The mystical marriage
There's a little elastic band sitting beside my doorstep. You know, the kind that the postman uses to tie up the packages he delivers? Now, this elastic band has been sitting there for quite some time without me bothering to pick it up.One morning I left the house for the train station (I was taking off down to Glastonbury to do the aforementioned facilitators' course) and it looked like a man's genitals (you have to use your imagination a little, because I'm not going to explain). The next time I looked at it, strangely enough, it looked like a simple pencil drawing of a woman's womb and ovaries - you know the kind they used to teach you about 'the birds and bees' at school?Then, yesterday, the way it was curled up looked more like a figure of eight - like an infinity sign?Then I got it (yes, I know, some of you think I read too much into these things, but for me, looking at life symbolically helps me understand things that I wouldn't otherwise)! It's in that space between male and female, the space where the two fuse, that we become infinite. And I'm not talking about the space between the male and female genders here (though we all know that magical things can happen when the two of these meet), but between the male and female parts of ourselves - what we might call the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And it's when we have fully come to terms with and surrendered into each within our own being, that the 'heavenly marriage' can take place within us - and we can become all that we are.By happenstance, I picked up a book in a Totnes bookstore about two months ago - you know the kind that just 'jumps out at you' and you have to get, though at the time you don't know why? Anyway, I've just started reading it (I got a 'nudge' to take it along with me when I first saw the elastic band on the doorstep, but chose to ignore it - it's a heavy old book); and funnily enough, it explains this in a bit more detail. Its author - a Danish mystic called Lars Muhl - refers to this as the 'isogynic' state - one where both the male and the female qualities are in balance (isos being Greek for 'the same, alike, equal' and sy'ne Greek for 'woman'). In the book it was defined as 'a condition where a human being, be they male or female, both integrates and dissolves the masculine and the feminine in him or herself, so that the individual is both and yet none of them'. And he clarifies that this has nothing to do with being androgynous, nor does it bear any relation to sexuality.But here begins the most interesting bit (and this coincides with my vision of what we are evolving into): 'The isogynic individual is the human being of the future because they have left all limitations and have transcended all mistakes, emotions and diseases. Isogynic man is universal and intuitive and acts (or refrains from acting) from a universal point of view. S/he has opened up to all the latent forces: empathy, compassion, poetic, musical and prophetic gifts, clairvoyance (vision), clairaudience (clearness of hearing), the ability to heal and a higher consciousness. From this condition the new human being is going to develop towards unfathomable heights.'Later in the book, a quote from Yeshua (the man we call 'Jesus') from The Gospel of Thomas: 'When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so the male will not be male and the female will not be female... then you will enter the Kingdom'. Profound!In this state you are the everything-nothing: in such a pure, essential state that magic and miracles happen around you. Naturally. Simply because you have unfolded into all that you truly are. And I have realised for myself that the more I come to terms with my masculine side, the more my feminine side can shine. And have you ever noticed how as a man becomes more in touch with his so-called 'feminine' gentleness, his innate masculinity becomes more beautiful? I'd love to hear your thoughts.You know, I still haven't picked up the elastic band. Maybe if I leave it there long enough, it'll turn into something really interesting - maybe a 50 pound note or a knight in shining armour, perhaps.