The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
The Soul’s Marriage with the Body & The Easter Mystery — Episode 53 in the series, “The Letter to the Ephesians”
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Good morning, patrick, all right, good morning to you, reverend Jonah Evans.
Speaker 3:Well, we're just going to have to do a little weather report.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is it Toronto weather report?
Speaker 3:Because it was negative 18 Celsius, what With wind chill this morning. And it's April 8th, and it's April 8th, it's April 8th, with kind of blizzard-like snow flurries and, of course, your spouse is outside right now, and it's a Welcoming cars to the school. Right, who hates it? It's a growing joke with the faculty at the Toronto Waldorf School that Katie always gets the coldest days to do the traffic yeah.
Speaker 2:My daughter was just like I think the technical term is pissed. She was just so angry she finished breakfast and then looked outside. She's like why?
Speaker 3:Why it's April.
Speaker 2:I was thinking to myself we need to do some submitting work tonight. That's right. Yeah, the world doesn't just bend to your pleasure, and we need to cultivate a muscle here.
Speaker 3:It's understandable too, because yesterday was so warm and beautiful, Getting delightful springy so interesting, but all these things springy, yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 2:But all these things, of course, have a great effect on our soul.
Speaker 3:They do indeed.
Speaker 2:But nothing like the Spirit.
Speaker 3:Indeed. Welcome everyone again to another episode of the Light in Everything.
Speaker 2:It's a little place where we try to have a deeper conversation into the mysteries of Christianity.
Speaker 3:And we'll begin, as we always do, with the gospel A drink from our coffee cup. The gospel of Joss.
Speaker 2:This is from the translation by Kalmia Biddleston, part of our Christian community movement. Chapter 8, verse 12. Jesus said to them again I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so very, very excited to continue this conversation about the fifth chapter of Ephesians, and we're going to continue what we've started for the last two or three episodes, trying to delve into this mystery of how Christ speaks about husbands and wives.
Speaker 2:And I find it extremely challenging I know you do too, Patrick, but also really the wrestling feels very fruitful to me so far Feels like it's simultaneously on a hot nerve in our world, but also like the heart of the whole secret of everything. So it's good secret of everything.
Speaker 3:So it's good. Yeah, the secret of everything lies in what weaves between a man and woman, in a way, and I think what's been inspiring for me in the past conversations is this work we've been doing, particularly with your relationship to the Old Testament, of gathering deep archetypes that have been founded and rooted in the original pictures of the interaction of God and human, but then more specifically male and female, as the dynamics arose between Yahweh and Adam and Eve. And I think to start we kind of ended with a bit of a cliffhanger of talking about a further dynamic as we gather these archetypes before we can kind of feel prepared to really address what Paul is saying here about women submitting and men giving themselves up fully to their wives, like Christ did for the church. It seems like we're still gathering some of the foundational archetypes.
Speaker 2:Would it also be helpful, maybe to read those sentences again? I wonder, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can do that.
Speaker 3:for sure, you mean the Ephesians From the letter to Ephesians yeah, Well, I can read the whole thing, but then I think it feels to me that we ended last time on looking more deeply into this further archetype as to why God said to Eve, after the consequences of her interaction with the serpent, that one of these consequences will be that Adam will rule over you. So with that in the background, which I'm hoping you can address a little more, we can then read this for context, what Paul is saying and then dive into this further exploration of archetypes. Sounds good, good, okay. So Paul here in verse 22,. I'll just read through verse 29, for today Gives us a good flavor of what we're trying to penetrate and work with. Flavor of what we're trying to penetrate and work with. Remember that Paul first is talking about everyone learning to imitate Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Speaker 3:So the submission mystery is actually universal for every human heart.
Speaker 2:That's very important. It's great to remember again. Nobody gets any different instruction actually there. Actually, everyone gets the same instruction to one another. That's like the foundation of Christian life, he's saying.
Speaker 3:So that's really important, that it's not just wives that submit. Nope, everyone submits to Christ and one another, yeah, out of reverence for Christ. This is so important.
Speaker 2:That's the foundational social order, and so yeah, so this is not.
Speaker 3:this is not actually in the detail, pointing out a particular section of humanity and making them subservient. It's actually saying these individuals, these wives, are going to be the leaders of teaching us how we all need to learn to submit to one another and to Christ.
