We might be able to see new responses to a pain that is as ancient as scripture.
Try not to curse the pain, or avoid it. Or to feel like a failure because of it. Try not to run from it, and numb it. Try to see it as our chance to reach a love that can withstand it. Not permanently; nothing is permanent. Just in this moment. That’s all that matters. Find the presence of love in those moments when before you had abandoned yourself. Even if it’s just a little love, a grain of sand, a mustard seed.
Your love is enough.
Love Has Already Won
After examining these matters, Peter said, “Has the Savior spoken secretly to a woman and not openly so that we would all hear? Surely, he did not want to show that she is more worthy than we are?” Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what are you imagining? Do you think that I have thought up these things by myself in my heart or that I am telling lies about the Savior?”
— MARY 10:3–6
There was a bird in the rafters above us. The ladies at Darting-ton Hall in Devon had tried to get the little creature out before the workshop began. But it seemed he wanted to stay. It was a sparrow, which is common to that area in the southwest of England. I loved its unexpected dashes from one rafter to the next, filling the air with the clamor of its furious wings.
If I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and I clicked my ruby-red slippers, home would always be here. Not here in Devon necessarily, but here, in a circle of women. We were in more of an oval, actually, so that we could all fit in the rectangular barn-like space I was invited to teach in that day. And as I looked at every face in the circle, I felt this galactic exhale. As I always do.
When I sit in a circle, I know my body will communicate more than anything I end up saying.
It says, wordlessly, just by being at eye level with everyone else:
There is no hierarchy to the spiritual world. We are all equal. And we’re all equally trying, in our own crazy ways, to love ourselves enough to see the good that’s right here with us.
For me, what I have witnessed in a circle of women for the past two decades is captured perfectly in Mary 10:3. We have the issue of worth that runs deep, 2,000 years deep. And we have the issue that as women we won’t be believed when we tell the truth. I see again and again this systemic problem with knowing that we are worthy of having a voice, and believing in it.
First, let’s talk about Peter.
After Peter is the one to ask Mary (in Mary 6:1–2) to tell them, the other disciples, what the savior revealed to her that is still hidden from them (because the savior loved her more than all other women), and after Mary very lovingly (in Mary 7–9) reveals to them everything she was taught (because of her love for Christ) Peter doesn’t believe her.
(And neither does Andrew, in Mary 10:1. He says he doesn’t believe her because Mary’s teachings are “strange.” Personally, I read “strange” as a compliment. Anyway, we’re focusing on Peter. But just so you realize, Peter wasn’t alone in his disbelief.)
He says, “Has the savior spoken secretly to a woman and not openly so that we would all hear? Surely, he did not want to show that she is more worthy than we are?” The two words in Peter’s reaction that stand out to me as if they’re on fire are the words “woman” and “worth.”
WOMAN: He can’t believe that Christ could possibly reveal to Mary what he didn’t reveal to them. How could she, Mary, a woman (the lesser sex), be more deserving?
WORTH: He can’t believe that as a woman she could be worthy of such secret teachings. The worth he’s questioning here is that of the female, and also of the feminine. How could she hear him from within her? How could she be worthy of such an intimate proximity to Christ?
And then Mary weeps.
Hurt, she asks Peter, “Do you think that I have thought up these things by myself in my heart or that I am telling lies about the Savior?”
She weeps, yes, because she isn’t believed. She’s betrayed after trusting them with her secret teachings, with the things she knows by heart. But I think she weeps also because she was given a transmission that she realizes now the disciples are not able to receive. It’s a teaching that she can uniquely give to them precisely because their whole world order and idea of power would have to shift in order to receive it.
I think it’s easy to identify with Mary. The one who in the 1st century, according to the Roman hierarchy of power, would be considered the least powerful among them. The one Peter sees as the least deserving. The one who, after sharing her heart with those she thought were friends, family even, is betrayed. The one who isn’t believed. And who, after being called a liar, is then lied about for 2,000 years.
And maybe it’s easy to identify with Peter also. Maybe we are all Peter at those times in our lives when we question how we could possibly deserve a love that’s right here, within us.
And maybe what made Mary worthy of such a love was that she knew worth had nothing to do with it. Maybe Mary was more loved by Christ than any other because she knew that she wasn’t separate from his love in the first place.
If we are caught up in trying to prove or earn or show that we’re worthy of love, we’re missing out on the actual presence of it. In the Gospel of Thomas, Christ says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.”
I think this is what was hidden that Mary revealed: that love is within us. We are love, and we don’t have to earn or prove or deserve this fact. And if we can recognize that we’ve never been separate from it, and bring it forth outside of us, this is what saves us.
Or at least for a moment, and then we go back to being Peter and questioning what we deserve. And this is what it is to be human. To walk around with this heaven, this treasure of love, here in the heart. And to do this crazy dance of trying to feel worthy of it.
I suggested to the ladies in Devon that what Mary Magdalene represents in her gospel is the anthropos, the child of true humanity, the true human being, meaning, the person who has remembered she is fully human and fully divine. She is a flaming ego, and an eternal soul of love. The fact that she could perceive Christ from within her proves that she had merged with the angel within her, the nous, the soul. She was what we can be also.
