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: Light in the Darkness —Episode 8 in the series, “Christian Shadow Work”
In this final conversation of the Christian Shadow Work series, Jonah and Patrick first pause to look back—gathering the threads of what has been opened in the earlier episodes. From there, the focus turns toward the heart of transformation in following Christ: the Eucharist.
Here, in Christ’s life freely given—body and blood—we meet the highest image of what it means to be human: the overcoming of self-absorption, offered in love for the world. In His death and resurrection, the question of what to do with our own shadows finds its answer.
When we turn toward Him and allow His life to live in us, our shadows can be transformed into something new: not just burdens, but living crosses—like Golgotha itself—where the light of God shines in the darkness.
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. 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.
Speaker 2:Okay, enjoy © transcript Emily.
Speaker 1:Beynon, it's really early.
Speaker 3:It's super early, 6.30, in the country of New York, upstate New York, the country exactly.
Speaker 1:Like the land, the nation of New York, beautiful, beautiful, oh, I love of New York, beautiful, beautiful, oh I love this Columbia County and a beautiful week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, well, welcome everyone and good morning Patrick, to another Light in everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is our little conversation, pulse, little heartbeat of our work, from the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America where we seek, in a living, live, risk-it conversation, to get deeper and nearer and wider into the mysteries of Christianity, amen. So we'll read what we read at the beginning as our kind of opening bell that we ring as a guiding word for our conversation. This comes from the Gospel according to John, in the 8th chapter, verse 12. 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:Well, patrick. So I just have to say at the very beginning it's just, I really am. I love this theme that we've been working on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we're both realizing that even after six conversations seven, seven conversations.
Speaker 3:this is the eighth. Oh my, oh, my goodness, that we're just getting into it. In a way, we're trying to kind of lay certain foundations. We've looked at what even is a sin, a shadow. We've looked at how we become aware of that shadow. We've looked at this deep Christian truth that there's actually no condemnation in Christ when we're working with our sin and our shadow. And then the last couple of times, we've really started to see and work with pictures from the Gospels, but also laws, archetypal processes that shine through our sacrament, our Eucharist service, which is the gospel and the offertory in relationship to this process.
Speaker 1:We made a little headway into the third step.
Speaker 3:Right, we did. We just crossed the fire. Remember that was this, that was the final. We thought we have this. We just crossed the fire, remember that was this, that was the final one.
Speaker 1:We thought we had this pure thinking oh, that's right, loving heart, this pure soul freed up of of the impurities, right? So? And I challenged you, jonah, what's going on with all this purification stuff?
Speaker 3:Right, so so maybe that's that's kind of where I wanted to take up again, if I just try to encapsulate it quickly and then lay a question on you. We started in a nutshell, by you could say something revealing itself to us, an inspiration, the gospel, the revelation of the word of Christ, being something that sets us on a path. It even begins to show us what purification is. This first step, this first step, this first step, and then we have to encounter our shadow in the second step. We're called to become aware of our weaknesses, our strains and our denials of God. Right.
Speaker 1:And we talked about that also in terms of the person of John the Baptist, which it is the very season of right now, but also we looked at those gospel passages, this personality, this figure at the river calling people to take account of themselves.
Speaker 3:So, and that, just this time, this person, this being, is kind of the archetypal guide of this essential process of witnessing your shadow. Yeah, that happens, though, in order also not only to become aware of it, but to gather forces in your being that are not, it Right?
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so it's not that we're just meant to dwell and become kind of obsessed with our darkness that would be not the Christian path of integration but certainly to become aware of it as a reminder to gather the best of yourself and turn to God in offering.
Speaker 1:I'm just in awe listening to you describe it again. It's so powerful, right. But that also the witnessing is in part an extraction process. It's a liberation process. Something in me is pulling out to look at me Exactly, and that something that has been pulled out is also not of the shadow. It has light in it, seeing's right.
Speaker 3:This witness and what's very important there and important in the context of our time, because very often that that witness part that pulls out is then determined to be god right. So if I'm, I'm just witnessing things in my being, I'm not that. There's an incredible sense of liberation and there's a kind of can be a calmness and consciousness that feels very healing, which is very good. And yet our Christian sacrament teaches us that's not. That's just kind of the beginning, right.
