Healing Tones

This is huge. I will be challenged in these next two or three post to my utmost capacity to synthesize, as I have been studying various authors and each one of them sheds a different light on the subject — and I will lean heavily upon them all for excerpts. So, I’ll just dive right in and let Spirit guide me where it will.

I will launch this multi-post consideration with this passage from logion 114 of the Gospel of Thomas:

Simon Peter said to him: “Let Mary leave us, for women are not fit for the life.” Jesus answered: “See, I have been guiding her so as to make her into a human [Anthropos]. She, too, will become a living breath like you. For any woman who becomes a human will enter into the Kingdom of God.”

Another translation of the same passage says it differently and more to the point I’m aiming to make:

Simon Peter said to them: “Mary should leave us because women are not worthy of the life.” Jesus responded: “Look, I’ll lead her in order to make her male so that she can become a living spirit as you males are. For each woman who makes herself male wll enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

In the first translation, the word “human” is used. In the second, the word “male” is used. I will call upon Jean-Yves Leloup for an interpretation of this poignant passage in her book The Gospel of Mary Magdalene:

The error of many translators is to render this as having something to do with being male. It is clear from the original Greek that the meaning
is that of anthropos (human being in the general sense), and not of andros (man in the masculine sense). It is true that in order to become whole, a human being must integrate in herself or himself the complementary gender. And this work or realization of wholeness is certainly not some­thing that only or especially women have to do–we each have our own work of becoming an Anthropos, a fully human being. . . .

The term anthropos is also richer than the term androgyne, which is sometimes used as the translation of the former, for sexual and psychic
polarities form only a part of what must be integrated in becoming fully human.

The other part is contained in the words “living breath” or “living spirit,” one’s true Self. And here I would introduce a consideration of the differences between male and masculine and between female and feminine. The first, male, relates to physical form, whereas masculine relates to spiritual or energetic essences. The same is applicable for female and feminine. I will address this difference after this clarifying explanation by the same author: 

This recalls a passage from the Gospel of Matthew:

But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.”

Some scholars have detected here the hand of an editor who was influenced by some sort of dualistic or ascetic teaching, one that was to
influence Christianity’s monastic departure from Old Testament teach­ings. Indeed, it does seem implausible that Yeshua would advocate
destroying the work of the Creator. How could he who claimed to be One with the Father advocate such mutilation of his creatures?

Others explain this by an improper translation or transmission of Yeshua’s words. The word eunuch should be replaced by the word androg­yne. Unfortunately the latter word (like so many others) was and still is often misunderstood and reduced to a sexual meaning that evokes some
sort of freakish bisexual mixture that is neither male nor female–hardly an advantage for someone who is already having difficulties in finding his or her identity!

As in so many other domains, one can only transcend that which one has fully known and accepted. One must live one’s own sexuality in one’s
own body before speaking of a higher state of androgyny. As in psychotherapy, one must first have an ego that is as sane and stable as possi­ble before pretending to have access to what is often (perhaps too often) called the Self.

This is why the authors of the Gospel of Mary considered it so important that Yeshua really lived his masculine sexuality, perhaps with Miriam, perhaps with another woman. This was necessary in order for him to become the archetype of synthesis, the Anthropos that he was. I prefer the term anthropos to androgyne because the former word still leads to confusion today, in spite of a widespread contemporary appreciation of
the value of spiritual integration and balance of male and female polarities in us. Rather than defending the literal translation of the original
word used in certain early Christian texts, it is preferable here to defend, through the word we choose as its translation, the truth and richness of meaning in what the original word communicates.

What is important is to become whole. This is what makes us able to truly love, not from our sense of lack, but from our plenitude, as Yeshua
himself loved us.

In the same way, we can say that it is because Miriam of Magdala fully lives her feminine sexuality, and because she fully accepts and integrates the masculine dimension of her being, that she is able to speak with authentic knowledge of the Word–though today, as during her time, there are still those who would deny her this. But it is only after the long and slow work of becoming fully human that she can legitimately speak, as an Anthropos, of the fullness of a humanity that, like Yeshua’s, is open to the Divine and transparent to its clear light–the most invisible and subtle of lights.

