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.
You can support our work and gain access to more unique content if you visit our Patreon: www.patreon.com/ccseminary
The Light in Every Thing
Re-Post: Consecration as Shadow Work - Episode 6 in the series, “Christian Shadow Work”
When we speak of spiritual transformation, we often imagine a straightforward process that’s similar to the way we work with the world of things and objects around us: if something is broken or imperfect all we need to do is fix it. We remove, correct or even eliminate the problem on the way to the goal.
In this next conversation, Patrick and Jonah recall how authentic Christ-centered transformation begins with a different orientation altogether. The key is not elimination at all but, instead, begins with simply witnessing our shadow with honesty and courage.
They reveal how this first step is connected to John the Baptist's call to repentance, providing the archetypal first step in transformation—creating space for us to "die before dying" by stepping outside ourselves to truly see our lives in a higher light. This conscious witnessing differs dramatically from forced confession or shame-based approaches that have plagued Christian communities. And it is foundational for deeper prayer.
What we learn in such witnessing can be hard to bear. The most painful part of this witnessing can be to see how our untransformed shadows don't just affect us or others—they flow into God Himself. This recognition that our inner and outer actions that flow from our untransformed shadow-Self actually wound the divine, opens up a piercing question: what can we do?
This us where the sacramental path comes in, offering a radically different understanding of sin and transformation. Rather than focusing on fixing problems, the sacrament for the self (the sacrament of consultation/confession) invites us to shift our attention toward a new and different kind of action. It calls us to offer something—and also to receive something.
Through this dual process of human offering and reception of divine grace, something wholly new can emerge—"the fire of love" that births a transformed identity no longer defined by our shadows but by our participation in divine self-giving.
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.
Hello everyone. This is Patrick Kennedy from the Light in Everything. We're going to be heading into the summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere and, after a very big and full year of work and an incredible path through the letter of Ephesians, together and Jonah and I just want to send you a warm greeting and let you know that we are going to be reposting episodes from our five years of podcasts that we think will be enjoyed by you all over these weeks until we pick our work back up again in September or the end of August. In September or the end of August, if you'd like to find out more of what's happening at the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, be sure to check out our website at christiancommunityseminaryca or go over to our Patreon site at patreoncom. Forward slash ccseminary to become a part of an incredible community of support of listeners who interact and engage with the podcast. Okay, enjoy ¶¶.
Speaker 3:Good morning Patrick. Hi Jonah. Still have this weird allergy going on.
Speaker 1:But we'll work through it. Just just keep like grunting and snorting and stuff and keep it. Keep it real.
Speaker 3:Here you know, we try to include everything light in everything even allergies.
Speaker 1:Awesome your gunk. Yeah, welcome everyone to our little podcast. We're really thankful we get to even have these conversations and more thankful that we get to share them as we speak together here at the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, in the GTA, the Greater Toronto Area, the greater Toronto area. So we begin each time with a little, a word, to outline and express a guiding aim in our work. This comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 8, and express a guiding aim in our work. This comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 8. Again, jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm always struck, again, by this word from John 8, the light of life, and it brings up into my heart this word also now from John 12, just a few chapters after that, where he's describing himself to the disciples and he says basically I am the light of the world, and those who connect with me, those who follow me, those who have this light of life, will gradually become sons of light. So it's quite striking that it's not just like you see a beacon of light and you know he's there, it's helpful.
Speaker 1:I see something. It's dark outside. I need a light to follow.
Speaker 3:It's also that, in connection with this light of life, it's going to have a power that gradually transforms me into His image and likeness, a son of light.
Speaker 1:There's some kind of germinal birth processes going on. I'm going to be born. There's some kind of germinal birth processes going on. I'm going to be born as a, as a new child, right Of a new kind of power.
Speaker 3:A new kind and a new kind of light. So it also implies, if we, if we think into it, that I'm not yet that light of life and so something in me has to be transformed is darkness, shadows that are of death. If I'm going to become a light, a son of the light of life, that which in me is of death and of darkness has to gradually be transformed. And last time, well, we've been working with this picture of how do we work with our shadow, how do we work with our darkness, our sin, and we looked at how there's no condemnation in Christ. We looked at how to be in relationship with the light, a kind of light of judgment and discernment where there is no condemnation. And then, last time, we looked at this process of metanoia or repentance. That is, in a way, the Gospel's orientation, way of transformation. Repentance, metanoia is the word that the Gospel uses again and again for transformation of heart and mind.