Speaker 1:As does the gospel right. The whole, all of the Christian spirit says like that's just preparatory for someone who is coming. Exactly, it's preparing the way.
Speaker 3:It's preparing the way. It's really the archetypal John being. I am am not the light. I've come to bear witness to the light. So that's what, then. We're called to take up that part of ourself that is able to direct its and willing and feeling as an offering to God. And it's an active offering. It's not just an idea or some sort of resignation, surrender. I'm turning actively inwardly to be united with God Right.
Speaker 1:Can I take another moment again? I find going over these processes are so helpful. So the witness in me extracts out of myself is able to see the shadow, because that is it. It can tell what is made of shadow because it's actually feeling its gaze is, is full of the light. That is its true origin. It can differentiate between shadow and light because it's feeling the light and this turn towards the light source that you've just described. That's like the John prayer that we pray then at the end of our liturgy. May the bestower of light, the creator of light, fill our souls. So this prayer, this shift extraction looking at myself, and then this shift in turn to make this offering of thanks of my full soul forces, yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry, I keep interrupting, I don't know. It's good. It's good because it just I think it's also helpful to hear two different voices repeat these things, because they can be so ephemeral, right, yeah, maybe that's why, right, and grasp them clearly in pictures. Um, right, so then you could say then our process, as we turn and offer, we're also. We're not only offering our being, we're also asking the spirit to come and make holy our offering. We're recognizing, then very important it's Christ, who we want to join our offering. So we're offering, but it actually turns out to be his offering that we're joining with, asking him to unite with our offering. So it turns out to be a communion of offering that Christ is offering to God, and we actually want to free ourselves from our shadow to offer to him. At the same time, though, we can't forget we mentioned that that we recognize our shadow and our sin is flowing already to God.
Speaker 1:Right, right. It's not just sitting there in its contained form, right, something is actually going into the world.
Speaker 3:Right. So, because my sin and my shadow flows to you, I'm going to do this offering. I'm going to do this trying to unite my best part with what I know I can become the image and likeness of, and then asking for the Spirit, asking for His joining with our offering, and asking that the fire of love be born in our offering as a prayer. We begin to pray let this soul, the best of me, become a vessel for you, god, and somehow then, as we mentioned, that crosses this threshold of as we enter the third part. And it's pure. Now we notice Our thinking, our feeling, our willing is pure, our devotion is pure Because we've separated, distinguished and we've united and we've asked to be blessed.
Speaker 1:And we've gifted, and we've gifted, we've become a gifter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's also a good way to say it. We're not just asking to be to receive, we're also becoming and offering ourselves Trying to do what God does through God's help, exactly. So that's already, you could say, a purification process. You could say, okay, well, is that it Right? Are we done? Yeah, nice, because we've separated, we've joined with God, we've become pure.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:In a way you could say. The third step then reveals more and more the depth of that God self, what we're actually uniting with. But one could very easily ask here, and I would lay it on your heart to just lead us through this next phase is that it what happens? Is it just an extrication process? It seems that in the fourth step we come back into sickness, relationship with the adversary, a broken world. Yeah, it also begs the question what happens to that sin and shadow that goes to God?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So there seems to be two aspects that we still have to kind of try to work with After this liberation process and becoming and offering ourselves in entering a certain kind of purity. How does that purity, that new sense of offering self, integrate back into or work with the shadow, and how does God work with our shadow? Those are two questions. Let's see if we can do it. You know, when I ask those what comes? How do we take the next step there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, jonah. You, jonah. So I think for me, I don't know how it's really possible to complete the work of shadow integration without the understanding of, of the journey of the soul after death and the, the journey of the soul from highest spirit worlds back into the earth and being in this process of reincarnation, because somewhere you could say zooming out, you know we're, we're back in the, we're often in the details of the, of the, of the shadow work, right, the zoomed out picture of what we're doing is the deep and profound alchemy of our being. How does all that is lead in me become transformed into gold? Yeah, simply put. Simply put, and I'm a lead, not just I don't just have have lead because it was just around, I'm a lead generator. I'm putting lead into my being and into the universe, with our trespasses and failings, generating things that are heavy, that decay, that death in them and that block light. You know like I'm generating non-gold, right? And if the Christian models that have existed are only God, could you please fix it?
