Relationships as a Spiritual Path: Desire vs. Will

In this episode, Jenny discusses an excerpt from a book banned from the Bible, the Gospel of Philip. She shares how this ancient text reveals sex as a spiritual path. A key to unlocking this path of conscious romantic relationship is understanding the role of spiritual will.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Why Didn't I Know podcast, episode 34. I'm your host, Dr. Jenny Martin, and today we're talking about relationships as a spiritual path, desire versus will. I'm basing this episode on a gospel I've mentioned previously on this podcast, which is the Gospel of Philip. The Gospel of Philip can be thought about as a book that explains sexual relationships as a spiritual path. Now, the Gospel of Philip relates to early Christianity, but it was a book that was banned from the Bible, and it was discovered along with other scrolls that are called the Nagamadi scrolls in Egypt in 1945 after being buried way back since the second or third century. And what to note, though, is that this gospel very often gets interpreted by scholars who are coming from an Orthodox background and interpret the erotic language here as simply Jesus and the church, just like they do with the Song of Songs, another very erotic piece of scripture that's actually still in the canonical Bible. It didn't get discarded. But to understand these Nagomadi scriptures, especially this one, the Gospel of Philip, we need to let go of any kind of linear analytical thinking, because that is counterproductive. These scriptures, much like alchemical texts that were also developed at the same time, were coded. These books were written in a coded form because when we're talking about sexuality, if a person isn't at a certain level of spiritual development and they are really only understanding sexuality through their egoic nature, they will completely miss the boat in terms of this type of teaching, as well as the sexual alchemical teachings that came about in early Christianity. Both the sexual alchemy teachings from Mary, the prophetess, aka Mary Magdalene, and also these Gospel of Philip teachings, which have a lot of parallel. They were both written in these kinds of, you know, like Notre Damas wrote in quatrains, and you have to decode them. It's not immediately evident what Notre Damus was saying, it's not immediately evident what the early alchemical teachings were all about, you know, because they're talking about joining male and female metals. Like, come on. You know, some people might say, oh, you're really grasping if you think that that's sex. But you have to understand a lot more about it to even grasp what they are going for. And the same thing with the Gospel of Philip. Now, this Gospel of Philip, the one that I'm using to, I'm gonna just read a short little section from, is a translation from Jean-Yves Leloupe. He's an Orthodox, interestingly enough, theologian from France. But he does accept that this Gospel of Philip is speaking about sexuality and spirituality, but he only goes so far as to talk about that it's really around the topic of reproductive sex. And the Gospel of Philip is helping humans have a conscious conception and bring your consciousness in line with your body so that when you are bringing new life into the world or conceiving new life, you're doing so with the utmost spiritual integrity and energy and so forth, which is a beautiful interpretation, no doubt. But people have sex a lot more often than just to reproduce. And lots of people don't choose to reproduce. So if it's just that narrow interpretation, then we're losing a lot of the meaning. But granted, you know, you have to see who is speaking here, and this person identifies, because I just read his short bio on the back of the book, he identifies as Orthodox. So you can't expect him to really embrace the full idea of sexuality outside of the reproductive, procreative aspect of it. So often this gospel has been in the past interpreted by people who aren't even willing to go as far as this French theologian. But anyway, the way that I found out about the Gospel of Philip was way back when, many several decades ago, when I first discovered the true understanding of Mary Magdalene as a co-equal to Jesus and most likely his beloved, when I read a book that actually became research for Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, because it came out so much before it. And it's a book called The Woman with the Alabaster Jar. And I became quite well acquainted with the community that arose around the Woman with the Alabaster Jar at the time in the late 90s. And uh in the Pacific Northwest, there was just a huge groundswell of people involved in that. And we were able to share different ideas, and that's when there was the talk that the gospel of Philip was really the place that this understanding about sexuality as expressed between Jesus and Mary Magdalene was a sacred sexual path. But it was written in this coded language, so only people with an understanding and more specifically with a personal experience with this type of spiritual path could decode it. And I can say for myself, when I first read the Gospel of Philip, I didn't have my own enlightenment experience through sex. But after having had some of those experiences, I went back to the Gospel of Philip. And it's almost like the words jumped off the page to me. I had tried to understand the Gospel of Philip because somebody told me it was a key. You could decode it and it would give you all of these secrets. And so I went to various university