Cynthia Bourgeault: wisdom gospels

The gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and Philip all clearly belong to the wider tradition of universal wisdom, or sophia perennis, with its core notion of conscious and integral transformation. Unlike the canonical gospels, which emphasize “right belief” as the basis for salvation, these wisdom gospels emphasize “right practice.” They are transformation-minded.



Cynthia Bourgeault

Some Richard Rohr Quotes

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

The great discovery is always that what we are searching for has already been given! I did not find it; it found me.

If it’s authentically experienced, Christianity is the overcoming of the split from God’s side once and for all!

The people who know God well—the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.

Forgiveness has nothing to do with logic. It is the final breakdown of logic.

God has quietly broken through and stands perfectly revealed in the now of things.





Richard Rohr

Thomas Merton: logic of God

There is a vast difference between the logic of men and the logic of God...

There is indeed no human logic in the ways of interior prayer, only Divine paradox.




Thomas Merton

Abhishiktananda: Jesus is the guru

Jesus is not the founder-head of a religion; that came later. Jesus is the guru who announces the mystery.



Abhishiktananda [Fr Henri le Saux]

Abhishiktananda: essential mystery

Christ is less real in his temporal history than in the essential mystery of my being.



Abhishiktananda [Fr Henri le Saux]

Abhishiktananda: a mere idol

As long as man attempts to seize and hold God in his words and concepts, he is embracing a mere idol.



Abhishiktananda [Fr Henri le Saux]

Thomas Merton: about ourselves

Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.



Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton: our idea of God

So much depends on our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however pure and perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really is.



Thomas Merton

Cloud of Unknowing: sharp dart

You are to strike that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love. —



Cloud of Unknowing (trans. Ira Progoff)

Cloud of Unknowing: I cannot think

I would therefore leave all those things of which I can think and choose for my love that thing of which I cannot think.



Cloud of Unknowing

Jean-Yves Leloup: absolutizing

The dramatic "sin" of the contemporary world is its relativizing of the absolute and its absolutizing of the relative.



Jean-Yves Leloup

Meister Eckhart: truly nothing

If you do nothing, truly nothing, God cannot help but come into you.



Meister Eckhart

Hildegard of Bingen: until we sing

There is the Music of Heaven in all things and we have forgotten how to hear it until we sing.




Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen: relatedness

Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, & under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.



Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen: I am the rain

I am the rain coming from the dew / that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.

I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work. / I am the yearning for good.



Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen: The Word

Without the Word of God no creature has meaning. / God's Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.

The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. / This Word manifests in every creature.

Now this is how the spirit is in the flesh - the Word is indivisible from God.



Hildegard of Bingen

Gospel of Mary Magdalene: my soul sang

And my soul sang: "What has bound me has been slain. What encompassed me has been vanquished. Desire has reached its end, and...

...I am freed from Ignorance. I left one world behind with the aid of another, and now as Image I have been freed from the analog. ...

...I am liberated from the chains of forgetfulness which have existed in time. From this moment onward I go forward...

...into the fullness beyond time, & there, where time rests in the stillness of Eternity, I will repose in silence.



Gospel of Mary Magdalene; translation Bauman, Bauman, Bourgeault

Thomas Merton: what God is

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is.



Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton: only SUM

For the contemplative there is no cogito ("I think") and no ergo ("therefore") but only SUM, I AM.



Thomas Merton

Cynthis Bourgeault: Jesus as Tantric Master

If I were to describe the kenotic path [Jesus] laid out in its broadest generic terms, using metaphysical rather than theological language, the category that most closely fits is “tantric.” Now I know “tantra” is an immediate scare word to a lot of Christians, who think it means making a religion out of having good sex. But “tantra” in its real sense is an ancient and authentic spiritual path, based on a comprehensive metaphysical system. The symmetrical opposite of the way of the ascetic (or brahmacharya, to use the comparable generic name), it seeks the unitive state— that is the transcendence of separation and duality—through a complete self-emptying or self-outpouring.

... In the kenotic or tantric path, anything can come toward you, and you can embrace it fully; you preserve your chastity simply by not clinging. In the free flow of this coming and going (which as we saw in the last chapter belongs to the perichoresis, or “dance around,” of divine love) you dwell in safety.




Cynthis Bourgeault in ‘Wisdom Jesus’