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Spirit of the New Earth Vibration, pg 13: Abiding in Love Always

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”¹

♦♦♦ ◊ ♦♦♦

IN BRINGING this series to a close, reflecting back on the period in which SACRED ANATOMY was written and published, between the years 1990 and 2005, those nine years during which I was compelled by Spirit to bring the image out of the heaven and into print were years of virtual withdrawal from the world and of dwelling “in the Secret Place of the Most High . . . under the Shadow of the Almighty,” as the psalmist declares.¹  It was a gift from Spirit, given as enlightenment and personal counsel, intended to be shared in book form. 

Perhaps it has outlived its original purpose, its subject having little if any relevance in today’s world of chaos and global unrest wherein more momentous and pressing issues are in focus, such as our survival as a species.  And the proverbial “choir” has moved on to more advanced transformational music.  It’s time to move on.  So I offer this final excerpt for those who are still interested and enjoying these meditations.  I thank you for completing this series with me.  Now on to the finale. 

                                                  ♦♦♦ ◊ ♦♦♦

ABIDING IN LOVE ALWAYS                            

     Our understanding of these sacred vessels as portals for love’s radiant release is purified in the furnace of the pure heart as they are brought back into the Holy Place and used rightly so that we do not keep getting burned by the unbridled release of this creative power [which is multiplying flesh on an overpopulated planet]. It is in the heart, after all, where we live our daily lives.  This is our inner bedroom, so-to-speak, our altar in our temple.  How do I keep this room?  Is it a place of peace and restfulness, or is it rather cluttered with the unresolved issues of daily living?  Is it a heaven or a hell?  Is it holy or defiled?  This will make all the difference in the quality of my experience of sexual intimacy, because I bring the essences of my day’s activities with me to the altar in this temple service.

     The secret of alchemy lies in abiding in Love always.  One cannot, for instance, spend one’s day in a state of complaint and turmoil and expect to share in sacred sex at the close of the day—or whenever one may choose to share this potent release of love’s alchemical fire.  Arguments are not resolved by “having sex” for instance.  The energies charging issues that need to be addressed and resolved are only intensified, making them more volatile.  Nor does it make things “all right again” between two people who have been hurting one another mentally, emotionally and physically.  Time and space need to be provided to resolve the coarser issues of living in the work-a-day world of the outer court.  They do not belong in the holy place of the temple.  

     In the temple of Solomon there was the outer court where things that did not belong in the holy place could be dealt with.  This is the mental and emotional levels of our outer being.  Here is where we rightly handle issues that we deal with every day out in the “encampment” of our larger fields of service.  And issues do need to be dealt with and resolved between two people who are committed to a shared life of intimacy.

     It is a challenge to deal with issues where differences and disagreements arise.  It’s easier to say “Forget the talking, let’s just go to bed and make love, then everything will be all right again.”  This has never proven out to resolve anything, and love is not “made” as we considered earlier.  On the contrary, the problems only intensify and pile up on the shelf, which gets heavier and weightier until one day it all comes crashing down on top of our heads and the substance of the relationship is threatened, often violently dissipated.  Irreparable damage may be done as open hearts are deeply injured. The dominance of one sex over the other cannot be creative and is certainly not enjoyable. . . .  

     Generally it seems that women are the wiser in relationships in that they know the importance of talking things out and resolving them.  Often their emotions become reactive, arousing defensiveness in men, who feel attacked.  Women are the ones who are usually left with the responsibility of initiating any important dialogue.  It need not be so.  Men can learn to open the space for such dialogue.

     From my own resistive experience, the way to that dialogue includes taking deliberate steps to open up the space in order to confront and resolve issues.  This is the “work” those who seek creative relationships must do in order to find the union that love would bring. That is not always a comfortable experience as it necessarily involves becoming vulnerable as one opens up to hidden and guarded areas of past wounding.  Dialogue involves honest inquiry to uncover assumptions and misconceptions in order to reveal the truth.  It also requires suspension of judgment, criticism and blame.  There is a paradox here in that the vulnerability we seek to avoid is what leads to intimacy, and ultimately to communion, the essential ingredient of true relationship. 

     The Dalai Lama said, in his Millennium Advice,  “Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.”  He also advised, “Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.”  His most insightful piece of advice, however, in my opinion anyway, is “In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation.  Don’t bring up the past.”  That is an easy pit to stumble into. 

     As one stands on one’s own ground of “radical authenticity” and passion for the truth of love in one’s relationship with another, and passion for the genuine experience of intimacy where trust and honesty are valued above all other privileges and pleasures of a relationship, one will have the opportunity to experience one’s own angelic fire, as well as that of one’s partner.  Such a fire is a beautiful, albeit fierce, power to know in oneself and to behold in another, giving rise to a deep sense of respect and honor between couples who dare to stand in the fire of Love together—and who take the time to learn and utilize the tools of dialogue that keep them on the path to clarity, as well as from taking the more familiar path of attacking, defending and name calling . . . or walking away.

     As true men and women, we love and honor that in each other and want to be full partners in that same angelic fire that will not settle for anything less than the real and genuine in our experience of love in intimate relationship with another sacred and precious angel incarnate.  The tendency is to avoid heated arguments because of the discomfort they often produce.   We can agree to disagree and then welcome confrontations as necessary encounters with the truth in order to arrive together on the other side in a place of accord where love still abides as sweet and strong as ever.  

     No man, or woman, can destroy the fire of spirit. One need never lose one’s sense of identity with the angel.  Nor need one ever let another take one’s crown of self-control and authority and become subject to another’s power and control.  The Father within is always present to receive our spirit and to support us in our ordeals in life, if we would but remember to make space in the heart for His presence. 

     It is essential, I feel, that both partners have an active and personal communication with their Father within before they come together to share in the powerful creative currents of love.  Otherwise a truly creative relationship is not likely to develop and blossom . . . . 

     Life, in oneself and in another, is sacred and is not to be taken lightly, or “messed with,” in common parlance.  The angel of fire we each are will simply not allow it, and if he/she is pushed far enough, the angel will come forth to deal with the situation forthrightly.  We know not the power that lies within this body temple in the angel incarnate we each are. Perhaps we do have a clue when we are forced to come forth in emergencies.  That is what emergencies are, moments that require us to fully emerge and deal with things forthrightly, assisted by our powerful Adrenal Glands and the tranquil vibration of the Spirit of the Single Eye.

     There is definitely a time for repentance, for turning around and facing one another in the current of love in “sacred space” before facing the issues that need resolving, and surely before approaching the altar of Sacred Sex together.  Love is a fire which purifies that which it loves, and love cares for our human capacities which give us presence and expression on earth.   In order to come through them with clarity, it often chastises them. Whatever is there—the residue of our day’s activities in service to our world, for example—is met by this fire.  What is not of love, not genuine, not you, is burned up and left for dross by the Spirit of Purification.  What is too heavy to ascend in the fire will descend and fall away. Only that which is gold, or “fine brass”—precious, in other words—will ascend, and if one is identified with the dross, or holding onto it, then one may get burned as well. 