Speaker 3:But I wonder today, I guess the question that came up into my mind today to see if we can work with, would be to stick on this theme of transformation and ask okay, so we looked at the gospel, this repentance question, but how does this transformation of darkness, transformation of shadow. How does that get revealed to us? In the sacrament or on the esoteric path, or in your own life? How can we take another step further in this question of okay, there's a transformation going on, transmutation. Our being is going to be changed in relationship to this living light. If we look at the sacrament, the Eucharist, how does that take place? Or even the sacrament of consultation.
Speaker 1:Right, which is this new transformed name for what was called confession in the Catholic Church. For many listeners, that might be a strange thing. Sacrament of consultation yeah, how does?
Speaker 3:that transformation take place. Yeah, what arises for you, patrick, when we just say, okay, what is the Christian? How can we enter the Christian practice of transformation? Through the lens of the sacraments, yeah, through the lens of the sacraments we yeah, because I feel like we did the gospel in a way. I mean, they're all connected, of course.
Speaker 1:And then there's also the esoteric path, which is interesting, yes, yeah as well could be woven in is there a particular section kind of on your heart this morning to to, to focus in on, because you can some ways you could say like the entirety of, or yeah, maybe that's. Maybe that's even a way to say why. Sacraments like to look at the mystery of this presence of sacramental practice in light of the redemptive alchemical christ work in this world. What, why are they? How did how do they fit into that picture? Yeah, I mean in all, in some core way. Then it seems kind of easy to say that that's their interest.
Speaker 1:They are, they are interested in being a very specifically constructed medicine in relationship to wounds and shadows that exist in our becoming, a seven fold body of medicine that is born of the being of resurrection, who has gone through the suffering and death mysteries as well, so knows the whole picture and has incorporated the whole picture. You have this being who has incorporated the worst of the powers that are at work in the world, like even just thinking that the key to his redemptive deed was having a betrayer in his circle, someone in whom the opposite of his own energy was there, who hated what he was trying to do so much that he tried to completely sabotage it and, in the sabotaging ended up fulfilling the work like. That's so profound that the intended evil, the intended opposite energy, was so incorporated in the wisdom of god that that intention pierces the lord in such a way that his power unfolds on the earth. It's included and incorporated completely. Yeah, so that gives us a picture that somehow all of these anti-human forces are going to be a part of the redemptive work.
Speaker 3:I mean it's so powerful are going to be a part of the redemptive work. I mean, it's so powerful and that gospel picture, in a way then radically informs what you said, which is also a radical statement, that these seven sacraments, which in some ways could be understood as just things you do to be good and to be a Christian Right, You've got to go to church.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's some things you do so that you are not bad. Gospel picture that Christ fulfilled healing through incorporating evil, sabotaging evil and betrayal. That that gospel picture that medicinal activity is present in each of these seven. Activity is present in each of these seven and if we start to take part with those sacraments, that healing power can also transform us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a radical way to look at sacramental church life. Yeah, yeah, the the, having fulfilled the creative, transformational, alchemical work in his own individual human body, he then embodies himself in a community, and so that's why you find that the early Christians describe that the community is his new body. If that's not just metaphorical, then he's going to continue doing his redemptive, transformative, alchemical work in that body and that body is going to need nodal points of profound, creative, creative, transformational energies, and that's what we call sacraments. You get this seven-fold expression of that creative, transformative work in the course of human biography and human experience. In the course of human biography and human experience, that's just this like concentration of Christ, transformational energies in an action, the body of Jesus Christ at work. That feels just kind of foundational.
Speaker 3:I like that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Of course now we don't want to get into like a massive sacramental theology of like every one of our sacraments. That's not, I know that's not what we're going for, but just as a basic, yeah, as a basic orientation, but how could we?
