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

My Chorale PicAn intimate, romantic, and sexual relationship with another human being, far from distracting one from spiritual attainment, can open a fast-track path to spiritual transformation: the path of romantic love.

This path is cluttered with signposts bearing moral Christian doctrines that warn of a sinful destination for those who seek erotic pleasure in natural sex drives that were designed to bring couples into a state of ecstatic union, along with the function of propagating the human species — sex solely for gratification not withstanding. The church is solely responsible for the degradation of sex from sacrament to sin in human relations, using Jesus, the celibate divine redeemer, and Mary Magdalene, the human “sinful prostitute,” as models upon which to base its thwarted and therefore false premise.

I’m in my second reading of Cynthia Bourgeault’s profoundly insightful and thought-provoking, if not controversial, rendering of  “The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE – DISCOVERING THE WOMAN AT THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY.”

This is unequivocally the most powerful book I have yet read on the story of Mary Magdalene and her role in the life and ministry of Jesus. The author, an Episcopal priest, literally plumbs the depth of my soul and awakens dreams of a “perfect world,” almost to the point of disturbing my default inner peace by arousing once again that painfully familiar longing for a seemingly unattainable state of “singleness” as a whole human being — ironically, a singleness that can only be obtained, according to her insight and perspective, in the state of holy matrimony. Cynthia’s Jesus came to “reclaim the path of romantic love” and to uplift marriage between a man and a woman to its original state of “one flesh” that no man can “put asunder”– and he walked his talk. He was not celibate by any connotation of that word. Nor did he recommend celibacy as the higher path to spiritual transformation. His was a life fully “enfleshed” as a whole human being, and that’s what made him such a powerful magnet and lightning rod. The people loved him for his authenticity. The governing religious leaders of that time hated him for the same reason.  Actually, in their gross darkness, they simply did not comprehend his light, and it frightened them and threatened their self-serving authority.

This book has a Voice. One that speaks from out of the ancient past, spanning time from the “beginning”– the Edenic origins of Man and Woman — up to and including the life, public ministry and death of Jesus the Nazarene, only not the Jesus introduced to us when we were children and foisted upon the Christian world since the fourth century Council of Nicea.  Cynthia’s Jesus is a whole human being who “emptied” himself fully of both his humanity and his divinity, leaving no part of his soul and body unused in service to his heavenly Father and to Humankind. And it was his intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene to which Cynthia attributes the fulfillment of his mission and purpose for incarnating on the planet when he did. I should say the fulfillment of their shared mission and purpose.

That said, I don’t think that I can do Cynthia’s book justice in a blog-long book review. So, with the thought in mind that my readers may be inspired to read Cynthia’s book to fully enjoy her viewpoint on these timely issues, I will simply share a few passages from her book that moved my soul to the point of shouting “YES! That rings so true!” I will share and comment on them as they come up in my second reading. Enjoy and be blessed.

I will start at the beginning of Chapter 7, “RECLAIMING THE PATH OF ROMANTIC LOVE,” just to give you a sense of the tone of Cynthia’s voice, along with the context in which she writes. Here she speaks to the issue of celibacy in a priesthood supposedly modeled after Jesus and his celibate apostles — or were they?

NEARLY TWENTY YEARS ago, long before The Da Vinci Code uproar broke, I was serving as parish priest in a small Episcopal congregation in Colorado. When the gospel appointed for one particular Sunday in August was Luke’s account of that anonymous “sinful” woman with her alabaster jar, I decided to take the risk of breaking open some of the insights that even back then were beginning to emerge from a growing spate of Mary Magdalene studies. My parishioners were a bright and intellectually curious bunch, so why not? During my sermon, I gently presented Margaret Starbird’s assertion (in her book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, named after this very gospel passage) that the anointing of Jesus’s hands and feet described in the text was not simply a random act by a penitent woman, but an exquisitely symbolic ritual enacted between two lovers about to be separated.

The fire storm was predictable.

I had tried to pave the way as carefully as I could. My point in raising those issues, as I made clear both in the sermon itself and in the discussion that boiled over afterward, was not to argue the case one way or another, but rather to get at some of the attitudes underlying the way we Christians do theology — and more important the way we do love. “How do you feel about the possibility that Jesus had a human beloved?” I asked these parishioners. “Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Why?”

The responses were pretty much what I expected: “But if Jesus had sexual relations with a woman, he couldn’t be sinless.” “If he loved one in particular, he couldn’t love us all impartially.” “How could he be the son of God unless he gave himself completely to God?” The overwhelming consensus was that if Jesus had known erotic love, he could not possibly have also been the full embodiment of divine love. It would somehow disqualify him as the divine redeemer.

I could hardly blame the congregation for feeling that way.

After nearly two millennia of reinforcement, these assumptions have become so much of the landscape of Christianity that they appear to be part of the seamless structure of revealed truth. But in fact, assumptions are what they really are — not core tenets of the faith, not anything that Jesus himself taught, but superimpositions of a male, celibate, priestly theology which for nearly two thousand years has been the only game in town.

The complicated history of how this situation came to be could fill a book in itself (and in fact has several times over). The short version is basically this: during those first four centuries of Christian life, as leadership moved from a charismatic eldership model to the threefold sacramental ministry we know today (bishops, priests, and deacons), part and parcel of this evolution was an increasing tendency to view both Christ and his apostles through the prototype of celibate priesthood. This is of course a flagrant anachronism in light of the unambiguous scriptural references to Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8:14) and the only slightly more ambiguous allusions in Luke to the other disciples’ “companions.?”

