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Spirit of the New Earth, pg 10: Holy Mother Earth

“I was with you in the beginning, in the dawn of all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of day.”

I will return to my consideration of the Vesica Pisces with my final post of this series next weekend.  Being Mothers Day, I will share this excerpt from SACRED ANATOMY featuring feminine deities in celebration of the return of the Divine Feminine to her rightful place alongside the Divine Masculine, co-creating life forms in the Garden of Paradise here on Mother Earth.

It is a peculiar aberration in human consciousness that has allowed women the world around, the very mothers of humanity without whom men could not even exist, to be minimalized and subjected to all sorts of abuse by the male of our species.  It hasn’t always been so.  Mother God has been very present to her living forms on Earth all down through the ages, albeit having to wait in the wings for her day to emerge and make her presence felt.  That day has come, and she will not be hushed or barred from full and equal participation in life with men.  Here is a bit of her history as a goddess in the world.

FEMININE DEITIES

We have meditated primarily on the biblical texts of John of Revelation, but there have also been visions of feminine deities. Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) also had an appreciation for the sacred nature of sex.  Anglo-Saxon writers A. T. Mann and Jane Lyle in their book Sacred Sexuality, published in 1995, describe a vision that Hildegard has during deep contemplation.  It was of a young girl who was like a goddess and whose radiance surpassed anything she had ever beheld. It was so dazzling that she could not look upon her.  Wearing a brilliant white cloak and gold shoes, she held the sun and moon in her right hand with loving care and bore the deep-blue image of a man on an ivory tablet on her breast.   Known to all of creation as “sovereign lady,” she spoke these words to the image on her breast: “I was with you in the beginning, in the dawn of all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of day.”  Her name was Love.

Hildegard believed the whole earth could be made into a garden of love if men and women simply loved one another, thereby becoming divine themselves.  There would be nothing lacking in this love, for it would shine forth as a unified field of light as a result of complete union of both body and soul with God.   (The Templar Revelation, p. 162)

John of Revelation also had a vision of a feminine being in the heaven. 

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered….“ (Rev 12)

There were other aspects of the vision that carry significance of their own.  There was the “great red dragon” which stood before the woman ready to devour her child as soon as it was born.  Then something remarkable happened when she brought forth her child, which was a man child who “was to rule all nations with a rod of iron….”  The child was “caught up unto God, and to his throne.”

In this metaphorical story I see the Divine Feminine travailing to give birth to the positive expression of Her own divinity on earth but forced to deliver it in the privacy and solitude of her own sacred space, knowing that it is acceptable in God’s heaven if not in man’s world.   This could be said of the full spectrum of her expression, spiritual, mental, emotional and sexual. So she has kept it all safe from the great red dragon—which could represent here the male-dominated world in which she lives her life, in quiet desperation much of the time.    As for me, I personally rejoice that the feminine has survived all that has been levied against her in the way of persecution and oppression on earth, and is yet available to the masculine that is beginning to understand her, for I love the feminine and all that she brings to the dance of life.

It is undeniably the feminine that has been responsible for holding something special over thousands of years with regard to the sacredness of her sexuality.   It is the male who has historically exploited her sexuality and raped her body and soul, along with the larger body of the Earth Goddess Gaia.  Now that many women have risen up and taken back their power and restored their personal sanctity and collective equality and autonomy as people in a patriarchal society, a major shift has occurred in the collective consciousness.  With career and temporal status still in focus for a majority of women, there is currently hardly anyone managing the home-fires and providing the space for family and intimacy. Thankfully, thousands are rediscovering both their sexuality and their nurturing capacity as being sacred and many strong and enlightened women are leading the way for both sexes in this exponentially expanding field of human endeavor to transcend tradition and live outside the box of what society expects of them.

Contemporary psychologist and teacher of advanced practices of sacred sexuality around the world, Margo Anand, comes to mind.  Author of the bestseller, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and a tape series on the path to sexual bliss, The Art of Sexual Magic, has brought back the true context of sex as “the most sacred act of creation.”  She writes: 

When two humans come together as lovers, they mirror the divine union…and connect directly with the energy of all life.  Thus, the energy of your sexuality is the source of the greatest ‘magic’ of all—the creation of life itself.

In her book she explores the meaning of Tantra, which means weaving, as a Hindu-Buddhist practice. 

As the threads of life and love cross one another, Tantra teaches, they join in cosmic union. Within this absolute connection with the universe, your most profound yearnings become possible. This is sexual magic.  Using erotic rituals and specific meditations, Tantric lovers can alter their consciousness and channel the energy of orgasm for healing, ecstasy—even enlightenment.

One of the most powerful and prolific voices among contemporary women authors, earth-activist Starhawk, puts these words on the lips of Mother Nature, who is embodied in the Goddess Gaia, in Doreen Valiente’s poem Charge of the Star Goddess, which she adapted for use in her own work of summoning forth and quickening woman’s spirit:

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals….  I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

Feminine deities have historically held sex as a sacred ritual. In the East, the Indian Tantra and the Chinese Taoism are the only two disciplines that hold sexuality as something sacred and transcendental. Here in the West, there has been a re-discovery of sacred sex. Sex is seen now by increasing numbers of spiritually awake men and women as the highest form of union with God at the physical level, a virtual erotic bridge between heaven and earth bringing a release of enormous creative energy, revitalizing lovers in unique ways, all the way down to their cells.    

The entire art of sexual expression as a centerpiece in life is out of the closet and being explored with enthusiasm by people of all ages.  We all knew there was more to it than our forebears told us, but this allowed us to stumble into one of life’s most intriguing and most misunderstood secrets.  Increasingly the spiritual aspects of sexuality are being put ahead of the physical act of “making out” and “getting some.”  Sex is being elevated to the level of a sacred art of union with the divine and has become so much more enjoyable.  Shame around this natural function is eroding.  A picture of the little Buddha with a big smile on his face and hands reaching inside his gown and down grasping “nirvana” comes to mind as I write.  Indeed, can we not reach down and lift up unto heaven the earth of our temples with all of its sacred anatomy and physiology in sheer celebration of life and in delightful praise of our Creator?   Through such upliftment, would not the flesh be renewed by the Spirit of the New Earth?  ♥

I will complete this series on the Spirit of the New Earth Vibration with the next post. Until then, I wish all mothers a most Happy Mothers Day.  You’ve earned it.  Blessings upon you all.    — Anthony

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Spirit of the New Earth Vibration, pg 7: The Divine Feminine

“If you don’t know what to do, maybe you shouldn’t do anything and just wait for clarity; wait for the impulse to act.”  — Charles Eisenstein, Time of the Sixth Sun Movie

FIERCE LOVE is one of the chief gifts of the Divine Feminine working through the hearts of both men and women.  Other gifts are resilience and an empathic capacity to embrace pain and bring healing to old wounds in the heart.  From my own experience, some of her greatest needs are honesty, affection, unconditional love, finding her voice and being heard. 

A prophetic promise from the Book of Genesis is unfolding as the head of the serpent of the human intellect is being stepped on and “bruised” by the “heel” of the Feminine.  The masculine destroyer of Mother Nature’s creations for monetary gain is being told by the Great Mother through her rising spirit in womankind: “THAT’S ENOUGH! STOP! THUS FAR AND NO FURTHER!  The news media are not bringing it to us, but it’s happening everywhere the world over.  

