Reflection on the Wisdom School Retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault at Bonnevaux, France, 30th September to 5th October 2025.
By Joanna Thyer
“Wisdom, like water, is itself clear and formless, but it necessarily assumes the shape and coloration of the container in which it is captured.” (Cynthia Bourgeault in The Corner of Fourth and Non Dual, p83).
I have followed Christian mystic Cynthia Bourgeault’s work for the past 5 years or so, so I was thrilled to be able to attend her 5 night Wisdom school retreat at Bonnevaux World Christian Meditation Centre in France on the 30th September this year. I had visited Bonnevaux previously in 2024 to do the East/West retreat, ‘The Marriage of Wisdom and Prophecy’, with Brother Martin– a former peer of the famous Benedictine monk Fr Bede Griffiths. (Fr Bede presided at the Shantivanam Ashram in India until his death in the early 1990s). So I was delighted to take part in another retreat at Bonnevaux, and to experience an equally spiritual and formative impact.
The Wisdom tradition echoes the Christian inner and fourth way tradition, similar to the gnostic Christian text, The Gospel of Thomas, and the work of the Armenian philosopher, George Gurdgieff. Wisdom is not about ‘knowing more’ but ‘knowing deeper’ – with more of oneself, with one’s whole being.
The lectures, daily meditations, and one desert day of silence, made the retreat’s emphasis on balance clear. The Benedictine Rule emphasises balance: ‘ora et labora’, prayer and work, so we looked at the four quadrants of working alone, working together, praying alone and praying together, fused with some of the wisdom of Gurdjieff’s work on the three centers – Mind, Heart and Body/Moving. (In other words, intellectual, emotional, and physical). Gurdjieff was also noted for his strong emphasis on group work, and I felt this came through as we reflected on these aspects of our own lives and how they might help us become full embodied human beings. For me, this fusion became a metaphor for what is needed in the world, -a force for spiritual transformation combined with the Benedictine 12 steps of humility, which emphasise Ascending by humility, and Descending by Ego.
In this polarized volatile world, the idea of nuance and balance has often been lost. Our attachment to identification and being caught up in our personal story can stop us reaching goals and suck our spiritual energy. So some of our conversation was about just that - not being too caught up in our own personal story, our identity politics, our identity per se, with our tendency to quip ‘this is who I am’, and what Cynthia referred to as ‘our canned emotional dramas’ that can get in the way of spiritual development. These can include being locked into self-identification with our unconscious conditioned values from childhood, sometimes configured as the ego self’s feeling of scarcity, and restlessness.
Mindfulness can help heal our consciousness and help us stand in front of the infinite. However to do this, we need to have compassion for our ‘small ego self’. My small ego self wants to be seen for example, but this can also keep me locked into a finite state of expectations, rather than bearing open witness. This is not a ‘bad’ state – it requires simply acknowledgment and acceptance, which then gives rise to a greater capacity for equanimity.
A key takeaway for me was that our inner task is that we are being asked to Wake Up. This can be enabled through healing consciousness, mindfulness, service, staying present to what is going on, being part of community, and being midwives to bring in the new -so needed for the world we are in.
“The twelfth step of humility is that a monk always manifests humility in his bearing no less than in his heart, so that it is evident.” (The Rule of St Benedict in English, 7.62, p37.)
References:
Fry, T. (Ed.). The Rule of St Benedict in English, Liturgical Press, 1982.
Bourgeault, C. (2022) The Corner of Fourth and Nondual, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.
Joanna Thyer – 1.6.25
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