But counterbalancing the testimony of the gospels themselves was a growing discomfort with conjugal intimacy, a discomfort whose roots probably lie in the extreme Essene asceticism out of which Jesus himself most likely emerged (we will be exploring this topic in greater detail in the following chapter). Beginning as early as Paul, this unease was magnified in each succeeding generation by a chorus of Christianity’s most influential thinkers including Marcion, Tatian, Jerome, and Augustine. The consensus grew stronger and stronger that sex and the sacraments simply didn’t mix. By the fourth century edicts were in place forbidding married priests to have conjugal relations with their wives. Not long thereafter married priesthood itself dropped astern in Western Christendom, and celibacy became the entrance requirement for admission to the power structure of the church.

It gives one a bit of a start to realize that for the better part of two millennia, Christian theology has been written, shaped, formulated, and handed down almost exclusively by celibates talking to other celibates. In that respect, it is extraordinarily monolithic. And from this exclusively celibate template emerges the only image of Christ our tradition has allowed us to entertain: of a celibate renunciate whose “sinless” purity would necessarily entail sexual abstinence.

At the age of twenty-one, this very requirement barred my own entrance into the Roman Catholic priesthood after seven years of seminary life, during which I tried in vain to suppress my body’s natural erotic urges and my soul’s longing for a feminine soul mate.  Cynthia goes right to the heart of the highly emotionally charged premise that in addition to all the roles attributed to Mary Magdalene — apostle, visionary, healer — “there is still one remaining to her, which may just be the most important of them all: soul mate.”

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers? Were they secretly married? That, of course, is the claim laid out in  The Da Vinci Code and a number of other books and documentaries and which the church angrily refutes.

The question would never have a fair hearing in Christian circles, she goes on to say, where the “mote” has not yet been cast out of our own eyes while we dare to pass judgement on those who entertain a different view from our own.

It is one thing to argue the case for reclaiming Mary Magdalene as apostle and wisdom-bearer, purveyor of a sorely needed feminine presence in the church; it is quite another to tie this claim to the theologically taboo subject of a romantic involvement with Jesus. Two-thousand years of dogma and tradition have left the field so thoroughly land-mined with negative assumptions and stereotypes that it is virtually impossible to see anything other than red, like my congregation that morning. The question will inevitably be heard as an attack on Jesus and as an act of sabotage upon the Christian faith itself.

After two-thousand years of programming that celibacy is the highest Christian way when compared to the second-rate path of committed spousal love, “it is hardly surprising that our Western anthropology of human sexuality is abysmal.”

In the secular version relentlessly foisted upon us by contemporary culture, it’s all about pleasure, performance, gratification. In the bedroom of the faithful, it’s still all too often about duty and shame: a begrudging debt to future generations which, even when carefully managed, is still tainted with carnal sin. Mention “erotic love” and people will immediately hear “sex,” then immediately thereafter, “dirty.” The idea that there could be anything holy about this kind of love is too alien to even consider. That’s simply the way our ears have been trained to hear it; we are all children of a cultural stream whose vision of human love  has been shaped by the shadow side of celibate spirituality.

From the gutter, the view of the gossip and speculation around Mary Magdalene and Jesus in various studies is less than holy and rather “scandalmongering,” Cynthia writes.

We are really presented with only four options:

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.”

With that, I will leave you to ponder these options for yourself and return in two weeks to compare your choice of options to Cynthia’s in my next post as we continue to explore romantic human love as a path to spiritual transformation. I will present 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.” Until my next post, then . . .

be love ~ be loved.

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter on-line at LiftingTones.com.

 

 

 

Category:

Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Sex, Transformation, Union with God

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On Human Relations ——- part 5: The Refugee Crisis

My Chorale PicThe current refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe unveils a crisis in human relations that has been smoldering in the heart of humanity yea these many, many centuries. The emotional and mental eruptions of fear, anger and a sense of threat to our heretofore protected way of life we’ve taken for granted offer viable opportunities for unprecedented change in the ways we view and treat one another.  We see some countries welcoming the refugees with open arms, even celebration. Other countries are treating them as invaders, even criminals, denying them their human rights to asylum as escapees from certain death in their war-torn homelands.  Such hostile attitudes have been part of the human psyche as far back as the Biblical days of tribal warfare, still going on. They are not going to be abandoned without deliberate action in thought, word and deed on the part of all the players in this crisis.

If you look closely at this crisis, the one attitude all the players exhibit is that of survival. The refugees are driven by survival, both in their own country and in a foreign land. Countries being “invaded” are concerned with survival of their culture and way of life. Let’s face it: we are all feeling put-upon and damn uncomfortable with this unprecedented migration of millions of Arabs out of the unsettled Middle East pouring into the well-settled and comparatively comfortable Western world. We worry about where it will all end up. Will we be forced to take in refugees into our homes, feed them and help them find work and a place in our society? Will we be faced, in other words, with the same question Cain faced after he slew Able: “Where is thy brother?” Are we being reminded in this refugee crisis that we are our brother’s keeper?

