Guest Author - MaryAnn Fry
Going Naked Being Seen
The Space Between Notes
An Excerpt from Chapter Nine
~ Several weeks
later, I asked to be baptized.
Mystical baptism is an initiation where the aspirant does a
retrospection of their whole life, guided by Jesus and Mary. The purpose is to
prepare oneself for a profound cleansing of errors and karma and for entry into
a relationship with these Master teachers where they guide and instruct a
life. It is sacred and I could feel
it. Actually, I felt everything, again.
I had thought I had completed a fearless moral inventory when I worked a
program of recovery, but this process was far more intense. I was so grateful
that I had I the guidance of these beings, a mystical priest, and a community
of like-minded aspirants because their love strengthened me to face some very
difficult realities about myself. I did know what a monumental gift such an
initiation was, because it would prepare me to receive the light of God.
On the day of my baptism, I felt pretty
loopy. My priest said that it was normal; I was preparing to receive the light.
When the priest asked if I was ready, I said, “Yes.” I felt that yes echo
through eternity as I gazed into his eyes.
He reflected such light through them and I knew I was in the presence of
something holy. I was blessed with a new spiritual name, Josephine.
Within
a month, I attended a spiritual retreat in Colorado facilitated by the
Order. The landscape was stunning
and the elevation made me woozy. So
did the light. For five days, I was
in intensive immersion with priests and deacons and fellow students. I felt like I was in the mind and heart
of God. At a meditation one
evening, we were led to a place where we could meet Jesus. Most of my meditation practice had been
about stilling my mind, so I was apprehensive about calling up an image in my
mind like the leader suggested.
But, as grace moves, my desire to meet him was enough and it
happened. By the end of the
meditation, I was in tears. I didn’t
stop crying for hours. The love
that I felt penetrated every facet of my being and I understood what it felt
like to be known by God. The intimacy was shattering, and I was broken open,
again.
We
were instructed to keep such matters to ourselves or to share them only with
our teacher. To set up a mental
construct of God in another’s mind is a grave mistake, as each person will come
to know God themselves, according to their own needs. It was precisely that intimate
interaction that convinced me that God knew me, and that I was worthy to be in
relationship with God. I was a part of a much larger reality, and blown open by
the experience.
Over
the course of the next several days, I felt lighter, as if I were walking above
the earth. I was awake and alive in
a way that made me feel connected to everything and everybody. I was acutely sensitive to sights and
smells and sounds, especially vibrations. I was glad to be nestled in a safe
and quiet sanctuary for a time.
It
was a very ordinary thing that grounded my experience as we left Colorado. I was behind the wheel, driving a
Brother and Deacon home to Kansas City. Someone wanted ice cream, and I knew it
was more than a long shot to find a place.
It was late January in Colorado and I was driving through mountains and
very few, small towns. Within a few seconds, a thought came to me as a
directive and I said,
“Look
on the left in a couple of blocks.”
Sure enough, within less than a mile on the left, was an ice cream
store. Even ice cream, I thought, this is cool.
That
is why I kept going back; because it was the first time in my life that I felt
God in nearly everything. For
almost six months, I went to daily meditation and communion and became an
official student. The disciplines
were rigorous, but the learning was magnificent. I was learning the mysteries that Jesus
taught his disciples.
I was living through
his emotions and events of his life and I was on fire with a love for God. The questions that I had asked all of my
life were being answered and the light was infusing my body, and making me
clear. It was extraordinary. And it
was there that I began to understand the real significance of my intrigue about
Mary Magdalene. It had been an invitation by God to walk her path and share it
with others.
But
that very realization was at odds with the path I was following at the
Order. I was being opened to a
radical path of ministry, something I had felt called to all of my life. At some mysterious point, I began to
feel isolated and depressed. We
were a small group of very dedicated people and few if any new people came
around. I had thought I left the world
and its allures long before my association with the order, but this requirement
of leaving the world entirely was not feeling right. I secretly struggled for months thinking
that it was merely another layer of resistance that needed to dissolve on my
path toward God.