Take time to view this brief movie trailer of Time of the Sixth Sun.  It’s happening.  We are moving into the Golden Age of a quantum new world where things are happening as fast as thought, and love and joy are bursting out all over.  The speakers all speak from out of a balanced field of Masculine and Feminine energy.  This is a turning point in the evolution of the human race and of the Earth.  As one speaker summed it up,

“During this time of change we don’t have to do anything to protect ourselves. Going to a secret place somewhere, or hiding food in the ground or guns and stuff, and trying to protect ourselves, it’s not going to work. It’s simply about being in your heart, being connected to the Mother Earth and Father Sky, being directly connected to the Great Spirit.  This is simple. Anybody can do it.”  (Drunvalo Melchizadek)

Excerpt from SACRED ANATOMY:

The Divine Feminine

The Divine Feminine is the negatively charged body of response of Mother God to the positively charged radiance of Father God. This is not a passive receptivity but a very actively charged energy that rushes to meet the positive radiation of love through the Divine Masculine, not to serve him, nor to be at his beck and call, but to empower and dance with him. For the dance to be enjoyable and creative, the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine must both be present on the dance floor of life and engaged with one another.  The commonly known animalistic male-female relationship is not sufficient, and dissolves with the revelation of Divine Man and Divine Woman on earth.

The Feminine Principle produces the alchemy that unites us with God and then draws to us the circumstances in which we find ourselves throughout our lives in and through which we may fulfill our mission and purpose for incarnating, which is to bring the things of God, the gifts of spirit, into the world.  In the Biblical story of the wedding feast at Cana, for example, which is believed to be a celebration of the sacred marriage of Jesus and Mary of Bethany, it is Mary of Bethany who arranges for the vessels of water to be brought to Jesus to be made into wine, bringing to him as well their life’s shared mission and destiny—echoing and rectifying that event in the Genesis story of the Fall wherein reportedly Eve brought Adam the “forbidden fruit,” and with it their life’s work of creating a world on Earth without their Creator but only with their own judgements of what feels good and what is deemed evil.  By turning the water into wine Jesus made the Truth of Life once more available to Man.  

In the story of the Grail Quest, the Feminine Principle, which operates through the heart realm, can be seen as being represented by the Grail itself—the chalice out of which Jesus drank at the Last Supper.  She is the chalice, the cup, for the life blood—the substance of one’s living symbolized by the wine—from which the Lord of the Sacred Dance partakes of life with us. The cup can thus be seen as the cupped hand of Divine Providence that brings to us each moment’s task, be it large or small.

Jesus is recorded to have asked his Father from the deep passion of his heart to take the “cup” of his betrayal and ignominious execution from him.  Sometimes the Feminine brings great challenges to us that will, if accepted courageously and met with a victorious spirit, bring us closer to our core quest in life, that of union with Source. “Thy will be done” was the attitude of the Master in this seemingly impossible situation that ultimately led to his resurrection from the tomb and ascension into the arms of his heavenly Father from whence he came—from whence we all came.

Containment being her very nature, the substance of the feminine energy provides a container filled with the water of truth that turns into the wine of life when she is allowed to embrace—spiritually as well as physically—the hot and fully erected vertical shaft of radiant masculine light. She is as the water surrounding the rod of plutonium in an atomic reactor that allows it to yield its power without burning a hole in the earth, to use a modern-day energy metaphor. If he will let her, she will ground him but not smother his fire nor use it all up loving her.   They both must come clean of their shadow side for this dance to be fun and generative of the essential substance of pneumaplasm that connects them both with the Divine and with each other.  At this level of intimacy, where there is accord between a man and a woman, is found the secrets to the creation of abundance.  In The Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is recorded as saying: “If two can make peace between themselves in a single house, they can say to a mountain, ‘Move!’ and it will move.”

In no way do I imply here that she is nice and sweet and agreeable at all times.  She can be that, but she can also be fierce and tenacious when it comes to exposing and putting down the lie, which she does with equal passion as she pushes forward to uncover and lift up the truth in any given situation in life.  There is nothing quite as exhilarating in the life of a relationship than to dance in the fierce fire of the passionate woman who sees you in the places you would rather not be seen. In the Arthurian legend she is represented by the “Hag.”  Diana Durham portrays the “Hag” as:

An old woman who visits Perceval at Arthur’s court during a banquet in his honor; she lists all his faults, chief among them his failure to ask the question [Whom does the Grail serve?] when in the Grail Castle and thus relieve the king and land from suffering. She is the truth-telling aspect of the deep feminine, and can also be said to represent here withered Mother Earth herself. (Return of King Arthur, page 13)

There is interesting and controversial history associated with this principle of the Feminine aspect of Man, actually spanning all the way back to Adam and Eve in the drama of Eden at the very beginnings of human existence on earth. It is significant that the Feminine is described as a “Principle,”which literally means “beginning.” She was present with God in the Beginning.  In the Latin Mass, the opening words of St. John’s Gospel are: “In principio [my emphasis] erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deus, et Verbum erat Deus.”  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The Word is the Feminine Principle out of which all of Creation springs forth.  She was called “Eve…mother of all the living…” and She is found not only to be with God in the beginning but is God.  She, the Divine Feminine, is God creating the flesh of all living things.

This ancient story, re-written by the great patriarch Moses, may well be fraught with bias.  It is said that the serpent beguiled the woman and that the woman led the man down the garden path which took them both out of Eden.  Who knows what really constituted the so-called “Fall of man?”  This we do know, women have been blamed for the Fall all down through the ages, a stigma that has caused them unwarranted deprivation and persecution. Women have been greatly feared and therefore suppressed by men in a male-dominated world.  Not understood by men, especially when their emotions take over their expression and their wrath becomes a force with which to be reckoned, women have been kept subdued by men and have been forced to withdraw into a state of obedience and subjection to them and to adopt what is considered to be “appropriate behavior” in order to keep emotions under raps.

On her darker side, woman has been a manipulator and a seducer as well, perhaps in an attempt to reclaim some of her power and control over her life. Historically, she was burned at the stake for her sorcery during the “witch-hunts” in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, when forty to sixty thousand people were executed and as many more tortured and imprisoned. This violence against the feminine has left a scar in the collective heart of womankind which overshadows and impacts male-female relationships even to this day.  Deep healing is needed in the heart of Mother God.

The world has not always been dominated by the male of the human species. There were periods of history when the feminine dominated life on this planet, when the Goddess was worshiped as Creator and revered as the Supreme Giver of life.  As I said earlier, in the ancient East, Elat, the feminine gender of the word Allah, was the name used to call upon deity.  In more recent history, however, since the male has dominated the scene, the importance of the role of the feminine in life has gone from one extreme to the other in some religious cultures.

There has been a masculine bias throughout the early history of Christianity, with the feminine principle all but eliminated entirely from the face of the Earth. For example, in the fourth century the early Church Fathers declared women to be “not worthy of life”—certainly not fit to serve as priestesses and bishops as they had been accustomed—and degraded the sexual act from the “ultimate sacrament” to a necessary function to propagate the human race. Before that, sex was a sacred ritual in which the alchemy of the Feminine Principle was engaged as a means of ecstatic union with the Divine.   The secrets of this ritualistic ceremony were held in safekeeping by many groups and organizations—such as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Cathars, the Priory of Sion, the Essenes and the Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris—until just recently.

