Blessed are the poor. Surrender is a creative act and is an act of your inner strength. Cynthia Bourgeault
The Paradox of Active and Passive
“The will is an active force; it is not naturally an organ of perception. In order for it to be able to perceive it should not—it must not—become passive, for then it would fall asleep or fade away, because its very nature is activity, and in ceasing to be active it would cease to be will; no, it should change center of gravitation, i.e. to transform ‘my will’ into ‘thy will’. It is the inner act of love alone which can accomplish the change of center that the will uses or around which it gravitates. Instead of gravitating around the center ‘me’, it can orientate itself towards the center ‘you’. This transformation, effected by love, is what one calls ‘obedience’.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p317.
“Inspiration is activity and passivity—or effort and grace simultaneously. Grace and human effort—Ora et Labora.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p396.
“Nothing is true until it is assimilated. Truth can only be your experience of it — not in books. There is a process of half-thinking and half-imagining which is very intimate. It is partly conversation with oneself, partly being oneself, partly seeing oneself and partly listening to oneself – to new meanings that are entering. It is half-active, half-passive, and something that is purely oneself, neither active nor passive.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p23.
Active Passivity: The Nature of Surrender
“Surrender is a wholly and all-encompassing act.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystery of Death 2021, 47:48 Rebooting Jesus with Cynthia Bourgeault.
“In the spiritual vocabulary, surrender is a creative act and is an act of your inner strength, where what you do is you let go of that crazy, neurotic, unhappy, smaller self.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind Awakened Heart, 5:15 disc 1 track 5.
“Centering Prayer is an intentional practice, working with surrender. Surrender is your intention.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Stonington 2016 Teilhard, 40:00 2016-06-10f Friday Evening Session.
“I think this is one of the most beautiful ways of looking at this being in the will of God, not as a passive victimization, but as an active growth. I, God, press through your branches into the sap and bear fruit on your boughs. Nice, eh? I mean, where would God be without the tree?” Cynthia Bourgeault, Boehme for Beginners, 0:00 disc 2 track 7.
“There are two kinds of obedience. If I try to obey in my passive state, unconsciously, I lose myself and cannot serve. But if I come to a more active state, I can voluntarily obey in submitting. This requires a state of conscious passivity in which only the attention is active and the functions are intentionally maintained in a passive state.” Jeanne de Salzmann, Reality of Being, p219.
Passive Activity: The Nature of Effort in the Work
“All effort in the Work is passive. Self-development starts from passive Do. Effort is something very quiet and deep and clearly seen. It is not noisy, not pretense. It is not contracting muscles and thrusting chins out. Effort in the Work is about effort on your inner states, where you are in your psychological country. All effort in the Work is about becoming more conscious of yourself to yourself. All effort in the Work is about seeing where you are inside—in what place internally in this vast psychological country—and separating yourself from the innumerable bad places in that country.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1005.
“It is not from the rich personality that the Work grows in a man but from the starved and real essence. This is why the Work reverses everything, and makes the active passive and the passive active. Do any of you really imagine that if this Work were a great success in life and were broadcast night and day it could retain any inner secret force and meaning?” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p294.
The Integration of Active and Passive in Spiritual Practice
“Concerning intuition, this is due, likewise to a single active principle. Here the lower self identifies itself with the higher Self, i.e. it raises itself to the latter and effaces itself (in the higher Self) to the point of becoming a passive and mute presence. And then it is the higher Self alone which is active.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p392.
“Things that you need to help you on your journey will come to you. But only when you are on your journey, not some daydream you’ve concocted of what a journey looks like. So that’s the first thing. The conscious labor must be conscious and it must be voluntary. It begins after you’ve given your consent to the conditions in which you work.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2012 Gurdjieff for Christian Contemplatives, 23:54 23 Sunday Morning Teaching.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Logion 42
Yeshua says…
Come into being as you pass away.
(Bauman)
Logion 42
Yeshua says…
Be passersby.
(Leloup)
“The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but do not build your dwelling there.”
(Arabic inscription at the site of a mosque at Fatehpur Sikri, India attributed to Isa or YesHUa)
Wait Without Hope
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (East Coker V)
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)
Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Thomas, Inner Traditions, 2005
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
0 Comments