“Stand firm, do not bend, is exactly what the tradition is talking about when they say surrender.” Cynthia Bourgeault

God’s Protection and Timing

“You know, you’ll be undone by a revelation, but your Heavenly Father knows you’re inside and knows at this point that you come along enough that you can face a little bit more of this and stand in the presence of it without being destroyed. God is not in the business of smashing egos. God knows they’re needed to protect us until we can stand on our own.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 41:00 Day 2c Evening Session.

Here I Stand

“You finally knew that conscience had spoken in a situation is that you were able to step into it and act out of it, that the sort of weighing and swaying back and forth, and maybe this, and maybe that, and should I do this, or should I do that, ended. Here I stay, as Martin Luther said, here I stand, I can do no other. And there you stand.

“And you know that you’re going to take a next step. You may not even know what it is, but you know that you stand in it and that it’ll be right. And that because it’s like the Quakers would say, you have surrendered to the inner light and it leads thee and guides thee.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 30:23 Day 4b Afternoon Teaching.

Standing Firm As Surrender

“It was a real aha for me that I realized what [Jacob Boehme] was talking about when he says, ‘stand firm, do not bend’, is exactly what the tradition is talking about when they say surrender. Spiritually, they mean the same thing. Because standing firm and not bending means refusing to collapse the tension of those two axes.

“My life and time with its psychological stuff, and the divine creative intelligence. You stand firm on both of those axes, feet planted in Being. You don’t just run off into psychological consideration. You’re If you do that, ‘you will see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts’.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind Awakened Heart, 6:17 disc4 track6.

Roots from Another Dimension

“The gathering of Being is precisely what gives us the capacity to stand in this world. But the deep inner letting go, non-possessiveness, non-attachment capacity to actively and graciously yield back is the counteractive force in whatever world. And as we participate in it, we begin to discover the roots of Being coming to us from another place and in another dimension.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 60:00 Day 4b Afternoon Teaching.

Work and Grace Together

“When you get subtle enough to taste the difference between World 24 and World 12 infusions, you begin to sense that we are in a cosmos which is constantly interpenetrating, giving and receiving. You sense these dimensions, you don’t intuit them, think about them, theorize them. You sense them. And so in that way, it doesn’t discount the teaching on struggle as an act of will, but it softens it.

“And for me, it brings together the work and the grace in a really beautiful way. Because we do the work of the struggle. We do the work to stand there with our conscious labor and our intentional suffering. But at the same time, lying at our disposal as close as our attention and sensation is the capacity to actually tune in on and ride with these subtle currents of grace that flow through the silence, that flow through the quieted atmosphere and are always there sustaining us in life, if only we can tune in.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Building 2nd Body June 2022, 1:09:14 3-transub-spiritual-substances.

Stand Still in That Which Is Pure

“♪ Stand still in that which is pure ♪ ♪ After you see yourselves ♪ ♪ And then mercy comes in ♪ ♪ After thou seest thy thoughts and temptations ♪ ♪ Do not think, but submit ♪ ♪ And then power comes in ♪ ♪ Stand still in that which shows and discovers ♪ ♪ For there doth strength immediately come ♪ ♪ And stand still in the light and submit to it ♪ ♪ And the other will be hushed and gone ♪ ♪ And then contentment comes ♪” George Fox, 1652, Epistle #10. Works 7:20. Chant by Paulette Meier.

Turn and Stand

“Opening to the force of attention evokes a sense of wholeness and equilibrium. One can glimpse a possibility of a state of awareness immeasurably superior to that of the reactive mechanism, an awareness which transcends one’s automatic subject-object mode of response. Turn and stand, turn and stand, turn and stand.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2012 Gurdjieff for Christian Contemplatives, 50:40 06 Wednesday Evening Q & A.

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Logion 23
Yeshua says…
I choose you,
one from a thousand,
two from ten thousand,
and you will stand to your own feet
having become single and whole.

Logion 28
Yeshua says…
I stood to my feet in the midst of the cosmos,
appearing outwardly in flesh.
I discovered that all were drunk
but none were thirsty,
and my soul ached for the children of humanity,
for their hearts are blind.
They cannot see from within.
They have come into the cosmos empty,
and they are leaving it empty.
At the moment you are inebriated,
but when freed from the effects of wine,
you too may turn and stand.

Logion 18
His student said to him,
“So, tell us, then, what our end and destiny will be?”
Yeshua answered,
“Have you already discovered your origin,
so that you are now free to seek after your end?
It is only at your source that you will find your destiny.
Blessed are those who come to stand
in their place of origination,
for it is there that they will know their end–
never tasting death.”

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Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)