What is a mystic? What is a prophet? By very definition, mysticism is not easily defined or talked about. As William James pointed out, “ineffability” is one of the very signs of mysticism! To put it another way, mysticism (or intuition) is the work of our right brain, and the verbal is the accomplishment of our left brain.

This week, you’ll discover the the Four Paths as a means for journeying into your depths — where your inner prophet resides: Joy (a product of the Via Positiva), Grief and Silence (of the Via Negativa), Creativity (from the Via Creativa), and Justice (the end result of the Via Transformativa).

In this module, you’ll:

• Become familiar with the naming of the spiritual journey on the Four Paths
• Discover where wisdom begins (not just knowledge) and where the gifts of reverence, gratitude, and respect are birthed and developed
• Grasp the purpose of the universe (maybe!)
• Become aware of the archetypes for the Sacred — different faith traditions give it different names, but the concept is the same
• Experience a meditation practice in which you’ll view clay tablets depicting archetypes of the Sacred, created by sculptor M.C. Richards and artist Ullrrich Javier Garcia Lemus

In this module, you’ll consider Meister Eckhart’s teachings on the mystical journey, including the Via Positiva — awe, wonder, joy, gratitude — and the Via Negativa — silence and stillness, emptying, suffering, loss, and nothingness.

People experience these realities on a daily basis — in fact Eckhart says that “for the person who is awake, breakthrough happens not once a year or once a month or once a day but many times every day.”

Tactical ecstasies are strategies designed by our various spiritual traditions to bring these breakthrough experiences about, especially if we are hurting from pain or abuse or have been taking life for granted. Thus such practices as meditation, fasting, chanting, and pilgrimage can bring us alive again.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover the power of amazement, wonder, and awe — and your right to it
• Understand the power and necessity of “letting go” and “letting be” as taught by Eckhart
• Return to your “unborn self” and become new again
• Practice meditations that will help you tame your reptilian brain
• Experience the meaning and importance of “nothingness”

Following from the emptying of the Via Negativa comes the Via Creativa, the awakening to our creativity.

It has been said that Eckhart had an entire philosophy of creativity, and he invites us to not just contemplate but to be able to live and work in the world. “While contemplating our creativity,” says Eckhart, “we bring God into the world… I once had a dream, even though a man I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness, and out of that nothingness God was born.”

Eckhart also teaches that interdependence constitutes the basis of compassion. This fits marvelously with today’s physics, wherein we are again seeing the world as interdependent. And he teaches that compassion means justice, God is justice, and compassion is where peace and justice kiss.

In this module, you’ll:

• Celebrate your creativity as a divine gift and divine experience
• Elicit your creativity through the formula of Via Positiva + Via Negativa = Via Creativa
• Name the mystical side as well as the prophetic side to compassion
• Consider how sustainability is another word today for Justice
• Connect Eckhart’s words to the wisdom of Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, Hinduism, Jung, and more

Hildegard of Bingen was a brilliant musician, healer, artist, poet, scientist, and prophet. She challenged societal leaders from popes to emperors, abbots, bishops, and clergy. She championed the Divine Feminine.

A mystic/prophet herself, we will consider her love of nature and the “greening power” of it. Hildegard was declared both a saint and a “doctor of the Church” just seven years ago. This brings her teachings right into the heart of the Christian church. Her love of cosmology and science was explicit — she said “all science comes from God” — and she paints pictures of the universe as science sees it.

In this module, you’ll:

• Meditate on Hildegard’s mandalas and paintings based on her visions
• Allow her amazing music to speak to your deepest Self
• Discuss the Divine Feminine and what this means in renewing our lives and institutions
• Embody Hildegard of Bingen’s prophetic voice to experience how she criticizes patriarchal power — and find your own prophetic voice
• Recover the power of “greening power”

Thomas Merton was a monk who lived in the Cistercian Order, a strict Catholic Order, for 26 years. On a journey to Asia, where he met the Dalai Lama and many other spiritual leaders of the East, he died a sudden death following a talk he delivered entitled “Karl Marx and Monasticism.”

