Many people feel crushed by the immensity of the universe. During the first class, you’ll explore how while the universe may be vast, it’s not meaningless — and it’s also quite intimate.

You’ll discover the 14-billion-year unfurling universe and your own spiritual path as an expression of supreme joy…

… and consider your place in this cosmic story, beginning with our home ecosystem and expanding out to the solar system as one of the 200 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy — and the place of our galaxy in the Virgo supercluster.

Brian and Matthew share how you can experience this expansion of the universe as a manifestation of a surplus of beauty that is continuously flowing into an ever young, ever fresh universe.

The spiritual journey most often begins with awe and wonder and joy — what Meister Eckhart calls “breakthrough,” what Aquinas calls “ecstasy,” and what Julian of Norwich calls “oneing.”

Such experiences take us out of ourselves (thus ekstasis or ecstasy) and remind us how big our inner and outer worlds are. You’ll explore both through Via Positiva, Eckhart, and the mystics.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn what an important role cosmology can play in awakening awe and wonder — and, therefore, a spiritual life
• Explore the role that joy and love play in your spiritual life
• Discover how to ground in gratitude and make that integral to your spiritual life
• Learn how the 14 billion years of the universe is an expression of supreme joy
• Discover how “ecstasy,” “breakthrough,” and “oneing” are available to us all — and how they name the mystical experience for great mystics, such as Hildegard, Aquinas, Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich
• Experience the immensity and the intimacy of the universe — to awaken greater connection and meaning in your spiritual evolution and life

The Via Negativa can occur as a great emptying, a taste of nothingness… a mind-emptying that precedes a mind-filling.

This week, you’ll explore how silence and stillness are part of that journey — and how Via Negativa names the experience of disorder or chaos that occurs cosmically, socially, and personally.

In its ultimate expression, the mystics call it the “dark night of the soul,” which can also appear as a dark night of society or our species as seems to be occurring today.

You’ll explore how to navigate both the silence and the chaos times, what they have in common, how they feed one another, and how to “sink” into Oneness as in Eckhart’s teaching, “we sink eternally from letting go to letting go into the One.”

You’ll also discover the universality of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its relentless drive to disorder — and the many ways that has played out through a universe that has sent 99% of all species into extinction.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn how the universe engages in disorder as well as order
• Explore how spirituality instructs us in how to deal with disorder and chaos in your life
• Discover the powerful role of silence and emptying in your spiritual life
• Delve into what the mystics say about “nothingness” experiences — and consider your nothingness experiences and what they have taught you
• Go deeper into the concept of the dark night of the soul and what the mystics teach about navigating that reality
• Experience a deeper sense of ease amid silence, stillness, chaos, and destruction — and a newfound capacity to harness the inspiration and creative forces that lie within them

Celebrating the creativity of the universe… that every moment of the universe is a moment of creativity.

Dissipative structures, which include hurricanes, unicellular organisms, animals, cities, stars, and spiral galaxies…

… all depend upon maintaining their existence “far from thermodynamic equilibrium,” where the creativity of the universe resides.

In this module, explore the star as an exemplar of inhabiting the zone far from equilibrium — and the spiritual quest as finding the strength to remain in states of “balanced turbulence.”

You’ll also consider: Is creativity the state of remaining in a state of “balanced turbulence?” And discuss how we can do that as individuals and as communities… and how spirit guides us in creating and recreating, birthing, and sharing the powers of creativity we carry within us and the universe carries within it…

… and how central creativity is to our survival as individuals and as a species at this time in history.

Lastly, you’ll explore how to connect spirit and creativity as a spiritual practice.

You’ll:

• Discover how a state of “balanced turbulence” is integral to the creativity of the universe
• Learn how the Holy Spirit brings about creativity in us — and how creativity is at the heart of understanding what it is to be human
• Explore how to practice art as meditation — and why art as meditation is called “the way of the prophets”
• Explore the role of moral imagination and how we transform self and society
• Learn the 3 I’s of the mystical experience
• Discover the joy of creativity and how the Via Positiva and Via Creativa inform one another

The universe goes through eras that are never repeated — like the galaxies, which were never created again. It is also in communion with all of its parts as it moves through various stages of transformation.

In this module, explore how the major transformations of the universe — from primordial plasma to atoms to stars and galaxies to rocky planets to life to the evolution of human consciousness — are understood as “moments of grace.”

To see each entity, including one’s self, as the culmination of 14 billion years — and to see each entity as searching for the transformation that the sun and moon and stars and rivers and mountains are calling for in this time of crisis.