Several books have been written and continue to emerge exploring these secrets.  Research-authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince have collaborated together in a most provocative book, The Templar Revelation. According to their exhaustive research, it was by way of this sacred sex ritual of “undefiled intercourse” that kings, emperors and pharaohs, as well as messiahs and saviors of mankind, fused with the Divine and became gods themselves, earning the title of Christ, or the Anointed One.

Jesus himself is reported to have become one with the Father within through the anointing by Mary of Bethany, his cosmic mate and partner in this sacred rite of passage, first from humanity to divinity and then back to humanity as God in the flesh.  This anointing was apparently not limited to pouring precious oils (spikenard) over the feet and into the hair, but included sacred sex wherein the two penetrated the veil between heaven and earth to fuse with the Divine.  Sex was called the “ultimate sacrament” because it was through this sacred ritual that sovereign rulers could come to know union with God and release the creative power that would bless and preserve their kingdom—the land and all their subjects—making them fertile and productive.

My next post will once again feature my favorite Arthurian legend author, Diana Durham, in her masterful consideration and interpretation of the legendary Holy Grail.  Until then, I bid you good day and pray health and happiness for you.          -Anthony (tpal70@gmail.com)

 

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A Nuclear Community, Part 5: Defined by Love

ATLANTIS¹

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not in fighting the old but in building the new.” —Socrates 

IN PREVIOUS POSTS of this series, I have used the design and dynamics of the atom as a model for true and coherent community, what I am calling “A Nuclear Community.” I will switch gears a bit and use the symbol of the wheel to demonstrate a viable design for a nuclear community.

As with the Atom, there are three parts to this wheel: the hub, the spokes and the rim. The hub is connected to the axle which is turned by an engine of some kind. (Except in the case of a hand-drawn cart or a horse-drawn wagon). The hub is connected to the rim by the spokes. With these three parts all in place and properly connected, the wheel turns on its axle properly.  In other words, there is a design that allows the wheel to function in a normal and serviceable manner so that the power that turns the axle, or shaft, is transferred to the hub, which in turn transfers power to the rim by way of the spokes so that movement along the road is possible. 

Let’s say the wheel represents the nuclear community model. The axle represents the stable Power Source of the Spirit of Love that manifests and drives all of Creation. The Hub represents the collective heart of the community—or of the body of humanity itself. The 12 spokes represent the collective consciousness out of which all the various aspects that make up a community manifest, such as housing, food supply, waste management, professional services, environmental care, education, religion, etc.  And the rim represents the community’s connection to and movement within its immediate environment—and, within the larger setting, upon the terrain of the planet, Mother Earth—to use a common metaphor, “where the rubber meets the road.”

NUMEROLOGY

There are twelve spokes in the diagram I’ve selected—however, although the number 12 is significant in numerology, as are the numbers 7, 13,17 and so on, any number of spokes can serve the purpose of the wheel, so long as they are supportive and balanced.  The critical factor lies in their connection to the hub and to the rim.  Each and every spoke must connect the axle-driven hub to the rim of the wheel in order for the wheel to move forward—and the hub must be connected to the power source of the axle. 

Now, everyone can see for themselves various implications to community in this model I’ve presented.  The one that stands out to me most relates to the necessity for a coherent transference of creative power, design and control through the various aspects of the community so that the purposes of the ONE and the good of ALL are served.  This requires that all the members of the community know and act out of their own authentic Self and connection with Source, and  that all of the various activities be connected to the Hub and to the nuclear Power of Love that emanates therefrom. There can be no individual self-activity on the part of any member of the community—and no competition between the various “spokes” that would disrupt the harmony and win-win atmosphere in the community.  There can be no profiteering off of another’s creativity.  In fact, money would not even be in the equation as nothing would be assigned a monetary value.  One can see a number of implications just in these few basic requirements.

THE MAGICAL POWER OF 12+1

Returning to the mathematics of numerology, single numbers have their meanings and value, and combinations of numbers have theirs as well. For example, the single digits that make up the number 12, when added together, equal 3, indicating there is a third dimension or reality created when 1 and 2 are added together.  In the example of the wheel, the twelve spokes all point to the hub where they are united in one point of origin creating a collective reality.  With the one point of orientation, a 13th dimension is created.  The number 13, then, represents a creative configuration.

We see this dynamic portrayed in the New Testament, for example, in the configuration of 12 Apostles with Jesus at the center.  We have 13 individuals making up the creative container which the Master drew together in order to accomplish His Heavenly mission and purpose on Earth.  This container also provided a hedge of protection for the Master from the opposing forces present in the religious structure of his day.  To remove any one of the 12 from the group would compromise the container.  As we learn from the Four Evangelists’ accounts, there were at least 2, Peter and Judas, who removed themselves vibrationally from the container by denying and betraying their Master.  Their breach proved fatal to the Master and to his mission and purpose. 

There were a few women along with his brother James and the Beloved Disciple John who provided a more stable and intimate hedge for him so that he could go on to accomplish plan B, so-to-speak, by achieving his own personal victory over death and establishing a precedent for others to follow in the Way to eternal life.  This configuration of 5 opened the Way to salvation for all of mankind—(5 is the symbol for life). These five close and true friends are his mother Mary, his cosmic mate and sweetheart Mary of Bethany, Magdala (“The Apostle of apostles” Mary Magdalene), his brother James, and John the Beloved to whom he passed his mantle of authority while on the cross, and with whom he left the continuance and completion of his ministry on Earth.

But that was not allowed to happen as Peter and Paul set out to establish a religion out of His teachings, conceptualizing and organizing them into doctrines and dogmas. The collapse of that creative crucible had its destructive repercussions throughout the early bloody history of Christianity and even to this day of a divided global community, particularly the diverse Christian communities and the aggregate of divisive world religions.

THE ESSENES

There was a burgeoning community that had its beginnings several decades prior to Jesus’s arrival called the Essenes who formed a love-based spiritual community along the banks of the Dead Sea.  They were called “Children of the Light.”  I wrote about them in a past series. Their mission and purpose centered in the “Nous”—actually knowing what Jesus taught rather than only believing.  Here’s an excerpt from that series with some interesting history: 

The Essenes were a rather secretive people whose main endeavor was to preserve the “Essene Way” and the secrets and knowledge handed down to them by the “Kaloo,” a very ancient race that was then going extinct. Also called the “Ancient Ones and the Wise Ones,” the Kaloo’s origin appears to have been the ancient and lost island of Atlantis, which sank beneath the ocean waters. The Essenes called it the “Old Land in the West.” Knowing their land was sinking, the Kaloo migrated to Egypt first and then spread out northward toward the Mediterranean Sea.  They were known as the “wanderers” and carried with them many secrets, much knowledge of ancient technology from their ancient world, along with wonderful machines.  They didn’t have mechanical skills to operate and repair these machines, something the Essenes had plenty of and provided. . . .  there was much anticipation of and preparation for the coming of the “Teacher of Righteousness.”

Here was a nuclear community whose collective consciousness was singularly minded in a radiant and stable core with a singular and shared purpose. What became of it is a very sad story in a dark chapter of the early history of Christianity.

