Picking up where Friday evening’s session leaves off, this Saturday morning workshop invites participants to engage more directly with the inner technologies of Sufi mysticism and Christian monasticism. Grounded in centuries of contemplative practice, these two traditions each developed rigorous psychological maps for navigating shadow, resistance, and transformation.
Participants will explore two foundational frameworks:
- The “Eight Evil Thoughts” (logismoi) — the psychic roots of inner fragmentation in Greek monastic thought
- The “Lower Selves” (nafs) — the stages of ego purification within Sufi psychology
Rather than rejecting or repressing these forces, both traditions saw them as essential material for spiritual alchemy — energies that, when recognized and worked with, lead to deeper clarity, compassion, and integration.
This session also turns to two 20th-century voices who brought these teachings into modern conversation:
- Reza Arasteh, a Persian psychotherapist who explored Sufism as a model for psychological wholeness
- Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who saw in contemplation a way to dissolve the boundaries of religion, nationality, and ego
Together, we’ll consider how these teachings speak to the emergence of the “universal person” — one whose heart-centered awareness transcends division and lives in conscious relation to the collective soul of the world.