I think the deepest wounds hold the most powerful medicine. I think the reason I feel transformed every time I sit in a circle of women and just listen to each other try, and falter, and try again to love ourselves enough to tell the truth is because it reaches back to Mary Magdalene. It helps correct an ancient wrong by believing myself and other women. It helps heal this imbalance of power by participating in a power that’s shared, that comes from within.
I asked us to close our eyes. I had this little punk renegade fearful thought that kept riding past my more serene thoughts, like Ron Perlman on his Harley-Davidson in Sons of Anarchy. It was my fear of having to fly back to the States. I led us then in a soul-voice meditation.
I suggested that we imagine a golden light like a full body halo surrounding us. Fierce light. As if it’s tearing through the fabric of reality as it carves out space for us to just hear ourselves. I suggested that this golden light, like the porousness of an eggshell, lets us release right now in this moment anything that’s no longer serving us. (Ron Perlman rode straight out through the light.) And it also allows in any guidance or support that we might need in this moment.
Then I asked for us to take that first intentional breath, the breath that would drop us like an anchor into the heart. In this circle of women, in Devon, that first breath was like jumping on a Slip ’N Slide. I’m not sure if I’ve ever reached my heart as quickly.
I asked us then to take the second intentional breath. And know that we can become aware of the soul this easily. Anything we ask in the heart is answered. Everything we seek inwardly, we find.
I suggested we ask then, from within the heart, “What do I need to know in this moment?”
I exhaled and sat there in the circle like a cat on the edge of
a couch in the sun. I never wanted to move.
I heard the answer then, of what I needed to know in this moment, love has already won.
Love has already won.
After sitting in silence for some time, I asked us to give gratitude as we take our third breath together. And that when we open our eyes, we are now seeing with the eye of the heart.
I looked around the room and blasted each woman with a fire hose full of light. My beloved REDLADY Ger was among them. These unassuming warriors have all just fought a battle that’s unseen. It’s the very real struggle to hear the voice of love inside them. And to believe it. To believe it enough that they can act now on its directives.
All I want to give them is this memory Mary’s teachings have given me: Love has already won. When we forget, when we give up on ourselves, tomorrow or next week, or when we slowly start to feel that heavy mantle of shame that isn’t ours to wear, and we allow ourselves to be treated in harmful ways, or we don’t rage against those who treat us harmfully, I want us to have this memory of what it feels like to be held. To just be in a love that has been here all along.
In about three days, I’ll be clutching the flight attendant’s hand during takeoff. I will have utterly forgotten everything I knew in that circle in Devon. The power of craving will have me completely blind to all else; I will crave desperately not to die. I will be visibly trembling. Concerned, the flight attendant will have moved us to the back of the plane so we can sit together in two empty seats. She will stare into my eyes until I am back behind them again. And I’ll tear up not because I’m afraid—which I am, I’m petrified—but because I get (again) that the whole point is that it never ends. We keep remembering and forgetting. We keep merging with that presence and then separating. We are here for each other. We need each other to remember that, as tough and terrifying as it gets, love has already won. Love is this merciful transference of power. Love is this compulsion to help, and this humility to be helped.
The metaphysical text A Course in Miracles says, “The holiest place on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.” This is what it feels like for me every time I can let love be present here in this body that has known trauma and pain. This fragile, fleeting body becomes the holiest place on earth.
The sparrow, I later found out, is said to have been the only bird present during Christ’s crucifixion. It became symbolic of the triumph that comes after a long time of suffering.
The White Spring
Levi said to Peter, “Peter, you are always ready to give way to your perpetual inclination to anger. And even now you are doing exactly that by questioning the woman as though you’re her adversary.”
— MARY 10:7–8
I had returned to Glastonbury to lead a soul-voice meditation for another circle of women on a retreat at the Chalice Well led by a friend, Rebecca, author of Rise Sister Rise. And I was there to return to Glastonbury with my love, Kyle, author of Light Warrior. The first night, Kyle and I went on a spiritual double date with our friend Lisa, author of Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic, and her husband, Rich, who has the best bear hug in the entire world. And our date included an unexpected skinny-dip into the cistern of the White Spring.
I had no intention of stripping naked. But there’s something about that primal space that compelled me to. There was very little volition involved. Maybe none. Sweet Rich averted his eyes, Kyle rolled them, and Lisa locked hers with mine in that way that only ladies who love each other through everything can.
And I wasn’t really naked. Or I didn’t feel naked at all, even though I very quickly didn’t have any clothing on. It felt as if with each next thing I took off, my jeans, my bra, I was joining something. I was entering a different reality. I was getting closer to an understanding of why I had been so drawn to be there, to the Red and White springs. I was becoming more fully clothed in something that can’t be seen with the eye.