What are the solutions being considered?  One is to impose a quota on all countries so that the refugees will be given sanctuary. Another is to simply deport the “illegal immigrants” back to their homelands. That raises the problem of whether an immigrant is migrating for a better way of life or fleeing from war and death by starvation. Another solutions is to stem the violence in Syria that is driving the refugees out of their homes and lands–deal with the cause, in other words, so that the refugees can return home and resettle their lands. I like that solution. But how are we going to bring insane rulers to negotiate sane agreements and policies?

As I write this blog post I am envisioning this last scenario as a viable one: deal with the cause of the refugee crisis, which is President Assad and the Islamic State called “ISIS.”  Somehow I must work out this resolution in my consciousness, see it as possible, envision it as already happening. Pray it into manifestation, in other words.

I propose that this resolution to the refugee crisis through peaceful negotiations between President Assad in Syria and the League of Nations be adopted and allowed to manifest.  I invite you and all of your friends to join me in this prayer. A thousand people praying and meditating can shift this crisis toward peaceful resolution in Syria.  Join me in this prayer.

Anthony Palombo

Category:

2015, History of Middle East, Human Relations, Light workers, Meditation, Middle East, Refugee Crisis

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On Human Relations —- part 4: A New Relation with Iran? page 2

My Chorale PicSecretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, negotiators for their nations, the US and Iran respectively, had become friends. Their relationship was interfering with their work. The story as told by Robin Wright in the July issue of THE NEW YORKER, is one every adult American needs to read in order to understand the larger picture: that of the people of Iran who, after living in a “pariah nation” for decades “crave normalcy,” re-entry into the world community, and a relationship with the outside world — but on their own terms. In my previous post, I conveyed their story, noting that in ten to fifteen years, when the Iranian Nuclear Deal will expire, there will be a new generation at the helm of government in Iran. The old hard-liners of today will have aged or passed away. In this post I wish to tell the rest of the story of how the members of the negotiating teams found their new-found relationships and friendships getting in the way of their negotiations. It’s a story well worth the read. It’s all about human relations. Enjoy the read.

The final deadline was supposed to be June 30th. The negotiating teams worked throughout June to get the talks back on track. Kerry and Zarif returned to Vienna for the final round on June 28th, two days before the deadline. They missed it. The major powers had to extend it three times. Ministers from other countries flew in and out of Vienna as the U.S. and Iranian teams debated their differences.

The diplomacy was supposed to be transactional. But at moments it was transformational, for two countries at odds about so much else. For twenty months, the Americans and the Iranians ate separately, often in small, adjacent dining areas. ”At a certain point, it just started to feel strange that they had never actually shared a meal together,” Kerry’s aide said. Zarif invited Kerry and his team to lunch on July 4th in the Iranians’ dining room, where he had ordered Persian food. “It was ten times better than the food we ate on our side of the house,” the aide told me. “It was a moment where it was clear–we knew it, sort of, without remarking on it–that these relationships had really developed over time.” Kerry and Zarif commiserated about pressures at home. Kerry mentioned members of Congress who were complaining that local political ads already opposed any deal with Iran. Zarif told Kerry about an Iranian newspaper warning that he shouldn’t come home if he compromised too much with the Americans.

The chasm was still deep. “Even when we can be, you know, just conversational with each other, there can come a moment in the middle of that–I would say them, more–when we revert back to form,” the State Department official said. “It can all of a sudden come out of the blue, when I think they can realize they’ve gotten too familiar.”

The next meltdown was on July 5th. The Iranians regularly griped about the indignity of international sanctions tarnishing a historic civilization and causing unnecessary suffering. During one long-winded tirade by Zarif, Kerry cut him off: “You know, you’re not the only nation with pride.”Tensions increased that afternoon. When Kerry and Zarif started shouting at each other, a Kerry staffer slipped in to say that they could be heard down the corridors of the Palais Coburg.

The next night, with another deadline imminent, Kerry offered Zarif a package deal, to get beyond the inteminable issue-by-issue squabbles. In a meeting with the major powers, Iran accused them of pulling back from agreed terms. At one point, Zarif shouted, “Never threaten an Iranian!” (When news of the flap spread, #neverthreatenaniranian quickly became a popular Twitter hashtag.)

“Or a Russian!” Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said, in an attempt to break the tension. Subsequent reporting implied that Russia sided with Iran, a long-standing ally. In fact, the Americans claimed, Lavrov regularly played a constructive role in calming the emotional Zarif.

The U.S. and Iran remained so far apart that Kerry told Zarif and the other foreign ministers that he was prepared to leave the next day. He would be available by phone if Zarif wanted to negotiate seriously. ”A lot of us felt, at that point, like we were in real trouble,” Kerry’s aide said. The next day, Zarif brought a point-by-point response to the proposal.

”It’s such a complex set of relationships,” the State Department official said. “We know each other. All of the mistrust that has been there for these decades remains. It’s not gone. It’s incredibly present all the time. But it fights against the fact that we’ve spent two years getting to know each other.”

Over the next week, negotiations sometimes drifted, as the parties nibbled away at differences. The terms to limit Iran’s nuclear program were wrapped up first. The most sensitive issues often had a link to Iran’s milltary, especially the powerful Revolutionary Guards. The final differences were sorted out in a meeting, shortly before midnight, on July 13th, with Kerry, Zarif, and Federica Mogherini, of the European Union. “They basically kicked everybody out who wasn’t a minister and figured out the end,” Kerry’s aide said.