Speaker 2:Or maybe again, we don't need to have an overvaluation of their role either, but to say they're going to be doing something in the unique relational pattern of that relationship. That is an expression of the relational pattern for everyone in Christ's community. Well said so. Therefore, it's actually not exceptional either in a negative or positive sense. I like that. It's actually you're called to do what we all are going to be called to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's not overvalue either.
Speaker 2:And that might be the issue with what's said to the husbands to look at. It'll be really interesting, but anyway we'll get there.
Speaker 3:So here's the text then. With that, with that in the background, this universal quality wives submit to your own husbands as to the lord, for the husband is the head of the wife. Even as christ is the head of the church, submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
Speaker 2:You want me to go on? Okay, well, just that. Quote then comes from Genesis.
Speaker 3:Therefore, this is Genesis he's quoting. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
Speaker 2:Because this is where I think if we don't go to that sentence, I don't think we can get to the mystery of what's going on and we will end up in a kind of either spirit archetype level only or soul archetype level only. Nice If we don't get to the flesh piece, then we're in a different territory and I think a lot of the concerns that are out there make a lot more sense.
Speaker 3:But anyway, that's a little bit pointing at some things, right, so we're going to get to those things.
Speaker 2:I think that's really good, but the flesh piece and the union.
Speaker 3:The union and the flesh piece. That's a deep mystery that we're going to work toward, but I think today it seems rightful that then, with all of that, we then go back to Genesis, like you've been leading us through, and pick up some of these final archetypes. Yeah, patrick, and okay. So why don't you take us forward then to gather these more challenging ones? After Eve has eaten from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, after Eve has eaten from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and these things. I think one of the secrets for me of why I love Scripture so much is its difficulty. So just reading through this again was difficult for me. I can imagine it was difficult for some of our listeners too. Just a line like wives submit to your husbands in everything Like you can just feel the abusive souls who see in that sentence a license to order their wives around because it's God-ordained.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, and that's happened countless times.
Speaker 2:Right, so you just feel that and you feel a little bit when anyone tells someone to submit. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's something dangerous there and that's, I think, the difference. It's like, without what comes before, he's articulating a Christ orientation that we submit to one another, so he's then going to walk through and he's also going to talk about children and other situations. So what does that look like in practice? To do that, then we have to look at real relationships. That's what he starts to do. Is to do that, then we have to look at real relationships. That's what he starts to do. So, anyway, it's like getting an irritant. Scripture can be an irritant and I hope people feel that's okay. Really, I think that's part of what Scripture does is it confronts us and that usually stirs us to like wait, wait a second what?
Speaker 2:And I got to go look and it starts me to seek the secret to the riddle. What is going on here? Can I enter into these things? Is there something in me that's wrong? Or is there something in scripture that's wrong? It could be. It could be I have to allow that as a possibility.
Speaker 2:It is a text that came through humans. Yeah, now, these humans, like Moses, were pretty special and they had went through very profound things like being placed in a casket as a child that was called an ark, into the river Nile and taken up and raised within the Egyptian mysteries as a prince of the Pharaoh. So he had access then also to the living flame of God that speaks as an.
Speaker 2:I am from the living tree, the tree of fire life, so it's a pretty amazing soul who had access to the beginnings of the formation of the human and is trying to share with us in this text what he saw there, so we can take these images in and try to understand what's happening in the world and in our lives. So, anyway, I feel like I wanted to say that again, feeling the appreciation for it, and we really got to get into the details. For example, this person who took from this tree of the knowledge actually is not yet Eve, she's just woman.
Speaker 3:Ezer, isn't it Ezer?
Speaker 2:The Ezer is the thing God wants to make find for Adam, for the human. It's not good that Adam is alone, and so he was looking to find first, or make then, an Ezer, but that is called then when it is made woman. So the ezer, which means like rescuer, helper, supporter, aid in times of great need, and this name for God God is my ezer is a main theme through the Old Testament.
Speaker 3:So the wife is God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Indeed. This separation of the one into the two is a part of the helping rescue work of God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's also just a profound fact that the division which for support, for help, One can ask a profound question well, what is helpful about this division?
