes the banality of life in search for “more spiritual realms” (e.g., the stereotypical New Age consumerist), it can provide the adaption of a religious worldview that makes God into our image of a “culture-war warrior” (e.g., the Bible-thumbing

Evangelical voter), or the false self can be that desired affinity with the “emptiness” sought in several meditative practices (e.g., the clichéd “navel-gazer”). Basically, the false self is our rationalizations and desires to be the absolute center of our own internalized universe.

Consequently, the false self is our major and recurring obstacle on our journey to God, blocking our means to experience intimate and transformative encounters with the Divine. In other words, our innate capacity for the Divine is limited or denied by our adopted false selves that consider our individual egos as the entirety of reality—as the very center of the universe around which everything else revolves.

In contrast, the true self is in many ways what the false self is not, but in just as many ways beyond what the false self can ever be: “This ‘no one’ [that remains when the false self recedes] is our true self. It is the self that stands prior to all that is this or that. It is the self in

God, the self bigger than death yet born of death. It is the self the Father forever loves.”128

Furthermore, the true self is “our whole self before God. It is the self the Father created us to

128 Finley, 21-22. 69

become. It is the self in Christ. It is the self that breathes, that stands and sits. It is the self that is.”129 Because the true self encompasses all that we are, our entire being, Finley makes a point to stress that our psychological and physical wellbeing serve a part in cultivating our awareness of our true self. Likewise, for Finley and Merton, the true self incorporates our ordinary self, our daily life, the mundane and banal aspects of living that the false self usually rejects in search of grandeur (material, social, and/or religious). This mystical absurdity is so because it is in such moments where God is often waiting for us to find him—or, more precisely, to recognize his presence within them. Accordingly, “The spiritual life for Merton is a journey in which we discover ourselves in discovering God, and discover God in discovering our true self hidden in

God.”130 Our true selves are our “godly self” in the sense that it is our direct connection with the

Divine before we ever became whatever our false selves deem us to be. Hence, the true self is not something that can be created or even aspired towards—as is the case with the false self—for it already exists within us in as much as God or the Divine exists outside human perceptions of temporal or material reality.

Whereas the false self is the most apparent aspect of our consciousness, the true self is that which is hidden in the Divine. Drawing on our earlier discussion on the role “hidden-ness” plays in Finley’s teachings on Merton, the hidden nature of our true selves in God is a matter of recognizing or acknowledging its presence within us. It is hidden in the sense that our false selves cannot recognize it in as much as a fish may not recognize that they are living in water; thus, the importance of symbolic language in the teachings of Finley and the writings of Merton.

Symbolic language, while often confusing and illogical to our false selves, is the best medium of

129 Finley, 23. 130 Finley, 35, emphasis added. 70

the spoken or written word that can resonate with our true selves directly, bypassing our self- limiting egos for the most part.

However, people cannot simply turn off their egoic personas—the “operating software” by which we perceive and interact with reality—which is why Finley recommends to his readers to adopt a prayerful attitude to his reflection on Merton’s thoughts. This attitude is keenly reflected in the Christian monastic practice of lectio divina, where practitioners meditate on a passage in the Christian Bible as they read it in order to intuit the deeper truths of those passages.

Likewise, adopting a meditative or prayerful mindset is the hermeneutical key to reading the symbolic language that both Merton and Finley employ. Knowing this to be the case, Finley spends much of Merton’s Palace of Nowhere describing to his readers what “prayer” is for a disciple of the contemplative path.

5.3 What is “True Prayer”?

How can one cultivate deeper awareness and presence with one’s true self? The simple answer for both Thomas Merton and James Finley is to practice prayer or contemplation.

However, this prayer is more like an adaptation of Buddhist meditation than it is to the common notion of prayer in Christian traditions (e.g., the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the like), and yet, neither Merton nor Finley offers any specific techniques to conduct prayer properly in

Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. In fact, Finley equates starting a life of prayer to finding a path in a pristine snow-covered field; one finds the path by creating it.

