You know, there's a very peculiar thing that happens to people who have undergone what we might call a spiritual awakening. They find that crowds, gatherings of people, what we would ordinarily think of as perfectly normal social situations, become extraordinarily difficult to navigate.  I don't mean difficult in the sense of social anxiety or shyness, though it might appear that way from the outside. I mean something far more subtle and far more profound. When you wake up, when you see through the game that most people are playing, when you recognize that the emperor has no clothes, you begin to experience crowds in an entirely different way. It’s rather like being the only sober person at a party where everyone else is intoxicated. You can see what’s happening with a clarity that's almost painful, while everyone around you is completely absorbed in the drama, completely identified with the performance.

The programs and resources of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) are grounded in the wisdom of the Christian contemplative traditions with a special emphasis on Father Richard Rohr’s Franciscan heritage—especially its alternative orthodoxy. 

The Franciscan tradition exemplifies an alternative orthodoxy through its emphasis on the importance of praxis over theory, or orthopraxy over orthodoxy. While orthodoxy is about correct beliefs, orthopraxy is about right practice — more to do with the way we live our daily lives and treat other people than making verbal or mental assent to this or that idea.

Maurice Frydman is one of most extraordinary people I’ve ever come across and virtually nothing is known about him. And because of his connection with Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, Nisargadatta, the Dali Lama I kind of view him in my own mind as a Forest Gump of 20th century spirituality. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit of interaction with some of the greats of Indian spirituality… He was a Gandhian, he worked for the uplift of the poor in India, he worked with Tibetan refugees, he edited extraordinary books [like] “I am That,” probably one of the all time spiritual classics. 

For a few years in the 1970’s, I was the headmaster of Kipchimchim Harambee Secondary School at the western end of the great Rift Valley of Kenya. I also taught math, physics and Scripture. At one stage we were studying Luke’s gospel and we came upon the story of the boy Jesus being ‘lost’ in the Jerusalem temple. Chastened by an upset mother, we are told that he returned to Nazareth with his parents and was obedient to them. Then Luke adds, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” In an earlier story, the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple some 12 years before, we read, again in Luke, “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.”

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