The king receives her eyes and arms and is restored to health. For the first time in the king’s life, he feels grateful. And with that newfound gratitude, he becomes curious about who exactly saved his life. He wanted to meet his savior. He is told that a beautiful hermit living in a remote cave is the reason he’s alive. So he travels to her cave to honor her for this profoundly selfless act.
When the king sees that the person who saved his life is Miao, the daughter he had tried to marry off against her will, had banished to be a chaste nun on a desolate island, had attempted to burn out of her home, and had ordered to be executed simply for being the radiant soul that she is—at this, the king falls to his knees at her feet, transfixed by the magnitude of her mercy.
And in that moment, Miao transforms into her true form, the thousand-armed incarnation of compassion, the goddess of mercy, Quan Yin. Flowers of every kind fill her cave, and the radiance of who she truly is can finally be perceived by everyone there to witness her.
This is when I got it.
I suck at math, but I heard her message loud and clear. When I imagined little armless Miao Shan with suddenly a thousand arms, I got the exchange rate. Two arms given with love, not because the recipient deserves those arms, not because the recipient has ever given the giver anything but suffering, but two arms given just for the sake of giving. This level of mercy allows the universe to give back to the giver a thousandfold.
The word mercy comes from the Old Etruscan merc, meaning “exchange.” Cynthia Bourgeault explains that all of life is an exchange because, “‘Giving-is-receiving’ is the energetic frequency upon which our universe is aligned.”40 We have to give of ourselves, meaning it’s when it’s hard to give, or when it hurts to give, that we receive the most in the exchange.
And this is because what we lose is the ego. When Miao gives her arms and her eyes to her father, she’s symbolically giving away her egoic identity. In handing over her ability to see and her ability to be of physical use in the world, she’s detaching herself from her physical body.
She’s giving back to him what was actually never hers; his ego’s illusion that she was an object at his disposal, that she was a piece of property obligated to obey his desires, that she was a dependent daughter in need of his control to dictate her life, that she was not capable of knowing who she truly is and just how infinitely powerful she has always been.
She gives all these limited beliefs back to him. And then he is able to see out through her eyes and move in the world with the same love that guides her.
Ultimately, the mercy Miao gives the king isn’t about him at all. It’s about setting her true self free. Whether he deserves her anger or not is irrelevant. If she chooses to remain angry, she chooses to remain chained to him. And this means remaining enslaved to the ego. Forgiving him unbinds her. Forgiving him means she realigns with the law of the universe, which is inherently merciful. The universal law of giving-is-receiving.
Mercy, I think, is the embodiment of compassion. I can have compassion easily for just about anyone. Once I hear how they’ve suffered, I have compassion on how and why they then perpetuate that suffering by causing harm to others.
What’s hard for me is the personal compassion, the mercy that’s required of me when I forgive someone who has done me immediate and direct harm. My ego masquerades as this superhero. Hands on her hips. Or like Gandalf, with his staff in the depths of the underworld, proclaiming to that horrible demon-fire-beast, “You shall not pass.”
The trouble is that the anger of the ego, even when righteous, can also erect some serious walls in my heart. And this doesn’t hurt the person who harmed me; it blocks me from the flow of the universe. It disconnects me from what it means to be truly alive, to give and receive love.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of god, have mercy on me.
Mercy is at the heart of the prayer of the heart. Because mercy is what returns us to the heart. Mercy is the power of Christ. A power that isn’t a power over, but a power with; mercy is about a perpetual transference of power. Mercy is the energetic exchange at the heart of the universe.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of god, have mercy on me.
The Cave of Eggs
In a world, I was set loose from a world and in a type from a type which is above, and from the chain of forgetfulness which exists in time. From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest in silence.
