Gnostic encomium for the Mary Magdalene Revealed Retreat

Here is my rooftop shout for the world to hear my encomium* for the Mary Magdalene Revealed Retreat held by the glorious Meggan Watterson. Hear me full body shouting like I did the night I merged with God.

As I have mentioned before, it makes me super happy when all of the fingers I am exploring are pointing to the same moon. Though, as I write this, I realize it is true for everyone. We all seek out that which agrees with our beliefs and create self-reinforcing loops to make ourselves feel validated. My huge ballast on this finger pointing to The Good as inside of us, as opposed to external to us, is from my own experience (see the merging above). So I am going to speak from that place, as a Gnostic.**

As I wrote 4 years ago after my incredible merging experience,”The Word is where the center of I AM rests at our throat. It is through our words that we ARE the I AM.”

Here we go, my words, my I AM truth, about Mary Magdalene Revealed.

The retreat was held at Omega and the format was a session on Friday night, two sessions on Saturday (pre and post lunch), and a morning session on Sunday. Meggan Watterson would give a talk about the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, we would share, we would do a Soul Voice Meditation, we would share, rinse repeat.

I contemplated making a list of my notes from her talks, but honestly upon rereading my chicken scratch I realize they are signposts for me. The best way to get a sense of what I heard from Meggan would be to read the sermons on her blog. Specifically, When He Calls her Sister, What Mary Knew by Heart, All Seven and We’ll Watch them Fall.

I had three huge takeaways.

First of all, I knew Christians were tortured and killed in vast numbers by the Roman Empire until Emperor Constantine converted and made it the state religion. But it wasn’t until this past weekend that I truly grokked WHY Christianity was such a threat to the empire. WHY it was that laborers, women, or shoeless preachers were considered dangerous - dangerous enough to throw to the lions.

It was because they believed in a God that was more powerful than the emperor.

The emperor couldn’t turn water into wine, heal people by touching them, bring back people from death, or multiply loaves and fishes. Additionally, The Good of the Christians not only performs miracles, but according to Mary Magdalene (and Thomas and Philip) this God lives inside each of us and as such renders us all equal. We are no longer master/slave, above/below, emperor/subjects - we are all brothers and sisters in The Good.

This love, The Good (as Mary calls the Divine) gushes through each of us - a thundering fountain of love - is what gives us the power to bring Love to where it has never been before. We become a voice for the voiceless: Mother Earth, the slave, the battered child, the tortured, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the battered and the bruised. As Cornel West said, “justice is what love looks like in public.”

Early Christianity was all about a group of men and women working together to navigate the dichotomy of being fully Divine and fully Human: anthropos. This is illustrated if we look back at the original meaning of a very loaded terms: mercy. Mercy is the key to this.

Mercy comes from the Etruscan merc which means “exchange.” I had always thought of mercy as someone with power (God) saving the lesser me from my sins (gargantuan transgressions). It felt awful. Thinking of mercy as an equitable exchange shifts the whole paradigm.

Yet it also begs the follow up question of what could I possibly have to exchange with the Divine? When could the Divine possibility need that I could give in exchange for salvation? (note this is an ego thought of me not being worthy, but I think this exercise is important regardless). This is where being a mother helps me see this clearly. When my children are in pain/upset/overwhelmed all I want to do is snuggle and hold them tight - to love them until they are back to themselves. I understood during my merging experience The Good loves us beyond and more than we love our children. The love of a parent for their child is a platonic shadow of the LOVE that gushes onto us (and thereby through us) from The Good. In that context, exchanging my egoic pain for Divine love makes total sense.

I am exchanging the trappings of the ego (or Cranky Monster in my house) for the love of the Divine. I practice every moment of every day to hand over my fear, my rage, my feelings of unworthiness, my What If? voice, my internal monologue that looks at the world (and me) through the lens of not Love. I hand over all of that gunk and in exchange the Divine fills me with irrational, unrelenting, never ending love.

I am willing to practice this form of mercy and see where it takes me. To deliberately hand over all worries, fears, and judgements (of self and others) and see what happens. Worse case scenario - nothing changes and my ego and I bumble along the way we have been. Best case scenario - this is the key to the Universe.***

Which brings me to another big takeaway. Mary writes of the 7 powers of the ego in her gospel.

The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.

Meggan broke down these “seven powers of wrath” as the seven powers of the ego. They are rather complex and rather esoteric and I don’t fully grok them. (So this is where you can research if you are curious to learn more).