One cannot find out first how to realize the true self and then set out to reach the clearly visualized goal. Rather, one must walk on in faith and as one goes on, the goal appears— not before, nor within, nor beyond us, but it does appear… and it appears to no-one [the true self]. It appears [from] no-where [beyond our capacity for spatial or conceptual awareness]. It appears not in a revelation of a fact but a transformation of our hearts, in

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which, without knowing how, God transforms us into himself and we begin to realize obscurely yet deeply that our lives are hidden with Christ in God.131

Fortunately, Finley is more precise about the objective of an authentic practice of prayer. For him, “Prayer, as the distilled awareness of our whole life before God, is meant to lead us to a radical transformation of consciousness in which all of life becomes a symbol. All of life is seen as God sees it. All of life is seen simply as it is.”132 Here as well, we see the importance of symbolic language in Finley’s teachings, yet here his symbology goes beyond actual language of words and comes to encompass all of life—all of the lived, human experience. Such an extension of symbology is part and parcel of Faivre’s imagination and mediation, where life itself becomes an esoteric mystery to be interpreted by the initiate. Additionally, the above quote is also a reflection of Faivre’s living nature that equates life or reality “as God sees it,” or as permeated with a sentient Divine presence. Likewise, it is a symbology that is hidden from people until they adopt the cypher by which to recognize and actualize its presence. In this case, within Finley’s reflections, the cypher is prayer as the contemplative life—“the distilled awareness of our whole life before God” or the Divine—without which such higher knowledge remains hidden to the spiritual seeker.133

Throughout his book, Finley describes prayer or contemplation as a sacred space, as fertile soil where the true self can take root and grow, as participating with Christ’s cross and resurrection, as the true self emerging in awareness, as the place where we meet our self in an inner battle, as the opening by which God prunes our heart; it is above all a life: “Contemplation is that act in which what we do is who we are. Contemplation is our person, our true self truly

131 Finley, 116. 132 Finley, 125, boldness added. 133 Finley, 125. 72

(albeit obscurely) actualizing itself as a self made to become perfectly like God.”134 In the end, true prayer and the quest for the true self are ultimately inseparable; for “An exploration of the true self will bring us to an understanding of prayer and a prayerful attentiveness will bring us to an understanding of the true self. That is to say, the self that prays truly is the true self.”135 To acknowledge or practice one of these element’s essence is to also call upon the essence of the other element, becoming a self-perpetuating cycle to the prayerful seeker.

5.4 Revealing What Is Hidden in Merton’s Spirituality

Throughout this section, we see Finley using language that evokes a mystical sense of the profound for a spiritual seeker. He does not shy away from taking such lyrical prose and symbolic language to a place that may very well confuse the average reader, especially those unfamiliar with Christianity, mystical experiences, or meditative practices in general. It is more important to Finley to be authentic to the mystical goals of prayer, contemplation, and the true self than it is to explain these mysteries in terms accessible to a post-Enlightenment audience— i.e., with clear terms in formulaic prose. Even so, Finley’s style and the content of his teachings fit reasonably well within an esoteric discourse.

In terms of Faivre’s paradigm, Finley checks off several items in his list of esoteric techniques. First of all, Finley promotes a worldview that sees the Divine enmeshed with the every-day reality of our ordinary lives, including our true selves hidden within our being and going so far as to say that God is waiting for us to find him within the mundane

(correspondence). Likewise, this Divine presence equally reflects on the living nature element of esoteric techniques by insisting that it is alive in our very being even when we are not aware of

134 Finley, 141. 135 Finley, 23. 73

its dynamic presence. As noted earlier, Finley’s heavy use of imagery and poetic language to express mystical mysteries fits well with the use of symbolic language (imagination) as a medium to express such knowledge. While he does not attempt to outline a genealogy through which this esoteric awareness was passed down into our age (as did the previous two authors),

Finley’s use of Thomas Merton as both an exemplar and his first teacher on the mystical still corresponds with Faivre’s understanding of mediation via spiritual authorities. However, taken another way, this scenario gives us an excellent example of the secondary esoteric element of transmission or initiation through a master by Faivre. As was considered at the beginning of this section, Finley was deeply influenced by his time with Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he both observed Merton’s meditative practices and learned the monastic tradition through his multi-year tutelage under Merton. Essentially, this book, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, and the reflections within would not have been possible for Finley without his time learning and practicing directly under Thomas Merton.