Speaker 3:I mean what? Which doorway could we enter that would show? I mean, one comes to mind of the offering in the main, sacrament of Eucharist, consecration of man, or the sacrament of consultation, or the new confession sacrament, those two come to mind. But I mean we could pick any one, yeah, any doorway. Yeah. How does transformation actually look? What are some interesting signposts of the process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think, if we go back to that first action of that we've we've gone to again and again, which is to say, what prepares me for my relationship with this human being who is in which the divinity is present, the creator world word, that what prepares me is to step out of myself and look at myself and see the shadow. You know, this immersion in water has a kind of threshold right, like if, for example, in the ancient Greek tradition, the feeling was there's a river that divides this world and the other world, and if you cross this river, if you pass through its waters, you enter the underworld, that is, the world beyond death. And here is this man at the River Jordan, at the mouth of the Dead Sea, at the deepest point on the face of planet Earth, which is really just absolutely stunning, the absolutely deepest point on the face of planet.
Speaker 1:Earth which is really just absolutely stunning the absolutely deepest point on the surface Surface point below way, way, way below sea level. Deep and death, death. And that little river which is bringing life all the way down, that kind of dry valley runs into this lake in which almost nothing can live, a death, death lake, right, these. These were pictures at that time that people understood and there were no swimming lessons. You didn't grow up like I did with you know, like the local pool, and you went and you learned to swim Like water was dangerous, water was dangerous and you could easily drown.
Speaker 1:So this being submerged by someone into the death waters which go back to creation, imagery the very first thing that is there is darkness and the deep waters of the abyss. So this submersion into a death experience, rudolf Steiner and his research as to what was happening at that point when John was doing this, was that people were having out-of-body experiences. They were actually stepping out of themselves and seeing their life like you would. When you would die, you'd have the life review that so many people have been having in the last hundred years, these near death experiences where you're able to step out and see your life in light of the spirit and just be very truthful with yourself, because when you're inside yourself you're just kind of your shadow is active, just working through you. So the first shadow work is to step out of yourself and bear the gaze of your, of your, of your life and how you've behaved, choices. You make the thoughts you have, the feelings you have.
Speaker 1:Just as it says in our funeral service be think. Oh, human being, you are responsible for everything you have thought and felt and done. Yeah, it's this maturing of an inner spiritual ego force that's outside of the active shadow force that works in me unconsciously. So it's like dying before you die is shadow work, yeah, and then I'm free. Now I've got a second self and now I can stand outside myself, now I can turn and look, I can metanoia, I can shift my orientation towards who I am called to be. All that, oh, I could be. I see this one who is of light and I should be a child of that one, not just a child of my shadow. So these three selves are there.
Speaker 3:Nice, okay, that's really cool. So you're describing some fundamental steps of transformation. First, I have to be able to see shadow. I have to be separate enough, so to speak, witness enough to myself, that I can even begin, because if I can't see any of it, how is it going to be transformed?
Speaker 1:We call that the witness in our seminary schooling and why it's connected with John the Baptist, who's the witness.
Speaker 3:I'm here to bear witness to the light, the true light, and call you to bear witness to your shadow, amen. Amen. So that is the doorway. That is the doorway and it's interesting that that's also in the esoteric path of Rudolf Steiner that we have the name for Anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner again was very crucial in inspiring our movement for religious renewal In the way he describes his esoteric path. That's also the first step in all of the inner work and meditational work and soul exercises to strengthen your own ability to witness your shadow.
Speaker 3:Until it culminates into an encounter, until it culminates into an encounter until it culminates into a, like a spiritual experience, an encounter with yourself, with yourself as an untransformed shadow, broken being. Yeah, and yeah, so that's also so. Not only is that true on the esoteric path, but it's just fundamentally gospel truth as seen through John the Baptist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he prepares the way. You need to check yourself first. If you want to meet the being of truth, you need to practice being truthful with yourself. You need to practice being truthful with yourself and that's one of the core spiritual practices of all spiritual formation in the Christian tradition To really do deep, honest work again and again, Some kind of daily review. The Jesuit tradition has the examine, the work of a weekly review, a monthly review, a yearly review, a self-reflection. It's not really it's not strange, but it is also strange because it's self-reflection. It's one of the key expressions of how weird we are as humans is that we can step outside ourselves and look at ourselves. We can be self-conscious. Amen, so yeah, that work is the first step.
