Mary Magdalene Got the Message
This picture depicts the stereotypical view of Mary Magdalene: drama queen, hysterical, perpetually grieving, and piling on the guilt from her randy younger ways. See where living naked in a cave in France will get you?
During my workshop on the 21st, this is the image we’re going to release and walk toward the fact she may have been the one who knew Jesus best, who really understood his message.
What excites me about The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is that, from what I gather from people who have studied it for a long time, the gospel speaks of the nature of Eternity, the kingdom of heaven on Earth, and how to become more complete, fully human even in small glimpses within the limitations of our ego. Some of us, Rumi, Blake, Saint Francis, the enlightened beings who we have never heard about, somehow get through the ego trap and live/lived in Eternity while in the mortal body.
Cynthia Bourgeault speaks of the alignment of the vertical axis with the horizontal, present time and Eternity in sinc. She theorizes that Mary Magdalene stayed with Jesus in a visionary state during the time he died and was resurrected, during the time of the “harrowing of hell” in which his work to liberate human beings was occurring. She got his message. We are free and eternal and that our suffering results from our attachment to matter, our bodies, and our egos.
But this does not mean that matter is not real, in a Platonic sense. The world is not a projection from the ideal, but rather an important part of the existence of God. Our egos though get misaligned by projections and clinging. Bourgeault speaks of the NOUS, the part of us, the kernel we all house that is the conduit, bringing divine energy into our lives, and thus the world. She calls in “the eye of the heart,” and “the homing beacon between realms.” We activate it by prayer and meditation.
One of the first things Jesus was called was ihidaya, meaning “the single one.” Jesus’ parting message in the gospel is: “The Son of Humanity already exists within you.” Mary Magdalene understood this and knew “when the heart is aligned with its eternal image, abundance cascades forth from the place of that origin, infinitely more powerful than the scarcity and constriction of this world.”
Christianity then becomes more than an acceptance of faith, but as a practice in purification of the heart and living in the faith that God and good are ever-present.
Quotes from The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault, Shambala Press, 2010 pages 50, 51, 52, and 55. I don’t know how to do superscripts!