I felt split in two and raised it with my
teacher. He always encouraged me
and I was grateful for that, but he also spoke to me about the darkness that I
was facing and that made me cautious.
So, my struggle
began in earnest because I always felt like I wasn’t working hard enough;
wasn’t surrendering enough or simply wasn’t enough. This emotion felt so familiar and heavy
because I had lived with it all my life. I remained haunted by the awareness of
how exclusive the order felt and I was seeing evidence of arrogance that made
me cautious.
I
spoke to Pam and my friend Carol, but had no time to really speak with anyone
else for months. Even those
conversations could not capture my real torment, because I had been instructed
to share only with my teachers. I
did speak with Christi, once, and she said something revolutionary,
“I
don’t think being with God should be so hard.”
That sentiment
welcomed me back to something I had been slowly losing. I wasn’t sure what it
was, but I was opened. And in that
space of not knowing, the answer finally came. It depends on what level of God
you are able to be with at the time.
I
remember something my teacher had asked me during my retrospection. The subject of the book that I was
writing came up and he asked me,
“What
if God wants you to be silent?”
At the time I
answered with hesitation,
“If
I knew it was God that wanted that, I am sure I would want to do it.”
That question
haunted me while I was a student. I
certainly felt like this book was not my own work and that I had been guided,
but the final yes; I wanted it to come from God. Unfortunately, I had a few teachers who
seemed to be the vehicle for God’s expression, so that very question filled my
being with a doubt. That was the
essence of my conflict. I willingly
gave of my time and was blessed with the graces of understanding and growing
light within my being. I drank in
the teachings like nothing before in my life; for the first time in a very long
time, I was stimulated and challenged and humbled by the enormity of the
blessings that Jesus and Mary had bestowed on this planet. I was alive and awake in a whole new
way. But, I also learned that only
God called souls and that books, or written words, did not change folks. I felt like I was being led down a path
of surrendering the very thing that had kept me alive, and it hurt like hell.
I
had long before stopped being seduced by status or the promise of recognition,
even money for that matter. What I
had learned had allowed me to live unburdened by such expectations and I needed
no reminding of the temptations of the ego. Something else was compelling me to
finish it and I simply said yes to that something. The rest would have to be up to God. I wanted to be responsible again and
this felt like a big decision.
And
this is why. I had lived my life
before recovery thinking I knew what I was doing but truthfully being driven by
a hundred forms of fear that were disguised by other motives. When I recovered
from alcoholism and depression and began to wake up, I accepted a deeper
responsibility. To be authentic,
and that meant that I lived my life through moments of clear and conscious
knowing and through periods of doubt until that clear knowing emerged
again. I had to stop asking permission
from human beings to be who I was. That meant that I accepted responsibility
for admitting who I was, and what I was not, even if it was only for a
day. There were no shortcuts
through the wanderings of uncertainty, but there was an absolute certainty that
I would return to clarity. It had
happened many, many times in recovery.
I didn’t have to beg or plead with the benevolent forces that were
guiding and nourishing me, I simply chose to listen to them.
What does all of
this have to do with Mary Magdalene? The message that I received when I was in
treatment comes to mind.
Connect to me.
To that place that has never been defiled. You are as you always were;
spirit-filled, pure and holy. From this place you will heal; shine. Look beyond
all appearances and feel me. The beauty comes through you, radiate it.
I
had been led on a path to know what was real, and I was led by her because she
forged it. I fell in love with love, just like she did and that is why I could
know that I was undefiled at my core, and holy. It is why I could look beyond
all appearances because I was guided by that love. I felt my way into it, no
matter what things looked like on the outside. I had learned how to believe it,
to know its signature, and to trust it as the source of all good. I could be
liberated from everything that burdened or tormented me, if I stayed connected
to that source.