    This is essentially what is being declared when one exclaims, “That just burns me up!”  One has to let go of it entirely, leave it out of the holy place and out of one’s life forever—certainly out of the sacred space of relationship. One way of letting go of something that “burns us up” is to stop judging it. [Another is to seek the help of a personal counselor in exposing the hot buttons and disarming them. (See footnote for a reference.)]²  

     Sex is not casual when it embodies Love.  Love is purposeful and its purpose is creation and blessing.  It is truly the most powerful force in our lives, which must be handled with great care and approached with our hearts first and well before we approach it with our genitals.   Then the sacred vessels of the temple are well anointed with the oil of love for the release of the blessings of the Spirit of the New Earth in a current of unified radiation of love into our worlds. We may truly say then, ”Behold, I make all things new.”  The very atoms that comprise our body temples, which started their ascent far out in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms of the Natural World, are lifted up in the ascending fire of love to become the living flesh of the Great Spirit that created them.  Ascension is our primary role as co-creators with God.  How else will the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our God save through us who comprise his beloved, holy temple on Earth? 

     We lift up the substance of our individual worlds in the temple service of sacred sex so that some of it might be transmuted, or spiritualized, into angelic substance,  and the rest sent back out into the Natural World renewed and sanctified by Love.  We bring it all into the Father’s house by taking it into our sacred hearts and hands. Thus is the world made new.  And there is so much to be made new.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.  (Malachi 3:10)   

    This is the service I came on earth to offer, the service I believe we each came to offer when we incarnated in these temples of flesh. 

    I do not see ascension as something we are to strive for in order to escape this world of trial and tribulation.  It is our very work and pleasure to lift up our bodies and our worlds, together with all other angels incarnate with us on this beautiful planet.  Let our passion be utterly to this end that we may each fulfill our mission and purpose in life, singularly and all together, to bless the world with shining light, with beauty and peace, and bring it all Home to the One whose world this is. Ω

♦♦♦ ◊ ♦♦♦

¹ Psalm 91

² For such personal help, I recommend Nancy Rose Meeker, a well-seasoned intuitive and transformation counselor. You can meet her on her website, http://www.nancyrosemeeker.com. From the menu, simply choose About and behold Rose’s shining face. (Just as a side note, Nancy Rose helped with the editing and honing of my book.) 

 

                                               

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Spirit of the New Earth Vibration, pg 11: Divine Alchemy

I am the Spirit of the New Earth

I welcome the substance by which I create all things new

in patience and right expectancy

I am the spirit of love

The vibrational tone of the Spirit of the New Earth is a low frequency in the red zone of the rainbow spectrum of Love’s White Light as it moves through the Gonadal seal of the seven endocrine glands.  The radiation of Love at this base level moves earth substance with the currents of masculine/feminine energy working as one creating force to bring forth new life forms.  

The Creative Process had already moved down through all six levels above, beginning in the Pineal Gland where the violet frequency of Love moves down into the Pituitary Gland and, stepped down to the blue vibration of the Spirit of the Womb or Truth, conceives the seed of Life which is then nurtured by the masculine/feminine parental hormonal energies provided by the anterior and posterior lobes of this Mother Gland. 

Life is thus born of the union of Love and Truth in and through the Thyroid gland that proceeds to give vitality to the body cells, and the parathyroid glands that metabolize calcium for bone building and strengthening. 

The vibration of Love is further stepped down to provide a purifying fire in the Thymus gland, the heart of the immune system, and through it in immune cells distributed throughout the body temple.  The Vibration of Love is stepped down further as the River of Life descends the steps of the temple to the level of the Pancreas and the Islets of Langerhans, where the vibration of Blessing is focused and sent forth through joyful currents of emotional energy. 

From this level, the current of Love steps down one more level to empower the Adrenal glands and fill the temple with the Light of the Spirit of the Single Eye, bringing the mind to a sharp focus for the shining of the Light of Truth into the world.  The final step is down into the realm of creative activity, the domain of the Spirit of the New Earth, where new life is born through the Womb of the Great Mother, portrayed here by the graphic of the Vesica Pisces. 

The Vesica Pisces

THE TWO CIRCLES forming the Vesica Pisces can also be seen to represent the inner world of spirit and Divine consciousness and the outer world of form and human consciousness. These two worlds, or realms, are connected in human consciousness where they overlap, the one being the realm of darkness and void and the other being the realm of light and manifest form.  In other words, the realm of creator and the realm of creation, which are inseparably one.

Diana Durham writes: “Thus the vesica symbolizes both the deep feminine, the source of creation, and the place of connection between spirit and form, heaven and earth.” Durham continues:

What other symbol has such connotations?  The Grail chalice itself: the feminine form and vessel of the chalice or cup, whose shape clearly echoes that of the womb and whose appearance in the Grail Castle signifies the beginning connection with the Grail King energy of the inner realms. . . .

The womb contains both menstrual blood or the newly forming baby.  Both blood and baby are symbols of life. . . .  The cup of the Eucharist holds wine, the symbol of Christ’s blood and a symbol of life.  So something is held in, or issues out of, the Grail that is life-giving. . . .

Perhaps the most central meaning of both aspects of the Grail is given here in this beautiful and simple passage from the Psalm 23: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”  The heart is full to overflowing with the presence of love, irrespective of outer circumstance—“in the presence of mine enemies.” The heart that is open to the presence of the heavenly king energy, in other words the experience of union—connection—with the divine source: this is what finding the Grail symbolizes in the Grail quest.  The container is the heart, and that which is contained within it, the life-giving substance, is the substance of love.

If the two circles of the vesica pisces symbol represents the inner and outer, the spiritual and material worlds, and the vesica shape is the place where the two connect, then finding the Grail also means to find the place of connection between these two worlds and to let them be joined instead of separated.  This place of connection symbolizes the purified heart realm. (The Return of King Arthur, pp .67-69)

Sharing in Sacred Sex, two lovers are connected with the sovereign energy of the King and Queen bringing with it the experience of ecstatic union with the Divine.  In order to enter this state, both must be conversant with the secrets of sacred alchemy . . . that, when allowed to work in their lives and in their “lovemaking,” bring a natural awareness of design and control inherent in the truth of sacred sex. 

That control is found to work particularly within the male who withholds his ejaculation so as to provide a radiant positive pole in his erection for the negative response of his receptive female partner as she opens her vesica to receive his love.  They must also be open in their hearts to love and be willing to go through a process of purification, for it is through the heart that one accesses the secrets of the sacred alchemy of the “deep feminine.”  

For that alchemy to be actualized there needs to be an arc of love between the two lovers. With the charge produced by this arc, the One Law we considered earlier in our meditation on the Pituitary Gland and the Creative Process (positive action—negative response—attraction—union—unified radiation), which is the power that creates and renews the world, is engaged.  

(In order to fully grasp and appreciate this symbolism, it would be most helpful and really necessary to read Diana’s book in its entirety.  In her chapter “The Dance” she shows in a most wonderful and understandable way how the dance between the masculine and the feminine works to create the arc of creative juice that renews the world.)

Divine Alchemy

Constraints imposed by the Church in the early centuries of the Christian Era, pushed the practice of alchemy underground.  The erotic roots of alchemy have apparently been shrouded by the pseudo-alchemical process of changing baser metals into gold, which was employed as a smoke screen to keep the real ritual of alchemy occult. The true alchemy occurred during sacred sex and was of divine origin, its purpose being to transmute human flesh, symbolized by lower metals, into the substance of love, symbolized by gold, thereby spiritualizing flesh.  An ancient rite of the anointing of the “sacred king” was based on the idea that the true priest or king received his divine power through the high priestess, without whom he was nothing.

