EVERYONE IS WELCOME

“Met-ah-noy-ah”

(noun) - the journey of changing one’s mind, heart, self, or way of life

(verb) - the act of reforming; becoming new

In most English Bible readings of Matthew 3:2 or 4:17, or Mark 1:15, it is translated, “Repent, for the realm of heaven is at hand.”

In the original Greek text of those passages, the word which was translated to the English word “repent” is metanoia, which actually means “to change one’s mind.”

What if John the Baptist (Matt 3:2) or Jesus (Matt 4:17 & Mark 1:15) was inviting us to change our minds — not just in a casual intellectual sense, but in a completely transcendent conscious way — allowing us to see ourselves, our neighbors, and our world with radically new eyes, leaving behind these concepts that we are broken, unworthy, or fallen?

John the Baptist was setting the stage for Jesus of Nazareth, the archetypal human for all people, so Jesus could show us how to truly know ourselves, our neighbors, our world, and our shared Life Source with profoundly new understanding, inviting us to a fuller life now.

The other part of the passages read, “for the realm of heaven is at hand.” So it’s right now, in this present moment, not just in some possible future time or destination when our time on earth is over. We are invited to the possibility of living in peace, joy, and harmony within ourselves and with others, and to experience wholeness, completeness, equality, and inter-connectedness with all creation. The realm of heaven offers us the freedom to live authentically as we truly are … right now.

The word Journey in our name describes the life-long path we travel to discover and embody these truths about ourselves. Some days we a take a step forward, others a step back, never fully arriving, but always evolving.

Would you like to join us?

We wonder together …

Who — or what — is Ultimate Reality (or whatever name or no name you have for our shared Ground of Being)?

Can we have profound, personal experience with our shared Life Source?

Who are we … truly?

Who is our neighbor … truly?

Are we more than the sum of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and behaviors?

Are we really living free?

Can we truly love ourselves uncritically and with self-compassion and accept our innate core of goodness?

What does it mean to live a life of love?

Are there deeper meanings in the World’s Wisdom Texts that allow us to transcend the historical and contextual meanings of these ancient writings and find meaningful inspiration for our lives?

Can we know all people as our beloved siblings and invite them into dialogue and relationship with us?

Our vision is continually evolving, but we wish …

To be contemplatives, grounded in looking inward for understanding.

To create space for each of us to rest and renew, leading to compassionate action in the world — in our own lives, locally, or beyond.

To be able to have difficult conversations, using compassionate communication, that impact our individual transformation and our common world. We know for sure that when a group gathers with conscious intention, nothing can separate us from each other or Ultimate Reality.

To listen deeply to spirit and each other as we manifest non-patriarchal, non-hierarchical leadership.

To begin to disentangle from gendered ideas and words about Ultimate Reality that no longer serve us.

To manifest community that is entirely inclusive and affirming to all our siblings. We wish to welcome, partner with, and learn from anyone who has felt hurt by familial, religious or societal constructs, including women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals who long for acceptance and community. We not only welcome all, we recognize that we need the minds, hearts and voices of all.

To support our siblings who are also white cisgender males as they embrace their implicit value and understand that they, too, are subject to similar challenges and traumas from established familial and societal constructs that put undue burden on them in society, and learn to let go of them.

To become valued partners with, and to offer contemplative practices to, other communities in Austin and beyond – whether Christian, other faiths, or non-faith groups. It is our hope to continue to learn from and share spiritual gifts with all communities.

To welcome those who already care deeply for an existing spiritual community, but who recognize a longing for contemplative practices in their lives. We encourage such friends to join us in our offerings while staying connected to their own communities, as they feel called.

We are founded upon our core contemplative practices …

Meditation / Centering Method / Centering Prayer

In receptive meditation, we learn to recognize that our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations are part of ‘being human,’ but are not who we are in our essence, because they come and go.

Over time, we begin to recognize and non-judgmentally let go of these “false aspects” of personality and experience our more authentic, creative, loving and lovable selves.

And as we welcome the presence and action of Ultimate Reality in the silence, an intimate relationship with Divine Presence begins to arise. We begin to find ourselves more and more awake to this Presence, even amidst the noise of daily human life.

Prayer has typically been defined as gestures, words and concepts directed toward our Life Source. That is true, but prayer has also been described as “the human heart before its Maker,” or “practicing the presence of Ultimate Reality.” So, in Centering Prayer, we rest in silence and open to the presence of our common Creator, beyond words, images and concepts.

Inner Work

In synergy with a meditative practice, the contemplative practice of “The Work” (as it is often called) allows us to partner with Ultimate Reality in our transformational process.

We use the Psychological Commentaries on the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouespensky as our framework for “how to begin to love ourselves and our neighbors” more fully. These teachings provide practical ways to learn to live more consciously. We begin to see patterns we acquired absolutely innocently in childhood — patterns that no longer serve us — not as faults, character flaws, or unworthiness, but as mechanical, unconscious ways of thinking and acting that separate us from ourselves, others, and Ultimate Reality.

We begin to relax around these unconsciously-learned patterns, realizing that they are not who we truly are.

The Work also helps us see how the collective traumas and societal patterns, such as racism, sexism, antisemitism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, ageism, able-ism – and all the "othering" that plagues humanity – have harmed each of us individually, those siblings from traditionally marginalized groups, and our beloved planet.

Together with our companions in The Work, we begin to liberate ourselves from unconscious individual and collective ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, and are able to forgive ourselves and others as we allow this transformational process to manifest our True Selves.