In this audio, EnlightenNext Magazine's Jessica Roemischer asks Cynthia Bourgeault, author, Episcopal priest, and internationally recognized teacher of contemplative prayer, “What is liberation for women today?”
Bourgeault, who divides her time between a hermitage off the coast of Maine and fulfilling her role as principal teacher at the Contemplative Society in Vancouver, BC, responds with a powerful description of liberation beyond all relative distinctions, including those of gender itself. The last step in women's liberation, she states, is liberation from the fundamental identification with being a woman. She speaks about the need to be surrendered to the nondual truth of our being, beyond all relative polarities, distinctions, and identities. True liberation—and true woman's liberation, therefore—is only to be found from a perspective in which the individual is already whole and complete. As Bourgeault states with characteristic conviction and depth, we all—men and women alike—must make every effort to be free from ego and its endless drive to identify with less than our highest potential as conscious expressions of the divine in manifestation.
BIO
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault is the principal Teacher and Advisor to the Contemplative Society, an ecumenical, not-for-profit association that encourages a deepening of contemplative prayer based in the Christian tradition. She is a retreat and conference leader, teacher of prayer, writer on the spiritual life, and Episcopal priest. Cynthia is passionately committed to the recovery of the Christian contemplative path and has worked closely with Fr. Thomas Keating as a teacher of Centering Prayer, Fr. Bruno Barnhart, and other Christian contemplative masters, as well as in Sufism and the Christian inner traditions. She is the author of Mystical Hope, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, and Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, and many articles on the contemplative life.