The next morning, Iran and the six major powers met to formally confirm the terms. The final statement read, “With courage, political will, mutual respect, and leadership, we delivered on what the world was hoping for: a shared commitment to peace and to join hands in order to make our world safer.”

Afterward, each minister made remarks about the collaboration. Kerry, who spoke last, recalled going off to war as a young man, the traumatic experience of Vietnam, and his commitment, when he returned, to end that war. The diplomacy with Iran, he told his peers, was one time that he could prevent the horrors of war.

At the end of Kerry’s comments, his eyes welled up, his aide said. Others teared up, too, including the Iranians. Then everyone applauded.  Zarif went off to make a brief announcement with Mogherini, while Kerry watched, on an iPad, President Obama’s remarks from the White House about the potentially historic deal. When Zarif finished, he walked backstage and patted Kerry on the shoulder. They shook hands, the aide recounted. “And that’s how he said goodbye.”

Robin Wright ends her article — yes, the author is a woman, who alone could write an article such as this conveying the emotional climate that permeated these negotiations with so much insightful detail — with promising, though typically conservative patriarchal, comments from General Martin Dempsey.

“We will always have military options,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during the final days of diplomacy. “And a massive ordnance penetrator is one of them.” A new bomb to take out a future Iranian bomb.

“Everyone who believes that overnight this relationship is going to change is naive as hell,” the senior State Department official told me. “It’s not. It’s just too deep–particularly among Iranian government officials, many of whom were part of the revolution. So there may be a generational shift that has to take place everywhere. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take a lot of time.”♦

Yes, “a generational shift” is underway already, both here in America and in Iran and the rest of the world. The new generation calls for an end to wars. Enough is enough!

I don’t know about you, but I get choked up reading this report. I suppose it’s because I know that, left to ourselves, we the people would find a way to live in peace and harmony with one another. I long for that, as I’m sure we all do. Seeing these human beings torn between their own natural inner compulsion to relate to one another as people just like themselves, even as friends, and their nations’ political agendas, that had ironically brought them together in this crucible, just pierces my heart and brings tears to my eyes. O God, let it be so for the peoples of all nations! Let us relate to one another as members of one species with one common purpose: the creation of the beautiful and harmonious world on this beautiful harmonious planet. Let it be so. ♥ (See the video link below for Colin Powell’s interview on Meet The Press.)

Anthony Palombo, DC

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com. Current topic: Update on cell phone hazards.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/09/06/colin-powell-says-what-many-conservatives-wont-admit-obama-made-good-deal-with-iran-video/

Category:

Global Events, Human Relations, Iranian Nuclear Deal, The Iranian People

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On Human Relations, part 3 page 2: Man-Woman Equality

My Chorale Pic

With the recent church shooting  in Charleston, South Carolina by a twenty-one-year-old man that abruptly ended nine lives, my thoughts turn to questioning the home life of this deeply troubled and misguided young man and the culture of racial prejudice into which he was born.

We’ve been considering The Law of Balance in this series on Human Relations. Here’s a case where that law has long been ignored in this young man’s family life, but more so in his social environment. Violence has its roots in the family unit and in our culture of hate and prejudice, particularly here in the South. Gun control is not where we need to go to fix this problem, and jailing or executing the shooter brings no healing to this wounded human being.  Only compassion and understanding will begin to heal him and eradicate prejudice and hate from our culture. He needs to be taken in by society and bathed in love, not shut out and disposed of by our penal system. That system needs a complete re-thinking and re-ordering. The church members were as quick to forgive this young man as they were open to welcome him into their congregation. That’s a huge step toward healing, both the traumatized congregation and the young man. That attitude needs to be reflected in society as a whole and somehow in our penal system.

*  *  *  *  *

In the previous post, I ended the excerpt from Lao Russell’s book, GOD WILL WORK WITH YOU BUT NOT FOR YOU, with this brief but poignant paragraph:

Man has always crucified love on the cross of his own self-glory by the killing of men; and women have always wept at the foot of the cross, as they wept when men crucified the Nazarene while all but one of His disciples who professed to love Him, deserted Him.

I then closed my post with thoughts that arose from reading what Lao had to say here concerning the crucified Nazarene, offering that there were actually three of His disciples who stood at the foot of the cross: Mary Magdalene, his wife and soul mate, his mother Mary, and John the Beloved with whom Jesus endowed His mantle of authority. I then suggested that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had fulfilled their mission and purpose on earth by restoring the union between Man and Woman, a union that had been fragmented since Adam blamed Eve for their disobedience. That failure on the part of Adam to accept responsibility for his action but rather place all the blame on Eve drove a wedge between them. It also separated them from the Creator, but only in consciousness and awareness.

With this severance of the unity between these two earthly partners in Creation and between Man and his Creator, the world as we knew it in the beginning began to change, as did our perception of the world. It became a hostile place to live where survival and the killing of animals and of one another became the way of existence on the planet. Man became the hunter and gatherer, as well as protector of his territory, and woman became the home maker. Love was lost in our fall from grace as fear darkened our hearts and clouded our vision. And that is how it has remained to this very day.

Lao continues to share her perspectives and understanding—which some of my readers may find antiquated. This was written, after all, in 1955.  Much has changed in our consciousness since then. I should hope so anyway.