Speaker 2:we'd spend at least one episode trying to articulate that as the archetype of all of world history and all of human life original unity, individuation, separation, new union without loss of individuality at the end. So this core archetype from separation through a marriage process into new union where independence has been gained as a result Beautifully said, where independence has been gained as a result Beautifully said, so at the beginning in chapters 2 and chapters 3, it's Adam which is earth human. It's not a name like Adam, like we think of, but it's the earth human is made. And that's really key, right, this picture of the formation of this earth human out of dust and water. Into the form it's formed, molded like clay, and the word adamah, which is the word for the earth there is like a red, ruddy soil. So it's this kind of reddish, earthy, earthy, red Human. I often think of Australian soil when I think of that.
Speaker 3:Right, I was just thinking that yeah.
Speaker 2:And this oldest aboriginal humanity that we have in Australia. So this ruddy earth soil is made out of misty water and dust, and then Yahweh comes, yahweh, elohim, and breathes into this. So something comes from the earth the form and something comes from God, the breath, and something comes from God, the breath. So the first human appears to us in the imagery of Genesis as already a marriage, something from earth and something from heaven. It's just so carefully and exactly described.
Speaker 2:And that breath element, the neshama, if you look through the rest of the Old Testament, also has to do with knowing and knowledge, wisdom, intelligence. It's part of the breath mystery. The people experienced what has made the universe, the breath of God which is full of intelligence. The world is intelligently and wisely made, and so when God noticed that this human being is not quite right yet, it's not good that this aloneness is there, the human can't look out into anything in creation and find a true complement to its own being a self-knowledge experience. I see myself in something, and so, then again, I think that the information is so key here in the text it's. He puts this earth, human, into a trance state, a kind of somnambulic sleep. It's sleep, but it's a sleep trance right, it's a technical world word from the mystery right world. So he puts adam into this sacred sleep and then doesn't go and make another human that's female out of the soil. That's very key, this Right, it's just like these little details.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, just hang out, I'll go make something other. Yeah, he reaches into the same being and pulls something out of it to make this second part. So it's very clear from that imagination then that woman is hidden in Adam. Adam has both woman and man. And that's when you get those first words, ish and Isha as a single entity. And the question is like, well, what part does he take?
Speaker 2:And he takes something from the side, and the side is the place. Sometimes it was thought of as a rib, the curved bone. It can be translated as like almost like an architectural buttress, and he then says that I built in Yahweh, elohim built woman. It's just an incredible picture. So there's a kind of church picture For the medieval Christians. They really understood this.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's building the original church and all these images that come from Paul in Ephesians are related to this picture. The community is the bride. He's building his community house in which he will dwell and be born anew out of it in us. So anyway, you can just see these are just a little bit of the details, but I think the key for me is the side is also where we have our heart and breath, this middle section of our humanity, not the head, not the limbs, but the side. So this, then, makes so much more sense than to see that the snake approaches her. There's a connection to knowing in this realm, beyond the normal sense world, in this garden, in this divine earth heaven garden, and she's seeking sacred, holy knowledge, god knowledge, moral knowing. So that's this picture of this being. The being who's created is coming from the side, not from the soil, not from the dust. She's the one who interacts with this higher being, the snake, and can talk with it and can have the initiative to take this knowing fruit, and apparently Adam's just there then and she gives it to him, and he has no actions, no agency, no question. Are you sure about this, didn't he say?
Speaker 2:So it seems to me, and I think the text will show this, that there is the inner part of us and the outer part, the breath-knower and the dust-man making up this whole human living next to each other in this divine space, this semi-divine, this kind of what would you call it like a, yeah, this place where heaven and earth come together in a garden space. So we hear what's told to the snake, that there will be this drama between her seed and his seed, and then to this woman the pain of childbirth, the desires that will be in contradiction to the husband or for the husband. It's not really clear exactly the text there in verse 16 of Genesis 3. But then it says but he shall rule over you. So she's clearly leading inside this garden space, active initiative, taking judging for herself, taking the fruit.
Speaker 2:And then what does God say to Adam? So let's hear it. What does God say to Adam? Because you have listened to the voice of your wife who, by the way, was crafted as your ezer, your helper, your helper, the one who's supposed to be from God to aid you and support you Because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you. You shall not eat it. It's like what would happen next.
Speaker 2:Cursed is the ground because of you. Yeah, look at that, he's talking about the ground. Right, she had no effect on the ground. Yeah, he has immediate effect on the ground and let's check out. Look at at that word. Oh, isn't that interesting, it's adamah yeah. Cursed is the adamah yeah.
