Men need a conscious relationship to the feminine principle not just to better understand women — many of whom are also disconnected from their own feminine nature — but because their connection to the spiritual realm is governed not by masculine but by feminine laws. Men need to get in the right relationship with a power that is beyond human control.
Just as we have evidence that humanity must come into balance in the external world, we also have profound indicators that we must come into balance within ourselves. The truth is that one precludes the other — we achieve balance within in order to generate balance in our shared outer world. It cannot and will not happen any other way. The current health crisis we find ourselves in is all the proof we require to know this to be true. Life experience is but a mirror to our interior world. And the society we build through collective agreements together is an extension of our relationship to ourselves and to each other.
Let me tell you a story.
A few years ago while staying in the hills of Tuscany, I caught the train into Florence where I had a transpersonal encounter in The Museum of the Opera del Duomo which houses many of Florence’s original treasures. Upon entering the understated building adjacent to the great Duomo, I was immediately drawn in a direction and toward a room as though some part of me knew what I was there to see. When I saw the piece of art, I understood that it was for her I had come.
My physical body responded with a suppressed sob as breath caught in my throat. I had the impulse to tell everyone around me to stop moving, stop talking, pay attention, but I didn’t allow myself to act on it. I quietly and with great reverence moved closer to the statue until I was standing perfectly still in front of Donatello’s Mary Magdalene.
The space between me and the six-foot wooden woman poised on a block of marble was charged with an energy that carried me deep within myself on a vibe of deep silence. I could hear the sound of her from a distance in the depths of my own being. So I pulled my focus inside to get closer to her, even as I let my eyes rest in hers, as though I were holding the tension between inner and outer through some shared awareness. Her presence held me in a space that until that moment, I hadn’t realized was accessible to me. Looking at her long waves of hair cascading down her muscular body, I sensed she was hauntingly beautiful in a tough way. As I stood before her, tears wet my cheeks. And I wondered how it was that I never knew this exquisitely carved creature in the image of Mary Magdalene even existed.
“How did I find you? I should have been here sooner!”
“You are here now. You have come a long way. I’ve been with you always.”
“You talk? I can hear you?”
“Yes, my daughter. You can hear me. And I have much to tell you.”
I looked around me to see if anyone else could hear what I was hearing but it was as though I were invisible. Very few people hovered around the room and nobody even noticed me. So I sat on the bench in front of her to gather myself. As I stilled myself within, and gazed again into her eyes, I understood I was in her very real presence because she had something to give me.
“You are safe here.”
She answered my question before I even asked it.
Trusting my safety, I relaxed into my body while sitting on the bench. I fixed my gaze upon her and dropped into meditation like I’ve done thousands of times before. I could feel her guiding me within myself. And she was right. I’ve known her all along. I was on familiar ground.
I let myself fall within as a weighted force descended upon me from above. It’s a sensation I’ve had many times not only in mediation but in session with clients. I knew there was a real weight because I could hear the bench creaking in the same way that I’ve heard my own chair at home groan. It was as though my body grew heavier. After a few moments, an energy rose up from within my womb to reach and meet the weighted force descending down upon and through me. I held the tension of these two energies in my chest and I could feel my heart expanding as space, in space. All time evaporated. I entered into the wilderness of my own soul.
The woman I met there in the museum was not emaciated and penitent as the description of Donatello’s Mary Magdalene has been written about her. She was not and never has been a prostitute, nor had she sinned. She did not exude an air of suffering intended to achieve spiritual perfection. No! She was the evidence of great strength in her determined stance with muscular arms and legs, the sinewed shape of her body. She had obviously suffered AND she ennobled the great and mighty force of the feminine.
“Rise high, daughter. And walk low.”
“What do you mean? How am I to do this?”
“Confront and transcend all that possesses your spirit.”
In that moment, I could feel myself accept the anointing offered by the active voice within me.
Mary Magdalene knows of humanity’s pain. She is the emissary of feminine power. And humanity must come to know the truth of her. Her presence in Italy gave me the experience of pure power in a way I’d never felt previously. Even as her reputation, identity, and physical being has been pulverized through human history, she still rises. For consciousness never dies.
She rises as you. She rises as me.
Her power transcends gender and comes from claiming the truth of life. We must become the embodiment of her courage now as we rise to face great change together.
It is time for us to clarify and consciously connect to the true nature of our physical existence. Stop objectifying spiritual life! Experience ALL that is here in us, as us, and expressing through us as the divine. We are nothing but spirit because we are spiritual beings in concert with all of life and whatever we do, we do to ourselves.
Rise high. Walk low.
Stay in the centre of being and let truth rise for life is a prayer to be lived in service to all that is.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: © Marie-Lan Nguyen and one more author on Wikimedia Commons /