libraries, looked up everything I could find in terms of what different expert scholars had said about this. And it was just, it all led me to a dead end because they weren't seeing the richness in this material. They weren't understanding the sexuality with it, they weren't understanding the sacred enlightenment aspect of it. And I had nowhere to really understand this material. It wasn't until I had my own personal experiences of shifting my state of consciousness through sexual experience, through with my partner, that I just spontaneously gravitated back to this scripture to find out what was really in here. And it's so interesting how you can read something and it just passes you by. Like you don't friggin' get it. Then you can open the same book, stare at the same words on the paper, and you're like, why did I not see that before? It's so apparent. And it's like that on almost every page of this book. Now, I will tell you, there are some words, phrases in the Gospel of Philip that I don't get. They didn't, they're not necessarily about the sexual erotic path, but they're just ways of phrasing things that we wouldn't talk about now and different metaphors that are really hard to understand. But for the most part, I would say 90% of it really does resonate with me. And I do see a message here that is enlightenment through sex and absolutely relating to Magdalene and Yeshua. In fact, this is the gospel where it talks about Jesus and Mary kissing and him knowing her and loving her more than anyone else. And uh again, it's interesting that quote experts on this book absolutely discredit that line in there and try to pass it off as something that all people kissed back then. I mean, it's just it's so interesting how far people will go to say, no, they couldn't have been enjoying themselves to reach God. You have to go through a path of suffering and pain to reach God. It's so interesting how people will do anything they can to say that that's not possible. Okay, so having said all of that, the reason I want to talk about desire and will and relationships and referencing this gospel of Philip because it gives us an understanding of what a romantic relationship is in terms of it being a spiritual path. I had a conversation with a client recently who really wanted to understand how we can have this mystical connection with our partner. She explained how when they first met, there was this buzz, this excitement, the honeymoon phase is what a lot of people call it. And you could reduce it down to an explanation that there's just a bunch of neurochemicals firing that made you feel bliss and love. And when that wears off, you can't get it back. And that's what this person was asking. Am I trying to get back that state? Because I don't think that's possible. We've been together too long, we've been through too many things, and it was so spontaneous and so natural, but we're not 20 years old anymore, and we don't know how to do that. Anyway, what I described to her was that's the beauty of a spiritual path. It's not just a spontaneous desire that's flooding through you, producing that state. It's an act of will. And what I was referencing in that was first of all, my own personal experience in going through that, being in a long-term relationship, but being actually informed by this ancient wisdom in the Gospel of Philip that frames this so beautifully for us. And here's what it says on page 84 of the Gospel of Philip. It says, even the worldly embrace is a mystery, far more so the embrace that incarnates the hidden union. It is not only a reality of the flesh, for there is silence in this embrace. It does not arise from impulse or desire, it is an act of will. Now it goes on after that, of course, unpacking this and going into other beautiful type of imagery, but let's just park it here and talk about this because it's really describing a sexual relationship through the lens of not this automatic trigger that you have, this automatic response that you have to being sexually aroused or excited by someone that comes so easily when you're in the initial stages of a sexual romantic relationship. You don't have to work at it, it's just there. But then when you get to know the person a little bit longer and you see some of their flaws, you see some of the things that you don't love so much about them, you start to lose touch with that bliss state around them, with that feeling of being completely in love with them. And it starts to even out. And you might feel like that bliss is gone and it's not going to be possible to reach it again because it just was this immediate type of automatic reaction to being with this person. But that's not what the gospel of Philip is saying. It's saying that it's not an impulse and it's not even a desire. Now, let's be careful with this because this is not telling us that sexual desire is unholy or not sacred. It's not saying that at all. But it's just saying, I mean, basically, we can desire a lot of things, we can desire a lot of people, we can desire, desire can just run its own course and take us over to a certain extent. And that can be a product of the ego. Not that the ego is bad either, but there is a spiritual path that it's available to us through romantic relationships, through sex, that calls on us to go a little bit further into our experience than just that surface level of automatic attraction. And the deeper is that as the gospel of Philip here says, it's not only a reality of the flesh, there is a silence in the embrace, and it's an act of will. So it's not denying that you have this