Speaker 1:I do not learn, grow or mature, and it would seem to me that one of the key secrets and if you read the gospel with this light, you'll see it there again and again is that there is a maturation process. This is about the angelic worlds of God having a little greenhouse called Earth and they're trying to grow this human into maturity, and that takes multiple, multiple incarnations to do the work and that is why we have this beautiful. You know, we can, we can be comforted with this beautiful hymn about amazing grace. It isn't just amazing grace. Thanks for doing all everything for me.
Speaker 1:There's this goal when we've been here 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we will have no less reason to sing his praise than when we just begun, because his final verse is the final right that there is. There's this picture of we're going to be in this process until we ourselves are a radiant sun, beautiful. So that's a that's. That's going to take some time right.
Speaker 3:So you're saying I just want to it. Because you're saying this integration of shadow it's not only, not only is God not doing it for us, because that wouldn't help us mature If God did it all.
Speaker 1:we would just be children still.
Speaker 3:That's right God did it all, we would just be children still. That's right, but it's in the very pictures of deep Christianity, of which Amazing Grace is a revelation of the song.
Speaker 1:And all of Paul's letters and all the book of Revelation.
Speaker 3:It's showing that we are to become a radiant sun, and that's going to take some time because God's not just snapping his fingers, or second.
Speaker 1:Corinthians yeah, remember when we came across that line. We are being transformed from glory to glory, in gradation or where that, from one degree, from one degree of glory to another. Yeah, yeah, there are. We're growing into glory, yeah, degree by degree, not just like boom, even though there's these other passages at the end time, in an instant and things like that, but there's this also. You have to balance that out. Yes, one degree to another.
Speaker 3:it's so, and that picture is not very often cultivated in our Christian milieu, because the emphasis has been understandably also God's side.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, there was a salvific deed done on that little hill in Judea. Yeah, that had to do with the healing salvation of all humanity in the earth. Amen.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, true, we're still on that ship.
Speaker 1:In fact, none of this work would even be possible without this Right, but like a seed, but given to us in such a way that our maturation process isn't removed from us and all done for us, but you could say, gifted the things we need and the access to the forces that we need to get there Right.
Speaker 3:So you're now saying to us that, if we look at the process from death to a new life because we need multiple lives to be in this maturation process it's not possible in one life. Yes, you're saying that this journey, this process from death to new life, is helpful for us to look at, to understand the integration of the shadow in the big picture and the small picture. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So in an amazing way then you could say the worship service, the Christian worship service. It has a task to make available to us the forces of highest heaven while we're living our life on earth, so that we can pull off this alchemical transformation. That means something of the forces that we normally receive while on the other side of the threshold after death, out of the body, in the different regions of heaven. Those forces need to be accessible through Christ while we're living on the earth, the Lord of the heavenly forces on earth.
Speaker 1:Beautiful Next, like basic, basic thought. But now we're going to get super Esdere Christian here. Okay, hold on to your pants. Woohoo. So St Paul gives this story. 2 Corinthians, I do believe Correct me if I'm wrong Yep, where he's kind of mockingly talking about I don't want to be a boaster like other boasters and tell you about the story of someone who was in the third heaven. Right, it's a great thing, because if, without these phrases, these little phrases that are there, we wouldn't know that the early Christians actually had a worldview that involved the seven heavens.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just like there's just heaven. But you read the Gospel of Matthew and you see the heavens, the heavens. Why is it multiple heavens? Yeah, there's multiple regions of heaven, and they shared that with their pagan brothers and sisters is known in medieval Christianity, esoteric Christianity and the ancient pagan world as the one ruled by a spirit whose physical expression is the planet, venus, the star, the morning star, actually, this mysterious realm, you could say, where the ruling force is love.