Primarily, though, Finley asserts the experience of transmutation (Faivre) and individual experiences (Stuckrad) as essential to his discourse on mystical spirituality. The primacy of these two elements in Finley’s reflection on Merton’s spirituality cannot be understated: “The spirituality of Thomas Merton centers upon the fact that the whole of spiritual life finds its fulfillment in bringing our entire life into a transforming, loving communion with the ineffable

God,”136 which we saw quoted earlier in this chapter. Elsewhere, Finley affirms that the crux of

Merton’s spirituality revolves around transforming the human identity.

The underlying thesis of this work is that Merton’s whole spirituality, in one way or another, pivots on the question of ultimate human identity [or the human experience]. […] What Merton repeatedly draws us to is the realization that our own deepest self is not so much our own self as it is the self one with the “Risen and Deathless Christ in Whom all

136 Finley, 23, emphasis added. 74

are fulfilled in One.” […] The self that begins is the self that we thought ourselves to be. It is this self that dies along the way until in the end “no one” [our true self] is left.137

In other words, the mystical spirituality of Merton and his novice, Finley, would be empty or aimless without this primary objective for holistic transformation of the individual in the entirety of their being—heart, body, and mind to use Bourgeault’s terminology—throughout this mystical journey of the earnest seeker.

A final observation to make regarding esoteric elements within Finley’s discourse is the role that “hidden-ness” or secrecy (Stuckrad) plays throughout his work. As we saw with

Stuckrad earlier in this thesis, a teacher revealing secret or hidden knowledge is a common motif in past esoteric groups. Whereas past esoteric teachers may have used secrecy to garner various forms of capital (social, cultural, monetary), Merton and Finley understand secrecy as a natural part of the spiritual journey. Instead of a dark veil deliberately pulled over people’s awareness by a maleficent force or institution, the hidden aspects of reality and one’s place within that reality is a natural starting point in human life—similar to the concept of root sin as explored by Rohr and Ebert earlier: “The spiritual life for Merton moves within the context of an identity given to us by God, distorted and hidden by sin and returned to us by Christ. The spiritual life for Merton is a journey in which we discover ourselves in discovering God, and discover God in discovering our true self hidden in God.”138 It would not be an exaggeration to say that Finely and Merton consider the various religions to be the frameworks by which the hidden is identified and revealed to spiritual seekers: “We can say that, for Merton, religion refers to our deepest reality which lies hidden in our innate propensity for union with God. Our life, in other words, simply makes no sense whatsoever except… to the extent that it is authentically religious.”139 Moreover,

137 Finely, 21, brackets and emphasis added. 138 Finely, 35, emphasis added. 139 Finely, 62, emphasis added. 75

this secrecy and the yearning to reveal its secrets is universal in humanity: “In a moment of solitary union with God we arrive at the center which is hidden, yet everywhere, and from which all of humanity, knowingly or unknowingly, cries out for and receives the healing touch of God.

In prayer, one with Christ, we hold everyone in our hearts and the secret longing of all become our own.”140 As with the individual experiences of transmutation considered earlier, there can be no spirituality of Merton or Finley without acknowledging the mysteries that are “hidden” in our human lives and experienced in the spiritual journey.

However, this “hidden-ness” also applies to the mysteries that are God and the spiritual journey towards oneness: “Like the birth of a baby or the opening of a rose, the birth of the true self takes place in God’s time. We must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust in his hidden action within us.”141 This “hidden-ness” is an unavoidable aspect of mystical spirituality for Merton and Finley that must be tolerated before it can be revealed—or the seeker made aware of the mystery’s presence. In other words, the inherent secrecy of mysticism is not something to be avoided or necessarily to be resolved, but to be lived, to be experienced as it is manifested in the seeker’s journey—even if such experiences are beyond our human understanding: “But in and through all of this we must not fear falling through the center of it all: we must not be afraid to fall through the center of the world which is hidden deep within us.”142 In essence, secrecy is a central aspect of Merton’s and Finley’s spirituality without they, themselves, doing the actual revealing. Rather, they reassure their audience that “hidden-ness” is part and parcel of this mystical journey and should be embraced instead of avoided or resolved, for it is such mysteries that propel us beyond our false self into the reality that is our true self before the Divine.

