The Union of Opposites
For more than a year now I have been in love with and obsessed by a woman nearly twenty years my junior. She is my Zahir (as I have described in a previous post). Our relationship is one full of deep currents of eclectic waters converging from many tributaries, pushing both of us this way, that way, and pulling us down in whirlpools – sometimes together, sometimes separately.
My love for her is boundless; her love for me is heartfelt platonic compassion. She is married to a fine man. In a sensual sense my love is unrequited. In nearly every possible way we are polar opposites, as far apart as two people can get in terms of human and spiritual interests, education, social standing, expectations, obligations, and family. She has an active robust life; I am a recluse. Yet, in our souls, we both know we are somehow one – kindred spirits – who belong together. For that reason we are mystically drawn together. We may never have a life together here on earth, but even if we don't we will join together forever through the sacred union of opposites somewhere else beyond the constraints of the physical world we are trapped in.
Sometimes we fight like an old married couple and sometimes we are comfortable and at ease together – depending, I suppose, upon which ends of our magnetic poles are pointed at each other at the time. It has been said by those who study such things that our chances of finding sacred union as human beings living in this sexually repressed world of the patriarchy are slim or none.
My personal situation with my Zahir reminds me of John the Apostle's love for Mary Magdalene. There are private documents, existing today in the possession of Tau Rosamonde Miller, of the Church of Gnosis, where John, an old man, confesses his eternal love and desire for Mary, but defers to her love for Jesus and Jesus' love for her: "Miriam, oh Miriam," he writes, "it is so hard to write even her name after so many years. My throat still tightens and my blood rushes young again through my veins just at the thought of her. I could never love any other but Miriam. . . . Were I to live a thousand lifetimes, I would seek for her, and there would come a time, I know, when we would never be apart again." He speaks here of the bridal chamber of the pleroma and the sacred union of opposites. So it is with my own Miriam – my Zahir.
Our malevolent patriarchal hierarchy, both secularly and spiritually, has intentionally but mistakenly separated and polarized the sexes: in other words an ideal man is a man without feminine qualities, and the ideal woman is a woman with no masculine qualities. Jung and others have recognized that this mindset throws both the male and the female psyche out of equilibrium – suppressing the feminine (anima) in the male and the masculine (animus) in the female.
In human relationships this imbalance is commonly carried over into the institution of love – or marriage – and the resulting internal conflict acted out in real life causes the love or the marriage to fail. Because men and women are trained from childhood in this patriarchal society to display diametrically divorced masculine and feminine qualities, those who blindly accept these errant principles of life (originally imposed upon us by Yahweh and his archons) are doomed to failure in their mindless physically structured earthly relationships simply because they have no understanding of the relationship between overt erotic sexuality and divine spirituality. Therefore they never achieve their original, naturally intuitive, desire to merge their hearts and minds as one, and eventually their psyches drift apart forever.
Perhaps this is the gods' way of "thinning the herd", for it is the sacred union of opposites that unites the souls of the female and the male energies – the yin and the yang, the Shakti and the Shiva, or the Eros and the Logos – that has been defiled here. But it is certainly not the goddesses' way. The goddess is the Deep Feminine – the creator of life and the nurturing of it with her love and compassion. It is from her womb that all life springs. Though the goddess can be a real bitch when crossed, she abhors death, for she is the giver of life. But she will not hesitate to take it for the common good.
Our world is caught up in superficial concerns, always worried about petty things that we are conditioned by the patriarchy to view as important. It is "the sky is falling" technique, a doctrine of duplicitous power-peddling that may be best illustrated in simple terms by George Orwell's Animal Farm. We are well-conditioned, unthinking, robots on automatic pilot who tend to let those in leadership positions do our thinking for us.
We seem to live by the Pisces Ideal: that men must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. But we owe it to ourselves to open our own eyes and see what is plainly exposed before us. According to Jesus it is the way to save our souls from the hell we live in. “If you see what is before your face, there is nothing that will not be revealed to you.” - Gospel of St. Thomas
So it appears that humanity owes it to itself to set out on a new path of individual thought and consciousness. We are all part of the collective Consciousness, and our individual consciousness is the core of what Plotinus said is "the one Consciousness of God." Maybe we vastly underestimate our individual souls. In fact, we seldom even think about our souls, when they are the most important of all things that should concern us during our lifetimes. All of us need to ask ourselves: "Where am I going and how do I get there?" And then we need to try our damndest to find out.