Of course one can take or leave Leloup’s interpretation of these passages. I personally resonate with his words of clarification.  For one thing, he has helped me come to terms with my own conflicted view of homosexuality, having been somewhat biased by my unsavory confrontation with pedofilia in my seminary years studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood, which left me with a deep aversion to anything the looked like men doing anything sexual to or with other men. But, that’s mine to work with and through. 

MAKE THE TWO ONE  

Masculine and feminine energies exist as two seemingly separate forces only in this “creating universe,” this illusory world of material forms, as Walter Russell expounds upon in his 1926 signature masterpiece THE UNIVERSAL ONE. The energy out of which these forces are born and in which they move and have their being in One, male and female bodies not withstanding. There is only One who occupies these capacities, and that One is what Jesus calls the “Living Spirit” and “Living Breath” in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Thomas. With this clarification–and with what I have written about in my previous post “The Imaginal Realm: As Above So Below”–see if you can “see” with the spiritual eyes of your heart what is being conveyed in the following passage from The Gospel of Thomas (22a & 22b):

Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples: “These infants taking milk are like those who enter the Kingdom.”

His disciples asked him: “If we are infants will we enter the Kingdom?”

Jesus responded: ” When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper, and thus make the male and the female the same, so that the male isn’t male and the female isn’t female. When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom.”

I could ponder this passage for days and still not comprehend with my intellect what the Teacher is saying. And what does it have to do with babies being suckled? He was obviously coming from a wisdom higher than that of the world. One can understand why he once told his disciples that he had much more to share with them, but they could not bear it. I wonder if we are able to bear it today with our highly educated intellects. It has been said that understanding if of the heart. This teaching has to be taken into the heart for understanding, something that the books I have been reading this past year have helped me to do.   

The Teacher in speaking here from the standpoint of creating in and from the imaginal realm, where images are sown as seeds from above into the soil of human consciousness. He is speaking of the alchemy of begetting as compared to the chemistry of making. “Begotten not made” is a phrase found in the Nicene Creed referring to the “only begotten Son of the Father.” This is historically known as “Fifth Way Love,” which I will consider in my next post. 

ATTUNEMENT WITH LOVE

From the standpoint of subtle energy healing through what has come to be called the “Attunement Process” in my field of service, the conscious focus of the practitioner is not on the analogue but on the image; not on the distorted physical form, perhaps fragmented and depleted, but on the perfection of the spiritual body which is whole and vital.  Our work is primarily done in the secret place of the Heaven, in Love’s domain, where we conceive images of wholeness and vitality. That wholeness and vitality is being transferred moment by moment to the physical body via this imaginal realm of spiritual substance — “pneumaplasm”– which bridges the two worlds that are one in reality.  Attunement is with the vibrational tone of Love.  

This is what the Teacher called the “Kingdom.” When we as healers, or as complete human beings, anthropos, access and enter into the imaginal realm — which we can only do as Beings coming from above — where the images of healthy form and function are available for transference to the physical body, then we can make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image. From the view in the Heaven, the inside is like the outside and the outside like the inside; the upper is like the lower and the lower like the upper; then the male isn’t male and the female isn’t female but they are the same. We are not male and female. We are Anthropos, fully Human and living spirits, with masculine and feminine energies blended together in our incarnating capacities. We are sons and daughters of God. “Ye are gods.”

As a segue to my next post, I will close with an excerpt from Cynthia Bourgeault’s signature work, The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE – Discovering The Woman at the Heart of Christianity. She quotes here a passage from the Gospel of Philip:

“The one who creates objects works outwardly in the external world. The one who labors in secret, however, works within the icon, hidden inwardly from others. The one who creates make objects visible to the world. The one who conceives gives birth to children in the Realm of the Unseen.”

In this complex distinction . . . Philip insists that begetting must come “from above”. . . .  It requires a free and conscious regeneration in the Spirit. “Begotten” is an alchemy in which spirit actively participates, and its fruit is the anthropos, or completed human being. 

Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

I invite you to visit my website at HealingAndAttunement.com for information about my work and my books SACRED ANATOMY and ATTUNEMENT WITH SACRED SOUND.