140 Finely, 66, emphasis added. 141 Finley, 114, emphasis added. 142 Finley, 117-118. 76

5.5 Chapter Conclusion

James Finley, and by extension, Thomas Merton, clearly utilize esoteric techniques throughout their discourses on mystical experiences and disseminating their spirituality to a broader public. However, their use of the esoteric element of secrecy or “hidden-ness” highlights the divergence Finley and Merton take from the scholarly application of the characteristic. As was considered earlier, Finley does not use secrecy or “hidden-ness” as a type of gatekeeping to keep out those who are uninitiated or unworthy—a type of practice that emphasizes the elite nature of the initiated. Instead, this “hidden-ness” inherent within the human experience can be overcome by everyone and anyone willing to undergo a life of contemplation and prayer. In this sense, Finley’s approach to “hidden-ness” attempts to be more “democratic” than “elitist”—as if often associated with the term “esoteric” in the popular imagination—especially in the sense of

McEntee’s and Bucko’s “the monastic” as a commitment to the contemplative journey in one’s daily life. In other words, Finley, like other new monastic teachers, democratize the contemplative life by conveying that a seeker does not have to become an actual monk, seclude themselves into a cloister or hermitage, and adopt a severe ascetic lifestyle or monastic regiment of constant prayers and religious labors in order to experience and live out a contemplative life.

While the traditional monastic life can certainly help one live a contemplative life, it is by no means necessary to spirituality that Finley expresses to his readers.

Similarly, we saw this slight deviation from the academic categories of esoteric qualities earlier with Rohr diverging from “Otherness” a bit to keep a foot within and a foot outside of the institutional church and with Bourgeault dismissing “esoteric knowledge” in favor of an

“esoteric thinking or practice” that emphasizes action over a static concept of truth. All three authors demonstrate their esoteric elements while simultaneously adding their respective styles

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to their understanding of the “esoteric” or “esoteric knowledge.” In the following chapter, having finished looking at each author separately, we will consider how Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley compare with each other as well as some aspects that their combined esoteric elements present to a scholarly examination of esotericism.

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Chapter 6

DO THESE AUTHORS ENGAGE IN ESOTERIC DISCOURSES?

6.1 The Commonalities between All Three Authors

Having reviewed all three authors and their respective works, they have some striking commonalities that appear between them. One among them is their common desire to share their esoteric knowledge and practices with the broader public. For Bourgeault, she was spurred to act upon her hermitage teacher’s death to conduct spiritual retreats and write essays that would later become The Wisdom Way of Knowing.143 Rohr felt somewhat guilty regarding the instructions he received while learning the Enneagram from the Jesuits in the 1970s:

At the time we were enjoined not to pass it on in writing nor to let anyone know where we got it. I have to confess that later I felt somewhat dishonest because of this… While I put my “secret knowledge” to work, my interlocutor would think: “Richard Rohr is reading my soul like an open book and focusing precisely on my problem. Just where did he learn that?” Thus I seemed almost clairvoyant to this person, as if I had the gift of “seeing the heart” attributed to a number of saints in the church.144

Shortly after, the wave of books teaching the Enneagram became the latest fade, and Rohr saw his opportunity—since the “sleeping giant” had awakened—to both share and guide people in how to use it properly. Finley, like Bourgeault, was propelled by his time with Merton to share and guide like-minded seekers on the spiritual journey: “The daily monastic life and my personal contact with Father Louis (Merton’s monastic name) as my novice master were priceless graces which I feel moved to share with those who feel drawn to some degree of contemplative union

143 See Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, xx-xxii. 144 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 22. 79

with God.”145 Not content with keeping such higher knowledge to themselves or within the monastic traditions in which they learned them, Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley each dedicated their lives to teaching the hidden doctrines and practices of Western spirituality to anyone willing to learn and practice—especially outside of a monastery.

A second commonality between them is their heavy reliance on mediation, genealogies, and personal experiences—as defined by either Faivre or Stuckrad—as validation and enhancers of their teachings. Each of these authors has used a broad narrative of Western history

(Bourgeault), the lesser-known aspects of the Christian lineage (Rohr and Ebert), and the life and legacy of a single Trappist monk (Finley) and that man’s mixture of Christianity and Zen

Buddhism to show their audiences where their esoteric knowledge came from as well as the universality of such higher knowledge. Furthermore, all three express to their readers their personal experiences practicing and exploring the perfect knowledge they are teaching and often incorporating the personal experiences of others—named or anonymous—as further validators of their teachings. However, these authors would also advise their audiences to experience their teachings for themselves, thus asking them to create their own experiences by which to validate the authors’ teachings and practices.146

