Restoring the Divine Feminine

We all know the joke that men won't stop for directions.  In fact, I remember when I was still in college and my boyfriend and I were headed back to western New York and decided to take some country roads through New York State.  It was getting late and I knew that we'd taken a wrong turn several miles back.  I told him I thought we should turn around.  He insisted he knew the way and so being a good girlfriend, I didn't insist.  Finally, after an unbearably long time, I did the unthinkable.  I suggested we stop for directions.  "No. I know the way," he insisted tensely. 

At least an hour later, he said, he thought we'd made a wrong turn and would head north on a rough road headed up to Rochester.  It was getting very late and was snowing heavily.  I was getting scared.  Finally, after what should have been at the most a 2 hour trip, turned into 5 hours, we found our way from Rochester to Salamanca.  We arrived sometime in the early hours of the morning.  I never said anything about it to him and we put it behind us.  But, I've never forgotten.  

The life of Christianity is like that.  We made a wrong turn in the early years after the death of Jesus for many reasons.  Elaine Pagels does a fabulous job of discussing the wrong turn in her books.  Rather than get into a dissertation on the lost feminine Christos Sophia, I'll offer some broad brush strokes to frame the wrong turn.

First of all, there is and always has been a living tradition about the Bride of Christ, who is not "the Church," as too many Church fathers have asserted.  Everything in the Gospel is not metaphor and myth, although as in the story of Jesus, there is also in the story of Mary, a "living myth."  In short, that means it all really happened, but it also points to a deeper level of conscious reality, a kind of parabolic truth that is also lived and experienced in our 3-dimensional material reality.  They were real people who lived real lives, but their lives were mythic, archetypal that pointed to a deeper, more profound sacred reality and eternal truth.  

Some people mistakenly think the Catholic Church is a mirror of the earliest faith communities that popped up after the death of Jesus. Recent study and discovery, as well as rediscovery, suggests otherwise and since the Reformation was a turn off from the Roman Catholic Church's misguided path, the protestant churches have furthered the great wrong turn.  But, if we trace history back to before the Fall of Rome c. 404, we find there was a rich living Gnostic tradition which co-existed alongside the earliest threads of what would become Eastern Orthodoxy.  

Simply, there was an existing Christianity that included an understanding that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and she, like him, was a "chalice," a human vessel of the Christ spirit, the "Christos," which is also the conduit of the "Holy Spirit."  This understanding is traced throughout the Hebrew scriptures as Sophia and is (according to Marcus Borg) used within a feminine context.  The "Word" or logos is the structure into which the spirit is poured.  It is power and she is wisdom.  The Gnostics do a much better job describing this.  He is will, intentionality, she is the substance sought which brings it all to life.  This is when poetry and parable would describe this so much better because it is ineffable and it is spiritual and hard to rationalize.  It is felt and experienced in a deep, inner place within our hearts and souls.  

And, that was the problem - understanding, or rather surrendering into that state of pure abandon in which is experienced the ineffable, uncontrollable power of the spirit.  To a hard core rational world, like the Roman Empire, the idea that the spirit wills where it wills and is free from the limited understanding of the human brain, was a threat to its ability to control, oppress, manipulate and use.  That kind of masculine power is the dark stuff of history.  

When Rome fell, the Roman Catholic Church filled the void offering the western world some much needed order, structure. While that was urgent and necessary, just prior to that much needed emergency civilization saving act, it had suppressed an entire other half of the Christian story.  Forcing Gnostic scriptures and monastics underground, their scriptures and tradition either remained underground in the Coptic churches, from which it also ultimately disapeared over the centuries or it brutally killed anyone caught with those scriptures, condemning them as heretic.  Even recently, when in seminary, I asked some questions about the Nazarenes and the Gnostics, I was urged not to ask those questions because the Church still considers them heretic and "wrong."

Why?  What would be wrong with Jesus having a wife?  What would be wrong with a fully human Christ bearer?  Why couldn't a woman also be a Christ-bearer?  And, how is the Gnostic understanding of who the Christ is so very different from that of the mainline Church?  

Would it be fair to suggest that there is something inherent in what a woman is that may stir up or threaten a man's need to control?  And, along the same idea.  Is there something inherently threatening to the masculine power/control about the free will of the Holy Spirit, as per Jesus to Nicodemus. 

And, even further, what would a balance between masculine domination and feminine partnership look like? Rather than unmitigated domination and unfocused, unstructured substance, could there be something else? That is both the question and the opportunity that's knocking at the door of our new world today.  

