union
Temple – Bridal Chamber, Inner Sanctuary, Cave
The journey from the Head to the Heart is one of the most profound initiations on the Path of the Initiate. It is in the Heart that the deepest most profound alchemy occurs and it is within this most sacred space that we die to all that we have been before. The River of Light that is Heaven melts into the molten gold of the Earth and in this alchemical union we are born into the Embodiment of our Holiness.
“This Magnificent Refuge is inside of you.
Enter. Shatter the Darkness that Shrouds the Doorway.
Be Bold. Be humble.”
Saint Teresa of Avila
In Daniel Odier’s book Tantric Quest – an Encounter with Absolute Love – the Yogini Lalita Devi teaches him about this inner sanctuary of Consciousness. “Guard the Silent Empty Open Temple” she warns. “What does the worshiper do? He cleans the temple. How? By asking all who have been sitting there forever to leave so he can sweep, throw fresh water drawn from the river on the stones, scatter rose petals.”
The seat of consciousness is this Inner Temple, this cave of the Heart – the womb where Consciousness is seeded and rooted. Who then are these silent ones who obscure the Radiance of this Love? These are the rusted, corroded conditionings, the social mores and regulations, the rigid defences, the relentless noise in our heads, the walls – and the psychic debris that have made their home in our hearts for eons. How do we wash down the temple? We dissolve these voices – caste out the illusions and meet the Beloved in the fresh open spaciousness of our Inner Refuge – our Temple.
“Washing down the Temple of Consciousness
Scattering Rose Petals”
Our Embodiment holds this sacredness – The heart of Heaven is not “out there” –the Holy of Holies is within. In Tantra the material world is suffused with this Love, a quantum field of Power, Grace and Wisdom known to Christian mystics as Sophia. The body holds the precious heart which is a portal to accessing this Grace as is – its Holy Breath.
Sophia
“The Garden of Your Body holds Your Precious Heart”
What are the sacrificial offerings placed on the alter of this most Holy Living Temple? The offerings are all the threads of our conditioned self preservation —the force of the egoic mind that obscures that which is Eternal Union – the Flame of Love – Union with the Beloved – this is the Sacrement, this is the Consecration, this is the Holy Vow. The mind with all its control, all its projections, all its worries can never know the logic of this alchemy. It is only the courageous heart that can take that leap – that can risk everything in its Desire for Union, its Desire for Freedom and its Desire for Sovereignty.
At this narrow part of the journey some of the “edgy” questions we might ask are:
Am I willing to let go of my desire for security in the world and my constant need to ensure it?
Am I willing to let go of my desire for affection/validation from others outside of myself?
Am I willing to let go of my desire to control my life and everything and everyone in it?
Am I willing to allow situations to be as they are without trying to change them?
Am I willing to be present in “this moment” to Reality – no matter how it is showing up?
Am I willing to unclench my fist, my mind, my body – and relax into and trust the invisible presence of the Beloved holding me close in this moment?
This deep allowance of Life to be Lived through the Living Heart can only take place in a mind Surrendered to Truth and Desiring of a Love that knows no end. To let go of likes and dislikes and to open to what is happening in this moment in daily life is the practice that finally allows for the slow dissolution into the Eternal Silence and Beauty of the Heart where the Eternal Lover awaits us.
“Eternal Silence and Beauty of the Bridal Chamber”
“At the very core of your heart, entombed in the shadow, is the ineffable diamond of Christ, who is pure Beauty. You are Mary, waiting at dawn. The stone has already been rolled aside. Meet the Beloved in the garden of your body. ”
Fred Le Motte
The Teachings of the Scarlet Sutra is dedicated to the Red Goddess Lalita, Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the 64 Yoginis and The Red Priestesses from all Traditions throughout the Ages.
Prem Moodaley
Copyright 2019
Full Moon May 2019
Resources:
Tantric Quest – An Encounter with Absolute Love Inner Traditions 1997
Fred Lamotte – Poetry – amongst other beautiful books – “Savour Eternity One Moment At A Time” – St. Julian Press 2016
Lovers – Union, Pure Awareness, Pure Love
“The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was,
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other
all along…” Rumi
In this sutra I explore the Sacred Masculine and the Sacred Feminine and what it means to embody them. This sacred configuration can be seen in the Eternal Lovers – Christ-Magdalene/Shiva-Shakti and many other Divine/Ordinary couples throughout the ages.
