Healing the Sacred Heart
One of my teachers, Beatrex Quntanna, frequently talks about the time we're experiencing as an opportunity to heal the heart of religion. Not just one religion, but the concept of religion across the board, no matter what your belief system. A re-calibration process is happening and you can resist it, or go with the flow, but it's going to continue to happen.
A few things are central to the re-calibration process, I believe, and are the concepts are driving my commitment to travel with a group of devotees to France later this year. First and foremost, is the resurgence of the Feminine Divine; a call to women to claim their dignity, honor, spiritual connection, and equal participation in all aspects of a religious experience. Also key is the concept of the earth as our Mother--Her survival is our survival. Thirdly, I see this re-calibration as a personal heart healing, in which we claim our own unique spiritual experience, without need for any intermediary, and allow our innate divinity to shine forth. We are, each one of us, a unique expression of the divine of Spirit.
It's taken me a while to get to this, and drive it back home to my own religious upbringing, to heal my own heart from both real and imagined slights and injuries in this lifetime, and that's trivial, compared with what I suspect I've endured in previous lifetimes. I grew up in a protestant household, attending Baptist, and then Methodist churches. Once on my own in college, I first explored taking most of the dogma and unquestioned beliefs out of the picture, and began to see, with different eyes, how women were depicted and treated, and I wasn't pleased with what I saw.
Next I encountered the Eastern philosophies of yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism and learned how to slow my body and mind down to meditate. I learned compassion for the human condition. But, that didn't quite handle all my questions, so I turned to Native American and Pagan traditions to learn about respect for the land, cycles of nature, the interplay of the stars and planets in our place in the universe. I learned about rites of passage that had disappeared from our modern lives, and the ceremonies that had been done for millennia to keep the earth in balance.
And, that still didn't completely heal my heart and mind, although it did take me on some amazing journeys to meet Hopi elders; and experience a Sundance that was a passion play of mythic proportions.
I was still missing the feminine piece of the puzzle, which led me to priestess training, as I finally felt safe to drop in to my experience as a woman of spirit, whole and embodied, with all the richness of the sexual and sensual intrinsically connected with the spiritual.
I revived an interest in the archetype of the temptress, the maligned and beleaguered source of supposed shame, blame and sin. But in studying Eve and Lilith, Inanna, Persephone, Demeter and Hekate, Isis, and Pandora, among others, I began to uncover remarkable stories of spiritual independence, strength, perseverance, curiosity, power and sexual freedom--all co-existing with a strong, direct link to Spirit.
Which has all led me back to my roots, if you will, to Christianity, to re-examine the roles of the Marys who were part of the story of Jeshua; and especially the role of Mary Magdalene. I believe the popularity of her story in this century has to do with the repair and re-balancing needed to heal the heart of Christianity from two thousand years of denying, denigrating and subjugating the feminine.
It is Mary Magdalene who needs to brought back into balance; restored to her honored place as the Christed counterpart to Jeshua, honored as the Apostle to the Apostles, welcomed into our hearts as the Sacred Bride, respected as the Priestess who anoints and makes a King. Her story of redemption is our story of redemption. Not redemption from sin, but redeeming as in buying back our wholeness and completeness as fully embodied sexual women who experience the love and light of Spirit; as above, so below, in the full glory of blissful connection.
And so, this September I will journey with a small group of women to France, where Mary Magdalene's energy, legacy and memory have been most treasured and kept alive in oral traditions, against overwhelming odds for a very long time. The truth and beauty of her love, faith and compassion, I believe, can still be encountered, absorbed, and integrated by walking the land that she walked, activating the energetic ley lines, and finding the inner spark of the divine within the heart.
On this trip, we will do what I call ceremony--which to me is an honoring of land, cycles, self and the Divine, through quiet prayer, joining hands in silence, repeating mantras and rituals, singing songs and dancing, gifting the land and energies with gratitude from our hearts, walking the labyrinth to our sacred heart centers, sharing intuitive messages, honoring the hundreds of people through hundreds of years who were prevented from speaking their truth and living their faith. We will gather near the autumnal equinox, a time of balance. We will end the trip near the new moon, setting our intentions for bringing our experiences into our lives and into the world.
I believe it will be a magical time. My own personal astrology and timing cycle indicates the two weeks we will be in France are ripe for insights and transformation. I have been studying Mary Magdalene and researching the places we'll be visiting since 2012, when I visited Glastonbury and Chartres Cathedral.
If you would like to join me, there's still time to sign up. The group will be capped at 12 participants. For a complete updated itinerary, leave me your contact information by filling out this form. Click Here to Order Information Packet.
A few things are central to the re-calibration process, I believe, and are the concepts are driving my commitment to travel with a group of devotees to France later this year. First and foremost, is the resurgence of the Feminine Divine; a call to women to claim their dignity, honor, spiritual connection, and equal participation in all aspects of a religious experience. Also key is the concept of the earth as our Mother--Her survival is our survival. Thirdly, I see this re-calibration as a personal heart healing, in which we claim our own unique spiritual experience, without need for any intermediary, and allow our innate divinity to shine forth. We are, each one of us, a unique expression of the divine of Spirit.
Next I encountered the Eastern philosophies of yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism and learned how to slow my body and mind down to meditate. I learned compassion for the human condition. But, that didn't quite handle all my questions, so I turned to Native American and Pagan traditions to learn about respect for the land, cycles of nature, the interplay of the stars and planets in our place in the universe. I learned about rites of passage that had disappeared from our modern lives, and the ceremonies that had been done for millennia to keep the earth in balance.
And, that still didn't completely heal my heart and mind, although it did take me on some amazing journeys to meet Hopi elders; and experience a Sundance that was a passion play of mythic proportions.
I was still missing the feminine piece of the puzzle, which led me to priestess training, as I finally felt safe to drop in to my experience as a woman of spirit, whole and embodied, with all the richness of the sexual and sensual intrinsically connected with the spiritual.
I revived an interest in the archetype of the temptress, the maligned and beleaguered source of supposed shame, blame and sin. But in studying Eve and Lilith, Inanna, Persephone, Demeter and Hekate, Isis, and Pandora, among others, I began to uncover remarkable stories of spiritual independence, strength, perseverance, curiosity, power and sexual freedom--all co-existing with a strong, direct link to Spirit.
It is Mary Magdalene who needs to brought back into balance; restored to her honored place as the Christed counterpart to Jeshua, honored as the Apostle to the Apostles, welcomed into our hearts as the Sacred Bride, respected as the Priestess who anoints and makes a King. Her story of redemption is our story of redemption. Not redemption from sin, but redeeming as in buying back our wholeness and completeness as fully embodied sexual women who experience the love and light of Spirit; as above, so below, in the full glory of blissful connection.
And so, this September I will journey with a small group of women to France, where Mary Magdalene's energy, legacy and memory have been most treasured and kept alive in oral traditions, against overwhelming odds for a very long time. The truth and beauty of her love, faith and compassion, I believe, can still be encountered, absorbed, and integrated by walking the land that she walked, activating the energetic ley lines, and finding the inner spark of the divine within the heart.
I believe it will be a magical time. My own personal astrology and timing cycle indicates the two weeks we will be in France are ripe for insights and transformation. I have been studying Mary Magdalene and researching the places we'll be visiting since 2012, when I visited Glastonbury and Chartres Cathedral.
If you would like to join me, there's still time to sign up. The group will be capped at 12 participants. For a complete updated itinerary, leave me your contact information by filling out this form. Click Here to Order Information Packet.
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