“A relational field occurs when there is an exchange of information or spiritual energy between two points … any kind of finite unit in which information is being exchanged across structural levels creates a relational field.” Cynthia Bourgeault

The Source of Selfhood

“We derive our selfhood from the relational field. Nothing in the cosmos works in service to the individual.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Vocabulary of Wisdom

“Don’t watch the individual pieces, watch how they flow. The relational field has the properties, not each one of us.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Vocabulary of Wisdom

Expression of Relationship

“Practices are not a means to get somewhere, but an expression of a relationship with something that is.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Vocabulary of Wisdom

“Health is in the quality and integrity of relationship. The drop is the ocean, not separated. The indwelling Divinity doesn’t replace you but suffuses you. So that what is hidden becomes manifest.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Vocabulary of Wisdom

Two Gravitational Fields

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh: for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. (Galatians 5:17)

“These ‘opposing desires’ are the tendencies through which the two gravitational fields manifest themselves. The man who lives in the grip of gravitation of ‘this world’ at the expense of the gravitation of ‘heaven’ is the ‘carnal man’; he who lives in equilibrium between the two gravitational fields is the ‘psychic man’: and. lastly, the one who lives under the sway of the gravitation of ‘heaven’ is the ‘spiritual man’.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p307.

Mercy as Exchange Within the Field

“Helen Luke, in her wonderful book Old Age, pointed out that the word mercy comes from the same Etruscan root as mercantile and merchant, and it has to do with exchange, and that we’ve gotten the word all juridically stashed. We think of begging for mercy before a judge, so it sets us in a juridical mode to begin with, and in unequal power, and in helplessness. Whereas she suggested the real context is that we live and move and have our being within a flowing, compassionate, relational field. Divine human. And that the prayer for mercy is really a prayer that that field be reestablished within us, that we be reconnected. Because when we get in those situations where we find ourselves out of mercy, we’re out of the universe that’s holding us and supporting us, and we’re going to experience it, therefore, as hostile, oppositional, threatening, and scarce.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-Centered Knowing, 20:25 12-Wednesday Evening Reflection.

Individual vs. Person: The Evolutionary Trajectory

“For Teilhard, the whole journey of evolution goes from the unorganized multiple to the organized multitude. In other words, from things in random little bits, not dialoguing, not in association, competing, to something that forms a new unit and gets the pieces together so that they can function. And for him, it’s only in this format that true personhood is accessible. He was the first person in the West to define and insist on a difference between the individual and the person. And he saw them as two phases in an evolutionary trajectory. The individual is one of those little unorganized atoms that takes his or her reference point just from myself. The person knows that they live in a relational field from which both unity and differentiation comes. And their sense of identity and their deepest individuality is mysteriously conveyed by the whole.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Dec Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 1:02:33 04 – Monday Afternoon Teaching

“Gurdjieff and Teilhard are exactly on the same page where they say that it is the unlicensed, unbridled mistake of individual autonomy that causes everything in the cosmic ecosystem to run amok, that human beings become cancers in the body of the intergalactic surface when we think that our goal is individual anything, individual enlightenment, individual wealth, individual self-expression.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Dec Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 32:10 17 – Friday Morning Teaching.

“Let’s go find our particular little set of characteristics that makes us us. Let’s hang on to them, let’s nurture them, let’s burnish them and polish them. And let’s not let anybody else steal them or take them away, because then they’re diminishing our identity. That’s a modern compulsive, it’s a modern fixation. And Teilhard named it. An individual is one who lives in isolation from the whole and in implicit competition with the whole. So that my being is achieved the more space I take up. And the space I take up is achieved by the diminishment of your space. It’s implicitly a destructive model.

“The person is one who knows in a mysterious way that their identity is conferred within a relational field. And it’s only within a fluid, permeable relationship, interpenetrating, supple with the whole, that your true personhood sparkles like light hitting a snow field. It’s not a permanent possession, but it becomes very, very rich and real within a relational field.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2020 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard II, 20:58 016-Teilhard and the personal.

Seeing the Field Without Judgment

“We are sustained both from above and from below. So be it. Everything exists within a relational field. And if you can actually see the field and also see that the final purpose of this may be the change itself, not any particular new creation, because it’s the change, it’s the shifting, the dynamism that creates the stability. Once you see that, you can look at things in a whole new way. … And what suspends our capacity to see the relational field is our tendency to judge it. So it’s just see.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Dec Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 1:16:45 04 – Monday Afternoon Teaching

Bodhisattva Consciousness and Seamless Interdependence

“Jesus and Mahayana Buddhism arose on the same wave, on the same leaping forward of consciousness into a sudden quantum leap understanding of what you might call, for lack of better words, bodhisattva consciousness, which is the realization that we live in a completely seamless interdependent universe and that everybody’s salvation depends on everybody else’s. And that there is no such thing as individual salvation because it tears the relational field. Jesus saw that. It was seen certainly in the great teachings of Mahayana Buddhism. So I think they’re essentially joined at the hip.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer Knowing Without Knowing, 0:50 disc3b track 12.

Exchange as the Structure of Reality

“A relational field occurs when there is an exchange of information or energy between these two points, usually several millions. So a relational field can be two people, it can be a field, a group, it can be a cell in your body, synapses, your brain is a relational field, any kind of finite unit in which information is being exchanged across structural levels creates a relational field.

“And I love the definition that Elia Delio gave in one of her books about consciousness. She says, consciousness is nothing more than the exchange of information across complex levels of relationship. She says, the more complex the levels of relationship, the more the exchange of information. So the relational field is both the structure that allows information to be exchanged and it’s the actual bits exchanging them. But it creates a dynamic in which exchange is the glue that holds the thing together.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter With Evil Feb 2023 CA, 0:08 Day 2c Evening Session.

Virtues as Nutrients for the Field

“I’m pretty much convinced that faith, hope, and love, which are energies in World 24 and qualities in World 48, when you get to World 12, the Christic realm, they are actually subtle spiritual substances, nutrients that are here to feed the life of the megalocosmos, the multiverse, and the life of our own souls, and the life of those relational fields that we are always in the midst of. So I invite you to think about the virtues of that way, not as qualities, but as the power to act in certain signature ways, along certain pathways of agency within a relational field. Don’t lose track of that.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 31:06 11 Tuesday am Teaching.

Knowing Yourself Within the Dance

“Again and again and again in the inner teaching in the Gospel of Thomas, from at least a half a dozen Logia, you will find this summons coming for you that there is something to do in this life. There is something to be known. And I love the stark way it is. If you will know yourself, you will be known. If you get into the dance, you will dance. And what you will know is that you’re sons and daughters of the Living Father because when you’re in the dance you’re in the relational field of that love. But if you do not know yourself and see how the implication is there is that you can’t know yourself apart from getting into the dance if you don’t know yourself then you are in poverty and you are poverty. To live your life as your realized false self what a pity. To have so much power and control in your life to so perfectly order your outer world that you don’t have to do any work of spiritual growth at all that you never know that the castle that you were building and protecting is empty.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2015, 33:16 Day 3.5 Afternoon Teaching Gospel of Thomas.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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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.

Logion 50
Yeshua says…
Suppose you are asked,
“Where have you come from?”
say, “We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, “Are you that Light?”
say, “We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father.”
If you are questioned,
“But what is the sign of the Source within you?”
say, “It is movement and it is rest.”

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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)

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.