Speaker 3:So there's clearly which makes sense, there's clearly a deep connection between adam and adamah. That's it, Because his actions lead to consequence for the earth For the earth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, her actions lead to consequences between she and the snake right and then and then a medicine this is what we talked about last time a little, a little bit, seems to be some kind of medicinal thing. You're bringing things into the world will now go through a pain process. That's going to be key you and the other thing is you won't be the ruler. You will have someone you will experience there's a power ruling over you, called your husband, something you are married to, something you become one flesh with. That's it. Yeah, we got to hold these exact descriptions, I think, in order to go back to the unique case of marriage. So he goes on. It's also. He says two sentences to the woman, and again it's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sentences to Adam, who just was like taking what she offered.
Speaker 2:So, listen, cursed is the ground because of you In pain. You shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. So, thorns and thistles, pain, sweat, hard work, eat bread Till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you will return. None of this is said to the woman, it's to Adam, to the man. You will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return. So this is this work for me in the meditation on scripture is take it super, super literally, not in the literalist way, not materialistically, not materialistically. That's the key. Not materialistically, but literally, like every word is meant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's I think we just just yeah, that's good, let's stop there, just just for we don't have to go into it, but that's.
Speaker 3:I think we just just yeah, that's good, let's stop there just just for we don't have to go into it. But that's a key for studying scripture, friends, is actually we have to take it literally but not materialistically. Yes, and to distinguish those two is very key. Yeah, because we're actually in this realm we're talking about before real matter was really fully formed. It was the dust. Image is the beginnings of matter, but these are spiritual realities that gradually became more and more hardened.
Speaker 2:Yes, and dust is then a key word throughout all of Scripture for the realm of death. Yeah, beautiful, the place where God is not. That's why he goes back to the dust. And we hear later in Scripture, for example, that the breath goes back to God. So we have this. If we take it literally, in a sense of literarily, like its structure and taking each word and poetic construction seriously, you return from the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust. Now Yahweh Elohim made this human. He knows he breathed into him. Why would he say you are dust? Why wouldn't he say for you are dust and breath and the dust part of you. No, he says to the man you are dust and you return to dust. So he's really limiting our understanding, hopefully so, for who this person is that he's talking to and who he was talking to, as the woman, I think, If we take it that literally and say so, who will now rule over her? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Who? Who is he saying? Then we'll rule over this one who has this draw to sacred secret knowledge and comes out of the human who's in a somnambulic sleep. And comes out of the.
Speaker 3:Which is an initiation picture that you rise from the dead.
Speaker 2:Out of the body.
Speaker 3:And the middle picture is a place of breath and heart, which is the life, the spirit.
Speaker 2:The soul life of the human.
Speaker 3:So if we stay close to those pictures you're guiding us to this, I think, very important picture that the ruler which makes total sense if we think about it, is death, the dust reality, the dust part of our human experience.
Speaker 2:That my soul feels I can't actually rule over my body. But insofar as I incarnate into an earthly body, my soul is subject and has to submit to the forces of death in the body and isn't free to simply go where it will. To simply go where it will. Astral projection, astral travel, expansion into the stars from which the soul has come Incarnation will mean I actually have to submit to my body A body that is decaying.
Speaker 2:So I think the original marriage picture is I have a part of me that is made out of the earth, elements of water or the life forces and the physical, material substances of the dust, but I come from the breath of God as a soul and I'm breathed into that body. But that part of me, because it's been infected by selfishness, is now going to go through a journey where it has to submit to the forces of gravity, of constriction and of death, to the dust human that I marry through incarnation. And this is really like the background to the whole buddhist path, for example, you could say, is divorce. How do I free my soul from the bonds of this marriage? Because I am married to the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this body has death and pain and right all this death and pain in it the separation from the divine. How do I extract myself from that so that I can unite with what is eternal? Only? And all of the ancient traditions worked on helping people extract their soul from their body so they could know the divine realm and then come back into the body and tell people about what they experienced there, and then come back into the body and tell people about what they experienced there, yeah.
Speaker 3:At least the Buddhism that is pre the great shift in the Buddhistic culture from the small boat to the big boat which is called Mahayana. Buddhism where it says I'm going to stay in the realm of death. Buddhism where it says I'm going to stay in the realm of death and I'm going to work to help all beings transform, but the word is often still liberate, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah?
Speaker 3:liberate, but it has, then, a deep connection to what I would call the Christ impulse, which is what Christ is doing coming into the realm of death and helping to liberate and save and transmute all of creation.