Another commonality between them is their downplaying of the term “esoteric” within their discourses on higher knowledge. Bourgeault, as we saw above, did not consider Wisdom esoteric or purposefully secretive; more precisely, Wisdom had been lost or misunderstood and simply needed to be rediscovered in order to become manifest in our day and age. Both Rohr and

Ebert see esoteric knowledge as a provisional necessity rather than an absolute quality. Ebert conveys how Christian biblical authors were not timid in borrowing concepts of Greek

145 Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 15. 146 See Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, xix and 100-119; Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, 23-25; and Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 7-8. 80

philosophy to promote their higher knowledge of Christ’s revelation: “Logos denotes rather precisely what ‘esoteric’ thinkers nowadays call ‘highest consciousness.’ John does not shy away from taking over this ‘esoterically handicapped’ term. He recasts it, and in that way, he explains the Gospel to his contemporaries in linguistic categories that they understand.”147 Rohr, at one point, honors the esoteric practice within Sufism around the Enneagram in order to keep those who were not ready for it from abusing it, while at a different point, he pokes fun at Gurdjieff for calling himself a “Pythagorean Greek” and an “esoteric Christian” while keeping the sources of his knowledge a secret.148 Finley sees the lure of the “esoteric” as a fixation upon which the false self can deceive us from deepening into true prayer (“The false self would have the answer lie in some esoteric secret, some strenuous and bizarre technique that would force the inner self into the open.”)149 or as an intimidating fear many seekers experience on their spiritual journey towards theosis. (“Who can attain such a union as this? It seems so esoteric, so beyond the average person, that it ought to be reserved for those living on cliff tops being fed daily by a raven. It seems, in fact, an impossible attainment.”)150 For these authors, the esoteric can become a hindrance instead of the gateway by which people experience and practice the higher knowledge of contemplative spirituality.

6.2 Gottfried Arnold’s “Gnosis” as Esoteric

Returning to Kocku von Stuckrad, he also saw esoteric knowledge as “not so much secret, but hidden;”151 that it was a matter of revealing the esoteric to the initiated at the proper

147 Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, xiii. 148 See Rohr and Ebert, 18-19. 149 Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 92. 150 Finley, 128. 151 Stuckrad 2010, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 56. 81

time instead of keeping it buried like secret treasure not meant to be found and dug up later. This concept was made clear with references to Gottfried Arnold’s three-part definition of “gnosis”:

“1) That you understand the things properly; 2) that you fulfill what you know; 3) and that you expound what is hidden in truth in divine fashion.” The gnostic search for higher understanding is “really a completion of man […] through the wisdom of divine things, both in words and in practice and in whole life, as they talk about it.”152

Moreover, this interpretation of “gnosis” exemplifies what Michael Pauen phrased as the “self- empowerment of the understanding subject.”153 Stuckrad asserts that this definition of “gnosis” as an emic term can be explored within an esoteric field of discourse. Therefore, gnosis, understood as the empowerment of the understanding subject, accurately describes the three discourses surveyed in this paper, including a core concept within new monasticism generally.

Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley share their knowledge in order to empower their readers. After the authors expound on hidden truths revealed through religious methods, they ask their audience that they understand their world better with this knowledge and follow through on their newfound insights through practices. None of them assuage their audience from any of the trials and tribulations they will face on their spiritual journeys. The authors reveal the hidden truths of different religious traditions and a monist reality and then ask their readers to trust in the very process each of them has undertaken as the students themselves assume the same journey with the awareness and tools given to them.

In this sense, the authors engage in esoteric discourses in order to empower others through the knowledge of unknown things or awareness of unrecognized perceptions, the means to put that understanding into daily practice, and, perhaps, the courage to pass that knowledge along to others. This empowerment and access to higher knowledge are part of what makes esotericism different from gnostic spirituality for Stuckrad: “Discourses of redemption—rather

152 As quoted in Stuckrad 2010, 62. 153 As quoted in Stuckrad 2010, 62. 82

than self-empowerment and perfect knowledge—are characteristic of gnosticism as distinguished from esotericism.”154 Likewise, Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley do not offer their knowledge to save people they see as utterly incapable, rather, to empower them to improve their own lives.