— MARY 9:28–29
It was one of those moments when I seriously didn’t know what would happen next. I was in yoga gear, because what else do you wear when you’re climbing a mountain to visit Mary Magdalene’s cave? I was trembling, unsure if I could keep moving forward across the tiny ledge I had somehow managed to climb out on. And I was clutching a small red shoulder bag that had my hotel room key, some Euros in it to pay for the candles I had just lit in her main cave, dark chocolate (I never go anywhere without it), and a map of a place on the mountain I had just found out about the night before—a place I was determined to find called La Grotte aux Oeufs, the Cave of Eggs.
Let’s back up before I move forward.
I woke up that morning at 5:13. And I screamed at the sight of it. The number 513 was haunting me. I kept waking up at that exact time. And I kept seeing it on receipts, on train tickets. It was everywhere. So, I looked at the little red numbers on the alarm clock and I gave it a wink. I vowed to figure out what that number meant biblically (at some point) and then I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I woke up later, glanced at the alarm, and screamed again when I saw it was already 10 A.M. I had forgotten to set it. The taxi would be picking me up at the convent at 11 A.M. I rinsed off as quickly as I could, put my yoga gear on, and raced downstairs before breakfast ended.
My taxi driver, Veronique, doubles as a tour guide, so she filled me in on much of the local history and belief around Mary Magdalene’s arrival in France and her eventual retreat to the cave at Sainte-Baume as we made our way along narrow roads to the base of the mountain.
She said that most believe that Mary Magdalene arrived first in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and preached for many years along the coastal parts of Southern France. Then when the Romans began to persecute the Christians more violently, her brother Lazarus was beheaded. And Saint Maximin wanted her safe. So Mary Magdalene followed a river upstream that runs from the Sainte-Baume mountain down to the Mediterranean.
Veronique told me about the ancient forest that surrounds Mary’s cave. She said people travel from all over the world just to see the forest because there are species of trees and plants that exist within it that are unique to this region of France. I was listening to her voice but taking in the stunning landscape of Provence far more until she said, “The Druids considered this forest sacred. It’s why they were living in this area before Mary Magdalene arrived. This mountain was sacred long before Christianity claimed it.”
Shocked, I pulled for some slack on my seatbelt and turned to face her, “You mean she wasn’t here alone?”
Veronique smiled at me, and said, “The church likes to tell the story that Mary Magdalene lived the last 30 years of her life as a hermit in the cave at Sainte-Baume. But that just isn’t true. It isn’t even possible. She wouldn’t have made it one winter alone up there on the mountain. The Druids protected her after her brother Lazarus was killed by the Romans. She fled to this area because they wanted to offer her sanctuary.”
It felt odd to be so shocked by something that made so much sense. My picture of her was morphing inside me as the car began its ascent up a steep, winding road. Instead of this almost otherworldly being who basically levitated in meditation, barely ate, and lived in a cave on her own on a mountain in the South of France, I began to see a fully human woman sitting and laughing among others, sharing stories and food around a blazing fire. Of course, she was a part of a community. Of course, a community had supported her.
She was not alone.
I tried to let the reality of th
at take root in my perception about Mary Magdalene’s years spent here on this mountain as I found the path that leads up to her main cave. I walked with intention. Conserving my energy but also beginning to draw my consciousness inward, to the heart.
It takes about an hour to hike up to the main cave. The clearly marked path winds back and forth, getting slightly steeper with each next turn. The slow gradual ascent through thick trees that filtered the light and provided shade from the blazing 100-degree heat let me chant the prayer of the heart with ease. Toward the very end of the trail, at the top of the mountain, there are signs for silence. A few pilgrims passed me and we nodded with smiles and childlike looks of trying not to laugh. There’s nothing like forced silence to make you want to bark with laughter.
The higher I climbed the heavier the soundlessness grew. It became a presence I was entering into. A substance thicker than air. I had thought I would cry when I finally reached the entrance to the cave, but I only felt awe, and with each breath inside the cave, I could feel that thick silence spreading throughout my lungs. I was so silent that even my thoughts stopped.