If we look at the middle east as well as the last gasps of the dyning greed paradigm of the western world, we see what unrestrained, unbalanced, domination by the masculine principle's world system looks like. We also can see where it might lead us.  

Again, the question, which will be addressed in the subsequent Tiger Lilies posts, is what would it look like if we balanced these two extremes of divine beinghood for the human race as well as the rest of the Earth and its life? 

Through the exploration of Gnostic Christianity, anthropology and Eastern mysticism, we may stumble upon an open door to our future.

An open mind is the first step to receiving the wisdom of She who was the equal partner to He who came to free us from the darkness and oppression of our unblanced world.  We might want to step away from our old polarized thinking, our blaming, our stereotypical worldviews which address things in good / evil terms.

I also think some of these answers are in our sacred texts, oral traditions -  on cave walls and in sanskrit scrolls.  I'd like to explore some of them.  Feel free to share back what you think, how you are being challenged and what this means to you in your life as you, as we all are, by the powers to control, limit and dominate your own creative spirit, who you really are and how you choose to live out and express your own sense of being.



Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  (John 3:5)

Above "St. Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles" from thenazareneway.com

Emergence of Divine Feminine

(The following is borrowed from CNN. It is offered as the first in a series of the feminine principle and the emergence of the Divine Feminine today. As we stand on the edge of the New World, a new age, our only hope is to embrace the Holy Mother-Maiden-Bride who is the counterpart, the partner of the Divine masculine. If this does reveal that Jesus was married, it may suggest, what Gnostics have always believed, that His wife, may have been the Christos Sophia, as He was the Christos Logos. This is just the beginning and as you embrace even the tiniest bit what this means, your world - our world - will be rocked, but not with bombs, rather with love, healing, peace and joy. )

The Smithsonian Channel will air a special on King's findings on September 30.

Jesus says, 'my wife' in Coptic fragment
By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

(CNN) - A newly revealed, centuries-old papyrus fragment suggests that some early Christians might have believed Jesus was married. The fragment, written in Coptic, a language used by Egyptian Christians, says in part, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife ..."

Harvard Divinity School Professor Karen King announced the findings of the 1 1/2- by 3-inch honey-colored fragment on Tuesday in Rome at the International Association for Coptic Studies.

King has been quick to add this discovered text "does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married," she wrote in a draft of her analysis of the fragment set to appear in the January edition of Harvard Theological Review. The divinity school has posted a draft of King's article to which AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University, contributed.

"This fragment, this new piece of papyrus evidence, does not prove that (Jesus) was married, nor does it prove that he was not married. The earliest reliable historical tradition is completely silent on that. So we're in the same position we were before it was found. We don't know if he was married or not," King said in a conference call with reporters.

"What I'm really quick to say is to cut off people who would say this is proof that Jesus was married because historically speaking, it's much too late to constitute historical evidence," she continued. "I'm not saying he was, I'm not saying he wasn't. I'm saying this doesn't help us with that question," she continued.

In the accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible, there is no mention of his marital status, while the accounts do mention Jesus' mother, father and siblings. The four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - tell the story of Jesus' birth and early childhood then skip to his short, three-year ministry before detailing his death and resurrection.

The idea that Jesus was married is not a new one.

In other writings about the life of Jesus from antiquity suggest Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene, a disciple who was close to Jesus. Author Dan Brown also used the idea of Jesus being married as a jumping off point for the fictional novel "The Da Vinci Code." King dismissed that notion in her call with reporters.

“There’s no indication we have that Jesus was married,” said Darrell Bock, a senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. “One could say the text is silent on Jesus’ marital status is because there was nothing to say.”

Initial dating for the honey-colored fragment by the team of scholars puts the papyrus piece coming out of the middle of the second century.

King is referring to the fragment as the "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" or "GosJesWife" as a short hand for reference, and noting that the abbreviation does not mean this scrap has the same historical weight as the canonical Gospels.

Biblical scholars often use the term gospel to refer to a genre of ancient writings featuring dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, King notes in her paper. The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas are just a few of the ancient accounts about the life of Jesus that Christians do not consider canonical.

At the conference, King said another professor suggested the fragment could have come from the text of a homily, or sermon, where the writer was using this phrase as a literary device. She told reporters that while she will consider that as a possibility, the fragment is “probably a gospel. Probably from the second century and most close to the Gospels of Mary, Thomas and Philip.”