Alchemy can be found in Egyptian religious practices as far back as the early centuries of the Christian Era and this knowledge was procured by the goddess Isis herself, who, according to the story in one treatise, “obtained the secrets of alchemy from an ‘angel and prophet’ through her feminine wiles.” (The Templar Revelation, Chapter 7, “Sex: The Ultimate Sacrament”)

Here in the West, outside of the intimate worlds of individual couples who have explored this “taboo,” we do not share  a consciousness of the sacred in our sexuality, much less a common knowledge of the alchemy produced through sacred sex.  It certainly is not included in our religious upbringing as a sacred part of us, much less a sacred ritual.  It is rather looked upon with much shame and guilt.  The authors of The Templar Revelation point out that this ritual was more about a couple becoming gods than about erotic sex.  First the high priestess becomes the goddess and then endows the man with divinity through the alchemy of her sexuality.  Through their union, their shared world was infused with “a regenerative balm,” as were they. . . .  The priestess’ body became a virtual “gateway to the gods” as the goddess/priestess united with the god/priest in a marriage rite that served the purpose of procreation as well as a way by which she bestowed wisdom on man.  The anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany, who was a priestess, was such a pagan ritual.     (Ibid, pp. 257-258)

Jesus is usually thought of in Christendom as having been celibate, and there seem to be as many arguments that support this idea as there are that prove its fallacy.   Without entering into the debate, I would simply suggest that Jesus had a sweetheart, and she was Mary of Bethany, which Picknett and Prince believe is one and the same as Mary Magdalene.

According to Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels. . . , while the other disciples despised her for her intimate relationship with the Master, Jesus honored Mary of Bethany with the title of “Apostle of Apostles.”  One text says “she spoke as a woman who knew the All.” She was raised by the Master above all the other disciples and declared by him to be the futuristic ruler of the “Kingdom of Light.”   He also called her “Mary Lucifer” and “Mary the Light-bringer.” As the texts portray the relationship between Jesus and Mary, he so loved her that there was nothing he could refuse her, including her request to raise up her brother Lazarus from the dead, which he did strictly out of love for her. This respectful treatment of her and loving regard by Jesus was not a small thing as it emphasized a basic shift needed at a core level of human consciousness during a period of history when women were still looked down upon as not being worthy even of life.

With this account of the quality of substance between them, the marriage feast at Cana could well have been their own wedding feast.  I have no problem with that, and there is ample evidence to support this scenario.   Why would the Master Jesus have circumvented this pivotal and most powerful aspect of our humanity whereby we experience the pleasure of union with our Creator and with one another in the physical plane of Being ?

The piece I wish to articulate here relates to the fact that this area of sexual function has long been hidden in the dark corners of human consciousness amid the rubble of the ancient residue of past failures on the part of Man, male and female, to come clean before the Lord of Creation, naked and unashamed of who we are.  Sexuality’s redemption and return to sanctity seems long overdue and, in the experience of many, is well underway. ♦                                              _____________________________________________________________________________    

I hope you have enjoyed this blog series as much as I have enjoyed sharing from my book SACRED ANATOMY.   I will now rest for a season until I am prompted from within to put hand to keyboard.  Wishing you happiness and joy until next we meet. —Anthony

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Spirit of the New Earth Vibration, page 4: Sacred Sex

Continuing to share inspired visions in excerpts from SACRED ANATOMY, giving consideration to the Gonads as a sacred endocrine seal through which the gifts of the Spirit of the New Earth, patience and right expectancy, manifest in our lives . . . in this post I consider the worshipful essence of sacred sex and the “sex principle” as it is operative throughout the Universe . . . and venture into the historical background of sexual engagement as part of the dance between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine.  To flesh this out, I draw on the expertise of one of my favorite poets and Arthurian Legend authors, Diana Durham, for metaphorical and legendary story.     

SACRED SEX

I would just preface this consideration with a few words about present human behavior in this potent and delicate area of creative Self-expression. For the most part, we as humans have not known what we have been doing with our sexuality. All the dysfunction and violent behavior in this area of human activity is simply the evidence of the absence of right function and gentle behavior. Ultimately, sexual misbehavior and frustration can be seen as the result of the suppression of love. When we deny love expression, we deny our own Self-expression and betray our divine identity. This results in a buildup of frustrated energy. When the pressure reaches a level where it cannot be contained, and steps are not taken to release the energy in creative ways, then there will inevitably occur an explosive and often violent release. The more delicate and fine the area of function, the more potentially violent and destructive the release. Love is the finest and most delicate of substances and therefore the most powerful.

From my own experience, as I let love find expression continually—in spirit, thought, word and deed—my creative energies find a natural flow rather than getting bottled up inside. Right function can only come forth from me as I am the right person, my authentic divine Self. The wrong person can never do the right thing. Only the authentic person, who is the angel incarnate, knows how to function appropriately in the realm of sacred energy.

As we continue to discover our divinity and live out of our authentic Self, we emerge from the darkness and come into the light of the truth of love with our sexuality and see it for what it truly is.

Let us now explore this area of sacred function, looking at some of its battered terrain as well as the possibilities and potential for its renewal, transformation and transmutation in consciousness and, subsequently, in experience.

__________________________

THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE of worship is to know union with God in one’s own temple.  The conscious experience of union with God is a glorious one. Glory is the unified radiation of love. It comes at the end of the Creative Process, not at the beginning, after radiation and response have been allowed to work their magic to initiate the attraction phase of the process that produces the alchemy which alone can bring about the experience of the union between God and human consciousness, between inner Spirit and outer form.  When physical sex is initiated on the basis of the Creative Process and allowed to embody it fully, Glory is known. To the degree that sexual energies—the transforming charge of the Creative Process—are of a quality and intensity that can generate the fine substance that makes our connection with Source at the core of our Being a tangible and knowable experience,  then sexual expression can be called worship and sex a sacred ritual. 

Having made this truthful statement, I acknowledge that human sexuality has been degraded to the level of lustful and recreational pleasure, pornographic voyeurism, pedophilia, and workplace sex harassment, amongst other abusive activities, that have all but stripped away any sanctity it once possessed.  There was a time when all things were held sacred, not the least of which our sexuality.  We appear to be returning to a level of consciousness we once knew, where we again see all things as sacred and connected to the Creator.

The Sex Principle

Sex is the very nature of the Creative Process, which moves in five phases: radiation—response—attraction—union—unified radiation.  It connects and engages the Creator with creation and integrates creation within itself.

The “Sex Principle” is operative throughout the Universe. It is what draws order out of chaos and continues to maintain creativity throughout the Cosmos.  It holds suns and their planets in spiraling patterns of perfect proximity in galaxies and keeps atoms from splitting apart.

Sex is the “main event” throughout Creation, particularly evident in the juicy womb of Mother Nature herself out of which springs forth all the green foliage and fragrant flowers we enjoy in the Spring.  If there is anything life is, it’s sexual.

Consider alone how sex occupies our own human consciousness.  Life on planet Earth is about the creative dance between the masculine and the feminine who are made to be intimate and to move together in the music and rhythm of life.  