Speaker 3:It's the first step, and I feel like it's important for us to also, for example, in our consecration sacrament, consecration of the human being, eucharist sacrament. That's also very clearly a step, a first step before we can do any kind of offering. We're called, in sacramental language, to step out of ourselves, in a way, or behold ourselves in our weaknesses and our untransformed qualities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting because this is beautiful. So we talked also about how Christianity has had this shadow itself in recent history in its attempting to fulfill this first step. You know it's, it's really cool. In English we have an expression that actually one of our colleagues and my dear spouse, kate kennedy, was using recently a come to jesus moment. And a come to jesus moment is being really truthful. What's the situation, what's? Let's not be, let's not be rosy, rosy-eyed here. Let's be really clear and true. Do we have enough money in the bank to do this thing or not? We need to come to Jesus here.
Speaker 1:And the come to Jesus moment that expression comes from like tent meeting culture and real traditional evangelical Christian culture in the West. First, be convicted with witnessing of the ways in which I have cast shadows in this world. Feel the moral force of that beholding. That's going to tenderize me and open me to have a spiritual encounter with the grace of God. That's to have a spiritual encounter with the grace of God. That's the pattern of worship service in the tent meeting culture of Christian tradition. But the preacher's job was to like force that experience.
Speaker 1:We talked about that last time. Right, it's like we're going to like force, that experience on the listener Right, and it's so fascinating then to see how does this movement for religious renewal handle this? What's it going to do? This is just the truth to, to, to move in, move towards God Another way of saying that to cross the river, you're going to see the shadow. Yeah, it's just, it's just a spiritual lawfulness move closer to truth. You need you're going to encounter actually the truth and you're going to see untruth in your own being.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, or it'll put you to sleep because you can't handle it.
Speaker 3:That's it. You'll just sleep through it, or you'll go into some sort of denial or blame or whatever. Forms of sleeping, forms of sleeping Like don't wake me up.
Speaker 1:Alarm clock's going off and I'm putting my pillow over my head.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me, me, me, me, me me me.
Speaker 1:So isn't it amazing, jonah, that in our worship service that is present, this action is present, and the one who does it is the one worship, the celebrant, the priest at the altar, and no one else has to do it. There is no pressure, there is no forcing at all. Right, but you witness the one up front who is tasked with revealing the journey to the depths of God. The journey to the depths of God. They do it out loud, in a kind of archetypal image, and then everyone present can approach it or not.
Speaker 3:Right, they can join inwardly, or they can just stay kind of a spectator.
Speaker 1:To me this feels like this is the methodology of our age. You can, you unfold it like a rose, but you can never, ever force such a thing upon a person. No, you can show it, you can be it, yeah, but you can't grab someone and drag them into it. That's a violence. You can't do it and we?
Speaker 3:I'm curious how you see that well, yeah, yeah, for sure, no question. And we talked about that last time in the context of the Catholic confession Right, where kids often, or adults often, say when they were kids, I just made up things, yeah, I just made up things. Which shows also the attempt, even the attempt to force, never actually works.
Speaker 1:Yes, Even if I do try, and it's born out of the knowledge that you can't actually have a deep, profound, transformational experience with God without doing this step. Yeah, that was known, that's known. And then that means that your worship services could get weak. Yeah, if people aren't doing it and they'll just like, oh whatever, there's just swinging incense up there, it has nothing to do with me. So, in order to keep the depth of profound power and personal transformation, we're going to make people go through the shadow work right.
Speaker 3:One can understand this is the logic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And yet it backfires and it becomes an evil.
Speaker 1:It becomes an evil Because if you drag someone down to the river before John, you've missed the point. Yeah, you can't do that Now. You're actually acting out a shadow because you're enacting somebody else's spiritual process for them. It's not your job. You've overstepped. John makes a call and you come down to the river or you don't. That's your freedom and that's inviolable in the light of the God. That is love. You never violate that holy reality. But you would dishonor the freedom of human beings if you didn't show them the mysteries Right, we have to have.
Speaker 3:You can give them an option. Yeah, we're blessed to have a window through which we can step into in freedom, a window of the reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you think, when you see this priest walk in and their investments and you have the feeling this is a holy one, oh my gosh, they're so different than me, they're so much more advanced because, look, they're up there, they're consecrated, they're investments and then you watch them approach the altar and go up the steps and come nearer to the holy place and the golden chalice and then you hear I have strayed from you, I have denied you, I have weaknesses, I have weaknesses.