ATLANTIS

Whether an allegory conjured up by Plato or real, Atlantis’s design was that of a nuclear community, only externally polarized in possessions, with all activities orienting around a central hub surrounded by terraces and motes.  The story has it that its collapse came at the peak of its industrial growth which was founded upon a materialistic mindset and dictatorial governance over the people.  According to the legend, their exploration into harnessing the nuclear energy of the sun using pyramid technology ended their “advanced” civilization in a catastrophic submergence under the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. 

There’s a lingering question as to whether or not Atlantis even existed. The short answer, according to DISCOVER Newsletter, is “No. All available evidence indicates that the philosopher Plato, sometime around 360 BCE, invented the island nation in order to illustrate a point about the dangers of aggressive imperialism. In Plato’s telling, Atlantis was no utopia. Rather, it was a foil for an idealized version of Athens from long before Plato’s time.  Archaeologists claim it did indeed exist and some say they have found the sunken island off the coast of Spain. Mark Adams writes: “It gave this sort of template that people could start to follow in decades to come.”³ 

OUR COSMIC COMMUNITY 

Another example of a configuration comprised of 13 celestial bodies is our solar system, which originally had twelve planets orbiting our star, making thirteen components in a creative dynamic.  Over eons of time that number was reduced in cataclysmic events to nine, creating yet another configuration involving ten participants in the nuclear community of our solar system.  So here we have a wheel of sorts with 9 spokes connecting our star Sol and his planetary satellites with the greater nuclear community of the Milky Way Galaxy through which we travel in time-space.  This new configuration altered the original vibrational dynamic and made life in the “fallen state” possible on Earth.  In common parlance, things are not as they used to be on the planet and with the solar system as a whole. 

Then we have the 12 zodiac signs our planet’s axis travels through over a Mayan Long-Count Calendar period of 2160 years—plus a 13th sign (Ophiuchus)² recently added to the circle.  Our calendar and time measurements are also based on the number 12.  Twelve months make up one year (12+1=13).  Twelve hours make up half a day; added to the other half we have 24 hours in 1 day.  (24+1=25; 2+5=7, another creative number).  

INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES

Finally, I want to revisit the excerpt from The Return of King Arthur in the previous post.  I was also engaged with the same Intentional Spiritual Community that Diana Durham wrote about for over thirty years, and I can attest to the sheer magic that manifested in its Attunement program.  I was part of a “World Blessing” team made up of an Attunement Master who provided a focal point at Sunrise Ranch, the program’s headquarters, and several other attunement servers located in various parts of the world, mostly in one or more of 12 Unit Centers located here and abroad.  Those times of “world blessing” were magical and powerfully uplifting.   

The “intention” of the Emissary communities was, and continues to be, to shine the light of divine being into the world by the expression of the many qualities of the Spirit of Love, such as thankfulness, patience and forgiveness.  “Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression” were words oft repeated in services. The full name of the ministry was Emissaries of Divine Light.

As Diana mentioned, after the passing of its spiritual focus, the program went through a transition from a developing spiritual organism to a transformational organization.  The majority of its membership dispersed into the larger world body to share their light and to receive and nurture the response from the field engendered by the ministry of its founder, Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda) and his successor Lord Martin Exeter. All but a few of it’s Unit communities were disbanded. The remaining centers, including Sunrise Ranch, continue to provide a venue for conferences and retreats, as well as classes in true Self emergence and transformation,  both here and abroad. 

Coming into one’s own spiritual presence and authority, one’s authentic Self, is the gift of transformation, the Holy Grail of the knights’ quest.  When the individuals of a community lead forth in  the Spirit of Love, of Truth, and of Life, external leadership and authority are not necessary to maintain order, harmony, peace and safety.

In a word, a nuclear community is a community that is defined, not by its economy or diversity, but by Love.  Profound love for the Lord of Love, and unconditional love for one another.♥

This concludes the series on nuclear communities.  I open now to the Universe for guidance to the topic of my next blog.  Any thoughts you feel like sharing? I welcome them.  Just write me at my email address below.  Until my next post,

Be loving. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com 

Credits:  Western Wood Wagon Wheel, taken from Amazon’s webpage. 

¹Artistic rendition of Atlantis taken off the WEB at medium.com. 

² Ophiuchus is one of the 13 major constellations in the zodiac, according to ancient Babylonians. The Babylonians left it out of the zodiac because they followed the 12-month calendar and assigned the other 12 constellations, or zodiac signs, to different months. . . .  “People born under this sign (which would be anywhere between November 29 and December 17) are said to be mysterious, ambitious, and tend to make good impressions on authority figures—but that doesn’t mean they are totally grounded. They’re also said to be very passionate and power-hungry with a jealous streak.” It’s a fire sign in astrology, which is all about passion, action, and spirit.  (Bustle.com)

³Mark Adams, 2015, Meet Me in Atlantis: Across Three Continents in Search of the Legendary Sunken City.

 

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A Nuclear Community, Part 4: Collective Sovereignty

If you continue in my word . . . you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (Jesus)

Continuing from where we left off in the last post:  In her timely and important book THE RETURN OF KING ARTHUR, poet and spiritual author Diana Durham speaks to the tenuous phase in the transitioning from the old to the new paradigm of leadership in community.  Letting go of our former beliefs—particularly those about the model of leadership in community—in order to let go to and fully embrace the new world being born, can be daunting, and hesitation for too long could prove fatal. One could drown in the rising tide of change in the direction and speed of the currents in the river of life if one holds onto the familiar shore of the past.  The only sane thing to do is let go and swim out into the central current of the river. 

Our beliefs about the truth—that the Spirit of God dwells within us, for instance, and that we are gods—are not the truth; they are but guides to the truth.  When we know the truth of our oneness with God, we move beyond our belief to knowing that I Am an aspect of that Divine Spirit.  We find freedom in knowing the truth, freedom from our beliefs. But oh how we love our beliefs and defend them with religious vigor:  “Oh no, I am not divine. I am only human.” Beliefs may need defending, and can be denied.  Truth, however, the Word of Life, needs no defense, and cannot be denied.  The Word of Life is “You are divine, made in the image and likeness of God, and in that Image and likeness you share the authority of God in speaking truth.”  

Heretofore we have depended upon leaders and mentors to lead us in the truth.  That model is fading away, leaving many floundering in the dark waters of today’s chaos looking here and there for someone to tell them what to do and in what direction to go, what to hold onto.  Looking around, we only see our elected leaders floundering themselves in the rising tides of rebellion and protestation desperate to hold onto power and control of the masses; and our mentors are fading away, moving on from their earthly roles. The pews in churches are emptying in the wake of corruption among the clergy, and in Rome itself, and their failure to deliver the goods, even offer resolutions to moral issues, such as contraception and abortion, by which the Faithful are able to abide.  The churches are largely out of touch with the Faithful’s spiritual needs and moral issues in life.  They cannot teach what they themselves do not know—and know that they know.

Our leaders and mentors have traditionally been men . . . even holy men such as Buddha and Jesus.  Someone recently posed the question in a conversation we were having about abortion, “What would Jesus do?” Unfortunately (or fortunately), Jesus is not recorded as having said anything about abortion in the scriptures. His only answer to a crowd poised for stoning a harlot was “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Today we have many “good” people casting stones at “bad” people.   