The Creator is both masculine and feminine. God is male, as all things are sired by the positive seed of the Father and made flesh in the responsive Womb of the Great Mother.  God is also female, represented by the emergence of all life forms on this planet from out of the womb of Gaia, our Earth Mother. The two are not separate but exist and function as one. We could say that God is a unified field of consciousness and creativity in which the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine co-create the world in which we live. One can hardly speak of one without including the other, as we shall now explore.

Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine

The Divine Masculine in both men and women represents Father God. His is the positive expression of love that draws the Universe together.  In the four Vedas, the world’s oldest religious writings, he is called “Purusha,” the primordial Cosmic Being and source of all human life.  He articulates the creative Word, the Tone that sets the vibrational patterns as seeds for the forms of creation. He plants his seed in the womb of the Divine Feminine, making her egg fertile.  He is embodied in the vertical rod of creative power that goes forth as a shaft of light into the void of formless chaos to bring forth order and beauty through Her womb.

In the Eastern tradition, the Divine Masculine is a trinity comprised of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.  Brahma is worshiped as the creator of the Universe, Vishnu as the protector of the world and restorer of dharma (law and order), and Shiva, the formless of the three, as infinite, or transcendental, consciousness.  Shiva is a pillar of light who directs spiritual energy through the spine, connecting the kundalini shakti, his feminine aspect from which he derives his power, as it uncoils from its “power cell” in the sacral region of the pelvis up to the top of the head and beyond. He was historically called the “Great Destroyer” because he enables spiritual transformation and evolution by using the essences of our current level of understanding to move us to a higher plane, thus “destroying” the plane of departure.  He is now, perhaps more accurately, referred to as the “Great Spiritualizer,” in that he facilitates spiritual growth and transformation. The significance of this particular characteristic of the “masculine principle” will become more evident shortly as we explore the alchemy of our sexuality.

In the Genesis story of creation, the divine masculine is called Adam, which means blood, or sap, of God that circulates throughout the whole of creation distilling its essences and sharing them with all the rest of the Body of the Great Mother, which is comprised of the entire Universe. Adam was created to provide a consciousness for divine being on earth.  It is he who established a vibrational connection with all living things by giving them names. He is the Great Protector of Creation.  

In The Return of King Arthur, her signature work, Diana Durham portrays the masculine as represented by the sword in the hands of the knights of the Round Table, and by King Arthur, who represents “enlightened leadership, particularly the spiritual mentor who blesses, creatively challenges, and empowers his ‘subjects.’” 

He is represented by Sir Lancelot as the “heroic part of ourselves that must transfer its attention from achieving greatness to the inner work of transformation in order to become whole.”

He is represented by Merlin, the magician, as the “‘magical’ resurrective power that lies trapped in one’s own subconscious mind, gripped by the rigid structures of fear and shame.”

Contemporary authors on the subject of the male psyche, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, have written in depth around the theme of the mature masculine energies, giving them names that characterize their individual qualities: “Sovereign, Warrior, Magician and Lover.”  These archetypal energies, accessible in both men and women, represent the entire spectrum of energies necessary for an individual to create a world.  In men the sovereign energy is of the King.  In women, it is the sovereign energy of the Queen.  

The masculine is also represented in religious and social traditions by a number of symbols that personify God as a father figure. Such symbols as the sky, the sun, fire and lightening portray the father symbolically as associated with authority, reason, law, warlike spirit and penetrating power.  His is the thrust of creativity facilitated by the mental process of logic and reason.

The phallus itself has symbolized fertility, good luck and protection in ancient mythical cultures. The king was the archetypal symbol of the dominant male who had “divinely sanctioned power and absolute temporal authority over a tribe or nation.  The stronger the king’s symbolic link with supernatural forces, the more crucial became his leadership qualities, intelligence and health—authority going hand-in-hand with responsibility for the happiness of his subjects, hence the ancient sacrifices of the king (or his representative) when countries were overtaken by plagues or crop failures.” (Tresidder: Symbols And Their Meanings.)

It was vital, then, that the ruler of the nation become one with the divine so as to ensure the health, prosperity and fertility of his kingdom.  So long as his identity was with Love, the Divine King, his kingdom flourished.  All of this is symbolized by the sword in the Arthurian legend, as Durham interprets the myth here:

The sword is naturally the masculine symbol: phallus, scepter, wand.  All relate to the masculine domain of potency, government, purpose, power. . . .  The myths tell us in fact that this masculine power is only misused when it is not in partnership with the feminine of the Grail and is wielded by a consciousness that has not learned to stay polarized in the spiritual realm.  The pommel of the sword given to Perceval was of gold—the symbol of love.  So we could say that the true sword is always held in love.  The broken sword can also in fact symbolize the misuse of power. . . .

If we think of the sword as representing purpose, while the Grail represents identity, we can see that the myth is confirming an additional meaning: namely that without the healing of identity it is impossible, or at best very difficult, to have one’s purpose line up coherently in one’s life.

The Divine Masculine, then, is the achieving energy of God.  Introverted, his energy is a vessel for transformation. Extroverted, his energy is procreative and concerned with building and maintaining structure at every level of creation and with the mental process used in developing architectural design. His authority comes from Source, from the King whom he loves and serves with all his heart, his mind and his strength.  To so love and serve his King he must have a heart, his feminine partner, opened upward to serve his love response upward and to receive and extend his King’s love and blessing to others.  Through her he receives his power to achieve.

__________________________

In my next post I will consider the transition to partnership from patriarchy, wherein a state of balance exists between the masculine and feminine energies. Until then, thank you for sharing my meditations and explorations. I welcome your thoughts. 

Anthony 

tpal70@gmail.com

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Spirit of the New Earth Vibration, page 3: Reshaping Hallowed Space

“Sacred tones our voices sound, reshaping hallowed space.  Let Love command.  Let wonders form.  Let heaven’s beauty shine.  Let every living breath sing praise for light divine.” ¹

In this series I have been sharing excerpts from the section of my book SACRED ANATOMY focusing on the endocrine Gonad glands and the vibrational essence of the Spirit of the New Earth.  The larger context for this post is available in a previous post, which I recommend reading first, if you haven’t already done so.  In this post I share my meditation on the musical aspect of this sacred seal . . . along with some thoughts on current issues. 

This is an area in which, as a musician, I have a passionate interest; one that led me to explore in depth the spiritual or vibrational essences that create the body temple.  My exploration led me to write and publish my research and experimentation in a second book, ATTUNEMENT WITH SACRED SOUND, wherein I offer energy healers a methodology for the use of sacred sound as a carrier wave for Spirit and intention.

THE CREATING POWER OF WORDS

Before I proceed, I will say a few words about the hymn I excerpted a few lines from above.  It was written by a friend and colleague as a worshipful tribute to the Word that articulates the “Whole Holy World,” as Uranda described Creation.  The term word signifies sound, a vocal utterance, as it has done from the Beginning:  “And darkness was upon the face of the deep . . . and God said: Let there be light.”
St. John resounds these words from Genesis in his Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. (John: 1-3)

I would like to give some thought to the creating power of words. The Word, spelled with a capital W, signifies the Divine utterance of the Tone that creates and shapes the visible world.  The “Word made flesh” refers to the incarnation of the Lord of Love in the man Jesus. By the same principle, our words, imbued with spirit and emotion, are also made flesh in that they manifest form and shape our worlds. 