All of this is quite natural. It could hardly be otherwise, for man in his unfolding (or evolving) remembered the fighter spirit of his primate days of taking, while not realizing that the woman spirit of giving was gradually awakening in him a keener desire for mental mating and the spiritual unity of the equal Father-Motherhood of balanced mating. The hardest lesson which man must learn during the long ages of his journey is that God made man and woman equal with one another in order that they should manifest divided love by equal interchange in their givings and regivings. God’s whole purpose for dividing His spiritual Self into pairs of fathers and mothers is to dramatize His Love nature by the romance of equal and opposite interchange of love. The romance of awakening love is far greater than either its mental or physical interchange. Every expression of mating is empty without the romance of love itself. Romance is love-awareness without which there can be no complete happiness in any mating.

The Cosmic drama of Creation is a romance which all mankind is perpetually transforming to comedy and tragedy as it eternally seeks romance without knowing the path which leads to it. Through the romance of balanced interchanging of love between fathers and mothers they find unity which alone gives to them the ecstasy of the divine nature of God.

Physical sex interchange has been first in the desires of mass-man. Mental sex interchange is rare, while romance starves in a world which would give all else for just one hour of it. That is the lesson of life which all must learn who search for the peace and happiness which will alone bring rest from world tensions. The world has never learned it because the senses of man have never let him know the real meaning of either love or romance.

The world of divided humans must some day know that God’s divided universe is an electrically sex-divided dramatization of CAUSE and EFFECT. The CAUSE is Mind-desire for expressing static idea through intechanging motion. The EFFECT is what happens because of that division and the necessity of interchanging. CAUSE is, therefore, one—and EFFECT is always two. The lesson of life is to learn how to so balance the interchanging between the two halves of every effect that all EFFECT is completely canceled out in complete sexlessness by their balanced unity.

God’s motive as Master-Playwright of His Cosmic drama is the love urge of the mating idea expressed physically by the uniting of bodies to void the physical tensions of the sex urge by balancing them, and thus reproduce other bodies. It is also for the purpose of expressing the love urge in its mental and spiritual expression by eliminating the mental tensions of separateness. This is accomplished by uniting spiritual mates for creating spiritual idea.

A mental sex relation is for the purpose of creating idea, while the physical sex relation is for the purpose of creating body forms of mentally conceived ideas.

That is why any woman and any man who have harmonious spiritual relations with each other, such as a mother and son, or good friends, or business partners, can multiply power in each other very much more. than any two men, or any two women could possibly do.

That is why any organization which consists solely of men, whether it be an industry, a club, or the cabinet of the President of the United States, or ‘of other organizations composed of women only, necessarily creates unbalanced structures in which there can never be complete unity.

That is why this man-made world is so badly unbalanced and disunited. Its male qualities are so preponderant that it has made a civilization which operates like a flywheel whose shaft is badly off–center. A woman-made world would be just as unbalanced. Its preponderance of female qualities would make it equally disunited.

If you look into the life history of any great man you will find a woman in it who had a tremendous influence upon the creative powers which accounted for his greatness. It may be more than one woman, such as his mother, and his wife, or sweetheart, or dearly loved friend. No matter who that woman, or those women were, the basis of their interchange with him must first be love mentally
expressed. A spiritual union between any man and woman is of ten-thousand times more value than love physically expressed without the spiritual.

The romance is in the awakening of love in one another, which is not a one-time event when our hormones are beginning to kick in. It’s has to be an ongoing event.  

Love is not objective, nor can it be possessed. The woman awakens love in the man, and the man awakens love in the woman. The romance of it is in the awakening, not in the consummation. It is the awakened ability to love which counts, and not the acquisition of the object which has awakened it, nor in any physical contact whatsoever. A woman may not even be aware that she is deeply loved, and the man who loves may never even exchange a word with her. Where love is spiritual it uplifts, exalts, enriches and ennobles.

Where sex is purely physical it debases and defiles. Millions have ruined themselves through physical sex expression which was not spiritually balanced. The roué [debauched person] is despised where the parent is honored. Whole civilizations have been utterly destroyed by the sex debauchery of incest and promiscuity. Wherever spiritual sex-mating is preponderant over the physical there is then the beauty and glory of the power which men and women can alone
know who have that unity which comes to those “whom God hath joined together.”

Any man and woman who are thus spiritually and physically balanced multiply their unified power by eight—not two. Two separate, disunited potentials are only two, but when two potentials act as one their power multi-plies in the ratio of the cube. In other words, when two completely united, balanced mates act as one they do not add their two powers together to equal two, they multiply
them in the ratio of gravitation mathematics, which are three dimensional.

There is no lesson so hard to learn, or of such great import, as the long lesson of learning how to interchange all spiritual and physical divisions of effect equally in order to unify them, and thus make two unbalanced conditions become one. A balanced life, home, business, community, nation or world of nations is possible only by learning that great lesson by the hard way of experience until it is put into practice.

An approximation of balance will not suffice for complete happiness. A man who still insists upon being “master in his own home,” cannot have a happy home, even though he provides for his family generously and is a model husband in every other respect. With such a condition contentment is possible but romance is utterly stifled. A residue of unbalance still remains which makes it impossible to cancel out all actions and reactions by balancing them as a businessman balances his books constantly. A business could not succeed if a daily deficit made it impossible to balance its books, nor can a family succeed in being all that a family should where a constant tension exists which cannot be utterly voided.