We’re left to decide our own course in the abortion controversy . . . and it is a conundrum that has found no resting place of resolution in the legal or legislative debates or courts of justice.  We are totally on our own solving this problem we ourselves have created.  A solution will not be forth coming without a fundamental change in human consciousness and subsequent change in human behavior.  Primarily a change in identity from human to divine.  We sometimes say “God only knows.” Well then, let us find our true identity in God and know and act with love in divine authority. 

Rise of the Feminine

A very interesting turn of events takes place in the story of the Grail Quest Diana revisits in her book when Sir Bedivere finally yields to King Arthur’s command and lets go of the sword.  The dominant masculine energy that once empowered leadership from the top is met by the rising Feminine, who comes to take back her power (the sword of truth) in equal and balanced partnership with the Masculine, a very poignant and prophetic event in the story.  This is from chapter eleven, “The Chalice of Collective Sovereignty,” as excerpted from my book SACRED ANATOMY and the chapter on the spiritual significance of the Pituitary gland:

Speaking of her own personal transformation within the container of intentional spiritual community that went through a transformation itself in the wake of the passing of its spiritual God-parent and leader, Diana writes:

There is a great fear of losing the sword—a fear of losing the tradition and forms that have embodied the truth for us, and a desire to try to preserve them in some way—to disobey Arthur’s command.  Twice Sir Bedivere, that most loyal and trusted knight, tries to hide Excalibur before finally obeying Arthur and throwing the sword into the lake.  After all, if we don’t preserve the sword, we might lose everything . . . .

Very often this is the way. The injection of spiritual reality brought by the great avatar, like Jesus or Buddha, one who is able to pull the sword of power, of spiritual authority, back out of the stone of fixed belief and tradition and wield it as a living reality, is turned after their death into a religion, a series of beliefs, a tradition.  And people warm themselves on the little spark that still glows in the embers of that tradition, but they don’t inherit the mantle of spiritual radiance. They have not become entrained into the understanding of what it really means to “Worship God”; they have not completed the quest . . . .

. . . . Thanks to Guinevere and Morgana (the heart’s wisdom), Excalibur is not destined to become a sacred relic of past glory “stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings.” The heart’s instinctual knowing of what is right has overridden the fears and the structures of the mind, thus ensuring that Arthur’s true legacy—the legacy of potency, of truth, as represented by his sword— has become a living possibility available within the subconscious mind for us all to draw on.  It has not fossilized into a tradition for the elite to fight over—whether a political elite or a priestly elite; it is beyond the reach of corruption, and can only be accessed by the innocent and the true. Thanks to the quest for the Grail, thanks to the heart’s compulsion to take on one’s individual path and authority, the Round Table could become what it was a promise of.  Our network could be transmuted from a community into a new and potent consciousness of oneness.

This is why no matter which thread of the plot we retrace to uncover the cause of Camelot’s downfall, we find ourselves staring into the face of the feminine, whether it be the actions of Guinevere and Morgana or the quest for the Grail itself.  Only the heart’s wisdom knows how to take us from symbol to reality and carries the passion and assurance that will allow the “old order” to change and find renewal.

So we can begin to approach the meaning of the fulfillment of the Grail quest from a number of different—but related—angles. First of all, the finding of the Grail . . . means that the sense of personal separation from inner source—which I have also called the Grail King energy, love, or God—is healed.  Once this happens, our dependency on a King Arthur mentor figure ceases, and we begin to live our lives from a direct sense of what fits, of what is ours to do.  We can trust the compulsion of our heart because the heart realm is now operating as a direct “transmitter” of our own inner being and purpose.  In this way, the heart realm is the place of connection, or oneness, with God or spiritual source, and once that consciousness of union with source is a grounded reality within us—once the ego that thinks of itself as the center of the universe is no longer dominant—then there is a basis for connecting deeply with others. The heart realm becomes the means of connecting with others, with one’s “neighbor.” Therefore, we also begin to share a sense of oneness with one another, and a sense of being—hologram-like—parts of a whole that also contain in miniature the design of the whole.

The sense of oneness with others, combined with the ability to discern direction for ourselves, enables the other meaning of the Grail to emerge, which is the aspect of collective leadership: the circle of many individuals forming one body.

Collective leadership is not possible while we are still dependent on a mentor figure both for our own sense of spiritual alignment and for a sense of direction.  Nor is it possible unless there is a sense of oneness to bind us together—as well as the ability to discern for ourselves (as opposed to being subject to “peer pressure”) what our actions need to be.

We remember that the individual sword—or sense of authority—is earned by going on a quest for the Grail.  Perceval is given the sword on his first visit to the Grail Castle.  The return of Arthur in a form of the return of many individuals wielding their individual swords—in other words, the condition of collective leadership—cannot come about until the Grail is found and this collective consciousness is formed . . . .(pp. 203-206)

The Grail is found in the legends, and finding the Grail symbolizes not only the individual experience of open-hearted connection to spiritual source in oneself but also the emergence of the possibility of collective leadership.  When Sir Bedivere throws that sword into the lake, a woman’s hand reaches up to take it. A new opportunity has been fertilized: a new union between masculine and feminine, and the emergence of an era of collective sovereignty. When we talk about the rise of the feminine we are describing a crucial aspect of this new era. Obviously this new possibility has been emerging for some time in the form of the suffragettes and the women’s movement.  Closely allied with the struggle for equal rights for women was the civil rights movement in the United States. Leadership has been rising up from the grassroots, bringing immense changes and balancing out some of the injustices of society’s myopic structures. Collective leadership implies both the roundness of the chalice cup—without hierarchy, containing all—the feminine; and the absoluteness of the sword, the element of individual responsibility required for true leadership: the masculine. (pp. 6-7))

     What Durham is describing here is a renewal process of the Pituitary Gland that appears to be underway, both within individuals and within the collective body of Man.  As these two energies find a way to work in harmony and balance within us as two in agreement, individually and collectively, the Spirit of the Womb can then work its hormonal and alchemical magic of renewal of life on the planet.  Paradise (Camelot) can then be restored.  

Where the kingdom is, there also is the King. Paradise cannot be restored until Man is restored.  Man will be restored when he acknowledges and pays homage to the King of Heaven; when he turns his heart away from the material world and toward the King in utter abandon and worship—not in some separate heaven somewhere, but right here within himself where the Kingdom of Heaven abides patiently awaiting for us to repent, turn around and enter in.  

In the Grail Quest story, when Perceval finally finds the Holy Grail, he was asked a test question, which he failed to answer correctly. The question posed was “Whom does the Grail serve?” If I recall correctly, the promise of the Grail was abundance of all that pleases and satisfies.  It seemed to Perceval, the simple fool that he was sitting there amongst the Knight of the Round Table, about to partake in the feast spread out before him, that the Grail serves human beings, and in that assumption he failed to answer the question correctly. The correct answer was, and still is: “The Grail serves the Grail King.” Having failed to give the right answer, he found himself outside the Grail Castle and in the company of an old hag who proceeded to list all his faults and shortcomings. 