My
search to know Mary Magdalene had coincided with my experiences of Mary, the
Blessed Mother. I had always had a
profound love for Jesus and as a child had a Bible where the words he spoke
were highlighted in red. That is
all I ever wanted to read. I became
intrigued by the absence of writings about his mother and Mary Magdalene
precisely because they figured so prominently in the resurrection. Why were they there? Who were they to achieve such
intimacy? Over the next twelve
years, I resisted a more intellectual approach while the inspirations to write
continued. I was satisfied because
I felt something real and substantial going on inside of me. Just capture it Maryann, I said to
myself, and I continued to write. I
also continued to live, even when I was the most self destructive. The pursuit of Mary Magdalene led me
through those dark days and inspired me through the transformations that
followed. And I had never really
known her.
I
did that because I felt loved when I experienced or contemplated them. And Mary, the mother, and Mary
Magdalene, the woman restored to grace, knew love of the highest order. That is why they were at the foot of the
cross, where only love could remain.
Mary never separated from God and that meant that her love for God was
always primary. She had said yes to
God, whatever the request. She had
known the sustenance of love and she was qualified to birth the Son of God, the
one who would lead the world to God.
She was pure in this sense.
Mary Magdalene had separated.
A woman of beauty and means, she had allowed herself to be seduced by
the worldly distractions and temptations, but they did not fill or nourish her
soul. When she heard Jesus speak
for the first time, something moved inside her being that felt different and
real. The painful work of atonement
began for her, but it was love that began the process and gave her the strength
and courage to continue. She
relinquished all she had to give to Jesus because she felt respected, seen and
loved, perhaps for this first time.
(Valtorta, 2004)
I could relate to all of this and the
beauty of my awakening was that I had not known this when I started listening
to this inner voice. I simply felt something wise and loving move inside of
me. And it was feeling loved in
this way, without expectations, and with a mercy that leveled my shame, that I
truly felt redeemed. It took time, but I realized that I had been attracting
attention, but not wholehearted love and respect, because I did not respect
myself, or loved wholeheartedly either. That was a game changer and pattern
breaker, and I felt a freedom to be myself, for the first time. I wanted to
know who I was, just as Jesus wanted to know me. It all made sense, and I
didn’t have to study her, or her life, to understand this aspect of the
mystery. What would that prove anyway? In law school I learned about the
doctrine of Res ipsa loquitur, or “the thing speaks for itself.” Mary Magdalene
was present at some powerfully intimate moments of Jesus’ life. Her power was as a vessel for the
transformational reality of love, not in her status, whatever it was then. Mary
Magdalene had returned. Jesus welcomed her like a prodigal daughter and he
welcomed me too.
How
many millions have labored with the feelings of unworthiness? How many millions have resorted to
addiction to satisfy the aching longing for something they couldn’t even
describe? How many could be liberated if they knew the power of this love to
transform them? How can I help people to understand this love and know its
power to transform a life?
I
sat with those questions for many months and every vicious doubt came back full
circle. In my dreams, in my waking moments, and in the more subtle forms that
resistance took. Then, I finally
remembered the message that had originally beckoned me,
The beauty comes
through you, radiate it.
My job was to
remain clear, so this could happen. God would do the rest.
I decided to
leave the Order, and I was more than terrified, but clear. It had been a long
and sleepless weekend, but by Monday morning, I felt peaceful and rested. I
intended to tell my teacher after communion. Before I could speak with him in
private, he announced to our group that the Kansas City Center of Light was
closing. They had made the decision over the weekend. I felt like my decision
to leave the Order was supported by God in the wake of this announcement, and I
was in awe. I knew I could trust my judgment after all. Nothing else mattered.
Not one little bloody detail, because I knew that love would never forsake me.
Jesus had reminded me of that in meditation that morning too. I don’t remember
much of anything after that morning at the Order; I floated in some other
dimension for a time, and it felt really, really safe. Chapter 9, The Space Between Notes