The wife would try to assure herself she was happy by seeing the good points in her husband. Something would constantly be happening which would not happen if the home was a balanced one. A daughter might marry against her better judgment because of the tension which could not be eliminated, or a son might leave home where he otherwise would not. Unity cannot exist where tensions hold two apart. They will always be two until residual tensions are balanced. The two will then be ONE.

In countries where their women are forced to accept infidelities as a matter of course there can never be the happy home life enjoyed by those nations where infidelities are the exception and not the rule. Under such conditions unity is utterly impossible, because romance is impossible.

I will leave it there and leave you to ponder, and perhaps comment on, what you have read. We will continue along this vein in the next couple of posts.

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Category:

Human Relations, Law of Balance, Love, Love heals, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Sex, Spiritual intimacy before phsical, Union with God, Walter Russell

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On Human Relations, part 3: . . . . . . Man–Woman Equality

My Chorale Pic

Let’s talk about the relationship between man and woman. I will open the consideration with an excerpt from Lao Russell from her beautiful book “GOD WILL WORK WITH YOU BUT NOT FOR  YOU.”  It follows quite naturally her husband’s article in my previous post on the Law of Balance. Mind you, this was written in 1955, and it is still current with world conditions of today. Enjoy her simplicity and clarity.

Man-Woman Equality

This chapter is addressed to the many advanced thinkers who are fully aware of the great world danger which civilization is now facing.

All such mystic thinkers also know that civilization need not fall if we but know how to unite mankind into one Being with but the one purpose of manifesting the love principle of Nature, instead of the fear and hate principle which he now manifests.

God’s universe is balanced. That is why it is unified and continuous. That is why it will endure forever and cannot fall.

Man’s universe is badly unbalanced. That is why it is disunited and transient. That is why it must repeatedly fall.

When grave danger confronts anyone, or the world, one wants to know what to do about it. If he does not know what to do to save himself he is helpless to avoid the danger.

World thinkers can save civilization if they know more about God’s ways and processes which alone can save man if applied in time. The great cause of world unbalance is the disunity caused by the practice of inequality in God’s divided pairs which He created equal. These inequalities are many. They could not be balanced in centuries–and that would be too late.

The principle inequality which is again destroying civilization is the man-woman inequality. That is the prime cause of world failure which underlies all other causes. That cause could be remedied in time to unite the whole world as one if world thinkers, both men and women, would do something about it now, right now before the next election takes place, and not twenty years from now.

The world resists change. It insists upon continuing the same old mistakes until the resultant suffering becomes too heavy. It has got to change, however, in respect to its man-woman equality or be self-condemned to another state of chaos.

The world cannot change unless individuals change. Each man must equalize woman spiritually in his own life, in his home, his business and his government. Until woman is thus exalted the tensions of inequality will destroy every civilization which man attempts to build alone.

Every woman should insist upon mental equality with men in all governing and managerial capacities, and when competent women are nominated for high office, I am confident men would feel it their duty and pleasure to vote for them to begin equalization of international affairs. I say this because each time I have mentioned this man-woman idea to a great man he has wholeheartedly and enthusiastically been in accordance with this principle.

It will always be impossible for humans to build an enduring civilization until it equalizes its man-woman Mind power. If world thinkers would but realize that, they would be aroused to action in beginning to bring equalization into being. God created this world for men and women, not for men alone, nor for women alone. He created them equally as mates just as He created all pairs and all forces equally. This is an electrically sex-divided universe. The two electrical workers which create this universe are male and female. Each are equal. One does as much as the other in creating every particle of matter in the universe. Without that electrical equality in expressed force we would have a very wobbly, and dangerously unbalanced universe of badly distorted forms.

We will continue to have a badly distorted, disunited and wobbly civilization until men and women world thinkers begin to equalize the two sexes so that there can be a marriage of unity in the world which will produce balance in world actions instead of distortions.

Motherless children vitally need a mother. No matter how sincerely or eagerly a father tries to become both mother and father, he is never able to fulfill both necessities.

This motherless world likewise needs a mother. The father is trying to fulfill both offices but the more he tries to function as both, the greater is the disaster to the world family.

Lao continues in an historical vein to describe how we have evolved from primitive man.  In that era, the hunter-gatherer was the male’s identity and role, while the female’s identity was centered around food preparation and clothing fabrication from skins. Survival was the prime concern that shaped the life-style of this primitive emerging civilization. This inevitably led to killing of other tribesmen when survival was at stake, leaving the women to “weep at the foot of the cross,” as Lao put it in Biblical context, referring of course to the crucifixion of Jesus, a custom that has survived to this day of war-mongering men who kill one another to preserve their own version of “freedom,” again leaving women to weep at the side of their men’s coffins.

In time, she goes on to say, man eventually began to “discover woman as a mental mate and took her to wife and consulted with her, but condescendingly.” This recognition alone elevated the whole status of civilization to higher levels. She then made this significant observation:

The country which gave the greater recognition to the matehood idea of man and woman progressed rapidly beyond those countries which glorified man and suppressed their women. Likewise, every individual man who learned to love a woman because of her mental matehood with him, as well as her physical, progressed beyond all men who looked upon her as woman alone.

This level of recognition, Lao points out, merely gained women a concession and not an equal right alongside men. Even in winning the right to vote, it was nothing more than the right to vote for man.  Men remained master and lord, the one who must be obeyed.

