We’ll begin by making our introductions to one another and engaging in an opening ritual that will establish our intent for our time together through the course of the School. We’ll locate ourselves within the Wisdom tradition by considering how we are in relation to the inhering orientation of this tradition toward living intimacy with Divine Presence.

The Wisdom tradition maintains that the heart is an organ of spiritual perception that makes it possible for us to perceive from wholeness rather than division. It’s the heart that makes exchange with Divine Presence and embodying Wisdom possible. In this gathering we’ll consider contemplation as the heart’s luminous seeing.  

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

Contemplation and heart perceptivity are kindled and illuminated in silence and stillness. The movement to contemplation requires an apophatic capacity – sitting in silence and stillness in nonconceptual presence. Centering Prayer fosters this capacity, creating an inner ground of receptivity that allows for a deeper relational knowing of Divine Presence. In this gathering we’ll revisist the practice of Centering Prayer and consider how it might act as a crucible for the transformation of our consciousness by love, toward love.

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

In this gathering we’ll orient with tenderness toward the personal within the wider context of the transpersonal, considering how our egoic structure of consciousness is perhaps not a defect to be fixed but a fixity to be released. We’ll consider how the conditions in which we find ourselves provide the raw material of our transformation and how the act of conscious transmutation is our uniquely alchemical task.

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

In this gathering we’ll begin our inquiry into the three centres of intelligence and how deepening our attunement with each of these centres helps us collect, reconfigure and direct our attention so we can live beyond egoic insistence and within Presence. In this session we’ll focus on the Moving Centre - the deep intelligence of our body-being - and attuning to this intelligence through the practice of placing attention and attuning to sensation.

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

In this gathering, as we continue deepening our attunement to three centred awareness, we’ll turn our attention to the emotional centre and the practice of emotional alchemy.

Emotional reactivity is one of the sure signs we’re mired in and moving from egoic consciousness and yet, our emotional life is part of our human endowment and intelligence. In this gathering we’ll revisit the Welcoming Practice as a way of being with feeling rather than attempting to bypass the reality of our experience in the misguided pursuit of some spiritual ideal. We’ll be exploring how we can both acknowledge and transmute the matter of our experience.

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

In this gathering, as we continue deepening our attunement to three centred awareness, we’ll turn to the intellectual centre and the practice of disidentification.

The intellectual centre has been privileged in Western societies, with reason and rationality more highly valued than sensorial and spiritual intelligence. As a result, the intellectual centre is usually the most dominant, the one on which we rely when it comes to making sense of things. Our attachment to our thoughts about things, including who we are, can obscure our true nature. In this session, we’ll consider both the practice of disidentification and the danger of depersonalization that attends this practice.

Each integration session will provide an opportunity for further engagement with the teaching of the previous gathering through a combination of guided inquiry, reflection, Q + A time, and conscisous conversation.

By balancing our three centres of intellgence we cultivate coherence of being, increasing our receptivity to Living Presence and the influence and guidance of this Presence.

In this gathering, we’ll turn our attention to how we might balance and listen deeply from all three centres, and submit to what the heart sees and hears. We’ll also touch on how we might discern the difference between the levels of consciousness - between heart perception and capable egoic functioning.

In our final gathering for the year, we’ll reflect on our time together and engage in a closing ritual for acknowledging and drawing together the different aspects of what has unfolded for us and between us.