The call to transform — to bring balance where there is unbalance; joy where there is sorrow; justice where injustice reigns; truth when lies dominate: This is built into all of us.

As Aquinas puts it, “the proper objects of the heart are truth and justice,” and “the vision of God is arrived at through justice.”

You’ll also consider how your work and citizenship are a carrier of the seeds of justice that bring about transformation and constitute what Jesus called a “kingdom of God” here on Earth.

You’ll:

• Explore the “moments of grace” of the universe’s unfolding — and the Earth’s unfolding
• Discover how to bring balance where there is imbalance; justice where there is injustice
• Learn the dynamics of compassion — what it is and what it is not
• Explore how the Via Negativa and Via Transformativa affect one another
• Learn how a quest for the common good lies at the heart of healthy politics — and how truth and justice are both “objects of the heart”
• Discover the basis of spirituality at work — and how work can be prayer
• Experience the deepening of relationship within the universe and in your own life as it makes way for compassion, love, justice, dignity, and balance in all things

Catholic monk and spiritual pioneer Thomas Merton — who became close friends with the Dali Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Luther King Jr., and D.T. Suzuki, who brought Zen to North America — was converted by the latter to study Meister Eckhart.

In this module, explore the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality through Thomas’ transformational journey and teachings.

Thomas spent the year 1958 studying Eckhart and Zen poetry, and a pronounced transformation occurred in Merton and his writings as a result.

He moved from being a pious and somewhat dualistic monk to being a prophetic Christian, a contemplative with a prophetic direction.

Matthew shares excerpts from his book on Merton, who advised him as a young Dominican to study in Paris, and who, like Fox, admired Pere Chenu deeply.

You'll:

• Explore the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality through the dynamic teachings of Thomas Merton — Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, Via Transformativa — and his methodology for reaching the depths of art and humanity
• Discover how the 4 Paths are applicable to your spiritual journey
• Experience Merton’s poetry and drawings as a path into the depths of your own inner artist and humanity

The Four Paths allow us to grasp and draw forth the depths of our great artists and musicians.

One student applied the four paths to understanding Walt Whitman in his doctoral thesis and received a summa cum laude for his efforts.

One musician taught courses for years on such musicians as Gustav Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, and more applying the Four Paths to their music and thus drawing out the depths of the spiritual teachings.

In this module, explore how Mary Oliver’s poetry can be grasped at a deep level when one applies the Four Paths to it.

• Learn how the 4 Paths assist us in deepening our appreciation of art and artists — and how to apply them to art in our lives
• Consider the poetry of Mary Oliver as it relates to the 4 Paths
• Grasp why Otto Rank says the unio mystica is encountered “through love and art”
• Experience the 4 Paths through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony

Saint John of the Cross is recognized as a great poet and a great mystic, but he was also a great prophet, for he dared to interfere with the complacency and actual corruption in his Carmelite Order during the 16th century.

Practically every poet who translates his work says that one should leave aside his commentaries on his poetry and just dig into the poetry itself. Why is that?

You’ll explore Saint John of the Cross’ poetry to uncover the Four paths of Creation Spirituality that are embedded within it.

Saint John of the Cross’ commentaries have an inadequate hermeneutic, that is to say, a method for interpreting the full mystical/prophetic journey.

In his time only the three paths of purgation, illumination, and union were in vogue, and they fail to do justice to his full spiritual journey. But the Four Paths do.

Explore Saint John of the Cross’ spiritual genius by way of the Four Paths as a model for our journeys of recovering the spiritual warrior within you.

In this final module:

• Learn through Saint John of the Cross’ poetry, teachings, and life story how the 4 Paths name his spirituality deeper than the 3 paths of purgation, illumination, and union
• Explore what Saint John of the Cross is saying to you and us today
• Learn how his work summarizes our entire class
• Consider his words, “Love: It’s all I do” — and how it relates to your life
• Experience Saint John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul” to music — and meditate on his and Dali’s paintings

Explore what Matthew calls “Christianity 2.0” — a deeper journey into Christ consciousness that integrates the scholarship in the past few centuries around the historical Jesus, the Aramaic Jesus, and the Cosmic Christ…

… and how to apply it to your evolution and ours as a species to revitalize and suffuse our everyday lives with the sacred essence of true natures.

During this special session, you’ll:

• Explore “Christianity 2.0” and where it leads

• Be guided by Matthew and the mystics on how to “ground in God,” as Eckhart says — grounding more fully into your own divinity

• Be inspired to propel your sacred journey of self-discovery forward

• Learn about a new, 6-month immersion program to awaken the mystic and prophet within led by Matthew and featuring the timeless wisdom of ancient and modern