Words are born of intention.  It is the intention encoded in the words we speak that shapes our experiences in life and our worlds.  In the larger context of the collective body of humanity, our shared world is shaped and conditioned by what’s issuing forth from out of our collective heart, mind and consciousness—our music, for instance. 

Concerts put forth an abundance of emotion-driven words and thoughts that speak for the masses of young people who field and applaud them.  What issues forth from the mouths of bands and rock and rap artists, conveyed on the carrier waves of sound, has its influence on the consciousness of those attending and participating, who then return to their worlds and lives and shape both out of their consciousness.   

In this day, that issuance via various media is largely one of fear, anger, futility, longing, hoping and praying, leading to deep depression and desperation in many to the point of suicide . . . notably among an increasing number of youths and even children, where “virtual reality” and “social media” simply do not substitute for actual reality and social activities with friends and piers at school.  

Through the eyes of such conditioning, we view a world falling apart when in reality it is our species that is threatened by extinction in a collapsing ecology and economy, under siege by a virus from out of the natural world.  Chaos is global, erupting this week in Myanmar.   It is we who are coming apart as a gregarious species sentenced to isolation from one another for too long. 

Profiteering in high places is rampant in this pandemic. No one needs to be profiting from this catastrophe that has produced so much irreparable damage and brought so much pressure on everyone, especially on our youth.  The pressure will only increase as we move toward the end of this pandemic and into the next phase of our collective transformation.  There is light at the end of the tunnel. 

UNDER PRESSURE

My son John in Ashland, Oregon posted this on Facebook a few days ago that depicts the climate in the world presently, as well as his beautiful attitude of compassion:

Feeling this song pretty hard tonight. The pressure just keeps increasing and increasing, and I see it affecting everyone around me. Some take it better than others. I mean, are we diamonds yet? We’re just… Trying to be good people. Trying to save the planet. Trying to love each other. Trying to keep a house. Trying to make enough money. Trying to feed the poor. Trying to be good parents. Trying to be good partners. Trying to be good friends. Trying harder and harder and harder. And it’s never “enough.” There’s a reason for that.  Having A LOT of compassion for all those getting squeezed by life right now. You’re not alone. Together we walk. It is We, not just you and I.

“Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the (People on streets) edge of the night
And loves (People on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure”

(Video: Queen & David Bowie  UNDER PRESSURE )  To read Lyrics click here

It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about
Watching some good friends screaming let me out
Pray tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people, people on streets

[The phenomenal crowds that flocked to Queen concerts back in the 1980’s speaks to the revolutionary awakening of that era sparked and shaped by the words and sounds of Queen and similar concerts . . . and still doing so.  Just this one particular video was viewed by 272,254,215 people in March of 2013, a quarter of a century after the song had been performed at every Queen concert between 1981 and ’86.] 

PRESSURE ESSENTIAL TO CHANGE

Without pressure, change cannot occur. There is no greater potential for shaping the hallowed space of darkness upon the deep of our yet uncreated worlds than from the sacred ground of our sexuality.  Here at the first level in the planes of being are all the essences from the levels above that go to create and empower the world in which we live and have our being.  So there’s much pressure coming to bear at this lower level with at least six levels stacked up on top of it. What we do here in this place of holy communion, and why we do it, sets into motion the energetic and vibrational factors that will most assuredly shape our world and our experience of life. 

If we approach this potent area of sexual intimacy for the purpose of relieving the pressures of life, or simply pleasuring ourselves — or, worse yet, profiting financially from human and sex trafficking —  then we compromise whatever creative processes are unfolding.  We also enforce our intention to seek pleasure and profits from the world that we create, and the world given to us by our Creator.  

This is not in keeping with the intention of our divine Self, the angels we are, who have incarnated to co-create a heaven on earth with other angels who have incarnated with the same intention.  We are wise, then, to be fully conscious as we approach this potent creative activity.  And I know I’m preaching to the choir here as those in “gross darkness” cannot begin to comprehend the light.  Nevertheless, I send my words into the mass consciousness through you, my precious and cherished reader, along with deep appreciation.  

That said, I will now proceed to share this excerpt from my book. 

Musical Shaping of Sacred Space 

   THIS FIRST-LEVEL CENTER for the differentiation of the awesome power of Love emits a vibration that corresponds with the longest of the seven dominant wavelengths in the light spectrum, Red, correlating with the musical pitch of A 220,  the lower octave of A 440 , which re-sounds the vibratory pitch of invisible ultra-violet light at the top of the spectrum. This lower vibration moves down to a G Natural red at the root Chakra, which represents the grounding our bodies provide between the current of the Creative Process and the natural world of the Good Earth, which is a further extension of the continuum spectrum of energy as it manifests in shades of red and brown earth tones, and which provides the materials for the construction of the body temple.

   The invisible, inaudible Music of the Spheres begins to be made visible in singing flesh.  Perhaps there is a significant correlation, as we considered earlier, with the intonation of the pitch A 440 by the Concert Master in tuning the orchestra just before the conductor enters to start the music.  The symphony of each life expression begins with the pitch of A 440.  Everything we see external to ourselves is but a reflection and echo of the designs found throughout the anatomy and physiology of the body temple.  

    For example, one can “hear” with one’s inner ear a pre-sounding of the vibratory pitches in the various parts of the anatomy.  I feel it in the area around my heart as well while sharing attunement with someone.  This is how I know what pitch to tone when I wish to work with sound as a carrier wave during a healing session.   It is really quite simple and very accurate, as I have discovered, offering a profound influence of sound vibration to facilitate the healing process. 

The audible music that we compose and play or sing is but a reflection of the inaudible “music” that is always sounding and resounding in sacred tones throughout our bodies.  It is what we are. We are music and light flowing like water through cool air and congealing like gelatin in an icy mold.  It is all one continuous river of sacred energy vibrating at different levels of frequency making itself visible here and there as it flows through the lattice work of force fields shaping sacred space along lines of force as functional design is given to living flesh.

   While focusing the attunement current in the region of the Gonads, I invariably have a deep sense of the sacred nature of this seal.   Here is the very seat of holiness in our sacred anatomy, an altar of worship upon which is sacrificed and sanctified the very finest molecules from the atomic world so that they might make their ascent into the temple of light. One may be compelled, as I am, to sound a sacred “OM” with deep, resonant tones.  Tender essences surely rise from these holy vessels as incense before the throne of God in our living temples. 

To close I simply say and sing “Let Love command.  Let wonders form.  Let heaven’s beauty shine.” I welcome your thoughts. Until my next post, blessings of light and love upon your path.  — Anthony  

CREDITS:  1. George C. Hanson, Let Love Command.  Hymn from Songs of Praise And Thanksgiving, hymnal of the Emissaries of Divine Light (©1986).

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“Fifth Way” Love: A Romantic Path to Transformation

I will open this post with the excerpt from Cynthia Bourgeault’s signature work, The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE – Discovering The Woman at the Heart of Christianity – with which I closed my previous post, and will continue quoting her commentary in its entirety. 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 makes 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. 