Speaker 2:And this is for me, then, the secret of the Christ mystery is oh, the problem is who we're married to, not that we should have to just divorce. We need a new Adam, because the soul, the complete human, is not just male, female, it's also inner human and outer human, heaven and earth.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. So this is extremely important. Actually, friends, this is revolutionary. The old Adam, the dust human, that is actually ruling over us, this is a cosmic marriage.
Speaker 2:We're talking about now, the very facts of life yeah, it's causing, but it's also like every human is participating in every human man and woman are participating in a marriage with the death human that rules over us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is dust, and you could say, from this perspective, I just love how you've built this up. That, because that is the case from the very beginning it sets us up for the need for a new Adam, a second Adam, a being that is, you could say, masculine or male in archetype, that will come and help us to find a new unity with a being that is not just death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an actual it's like. Now we can begin to understand why in the world do Christians celebrate a worship of their God by taking something that is of the dust world and of the water world to take in bread and wine, but bread and wine that has been transfigured and permeated with Christ's nature, and we call it body and blood. Those are the two Adam substances we need for our soul, adam's substances we need for our soul. It's our soul that is. Now it gets to the point where, if our soul is so married to this dust Adam we're going to be buried with, our inner human is at risk of sharing in the destiny of the one who goes back into the dust. So we're in, and that is why the Christian community understood this is a bridal moment. We, as our souls, we die to the dust Adam. That's the only way the divorce happens. We die to our old selves, but that only works for salvific work. We are made whole then, because now we're partial. We're made whole by being united with the body and blood of a new Adam.
Speaker 3:Communion, communion. That's why we practice communion. This is why we practice, we're actually letting go of an old union and uniting with a new marriage?
Speaker 2:Yes, and because his body and blood is full of life, it's a resurrected body and blood. It's a totally new reality. We experience participation in the divine rather than participation in that which has no future the dust.
Speaker 3:And so then there's also a new Eve. If I follow Okay, Eve is then working with the impulse to become like God, but now with a new orientation and understanding that if I eat this body and blood of Christ, I'm beginning to become like God, but in a new way, with a new knowledge.
Speaker 2:The taking of the fruit of this life tree?
Speaker 3:yes, that's because as we take communion we're being shaped and becoming like God. That's part of it. If I take in new body substance and new life substance, I'm saying I'm going to be shaped into the likeness and image of God.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So it's a new, rather than the serpent with a distorted image. It's become the true knowledge of what is good, and it's going to shape me into a redeemed likeness of.
Speaker 2:God, yes, and the doorway to that new life remains the gift of the dust atom.
Speaker 3:Right, so they're not mutually exclusive. One is the doorway to the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I submit to the experiences of pain and death as something that heals me of my selfishness, yeah, and opens me up in need to the one that truly can complete me, a fruit from the tree of life which is his body and blood.
Speaker 3:Which becomes also a new tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So they come together, they do yes, in a redeemed way. Amen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful. And so then, if I track the Gospels and look at figures like Mary the mother, mary Magdalene, mary of Bethany, and how they participate in Golgotha, yeah, they're the first ones to really recognize and they go through death of soul.
Speaker 2:Jesus goes through the mysteries of the death of the body, but at Jesus' birth a prophet comes to Mary and says a sword will pierce your heart. She's one of the only ones who can bear standing and watching her son be murdered, who is also the son of God being murdered, being pierced. Mary Magdalene rightfully people feel there's a bridal energy here. You look at the anointing imagery that's someone preparing the festal king for his wedding, anointing him with nard and the fragrances. It's a beauty and a sensual picture. So you see an image of us as bride preparing him for death. It's unbelievable and we can feel into each of these. They're real historical individualities but they're bearing and revealing to us also the human, a part of ourselves is pictured and this soul, feeling, middle element, feeling, knowing element is the accompaniment of, quote-unquote, the figures of the women.
Speaker 3:I just love. It's profound. Such a beautiful picture, patrick, and someday we're going to have to write some of this down so we can maybe have a new biblical commentary or something seminary produced. But I just want to clarify also that this seems to be saying that in this one regard, this mystery of one of the consequences is that Adam rules over Eve.
Speaker 2:Or the dust.