Bock agreed with the notion that the text fragment shared similarities with those gospels, called the Gnostic Gospels, which were the writings of an early outlier sect of Christians. He said the text could be referring to a "gnostic rite of marriage that is a picture of the church and Jesus, not a real wife."

But he added, "it’s a small text with very little context. We don’t know what’s wrapped around it to know what it’s saying.”

Bock said it’s likely to be a gnostic text if it proves to be authentic. “The whole text needs vetting. She’s doing the right thing to release it and let scholars take a look at,” he said, adding “it’s a little bit like trying to analyze the game in the first quarter.”

“It’s a historical curiosity but doesn’t really tell us who Jesus was,” Bock said. “It’s one small speck of a text in a mountain of texts of about Jesus.”

The owner of the fragment has been identified by King as a private collector who has asked to stay anonymous. The owner brought the fragment to Harvard have King examine it in December 2011.

King then brought it to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Roger Bagnall, the institute's director and an expert on papyrus, examined it and determined it to be authentic, Bangall confirmed to CNN.

Ariel Shisha-Halevy, professor of linguistics at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, who was asked to examine the authenticity, according to the draft of the article, told King via e-mail, “I believe - on the basis of language and grammar - the text is authentic. That is to say, all its grammatical ‘noteworthy’ features, separately or conjointly, do not warrant condemning it as forgery.”

Little is known about the origin of the text. Because both sides of the fragment have writing on them, King said it could have come out of a book rather than a scroll.

"Just like most of the earliest papyri of the New Testament and other literary and documentary papyri, a fragment this damaged could have come from an ancient garbage heap," the King says building on prior research by Luijendijk.

King writes "the importance of the 'Gospel of Jesus’ Wife' lies in supplying a new voice within the diverse chorus of early Christian traditions about Jesus that documents that some Christians depicted Jesus as married."

Eric Marrapodi - CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

السلام

Peace. People, be at peace. Please people, stop the insanity. Stop the hate. Put down your weapons and reach into the love and peace in the Qur'an and be at peace. America does not hate you. America has a heart as big as the entire world. In our cities and homes here in America we reach out to you who have come here from war torn, impoverished nations all around the world.  When you were hungry, we gave you food stamps.  When you needed shelter, we gave you shelter.  Try to see beyond the war and violence that is in your world.  We want to love you if only you will stop your violence.

Love each other, embrace each other and let your own hearts be filled with the light of our future which will only come if you will allow room for all of us.

If the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ and Master Buddha were to all come down here right now, wouldn't they be upset with us?  If we say we love our spiritual leaders, then why do we have to protest and fight and kill for them?  

Please everyone just put down your protest signs and go home to your wives and children.  For those of you out there who are hating America, take another look. Your people are here. America is the world.  America is not a handful of rich old white men (WASP) who are ruling the world.  The old empire is long gone. America is a country where all religions, all worldviews, all cultures, nationalities have the inalienable right to freedom of speech, of creative freedom to write, to design, to speak in however way one chooses to speak.  

Yes, there are ugly, rude and ignorant films out there, made by unenlightened people.  But, there are also pornographic films that display despicable acts in violation of children and women. Do you really think violence is the best response? Reactionary violence is not an enlightened response.  Here in America, when we are offended by ignorance such as that in this film the Muslim world is reacting to, we put our thoughts out there through letters to the editors in newspapers.  In America we have a national conversation  in the press, on the news. We pass laws. We hold town meetings. We may have a peaceful protest, but we don't blame a nation or a government for the poor creative choices of an individual.

Why do you pick up on - seek out even - a reason to feel offended by one insane person's rude portrayal of the Prophet?  Anyone who has even a modest education is well aware of the dignity and beauty of the Qur'an and yet this global overreaction to one person's stupidity makes fools of all of you.

If Americans are going to apologize for one stupid, ignorant and rude film, we better get to work because there are others that are far more violating and ignorant that exploit the minds, souls and bodies of our children and women. Who is apologizing for those?

Listen world! The crusades were fought centuries ago. The blood that was spilled then, is long gone. We have a global environment to clean up.  We have a world economy to put back on track.  We have starving children everywhere - in America's inner cities as well as in African nations.

We have got to stop this madness.  Whoever you are and wherever you are, put down your weapons, get over your religious pride, and live in peace with your neighbors - whether they are Christians or Jews.  We have more important things to do together as a world than to be fighting over something that isn't worth fighting over.  Stop spilling blood in reaction. America is you. As I look at the faces in our grocery stores, in our streets and schools, they are Muslim Arab Americans, they are Pakistani, they are South Korean, Philipino, Australian, African American, Irish American, Norwegian, Polish.  They are you - world.  They are you who came here to find peace and live and express your natural human rights of self expression.  When you decide that you are going to "hate" America, it is they who you are hating.  They are your people.  They are yourselves.

