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The Discipline Of Her Gaze

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         The feast day of Mary Magdalene is over, yet the daily discipline of her gaze continues. Her darshan is a flame that consumes us, burns us up, and burns us down. Her alchemy turns our dross to gold, annihilating everything that is not ourselves. Nothing remains but our uniqueness. The eyes of the Magdalene behold us, and we are held. She holds us in the gaze of a most severe and lethal demand: the demand to become who we are, each of us.  This is true bhakti. Her gaze is not a call to merge with the One,  annihilating  our personhood in collective consciousness. It is a refiner's fire, shaping us in the ingot mold of our soul, destroying all but the grace of our own eccentricity. "Bhakti" means devotion. But devotion to what? To whom? To the love of Jesus? To the Guru? To the path of enlightenment? No dear friend, Mary's eyes burn with an even more terrible and beautiful vocation. Her silence calls, "Be You!" When...

A New Perspective On Mary Magdalene (Video)

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How she became my guide in uniting the wisdom of the East with the Christian mystical tradition. Mary is very personal, and very real, yet she is an energy within our subtle body, not just a historical figure from the past. LINK

Spirituality Is Minding Our Own Business

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   Sometimes the most "spiritual" thing we can do is mind our own business.  In this frenetic age of "activism," we often think its our spiritual duty to be a crusader, to save the world, to impose our concept of utopia on others.  Rather than minding their business, what if we mind our own, very lovingly, very carefully, without haste, self-judgment, or comparison?  Strange as it sounds, minding our own business can profoundly affect others, like a flower that enhances the whole garden by releasing its unique peculiar essence. This is a subtle secret: when we learn to be wholly and authentically ourselves, we radiate the quality of wholeness to others. The  very presence of a centered soul soothes, heals, and centers the community. This is Alignment, another name for Yoga. Being in alignment emanates a field where others can more gracefully come into alignment. Alignment is infectious. Not alignment with religious or political ideals impose...

She

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   Playfulness without a player. The frolic of God. An abandoned lute fingered by the midnight wind. Countlessness of pollen grains in a single flower. The fragrance of myrrh wafted over the ocean where moons dance in dolphin crescent stillness. A fallen tower spilling jasmine  and oil of spikenard on the sand as rudderless boats of plenty drift unhelmed wherever anointing is needed. Her body laden with jars of chrism and wine, how could she whirl up your backbone from blossom to blossom, escaping your gravity? A woman of the night or the temple virgin of Ningal? Yes. And the grail holder of Jesus. Scholars will never understand how her polished emptiness overflows. How her darkness engenders stars. They would rather correct mistakes in God's translation of her marvelous silence. If you want to taste her fecund blackness, cleanse the secret window of your heart. Behind clouds of grief and time the space of her...