Speaker 1:If you hear that one say that like oh. A that maybe maybe they're not perfect after all, maybe they're more like me than I thought. B, they still seem welcomed by God.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, they're investments. They're investments in their life At the by God. They're investments. They're investments at the holy altar.
Speaker 1:They have weaknesses, they deny God and they get to be up there.
Speaker 3:Good point. No, the priest as a picture of worldly perfection is one of the most difficult things that we have to deal with. That is not the picture. And the picture of the priest that has wounds that are trying to become doorways to God that's what we actually see at the altar.
Speaker 1:A priest is there to represent our humanity. Yeah, I should be able to see in the priest myself yeah and when it's in its truth, not just in that idealized, yeah.
Speaker 3:Superhuman, no yeah then.
Speaker 1:So there, there we are right. Okay, here's someone who wants to worship. Here's someone who wants to approach god's altar. Here's someone wants to come into the deepest connection and contact and commune with god. And the first thing I hear investments, not secretly, before even entering the chapel, it's inside the chapel, it's so key, it's included in the holiest worship part of the service. Flowing out from me as priest, flowing out from me, oh divine, holy creator, reality, you ground of all things. Into your ground has flowed my shadows, my darknesses, my failings to fulfill what you have given me as promise, without any extra heavy sentimentality, just facts. Just this has happened. I have done these things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and a kind of healthy, a healthy shame, a healthy guilt is also appropriate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they're real and I find it utterly stunning that that sentence is described. It's not a confession in the sense that I'm just going to come up there and my job is to admit I did these things. It's the first part of a sentence. Good, it's a clause. All it's saying is because these things have happened, yeah, oh, what Wait? Because the okay, Because these things have happened, this all has flowed to you. I have a preciousness inside me which is my very soul, my very spirit. I want to give that to you. That is radical. I can't think of anything that's that, that that has this relationship, of a causal relationship. Because of all that, I want to give you the best I have to offer.
Speaker 3:This is very interesting. I want to emphasize what you're saying here, so that it seems to me that there's three qualities that we're naming. The first is the necessity of bearing witness. First of all, I need to become aware of my weaknesses, strains, denials of your being strong enough to see factual truth, Strong enough to see factual truth. And then the other element there that's pretty radical is that we're saying those are flowing into you.
Speaker 1:O Father God, like Abel's blood at Cain's murder. Like Abel's blood Flowing into the ground of the world.
Speaker 3:So not only is it, just I need to admit and become aware of this it's actually flowing into God and we're recognizing that. And then the third element that you just mentioned.
Speaker 1:It means I'm wounding God with my shadows too. I'm wounding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he is the receptor of my sin, my shadow, my brokenness. So that's also interesting. It's not just becoming aware in the sacramental technology, if you will, or sacramental archetypal processing, it's becoming aware and then recognizing that those weaknesses, those sins, those objective shadows are actually flowing into God. Yeah, into God, yeah. And then this third element that you mentioned because that flow is happening, because he's receiving a wounding, so to speak, from my untransformed self, because that's happening, I want to in a way, do something else for God. I want to take what is most holy in me, what is not something that is precious, like you said, and offer it to God. I'm not actually offering the shadows and sin. This is another really important discernment. Those are just flowing because I'm doing it, so it's kind of an unconscious offering but it's not really an offering.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's like something that's happening. It's happening, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I don't want to give it. I don't want these things to happen. Let's just be clear, yeah.
Speaker 3:Who wants to be broken and hurting God? Nobody. So those three elements becoming aware, recognizing that my shadow, my untransformedness is actually affecting God that's radical. It's so powerful, so powerful. And then, because of that, I want to find something in me that I can give consciously, freely. That is worthy, that is something beautiful. Yeah, that is my best. Yes, that's what an offering is. Yeah. Like in the old Jewish tradition, you offered your best cow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unblemished.
Speaker 3:Your unblemished sheep. Yeah, you offered what you could find Most valuable, what was most valuable, yeah. So those three elements seem to me to be very discernible and radical in this sacramental form of transformation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I lost count. I only got two. What were the three? So the first is witnessing? Oh yeah, the witnessing.