Your hate is your fear.  Face your fear and the phantoms that you lunge at or who lunge at the world through you, will go away.  They are not real.  But, your faith in your fear, your emotional and psychological investment in your fear is the most terrible fear.

Seek peace.  For God's sake, for your children's sake, for the world's sake, seek Peace.

                                                            السلام

Photo courtesy of CBS News.

Cracking the concrete of old religion

Sometimes we need a little extra clarification from the divine, something that actually makes sense to our 21st Century rational thinking, not some more old stuff that smacks of a kind of Indiana Jones' Temple-of-Doom-god.  And, I think these Christs' Letters is that extra clarification.

One of the reasons I began writing Tiger Lilies was to bridge the old thought of our ancient religions with the fresh late-breaking new age quantum spirituality that's being revealed almost everywhere, now.  

I found so much of the new buried in the old and wanted to build bridges connecting the ancient with what really isn't new at all, only new to us on this side of the ice age.  My goal was to offer those of us who grew up in the old religions a way to embrace the new, and authenticate and make relevant some of the old that too many intellectual scientific-minded people have discarded contemptuously.  As we are evolving our consciousness and spirituality, so is our understanding of what the great ones before us tried to teach us.  Then, we simply did not have ears to hear. Now, many of us, do.  We have synergized the orthodoxy of mainline and Catholic Christianity with the newfound Gnostics, Yoga, Sufi, and Jewish Kabbalah, Hindu and Buddhism.  As we mix and stir, we find a radiant something new - a bit of the old and yet something that speaks to all us, ringing deep through all the layers of our collective humanity. 

There is no question that these days are that long promised second coming.  There is no doubt to me that since we are ready, our teacher has come, returned.  There is no doubt that Christ is speaking to whomever will listen and he is calling us all into a deeper and more honest relationship with the divinity that is within each and all of us, which stems from our Creator, the Source of Creation.  Over the last couple of years, I've found these Christ Letters powerfully inspiring.  This one, I thought I'd share with you, since it shows Christ's penchant for breaking open the coffins of thought in which we've buried ourselves.  His oft reported radical nature still shines, even through these two millenia.   

Thank you for being a part of the Tiger Lilies community and joining me, and all of us, on this journey of discovery. Feel free to share your thoughts. 


Dear Readers of Christ's Letters,

In this excerpt taken from Letter 6 page 277 of 'Christ Returns Reveals Startling Truth', Christ discusses the origins of a belief in a 'Super Individual Godhead'.

Therefore, we will begin with a description of the origins of a belief in ‘God’, a name which has meant many different things to mankind. This belief began when the ancient Hebrews walked the desert plains and questioned the origins of creation. It was imagined that in some way the SOURCE of CREATION must surely be a ‘superhuman man-god’ invisible and far transcendent to earth and human kind. Some of the ancient prophets were mystically aware that theSource of Creation was diffuse and present – in some way – throughout creation and was also sited in the eternal dimension but this mysticism was not available to the average human mind.

You must also understand that, despite the present ‘seeming reality’ (in your minds) of such a ‘God’ from your readings in the Bible, no one has ever glimpsed such a ‘superhuman man-god’ in any form whatsoever, except, perhaps, Moses who claimed he saw Him in a ‘burning bush’ and described Himself as ‘I am that I am’.

All that people have known of such a super-human ‘god’ has been derived from reading the colourful descriptions of ‘God’ given by prophets during their sojourn on earth. It is a hallmark of how illusory are religious beliefs that religionists return only to the ancients for their ‘truth’ since they cannot believe that ‘God’ is truly real, eternal and equally able to speak to people in your day and age.

Your ministers are terrified of any beliefs which do not meld into the old ones. They never consider – or are afraid to consider – that perhaps spiritual knowledge within the earthly dimension – is evolutionary!

I want you to ‘see’ that a ‘fabric of belief’, a mixture of rationalisations and beliefs has been concocted to make a web of mental/emotional security with which to enmesh and trap the minds and hearts of people. All that people are taught in the Christian faith is emotionally-based and emanates from ‘hearsay’, derived from early reports of my life and death on earth. Yet these are believed fanatically.

Christians are taught that: ‘God is Love – and God is aware of your sin and punishes, disciplines, rewards the doers of good and sends misfortunes to the evil-doers’. This is an exact description of human activity and consciousness!

