Because the energies of Yeshua and Mary Magdalene have been coming through more and more frequently during our channeling sessions, I’ve been reading more about the lesser known of the two. Who was Mary Magdalene really? There is very little written about her in the Bible although there are references to her in ambiguous ways, mostly which point to her as the ‘unholy’ woman who Yeshua cleared seven demons from.

Although I dabbled in my fair share of faith-based varieties of religion as a child (In hindsight, I so often felt like the female counterpart to Life of Pi’s main character Pi Patel), I ended up fleeing from all of them, like so many of you reading this may have done. The notion of reading the Bible or about angels made my skin crawl — anything related to an association or connection to religious dogma.

As a supporter of all walks of life and belief systems through the healing work Anthony and I do together, I’ve come to better understand the value of historical teachings from healers who contributed to humanity in a positive way, including Yeshua and Mary Magdalene. Unlike how the Catholic Church portrayed them, I see them as strong-willed and powerful shamans of their time who acted as vessels for divine light and healing to occur through them.  I sense that they worked together in a beautiful symbiotic way that represented the divine masculine and divine feminine in perfect harmony. It is this harmonic balance that we lack in the world today.

What is now referred to as the Gospel of Mary, is part of the so-called Berlin Papyrus, which is a manuscript acquired in Cairo by C. Reinhardt and has been preserved since 1896 in the Egyptology section of the National Museum of Berlin. Like the Gospel of Thomas (and so many others left out of the New Testament), it is written in Sahidic Copic.

Remembering Miriam of Magdala

Magdalene is referenced more frequently than not in modern times as Miriam of Magdala and it is how ‘she/her/his/its energy’ announces itself during Anthony’s full embodied channeling.  There are countless books written about this mysterious woman who many claim to have been the sexual partner/wife of Yeshua and that they even bore a child together. The details and the perceived realities are not really of interest to me in that these details are not as meaningful as what they learned, shared and taught together as a couple. What could we learn from that sacred relationship and her insights and wisdom today? And, how can we apply it to live and simply BE in a higher consciousness?

“So the essential question, for you is, what pivotal point have you entered in relationship to your own existence upon this world and your journey as a soul, as a consciousness? It is a question of individual freedom to move upward in consciousness or dissolve into some lesser form of being.”

–Mary Magdalene from The Magdalene Transcript Tom Kenyon/Judy Sion

If you consider the time, simply being a woman who had access to sacred knowledge and teachings and perhaps understood them better than the traditional known disciples, was enough to make her shunned by society as a whole. In speaking about the Resurrection, it was said that ‘it’ couldn’t be seen with the eyes of the flesh, nor with the eyes of the soul (psyche). As Jean-Yves LeLoup so beautifully outlines in his book “The Gospel of Mary Magdalene”, “this vision is no hallucination, nor is it any sort of fantasy linked to sensory, psychic or mental stimulation. Rather, it is the ‘nous’ — a dimension often forgotten in our anthropologies. In the ancient world, the ‘nous’ was seen as the ‘finest point of the soul.”

Miriam perhaps understood best of all how to connect to and convey the wisdom from between the world of immaterial spirits and material bodies, between Source and Humanity, between the invisible and the visible. Perhaps it is after all, our imagination that needs to be healed. We are responsible for how we show up in the world and our experiences for it is we who create the realities in which we perceive.

Early Christian teachings which excluded Miriam of Magdala’s wisdom is the restrictive teachings many of us learned as children. As LeLoup points out of these early teachings: “they overlooked the need to introduce a lightness into the world’s density, an imagination that would open it to new possibilities and make it more bearable.”

The dogma and the rules and the constraints and the restrictions of these dogmas remain in our society today and some still feel bound by them. Although the guides we channel, including Miriam of Magdala always tell us that all is divine and that all actions are divine, when we push back asking “how could murdering a child be divine?” the response comes back as a question: “how do you feel with the decision to murder a child?” In other words, are your actions bringing you closer to the so called “Light” or “Source energy” or further away from your true self?

“Are the things we do — with regard to our work, relationships, lifestyle, attitudes — bringing us closer to Being? Or, are they taking us further away? Do our actions awaken the Good in us, where truth, goodness and beauty are One? Do our decisions take us further away towards exile from our true identity, sot hat we became slaves to circumstances — whether favorable or unfavorable — and thereby cut ourselves off from our true Life and Source, which in every instant, give us our Being? Are you a manifestation of it, or a repression of it?” – LeLoup’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Do we plug into mass consciousness or do we tap into the power of our own innate understanding, being and knowing? Are we honoring our Soul and Higher Self’s calling or allowing an external force, voice, being to dictate our life’s outcome?