visceral experience, this, as they call it, the reality of the flesh. So it's not against the body. This is not some Gnostic idea that the body is corrupt at all. It's very much embracing the body that it's through our physical vessel that the higher realities are made known. If we didn't have this sensual body, that it could have all these five senses, the sensual and sexual experience, then we wouldn't be able to have that experiential knowing of the divine in the same way that we can with it. Because the divine meets us not in an analytical space, not in an intellectual space, but in the felt sense of the moment. And that's what changes people's lives. It's that you could call it Satori moment, that moment when it overtakes you that you know that you know that you know, that nobody can take it from you, that you have experienced some moment that was sacred. Some people have their first glimpse of that with the plant medicine, uh, but that's not where it needs to end. You can absolutely experience this organically, and I do think the natural psychedelics in our body are part of our interface with these higher realities. And these natural psychedelics are activated through the experience of ecstatic union, through the experience of sexual union and pleasure and love and bringing all of your five senses into it. But we approach the moment of sexual union not from just our desire taking us over, but from, as it says in the Gospel of Philip, it being an act of will. Now that's also a tricky thing because when we think about will, we think, okay, what I want, I want, you know, this is what I want. And we certainly have a lot of reinforcement of sex and desire and manipulation and want and usury out there in the world. I mean, it's throughout all of movies and online media that there's this sense of possession and want and having and taking, which is all rooted in the ego, having to do with sex. So when we're talking about will, we're not talking about my will over yours, and I'm gonna have and I'm gonna take. It's not that. It is an active will in terms of the fact that as a conscious spiritual being, we need to use our free will to choose to align ourselves with the highest thought in the moment, with the highest inspiration in the moment. And that's always going to be the highest good for everyone concerned. So when you align yourself with a higher power, and I'm not talking about a man in the sky, I'm talking about a presence that is everywhere present, all-knowing, and created, you're the cells in your body, it's the presence that is breathing through you right now, that is beating your heart. And it's beyond our finite minds, it's beyond our intellect to even comprehend it. But that there's not only a everywhere present nature to this presence, there's also an intimacy. And that's what's lost in a lot of the new age material out there, is there's a sense, oh, it's everywhere present. But okay, but it also knows you, it also can interface with you in a very immediate, personal, and tangible way. You can actually dialogue and meet this presence when you're in this exalted state. And that's the whole purpose of having spiritual practice is to get into the state that we call communion. Now, that was the original Christian sacrament of holy communion. It wasn't eating the dead flesh through the host and the wine. When you go to a Christian church, they give you a piece of bread and they give you juice or wine, and it's supposed to symbolize Jesus' body and blood to get closer to Him. Well, that is a complete distortion of the original before the fourth century, the original Holy Communion. The original Holy Communion is this exalted ecstatic state where you are joining, physically joining with your partner. Through this act of will, you're actually choosing to uh see the divine and the other person, invite grace, invite a higher realm of intelligence and presence into uh the sexual act with you. So you're not just trying to control anything, really, you're handing the moment over to a higher presence and letting it imbue you and letting it be present in the room. And that's the distinctive idea here in this type of Christian mystical sexual act. It's not just two people seeing the divinity in each other that we see in Eastern paths that we learn about in Eastern traditions. In this Christian mystical path, it's two plus two equals exponentially more. So it's not just two people having sex and seeing divinity, it is two people dissolving into one. That's the one flesh union in the Bible. And in that moment of dissolving, which what does dissolving mean? It means your brain and body are equipped to go into such a deep trance state that you no longer are aware that you are a separate individual. And this is why there needs to be spiritual preparation for this. Because if you're on shaky ground, you don't know who you are as a person, you have low self esteem, you have tendencies towards codependency, this is not recommended. Because could you kind of lose yourself in the other person by doing this merging activity? Sure you could. So it's a Advance spiritual practice. It's not for someone who's just on a path of learning to love themselves or learning to who they are or learning about their own divinity. All of that needs to happen first. Because if you don't have love for yourself, if you don't have a connection to the divine as an individual, it becomes very complicated when you're doing this as a shared activity with another person. Because literally, during the moment of the sexual union, you will not know where you end and