- Christ Returns, Letter 6

Comments from the Recorder:

There are several passages in different Letters, stating that no spiritual progress is achieved by retaining old beliefs along with the new truth contained in the Letters. Whilst sympathetically acknowledging that old beliefs are like concrete in the mind, Christ also urges people to do their best to get rid of old concepts and mental images depicting their image of God.

In these passages above, Christ tries to help people to dissolve such images by pointing out the illogicality of such beliefs.

However, Christ has also said that he knows how people have been conditioned by Churches to fear damnation if they entertain any doubts concerning Biblical pronouncements. This fear acts as a strong barrier against a practicing Christian's conversion to Christ's Letters.

But Christ's arguments are seen to be so logical and persuasive if one studies them sincerely, that it is only the most obtuse of thinkers who can remain true to Christian dogma. Such people will probably have to remain in their ignorance until they reincarnate into an enlightened thinking family.

With all love and joy in Christ,

Recorder

Circle of Life

In all the great religious sacred scripture, there is an emphasis, a call to focus on that which is only found within our own center, at the core of our being, the nucleus of our Self.  

At that center of who we are, we find a doorway - a portal, a narrow gate, the stargate - and when we enter it, we enter into the absolute - the Being who is in everything and is everything - and that Being is whom, the ancients called the "I AM."  It's interesting and mind boggling at the same time.  When we finally cut through all the layers and layers of "masks" our ego lays on us, and we experience that ultimate peace of Being one with Ultimate Being, we find a most awesome thing.  We are all there.  

No one is not there. You might see a million candles there - each one representing the soul of another - but when we're all lit, the heavens are lit by us.  We are all one when we are our truest selves.  

That is peace.  Nothing the world gives us, could ever bring us peace and the road to this awesome awareness is usually cluttered with obstacles and challenges that could trip us up, and yet the Great Being, the Great Father, is calling and that little light within us is responding - all beyond our own will to respond.  We are responding, whether or not we realize this.  We are singing in the heavenly shower of light and love.  Some of us are very aware of this path we're on, facing the challenges and yet each slap in the face, turning the other cheek or getting back up on the horse after every tumble.

There is a point on this path when you look around and realize that if we are really all one, then "we" are one being.  Then, if we are one, then the entire human race, all of creation, is on this horse to heaven together and all the countries are like arms and legs of this one body.  And, since the path to enlightenment is marked by all kind of challenges, outward reflections of that inner journey, then we can see that all the wars in the Middle East and the churning struggles of almost every country in the African continent, and the obvious decline of the excessive materialism of the United States are all part of OUR journey toward ultimate being as One Being.

We have a long way to go, yet, obviously.  But, we're not forgotten or abandoned.  Our Great Father/Mother is well aware of our progress and can see the outcome in a way that we can't.  The end is guarateed.  We will prevail and we will grow up as a single Human Being, comprised of all of us.  We are all on the way together and for that I'm very grateful this morning.  

And, if there is one thing to remember on a very simplistic level it is that we are all part of this great One and so everything we think or do or react to will affect the Big Body of Us. Love of ourselves will be reflected somewhere in this global Self.  Love is the only medicine and yet that love is not passive, nor is it enabling , It is strong, determined, passionate and willing to go beyond anything we've ever known before.  But, our future begs us to do this, today.

Beware the snare

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler 

and from the deadly pestilence. 

-Psalm 91:3

As these days thicken with fear, like old, heavy curtains closing at the end of a theatre production, a kind of spiritual cacophony remains.  The audience, once held in silence or applause as one, now breaks into the discordant sound of a hundred different conversations, sporadic laughter, coughing.  Then, the exodus, up the aisles, into the lobby, until, pouring like a sudden rainstorm into the parking lot, their noisy presence follows them, until finally the last car leaves the parking lot.  Silence. 

There is nothing from the former age that will sustain us in this newly emerging one.  All the world's religions contain, at their core, in their essence, the stargate that will safely carry our human soul into the new age, but with all the heavy gridwork of those religion's legalism, we may not be able to make out the core through the barbed wire of the old.  Jesus said you couldn't put new wine in old wine skins.  Even Christianity today, seems to feel like an old wine skin, even if the wine within it remains fresh.  The wine skin itself taints that ever pure wine of the spirit.

We, as it is often written, are spiritual beings having a human experience.  We are eaglets, learning to fly under the wings of the great Eagle.  We must now take flight.  The essence of our spiritual lives is a beckoning to leave the nest, lift off from the tired old limb of the tree of those religions which only now harbor us and yet, like an over protective mother, stunt our growth, keep us in the nest too long and delay our overdue flight.