Speaker 3:yeah, Then recognizing my stuff, my brokenness is flowing to God.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like the depth of the witness is beyond myself and beyond the, maybe the people I've hurt, but actually this goes all the way. My shadows cast effects into the, into the reality of, of the divine.
Speaker 3:That's it. And this I mean we can also just kind of hyperlink this to Christ's word in the gospel that when you don't feed me, when you abuse other people, you're abusing me.
Speaker 1:Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.
Speaker 3:Right. So that's this archetype, that's the reality. Yeah, your sin, your trespass, your brokenness is wounding God and also others.
Speaker 1:So here I mean I just feel like this piece.
Speaker 1:I want to stay with it a little, because you could understand how hard it is to see that, how devastating Like for me in my life when I look back at people I was wanting to love and in the way I was loving I was hurting them, like how painful that is, how everything in me doesn't want it to be true and how it's like a piercing into my heart that the one I wanted to love I was actually wounding.
Speaker 1:If you extend that feeling out to the experience, the one you love most, who is the source of all things in all life you've also been hurting at the same time. This is very hard to stand in front of. It's another reason I think that you could say the spiritual technology of the sacramental worship service is the priest, you could say, takes that on and reveals it in a way that each person in the room can approach it at their degree of strength. It's a good point you can, because it would just slay you If you really could see that in its full reality. It's very, very hard to stay standing.
Speaker 3:Well, this is a very important point, because not only you and I, as ordained priests, are meant to take the brunt of that, so to speak, and the congregation members are left in freedom to approach that reality to the degree that they're able, because, again, the principle of forcing is not what's meant, not meant Again the principle of forcing is not what's meant, not meant.
Speaker 1:And yet, or in addition, I'm not able to do that.
Speaker 3:I know that's right To stand before that. Who can do that? To stand before the weight of that? So to me, that also shows that also gives us a window into what priest is. Priest is not just Jonah and Patrick, because we're strong enough, Right? Yes, thank you, and we've committed ourselves. It needs that. We're not strong enough, but it needs that commitment. But it also shows there is only one that can actually stand before that reality.
Speaker 1:The full reality of it.
Speaker 3:Right stand before that reality, the full reality of it Right, and I think that's why, rudolf Steiner, and that's why, in the pictures of the Book of Revelation, the one who stands at the altar with seven candles is the Son of man. Yeah, the representative of the true human being, as you mentioned before. Representative of the true human being as you mentioned before, the one who actually has the Lamb, who actually has taken on. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes upon himself the sin of humanity.
Speaker 1:They will see in this one coming in the realm of the clouds, the one they have pierced, the one they have pierced. The one they have pierced that's a part of our moment is to be able to see him and see whom we have pierced, and, as you say, it's more than any one of us is yet able to bear. So we too are actually just picturing the activity of a greater one than ourselves. That's right, and we too are participating as much as we can bear. Amen, that's right.
Speaker 3:And we too are participating as much as we can bear. Amen, and I think that's very important because Jesus Christ is the eternal priest yeah, we're just trying to reveal him.
Speaker 1:We're just trying to reveal him yeah.
Speaker 3:He is the priest even when there's no altar visible to the senses. Yeah, he is the one who is constantly making this offer and constantly recognizing this challenge. We're in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And if you track this part of the service, you could say we're in a process of joining with him in his priestly office Beautiful, and that just asks as much as we can, asks as much as we can do, as much as we can do to participate in this action awake and with fullness of life. So, yes, yeah, and luckily you could say you know, the veil isn't just fully rolled up at this moment, because we would all just fall down, right, we couldn't even continue the service probably.
Speaker 3:Exactly Also for a priest personality, patrick Jonah. We're also in this process.
Speaker 1:I probably have, to like, stop celebrating.
Speaker 3:So we're also left in freedom as personalities, even though we've committed to being at the altar investments.
Speaker 1:But there is a very genuine as far as this is a genuine, true word that we can speak from the heart. That matters, that's what matters as much as we is a genuine, true word that we can speak from the heart, that matters. That's what matters as much as we can do that, to go up and to make visible, make audible that moment of witnessing. But, as you say, because this word, because this has flowed to you, I want something else to flow to you as a gift.
