Cynthia Bourgeault - 12 Aug

There are few spiritual teachers who give us genuinely fresh insight, but even fewer who give us the tools so we can come to those insights for ourselves. Cynthia Bourgeault does both, and does them very well!

Richard Rohr, OFM, author of Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

A masterful work. Cynthia Bourgeault invites us to follow Jesuss path of self-emptying love, and she describes wisdom practices that we Christians can use every day to transform our own minds so that we too can see with the eyes of Christ.

Jim Marion, author of Putting on the Mind of Christ

Bourgeault centers her expansive house of wisdom in the sayings and extraordinary death of the gospel Jesus as she turns light and darkness into a living poetry of self-emptying vision.

Willis Barnstone, author of The Other Bible, coauthor of The Gnostic Bible

ABOUT THE BOOK

If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus and approach the Gospels as though for the first time, something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of the transformation of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault is a masterful guide to Jesuss vision and to the traditional contemplative practices you can use to experience the heart of his teachings for yourself.

CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT, PhD, is an Episcopal priest, teacher, and retreat and conference leader. She is the author of several books, including Chanting the Psalms and Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.

Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications.

Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala.

The Wisdom Jesus

Transforming Heart and Minda New Perspective on Christ and His Message

Cynthia Bourgeault

Shambhala

Boston & London

2011

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2008 by Cynthia Bourgeault

Cover art by Darina Gladiov

Fern Hill (excerpt) by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright 1945 by The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. The Gospel of Thomas (excerpts), translated by Lynn Bauman, copyright 2003 by Lynn Bauman. Reprinted by permission of White Cloud Press. Love is recklessness, not reason, from Living Presence by Kabir Edmund Helminski, copyright 1992 by Kabir Edmund Helminski. Used by permission of Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed by James D. Skatges

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bourgeault, Cynthia.

The wisdom Jesus: transforming heart and mind: a new perspective on Christ and his message/Cynthia Bourgeault.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2320-4

ISBN 978-1-59030-580-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Jesus Christ. I. Title.

BT304.9.B68 2008

232DC22

2007044952

To Gregg Anderson

Thank you for thirty years of holding the space.

My heartfelt gratitude to Nancy Smith, managing editor at Sounds True, who first invited me to shape several years worth of class notes and lectures into a CD teaching series called Encountering the Wisdom Jesus. We recorded the material in an intense three-day marathon in November 2004, and the six-CD teaching set made its debut in April 2005. The present book is an adaptation and expansion of that original product (if you prefer your learning in audio form, the series is still easily available at www.soundstrue.com). Nancys skill, sensitivity, and vision are an inseparable part of this work, and she is its official midwife. As always, I am grateful to the entire Sounds True team for their exemplary professionalism, helpfulness, and graciousness.

To my dear friend Robert Pynn, dean emeritus of the Anglican Cathedral in Calgary, Alberta, who urged me to adapt the material to book form and took the decisive step in making it happen: arranging for it to be transcribed into written form. To Ellen Lea, who patiently converted twelve hours of teaching into 108 single-spaced manuscript pages, virtually flawlessly. I am not only grateful, but amazed!

To Dave ONeal, my editor at Shambhala Publications, who took the material from transcript to manuscript with a finely tuned discernment and steady encouragement.

To Rami Shapiro and Lynn Bauman, longtime friends and colleagues, who read the manuscript closely and offered helpful comments and clarifications. To Ed Bastian and my fellow faculty members at the Spiritual Paths Institute, who have helped me to reintroduce the Wisdom Jesus to a wider interspiritual audience. To Ken Wilber for his brilliant paradigms, and to Sherif Baba Chatalkaya for his boundless heart.

To my many students over the years, particularly in the Aspen Wisdom School, who have helped me work through every bit of this material. And to my faithful friends in the Contemplative Society in Victoria, British Columbia, whose prayers and financial support made it possible to bring the project to completion.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge in a special way The Rt. Rev. Robert J. ONeill, my bishop here in Colorado, whose steadfast support during these past five years has been a crucial ingredient in the emergence of my own writers voice. In these times of spiritual ferment, when one hardly knows whether one is a midwife or a hospice worker to the traditional forms of institutional Christianity, Bishop ONeill has led the way with clarity, compassion, and imagination. He renews my faith that Christianity will emerge from this time of winnowing with a deeper and more authentic commitment to the path of its risen Master.

PART ONE

If you are searching,

You must not stop until you find.

When you find, however,

You will become troubled.

Your confusion will give way to wonder.

In wonder you will reign over all things.

Your sovereignty will be your rest.

T HE WORDS ABOVE are from the Gospel of Thomas, recovered in 1945 amid the Nag Hammadi scrolls in the Egyptian desert and now largely accepted as an authentic teaching of Jesus. The quotation in this version is probably longer than youre familiar with from the Bible; the other gospels stop with seek and you shall find. But here Jesus lays out several additional steps to tell us what the search is really like. Seeking leads to finding, yes, but the result of that finding is often to plunge you into confusion and disorientation as the new information rattles the cage of your old paradigm. Only gradually, as you can make room for what this gospel calls wonder, does a new universe begin to knit itself together around you, and you come to rest on a new foundation. Until the next go-round, that is.

Thomass words are timely because in this book well be embarking on an exploration of some rich spiritual territory, which may be very challenging precisely because its so near at hand. We will be attempting a new take on Jesus, a new look at him as a master in an ancient spiritual tradition which Ill call