THE SPIRITUAL KISS THAT BEGETS

From Philip’s point of view, then, lineal descendents of Jesus, even if they existed, would not be “anointed ones,” unless this claim were to be validated by their own spiritual transformation. The kingdom over which the Anointed One reigns is beyond the space/time continuum and cannot be inherited lineally (that technicality consistently overlooked in the literal-mindedness of The Da Vinci Code); it can be entered only by becoming a new kind of human being–what Philip actually describes as “a new race of human be­ings . . . . Only true sons and daughters can gain immortality,” he writes in analogue 56, “and no one can gain it without becoming a true son and daughter.” Progeny cannot be fashioned out of flesh and blood; they are the fruit of an alchemy of consciousness.

Philip makes it clear that this is the kind of spiritual procreation that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were chiefly about. As we discussed in chapter 10, his symbol for this type of richly engendering spiritual love is the kiss, which (as is universally the case throughout the Near Eastern culture) is seen as a sign not of sexual attraction but of spiritual begetting. When he indicates in analogue 37 that “the Master loved her more than the other students and many times would kiss her on the mouth,” he is not describing an illicit romance but rather a sacred exchange of their deeply commingled beings. The spiritual kiss is the symbol par excellence of Fifth Way love.

From a Fifth Way standpoint, this kind of intense and trans­forming love, “which is really the birth-pangs of union at a higher plane,” will indeed bear fruit. But the fruit may not be human children so much as an energetic sphere of pure creativity, in which reality is touched at the core and love itself is the progeny.

As analogue 66 points out, “The one who creates objects [i.e., literal offspring] works outwardly in the external world. The one who labors in secret, however, works within the icon, hidden in­wardly from others.” In other words, the work goes on at the imaginal (or causal) level, and its potency is made manifest not by producing new people but by engendering transformed people­ giving birth to children “in the Realm of the Unseen,” in the words of the text. (Underscores mine)

“FIFTH WAY LOVE”:  AN EROTIC PATH TO TRANSFORMATION

The “Fifth Way” is a spiritual path based on relationship. Cynthia Bourgeault calls it “conscious love” rather than “tantric love” so as not to put a stumbling block before her parishioners. She is an Episcopal priest whose passion is to restore the romantic love affair between Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the center piece at the heart of Christianity. The term itself is a deliberate spin-off from George Gurdjieff’s “Fourth Way,” the “Way of the Conscious Man.” Boris Mouravieff (d.1966), a little known Russian esotericist who studied Gurdjieff’s system intimately, coined the phrase and used it in his three-volume Gnosis to represent “courtly love as a spiritual path and of the way of transformation through mystical union with one’s ‘polar being.'” Cynthia’s comment:

“While he [Mouravieff] stops short of saying that Jesus and Mary Magdalene practiced this path, he makes it clear that its headwaters lie deep within the marrow of Christianity itself, and he insists that it represents “The purest and most sublime realization of the Christian spiritual path.” 

THE “SONG OF SONGS”

More commonly known in Protestant circles as “The Song of Solomon, Bourgeault associates this erotic book of the Old Testament Bible with Mary Magdalene, seeing it as an ancient testament to the practice of “Fifth Way Love.” I will share my favorite passage from the Biblical texts and then offer a commentary on it. The song opens with the kiss that begets love:

The song of songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. 

Because of the savor of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee…. 

The voice of my beloved! Behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

My beloved spake, and said unto me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.  Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Our winter is currently at the door in mid October, not a time to be leaping and skipping. Perhaps, then, we could see this passage metaphorically as describing the nature and character of Life itself and of the Beloved who abides within us each one, peaking out through the windows of our eyes and showing himself through the lattice of our veiled and guarded hearts. The Beloved is always there, “standing behind our wall,” when our world gets dark and seemingly impossible to navigate.  Always there to turn to for assurance that all is well and as it should be. Always there to love in passionate embrace and simply say: “I love you with all of my heart, with all of my mind, and with all of my body. With Solomon I sing . . .

Place me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. Strong as Death is love; intense as Sheol is its ardor. Its shafts are shafts of fire, flames of Yah (Yahweh). Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away.”

AN UNLIKELY BIBLICAL TEXT

Like Mary Magdalene herself, the Song of Songs has had a long his­tory of both admirers and detractors. It has been called, with some justification, “the most unbiblical book in the whole Bible,” and there are those who feel that its inclusion in among the wisdom writings of the Old Testament was a grand mistake. But others see it as nothing short of scripture’s mystical highpoint, an inexhaustible fountainhead of beauty and spiritual wisdom. Among this latter group was Rabbi Aqiba (d. 135), one of the most influential of the early rabbinic commentators, whose celebrated words eventually carried the day: “All the ages are not worth the day on which it was written for all the writings are holy, but the Song is the Holy of Holies.”

At the heart of all this consternation, as you might expect, is the fact that this text is a love song–and not just a mild-mannered, “spiritual” love song, but an unabashed celebration of erotic pleasure. From its opening salvo, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” to its parting affirmation, “Love is as strong as death,” it never breaks stride, In eight canticles of stunningly evocative imagery, it sings the glories of carnal desire in exquisite and scintillating detail. 

KENOTIC LOVE

Kenosis is the act of emptying oneself, a characteristic applied, by Paul specifically, to the path that Jesus took in his life of service. It was the path Mother Theresa took and other saintly souls.  Cynthia writes: 

As Paul so profoundly realizes, self-emptying is the touchstone, the core reality underlying every moment of Jesus’s human journey. Self-emptying is what  brings him into human form, and self-emptying is what leads him out, returning him to the mode of glory. The full realization of Jesus’s divine selfhood [our divine Selfhood] comes not through concentration of being, but through voluntary divestment of it. . . . Stripping oneself and standing naked: this is the essence of the kenotic path.

KENOSIS IN THE FIFTH WAY

We have already seen that kenosis is the tie-rod of Jesus’s entire teaching, connecting the inner and outer realms of our human experience in a single, unified gesture. “Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend” (John 15:13) is one of his most celebrated dictums. But when that “friend” happens also to be one’s uniquely beloved, one’s romantic partner or spouse, kenotic practice takes on a particularly intense and even a sacra­mental character. This is because the root energy it works with is the transformative fire of eros, the energy of desiring. That messy, covetous, passion-ridden quicksilver of all creation is tamed and transformed into a substance of an entirely different order, and the force of the alchemy accounts for both the efficiency of this path and its terrifying intensity.

Vladimir Solovyov, that great nineteenth-century philosopher of love, was among the first to grasp the enormous implica­tion of this point, which defines both the modality of the Fifth Way and its ultimate destination:

The meaning and worth of love. .. is that it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge for another the same ab­solute central significance which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our own selves. Love is important not as one of our feelings, but … as the shifting of the very center of our personal lives. This is characteristic of every kind of love, but predominantly of sexual love [erotic love]; it is distinguished from other kinds of love by greater intensity, by a more engrossing character, and by the possibil­ity of a more complete overall reciprocity. Only this love can lead to the real and indissoluble union of two lives into one; only of it do the words of Holy Writ say: “They shall be one flesh,” that is, shall become one real being.

In the path of “Fifth Way Love,” as Cynthia Bourgeault presents it in her book, and as she portrays the intimate companionship of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, the eros is transformed and transmuted to a higher level so as to become an erotically ecstatic bridge between the physical and the spiritual worlds, making the oneness of heaven and earth an actual and tangible experience.  The ultimate transformation takes place between “polar beings” who become one blended substance, so that one cannot tell where the boundaries of one’s own body stops and the other’s begins. For there is no “other” and no boundaries. There is only the One I Am.  

