“Sometimes, it takes the complete collapse of every outer paradigm for you to realize you’ve just touched the pearl of great price.” Cynthia Bourgeault
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Matthew 13:45
“Notice he had to sell first before he could buy. He sold what was valueless in comparison with the pearl. The merchant is yourself in relation to the Work. To sell means, psychologically, to get rid of former interests you have valued by drawing energy out of them through not identifying. The released energies can then go to the ‘pearl’—which for us is the Work and the attaining of consciousness. All this will take very many years. It is a mysterious process like a seed that grows no man knows how, and it leads to a gradual transvaluation of one’s previous valuations. To buy means to appropriate a thing, to make a thing one’s very own psychologically. Psychic energy is like money. With little free psychic energy one can buy little new understanding.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1635.
“The pearl of great price is conscience.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, Day 1a Morning Teaching.
“There is throughout the inner tradition, this strong, strong teaching that the recognition of the exceptional fish, the hidden treasure, the pearl, brings with it the obligation to buy it at some cost. In other words, you have to pay for it. This is very, very keenly built into the tradition, and the paying for it, whatever we mean by that, is part of the recognition. I think that a lot of us do get in trouble on our early phases of the life by not recognizing and not kicking in soon enough with the understanding that something has to be exchanged to create room for the new to continue to grow.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Divine Exchange, 4:40 Divine 02-10.
“Keep within. And when they say, ‘Look here or look there is Christ, go not forth, for Christ is within you. And those who try to draw your minds away from the teaching inside you, are opposed to Christ. For the measure’s within, and the light of God is within, and the pearl is within, though hidden.” George Fox, 1652, Epistle, #19 , Works 7:27.
“There’s an exact parallel with the Quakers and this whole business of the light within. Measures within and the light of God is within and the pearl is within you though hidden. And we think, oh, the Quakers say there’s a light of God in everybody. And the thing about the arousal of conscience, the arousal of the light is that it doesn’t make you feel good. It makes you feel awful. You get pinned to the wall. You get right into remorse. You see. What conscience does is shine the searchlight on all the places where you’ve been asleep, you’ve been hypocritical while you’re saying one thing and working the other, where you’re pouring in two directions.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 48:30 07-WED Q&A.
“There’s a wonderful passage in Jacob Boehme, in one of his early essays about the parable of the pearl of great price. And the seeker is talking with Sophia Wisdom about the pearl. And she says to him, in this life you can glimpse it and taste it, but I can’t let you have it or you’d mess it up. And it’s true because the moment that you think of it as something that you can grab and put in your hip pocket, your ego self has taken it right back over. So we have to just take it that that’s one of the operating difficulties of where we human beings live right on the cusp between the infinite and the finite. But you’ll taste it, you’ll know without knowing when you hit that vibrational current of your own aliveness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Divine Exchange, 03:42 03-11.
“Don’t let your attention go running this way and that way and that way, whoring after everything. Keep it gathered, present. This is something that the Eastern Orthodox tradition knows as vigilance or attention of the heart. And whatever else it is, it begins by not allowing your attention to be grabbed again and again by objects out there. That as we begin to learn to draw the living pool of attentiveness within, we discover that yes, the measure is within, and the light of God is within, and the pearl is within. The pearl of great price.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Integral Light Dec 2021, 2:31 3.2 Vigilance.
“Overhead, the wild geese are flying, mysterious, free, announcing your place in the family of things. Not solving your problems, but announcing your place. Somehow in the midst of all this, you belong. And there’s a little fierce laser piece of consciousness that knows it, that can retract right in and say, I am here. And sometimes it takes just the complete collapse of every outer paradigm for you to touch it and realize you’ve just touched the pearl of great price.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2015, 32:35 Day 2.5 Afternoon Teaching The Gospel of Thomas Logion 2.
“Coiled within us is something that is called the second body. Gurdjieff called it the Kesdjan body, but it’s been spoken about in all the great traditions. Christianity sometimes calls it the resurrection body or the second body. And it’s the lighter body that lives within us. When we sing that line, ♪ And the pearl is within you though hidden ♪ It’s pretty easy to think of that as the second body. And that second body is under the laws of world 24.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 31:41 08 Monday pm Teaching.
“What you can observe internally you cease to be identified with. This begins inner freedom. You then can at night go through the day and all its mechanical effects on you. By observation, both at the time and in retrospect, you separate from all these effects. This is a marvelous gift. And if you employ it, the results are marvelous. But you must keep awake in order to do this. Once you know and then understand this secret, you have something comparable to the pearl spoken of in the Gospels.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1144.
Logion 76
Yeshua says...
The Father's Realm can be compared
to a merchant who discovered a pearl
hidden in a consignment of goods.
Wisely, he returned the goods
and bought the single pearl instead.
You too must seek out for yourselves
an enduring treasure
in that realm where moths cannot devour
nor insects come to destroy.
Logion 3
Yeshua says...
If your spiritual guides say to you,
"Look, the Divine Realm is in the sky,"
well then the birds will get there ahead of you.
If they say, "It is in the sea,"
then the fish will precede you.
No, divine Reality exists
inside and all around you.
Only when you have come to know your true Self
will you be fully known—realizing at last that you are
a child of the Living One.
If, however, you never come to know who you truly are,
you are a poverty-stricken being,
and it is your "self" which lies impoverished.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Read more Impressions on the Parables.
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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