“My dove, in the hidden places of the rocks, in the secret places of the cliffs, show me your form,
and let me hear your voice.” — The Song of Songs
La Grotte de Sainte Marie Madeleine first became a pilgrimage site supposedly in 415 A.D. because of the desert father and Hesychast John Cassian after his return from Egypt. Now the Dominican monks maintain it and conduct services every Sunday. Pilgrims can stay in the convent built into the side of the mountain right beside the cave.
I kept expecting the emotions to attack me like some rogue wave. I kept expecting to feel chills, or get feverish. Something. But all that came to me was this deep reverence in the form of silence. It was a silence that stilled everything.
That’s what it was; I was still. Maybe for the first time. Ever. I wasn’t thinking, searching, wondering, questioning, fearing, longing, I was just there. Fully. I was spacious and silent inside.
“In a world, I was set loose from a world” sounds like the start of the best movie trailer ever made. What Mary 9:28 is articulating is that while Mary was in the world, she was set free from it. Meaning, she didn’t have to wait to die to be cut loose from the egoic binds that tied her here.
“World” here, it’s important to explain, is the world that we each perceive. It’s personal. It’s not world as in our shared planet. It’s world as in our individual realities. And yet we all have this same template of seven powers of the ego that impose suffering on us in varying measure. And we all have this same potential, to be set free from this “world,” while we’re still very much in it.
“In a type from a type which is above” is reminding us of what ultimately frees us; the nous, the highest aspect of the soul that we can perceive while here, embodied. We remember that we are not just this ego, this mass of seemingly endless desires the ego creates, but we are a soul; we are “from a type which is above.”
Remembering this is the antidote. Remembering that we are essentially good, essentially this nous at the heart of each of our own worlds is what breaks the “chain of forgetfulness.” Remembering that the body exists in time, but the soul does not. The soul is not of this “world.” This is what can free us, even if for some of us, only for a moment.
I went to the back of the cave behind the small wooden pews and behind the main altar. A friend had told me about the Mary Magdalene statue there and all the love notes pilgrims leave at her feet. It’s a statue of Mary in ecstasy. Her head is thrown back, her eyes are closed. She’s clearly receiving something from within her. I had brought my red pen and a few torn pages from my journal. I wrote prayers for loved ones, folded each up, and tossed them among the sea of others.
In Mary 9:29, “I will receive rest in silence,” I can feel the way the war within Mary has come to an end. The rest is the bliss that comes after the demons, the powers, those loud egoic voices have been overcome. The “rest” comes because she knows herself completely. She knows that this “silence” within her heart is the treasure; this is where she can rest in love.
“Silence” to me means the calm quiet that comes when fear has lost its voice. Silence here, again, is not an absence of sound, it’s the end of the clamor, the racket the ego makes. It’s the rest we can receive when all we are hearing is the sound of what the heart contains.
I lit seven tall taper candles on an altar against the far wall of the cave. Then I wrapped the red shawl I had fortunately brought with me tightly around my shoulders and sat down to take in the light the candles emitted. I turned from the candles and the dark cold wall of the cave and stared at the light streaming in through the stained-glass windows. One is of a long-dark-haired Mary Magdalene sitting at a white round table being served a feast with Christ. Another one is of Mary Magdalene pouring water over Christ’s head.
She was not alone. And he was not alone.
The stillness lifted. Just like that. I was suddenly restless to find the Cave of Eggs. And if it was as difficult as Rose suggested, then I only had a handful of hours before it got too dark to find it. So, I set out, without water, or any sense of what direction I should be heading.
The only people I had passed on the trails for the past hour were in full-on hiking gear with water bottles and those strange hats that have flaps that cover the back of the neck. I wasn’t sure what made their expressions of confusion more pronounced, the fact that I was out on the mountain dressed like a lost tourist or that I was asking them in my heavily American-accented French if they knew where I could find La Grotte aux Oeufs. No one seemed to understand what I was saying, or when they did, they didn’t know where the cave might be. But I refused to give up.
