Contemplative Light: Expansion!
Donation protected
We are a network of spiritual teachers and writers in the contemplative Christian tradition. We have been building a lively community on facebook and a great website for educational content, but our vision is much broader.
We will be offering workshops, conferences, silent retreats, building support communities, expanding our podcast , offering training, contemplative reference material, extensive one-on-one coaching, and publishing some of the best material on these topics from awakened teachers for genuine and lasting inner transformation, wholeness, and shalom. We want to tend the flame of transformation.
You are part of that process! Through your participation, spiritual and financial support, you help us facilitate the awareness of the ever-present God within, God of the still point beyond word and concept.
We draw from the rich tradition of Christian monastics and mystics, from 20th century writers like Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Cassian, Meister Eckhart, and the early Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Our vision of expanding awareness and participation in the beauty of our mystical and contemplative tradition in a time when it is sorely needed is of utmost importance to Contemplative Light's founding members and our many partners .
For most of Christian history, mysticism has been reserved to the cloister or the monastery. But as more and more Westerners feel the need for transformative healing, inner depth, and transcendent experience, they continue to turn away from Christianity in pursuit of other paths to healing. While we, too, recognize the good and true in other religious traditions, contemporary psychology, and the personal development field, we also realize that our own Christian tradition has a rich reservoir of teachings and to foster personal growth and interior calm.
Drawing on contemplative teachers down through the centuries, we have three core missives:
Purgation. Illumination. Union.
Purgation. Honoring the experiential component of our unique and personal journeys guiding toward an awakened state, we understand the first part of the process to be a stripping away and letting go of the hindrances to abiding in the unitive state. This often occurs after an inner release, catharsis, or initial awakening experience. Given the emptiness of cultural materialism and the pursuits of the ego, we want to help as many people as possible achieve deeper inner awareness to open themselves to the divine through direct experience.
Illumination. We believe this process involves a continual unfolding, through dedicated practice, growing awareness, experiencing the growing light through ego-divestiture. Teaching the many contemplative and mystical practices of the Christian tradition, including Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, Ignatian exercises, the Jesus Prayer, Christian meditation, hesychasm, and much more to help illuminate this path.
Union. We want to help others uncover the sense of the sacred through experiencing the silence in our inmost being, the peace that passeth all understanding, to be guided ever more deeply into divine union.
We are currently finishing a course on contemplative practices, have published our first book under Contemplative Light Press, are building a network of seasoned contemplative teachers and practitioners, and are helping more and more people through one-on-one contemplative coaching.
Through our ongoing work and expansion projects, we want as many people as possible to taste the freedom, lasting peace, wholeness, and deep awareness that comes from engaged contemplative practices and mystical teachings in the Christian tradition. And we need your help to get there.
We invite you to participate in our development as we explore what it means to open to the sacred rhythms of the divine dance. We offer you our insight, our experience, and most importantly, our love.
Funds will go towards:
1. Marketing/Promotion budget: 3,000
2. Online platform montly fees: 220
3. Curriculum implementation: 1,100
4. Non-profit status establishment process: 1,450
______
Total: 5,770
We will be offering workshops, conferences, silent retreats, building support communities, expanding our podcast , offering training, contemplative reference material, extensive one-on-one coaching, and publishing some of the best material on these topics from awakened teachers for genuine and lasting inner transformation, wholeness, and shalom. We want to tend the flame of transformation.
You are part of that process! Through your participation, spiritual and financial support, you help us facilitate the awareness of the ever-present God within, God of the still point beyond word and concept.
We draw from the rich tradition of Christian monastics and mystics, from 20th century writers like Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Cassian, Meister Eckhart, and the early Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Our vision of expanding awareness and participation in the beauty of our mystical and contemplative tradition in a time when it is sorely needed is of utmost importance to Contemplative Light's founding members and our many partners .
For most of Christian history, mysticism has been reserved to the cloister or the monastery. But as more and more Westerners feel the need for transformative healing, inner depth, and transcendent experience, they continue to turn away from Christianity in pursuit of other paths to healing. While we, too, recognize the good and true in other religious traditions, contemporary psychology, and the personal development field, we also realize that our own Christian tradition has a rich reservoir of teachings and to foster personal growth and interior calm.
Drawing on contemplative teachers down through the centuries, we have three core missives:
Purgation. Illumination. Union.
Purgation. Honoring the experiential component of our unique and personal journeys guiding toward an awakened state, we understand the first part of the process to be a stripping away and letting go of the hindrances to abiding in the unitive state. This often occurs after an inner release, catharsis, or initial awakening experience. Given the emptiness of cultural materialism and the pursuits of the ego, we want to help as many people as possible achieve deeper inner awareness to open themselves to the divine through direct experience.
Illumination. We believe this process involves a continual unfolding, through dedicated practice, growing awareness, experiencing the growing light through ego-divestiture. Teaching the many contemplative and mystical practices of the Christian tradition, including Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, Ignatian exercises, the Jesus Prayer, Christian meditation, hesychasm, and much more to help illuminate this path.
Union. We want to help others uncover the sense of the sacred through experiencing the silence in our inmost being, the peace that passeth all understanding, to be guided ever more deeply into divine union.
We are currently finishing a course on contemplative practices, have published our first book under Contemplative Light Press, are building a network of seasoned contemplative teachers and practitioners, and are helping more and more people through one-on-one contemplative coaching.
Through our ongoing work and expansion projects, we want as many people as possible to taste the freedom, lasting peace, wholeness, and deep awareness that comes from engaged contemplative practices and mystical teachings in the Christian tradition. And we need your help to get there.
We invite you to participate in our development as we explore what it means to open to the sacred rhythms of the divine dance. We offer you our insight, our experience, and most importantly, our love.
Funds will go towards:
1. Marketing/Promotion budget: 3,000
2. Online platform montly fees: 220
3. Curriculum implementation: 1,100
4. Non-profit status establishment process: 1,450
______
Total: 5,770
Organizer
Clint Sabom
Organizer
Marietta, GA
