For anyone raised in the Christian tradition whose heart is telling them to search deeper, Cynthia Bourgeault is a source of illumination. This modern-day mystic shares contemplative practices as a necessary step to understanding the true teachings of Jesus.
Who She Is
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, mystic, writer, and internationally recognized retreat leader dedicated to recovering the ancient Christian contemplative and Wisdom path and growing its practice in contemporary life. She is a member of the Global Peace Initiative for Women Contemplative Council and a founding director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Chapel Wisdom School. She is part of the core faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation and the principal teacher and advisor at the Contemplative Society. Bourgeault is the author of eight books that offer fresh insight into Christian topics.
What She Teaches
Cynthia Bourgeault’s broader and more inclusive theological vision may seem like a new development in Christianity, but it is actually rooted in the most ancient elements of the tradition. Contemplative practices such as centering prayer and kenosis, or self-emptying, are central to a path of experiencing God in all of reality. Bourgeault’s Christianity is a personal experience of God’s grace and a way to fully understand and embody Jesus’s teachings on love and compassion
Why You’ll Love Her
There is no dogma in Cynthia Bourgeault’s message. Her vocabulary—and it is an extensive one, drawing from scholarly texts and philosophical concepts from a well-read life of contemplation—is one of radical inclusion. For many people, Bourgeault’s insights are the missing link to understanding the teachings of Jesus. She focuses on cultivating the level of consciousness needed for the true meaning to emerge, on its own, in individual understanding. She is also dedicated to making the mystical accessible. Esoteric, Bourgeault points out, does not mean secretive and hidden away; it often means hidden in plain sight, and until one reaches a certain level of receptivity, it can be missed entirely.
How She Found the Spiritual Path
For Bourgeault, the circumstances of her early life provided fertile ground for her spiritual awakening. She was born in a small town west of Philadelphia, deep in Quaker country, to a mother who was a devout Christian Scientist. Bourgeault attended a Quaker school, where she resonated deeply with the tradition of Silent Meeting. “What was formed in me was the basic reference points for a contemplative life,” Bourgeault explains. Throughout her childhood, Bourgeault struggled with two competing maps of the universe—the one taught in her Christian Science Sunday School class and the natural mysticism and intimate silence learned in Quaker meetings.
The turning point came in high school when Bourgeault took a class on religious thought. Here, confronted by viewpoints across all spectrums of spirituality and philosophy, her deeper questions about life surfaced. She eventually solved her Christian Science-Quaker standoff by discovering Episcopalianism. She was ordained, served in parishes, and continued to gravitate toward the monastic and mystical.
In the process, Bourgeault became “more and more intrigued and disturbed by how Christianity—a religion that has one of the most loving and inclusive gurus that has ever walked the face of the planet at its epicenter—has tended to develop itself in formats that were so rigid and exclusive and non-generous,” she says. “Why didn’t people walk the talk? That became more and more of a heartbreak to me.” The issue led Bourgeault to philosopher Jacob Needleman’s Lost Christianity in 1980, and a light bulb went off. People cannot just decide to be conscious; there is a missing piece that must be found in order to attain the level of consciousness needed to understand and follow Jesus’s teachings, which came from the absolute highest level of consciousness. Without that missing piece, the teachings will continue to be misunderstood and diluted.
Bourgeault began to study the work of G.I. Gurdjieff, an Armenian-born spiritual teacher who recovered and transmitted ancient spiritual wisdom without the intermediaries of religion or dogma. Her own teachings advocate the meditative practice of centering prayer. She has worked closely with fellow teachers and colleagues including Thomas Keating, Bruno Barnhart, and Richard Rohr, and has also participated in inter-spiritual dialogues with the likes of A.H. Almaas, Kabir Helminski, Swami Atmarupananda, and Rami Shapiro.
What She Says
“According to the great wisdom traditions of the West (Christian, Jewish, Islamic), the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Its primary function is to look beyond the obvious, the boundaried surface of things, and see into a deeper reality, emerging from some unknown profundity, which plays lightly upon the surface of this life without being caught there: a world where meaning, insight, and clarity come together in a whole different way. Saint Paul talked about this other kind of perceptivity with the term “faith” (“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”), but the word “faith” is itself often misunderstood by the linear mind. What it really designates is not a leaping into the dark (as so often misconstrued) but a subtle seeing in the dark, a kind of spiritual night vision that allows one to see with inner certainty that the elusive golden thread glimpsed from within actually does lead somewhere.”
Where You Can Find Her
Bourgeault frequently teaches, holds retreats, and leads Wisdom Schools in America and abroad. Some events take place on her home island of Stonington, Maine. In 2019, Bourgeault will lead retreats in Arizona, British Columbia, West Virginia, Connecticut, and other locations. Check her events page, sign up for her newsletter, or follow her on social media for up-to-date announcements. A four-part workshop is also available online through the Aspen Chapel.