Speaker 1:In our service we are going through these heavens and you can see the gateway, and the gates to this region are marked super clearly if you have eyes to see. And at the end of our offering service, we speak of this fire of love, creative, of being, and we cross into this sphere of love, this Venus sphere, and then we begin this communal prayers that are all about joining in union, unity, union, joining marriage, imagery all kinds of, and the priest opens their arms and asks christ to enter. It's just so beautiful. And the offering of our pure thinking, our loving heart, our devoted will. These are just very high, beautiful pictures from this venus realm, this love realm of the union, of the bride and bridegroom imagery from christianity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this, and we come to the gate of venus and bridegroom imagery from Christianity, and we come to the gate of Venus and when we are passing through the heavenly forces realms into the fourth heaven, we have another love gate and the additional element that's brought in is we pray that the Father let the Son become active in the bread and the wine. Suddenly we name for the first time the bread and the wine, this Son. Who is this Son? The one who has his being in love. So the love is mentioned twice and it's at the two gates of this Venus sphere, so that when we get to the second gate we're passing, but now we're passing into the realm where we're going to be talking about bread and wine, which is now the realm of the sun. The fourth sphere is the sun sphere and in that sphere there are two things going on always the Last Supper and the Mystery of Gaggatha.
Speaker 3:So you're now just for our listeners also.
Speaker 2:You're now just for our listeners also.
Speaker 3:you're not only describing, you're linking the path from death through the spiritual spheres. You're linking that and seeing that reflected in our Eucharist service.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why are we all facing the same direction? Because we're on a journey. Yeah, we're passing through these regions to receive their forces, just like a soul would after death.
Speaker 3:Right. So now we're in, we've passed through the love sphere and we're in the sun sphere, so to speak, and you're saying there's two things that are always present there the Last Supper and the mystery of Golgotha yes, which are earthly things, earthly things. So, even when we die, we pass through the realm that is revealing and constantly practiced, even though it's an earthly reality the sun sphere, where Golgotha and Last Supper are being constantly shown, revealed, done, done.
Speaker 1:Shown, revealed, done, done. It's a living, pulsing presence generating resurrection, life. Why? Because that being came to earth, the being who's dwelling in the cosmos, cosmically, was between the highest stars and the earth. You could say the place of the cosmic high priest between highest heaven and earth is the sun. There are three regions above the sun this Christ sphere, the sun is, of course, also in highest heaven, but there's another way in which this region is also expressing the heart of heaven, the head and the stars, the feet of the earth, the single cosmic human being. And the sun sphere is the heart of that one single human, the heart of that one single human.
Speaker 1:And the reason we see those images of the Last Supper and the Mystery of Golgotha is because he took those sun mysteries and he implanted them into the earth through his biography. So we enter that sphere and then we are initiated into the mysteries of love at an even deeper level than the offering we did back at the beginning of this process. There, which were the first two spheres, the purification spheres, yeah, the purification spheres, where we, through participating and offering our soul forces, we were able to enter the Venus sphere Now, by moving into the realm of the bread and the wine. Now he's moving into deeper layers of reality that can generate body and blood. That's just another level, that's not soul forces, that's much, much deeper, where the sun can work, with growing plants, for example, and body making, shaping the Elohim exousiai body, creating mysteries.
Speaker 1:And there we see the opposite of what we are normally doing with our body, which is taking from the world and holding on to our body to be an ego. We see him taking substances, extending his ego into them and giving it away. We see offering at the level he's able to offer his body and blood for the life of the world. Just as the sun offers its sun rays, pouring it out, the sun is itself actually burning itself up and dying into the world so that we can have life. He's showing there's a version of being a human. There's a version of being a human that overcomes egotism all the way down to the body and blood. He shares it, he offers and gifts it and creates community.
Speaker 3:First step within that Beautiful. So, in a way, simply put, when we enter the transubstantiation section that you're talking about, when we enter the sun sphere after death, we touch a picture of the highest reality of the human being that is so connected to love. It learns to express its very being, its very identity in giving its whole being being even into its body, just like the sun gives itself, is burning itself up for the life of the world.
Speaker 1:And that's, you said, that's how egotism is being ultimately overcome, all the way down into the body, not just in the soul which we start, which we can participate in now, mm-hmm, we can start, yeah, to transform our souls Right by offering our soul forces. Sure, that's this age.
Speaker 3:It's the same gesture, same gesture, but it's just at a smaller degree.
Speaker 1:It's like where we begin to have a little authority is what we're doing with our thoughts, feelings and will Right In the offering. But then we have to join as a community and enter into a sphere where someone is working, who can work at another layer of reality, like the fullest, deepest, but the archetype remains.
Speaker 3:It's not different, right?