I wasn’t cold. I should have been. The others were exhaling little wisps of smoke that their breath made visible by the chill in the air. I knew it was cold, but I experienced the freezing water as an intensity rather than a temperature; the cold was a searing clarity. I didn’t resist it, so there wasn’t any pain as I walked to the center of the cistern, naked, and cloaked in the memory of who I have always been.
What I felt was a pride that went deep into my bones. No, it was a pride that came from within them, through them. A pride that could never be extracted. It was a pride in me, in the woman I am that coursed through my body, my blood, my veins as if through all the centuries, as if it had always existed.
Lisa was singing a song that felt hauntingly familiar to me. It filled the crypt of the White Spring with its timeless beauty. My eyes filled with tears.
The song seemed to be asking me, “What do I know that I don’t need anyone else to know with me? What is true because I can feel that it is, not because it’s in scripture or ordained as true?”
The Petrine Doctrine is the belief that Saint Peter was given special authority by Christ that has since passed on to each Pope. It’s an entirely male succession of power and spiritual authority. It’s the outcome of this dispute that’s so evident in Mary’s gospel. Peter does not believe her. He does not believe that she was given secret teachings from Christ to pass on to the other disciples.
So, although Levi comes to Mary’s defense in Mary 10:7–8, and although he represents a voice of the early Christ movement that believed Mary, we know that ultimately her gospel will be destroyed (and buried—kiss those Copts) within the next 300 years, and that by 594, in Pope Gregory’s homily 33, her story will be retold, branding her as the prostitute.
Mary’s status as the companion of Christ, the first to receive his teachings on how to perceive him from within the heart and how to become unified ourselves, will all be lost for millennia.
Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, “When you strip off your clothes without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like children and trample them, then you will see the living one and you will not be afraid.”42 And in the Gospel of Philip, Jesus relates, “They who make themselves simple, to the point of nakedness, are not naked.”43
What we wear without realizing it is the ego. It’s the stories we’ve covered ourselves with, or the stories we have used to obscure the truth of who we really are. And the ego is so well meaning. It’s like this helicopter mom who thinks we need protection and thinks fear will keep us safe. The ego builds up all these layers of why we should be afraid of who we are, or why we should feel shame about who we have been.
And the power that is the most crippling, or blinding, is the last power, the seventh (even though as you’ve recognized within you, there isn’t a consecutive order to the powers). It’s the one Levi says that Peter has been overcome by in Mary 10:7, “Peter, you are always ready to give way to your perpetual inclination to anger.” After Mary reveals the secret teachings that Christ gave her, and her alone, I can imagine Peter was angry. He became a saint but he was also human. And I can imagine he might have felt betrayed, since he didn’t receive these secret teachings as well. He’s angry, and in his anger, he treats Mary as if she is an adversary and not his sister.
His anger, a power of the ego, and the anger of those who followed him, changed the course of Christianity to exclude Mary, to shift her from the one Christ loved completely and steadfastly to the one Christ healed of seven “demons.” Peter, and those Peter represents, didn’t seem to get the parables Christ used to suggest to us that we “get naked” so we can see each other with a clarity of heart the ego obscures.
As you know now, the ego has seven incarnations, attributes, or powers, according to the Gospel of Mary. These are the “demons” that supposedly Christ drew from Mary. And the answer of what to do to free ourselves of these powers could not be easier. Just get naked. Every time the ego tries to dress you again in an old story of what you’re capable of, or of the victim you once were, or of wha
t you need to be afraid of, or of why you need to remain small, just take it off. Strip. Skinny-dip. Repeat.
(I’m speaking metaphorically here. But, of course, if actually getting naked helps, more power to you.)
Cynthia Bourgeault believes that Christ’s process of freeing himself and becoming ihidaya, becoming the “unified one,” had everything to do with mastering the art of kenosis. Kenosis comes from the Greek verb kenosein, which means “to empty oneself.” She believes that Christ is able to endure and ultimately overcome “Satan” because he never takes the bait that keeps getting dangled for his ego to latch on to.
He remains still; he rests in emptiness. Bourgeault explains, “Stripping oneself and standing naked: this is the essence of the kenotic path.”44
According to conventional wisdom, 40 days is what it takes to break an addictive thought pattern. The thought pattern in turn causes addictive behaviors and actions. And these behaviors and actions can become habituated, unconscious even.
I’ve always loved that Christ was in the wilderness (of his own mind) for 40 days being tested by “Satan” (the ego he needed to meet with inside him). And that really, this is not something that was done once and then done with forever. This was a powerful spiritual tool that he used to integrate his soul with his body, his mind with his heart. This is how he was able to unify the angel within him to his physical form. Getting naked. Again and again.
When a past love reveals the reason why they left, when a parent lets you know what more you could do to find success, when a beloved friend betrays you, when you hear a voice within you telling you you’re not enough, you’re not worthy, you won’t ever be truly loved—this is what I took off when I stood in the cistern of the White Spring.
And this is when I felt a pride that went all the way back and all the way through. A pride in being human. In struggling, and failing, and in sometimes reaching this state of exalted light.
Mary Magdalene Revealed Page 19