6.3 Have These Authors Engaged in Esoteric Discourses?

We have seen how Bourgeault, Rohr, and Finley engage in contemporary esoteric discourse through their claims and practices of higher awareness to empower the understanding subject and validated by both particular mediations and years of personal experiences. However, what capital do they gain by engaging in this discourse? As Stuckrad and Bourdieu suggest, agents within the esoteric field do so to gain capital of one kind or another. All three authors would admit to the economic capital gained through the selling of their books, but they would also argue that is by no means their main goal—Rohr alone, as a Franciscan, made a vow of poverty after all. Nor would any of them do so to gain social or symbolic capital in the sense of acquiring prestige or relations with the rich and famous.155 What about cultural capital, then?

Instead of acquiring it, they rely on their cultural capital to validate their teachings and experiences. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that these authors engage in esoteric discourse to gain metaphysical or teleological capital, i.e., the hope or faith that the more people understand and practice this higher knowledge, the more peaceful and harmonious our world will become, lessening the suffering we endure or inflict and coming closer to creating a heaven on earth.156

154 Stuckrad 2010, 62. 155 See Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 12-13, for how even Thomas Merton wanted to avoid the limelight; and Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, xix, for her assertion that Wisdom is for everyone and anyone willing to search for deeper truths. 156 See Richard Rohr and John Feister, Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 1996) as an example of advocating for a benevolent teleological goal for both humanity and the world. 83

This drive towards sharing their capital rather than accumulating them is also a common motif among new monastic teachers (as we saw in Chapter 1). McEntee and Bucko frame their manifesto in The New Monasticism as “a rallying call for these new types of spiritual life and community, lives that are dedicated to building a sacred world through commitment to one’s spiritual maturity, to the growth of community life, and to living out these values while fully engaged in the world. […] at its heart lies a passionate embrace for the transformation of our societal, political, and religious structures.”157 In other words, enlightenment and the contemplative life are meant to be shared with all of humanity—individually and collectively.

Likewise, the three authors examined in this thesis wrote their books with the explicit aim to transform their readers’ lives and, by extension, the communities they live within. As a result, their esoteric knowledge had to be shared with everyone and anyone willing to listen; those who are driven to realize an interior vocation for the contemplative life—as new monastics in the world—would be the ones to gain the most from their teachings on higher wisdom. Even if a reader is not “quite ready” for their higher knowledge of the spiritual life, at least their teachings may be like a spiritual seed that will sprout, take root, and grow when the conditions of their personal lives become ripe for such an interior awakening.

The Living School program refers to its students as “multipliers” of the esoteric truths

Rohr, Bourgeault, and Finley teach. They want their students to spread the word through their actions and daily lives—to their families, their communities, and the strangers on the other side of the globe. This is not an attempt to convert or proselytize people into a single denomination or creed; on the contrary, it is to help make our world and our lives better for us and for future generations to come. The more that people understand reality holistically, fulfill what they now

157 McEntee and Bucko, The New Monasticism, xx, brackets and emphasis added. 84

know, and go out to expound the hidden truth in divine fashion, the more metaphysical or teleological capital is generated to create a better world for all of creation.

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Appendix

Defining the Nine Enneagram Types According to Rohr’s and Ebert’s Typology

Rohr and Ebert spend nearly one hundred fifty pages exhaustively describing each of the nine types of the Enneagram from this Christian-psychological perspective. Their segmented examinations of all nine Enneagram types are broken down into four sections. They begin with a broad overview of the type’s personality and common modes of perception or self-image, general behaviors, relationship building, and childhood experiences. Next, Rohr and Ebert discuss the type’s dilemma pertaining to their peculiar temptation, what this type instinctually avoids, their typical but unhealthy defense mechanism toward conflicts, and how it all ties into their root sin.

The authors also include initial references to the type’s likely gifts or their “fruit of the spirit” as reflections of their root sin when redeemed, followed by equally potential pitfalls and fixations that can hamper the type’s growth towards maturity. Third, the authors provide a plethora of symbols and examples from history, literature, and/or biblical scripture to give concrete examples of the type in question. Lastly, Rohr and Ebert conclude their exploration of each type with considerations of crucial elements necessary for the conversion and maturation of that type, which involves identifying the particular “invitation” to change, the lifelong work usually required to pursue maturity for that type, and an example of a “saint” or two to demonstrate what a mature person of that type has looked like in the past. During these exhaustive surveys, Rohr identifies himself as a ONE and inserts his life experiences into the type ONE general narrative.