It is time to fly.  I don't know if we've ever really learned to fly before.  Anthropologists and archaeologists have uncovered evidence and remnants of a civilization that existed on earth, long before our present one, which extends back about - approximately - 50,000 years - more or less. At the risk of polarizing our time here, it seems, the human experience has moved from a predominantly female-dominated, goddess-centered, nature-based, peaceful civilization to the control-centered, male god dominated warrior-based, structured, and legalistic civilization that is today poised to start another act of it's conflict, violence-ridden, egoic, fear-based production that threatens life itself on our beautiful earth.  

Truly, it seems to me, that these are extremely perilous times.  They are not the "end times," but hopefully they are the end of that production and the opening of something more balanced than either that has gone before.  These days are challenging for those who hope for a better life, a more prosperous experience, richer - not with material consumption - but more alive, more vibrant spiritually.  In this new age, we will seek a direct and authentic experience of God, of the divine as we enter into higher dimensions of reality.  

On some level, we know this.  It was hinted at in our ancient scriptures in both dark warnings and in light-infused deep mystical wisdom.  It was always there but as we became intoxicated with our pursuit of power and what little satisfaction we received from it, just enough to keep us seeking more and more, in our primitive human lust, we fell further and further away from our beautiful origins.  There have always been wise men and women who have called us back from the brink. We honored them, we listened and yet then we were sucked back into the old ways, century after century.

Today, we're all set to start the cycle all over again.  Religious fundamentalism is only feeding that great "spoiler," the "fowler," that which would lure us into opposing camps, as we seek an external identity which is only another mask for our split mindedness.  We need to have the courage to leave behind us all the world's religions and step out onto the mountain top, as the old Hebrew midrash goes.

The safety net, the sense of security, of home, of all that was once so familiar and comfortable, no longer can protect us, can sustain us.  It is time to fly.  If we look deeply into the common spiritual essence of all the world religions, we will find the stargate which allowed the earliest prophets and messengers to travel back and forth between worlds, from what is real to our current - then and now - theater production, the stage, as Shakespeare once called our world.


We can trust ourselves this time.  We can, as a world, despite our religions, cultures, nationalities, realize that he who is within me, is also within you, and that "he" is the "great being" whose selfhood fills the universe with his substance, intelligence, power, will and love.  We may not understand this because this is written in the heart of humankind, rather than the intellect.  I think the major stumbling block of all the religions is the mark of rationalism.  The intellect cannot find God, cannot find love, rather only the heart has the stargate.  Theology is only a cacophanous intellectual pursuit that is spiritually dead-ended because it lacks the authentic experience of the divine, of ultimate reality,  Even this writing, now, is that very thing, but it  is a signpost, pointing to where we need to go.  


We all know this on varying levels of awareness.  For some it is still vague and for others it is as clear as the morning sunlight.  For me, it comes and goes.  I see this so clearly one day and the next I admittedly get caught up in the major production unfolding on the daily news.  It's liquid substance abuse.  That's all i can say about it.  The news has an incidious way of luring us in and capturing our attention and even convincing us of its importance, its relevance to the big picture.


It is a kind of religion on its own.  Intellectuals worship the news, posing behind the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, or if you're self defining as a liberal progressive, try the LA Times.  The fowler is that which will hold you back, catch the hem of your skirt as you fly past, holding you down, stopping you.  It is the very definition of "religio" the corral into which the substance of spirituality was poured, but once the spirituality was all drained out, all that remained was the vessel, the empty chalice, and we found we were sipping nothing but the taste of the vessel.  Some have come to worship the container, rather than the spirit.  The great warning at the end of the Book of Revelation is just that.  Beware of false idols, empty vessels, of which many of the world's religions have become.


There is still One God, or rather, more accurately, the singularity or total only-ness of God.  Clearly, we, in our small separated state cannot fathom this, nor will we ever, I suspect, but by letting go of all that we seek to define ourselves by, and entering through faith and mostly through love, into deeper relationships with each other, we will find the great encounter.  We have to find the courage to love those who most frighten us and yet not be tempted by anyone's fear-based attempt to control or limit our flight.  That is the snare and fear is the fowler.

Restoring the ancient stargate

There are two worlds, two realities.  One is real and the other is a mirror, a collective projection.  When spiritual people talk about our world, our current daily, late-breaking news world, as unreal, as only an illusion, most of us scratch our heads and wonder what they are saying.  Clearly, what we see is real, what we hear, feel, touch is all real.  Is it not?