This is the big takeaway of the seven powers of the ego. 2000 years ago Mary Magdalene shared that Jesus Christ had told her that being human involves having a Cranky Monster. Magdalene’s Cranky Monster has seven faces. These seven facets became later the seven deadly sins, “envy, gluttony, greed or avarice, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.” What were normal and anticipated parts of the human experience in Mary’s Gospel became unforgivable cardinal sins that had to be avoided at all costs in the Christian tradition that followed.

Instead of avoiding the sin of wrath and then feeling guilty when wrath takes over (and having to go to confession or do penance of some sort). Mary’s Gospel points towards a gentler approach to these 7 parts of being human. It is so comforting to know this is an expected part of the human condition - like having two legs. Our soul’s job is to recognize them. That’s it. No judgement, penance, confession, guilt. None of it. “There is no such thing as sin” (Mary 3.3)

The soul answered, ‘I saw you. You did not see me nor did you know me. You mistook the garment I wore for my true self. And you did not recognize me. (Mary 9.4-6)

You mistook the garment I wore for my true self. How MANY times has that happened in our daily lives. Where dinner is late, or we had too many activities, and suddenly everyone is carping at each other. All of us thinking we are being totally rational and instead are fully steeped in our Cranky Monsters.

What is even more poignant is that after Mary answers Peter’s question to “tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.” (Mary 6.2) Peter is so irritated by what she says that he goes directly into his Cranky Monster/Ego/Wrath and doesn’t believe her AND Levi calls him out on it, “Peter, you are always ready to give way to your perpetual inclination to anger. And even now you are doing that by questioning the woman as though you’re her adversary.” (Mary 10.7-8)

Just today I had that conversation with both children. “You are in your Cranky Monster. Breathe with me. You are angry and need to recenter.”

“I am NOT in my Cranky Monster. I just hate/wanted/didn’t like...” and the tears flowed.

“Breathe with me, in and out of your belly. Do it with me. Tell your Cranky Monster go to away. I know this is hard.”

“I don’t WANT to breathe! I HATE this!” Tears dripping onto shirts.

“I know. I know. Breathe from your belly. You are hyperventilating, it is not helping. Breathe from your belly.”

This awareness of the ego is something to do now - to awaken to the Divine in this life, not when we die and show up to pearly gates. Judgement day happens every day, every moment we recognize we are in one of the 7 powers and pull ourselves back to the Divine. As my mother would say, “No time like the present.” When it comes to listening to the Divine and acting from that listening - the present is IT.

My final takeaway was this. It was glorious to be doing this in community. I learned as much from the soul sharings of the participants as I did from Meggan’s formal talks. By Sunday morning the room was a love fest of glowing smiles and heart tears.

One log can’t burn alone. It takes the pressure and the heat of two or more logs touching to make a fire that sustains, that burns, that devours the wood. That was the weekend. My heart fire became an inferno. I can’t wait to join her community The House of Mary Magdalene and keep feeding these flames.

Hallelujah

* Encomium is one of my favorite words: a song of enthusiastic praise. I have only ever given a encomium for my grandmother and my father to give you a sense of the gravity with which I choose that word. Encomium for The Good inside of you - for The Good inside of me - for The Good inside of all of us.

** Gnostic means to know The Good all the way down and all the way through - direct experience.

*** Rob Wergin’s first Divine Transmission for August elucidates this point. It is not just our self-doubt, self-criticism, self-loathing that needs to be handed over to the Divine. It is also that which we carry with us from past lives and our ancestors - the reason why many of us might feel that we are being offered another chance to learn a similar lesson. Again and again.

This is a prayer to assist from Rob. “Speak from your heart. Trust, know, and believe these are powerful words that will change you as you say them. Please place one hand on your heart. Close your eyes, take a nice deep breath. Say these words out loud with pure intention. Drop into your heart. So imagine that your heart’s actually speaking, not your brain. Your brain is going to repeat, your heart is going to accept and receive. Nice deep breath. Here we go:

I deliberately and consciously give my soul and the Divine Consciousness permission to remove from my energetic fields any anger, fear, doubt, judgements, ego, insecurities, jealousy, and everything else that is no longer needed for me to perform my life mission, life path, and my life work. And I give permission to remove any soul contracts or other energies no longer serving my highest good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With gratitude I speak and so it is.

Take in three deep breaths and as you take in these three breaths think of all you are grateful for.

Here is another one, it is much shorter, but just as powerful.

I forgive myself and I forgive all others for the learning experiences that I/we have created. So be it. And so it has been accepted. With gratitude. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”