And so it befalls men and women in the realm of self-serving and self-pleasing human relations, where the Grail King is not allowed to drink and savor the sweet nectar of love from the Holy Grail of the Pure Heart of Humanity.  We judge and measure one another by our faults and shortcomings.  Perhaps I will find words to expand on this theme in my next post. I welcome your thoughts.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

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A Nuclear Community

“I have thrown fire on the world. Look. I watch it until it blazes.” —Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas

The “fire” that Jesus threw on the world was not wild fires like we’re experiencing along the West Coast.  It’s the all-consuming flame of love, the atomic power at the heart of creation.  In this series I will explore how the design of true community unfolds naturally and organically, fueled by atomic power released under the control of the stabilizing design and dynamics of the atom. Without further intro, I’ll dive right into it.

Our Judaeo-Christian model shaping social and family configurations, dictating human morality and ethics, and designing community structure and governance, needs to be revisited in the light and context of the Natural Laws governing all of Creation, from atom to galaxy and beyond.  In our close in relationships, for instance, monogamy is not a natural arrangement. Neither is marriage, for that matter. They have been necessary, however, as temporary control measures in humanity’s fallen state of consciousness—as are all man-made laws.  

Bible “thumpers” and scholars will surely take issue with me on this and argue that marriage was established and sanctified by the Creator from the beginning when He created Adam and Eve and declared that a woman shall cling to her husband and the two shall be as one.  However, we must remember that the Creation Story in Genesis was written by the patriarch Moses and not by an eyewitness to Creation in the Garden of Eden. . .and it was most likely redacted in order to support the seventh and tenth Commandments.  His was the job, after all, of governing these unruly tribes of Israel reveling in their newfound freedom after their release from bondage in Egypt.  Moses’s Ten Commandments gave him the leverage and divine authority he needed to reign in and cultivate the Nation of Israel into a civilized “Chosen People.” That’s my speculative opinion anyway, for whatever it’s worth. 

In a restored state of consciousness, a new model and paradigm of governance by Love and the Truth of Life come into play.  As the Master Jesus told those who challenged him on the issue of divorcing and remarrying,

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. 

He was speaking to a somewhat elevated level of human consciousness, compared to that of the Israelites of old, attempting to elevate it even further by extending an invitation to humanity to rise up, “come up hither,” and enter the Kingdom of Heaven, a spiritual level of consciousness, just above the mental and physical levels—an invitation few at that time accepted.  Nevertheless, through His own victorious life, He established the Way by which resurrection and ascension would be possible for the entire Body of Humanity after his resurrection from the tomb and his eventual ascension from this earthly plane back into Heaven.

As human consciousness rises to higher and higher levels, and human beings are increasingly governed by Spirit from within, rather than by man-made laws—laws that the Master himself admonished us not to make beyond the two Great Commandments He had given—marriage ceases to be necessary.

This is already a dawning reality in many sectors of society, even within the Judaeo-Christian world.  Couples are coming together as “partners” in life.  Angels may not marry but I believe we do come in inseparable pairs, or as “soul mates,” most often with only one incarnating leaving the other to provide guardianship and heavenly connection and support.

Conscious awareness of our angelic nature has already dawned in the experience of a growing number of awakened souls who are conscious of their presence in heaven on earth—the kingdom of Heaven that is at hand and all around us.  Obviously, we are not even close to a collective transformation and transmutation of the mass consciousness of humanity.  However, we are on our way, and a new Golden Age awaits us. This I know.

The Nuclear World of Controlled Power

The atom is a micro model of right relationships in true community.  In it is manifest the working dynamic of the One Law, simply stated by Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda) (1907-1954) as “Positive Action, Negative Reaction or Response.” Walter Russell called it “The Law of One.” As I consider these two nomenclatures, I see how compliance with the One Law would bring about Oneness in the human family as “one Nation under God.” 

Consider what we now know about the structure and dynamic operation of this fundamental building block of Creation.  At the center of the atom dwell one or more positively charged Protons and one or more neutral particles called Neutrons.  Orbiting around this central hub of focused power are a number of Electrons carrying a negative charge.  Looming behind this nuclear structure lies a potential of awesome power held in check by the integrity and stability of the tiny atom.  We know this by reason of our experience destroying that integrity and releasing that awesome power to destructive ends.

As I pondered this model at three o’clock yesterday morning, awakened by a pressing urgency to explore it further and perhaps do a blog series on it, I am finding much food for meditation as I write.  It’s a huge and complex consideration.  It may not be relevant to all that’s going on in our world today with the West Coast ablaze and smothered in smoke, and the Southern Gulf States ravaged by hurricanes, including our home town in Southwest Louisiana, not to mention the human tragedies occurring globally in war-torn nations, and the divisive political climate here in the US, my thoughts today soar in the New Heaven and engage in the imaging of tomorrow and the New Earth already being born in and through the hearts, minds and innovative activities of thousands around the globe.  So, I ask you my readers to bear with me as I dream of a new world for tomorrow in the midst of a crumbling and burning old world of today.  There’s a legendary phoenix in the ashes.

I will continue in this exploration in my next post and leave you with this provocative saying of the Master Jesus:

“Let those who seek, continue seeking until they find. And when they find, they will become troubled. And when they become troubled, they will be astonished, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]” –Jesus, The Lost Gospel of Thomas

Until my next post of this new series,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

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Masculine-Feminine Energy, part IV: Energy Must Flow

As with a lot of my writings, this post is as much for my own conscious evolution and spiritual transformation as it is for my readers’. If you benefit from them as well, then I am thankful.  This is heady stuff, I will admit. However, we do have minds – although Walter Russell says there is only one Mind we all share – and there are many errors and incomplete truths we hold as sacred in these minds. We are wise to open them up and have another look at things we have been told by those who have gone before. Even the Teacher Jesus said that he had many things to share with his disciples, but they could not “bear” them then.  Well, we’ve evolved since then and there are things we need to unlearn and learn anew. That’s where my passion lies in writing this blog. 

So, let the creating, transforming Masculine-Feminine Energy flow as I put fingers to the keyboard and apply a fraction of the newfound knowledge that Walter Russell has left us in his signature work THE UNIVERSAL ONE to our experience and handling of Masculine-Feminine energy. 

SUBTLE ENERGY AT WORK

We can be so preoccupied with our creations in life as to become oblivious to the subtle energies at work within us that bring them about. The creating energy of life is very subtle, when one stops to think about it. For example, consider the giant sequoias that have taken decades and even centuries to grow. On a smaller scale, consider the lowly grass blade that seems to grow so fast in Summer that one might even be able to observe it growing. Yet these creations of Mother Nature make no commotion as they slowly increase their mass molecule by molecule. The slow growth of our own bodies testifies to the subtle nature of the creating energy of life.  What Walter Russell presents in his book about energy is also a testament to the subtle but unconquerable nature of life. My desire in this post is to explore some of the implications of his writings. So, I’m just going to write down my thoughts as they present themselves, trusting they will flow together in a coherent manner. 

ENERGY MUST FLOW

Energy wants and needs to flow in order to create forms, illusions though they are said to be. Masculine and Feminine forces interacting with one another make possible the flow of creating energy. The creating energy that flows through their interactions is the creative power of Love manifesting the ideas in the Mind of the Creator. This is how Walter Russell’s cosmology works. 