Speaker 1:So you get a glimpse of the highest human expression, in fact, because we've joined forces as a community and there actually is a larger soul than any of us who's taken us with it into this realm. We're participating in it, and how that expresses itself is it's reenacted. The priest reenacts the gifting of those things to the disciples and we have a simultaneous experience as a community of spiritually receiving them and experiencing ourselves in the priest, meaning in Christ, giving them. We actually get to taste, feel what it feels like to gift. Even though it's not something we can do ourselves, we're kind of taken up into him and feel the gifting he's doing. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:that's hard for me to describe. It makes sense to me. So it's not just your activity, it's his gifting and offering that we become so connected to, that we become in that image and likeness, that offering, but it's full of him.
Speaker 1:We're like, we're like cells in his body. Yeah, he, he's the operating eye within it, but we feel ourselves in it like, if you imagine, each one of us is a little spark within the fire of the sun, but the actual engine of that sun activity is his eye. Yeah, but we, because we're so inside him, we're feeling that feeling of egotism, ultimately and fully reversed and healed Cause. That's why I feel like glimpse wasn't enough. It's like somehow we're feeling it in our, in ourselves, not that we can ascribe it at all to our own activity right.
Speaker 1:So it's not just like you get a glimpse of someone walking down the street, you, you get an experience of the, even if it's in kind of chronological time, momentary, you get a full experience of what that realityifting themselves away and as I feel my eye in that, I feel the most beautiful, true and good thing that exists in the universe and I'm feeling healing, just participating in him doing it, participating in the sense of beholding, in such a way that I'm feeling his activity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and feeling. That's where my truest humanity is, oh yeah, that's where I'm trying to go. So, it's also a kind of not remembering like it's a past only thing, past, only Thing, but also Because it was something In the past but it's current and I'm remembering In the sense of rejoining my members to its reality.
Speaker 1:How beautiful is that Right? So that's sometimes. That's why we started too. We were with him in the very. We were with him in the very, we were inside him in the very beginning.
Speaker 2:Very beginning. That's why it's a remembering also.
Speaker 3:Exactly so in that sense, when Plato says all knowledge is a remembering, or when we often say in Christian tradition do this Eucharist, do this Last Supper enactment in remembrance of me. It's not that we're excluding that, it's just integrated into remembering as a very deep, full reality of connecting to our truest humanity. So we do that after death too. That's pretty, pretty remarkable statement.
Speaker 1:And on our way to earth. Yeah, so it's also a prenatal, a pre-birth thing. That's why it's also a remembering. It's like, as we're coming back down from highest heaven, we pass through that same sphere again and it's, you could say, readying us, equipping us with those forces, life forces that are born not by taking from the world but through this self-gifting. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the bread of life. This I am is true life. He's just revealing that to us in that realm.
Speaker 3:Right and it's explicit in the sacrament, in the consecration, where it says in coming close to this reality, your divine self, your true human is given to you again. And it looks like this Death resurrection revelation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is happening in the same prayers that Jonah's talking about, that after the reenactment of the Last Supper there are these continued words from Christ where he says take this into your thinking, which our new translation, our new expression of, do this in remembrance of me, Take this into your active, present thinking, activity which we offered back in the offering section, and then say that prayer again Thus thinks in us.
Speaker 3:So it's not just I'm conjuring up thoughts, which is not really a thing anyway, but this being, this process, this true humanity, this true offering, overcoming the depths of egotism, is starting to think in us. Christ's suffering and death, his resurrection, his shining revelation, so it says to us, our true being is. Golgotha is also the supper expression of take me as, take my body, take my blood as life.
Speaker 1:So now we're in it. Now we're in it Because that means one could have, could have thought and then this was true before the incarnation of christ that the the path to sun humanness is to leave the body. Yes, good, just as we've been doing. Go up into this fourth heaven and experience our true I am, in this cosmic, I am who gifts itself away and expresses itself in this sun, the source of life. You're like, yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:Awesome, you've got to get out of that heaviness that lead, that darkness in order to participate in that sun ego-hood, yeah.
Speaker 3:This was always the way, up until just 2,000 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have people going through initiation process to get them out of the body. You had them taking substances to get them out of the body. That's give to bliss. You got to get out of there to oh yeah. And you're remembering, yeah, you're remembering, you're true, being so you're looking backwards, yeah, you're remembering, you're looking backwards. Yeah, so the moment we begin to say, take this into your thinking, that's a force that also begins to enter humanity. Just before the mystery of kongfa, people weren't really thinking like we think you don't you know?