Those on a holistic or spiritual path for awhile already know that there’s a direct correlation between our mental states and our physical ones….between our emotional and physical health. If imbalanced in one, we’ll be out of balance and sick in another. When left unchecked or poorly handled, it can lead to disease.

“Ignorance, a sickness of the heart and the mind, is accompanied by attachment, which is a sickness of desire.”

Some of Yeshua’s wisdom which Miriam of Magdala carried forward and taught after his death often resembled the Eastern Philosophy and teachings of the Great Buddha.

For example: to look at an object, a person, or a landscape with love and without attachment, with no desire for appropriation of it, is to see it more clearly. Nothing is owed to us, everything is given to us. We are not created to possess, but to ‘be with.’

In the book, he says: “To think that we can really possess any object or person — even our own bodies, our own thoughts, or our own lives — is an illusion.” Buddhism speaks of this often — when you set up a relationship of power and dependence, it is the opposite of true relationship, which is in harmony of all that is.” Were the teachings of Yeshua, Miriam of Magdala and Buddha really that different or were they simply getting us to the same place using different words, analogies and frequencies of thoughts and meaning?

This brings me back to the relevance of Miriam of Magdala today as a powerful feminine archetype, one which has been sorely missing from any ‘teachings’ in the past 2,000+ years. This archetype is re-emerging in a significant way right now because humanity has been out of balance for so long.

The feminine wisdom and insights have been dishonored, buried and forgotten for so long, it’s no wonder that Goddess retreats are exploding around us right now — gatherings of women stepping into their own Goddess archetype to simply remember the power of this force within them. Remembering the power that Miriam of Magdala in her human form is also about remembering and embracing the divine power of the Goddess and Feminine Divine in all of us.

The Goddess Re-Emerges to Create Harmony & Balance

In spiritual circles, you see Miriam of Magdala’s powerful energy and archetype emerging around the world right now. Depending on where you live and what belief system you grew up with, you may identify with other incredible Goddesses, such as Durga, Kuan Yin, Mother Mary, Gaia, Tara, Danu, Brigid, Amaterasu-ōmikami, Oshun, Oya, Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, Nana Buluka, Yemaya, Pele, Bastet, Nüwa, Isis, Sekhmet or others. Simply put: the Goddess is re-emerging now because the balance of power is turning a corner. It is this very reason that I feel Miriam of Magdala is showing up and presenting its/her energy to so many women now.

For many in our western civilization, Miriam of Magdala is this incredibly powerful divine archetype because it was “she” who taught and healed with Yeshua as his equal although was never recognized for her strength, contribution, wisdom and power.

This divine feminine is rising and calling to be embraced by the divine masculine to it can once again, be in harmony with and create the whole.  Just as the wisdom of martial arts tell us: to be in harmony with another — including your enemy btw — is to skillfully allow the ‘attack or violence’ to pass through us without negatively impacting us or contaminating us. Martial arts and other ancient practices teach us that in order to be in harmony with others, we need to be in harmony with ourselves. I love LeLoup’s beautiful analogy to music here.

“How can an instrument that is out of tune with itself be tuned to other instruments, regardless or whether or not they also need tuning?”

Anthony and I recently spoke of the Hippocratic Oath that he had to take as a bi-lingual speech pathologist when he started his career – all health practitioners know of this oath. The Hippocratic medical tradition speaks to the human, psychic and sociological balance we need to be in harmony. When we are out of harmony and balance (anarmostein), suffering emerges, whether that be emotional, physical or most often, both.

To become whole, doesn’t it make sense that we integrate the complementary ‘gender’ and ‘energy?’  And, each of us have our own journey to get to that whole, of becoming what the Greeks referred to as Anthropos, a fully human being. In this fully human-ness, we can fully love.

To get to that place, Miriam speaks of seven so called powers of ‘wrath’: darkness, desire, ignorance, zeal for death, realm of the flesh, foolish wisdom of the flesh, and wisdom of the wrathful person.  Meggan Watterson in her artfully written book Mary Magdalene Revealed, suggests that “if we so the spiritual work to allow our soul to pass through these seven wraths (aka stages) that exist within us as a part of the human condition, the soul will ultimately merge with divine love.  And, then the soul is free.”

The God/Goddess Within

The idea that God/Goddess/Source exists within each of us is a far cry from the teachings of the Catholic Church and others, who suggest that a Higher God exists outside of us, beyond us, above us — the God to be feared, the One who had the power to restrict our actions, our words, our way of life.