When I speak of Masculine and Feminine, I do not equate these words with male and female, nor with men and women. As we now know in this age of enlightenment, these energies are at work in both men and women. The Feminine energy is by design, and hormonal chemistry, more dominant in women and the Masculine energy more dominant in men. This is not always the case, but is generally so.  The ideal would seem to be a balance between these two forces in both men and women — something that I have personally worked at in myself over the past two or three decades. 

These two forces are not attracted toward one another, as is commonly thought. Walter Russell’s view is that masculine energy spirals centripetally (inwardly) toward its apex, or vortex center, and is thus contractive and magnetic. Contrarily, feminine energy spirals centrifugally (outwardly) away from its spex and is thus expansive and radiative. One inhales while the other exhales only to restart the inhaling cycle. As the positive masculine force winds inwardly toward its maximum potential charge, it discharges energy via a feminine emoting phase of expansion, much like a spring winding and unwinding. So, there is a continuum here at work. (Is this perhaps what our emotions are all about?)

Russell’s primary point is a correction to the current scientific understanding of the law of attraction. The way he sees this law is that positive charge is attracted to and attracts positive charge, and that negative charge repels both positive and negative charge.   

MALE AND FEMALE ATTRACTION

Males and females of the same species couple by reason of the law of attraction: positive attracts positive. This is contrary to the common understanding that positive attracts negative, or that the negative female is attracted to the positive male; that men radiate (positive) and women respond (negative) to men; that women are therefore the “weaker” sex and men the “stronger;” that women are to be obedient and subservient to men. All these thwarted concepts and attitudes are the result of a fundamental misunderstanding and therefore misapplication of the law of attraction, not to mention mental fabrications of the patriarchal human ego. 

Men are attracted to women and women to men by reason of their positive charge. A lower potential seeks a higher potential and a higher potential seeks out a lower. This is the law or attraction at work, whether between members of the opposite or the same sex.  Men are attracted to men in some cases, and women to women on the same basis. These raw energies are no respecter of persons, hormonal chemistry taken into consideration – and genitalia not withstanding. Genitals are male and female in their design and function.  Energy is masculine and feminine in its function and needs to flow between these two forces. As someone simply voiced it in a recent conversation around the subject of LGBT, the chemistry allows the energy to flow, and that’s what relationships are all about, isn’t it.

Masculine energy is the attractive force of this universe of integrating matter, which increases in density as pressure and positive charge increases. Feminine energy is magnetic and is the repellant, or separative, force of this universe of disintegrating matter.  Where they meet in what Russell calls the “inertial” plane, these forces come into a state of balance which he designates as a “bi-sexual” zone. (I do not yet see the implication nor the application here.) 

AS ABOVE SO BELOW. AS BELOW SO ABOVE

How things work in the “physical” world of effects mirrors exactly how things work in the “spiritual” or vibrational realm of cause. In the world we have created, what happens on earth is an exact mirror of what is happening in the heaven of human consciousness. As above so below. Because of human interference and manipulation, the harmony and beauty in the Heaven of Divine Consciousness are not reflected in the world that man has created and maintains. Where man has not manipulated the design for the Natural World, such harmony, beauty and balance are evident. We might say that Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine forces work together in perfect balance and harmony. This is not accurately reflected in our world where historically males lord it over females – a dynamic that is rapidly changing these days with the “rise of the feminine” currently underway.  

The Masculine gathers the energy of the expelled and exhaustive Feminine force unto itself to empower his creativity. He contracts light energy into integrating form. He is Brahma, the Creator, in Hindu religious tradition, which holds to the belief that the universe is cyclically created and destroyed. 

The Feminine discharges the built-up potential of the Masculine in order to disintegrate structured form. She is Shiva, the destroyer, in Hindu religion. She destroys form in order to re-create new form. In this sense, she sees to it that the Creative Process continues to cycle.  She does not settle for what the Masculine has created as “permanent” reality, but rather clears the creative field in order for new creations to come into being – sometimes in a fitful outburst of wrathful anger. So, she gives her responsive energy to Brahma so as to foster the ongoing process of creation. Then there’s Vishnu whose role it is to maintain and preserve Brahma’s creations.  Vishnu is the second Hindu deity who is both male and female. Perhaps he/she is who Man is designed and intended to be as Steward of the Garden.

THE “BATTLE OF THE SEXES”

These two forces are integrated in the Natural World and are beginning to be allowed to integrate more and more in human beings. The so called “battle of the sexes” describes the creative dynamic at play between these two forces in the Creating Universe. As I said above, Masculine and Feminine forces are raw energies that are no respecter of persons or gender. 

In the hands of the human ego, they are being used to enslave women and men and destroy life on Earth, all to enrich the few who maintain power and control over the masses. Not for much longer, however.

A third force is needed in order to bridle in these raw forces. Left to their own, they take on the false identities of human nature, dividing men and women in a competitive struggle for power and control over life and the illusory world they create, including their offspring, played out in the legal battle for custody in divorce courts. So long as one force dominates in the affairs of human beings, imbalance and imposition of one will over the other continue to sow the seeds of conflict  and war. So a third force is needed – and is rising today – to harness and balance these raw forces.  

THE “LAW OF THREE”

Here is where Gurdjieff’s “Law of Three” comes into play, which states that when three forces come together, a fourth and totally different state is born of them.  That third force is Love. Spirit. A spiritual force that originates from a higher level than that at which men and women presently conduct their waring affairs on the horizontal two-dimensional plane. The vertical component of Love transforms and levels the playing field, so-to-speak — the field that the poet Rumi speaks of: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” When we meet in that field, a fourth and totally different state in possible: the New Earth.

This Spirit brings with it seven other spirits, or gifts, that are designed to help us meet the various needs and conditions that present themselves along life’s creating journey.  The late spiritual teacher Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda) presented them as “Seven Steps to the Temple of Light.” There’s Patience, the first step toward enlightenment. Tranquility and single mindedness, the second step. The gift of Blessing is the third step. Can you imagine men and women being a blessing to one another instead of being competitors?  A fourth gift is Purification, the detoxification of our words and feelings toward one another; our selfish intentions and motivations, not to mention our lack of respect for one another. The expression and application of these four gifts of Spirit bring about the assurance and confidence of authenticity, along with the fifth step of Radiance, and with it the joy of success and victory. The sixth gift of Spirit is Wisdom, Sophia, whose gift is the sense of what is fitting in our speech and actions with one another and with our shared world. At this level of creativity, Masculine and Feminine forces are brought into balance. Peace is known at a deep heart level, bringing with it the experience of oneness with the All, Love, the seventh gift of Spirit. Enlightenment dawns. These are the qualities and gifts of our Being, our true and divine Self. 

In conclusion, I will simply reiterate what I have written above. Our true identity is not as men and women. Our true identity is as Human Beings. I am not only a man. I am a human being in a male form with both masculine and feminine creative energies at my command for creative work on Earth.  My origin and Home is Heaven.  I have come here from Heaven, as we all have, to bring Love into the world and to allow Love to create the New Earth. Let us be about our divine mission and purpose together as Human Beings, God incarnate on Earth. 

Thank you for sharing my thoughts and meditations. I welcome yours. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony 

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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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Alchemy, Alchemy of Begetting, Books on spirituality, Christianity, Eros, Finding Self in Another, Human Relations, Identity in the One, Love, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Rise of the Feminine, Romantic love, Sex, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The path of romantic love, Transformation, Transmutation, Union with God

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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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Celibacy, Eros, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Spiritual intimacy before phsical, The path of romantic love, Transformation

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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.