Speaker 1:philosophy doesn't start just a few hundred years before christ? Really, people need to remember that Thinking is like the way we think is actually a bit of a. It's a new birthing process, a new organ actually in humanity, and it's the most shadowy thing we do. Our earthly thinking is utterly shadowy. When we reach the sun sphere, we enter cosmic, divine thinking, which is generative, formative, it is logos. All right, we're there, we make it over the sun sphere and guess what it says? And it's expression now is fulfilled on the earth with a cross.
Speaker 3:So you're now, now we're going back down.
Speaker 1:We're way up in fourth heaven and he's like look down there. This is where the divine I am expresses itself, and when you take me into you, that is where you will come to your fullest glory.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. So if we go back to 2 Corinthians that you already cited, in chapter 12, where Paul says these three heavens he's been there, he's done that in his earthly life how the revelation of Christ's being as a spiritual experience is going to work into and through the thorn as grace. So I love this direction so now we're taking. Okay, so you could think that it's just about escaping your shadow, being escaping your sinful self, joining with the sun sphere, but that's not the end of the journey.
Speaker 1:No, and the sun human teaches us something, right there, right, about the value of the earth. It's about the earth.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I just so okay.
Speaker 3:So how does this now start to integrate? How do we take up with this new inspiration, this new, more than a glimpse Right inspiration, this new, more than a glimpse? How do we take up with this archetypal picture of what true love, true overcoming of egotism is? How do we integrate that thinking, that being, that reality of our true humanity into our lives, earthly world, yeah, Well, amazingly right At that point in our service, we don't turn around yet and go back to the earth.
Speaker 1:You could say we take a new step to get ready, and this is for me. I want to go back to what you described so beautifully. Let's go back to the beginning to get ready, and this is for me. I want to go back to what you described so beautifully. Let's go back to the beginning. So, first step, john calls us to step out of ourselves to look at ourselves. So this extraction process of a part of our soul which isn't inside the body, that is able to witness ourselves, right, we have to do it. Self-reflection means I'm starting to step out of myself. Then we have this picture of turning towards the one who is coming towards the heavenly world. I can make an offering, god your love, your reality is so beautiful You've had to receive my darknesses have flowed into you. I want to give you my best and in so doing, through your Holy Spirit, my offering can give birth to this love force in the soul. So my offering in the soul realm can give birth to a fire of love, this altar fire of offering. Now we've moved up, actually, into this sun sphere which points at the mystery of God's life being revealed in death and suffering, in resurrection and revelation the whole process of Mr Kogba. Okay, now we've had a vision of the fully fulfilled divine human being. We have to finish the extraction process, not just extraction, we need to complete the marriage.
Speaker 1:So, okay, the issue of our soul is that in the language of esoteric Christianity and esoteric Hebrew sages who wrote Genesis, there are two parts of who we are. There's the inner soul part that we call even life, and then there's the outer body part we call the atom and dust, and they are. That's the first marriage. The soul is married to the body, adam that gets infected with the poison of a being greater than ourselves. Lucifer comes in the snake, he poisons it so that there's something in the lead. Lead is poisonous and it turns out because the infection is from a being greater than ourselves. We can't actually heal it of ourselves, even if we know all these things and we see and we witness, we don't. We can't.
Speaker 1:So what's the solution? According to Christianity, the solution is you need to die because your life in your body is a marriage and divorce is only allowed after death. Death is a divorce. According to Christianity. You're extracting your Eve from your Adam. But you have to get married again. You have to be made whole. Wholeness is marriage. So now you need to get married to the bridegroom who has no poison in him.
Speaker 3:He's gold, he is the gold human, the sun human, the one we found in the sun sphere, in the transubstantiation, who is practicing Golgotha? And the Last.