The Lovers are the building blocks of the Universe and they exist in complete union within us. They exist as polarity and it is only in Union within ourselves that we discover the most sublime secret – that we are both – spirit and matter, light and dark, heaven and earth – all spiraling within and around one another.
The challenge of this human existence is to bring these lovers together and we do it within our own body temple. This is the alchemy of integration and the fuel of awakening into Love and Truth. So what then do these two forces represent?
“I have been listening to the love songs of
Form longing for formless.
What are these energies
Undulating through our bodies
Pulsing us into action?
And this “matter” out of which our forms are made-
What are these dancing particles
Of condensed radiance?
Lorin Roche
Union
Sacred Masculine
Spirit
The Witness
Being
Light
Transcendent
Unmanifest
One
Solar
Still point
The Seer
Divine
Heaven
Sacred Feminine
Matter
Embodiment
Becoming
Dark
Immanent
Many
Lunar
The Dance
The Mother
Human
Earth
I vow to never forget: I am You.
I vow to recognize: you’re right here,
in the cadence of my breath,
in the dull quiet ache, of wanting only more of you.
I vow to let our union guide me.
Not just your heaven, but also my earth.
Not just your strength, but also my weakness.
I vow to be a Presence of Love made more powerful because imperfect, faltering.
Made more powerful because my broken spaces are where you enter me.
I vow to be nothing more than I am.
This singular chance to marry your love to my humanity”
Meggan Watterson
The very essence of our being contains these divine energies and yet we continue to seek outside ourselves. The Divine Masculine and Feminine are not separate, they are eternal union. Even though the Feminine becomes the whole of creation She is in constant union with the ground of being – the underlying force of existence.
We have lost our connection to the realization and presence of these forces through our false identification with our minds. We get lured into the matrix of thinking and the drama of our lives, seeking outside ourselves for our validation, our completion, never looking within to where the true treasure hides.
When we empty ourselves of our personal story and become silent we are bathing in the realm of the Sacred Masculine/Christ/Shiva energies. We are surrendered into the Truth of our Being. We have detached from our mind with its stories and acquired conditioning, in essence we become spiritually naked. In this Naked space we have access to the Vastness of our True Self beyond the limitations of the form our mind identifies with.
From this place of Stillness – we birth the Sacred Feminine/ The Mother/Shakti. She is Love and this Love is the perfume of Pure Existence. It is from this wholeness and freshness that we engage with the world, we allow ourselves to know the miracle of existence within the human body vessel with its joy and its suffering. We engage in play, in creativity and in the sensuality of the human experience. We continually become – allowing more expanded forms of creativity and evolution to manifest through us. We become the Mother – holding and integrating all polarities within our vast Heart, we become Love in Action in Union with all of Life.
“Here sits the Holy of Holies.
The Secret, The Diamond, The Well.
We are Everything and each other.
The Light, the Dark, the Sun, the Moon.
The Mother, the Sky, the Father, the Earth,
The Orb of Light that orbits us.
The Dawn, the Daughter,
The fixed Presence that forgives us.
We are Everything and each other.
We can only heal if we see together
The Red Thread looped around the back of our Hearts.
No matter how separate we think we are,
No worldly knife or hardened words can break it.
No amount of our own humanity can untether it.
We cannot undo what we didn’t create.
And so Love is a bond that can’t be unmade.”
Meggan Watterson
Eternally One
The Teachings of the Scarlet Sutra is dedicated to the Red Goddess Lalita, Mary Magdalene, the Yoginis and The Red Priestesses from all Traditions throughout the Ages.
Prem Moodaley Copyright 2018
June 2018
Resources:
Lorin Roche – The Radiant Sutras – Sounds True 2014
Meggan Watterson – The Sutras of Unspeakable Joy – 2016
Stephen Cope – Yoga and the Quest for the True Self – Bantam 1999