 

 

Category:

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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On Human Relations . . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 2

My Chorale PicFar from keeping one earthbound, romantic love, not celibacy, was exemplified and touted by Jesus as the highest path to spiritual enlightenment and union with the divine. From the very Genesis we were created male and female so that through our union as one flesh we could bring forth life. That was the original template.  We’ve obviously altered and thwarted the original template for the creation of human beings and produced a species of human doings who put achieving ahead of being and compete with one another in a “battle of the sexes.”

I’m in my second reading of THE MEANING OF MARY MAGDALENE – The Woman at the Heart of Christianity, a most provocative book written by episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault, in which she weaves the scenario of a romantic human relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. That alone should give you a clue about its provocative subject matter. To write this series of posts I dove right into the book to share poignant excerpts from chapter seven: “Reclaiming the Path of Romantic Love.”

In my last post I left my blog followers and readers with four options offered by the author to consider and choose from. They are:

1. That Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s mistress;

2. That theirs was a politically arranged marriage, strictly for dynastic purposes;

3. That they were sexual consorts in some Gnostic Mystery religion, ritually reenacting the sacred hieros gamos, or union of the opposites;

4. That the whole story is purely archetypal, a great Sophianic myth depicting the integration of the masculine and feminine within the human soul.”

I chose the third option. Here’s what Cynthia offers:

Sex, power, cult, or myth: not a great set of choices.  I have yet to see considered what in a sexually healthy culture would surely seem to be the obvious possibility: that they were faithful beloveds, whose lives were joined together in a fully enfleshed human love which was a source of strength and nurturance for both of them; which far from diminishing their spiritual integrity, deepened and fulfilled it. Why is it so hard to go there?  Well, obviously: because that is the one possibility our celibate template will not allow us to consider.

The “celibate template” of which she speaks is the scenario handed down to us by a patriarchal church and its celibate priesthood that portrays Jesus as a celibate bachelor, who had a virgin birth, and who gave himself utterly and completely to God and his mission without the “distraction” and high maintenance of a human relationship. Obviously, human sexuality has been a problem for the church for the past two-thousand years.

In this post, I will present the author’s four “propositions” or “myths”– all “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.” Handed down as “gospel truth,” these myths in fact have “little or no scriptural authorization in the teachings of Jesus himself but instead draw their credibility entirely from the circular logic of his presumed celibacy.”

MYTH NUMBER ONE — Celibacy is the preferred means of giving oneself entirely to God

This myth as been promulgated and fostered by the church almost from the beginning of priesthood and monastic life.

Like so much else in church’s teachings on human sexuality, its scriptural origins lie in Paul’s oft-cited admonition, “The unmarried man cares for the Lord’s business; his aim is to please the Lord. But the married man cares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife; and he has a divided mind” (Corinthians 7:33). Clearly this is a highly effective recruitment tactic for the religious life. Virtually every Christian monastic I know has entered upon the vocation espousing some variation of Thomas Merton’s impassioned outpouring: “I want to give God everything.” Of course, from an operational standpoint Paul is quite correct: being in partnership makes the logistics of spiritual discipleship a good deal more complicated.

But the theology underlying this principle, if you really consider it, is monstrous. In fact, it seems to be saying that the wholehearted love of God and the wholehearted love of another human being cannot coincide; as our love for a particular human being increases, our love for God is proportionately diminished. Not only is this a theological nightmare; it is also a flat-out contradiction of Jesus’s own dual commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). Whatever the difficulty in juggling these sometimes contradictory demands, collapsing the tension between them is not an option.

I love her articulate way of stating the obvious in her writing style.  What she writes next, and the way she turns the usual perspective on its head, sends a delightful burst of sunshine into my heart:

The real solution to this paradox, I believe, comes in the gradual discovery that one cannot love God as an object. God is always and only the subject of love.  God is that which makes love possible, the source from which it emerges and the light by which it is recognized. Thus, “love of God” is not one love among others, not love for a particular “one” to whom my saying “yes” requires that I say “no” to another. Rather, God is the all-encompassing One who unlocks and sustains my ability to give myself fully to life in all its infinite particularity, including the excruciating particularity of a human beloved.

. . . God is the divine giving, who flows out and through our human expression to manifest love in all its fullness.  And so the way to give oneself fully to God would be to give fully of oneself

MYTH NUMBER TWO — Love divides the heart

The notion that erotic love divides the heart is so deeply engrained in monastic spiritual formation that renunciation becomes not only the imperative course of action but even a spiritual opportunity: the direct route to spiritual wholeness. The modern Jesuit John S. Dunne reflects this traditional view when he writes: “If I set my heart upon another person, then I cannot live without that person. My heart becomes divided. On the other hand, if I give my life to the journey with God, then my heart becomes whole and I can be whole in relationship with another.’ [Dunne, Reasons of the Heart].

. . . And yet the question remains: does love divide the heart? If God is considered an object of one’s love vying with other objects, then the crucial premise on which this theology hangs is true: yes, love would divide the heart. But if God is the subject of love, the place from which love emerges, then one could more reliably claim—as poets, mystics, and lovers have claimed throughout the ages—that love does not divide the heart, but is in fact the sole force strong enough to unite it. What divides the heart is not the love relationship itself but the passions: the strong emotions and shadow side that are always present when love runs strong. But these are not grounds for renunciation; rather, they are grounds for purification.

This story Cynthia shares next my wife and I can personally relate to, as she has spent the larger part of this year undergoing chemo therapy for breast cancer. Our hearts have been opened wider by this crisis so that we have been able to easily and gratefully give fully of ourselves to one another in a mutually loving and caring way. We have both been transformed in this challenging crisis so that we don’t see cancer as an enemy to fight against and conquer. Rather, by embracing it, the tumor has become a messenger bringing us an opportunity to grow spiritually and more intimately together in life . . . as well as to realize how many wonderful friends we have surrounding us and holding us in their love and prayers.

In closing this consideration, Cynthia writes:

What this purification might look like is captured with wrenching power in the memoir “Grace and Grit” by the contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber. In this remarkable autobiography he shares the story of his own love and transformation as he and his wife . . . wage a five-year battle against her ultimately fatal breast cancer. As their ordeal intensifies, one watches them each being melted down and refashioned in the refiner’s fire of their love for each other. Egotism, clinging, resentment—and other, darker shadows—rise to the surface and are released. Particularly in the last six months of [her] life, Wilber writes, “We simply and directly served each other, exchanging self for other, and therefore glimpsing that eternal spirit which transcends self and other, both ‘me’ and ‘mine’”

If this sounds like something you recall Jesus saying in the gospels, you’re right.

I do enjoy Cynthia’s style of writing and her bold expression of truth in the face of her own congregation and of the larger religious field in which she ministers. Fearless is perhaps the appropriate word to describe her writing. She is clearly in love with love leaving no room for fear of criticism and sanction.

The next two myths: “Human love is inherently different from divine love” and “Celibacy is a state of greater purity” I will leave for the next post. See you in a couple of weeks. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com. 

Category:

Celibacy, Healing Tones, Holistic Healing, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Love heals, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, Romantic love, Sex, The path of romantic love, Transformation

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