Pagan man made man the master of women, and ruler of the world. Even the pagan God concept was male-and still is. God, the Father, has never been the generally accepted Father-Mother of His equally divided fathers and mothers of Creation. Man the conqueror, the killer of man for the possessions of man, the pirate and trader in slaves, the exploiter and builder of empires, built this world in his own carnal image. He built it for man and glorified himself as the killer of the sons of man, while women wept.

Man has always crucified love on the cross of his own self-glory by the killing of men; and women have always wept at the foot of the cross, as they wept when men crucified the Nazarene while all but one of His disciples who professed to love Him, deserted Him.

TWO WOMEN AND ONE MAN STOOD WITH JESUS TO THE END

There were actually three who stood at the foot of the cross: Jesus’s soul mate and wife Mary Magdalene, John the Beloved upon whose shoulders the Master place His mantle of authority, and Mary the mother of Jesus. It is significantly telling that there were two women and only one man.  John the Beloved was more than just any man.  He was a well integrated Man with both masculine and feminine energies balanced in his humanity. And Mary Magdalene was more than just any woman.  She also was an integrated human being with her masculine energies just as available to her as her feminine, which is why Peter and some of the other male apostles didn’t like her. She was the Apostle of apostles, the only one of his disciples who knew Jesus at his core being.  There was no separation between them, even after he ascended to his Father. Wherever Mary went Jesus went. Whenever she spoke Jesus spoke.

I truly believe, as author Cynthia Bourgeault goes to great and profound ends to present in her timely and important book The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE — discovering the woman at the heart of Christianity, that this reuniting of man and woman was the sole purpose of their mutual and timely visitation, and at a most critical and pivotal moment in the history of Mankind.

The Great Redemption and Reparation has been accomplished. The broken relationship between man and woman has been repaired. Mankind has been redeemed from its state of separation and war between the sexes.  What’s keeping us from enjoying our salvation and getting on with life as it was intended and designed to be from the beginning and restored to its natural divine order and beauty by Jesus and Mary Magdalene?

Now there’s a book every Christian needs to read . . . would be restored to sanity by reading.  For the state of Christianity today is one of utter insanity and impotence. Little wonder people are leaving their father’s religion behind.

OUR HOUSE IS FALLING DOWN AROUND US

It’s time we took a closer look at the state of our humanity.  We are a race divided, and we will not withstand the apocalyptic changes that are afoot for all of Mankind. And by apocalyptic I mean what the word implies literally: REVELATION.  All things both good and evil are even now being revealed via social networking and the blessed internet. What a timely gift that is proving to be! Check out this video by THRIVE about the current state of the global economy and the banking system. It’s all collapsing around itself. The man-made currency system, made for men by men, is bankrupt and in utter failure . . . and  I don’t mean to insinuate that women have not been involved and behind those men pushing them on to make more money for greater security and wealth. No, both sexes bear equal responsibility for this deplorable state of our economy and our world . . . and our days are numbered.  Brace yourselves for a revelation of the truth.  For even as an old world is collapsing, a new and true world is emerging. The media just doesn’t find that news profitable.

Because of the timely and crucial nature of the topic in this chapter in Lao Russell’s book, I intend to share the bulk of the remaining chapter in the next couple of posts.  I will publish them a week apart.  Thank you for reading and following my blogs. I would love to share your own thoughts on these matters. Write me.

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2015, Divine Economy, Economics, Global economy, Global Events, Human Relations, Jesus, Law of Balance, Love, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Money, Our Economy

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On Human Relations, part 1 — What is love?

My Chorale Pic

In looking for what book to read next, Walter Russell’s MESSAGE OF THE DIVINE ILIAD came to mind.  I had read it some time ago and remembered the profound impact it had on me.  Looking at the front cover again, however, it was the subtitle that caught my attention: “THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY IN HUMAN RELATIONS.”

This theme also runs through Lao Russell’s book GOD WILL WORK WITH YOU BUT NOT FOR YOU, which my wife has been reading recently – which is likely why I was drawn to Walter’s book. What stands out to both of us reading these books is this matter of love, oneness and human relations. So, I would like to spend a few blog posts considering some of the wisdom that has come through these two authors . . . and perhaps add a little bit of my own.

As the “Golden Race” who are here to usher in a “Golden Age,” it behooves us to understand what love is. What does it mean to love God with all and our neighbor as our self? Let’s explore.

LOVE GOD

Of course this caption is redundant, for God is Love. When we feel love in our hearts, it is God we are feeling and experiencing. Love is God within us. When we love doing something, for example, we are experiencing the power of God working in and through us.

Here are some words of wisdom from Walter Russell:

A lady wrote me once that she hated making the beds and washing the dishes. I said: “Whenever you find that you do not like what you are doing, just remember that God centers you, and whatever you are doing you are doing it with Him and with His help. You cannot move your little finger otherwise. When you make your bed, just say, ‘Come, God, make this bed with me.’”

Later she wrote: “That made me love to make beds and do things I did not like to do. Knowing that God was helping me took away that feeling of loneliness and drudgery.”

Take joy in doing things; find happiness in doing everything the best way you can. If you have to do it, you must do it, so you might just as well love doing it. If you really love your work, you will not tire. Conversely, if you hate your work, you will poison yourself by that hatred and the poison must be removed by an understanding of the universal law of balance. Any other form of relief which does not remove the cause can only be temporary.