We will shift gears in my next post, leaving the realm of the “Holy of Holies” to explore the mysteries of the Universe–as Walter Russell understands and explains them anyway. We are in for a profoundly intellectual roller coaster ride. So, sharpen your mental focus before you read my next post. The theme will remain in the domain of the masculine and feminine energies at work within us and throughout the illusory universe.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony     (tpal70@gmail.com)

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On Human Relations . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 4

My Chorale PicIn chapter seven of her powerful book MARY MAGDALENE – Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, “Reclaiming the Path of Romantic Love,” Episcopal minister Cynthia Bourgeault paints a much different picture of the spiritual path Jesus walked than the one painted by Christian orthodox interpretations of the four gospels. Continuing from where we left off in the previous post, Cynthia speaks to the question “Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers.” I will let you read directly from the final two pages of this chapter.

Having described Jesus’s spiritual path as being anything but celibate, an “enstatic” path of conserving pranic energy, Cynthia makes her case against traditional Christian concepts and beliefs to the contrary.

By contrast, the path that Jesus himself seems to teach and model in his life, and particularly in his death, is not a storing up but a complete pouring out. His pranic energy is quickly depleted; on the cross, as all four gospel account affirm, he does not hold out even until sunset, but quickly “gives up the ghost.” Shattered and totally spent, he simply disappears into his death. The core icon of the Christian faith, the watershed moment from which it all emerges, is not enstatic but ecstatic — love completely poured out, expended, squandered. In contrast to clarity, it is the arche­typal image of purity, the complete self-giving of the heart.

THE PATH JESUS WALKED

And right here, I believe, we come to the fundamental problem with these celibate models of transformation. It’s not merely their monochromatic viewpoint or the implicit devaluing of a whole other stream of Christian spiritual wisdom whose roots are in passionate human love. Rather, it is the fact that at key points they seem to be slightly out of kilter with the path of transformation that Jesus himself walked and taught. One might say that this model points us toward John the Baptist rather than Jesus: to­ward those ancient and time-honored practices of renunciation, asceticism, and self-concentration through abstinence, whereas if we really look closely, we see that Jesus himself seemed to be con­stantly pushing the envelope in the opposite direction — toward radical self-abandonment, reckless self-outpouring, and the trans­mutation of passion in complete self-giving.

But it is right there, at the center of that cognitive dissonance, that a window of opportunity opens up. Rather than trying to smooth it over and pretend it does not exist, as the church has done for nearly two thousand years, we need to tune in and listen to it very carefully, for it gives us exactly the tool we need to proceed.

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers? To date, nearly everyone seems to be trying to solve that riddle from the outside, like good investigative journalists. It’s all about finding new evi­dence: secret documents and societies, new gnostic gospels, purported lost tombs, hidden mathematical messages embedded in the lines of existent texts — some new piece of data that would settle the issue one way or another. Equally, those who are ap­palled by the very notion of a romantically involved Jesus build their case by recourse to doctrines and templates that did not exist until three or four centuries after he had left the planet. It’s all external logic.

But there is another possibility, which has been sitting there right under our noses all along yet so far seems to have been consistently overlooked. That is to evaluate the evidence from the inside, on the basis of the path itself. For Jesus was, after all, a teacher, and the teaching itself is there to be consulted. Once one has compensated for the negative set and drift of the celibate current, it is merely a matter of asking a single question: In the light of what Jesus actually seems to have been teaching, is there anything in the teachings themselves that would have precluded such a love relationship?

If Jesus were indeed walking the path of classic monastic brahmacharya, then the answer is obviously yes; celibacy is an essential requirement of this path, and to diverge from this requirement would violate his integrity and sabotage his spiritual power.

But what if in fact he was walking a different path? A path difficult to identify because it was so close to its own headwaters that it was missed by nearly everyone both then and now? What if he was not an ascetic at all, but was in fact following a whole new trajectory, previously unknown in the West and with its own ways of understanding integrity and purity? Along this other trajec­tory, it might indeed be conceivable for him to be in a human love relationship, although that love would probably not look like what most of us are familiar with.

Let’s see what the teachings themselves have to say.

Thus ends chapter seven with a segue to chapter eight, and to the rest of Cynthia’s provocative treatise, for that matter. The title of chapter eight is “The Great Identity Theft.” Who was Jesus and how was his presentation of himself perceived by the world he came to save from itself?  There are two brief paragraphs midway through this chapter that speak to these questions.

In the Aramaic language of Jesus’s immediate followers, one of the earliest titles given to him was Ihidaya, “the Single One,” or the “Unified One.” In context, it speaks unmistakably of this state of inner oneness; it designates the anthropos, the fully realized human being: the enlightened master of Eastern tradition, or the monad or “undivided one” of hermeticism.

The “great identity theft” to which the title of this chapter refers is that in remarkably short order this term, which was so clearly intended to designate Jesus’s attained state of inner oneness, should come to be interpreted as “singleness” in the sense of being unmarried, “the celibate one.”

Jesus was not necessarily monastic nor ascetic, which leaves him available to a romantic relationship. Actually, according to Islamic scholar Ibrahim Gamard, monasticism was not mandated by the Koran. In a letter to the author in 1998, Gamard shared the insight that “in the Islamic tradition monasticism was disapproved of in the Qur’anic verse which states that the monasticism of the followers of Jesus was invented by them and was not something commanded by God.” As I said, this leaves Jesus with the option at least of having a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene as his wife and partner in a shared service to Humanity: personal transformation via a path of romantic love.

I will leave it there for now and continue with “The Path that Jesus Walked” in my next post . . . . or not. This series seems to be complete, so I may let this be the concluding post to the series on Human Relations. We’ll see what the Current of Inspiration brings us for exploration. Thanks for sharing this consideration with me. As always, your comments are welcome.  Until my next post,

Be love. Be Loved

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com for helpful information about health and wellness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On Human Relations . . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 3

“Without the quicksilver of eros nothing transforms . . .”

My Chorale PicIn the previous post I presented and considered the first two of four propositions, or myths, that are all “firmly rooted in the soil of celibate spirituality–that together have subtly sabotaged our ability to see romantic love as an authentic path of spiritual transformation” presented by Cynthia Bourgeault in her boldly provocative book The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE — Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity.  In this post I will present and consider the third and fourth myths and share some of Cynthia’s thought provoking views and commentary from her book — which I highly recommend to my readers.

Myth Number Three: Human love is inherently different from divine love

This is what has been handed down through Christian church teachings. Actually, it was Plato who classified love by types: agape and eros — although he didn’t attribute agape exclusively to divine love nor eros exclusively to human love. After all, the Greeks had their riotous gods who were capable of both human and divine passions. Rather, agape love to Plato was impartial, disinterested love and eros desiring love, which both the gods and humans were capable of experiencing. Plato’s delineation, non-the-less, set the foundation for such discussions for two-and-a-half millennia since, writes Cynthia Bourgeault.