It is and it isn't.  There is the real world and then there's our collective egoic creation, based on all things human - competition, control - from self control to exploitation and the fine art of manipulating out of people stuff that we want through our own wiles and cunning.  There is no country that is immune from the ego's game. It is a trickster, a wolf in sheep's clothing, your local friendly fake fiend.


So, how do we restore that ancient stargate to get to what is real.  I don't know too many people who have actually entered that stargate. There were other ancient stargate travelers and we have so sadly muddied their words to suit the great compromise between heaven and earth that when we read them without the key to the stargate they sound almost like a sentimental Hallmark greeting message.  But, they knew the way to God through their own interior stargate, where the real gate - the narrow gate - is located.  It's not so much a place as it is a consciousness, but don't dismiss the reality of that consciousness.  If we all entered it, the world would be a very different place.


The way begins with the intention to enter the way. With that honest intention, everything we see, think, do comes under scrutiny.  It's like looking for a lost treasure, that pearl of great price that's in some oyster under the great sea. We will leave no stone unturned.  So, that's the beginning. First, the desire to see things differently.  Since God's grace is the great energy in everything and is a power and authentic creative force, it seems to be invited into our minds, spirits, hearts and lives the minute we invite it and we invite it when we set that intention to find the way. The stargate is the portal within our integrated inner Self, our soul, that opens to God, to the cosmic array of authentic reality. It is, simply, inside your mind, behind all the chatter of the busy egoic mind.  It is in the silence, and interestingly, there really is a star shining in the night sky within your mind.


(It's large and luminescent and I have been convinced for a long time that it is the authentic Star of Bethlehem in the Gospels which led the wise men to the birth of the Christ child. (Can you see the Gospel writers knew truth on a much deeper level than modern literalists?) However, as in many things in the scriptures, it may have also really happened. That's what makes it all so interesting.  God's inner world, as it was for Moses and the great Exodus, really happened on the material plane. For now, though, look for the star within your quiet mind. It is truly a stargate that has been left in the ancient writings as a guide to authentic reality and God.


There are several ways to restoring it. We were all born with an inner mechanism. The ancient Hebrews called the plsce where Moses - and later temple priests - met God, was in the Holy of the Holies, the innermost center of the temple. I suspect the external altar they erected in their traveling temple was understood as an external reflection of the authentic Holy of Holies within them.


Directions into that inner holy chamber is left in their symbol of who they are: the tetrahedron or "Star of David," which is synonomous with God's name, the tetragrammaton*, which means "I am." So that inner chamber, symbolized by the Star, is that "I am." When we enter the star, which is seen, found, within our fully integrated Self, we enter the great I am, God, universal consciousness, authentic reality.  

The Star of David on Israel's flag, is a symbol, a reminder and a key to that ancient stargate. I think it may actually be the stargate or the Holy of Holies. It is a tetrahedron.*

                       

Christians, Kabbalists, Sufis, Yogis and all mystics rightly claim that the authentic Holy of Holies is within us. The ancient name for God, in Hebrew means "I am," and the ancient symbol of the soul is the male/female integrated tetrahedron. God is One, asserted in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  So, we understand this tetrahedron is a symbol of God's oneness or singularity.  This means, without delving any deeper into all the esoteric, mathematical stuff, is that all we see and are is one single breath.  We are all one and we are all enfolded into God's oneness. When that oneness is split, due to some kind of victimization, the stargate is broken, cutting us off from God, and the experience of God.  God remains One and our authentic being, which is a part of that Oneness, as a cell in a body is a part of the body and is actually even holographic of that body, remains in its pure, radiant, powerful state, unharmed and untouched by the break, BUT, is also inaccessible to us because we have shifted away from it and think the ego is us.  

Our authentic "inner child" or "Self," to use Jungian language, is perfect, pure God power, pure love, creative beyond anything most of us ordinary people can grasp.  We are One with God and God is oneness, totality, absolute, the universal all. It doesn't matter if you call God "Allah" - which simply means God in Arabic, or Jehovah, which is an attempt to pronounce that original name, which is the tetragrammaton and which, you will remember, was never to be said as a name.  God is nameless because God is being, ultimate, authentic, all-beingness. 