Speaker 3:Which is really from your pictures, from the Bible itself, the dust one rules, which is death rules. That, then, what we're called to do is work with this death rulership, especially in, now, the Christ mysteries, now the Christ mysteries. It's not like Christ has taken that away from us, but he's made it into a doorway for us to find the new Adam in and through it. Yes, yeah, so, nevertheless, it rules, death rules, death rules. And now seems to be the mystery that if I learn to die to the dust one, I can also find life in and through that, because of the new Adam. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The new marriage possibility.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and maybe I would just kind of maybe deepen what we're doing here by bringing in this element we've talked about before with the sun and the moon and the earth, this kind of core cosmological element. Yeah, another way of looking at this is what is the utterly uniquely earthly element that comes into being in?
Speaker 2:the universe, if not dust and death.
Speaker 2:And what we see in the woman in the beginning picture is a being who, if we take in, for example, this element of the night, of how he is put into this deep sleep and he, she, comes out of him and then is having these sacred conversations about divine knowledge, there's a lot of esoteric knowing which is being pointed at the soul that longs to interact with higher beings and know, know divine things and become godlike.
Speaker 2:I want also to become like God and the fact that this stuff goes all the way down into the body it's not just archetypes. Also, then these humans are separated and those archetypal, spiritual, creative forces shape our reproductive organs, like we're born into very, very different bodies. I mean, I can't even begin to imagine right now. I could, like touch it a little bit. What does it mean? Like that the moon has some relationship to a monthly rhythm of blood flow from my body as a woman and to live in a body that is so a part of the cosmic energies that it does that, and the month is from moon and the nine months there are these moon rhythms connected very much right down to the body and the ocean tides.
Speaker 3:It is amazing.
Speaker 2:The male body has a totally different rhythmic system. It isn't subject to those experiences at all at the level that they are. So this very big difference that goes right down into our bodies, and then spiritually, these traditions also, and this is, I think, so huge in this letter Jonah for me because it's also let me see if I can slow down Paul is worried about also the union of the pagans and the Jews. In this letter, a new humanity is trying to form where the two that were separate and a dividing wall was between them, the Hebrew people and the rest of the pagans. This is all coming together for me in this mystery as well.
Speaker 3:Right. We read that he describes that as his main mission is to reveal the inner unity of all humans.
Speaker 2:To become one new human being. Yeah, the two becoming one, and he talked about that for all of the separation between those two groups. All of the separation between those two groups, and probably the main separation, is the difference between clairvoyant knowing in the pagan tradition, ecstatic, pagan out-of-body experiences, and the embodied intellect intelligence of a Jacob, a Yaakov Israel, who nevertheless has an inner experience of the I am of God, even though the force of the intellect, which is connected to the dust world, predominates. But that's the earthly element and that's the earthly element and that's the new element. And actually that old way of knowing was from another era of world evolution this moon, knowing this night, knowing this dream, knowing that needed to submit itself to the earth, knowing the intellect, because we had to receive the gifts that the earth had to offer and not skip them.
Speaker 3:Right and the intellect is of the death realm.
Speaker 2:Totally, everyone knows it, everyone knows it.
Speaker 3:If you just do intellectual work, you feel dry, you feel empty, you feel kind of dead. Yes, yeah, so that's another expression of this ruling.
Speaker 2:And people who've studied the history of spirituality have a lot of pain here, and I think rightly so on the one hand, but also haven't. It's kind of like my daughter with the snow. It's kind of like my daughter with the snow broken through to the question why were all these ways of knowing, subdued, overcome, put into the background, oppressed, and intellectual knowledge rose in world culture in the West and now dominates our earth? Has something to do with our journey, our path into the death experience and the unique by death, not just that people die, but the experience of death in our consciousness, separated from God, separated from each other, cold intellectual mind, the desert. And now it's apparently time, according to Paul, to actually bring in the other element and complete the fullness that the feminine knowing, a new kind of clairvoyance, also a new experience of the divine world will have its place and can come in in a new way. Beautiful.
Speaker 3:In relationship to the death realm, but not limited. No, as a doorway, kind of you could say. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's amazing how many layers of this archetype, in terms of also just expanding it out to universal reality, which I think is just so important. But I mean, I know we have to end soon for today, but I wonder if we can come to some sort of kind of key picture of how we're going to then lead this further. This insight, this picture of why Adam was to rule, why death was to rule, seems to be. I just think it's beautiful how you've really opened that up for us. But how do we go further, patrick? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right. So maybe the summary in one regard is that the soul of the human being that longs to become like God, but was infected by a selfish desire within that, has been gifted a medicine in pain and death.