The answers lie in our divine sexuality – in the hierosgamos, the bridal chamber of the pleroma, and the incredible androgynous power of the Union of Opposites.
My love for her is boundless; her love for me is heartfelt platonic compassion. She is married to a fine man. In a sensual sense my love is unrequited. In nearly every possible way we are polar opposites, as far apart as two people can get in terms of human and spiritual interests, education, social standing, expectations, obligations, and family. She has an active robust life; I am a recluse. Yet, in our souls, we both know we are somehow one – kindred spirits – who belong together. For that reason we are mystically drawn together. We may never have a life together here on earth, but even if we don't we will join together forever through the sacred union of opposites somewhere else beyond the constraints of the physical world we are trapped in.
Sometimes we fight like an old married couple and sometimes we are comfortable and at ease together – depending, I suppose, upon which ends of our magnetic poles are pointed at each other at the time. It has been said by those who study such things that our chances of finding sacred union as human beings living in this sexually repressed world of the patriarchy are slim or none.
My personal situation with my Zahir reminds me of John the Apostle's love for Mary Magdalene. There are private documents, existing today in the possession of Tau Rosamonde Miller, of the Church of Gnosis, where John, an old man, confesses his eternal love and desire for Mary, but defers to her love for Jesus and Jesus' love for her: "Miriam, oh Miriam," he writes, "it is so hard to write even her name after so many years. My throat still tightens and my blood rushes young again through my veins just at the thought of her. I could never love any other but Miriam. . . . Were I to live a thousand lifetimes, I would seek for her, and there would come a time, I know, when we would never be apart again." He speaks here of the bridal chamber of the pleroma and the sacred union of opposites. So it is with my own Miriam – my Zahir.
Our malevolent patriarchal hierarchy, both secularly and spiritually, has intentionally but mistakenly separated and polarized the sexes: in other words an ideal man is a man without feminine qualities, and the ideal woman is a woman with no masculine qualities. Jung and others have recognized that this mindset throws both the male and the female psyche out of equilibrium – suppressing the feminine (anima) in the male and the masculine (animus) in the female.
In human relationships this imbalance is commonly carried over into the institution of love – or marriage – and the resulting internal conflict acted out in real life causes the love or the marriage to fail. Because men and women are trained from childhood in this patriarchal society to display diametrically divorced masculine and feminine qualities, those who blindly accept these errant principles of life (originally imposed upon us by Yahweh and his archons) are doomed to failure in their mindless physically structured earthly relationships simply because they have no understanding of the relationship between overt erotic sexuality and divine spirituality. Therefore they never achieve their original, naturally intuitive, desire to merge their hearts and minds as one, and eventually their psyches drift apart forever.
Perhaps this is the gods' way of "thinning the herd", for it is the sacred union of opposites that unites the souls of the female and the male energies – the yin and the yang, the Shakti and the Shiva, or the Eros and the Logos – that has been defiled here. But it is certainly not the goddesses' way. The goddess is the Deep Feminine – the creator of life and the nurturing of it with her love and compassion. It is from her womb that all life springs. Though the goddess can be a real bitch when crossed, she abhors death, for she is the giver of life. But she will not hesitate to take it for the common good.
Our world is caught up in superficial concerns, always worried about petty things that we are conditioned by the patriarchy to view as important. It is "the sky is falling" technique, a doctrine of duplicitous power-peddling that may be best illustrated in simple terms by George Orwell's Animal Farm. We are well-conditioned, unthinking, robots on automatic pilot who tend to let those in leadership positions do our thinking for us.
We seem to live by the Pisces Ideal: that men must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. But we owe it to ourselves to open our own eyes and see what is plainly exposed before us. According to Jesus it is the way to save our souls from the hell we live in. “If you see what is before your face, there is nothing that will not be revealed to you.” - Gospel of St. Thomas
So it appears that humanity owes it to itself to set out on a new path of individual thought and consciousness. We are all part of the collective Consciousness, and our individual consciousness is the core of what Plotinus said is "the one Consciousness of God." Maybe we vastly underestimate our individual souls. In fact, we seldom even think about our souls, when they are the most important of all things that should concern us during our lifetimes. All of us need to ask ourselves: "Where am I going and how do I get there?" And then we need to try our damndest to find out.
The answers lie in our divine sexuality – in the hierosgamos, the bridal chamber of the pleroma, and the incredible androgynous power of the Union of Opposites.
vvv
Copyright (©2008) Albert Lloyd Williams
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