Speaker 1:Supper, or in other words, his body and blood, has no snake poison in it. It's resurrection forces, it's after the healing, it's resurrection forces, it's after the healing. So, this image of the prayer that we say is help my soul forces, my thinking and willing, extract themselves, rest themselves free from the load of sin, the lead, the weight. Sin, the lead, the weight, so that I may join with you, o Christ. This joining, so now there's this new marriage. We need to wholly hold to him and begin to have a new identity in and with him, a new human being, which is our soul, united with Christ. That, then, is what we. If we're doing that, then we've got a chance to work with our sin body in such a way that it becomes a Golgotha in our life. That is something through which God's life can be revealed. Otherwise, it would just bury us.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that's very interesting. So after we make this journey through death or through the consecration of the human being, eucharist service, we're so inspired by the Christ activity that we find in the transubstantiation and in the sun sphere. We're so inspired we feel that's our true humanity. That's also what we want to then marry. But we have to practice that marriage as we come back into and relate to the old human.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, I'll never feel at peace with this world.
Speaker 3:So we come back into a relationship with our shadow being, which is in the consecration service, expressed as the world which is broken or our sick dwelling. Our sick dwelling which is your body, your soul, your whole, wherever you find it in yourself. Our sick dwelling and the adversary's realm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were the enemies at work. The snake and the beast are at work, just as they were on Golgotha with Jesus Right.
Speaker 3:It's not separate. So now you said this remarkable thing that those things broken world, sick dwelling, for example, my thoughts of anxiety and fear and jealousy, all those things, all those things I find in my house of my being, or the adversarial forces themselves, the fact that evil rules this reality, all those things are not just to remain just that, but now, in relationship to this new marriage that I'm trying to remember in my being, constantly lift myself to and receive in the milieu of this darkness, that starts to transform the darkness, the sick dwelling, the broken world, into a cross, into a Golgotha place where I can start to feel. On this cross, in this cross, in this darkness, there's the light of God starting to shine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that fair, beautifully said. That means where is the place where my son, humanity, will be fulfilled? Yeah, in my life, in my life, so on the earth, right with my shadow and darknesses. That's where this process is fulfilled, right so that's quite radical.
Speaker 3:It's not fulfilled just by experiencing in the sun sphere. It has to be brought down again so that it can be experienced in the cross.
Speaker 1:Yes, Of our body, of our life. Right, as Luke says, each day, take up your cross, yeah, and follow me.
Speaker 3:Which now, in this light, does not mean just suffer, just bear stuff. Just bear it and grit your teeth. No, so you're saying, now the practice is, let me experience this Golgotha and grit your teeth. No, so you're saying, now the practice is, let me experience this Golgotha. Peace in the midst of the broken world, and that peace starts to what slowly melt, change the shadow realm into not just mere darkness and suffering, but the place of divine life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we may then find ourselves then turning to, well, what happened in jesus's life. Now I've got a different interest in his biography because he's showing me how sun, humanity, life-giving, transformed, sun, ego hood comes to birth on earth. Oh, now I'm reading that gospel a little differently and then I see, oh, judas is essential, peter the denier is essential, pilate is essential. The crowd chanting crucify him Is essential, is essential. That means, oh, the things I'm going to go through that feel like they're against me, have powers in them that can transform me. Jesus is himself changed by all he goes through. Jesus is himself changed by all he goes through. Those forces help the process, actually in the end, of piercing and opening him so that he can give his gift Right. He can't fulfill his mission without Judas, for example.
Speaker 3:Without that. So we need the shadows, then. So this integrated process is coming back into the shadows as necessary, coming back into our experiences of weaknesses as necessary, but not just in and of themselves, not just to be related to them, but to start to bring in the remembrance of this spirit that we found in the sun's sphere, this shining peace, this sense of wholeness, this recognition of him in the midst. Paul describes it in Corinthians 2 as deep spirit, comfort in affliction, comfort in affliction, yeah, feeling the light, being led by the light of life in the darkness, which we start with.
Speaker 1:That's so beautiful, so like when the one we love as a teacher, rudolf Steiner describes a human soul who's able to be totally able to actually look at their shadow, their double. They see that's not just shadow. Those things themselves are seeds, the seeds of my maturation, the seeds of my maturing and my becoming. Yes, and Christ shows us in the sun sphere, my work is to keep you connected with your shadow. I'm actually going to be the cosmic force and power and being who keeps you connected with the thing that can transform you into your sun human.