Merton was converted by Meister Eckhart in 1958 to become a prophetic Christian witness to movements of peace and justice. His mystical journey did not stop with his own enlightenment, but culminated in resistance to war, racism, economic injustice, genocide, environmental degradation, and patriarchy.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover Merton’s insightful, humorous, and prophetic poetry and prose
• Deepen your journey as a mystic and prophet, inspired by Merton’s activism
• Discuss what is possible when East meets West along our spiritual paths
• Embrace art as meditation that nourishes the prophet in you
• Discover Merton’s acute criticism of our culture and discuss how it applies to conflicts we wrestle with today

In this module, you’ll explore Mary Oliver’s poetry and how it can enrich your mystical and prophetic journeys. A key category to Oliver is “astonishment” — a synonym for awe or wonder or the Via Positiva. She talks of “wanting to be dazzled.”

Though a self-named “praise poet,” Oliver was familiar with the Via Negativa and suffering and loss. As a child she suffered abuse, and it took her “years and years” to get her love of life back. She writes about the “dark river of loss.”

Thus, her capacity to praise did not come cheaply; it was a process and a journey. We are the blessed recipients of her largeness of soul. Embedded in her work, her poetry, her Via Creativa, are layers of wisdom for deepening and nourishing our spiritual journeys.

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore the wisdom of Mary Oliver as we journey the Four Paths with her
• Meditate with Mary Oliver through her poetry and spiritual insights
• Become more attuned to praise and wonder, and what Mary calls the “glory of the world, that great teacher”
• Challenge and empower others to become more attuned to praise and wonder

In this module, we’ll address any remaining questions that may have been raised, and discuss areas that may have gone underdeveloped due to shortage of time. You’ll be invited to submit questions ahead of time.

You’ll also receive a short summary of where we’ve traveled together and what comes next: what directions challenge us as we move beyond our virtual “classroom” into our work worlds, homes, and communities.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn from one another’s questions
• Voyage more deeply into your inner and outer journeys of joy and emptying, creating and healing
• Bring together and summarize the teachings from Eckhart, Hildegard, Oliver, and Merton that have nourished and challenged us
• Prepare for the future with suggestions on where we go from here as mystics and prophets, responding to the call of Mother Earth today

Andrew Harvey joins Matthew in this audio dialogue to discuss Hildegard von Bingen — a renaissance woman long before the renaissance. She was a mystic who had many visions and incredible illuminations that she said came from the living light. She was a healer who studied and understood the healing properties of plants and minerals, and was also a social critic.

Andrew Harvey is an author, speaker, and founder/director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change in order to create peace and sustainability. He has written or edited over 30 books and received many awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Mind Body Spirit Award.

Matthew Fox explores how intrinsic creativity is to our human nature — and how the highest communion with the Divine can be found right at our fingertips in the simplest expressions of human creativity. It is a message to put into action in everyday life. Fox asks why our culture so undervalues creativity in, for example, our educational programs and schools. He also explores the place from which creativity arises in us, and how to bring creativity alive in all peoples.

Join us for a journey with Matthew as we learn about the nine choirs of angels and the Enneagram, and all of it in terms of the illumination of the mystical within each of us. Matthew has learned to surrender to a culture that has pushed out mysticism — and to the Beloved.

Jessica Dibb is founder, spiritual director, and principal teacher of the Inspiration Community School, an integral consciousness school dedicated to promoting personal, relational, and planetary wellness. Over the last 20 years, Dibb has designed and facilitated unique workshops, classes, and ongoing breath-centered trainings that are grounded in a highly integrated model of psychospiritual healing and development to support self-actualization. Her teachings assist people in cultivating consciousness through all stages of life, from conception onward.

Father Bede Griffiths is considered by many to be one of the most advanced, illuminated, and profound modern Christian mystics. After a lifetime of deep devotion and study — which led him to live many years in India — Father Bede underwent a transfiguration process as he moved towards death. In this exclusive bonus, which was recorded on his last visit to the U.S. before he died, Father Griffiths and Matthew discuss the nature of Mysticism and Creation Spirituality. They look at the need for Christianity to recover its mystic tradition and discuss the future of spirituality and theology.

Father Bede Griffiths was a British-born Indian Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India and became a leading thinker in the development of the dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism.