Assumption (August 15)

"Glorify God in your body!" (1 Cor 6:12)

This day, August 15, is the Feast of the Assumption, celebrating the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven. In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed her bodily assumption into heaven an official doctrine of the Church. In his book, Answer to Job, Carl Jung wrote, "I consider this the most important religious event since the Reformation." Why?

Because it holds a greater significance than the Church prelates themselves even realized at the time. It signifies that the Divine Feminine is not on a lower order of being than God. Mary is not on a lower order of being than Christ. Mother-Mater-Matter is not on a lower order of being than the Holy Spirit. The Spirit infuses our earthly form as Breath infuses the blood. Mary's physical assumption "into heaven" is a sign of the glory toward which evolution leads us, not just as souls but as embodied children of humanity. Of course, the old Catholic lady and her grandchild, lighting a votive candle together in the local parish church, knew this all along. Devotion to Mary has always been about our longing for the Goddess.

The Hebrew word Kavoth means "glory." Glory is not an abstraction, a mere mental concept. Glory is the very substance of matter when our flesh is permeated by the grace of Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. Which is the very purpose of our meditation practice: to suffuse the human nervous system with the energies of the Divine.

At the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, Jesus's three disciples saw him transformed into the light of glory. They did not see a disembodied spirit. Nor was this after Jesus's death. They saw his BODY transfigured into Kavoth. The Transfiguration presages the evolution of our own bodies into a new substance, Kavoth. In that day, we will no longer speak of "spirit" and "matter." We will look back with pity on an age when people distinguished between "soul" and "body." We will celebrate life in soul-bodies composed of the very substance of Glory.

Through all that we suffer and love, grieve and savor, honor with our tears, or enlighten with our laughter, each atom of our flesh is in the alchemy of Transfiguration. We are being changed from glory into glory. Every cell becomes a galaxy of angelic voices, a super-cluster of celestial worlds, an incarnate ocean of the splendor of the Goddess, who in Yoga philosophy is Shakti, dancing in the silent heart of Shiva, and in quantum physics, virtual energy dancing in the silent heart of the vacuum.

At least for this day, at least for this hour, at least for the duration of this breath, "Glorify God in your body!"

Painting: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Francesco Botticini (1475 – 1476)