Speaker 3:And that you can experience the cross. So it's not just what Patrick's not saying is that he just wants you to suffer. No, he wants you to have the opportunity to become fully yourself, yes, and experience this life of God on the cross, in the cross, yeah. So, for example, I mean it just comes into my heart. I mean we're coming to a close, but just yesterday, I was experiencing this incredible anxiety of various burdens that seem to be just gnawing on my consciousness. We've all experienced that, yeah, and instead of just wanting to shut it out because I've, I'm trying to remember okay, lord, help me to feel your peace in this anxiety. But that wasn't enough. It started to reveal the anxiety was deeper. There was something deeper than just anxiousness. I was angry, I was irritated that all of these, that I had to be related to, all of these problems which means you're kind of irritated with god, right, like why have you brought these things to me?
Speaker 3:give me a break, and yet I thankfully, I kept remembering. These are not there to just punish you, make you laugh. They're there as a possible cross experience where I can find. But what is the light that I need here? Help me to trust, help me to let go of my surrender to this. That helps anger, maybe. So I started to pray for surrender power. That wasn't enough. It then revealed that these were just. I was feeling overwhelmed with the burden. It was just too much for me to carry, and it revealed a funny thought in me that was well, why are you carrying on your own?
Speaker 1:So I just find this amazing. That's such a beautiful description. When you get down to the actual, if you can put into words, yeah, what you're doing, when you get to that place with your, how you hear a new voice, yeah, suddenly it's, it's just there, it's just there if you stick with.
Speaker 3:So this is an integral sticking the shadow, not as a punishment or just a problem to solve, but how is it going to reveal a place where this needed Golgotha light can come in? And finally I realized oh, my shadow taught me. I'm longing to feel the faith that he is carrying everything with me I had forgotten?
Speaker 1:You weren't, yeah, so it taught you, it showed you another way in which you were looking away from God.
Speaker 3:Looking away, looking away from God Looking away. So my intention was to remember this light of Golgotha in the midst of the school of my shadow world. And so then in that shadow world, it didn't take away that reality, but it added the light of to my own remembering. Lord, help me feel your carrying of these problems with me. Help me remember and trust and have the faith and let me feel that faith that you are holding with me. All of this, all these things, all these things that are overwhelming me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, then it became that sun light, that sun offering, because he's offering his being in that carrying in the midst of the shadow, which starts to change the shadow into not mere suffering but a cross that I'm bearing with him, or he's bearing with me in reality. So that feels to me like something of also, or he's bearing with me in reality. So that feels to me like something of also, just the archetype of what you're describing as we come back into this world, from being inspired by our true humanity as we come back. And how do we remember that light in the midst of the school of our shadow?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we need this relationship with all of those heavenly forces, but while we're here embodied, yeah, and the worship service is to open doors to them, and the more you are schooled in them as a disciple of christ, you can open to the one we call in our creed the lord of the heavenly forces on earth. On the earth, while you're in the middle of handling an issue, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:The Lord of the heavenly forces that we've met either after death or in the consecration in his being, yeah, and we've also realized them or tried to help them come down with his help into earthly reality, brokenness reality.
Speaker 1:And now, maybe it's a simple summary that the mystery of God's life is to speak light into darkness. It is not to speak light into darkness. It is not to speak light into light. Beautiful, yeah Right. So now we understand, to become, to take this path, to this 10,000 year moment of amazing grace when we too will be bright, shining as the sun. Our sun journey is going to be in the darkness To, to being in with it.
Speaker 3:To cultivate the light in the darkness is our path. That's our path, not light in light?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why we've got to seek the light in the light in him, and he shows us. Yes, I birthed this in the darkness. Look down there. That's where it comes into being. I'll be with you. I'll make all the forces of need available to do your part.
Speaker 3:So maybe just another summary we strengthen ourselves to recognize our darkness and shadow, yeah, and separate it in a way, separate it from it in a way to enter the revelation of our truest humanity, yeah, and be inspired by that and marry ourselves to it and say this is my true being. And then we bring that and integrate that into the broken, sick, dwelling shadow world. It needs to become the light in the darkness or the life on the cross, yes, yeah, so that's a beautiful next step.
Speaker 1:I can't believe we got all the way that far. We might have to listen to this conversation multiple times. I hope everyone can hang in there. But yeah, I'm really glad we got to try to get into those steps. Thank you John. Thank you Patrick in there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I'm really glad we got to try to get into those steps. Thank you, thank you. ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.