It was a Swedish Protestant theologian in the 1930’s by the name of Anders Nygren who relegated eros to human desiring. His “monumental” three-volume work Agape and Eros, in which he writes “eros is man’s way to God; agape is God’s way to man,” had a powerful and pervasive influence on contemporary Christian spirituality. Cynthia writes:

According to Nygren, eros is by its very nature filled with desire and neediness, hence impure; by contrast, God’s way of loving is free, clear and impartial, motivated only by the goodness of the giver. With one deft stroke of the theological scalpel, Nygen essentially divided the core energy of love into two separate species and assigned to erotic love (the only love humans are by definition capable of) a permanent second-class status that essentially negates its value as a spiritual path. It is hard to escape the implication that if one is following a path of passionate commitment to a beloved, one is on an inferior spiritual track, or no track at all. This despite love’s unassailable record as the most potent force at our disposal to unify the heart and transform the soul.

Fortunately, the damaging pronouncements of Nygren has impacted only the modern era. Earlier generations of Christian teachers considered eros a “wellspring” of transforming energy that one simply had to learn to work with in one’s spiritual path. Cynthia quotes John Climacus’ sixth-century writings to exemplify this historical fact:

“I have seen impure souls who threw themselves headlong into physical eros to a frenzied degree. It was their very experience of that physical eros that led them to interior conversion. They concentrated their eros on the Lord. Rising above fear, they tried to love God with insatiable desire. That is why when Christ spoke to the woman who had been a sinner he did not say that she had been afraid but that she had loved much, and had easily been able to surmount love by love.”

The goal of “surmounting love by love” for a thousand years formed the heart of the Christian mystical program of transformation, culminating in the twelfth century in the magnificent “monastic love mysticism” of St Bernard of Clairvax and those following in his wake (and notice that whenever eros is mentioned in a text, the figure of Mary Magdalene hovers right in the background). To the extent that it still conceives of God as an object that one can “concentrate one’s eros” on, it ultimately falls victim of that same dualistic fallacy we have already seen in the first myth. But it is far, far better than what has been served up today in the name of religious and psychological health; a gutless, passionless numb “agape clone” that goes nowhere at all. Without the quicksilver of eros nothing transforms: a secret which I believe Jesus himself knew and worked with in his teachings in a profound way, only at a unitive rather than a dualistic level.

Now, of course, if you were fortunate enough to escape such indoctrination in your upbringing, then none of this serves you very much, excerpt perhaps as an educational piece at an intellectual level. I am intrigued by perspectives on historical events that shed light on the path I have traveled over the last seventy plus years. You see, I was born into a Catholic family, groomed for a priestly vocation — which was more my father’s desire for me than my own — and educated in the hallowed halls of Roman Catholic seminary. Only the halls of Catholic seminary were not so hallowed as they were hollow and empty of any transforming energy. Eros was a path to a life of mortal sin, the punishment for which was eternal damnation and separation from God. So, it thrills me to have someone like Cynthia Bourgeault articulate so eloquently some of the undercurrents that were churning beneath the turbulent and confusing terrain upon which I spent the formative and developing years of my life, as well as their origins in history.

Don’t worry for me, however, for the Church’s brain-washing, for some strange reason, seemed like water poured over a duck’s back. It didn’t penetrate the core of me. My guardian angel was apparently protecting me. However, I did not escape the damage to my human psyche and the spoiling of my physical enjoyment of a fully enfleshed life of healthy sexuality as a young man. That came later after awakening to the truth of love and of life.

But enough about me. Let’s look at the fourth myth, the one that lured me into the seminary and, ironically, disillusioned me at the age of 21 and sent me in search for the truth of love in human relations, both with the divine and with one another, a search that would last only seven years. Let me share some of her thoughts and perspectives right from her powerful book.

Myth Number Four: Celibacy is a state of greater purity.

The mistake here–and it is one commonly made in spiritual teaching — is to confuse purity with clarity. Clarity has to do with attuning the mind. Purity is about awakening the heart. The two can overlap each other, but they are not synonymous.

I enjoy her distinction between purity and clarity. She goes on to give a little history of the practice of celibacy.

In Hinduism, where the practice of celibacy as an applied spiritual technology (known as brahmacharya)  arose more than three thousand years ago, the objective has to do with conserving and concentrating prana, the vital energy or life force, so that it can be utilized for spiritual transformation. The modern Hindu master Swami Chidananda has restated the traditional wisdom by explaining it in this way: “Prana is the precious reserve of the seeker. Any sense activity or sense experience consumes a lot of prana [the sex act most of all, he claims] . . . The highest of all goals in life, spiritual attainment, requires the maximum pranic energy on all levels.”

For Swami Chidananda, the practice of celibacy harnesses pranic energy much like a dam harnesses the force of water for the purpose of turning huge turbines, and like a lens concentrates the rays of the sun to burn whatever they are focused on. Cynthia continues:

In the most ancient and powerful understanding of the practice, celibacy belongs among practices that can be classified as enstatic — those that have to do with conserving, collecting, concentrating. The positive side of this kind of practice is a significantly enhanced clarity — a relative freedom from the energy-consuming turmoil of the physical lusts and emotional passions and thus a greater capacity to stay present to the higher frequencies of spiritual energy.

For exactly this reason — that celibacy is a “storing up” process — its shadow side is avarice. One must be alert to a subtle tendency to withhold or “preserve”oneself, to hold oneself back from full engagement in the human sphere in order to have access to those higher realms of truth and light. Under all the aura of “selfless giving” with which the practice of celibacy generally cloaks itself, there can be a subtle spiritual acquisitiveness at work, betrayed in the very phrase “spiritual attainment.” Which “I,” one wonders, is this “I” who attains?

Cynthia gives her reader pause to consider what’s really at work in spiritual attainment. She then turns toward the life and death of Jesus in a most remarkable portrayal of him as being anything but enstatic in his public ministry.

By contrast, the path that Jesus himself seems to teach and model in his life, and particularly in his death, is not a storing up but a complete pouring out. His pranic energy is quickly depleted; on the cross, as all four gospel accounts affirm, he does not hold out even until sunset, but quickly “gives up the ghost.” Shattered and totally spent, he simply disappears into his death. The core icon of the Christian faith, the watershed moment from which it all emerges, is not enstatic but ecstatic — love completely poured out, expended squandered. In contrast to clarity, it is the archetypal image of purity, the complete self-giving of the heart.

Such is the character of unconditional love: “. . .the complete self-giving of the heart.” This reminds me of Jesus’s words to his disciples during his sermon on the vine and the branches: “Greater love hast no man than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.”  He was giving them all that he had to give, and for a truly selfless reason: “. . . that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” (John 15:13)

The joy of giving fully of oneself is like no other joy.  It’s a joy that utterly sets one free. This, I believe, is what’s really behind the mad rush to buy presents for loved ones and friends at Christmas time every year. We do get much joy out of giving.  I’ve actually read of a tribal community where there is no word in their language for “Thank you.” Such is their awareness that the pleasure and joy of giving are the giver’s as much as, if not more than, the receiver’s. I love Cynthia’s portrayal of this great Teacher as one who spent himself fully during his three-and-a-half years of public ministry. It is the Jesus that I can easily hold as a hero and model of true manhood.

In my next post I will share Cynthia Bourgeault’s view of and commentary on “The Path Jesus Walked.” So, stay tuned for more inspiring posts on my Healing Tones blog.

Wishing for you a Happy New Year and a healthy and happy 2016!

Anthony

Read my HealthLight Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.

 

 

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Celibacy, Eros, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Sex, Spiritual intimacy before phsical

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