Speaker 3:Right. So this is interesting Becoming aware of the shadow, knowing that it's flowing to God, that gives me the impetus to offer something of my best. Yeah, so how is that? That's an interesting description of transformation, or at least the beginning of it.
Speaker 1:The beginning of it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:What's being? Yeah, how does that go on? Or what's being transformed? How would we describe that? The sin, the darkness, is being first witnessed and then recognized as flowing to God.
Speaker 1:It's gone to the divine.
Speaker 3:So it's not necessarily transformed yet. No, it's just on the move and with me, yeah, but then I'm kind of. One step of this transformation is to not be fully identified with it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And actually take hold of something that is deeply of my bestness and identify with that.
Speaker 1:And give that Okay, awesome. So you said you're not fully identified with that, which is the denials, the weaknesses and the strayings from the way, and I hear of course you could say in many ways, the action is to identify it as mine. The first thing is to name it and to say I did that we talked about that Take responsibility, but that's not all of who, I am Right.
Speaker 1:There is something else still in me and that is, um, almost like a potential potential for any deed. Yeah, my, my whole soul, life and my eye, my, my individuality, yeah, and what I'm, what I would like now to do, is to participate in what Christ does. I want to give myself, I want to pour out to you the gift of my attention, my whole will, all of my feeling and my thinking. I want to give you, you could say, the sacrificial animal forces, the astral forces of my soul, the inner bull of my will, the inner lamb of my feeling and the inner dove of my thinking these three sacrificial animals of the ancient tradition.
Speaker 1:I want to give you them in their unblemished character.
Speaker 3:To you I turn my willing, my feeling united with Christ, my thinking that wants to live in the Holy Spirit's thinking, my thinking that wants to live in the Holy Spirit's thinking, which is all my image of God nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is. The Trinity is connected to the Trinity of my soul.
Speaker 3:Right I want to be if my willing is being united with God's willing and my feeling is united with Christ's presence and being and my thinking is thinking God's thoughts and I want to give it away. Then I'm like God, Then I'm the image and likeness of God, and that's what we're meant to be.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, that all of my forces are becoming a present Right, a gift to my loved one, are becoming a present, a gift to my loved one. Now I'm starting to activate the God nature in me, with that potential which led, on the one hand, when I was trying to take, take, take which is usually what the strains, denials and weaknesses is connected to. It's just like I have to take care of myself because no one's going to take care of me. I have to get it's that consumer being inside me, the one who takes for myself now instead shifts into being a giver. I want to also be a giver, as you have gifted me all these things. You gave me these powers. I want to give them to you. You have allowed me to use them as I want to use them. Well, guess what? I would like to gift them to you, pour them into a chalice and raise that chalice high to you.
Speaker 3:So it's very interesting because it's not normally, when we think of transformation, of darkness or sin or brokenness, we often think, okay, well, what is it and how do I fix it? How do I you know if I'm jealous or if I'm angry, how do I look into it and make it so that I'm not? But it seems to me this is a different gesture of transformation, fascinating At the beginning phase I'm not focused on the darkness, but I'm not in denial of the darkness. I've witnessed the darkness. I've said it's there. I've said I've witnessed the darkness. I've said it's there. I've said I've recognized it's actually flowing into God, which is just radical. And now I'm shifting my attention, I'm kind of resting myself, free from focusing on the darkness, even though it's there, and I'm focusing now on the best quality of me that I can give to God. That becomes a way of communing with God, but it's active. I'm offering my soul, my very being, to Him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which then culminates in the prayer at a next level, After this has all been poured into this golden receptacle, the chalice, we pray directly to Christ to offer us with Him. Now we've named this is what Christ does is he offers himself as a gift to God and to the universe, and his blood that flows into the earth is actually full of purified love. His very being is an offering. His very activity, his nature is self-offering, so that all of that then culminates in that line for me of offer us with you. So now we're trying to join into his priestly activity.