And this is how I found myself several hours later, panting in the heat, clinging to the side of a trail no wider than my two feet and trembling at the reality that I could fall. Far. Sweat was beading across my forehead. There was zero shade. The fierce sun in the cerulean sky reminded me how exposed and unprepared I was to set off and find this mysterious place on my own.
There I was out on a ledge like a stranded baby goat thinking about the possible titles to the newspaper article reporting my disappearance. And realizing that only Rose even knew I’d gone to find the Cave of Eggs that day. In my rush that morning, I hadn’t told anyone back home.
I couldn’t move forward, and I couldn’t move backward.
This is when I met my savior. I could hear her long before I could see her. She was whistling. It made me think of the legend of Brigid, the Celtic goddess who supposedly invented whistling so people walking through the dark can call out to each other and know they’re not alone.
She made the most compassionate coo-ing noises when she saw me on the trail. She knew two things instantly, no doubt: first, that I was American and second that I was evidently completely lost. The thing is, she couldn’t get past me and I couldn’t move. I was too terrified to keep inching my way forward across the ledge. She was followed by a teenage boy, two teenaged girls, and a man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Very slowly and carefully, she figured out a way to step past me. (I had pretty much pressed myself flat against the side of the mountain.) Then she reached out her hand from behind her and made this odd, “Alle, alle, alle ooop” rally cry that we just don’t have in English. But it felt so reassuring.
I just couldn’t picture plummeting to my death to such a crazy and strangely comforting sound. I was not going to die with “Alle, alle, alle ooop” as the last thing I ever heard. I held tightly to her hand and shuffled sideways across the ledge with my face still pressed to the mountain. She stopped as soon as we made it to a wider clearing. My heart was flamenco dancing in my chest.
The rest of the group circled up and opened their backpacks to drink water. She offered me a sip from her water bottle, I was so clearly out of breath. And I gave her my last chunk of dark chocolate. We smiled, wordlessly agreeing on the equity of those two essentials
.
In French, I have the vocabulary of a three-year-old. So I told them in my toddler French that I was writing a book about Mary Magdalene and wanted to find the Cave of Eggs. Alle Ooop’s eyes immediately lit up with recognition and she shot her fists triumphantly into the air, LA GROTTE AUX OEUFS!!! Miraculously, we were all looking for the same place. So, we set off together, emboldened by our chance meeting and common destination.
After another hour of hiking, and after passing several sets of pilgrims who couldn’t point us in the right direction, we stopped by a boulder with a small cairn, or rock pile, that pilgrims leave for Mary Magdalene to bless them with fertility.
Alle Ooop passed me her water bottle again. The kids were getting tired and wanted to return to the café that was at the base of the mountain. We looked at each other and realized that we might not make it to the cave. It suddenly hit me then that I hadn’t prayed. I suggested to her that we ask Mary Magdalene for guidance. So Alle Ooop and I closed our eyes and said a prayer together for the way to be revealed.
As soon as we got back on the trail, two hikers came into view, clearly pros, decked out with those metal sticks that look like ski poles for managing down the steep terrain. Alle Ooop and I took one look at each other and knew this was our last chance. Her sudden expression of excitement is sealed in my heart for good. Her eyebrows were clear up to her hairline.
She asked them in rapid-fire French as they passed if they knew how to find the Cave of Eggs. And when they responded with an enthusiastic yes, our little band of exhausted pilgrims erupted into delirious hoots of all kinds and ecstatic high-fives. And then we all shot our hands into the air like Alle Ooop and yelled, “La Grotte aux Oeufs!”
We hiked for maybe just 20 more minutes, made our way through some green shrubs that obscured our view, and then there it was. The Cave of Eggs. The yoni of the mountain.
My little family of pilgrims all whipped out headlamps from their backpacks and put them on. I marveled at the grace I felt in having met up with them. Without them I wouldn’t have made it here. We were meant to find the cave together.
Mary Magdalene Revealed Page 17