“Attention in the heart, in the great tradition of Orthodox Hesychasm, praying from the heart.” Cynthia Bourgeault.
“The unique characteristics of Centering Prayer, which can be felt as a distinct shift, a distinct, subtle, energetic transformation, I relate that to the whole Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition of attention in the heart, the great tradition of Orthodox Hesychasm, the praying from the heart, where the theme song is to put the mind in the heart, put the mind in the heart, put the mind in the heart. And it’s clear in these texts that they’re not talking about turn off your mental, cognitive, and get emotional. They’re not meaning that at all.
“So this drop is a way of entraining mind and heart, letting go of the kind of cycles and operating systems that run in the mind, moving beyond the operating system of the mind to the operating system of mind-heart. And I’m looking at centering prayer as a way of beginning to actually put teeth in that.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer: Knowing Without Knowing, 4:28 Disc1a track 01-03.
“When you pull your attention from the mind to the heart, you’re bringing yourself lower in your body. You’re thinking and existing and becoming stabilized closer to your own natural center of gravity. And this will help you tremendously in three-brained awareness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 43:02 19 Wed eve QA.
“It’s an energized state of awareness, and suppose that’s what’s really meant when the Eastern Orthodox tradition speaks of vigilance or nepsis or attention of the heart, and when the Western tradition speaks of recollection. It doesn’t mean that you’re thinking vigilantly and alertly about something, focusing that scrunchy energy of your forehead right on it. It means that with the attention deeply grounded in the heart as the epicenter of a three-dimensional sphere, your attention forms itself as a tensile space of non-dual objectless awareness in which deep perception occurs, and in which there actually is content imparted and content retrievable, but you can’t retrieve it by the usual methods of the mind.
“It’s a very, very intense alertness, a field of tensile alertness that corresponds profoundly to the, if you want to call it that, the information flow that doesn’t originate on this plane, but connects us in a profound way with the heart of God and with a divine knowingness. Okay, suppose this is true. Worth a wager.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer: Knowing Without Knowing, 2:50 Disc1b track 01-07.
“It’s really fun to have your drama. It’s really fun to feel slighted, wounded, meritorious, urgent, important, all those things. And you can have them. But you won’t get the heart as an undivided instrument of spiritual perception if you gratify yourself on that other level. So that’s basically been the teaching as it’s been handed down through the Christian masters of radical transformation. And what you might call that is the radical ascent to non-dual consciousness.
“Non-dual consciousness, non-dual identity in the Christian tradition is carried in the heart. And as the heart becomes pure, which means undivided, it sees God. The treatise by Symeon, the New Theologian, asks, how do we develop this attention in the heart? He says, ‘You should observe freedom from three things:’
1. We should have freedom from all cares.
2. Your conscience should be clear in all things.
3. You should have a complete absence of passionate attachment.”
Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2015, 3:24 Day 5.2a Morning Final Teaching Part 1 of 2.
“What Symeon the New Theologian is calling out as the essence of the mind of Christ is this radical non-clinging. And the way that we put the mind in the heart is through being able to emulate him— imitātio they call it, imitate him—but that doesn’t mean copying from the outside. It means finding the place from within you where you, too, can participate in this radical non-clinging. Symeon suggests that all of these three practices will help you to put the mind in the heart. The practice of observing and learning equanimity or in other words, not letting attraction and aversion be your motivation, but something else. Keeping your conscience clean. And beginning to watch when you get hooked on those worldly attachments, those needs, and releasing it. He’s teaching a path here of radical non-clinging as the path to non-duality. And that non-duality in the Christian path is pretty much synonymous with having the mind in the heart, so that it can function as this organ of spiritual perception. It can make clear, so that it can see the whole picture from the point of view of conscience.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2015, 26:28 Day 5.2a Morning Final Teaching Part 1 of 2.
“Symeon, the New Theologian, makes a very interesting comment. He says that without attention in the heart, it is impossible to do the Beatitudes. He says, it’s impossible to be merciful and to receive mercy. It’s impossible to do. He says, basically he’s saying that without attention in your heart, you can’t do the teachings of Christ. You won’t get them because they are designed for three-centered awareness.
“They’re designed for a way of paying attention that’s lower than just this mental mind that’s always gonna be nervous and jumpy about everything. So what they’re suggesting is get your attention out of your intellectual center, pull it down, pull it down closer into this region of the heart, the solar plexus, stay present, learn to think from there, learn to be from there. Let that become your new center of gravity. And from there, go about what you have to do.
“So for me, what they’re really talking about is very, very close to what Gurdjieff says to stay within a collected state. You have the attention in the heart, vigilance, staying within your atmosphere.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 39:28 08 Monday pm Teaching.
Logion 5
Yeshua says…
Come to know the One in the presence before you,
and everything hidden from you will be revealed.
For there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed,
and nothing buried that will not be raised.
Logion 113
His students asked him,
"On what day will the kingdom arrive? "
"Its coming cannot be perceived from the outside," he said.
"You cannot say, 'Look, it's over there,'
or, 'No, here it is.’
The Father's realm is spreading out
across the face of the earth,
and humanity is not able to perceive it."
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
0 Comments