Speaker 3:Pain and death are medicines.
Speaker 2:Pain and death. That's such a beautiful and being powerless in the physical body? Yeah, not able to overcome its force, right so?
Speaker 3:you're having to have something rule over you to be powerless in a way. Yes, yeah, and that somehow that condition consequence is going to be we're not going to divorce ourselves from it in the Christian mysteries, we're somehow going to use it as a doorway powerlessness, death and pain to enter into true life.
Speaker 2:To the new life. Yeah.
Speaker 3:To the new Adam, to the new human, to the new Eve.
Speaker 2:Yes, and thereby become the bride made pure. That, all of that path, that journey through the pain and suffering of childbirth, that's the birth of our new selves. That's part of what's actually cleansing us of the selfishness.
Speaker 3:It's so powerful. What comes to me now is just this picture of kind of an old picture of purity and holiness, which you could imagine as a white garment yeah, like you're. You're dressed in white, pure, having divorced yourself from death, pain and and what's the third one, death, death, pain and Selfishness. Selfishness yeah.
Speaker 3:And now to find this new picture of holiness, which involves the doorway of death, pain and selfishness. Yeah, involves the doorway of death, pain and selfishness. Yeah, you're still in a white garment, but the picture comes to me that is proclaimed in the book of Revelation You've washed your garments in the blood of the lamb, yeah, which gives you a sense of taking up death, sacrificial death.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Taking up the selfishness and transmuting it into selflessness, Right as a new element that he pours out of his being pure selflessness. Which we've got it's his blood, which is what the man is asked to do in this dynamic. Yes. Which we maybe will come to next time? Yes, and then pain. Pain it's not gotten rid of, but it's gone through on the cross. The pain of childbirth becomes creative, Becomes creative.
Speaker 2:Generative yeah.
Speaker 3:Generative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a path, yeah, and I think at some point in the future we'll be done with the pain and the death when the old world has passed away. But clearly they have not finished playing their role.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's clearly shown in Scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That death is thrown into the pit and God wipes away every tear from the eye in New Jerusalem, when heaven and earth have fallen away and the new world has risen.
Speaker 2:So there's a kind of double. So the work, I think, for us is like let's see if this sounds right to you. I'm really curious. It's like I continue as a soul to submit to my body and actually I can make it a holy work as a bride because I've got teeth issues, I'm getting older, whatever I've got cancer, whatever Stuff happens to us through our body, that's where it comes to us. Stuff we go through. The soul goes through things thanks to the body, including very much our own deaths, and the way I submit to that can become a submission to the Father, the will of the Father who said you need to submit to this husband. And we see Christ do that. We see him submit to what his body brings to him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and what this dust world brings, not fight it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he submits to death and thereby overcomes it. Yeah, trusting that this has been gifted to him by the will of the Father. Yeah, so we also see Jesus being bridal, right, like he's submitting to the dust. Human Are they? And that act changes the world. So it's pictured to us as the highest act. And then the sacrificial gifting of his life for his friends that cleanses us. So it's utter selflessness and submission. Not to the Romans, he's not submitting right. Pilate says don't you know? I've got power to crucify or not, to crucify you or not. Jesus said you wouldn't have any of this power if someone higher had not put you there.
Speaker 3:I'm not submitting to you, I'm submitting to destiny to god's, given consequence to adam and adamah that is yeah, and I've got my thorn experience right now.
Speaker 2:And now I'm going to go the way of the dust too.
Speaker 3:So in a way, you could say from this and I'm just so grateful because I feel like these things are going to really help us understand our marriage sacrament, I think so.
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 3:That in a way you could say Jesus from this perspective. Jesus shows us the way of how to be a wife.
Speaker 2:If I'm called to be the bride to the bridegroom as a Christian, I need some picture of what that looks like. And this is, of course. You can feel all kinds of people squirming right now like in the universe, but it's, I think. I don't think there's any way other. It's. It's just taking it very seriously and then in your own heart and mind, trying to judge is this feel true? Sure, is this really mapping reality in a way that suddenly it makes so much more sense and and gives deeper meaning?
Speaker 3:yeah, I'm grateful, patrick me too, jonah.
Speaker 2:Thanks everyone, thank you guys ©. B Emily Beynon.