Ebert, on the other hand, identifies as a TWO earlier in the book without divulging his personal experiences as this type.

For the sake of efficiency, several of these aspects and symbols that construct a given

Enneagram type for Rohr and Ebert have been assembled into TABLE 1 and TABLE 2 below.

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TABLE 1: A consolidation of key traits, common behaviors, and theological associations with each of the nine Enneagram types according to Rohr and Ebert (2001). Three tables like this can be found at the very end of The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective on pages 294-296. Self- Defense Common Associated Invitation to Fruit of the TYPE Image Avoidance Temptation Mechanism Pitfall Root Sin Maturity Spirit Cheerful I am Control of Hyper- Anger Vexation Perfection Growth Tranquility ONE right Reactions sensitivity (Resentment) (Patience) Suppressing Helping Flattery Pride Freedom I help Repression Humility TWO Neediness Others (Obligingness) (Presumptuousness) (Grace) I am Vanity Untruth Hope Truthfulness Failure Efficiency Identification THREE successful (Superficiality) (Deceit) (God’s Will) (Honesty) Originality I am Artistic Depression Consistency Ordinariness Authenticity Envy (Union with FOUR different Sublimation (Melancholy) (Balance) God) Wisdom I see Withdrawal Emotional Emptiness Knowledge Avarice (God’s Objectivity FIVE through (Segmentation) Stinginess Dispensation) I do Inappropriate Cowardice / Fear Faith Security Projection Courage SIX my duty Behavior Recklessness (Anxiety) (Trust) Realism I am Intemperance Pain Idealism Rationalization Scheming (Cooperation Sober Joy SEVEN happy (Gluttony) with God) Mercy I am Shamelessness Weakness Justice Denial Revenge (Interpersonal Innocence EIGHT strong (Lust) Truths) I am Self- Lethargy Love Conflict Numbing Laziness Action NINE content Deprecation (Comfort) (Unconditional)

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TABLE 2: A consolidation of symbolic, social, and Christological associations with each of the nine Enneagram types according to Rohr and Ebert (2001). Three tables like this can be found at the very end of The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective on pages 294-296. Associated Self- Associated Associated Associated Individuals or Social Preserving Style of Qualities of TYPE Colors Animals Countries Denomination Subtype Subtype Speaking Christ Terrier St. Paul Teaching Non- Teaching Silver Ant Switzerland Martin Luther Anxiety Tolerance ONE Richard Rohr Adaptability Moralizing Bee Karl Barth Patience Donkey Mary Magdalene Care Flattering Red Cat Italy St. John Ambition Privilege Compassion TWO Florence Nightingale Advising Puppy Vincent de Paul Solidarity Chameleon Biblical Jacob Ambition United States Wooing Yellow Peacock Pontius Pilate Prestige Security Energy THREE of America Bill Clinton Inspiring Eagle Dorothy Day Vision Basset Hound, Shulamite Creativity Bright Lyrical Dove, Oyster, France Prophet Jeremiah Shame Resistance Sensitivity FOUR Violet Daniel Berrigan Lamenting Black Horse Thomas Merton Naturalness Owl St. Thomas Distance Explaining Blue Fox Great Britain Zacchaeus Totems Refuge Sobriety FIVE Hildegard of Bingen Systematizing Hamster Dietrich Bonhoeffer Wisdom Hare, Deer, Mouse, St. Peter Fidelity Warning Beige Wolf, Rat, German Germany Roman Catholic Church Duty Warmth Obedience SIX Helen Palmer Limiting Shepherd Oscar Romero Trust King Solomon Festiveness Monkey Ireland Readiness to Garrulous Green Epicurus Defense Joie de vivre SEVEN Butterfly Brazil Mozart Sacrifice Story-Telling Francis of Assisi Pain Black Rhinoceros Spain King David Confrontation Satisfactory Challenging & Rattlesnake Oppressed Ernest Hemingway Friendships Clarity EIGHT Martin Luther King, Jr. Survival Unmasking White Tiger, Bull Nations Mother Teresa Authority Sloth Prophet Jonah Composure Monotonous Gold Elephant Mexico Liberal Protestantism Participation Appetite Peaceableness NINE Carl Gustav Jung Rambling Dolphin, Whale Pope John XXIII Love

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References

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