International Women’s Day 03/08/2024

Sometimes it seems like half the people I know are women! 😊

My sisters, so many teachers, mentors, friends, co-workers, bosses . . . . so many women, without whom I would not be the man I am today.

And NONE have had more impact than my mother, my wife and my daughter – women who have not just made my life possible, but who have brought light wherever they go.

So, prompted by International Women’s Day, but in honor of these women who have meant so much to me, I’d like to share one of the exercises from Tantric Christianity. This meditation leans on Mary, Mother of God, as our paragon – our object of focus as way of calming and stilling the mind, as well as encouraging the personal characteristics of Mary in our own experience.

There are many supporting techniques and perspectives which magnify the impact an exercise like this can have on our spirit, but employing this single meditation as a stand along practice can promote real growth. I hope you take advantage of - and enjoy working with - this meditation:

Settle yourself in a position which serves both stillness and alertness, and attend to your sensations, both internal and external. As you mindfully relax into your awareness of these sensations, allow the internal to grow in intensity while the external diminishes somewhat.
Go through the meditative pre-work below:

• Reaffirm and strengthen your hope that all of God’s children will find their way home, with Jesus the Christ as the Way for that return to the Father’s embrace. See the Christ before you, perhaps with the angels and saints surrounding Him, and feel adoration welling up for his generous love. Ask that He assist in your efforts to become closer to Him through the upcoming meditation / visualization and subsequent worldly activity
• Review your conscience for behavior which stands out by making you uncomfortable this doesn’t need to be a huge list. Identify one or two primary weaknesses and break down that behavior into its primary elements: what are you doing with your body, what words are said (or left unsaid), and what sort of thoughts go along with this troublesome activity?
• Make a firm resolution to avoid such behavior in the future
• Just as firmly resolve to speak, think and do the things you know are in concert with God’s will in the future.

Having set your direction with the pre-work, spend a few minutes with the stilling and centering exercise of your choice.
Once settled and focused, introduce the thought of a broad, flat area of grass near the river Jordan, with hills rising up in the distance. Wild flowers dot this small plain, providing a lot of color to the landscape. In the distance you can see a large fortification stretching above those walls stands a tower with three windows which overlook this plain. Nearer to your point of view, an almond tree in full bloom is visible.
Immediately before you a circular pedestal sits in the grass, glowing with gold and silver light. Six steps of gold lead to the top of the platform. Sun and moon hang in the azure sky. Between them, a single star shines brightly down upon the pedestal.
Watch as the pedestal's glow begins drawing together, taking on the shape of two pairings of Greek letters: Mu/Rho (Mu atop Rho) and Theta/Upsilon (Theta above Upsilon).
M Θ
Ρ Υ
Abbreviating Mary's epithet, Mother of God, these four letters continue to gently glow gold and silver. This flow of energy does more than provide simple illumination to the landscape these beams of light support the scene and lay the foundation for your ability to experience it. Let it fortify the clarity of your image, energizing mind and spirit. Bask in it, as a flower soaks up the rays of the sun.
Infused by these vivifying beams of light, watch as the energy flowing from the four letters begins to coalesce, taking on the form of a throne made of ivory and gold. Upon this throne, the Throne of Solomon, sits a very young woman. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen and with a beautiful olive complexion, young Mary smiles slightly as she looks directly at you. Her attention is exclusively focused on you. Her left leg (on the right side of your image) is tucked under her seat and her right leg is extended out, with her foot upon a golden foot rest.
A gentle light radiates from Mary's face. Her form is surrounded with a silver white halo. She is wearing a simple, yet very fine, robe which is light green in color, with a radiant white sash around her waist. Everything about her – her face, her dress, the throne on which she sits, even the marble platform – glows with gold and silver light.
Say to yourself, “Behold, the servant of the Lord.” Feel these words bubble up from your heart. They vibrate in the light around you. As you internally hear this logos, watch a ray of crystalline white light shoot from Mary's forehead to the middle of your brow. More than simply shining on you like the beam of a flashlight, this ray of energy pours into your head and fills your entire body with a gentle, yet unstoppable, persistence.
Feel this light warm you from head to toe. As it fills your physical organism, see it or feel it exposing the many physical habits you have harbored through your lifetime. Many of those habits hold you back from enjoying the relationship with God you desire, and from accepting the love He is anxious to share with you. Feel Mary's unflinching willingness to act on God's will, communicated to you through this stream of diamond light, begin to replace those fettering habits. Your body becomes lighter and lighter, filled with nothing but the desire to boldly fill your own role in God's plan.
Sit for a few minutes with this desire to do exactly as God wills. Enjoy the freedom from your own smallness, the narrowness of your conventional possibilities.
When ready, again recite the logos, this time seeing a beam of rich red light shining from Mary's throat. The energy of spiritual communication pours into your own throat center, filling your whole body. This brilliant illumination empowers your capacity to speak with the same courage Mary showed, and to see and hear with the same clarity she had. Where you have normally looked at your family, friends and even enemies with a surface level appreciation, you can now see and hear something deeper about them you can appreciate how, like you, they are all children of God who hope to return to their ultimate home. And, seeing that reality, you may intentionally relate to them as fellow travelers.
Sit for as long as is comfortable for you, enjoying the capacity to see and hear with absolute clarity, and the intention to speak with exactly the same clarity.
When the time is right, say the logos to yourself a third time while watching brilliant blue light streak from the middle of Mary's chest to the point you feel your own heart beating. Blue light – pure and cool as a cloudless mid-afternoon sky in the mountains – pours in and fills up your whole body. Allowing this vibrant, scintillating blue light into your heart connects the way you think with the way Mary thinks: aware of how simultaneously important both the conventional world and our spiritual reality are. The many hang ups, neuroses and simple misunderstandings which have colored the way you have historically approached the world are exposed and eliminated. In place of these impediments there is pure, wide-open space.
Sit like this for a while, your gaze still upon Mary seeing in her a reflection of your truest self: your body ready to do what God wills, your ability to communicate in line with God's word, and your mind aligned with the same focus on God's desire that Mary has. Like Mary, you are a willing participant in God's creative process.
When ready, see this entire meditative scene - the River Jordan, the tower of David, the almond tree, along with Mary and her throne - grow even brighter than it had been. Glowing brighter and brighter everything in your field of vision moves beyond any particular characteristics or defined boundaries, becoming simple space and light. The light melts into Mary, whose glow now becomes more intense. Her attention never wavering from you, see her form also melt into pure light and flow into your body.
The essence of Mary continues to glow brilliantly in your heart. Your field of vision holds only open space, which you are breathing in and out. All impulses behind your thoughts, your words and your actions rise purely from that space in the same way Mary’s own thoughts, words and actions did. Sit with that for as long as you are comfortable, repeating the logos “Behold, the servant of the Lord” when your mind wanders. As you begin the process of returning your senses to the external world, spend a few moments asking our Father to let whatever merit you may have accumulated through this practice be of help to all His children ask Him that such merit help everyone, everywhere find their way home to Him.
When finished, allow your attention to come back to our shared reality, knowing that your relationship with that reality has grown much larger than it had been.