Our heart is really the spiritual vessel in us that mediates between our finite being and the infinite that loves us. Cynthia Bourgeault

The Call to Inner Selection

“You have not begun to select—to separate—to throw away the bad and put the good into vessels. If you want to change your level of Being you have got to see what your level of Being is.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p168

“Think what it means to ‘put the good into vessels’. Have you a vessel? Have you yet attained through self-observation any power of inner selection—that is, of throwing away negative ‘I’s, and negative thoughts and emotions, and keeping good ideas and feelings and experiences and discarding the rest?” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p343.

The Heart as Sacred Bridge

“The heart, properly understood in spiritual tradition, is the vessel, the sacred spiritual vessel, that mediates between our own deepest essence, our own decent, who we are as a created being, and the ability to hear, to respond to, and to be oriented in the holy, in the divine. So our heart is really the organ in us that bridges the gap that mediates between our finite being and that infinite that loves us.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Conscious Love, 1:45 disc 3 track 13.

Building the Vessel Through Conscious Work

“One of the general teachings that you have in the Gurdjieff work is that you can’t get conscious unconsciously. You can’t turn over the reins to my prayer life, my dream life. No quietism works because you need the absolute firm core of your struggle to come to terms with your conscious self in order to create a spiritual vessel that’s strong enough that these incredible cosmic forces can run down and begin to interact with you.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 48:24 06 – WED PM Teaching.

“The heart is in the movements, the liturgy is in the movements, and the actual practice, this transubstantiating practice is in the exercises. And as we begin to work with these, you begin to learn to your amazement the whole subtle technology buried in the [Gurdjieff] teaching, buried in plain sight. For the enlivenment, feeding, awakening, and increasingly subtle sensitization and then masterful conscious deployment of the outer body to serve as the vessel for the inner body to arise.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Building 2nd Body June 2022, 47:58 3-transub-spiritual-substances.

“Rafe used to tell me no conscious work is ever wasted, even if you do it in a vacuum. So it’s a, as you see this, as you actually see there’s a possibility to move in that direction of creating your vessel, your wedding garment for cosmic servanthood in the next realm beyond pure physicality. Through the quality and quality of your alchemical work in this world, working with your own stuff, the material of your raw untransformed energy, your raw untransformed ego, your story sacrificing your ego self to your emerging person.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystery of Death 2021, 26:05 02 Tuesday Afternoon Session Mystery of Death.

The Vessel as Conduit for Divine Becoming

“When you give yourself entirely and honestly and completely to the journey of God becoming in the vessel of your being, it flows out and reaches that and sees that and understands that in other people as well. And it flows out into the world as more integrity, as a different quality of being.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind Awakened Heart, disc 3 track 9.

“We understand that personally and collectively, when we see that it becomes possible and, in fact, almost inevitable at a certain point, to rise, to want to bring the disordered, disorganized, fractured bits of ourself together to collect and to become vessels that can more and more hold those delicious, high-energy, subtle substances which are wishing to descend and nourish the life of the planets and the whole ray of creation. So it’s a dance, ascending, descending, ascending, descending, evolution, involution.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Introductory Wisdom School May 2025, 16:08 13 Thurs eve Eucharist 5-29-25.

“Remember, as your being increases, receptivity to higher meaning increases, as you become vessels of that higher meaning, which is the universal compassion, which is the capacity to die for your neighbor, to exchange places with your neighbor, to walk in the world totally with no fear, with no attachment. That comes from the higher state of being, and that transforms the world.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga 2015, 0:18 Day 5.2b Morning Final Teaching Part 2 of 2.

The Dance Between Vessel and Flow

“You begin to learn not to hoard your contemplative silence, to hoard your lifestyle, to put castles and fences up around it, or make idolatries out of it. The world is not gonna collapse if you miss a centering prayer period. You hold things lightly with the emphasis on the flow. And you honor and respect these contemplative practices as sacred vessels of transformation. But you don’t allow the worshiping of the vessels to substitute for the transformation. The bottom line is the action. And the world cries for the action of enlightened contemplative hearts.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 1:00:10 20 Thurs am Teaching.

“I hope that we can bring about in each one of you a strengthening and deepening of your own personal vessel of perception. And that in dialogue with a slightly different frame from what you’re seeing in any of the spiritual culture you’re used to, but which won’t be unfamiliar to any of you, I guarantee. Because your heart already knows it.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 8-2020, 23:20 0816 IWS Sunday Evening Teaching.

Cosmic Function of Human Vessel

“There’s a sense that the human being holds this place, this function within reality, this capacity for the divine to know itself through the vessel of the human being and to bring the names into balanced expression through the human being. And that the whole universe exists in some sense to bring forth the ripened fruit of the human being.” Matthew Wright, Rebuilding Trust Feb 2022, 34:37 Day2.2-Islamic-Names-of-God-Matthew.

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Logion 29

Yeshua says…

If flesh came into existence for the sake of spirit,

it is a wonder,
but if spirit exists for the sake of flesh,
it is a wonder of wonders.
I am truly astonished
at how such richness
came to dwell in such poverty.

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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 the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.

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