If we agree (Jew, Christian and Muslim) that God is one, then we - as authentic human beings seeking reunification (communion, union) with God, would understand that we cannot have any divisions among us.  Sadly, we do and I would say that divisiveness is caused by the ego - the overarching, collective unconscious.  Muslims think they've got the corner on God, as did the Jews and the Christians.  Our history is too bloody to dispute this.  So, we have all "sinned" to use the definition I offered yesterday.  

To restore the ancient stargate is to merge myself with thyself in genuine love - skip the romantic part and enter into the idea of love being that merging soul to soul with another human being.  Jesus, who was fully transformed by God's power because as a sinless (immaculate) human being his soul was never splintered, broken apart by abuse, was consequently alive with a fully intact stargate.  So, he entered through it - through his authentic self (that inner closet, he mentions in the Gospel) and encounters the great Father, the great Being that we are all part of.  Your authentic "am-ness," being, is really part of the Great I am, the Great Being, the "body" of the all and is the only One out there.  

Through his integrated, perfect Self, Jesus reflected the Christ light of that universal Self.  He traveled frequently through that stargate and attempted to teach us how to do it also. Instead we treated him like a pagan god and worshipped him and missed the whole point.  But, now, with the discovery of some of the ancient Gnostic texts, the writing of the medieval mystics (Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, St. Therese of Avila, etc. combined with Karl Jung - whose work is a complete reflection on the Jungian Codex which was found also in the Nag Hammadi) we are able to piece a lot of the separated parts of that ancient stargate together.  

Now, it's Ramadan - the time of fasting and prayer for the Muslims.  Since it's Islam's holy month, I felt it was right to enter into their fasting and prayer in respect of the authenticity of their religion, but with an eye on the unity, rather than the exclusivity.  It has been already an amazing five days of on-going illumination and enlightenment.  Because.... we are body people - all of us are.  We are so connected to our bodies that we are completely controlled and governed by them.  By obstaining from their control - hunger, thirst - because we say we love God and want to encounter God, we are forceably intensifying that initial intention which clearly invites and invokes a kind of opening of the Stargate.  

The words of Jesus in the Our Father, "lead me not into temptation"  seem to be on my hungry lips most of the time.  I am hungry for God, who is the true bread of true life, and I thirst for God who is the substance that flows spiritually, the wine, of my authentic body, which is my spirit.  With that meditation, I find myself connecting the separated pieces of the stargate and slowly it is opening.  

When we look for unity, we will find unity.  But, the ego will not look for unity.  It will trick us - in a million seemingly rational ways- to create separateness,  In the Gospel, St. Paul says, "In God there is no Greek nor Jew, no male, no female:  So, you see this.  In God's Oneness, there is no Muslim or Christian, no Jew or Palestinian.  Until we can open our hardened, fear-based, stoney hearts to one another, we will not find God.  But, once we do, there is no going back.  Once the river of love flows among all people, all humanity, all nations and religions, we will rise up with a power unlike anything the human race has ever experienced, ever in our long history.  

And, just for what it's worth, this name of God, this tetrahedron may have deeper, more incredible mathematical, technological, scientific meanings and applications that my little brain doesn't understand.  For now, the Oneness of God and surrendering into that oneness through Ramadan is a requirement of Christians, and Jews as well as Muslims.  I would love it if we all joined hands in a great circle of love and praise of our One God.  Amen 


P.S.  Pyramids are everywhere on the planet - all from an ancient time.  Egypt, South America, even under the water off the coast of Japan.  What did the ancient humanity know that has been lost through our many dark centuries?  Yogis talk about the yugas, or time cycles around the galaxy.  There once was a "golden age" and I suspect these pyramids stem from that time.  Now, that we've moved out of the Kali Yuga, the darkest of dark ages, we are beginning to rediscover some of the messages left by the ancients in these pyramids, in ancient sanskrit writings, on ancient stones and buried in our (until now) long separated holy scriptures.
___________

*In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra) is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. It has sixedges and four vertices. The tetrahedron is the only convex polyhedron that has four faces.[1]is the three-dimensional case of the more general concept of a Euclidean simplex.

The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point. In the case of a tetrahedron the base is a triangle (any of the four faces can be considered the base), so a tetrahedron is also known as a "triangular pyramid". (Wikipedia)

**The ancient Hebrew tetragrammaton (from Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning "four letters") refers to the Hebrew theonym YHWH (Hebrew: יהוה‎), which is derived from a verb that means "to be", and is considered in Judaism the name of the God of Israel (who, if indeed is the Only God, would be the God of all people, anywhere, everywhere - on or off the planet). The symbol of the people of God, or nation of God's chosen people is the "Star of David," which is also the flag of Israel.