The way this truth is phrased quickened a fresh perspective in me: “…just remember that God centers you.” As I extend this truth outward to include everyone and every living thing around me, my worldview suddenly takes on a renewed quality of compassion. God centers all living creatures, including those who do “evil” deeds – terrorists, murderers, bank robbers and rapists. God centers them, too, although their actions do not seem to arise from that center but out of their conflicted hearts and misguided minds. Still, God centers us all, goes where we go, does with us what we do.  That’s a provocative thought . . . and, at the same time, empowering.  God does not pick up and leave us when we fail to act out of the Love that centers us.  God powers our every action. We simply provide direction. Nor does God abandon those who do harm to others and enact horrific crimes against humanity — our enemies. “Love your enemies,” the Teacher instructed, “Do good to those that hate you.” In other words, love God in your neighbor as your Self. Or, simply, love God.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS SELF

Lao Russell has written some wonderfully inspiring words in her book as well. In Chapter XVI, entitled “Love Ye One Another,” she speaks passionately and longingly about the family of Man as One Body of siblings who share One Father and One Mother.

“Man does not yet know how to live with other men. He has not yet found that every other man on earth is part of his very body, his very self, not merely his brother. . . . Three thousand miles away means nothing. What happens three thousand miles away happens in our own homes. People who are hurt three thousand miles away are being hurt in our own homes, for what happens anywhere happens everywhere.”

Then she waxes beautifully with deep passion as a mother who longs for the healing of her feuding family.

[The world] must see the good in man and not look upon him as sinful and evil. The world becomes what the world thinks. It thinks of man as sinful and evil and he has become what his own thoughts have made him. He has made a world of hate and fear, and where hate is love cannot also be.

There will come a time, however, when the whole human race will know itself as one family, with but the one FATHER-MOTHER of all. When that day comes every man will be the father and mother, or brother and sister, or son and daughter of every other man. As love comes into the world with spiritual unfolding, separateness and disunity go out of it. With love comes knowledge of the power of unity which makes the power of every man become the power of every other man. Separateness and selfishness breed each other. Separateness makes one man want for himself what every other man also wants for himself. Separateness takes. It never gives, and long ages of taking must pass before he learns that what he takes he never has, but what he gives he always has.

The long ages will pass, however, and every man will serve every other man whom he knows as his very Self. Blood relationship is mighty in its desire to serve sons and daughters, or brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers in one separate family. No matter what wrong a son may do to the whole world, the love of parents is greater than the fault.

The happy, peaceful and progressive home is one where each member of the family thinks first of each other member, serves first each other before himself, and freely gives without motive of self–gain. In the ideal family everyone will not only serve each other to make him happy but will refrain from doing anything to make any member of it unhappy. That is the ideal. That is what every home needs to make complete happiness for every member of it.

The world is one family of one world–home. The ideal world is one in which every member of it serves each other lovingly to give him happiness, and refrains from doing anything which will take his happiness away from him. That is the ultimate goal. That is what mankind is striving for. That is what he has been striving for over the long aeons. For these long ages he has ever been searching for the road which will lead to that goal of romance and peace. 

The road to peace is not war. War is the road to destruction and post-traumatic suffering for our sons and daughters who fight for . . . what? That’s a good question, a question that likely lies at the heart of every soldier who comes back home after killing other selves. I believe deep down inside every man and woman who goes to war to fight their country’s battles returns home with a profound awareness that there are no “others.” There are only other countries’ sons and daughters who are just like themselves. There is no “other.” There is only one Self.  Russell says it well here and expands the thought to include place:

We think that thoughts, sounds, and other happenings of which we become cognizant take place in other objects and in other places outside ourselves. This objectivity of belief is not true to Nature. Everything which happens anywhere, happens everywhere.

There are not two points, two positions, or two objects in the entire universe. Therefore, whatever you think of as happening outside yourself is actually echoing within yourself.

There is no other place in the universe than that place which you universally occupy. Likewise, there is no knowledge or thought in the universe that is not omnipresent in the Light of you. The reflection of a light in the mirror is actually within the mirror. All Creation is a mirror which reflects itself within itself universally.

He then answers this profound question, which I will close with and let you ponder:

What is meant by being One with God? 

The more you are aware that the Light of God centers you, the more you become aware that that Light is your very Self, and that your body is but an extension of your Self which you have created to manifest your Self. The more that awareness grows, the more you become the cosmic Being and the more you know.When you finally become fully aware of that Supreme Being as your very Self, you ARE that Supreme Being. 

Human relations are healthy when based on love, which gives birth to oneness. We are each one centered by the same Light of Love. Therefore, we are already One at a core level, the level of our Being. At the Human level, we are different but not separate.  Like the rainbow of many colors that are inseparable from the one white light they differentiate, as Human Beings we are diversified in our expression of the One Light of Love. Why, then, does it seem so hard for us as a Global Family–or even as couples and nuclear families–to find our oneness in Being? Perhaps it is because we are distracted by our Human differences.  ‘Till my next post,

Be Love. Be loved.

Anthony Palombo

Read my Health Light Newsletter at LiftingTones.com for informative and enlightening articles on health and related topics.  My blogs have now been visited over 88,000 times in 123 countries worldwide.

Category:

Finding God, Golden Age, Golden Race, Healing the world, Human Relations, Love, Love heals, Walter Russell

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