Speaker 3:So okay, so, if I'm tracking this right, so not only do we not try to fix our shadows, we're, so to speak, just letting them be in recognizing them and in their just factual flowing to God, but now this transformation path is focused on offering to God, with this other being called Christ Jesus. Yeah, so the transformation is. It's actually starting to look very like a capacity building as opposed to a problem solving. I mean, just to kind of put it in normal terms yeah, we're not focused on so much fixing anything. Yeah, we're focused on a capacity, yeah, and a feeling of joining with this one who's super good at it. Yes, exactly, jesus Christ. Like, offer us with you. Yeah, all in the light of transformation.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, we've kind of got it in the back of our mind At this point. You just see these two different streams. And there's this one stream that we didn't want to happen but happened on its own, and this other one we consciously and fully want to give as a gift of love, which is our very self and our soul forces, activating the image of God, realities inside us, to join with the one who is the very image of the divinity as a human, therefore the ultimate, priestly one to join in his activity. So now, what? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? How does it continue?
Speaker 3:And we may have to, we might, we might have to see where we are, I think, we need to kind of come to a close soon, but this is nice because we can continue it and maybe track. How does this transformational process really fully unfold in the sacrament of the consecration of the human being? Yeah, to make sacred what has clearly had suffered desecration.
Speaker 1:Exactly what has clearly had suffered desecration.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So maybe to end this part, what happens next? We join with his offering and then, well, what comes up into my mind? There's probably lots of places, but the kind of culmination of this offerings section is that in this offering that is now not just my offering, not just my giving my thinking, feeling willing to God, giving my thinking, feeling willing to God, asking that it be penetrated by him in his threefold nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, maybe can we take a moment right there, sure, before that last step, because that, maybe, is that other step, the actual call out to the Holy Spirit to consecrate the offering itself with your holy being. Oh, yeah, come to us, spirit of the wits of space and depths of time, and make sacred what I'm trying to offer. Yeah, it's not. It's also not enough on its own. I'm asking for your help to actually, with with your fire breath, to fully purify and consecrate it as well. Make it worthy through your grace.
Speaker 3:Through your grace, so in a way that also reflects us asking Christ to offer with us.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:His gift of grace, his being.
Speaker 1:But we started on our own. We started on our own From ourselves.
Speaker 3:Right. So then, maybe that's a good way to say this. Next step is really a prayer that we be helped to make this offering worthy, that Christ's presence, the Holy Spirit's presence, the fire of the Holy Spirit, and then finally, in this offering be born love. Something should be born out of this Be born the fire of love, which is also another prayer for grace that Christ Jesus is offering with us, that the Holy Spirit is present with us, that the substance of love become real in our offering Through a grace. May in this offering be born the fire of love. So that's also interesting. You could say this we turn the best of ourselves in this desire to be in communion with God, offering to God, and we also then pray for grace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. We join into the activity that Christ is always doing, offering. We pray for that consecrating grace then, to permeate our offering and actually all of this should be generative of a whole new identity. Yeah, this is to give birth to an eternal self, this third self. We've talked about these three selves that came up too.
Speaker 1:That first one, which is the self of the deeds I have done. The second one is the one that can step out and look at that, separate from it, and say I did that. But I'd like to shift and turn and I see this self-offering one and I say, hey, I want to be like him, I want to be a son of the light. Yeah, self-offering one, and I say, hey, I want to be like him, I want to be a son of the light. Yeah, and to become a son of the light, I start to participate in self-giving, praying that that be made consecrated and sacred through the power of this God. That is a fire, love, a love fire that can purify my gift, and then I'll actually participate in an experience of a new identity. Now I'm participating in a God self through a grace and through my offering. It's a double action, right.
Speaker 3:So the God self that we're trying to rest ourselves to from the fallen self, the God self that we want to identify with is both an offering self and a receiving of grace self at the same time, Same time. So the transformation is this journey that first recognizes our broken human being turns because that's a reality, turns to try to identify myself and join with the self that is offering and receiving God. Yeah, Offering with God and receiving God's fiery love.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so the great riddle now before us is what is all of that work that has just come about, this birth of a, of a new, a new experience of who I am through the practice of offering and the practice of receiving grace? What is that going to have to do with these shadows later on, amen? How will that be a part of actually healing and transformation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question to go into the next. Like we know that all of those sins have flowed, all that darkness has flowed to God, what's he going to?
Speaker 1:do with it. Congratulations, you can go live in the beautiful fire of love. But what about all that junk you've just done down there, right?
Speaker 3:so that's, that's great. I like that first first step, and then we'll see what unfolds. Nice, nice thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you ¶¶ ©. Transcript. Emily Beynon.