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An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault Course Transcript & Companion Guide DAY 1 OF WISDOM SCHOOL Day 1.1 Morning Reading, Chant, Meditation & Body Prayer Day 1.2 Morning Teaching The Three Centers of Intelligence* Day 1.3 Morning Conscious Practical Work Day 1.4 Afternoon Reading, Chant & Meditation (offered by co-leaders) Day 1.5 Afternoon Teaching Introduction to The Gospel of Thomas & Logion 1* © WisdomWayofKnowing.org An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault—Course Transcript & Companion Guide Notes: © WisdomWayofKnowing.org Day 1.1 Morning Reading, Chant, Meditation & Body Prayer The Gospel of Thomas Logion 10 Yeshua says, “See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.” —The Gospel of Thomas, Translation by Lynn Bauman [01:00] [Chant with Darlene Franz on harmonium: Speak Through the Earthquake] Speak through the earthquake The wind and the fire Oh-oh Still small voice of love [04:35] [bell for meditation] [31:13] [bell to end meditation] The Gospel of Thomas Logion 10 Jesus says, “Behold, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.” [from] Logion 82 Jesus says, “Whoever is close to me, is close to the fire.” [32:01] [final bell] © WisdomWayofKnowing.org 1 An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault—Course Transcript & Companion Guide Notes: © WisdomWayofKnowing.org Day 1.1 Morning : Reading, Chant, Meditation & Body Prayer 2 Day 1.2 Morning Teaching The Three Centers of Intelligence An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault Course Transcript & Companion Guide Part 1: Introduction to Three Centers of Intelligence, page 2 Part 2: The Moving Center, page 5 Part 3: The Intellectual Center & The Emotional Center, page 9 Part 4: How the Three Centers Interrelate & An Introduction to Conscious Practical Work, page 11 © WisdomWayofKnowing.org 1 An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault—Course Transcript & Companion Guide Introduction to The Three Centers of Intelligence (Part 1 of 4) So this morning, we’re going to talk a little bit further about Wisdom and about a topic which is really foundational to how we’re going to proceed in Wisdom School and a little bit different environment from what you might get in more sort of traditional renditions of the Christian contemplative path. I started last night with a quote that comes out of the Gurdjieff work, The Fourth Way tradition. “As your being increases, your receptivity to higher meaning increases. As your being decreases, the old meanings return.” This may take a little bit of decoding—“What’s this mean, ‘my being increasing?’” You know this really, really simply. You can tell in yourself when you’re in a bad state and “As your being increases, your receptivity when you’re in a better, I ask you to remember right now, to higher meaning increases. As your take about ten seconds and recall yourself in the worst being decreases, the old meanings kind of state you get in: angry, neurotic, intense, urgent, return.” —Maurice Nicoll whatever it is, and really kind of feel that inside with sensation; how you are there. Then compare yourself, think about how you are when you’ve just come out of meditation or seen a beautiful sunset, or somebody’s told you’ve done such good work. You’re going to get a raise. And sort of ease in to how you feel inside there. Okay. Can you feel the difference between the two and yourself? Okay? So use that as your own internal measure for what it means: the difference between being in a bad state and a good state is, when you’re in a bad state you have very little being. Okay? If that time when you’re like that, your three-year- old kid or grandkid comes along and says, “Tell me a story.” Or, “Let’s play, there’s a castle under my bed and let’s crawl under.” And you go, “Aah! Leave me alone kid!” Whereas, if you’re in a slightly more relaxed state, you accept the invitation. This is all right in your normal life. To take that and then translate it back into the statement; when your being is like this, when you’re agitated, when you’re tensed, when you’re self-preoccupied, you don’t pick up the opportunities. You don’t take advantage of what’s there in every moment for wonder, for joy, for creativity, for connection with something that’s much more mystical and much more uplifting. © WisdomWayofKnowing.org Day 1.2 Morning Teaching: The Three Centers of Intelligence 2 An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault—Course Transcript & Companion Guide And when you’re in a larger state, a more profoundly settled one, you’re able to run with possibilities, and to see possibilities you couldn’t see when you were trapped beneath your own event horizon. Really, in short, the business of virtually all spiritual traditions is to help raise your state of being so that you become open to things that are there anyway, but that you don’t see when you’re too sort of shattered and tense, and off-balance. It’s really fundamentally as simple as that. Another story—to take it in a slightly different direction about being in higher states—About 15 years ago now, a monk died at the monastery of Snowmass, my spiritual home away from home. Father Theophane, who was a wonderful, wonderful fellow who actually looked like the Buddha dressed up as Rasputin: shaggy hair, beaming eyes, this friendly, playful nature. One of the great gurus of the planet and gave everybody joy. Well when Theo died, they did the usual protocols at the monastery. They laid him out in his Trappist robes in the middle of the congregation. They came to do the requiem mass to send him off. At the end, it was really interesting, people walked out of that church and there was a couple of completely different meanings. It’s like they’d been in different funerals. Some people said, “Oh, it’s so sad. He was so alive and now he looks so stony and gray lying there on his pallet. Isn’t a tragedy?” And others said, “That rascal, he was playing with us all the time.” What was the difference? Simply that some people only saw his physical presence. Others could pick up his imaginal presence, his energy still there in the room. So, that’s another way of looking—a slightly more esoteric way of looking—at this question of being increases. The ones that had enough being to pick him up and really be there with him at that energetic level had a whole different experience of what was happening. He was not absent or dead. He was present and dancing. Another way, as our being increases, our receptivity to higher The call over and over again in all meaning increases. spiritual traditions is: wake up; awaken; increase your being; wake up. Be here. A couple of other names for “being,” higher being, more being. When we’re in a state of being, we can also say we’re present. And another term that’s used consistently in all over everywhere in the inner tradition including very, very strongly with Jesus, we’re awake. The call over and over again in all spiritual traditions is: wake up; awaken; increase your being; wake up. Be here. In approximately two weeks, the trumpet shall sound and the clarion call shall again tumble from the pulpits: it’s Advent— awake, awake! Be watchful. Be vigilant. It’s the theme of the season we’re coming up to liturgically in the Christian Church. But the catch is, nobody tells you how to wake up. You hear people yell, “Awake!” It’s like a little alarm clock just went off. You just go back to sleep more nervously. How do you wake up? And what does presence even mean? Sometimes, it looks like just doing everything in slow motion. “I am present. I lift my feet so mindfully.” Is that presence? I don’t know. But the problem is and I think anyone, if the truth be told, really starts searching for this, the problem is we’re faced with an imperative that’s urgently given to us with absolutely no clue what state we’re aiming for or how to get there. No wonder people keep going around in the same sort of tracks. © WisdomWayofKnowing.org Day 1.2 Morning Teaching: The Three Centers of Intelligence 3 An Introductory Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault—Course Transcript & Companion Guide One of the things I find most useful about the little schematic I’m about to share with you is that it gives you some quantitative measurements you can work with about when you’re awake and when you’re asleep, when you’re present and when you’re not present. And it gives you some really specific things to do to change the state when you evaluate that you’re not present, that you’re not awake. In that way, it becomes a wonderful, wonderful tool for moving toward a state of greater objective presence. I think it’s also the curricular foundation of the Wisdom School. This is the Gurdjieff notion of Three-centered Awareness or, as he often calls it, Three-brained Awareness. The assertion here is that human beings have not simply a single system of intelligence in them, but actually three major centers. That there is certainly the intelligence of the Three Centers of Intelligence: 1.

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