The Gospel of Mary says in Mary 9:1-4, “Impose no law other than that which I have witnessed. Do not add more laws to those given in the Torah, lest you become bound by them.” LeLoup  writes of the seed that Miriam of Magdala offers in her gospel. The seed must grow within us — it doesn’t come from outside of us. “There is only a Presence that is to be discovered, and allowed to grow, in the very core of ourselves.”

 

“It is important to note that the teachings of the apparitions, the canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene all agree on this point. As long as our peace is dependent on any kind of external reality, it is not Peace; as long as our love for others and for the world is dependent on attitudes and feelings towards us, it is not Love. To the extend that our life depends on the material circumstances and conditions that constitute us, it is not yet Life. It is still within the domain of the ‘outer person,’ who is destined to fall into ruins. Only within our true being do we find a Reality, a Life, a Knowledge, a Love and a Peace that are not dependent. This Reality is both who we are and what we must become.” – LeLoup’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

The divine feminine within, the Goddess within has turned to the love within again and again. As Watterson writes in her book on Miriam: “the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was laid buried deep in the Egyptian desert and hidden in an urn, inside a cave, through both Marguerite’s and Teresa’s lifetimes.”  She continues, “they would have never been exposed to the truth it also conveys; that there are seven powers or ‘climates’, the soul must move through to unbind itself from the ego. And, that ‘collectively, they comprise the gravitational field of what the contemporary spiritual teacher Thomas Keating has termed ‘the false self system.'” These powerful and masterful women came to it on their own. And through their own wisdom, love was the final outcome and realization and understanding of both self, others and the I AM. This is the love that shone through Miriam in her teachings and healings with Yeshua and after he died.

This Brings us to Love

The repression of the feminine, I’d argue, is a part of this missing link, this missing inner knowing that we all innately have. When this divine feminine arises in each of us, harmony and love becomes who we are. The above inward journey may take us into the dark night of our souls before we experience the truth and divine love, but go there we must if we are to break through the illusion we are living.

It’s about living from a place of BEING rather than DOING.  The ultimate wisdom that Miriam of Magdala brought forward was about LOVE, which was core and central to Yeshua’s greatest teachings

I write this the week of Valentine’s Day, a holiday in the west which has become to celebrate Romantic Love between two partners. Divine love doesn’t see the difference between Romantic Love and Love.  You see, when you embrace love in this way, it isn’t a love of emotion, but a love of inner knowing — a love of all, meaning that we truly understand that we are not separate. When we can truly love another (and most importantly ourselves) without judgment, without deference, without a condition, without rules, then you finally understand the I AM and I AM who I AM.

Harmony & Balance of the Whole

It is in this I AM place of inner knowing that we can fully love unconditionally as divine love has no boundaries and is fully abundant.  Miriam of Magdala fully lived (and expressed) her feminine sexuality. From LeLoup’s The Gospel of Mary: “And, because she fully accepted and integrated the masculine dimension of her being, she was able to speak with authentic knowledge of the Word — though today, as during her time, there are still those who would deny her this.”

Watterson echos similar thoughts about Magdalene about her ability to love and BE love. In one instance, she cites Cynthia Bourgeault who says of the Gospel of Mary, that she was witness to the transformation Yeshua went through. And that, “if she had merged with the ‘nous’, if she could see with the spiritual eye of the heart, which is a vision that allows us to see through death, to be a love that exists beyond it, then she never left him, not physically or psychically. She witnessed the way he freed himself from the bonds of death, how he remembered the ‘nous’ and created a spiritual blueprint for us all to follow.” “

“We return to the love within us, within the heart, quietly, discreetly, and we don’t ask for any reward or external affirmation in exchange for doing the work. The return to love is the treasure itself.” — Meggan Watterson’s Mary Magdalene Revealed

She continues:

“Union is hard won. Merging with the ‘nous’, the angel of the soul, becoming one, this is as gritty as it gets when it comes to spiritual work. It happens where no one else can see or validate for us that we’re doing the work. It’s feminine. It’s internal. It’s direct experience. It happens quietly, within, when instead of reacting from the ego, we take a moment and respond differently.”

Returning to the link she makes between Mary Magdalene, Marguerite and Teresa, she connects them all like a ‘forgotten chain,’ where “we see a legacy of love being left for us. A trilogy of love stories. And, all of them are led by divine love through these seven stages. As if seven is a spiritual truth that exists intrinsically within, encoded in us, like a religion every body belongs to.”

Imagine if we showed up in life breathing, thinking, speaking and most importantly simply BEING, a religion that every body belongs to, then it becomes about one ultimate and simple truth: Love is the glue that restores us to our true selves, to others and to the Universe. I AM what I AM.

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