the other person begins. It's possible to get into such a deep state of mind. And we're talking about no drugs, nothing else except the pleasure which is bringing you into this altered state. And so it's important to have your mind and body prepared. And this is why these texts were in coded language, because they didn't want people getting the wrong idea and thinking that, oh, well, somebody else is going to save me. Oh, I'm going to put my whole spiritual future into my relationship. No, that's a path of being a doormat. That's a path where you become codependent. And that's not an optimal path. Like when you think about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, she wasn't, even though Hollywood likes to depict her as some lost, wayward woman who was just falling at his feet and just completely no self-esteem. That's not, if you look into this history, she was the antithesis of that. I mean, here was a woman who knew who the hell she was. She was very well versed in her alchemical teachings. She had her own wealth. She financed his ministry, not because of prostitution, but because she was very astute with what she was doing. So she wasn't falling at his feet looking for help. That is a total fallacy, of course, by a very patriarchal church that likes to control the narrative. But what we're talking about here in the Gospel of Philip is the opportunity to see relationships, to see sex as not just a beautiful experience with your partner of giving and receiving pleasure. Absolutely, it's that. But it's something more, it's an opportunity to enter this altered state, not just by your human ego wanting to have an orgasm, but your higher self wanting to merge with the creator. And when you're in that state of your higher self wanting to merge with the creator, it's impossible to do anything but love your partner. It's impossible to just want your own orgasm or want to take from your partner. Because if you're truly in that higher frame of mind, doing anything that is unloving towards your partner completely takes you out of the space. To be able to stay in this space of a higher exalted frequency, a higher state of mind requires you to exude that consciousness to your partner. So you would only want them to have pleasure. You would only want to be kind enough, service to them, and also to be receiving as well. But there's no consciousness there about taking and about what I can get out of the sexual act. It's the pretty much the opposite of what we see depicted in online content today where sex is about using another person and it's all about me and my and what can I get out of it, and did I get my orgasm? And that is a lower evolutionary mindset when it comes to sex. It keeps us at a very low level of consciousness to just be coming from that perspective of it's all about me. This whole topic discussed in the Gospel of Philip challenges that idea, doesn't make desire wrong. Desire, when it's actually fused with this higher will, desire is the pathway where spirit expresses itself. Your sexual desire is not impure. Your sexual desire becomes the conduit for spirit to actually be present in the room. So how does heaven show up on earth? How does the higher reality merge with this reality we're in on earth here? It shows up on earth when we as human beings become the conduit for it, when we become the vessels for it. And the most potent way to do that is through the sexual act. Because when we engage in a mindful way, when we're not rushing, wanting to perform or trying to make anything happen, it's not about trying to make anything happen. When we're just in it for the moment, luxuriating in the moment, then when we have turned our will over to this higher power, there's an opportunity for the presence of the divine to be made manifest in your body, and then through intercourse and the sharing of that consciousness, that automatically happens. You don't have to think about it, but that automatically happens with our partner, then that energy becomes present in the entire atmosphere of the room. And there's a shift in the atmosphere of the room. And so that right there is an example of how sex and desire are not the opposite of spirituality, or not even the opposite of Christianity. This Christian teaching was about bringing heaven to earth. And the most potent way to do that is when sex doesn't just be about, when sex is not just about an act of desire taking you over, but it's desire infused with this higher will. And that's what we all have the opportunity to do. You don't have to be Christian. I mean, these are not Christian mandates, these are just human ideas that yes, you have a will. Yes, there's an intelligence that pervades all life, but it's not just an impersonal, pantheistic idea. It's also an intimate sense. And it's very hard for us to wrap our mind around that. Like, how can something be everywhere present but care about me? How could something be everywhere present and know about what difficulties I'm having in my life? But it does. And I've experienced that in my life time and time again. And I can tell you, it is very personal. It absolutely is very personal. And the moments that we get to be re-reminded of that personal sense of the divine is through that communion act, which was the original holy communion ritual. That communion act with the divine through lovemaking when it becomes an act of will, not just desire. So I'll leave that with you for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. If this episode has been helpful to you, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.