Are you reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle?

Anybody reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose? I am.  I was hesitant to pick it up because of all the Oprah hype — made me wonder if it was pop-spirituality.  But then since I had read his previous book the Power of Now, decided to give it a chance. (I am such a spirituality snob).   Turns out A New Earth is a life-changing book — who needs to go see a counselor/therapist, who needs to sit at a guru’s feet, when you can read this book? <grin>  And talk about helping you relate to every other human in your circle: your significant other, kids, your parents, co-workers, friends… EVERYone.  This book is awesome.  My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is he makes the common mistake of exaggerating the numbers of those “killed by the Church”.  In one such instance in his Sacred Feminine section, Tolle writes “Three to five million women” were burned by the Inquisition.  In reality historians (even pagan historians) say it was only 50,000 over 400 years, many of whom were men (Charlemagne beheaded 4,500 Odin worshippers, no women), many of whom were not burned at the stake, and most of whom local towns / magistrates or kings killed, not church authorities. That’s a myth. But many authors make this error lately it seems — Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code is another — and since Tolle is a European probably “mad at the Church”, we can overlook these errors in his otherwise fantastic liberating book).  I just skipped over those paragraphs (very few) and kept devouring the spiritual hands-on life-altering peace-bringing teachings and techniques in A New Earth.

Tolle puts a lot of esoteric Christian correlations in his teaching such as why Jesus really said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do,” and the real meaning of “Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (the new awakened earth), and Jesus didn’t say “be ye perfect,” but “Be ye whole…” Many deeper meanings opened up with “aha!” moments galore even for this ol’ diehard alternative Christian teacher.  I was just writing to one of our newly ordained ministers that A New Earth is an excellent book for using with one’s pastoral counseling clients. It helps one figure out life’s purpose, not just awaken to one’s own life’s purpose as the title suggests, but THE purpose of life and why we are here, etc. cosmic questions.

Not to mention this book makes a great Mother’s Day gift…. hee hee.  Sending one to my Mom and mother-in-law, too…

Anybody reading A New Earth or have you already read it?  Here’s a link to it for only $7.70 and you can read inside the book online before buying.

Katia

Cakes & Wine for the Queen of Heaven

Here is what I’m up to today — this evening I am hosting our second local Goddess Gathering at the Unitarian Universalist Church where we meet.  I am taking two Goddess books, titles below, as well as some statuettes of Goddess to adorn our altar.  We will have a beautiful ceramic pot of black dirt on a stand in front of the altar that everyone will have a chance to pour wine into.  And we will eat the rest of the Goddess Eucharist, raisin cakes (aka cookies).  The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) says the people poured libations into the earth for the Queen of Heaven and baked cakes for her.  The Bible specifically says they were raisin cakes.  Then we’ll look at Goddess slides in art and sculpture both modern and classical (and ancient) and discuss.  Oh — and sing a cool goddess song while watching a slide show.

Here are the beautiful Goddess books, be sure to click thru and see the many lavish illustrations here:

The Book of Goddesses: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine, by Kris Waldherr

The Lady of Ten Thousand Names, by Burleigh Muten, illustrated by Helen Cann

The second one is somewhat geared to younger readers, and my daughters do love it, but I also enjoy it immensely and have learned a lot.  Both are excellent coffee table books for your friends to peruse, guaranteed to jumpstart any conversation on Goddess in general.  I plan to pass them around tonight during our discussion of the Divine Feminine. We will focus on Magdalene, Sophia, Asherah, Mary — the Christian Goddesses, but I always like to tie in as many of the Goddesses of the world as possible, all manifestations of Her.

In Her Service,

Katia

Bloodline the Movie, evidence of Magdalene & Jesus in France

Magdalen Papess Card by Robert PlaceEveryone is talking about — and my friend Joan Norton, author of The Mary Magdalene Within, is blogging about — the mysterious film coming out next month called Bloodline: the Movie. The filmmakers interviewed Margaret Starbird whose work we very much appreciate and very much study in our Order of Mary Magdala. Margaret told us on our Yahoogroups forums she doesn’t even remember a word she said the day they interviewed her because producer Bruce Burgess showed up on her doorstep, cameras in tow, just hours after she had learned of the death of her beloved father. She had forgotten he was even coming. Evidently the interview ended up being quite powerful because the Bloodline movie people have posted it in full to their website (click on Screening Room).  I need to go over and have a look. They also have an interview with the supposed head of the Priory of Sion, an organization I thought was basically made-up by Frenchman Pierre Plantard (of Holy Blood Holy Grail fame). The film claims to be following up on the mysteries of the groundbreaking book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (as brought into the public forum by DaVinci Code), a sort of whodunnit digging thru clues and artifacts in France and uncovering a chest of treasures dating to 1st Century France. Somewhere online a few years ago I saw photos of the contents, on a website of one of the filmmakers, I believe. Anyway, there was a scroll (I think) and a cup (the Holy Grail?) and some other items. Very cool. Then the Indiana Jones type explorers found a tomb with a mummy draped in a shroud bearing a red cross.

It sounds a bit fantastic, too good to be true, but hey, I will be in the front row watching the movie and taking notes. Well actually, I don’t live where it’s going to be screening! Bloodline: The Movie is being shown only in limited theaters in Los Angeles — and maybe New York? Joan has it posted on her blog where you can go view it in L.A. on May 9, I think it is. They are going to have a question and answer session after the premier. Then it’s going straight to DVD after that, so the rest of us won’t have to wait too long.

Sophia, copyright Hrana Janto, used with artist permission. Note her wings, holy spirit dove, pregnant belly with crescent moonThe blogs and forums are all discussing the topic and it’s good to have dialog about our favorite Christian “theory”, that Magdalene and Yeshua were married and the Sacred Union is at the heart of Christianity.I say theory because as Margaret Starbird often quips, “we don’t have a marriage certificate!” Having both a Christian Goddess and God is a spiritual “doctrine” that brings Christianity into balance, no longer a lop-sided dysfunctional religion, but one with heart AND soul. I believe Mother Mary was also a Judeo-Christian Goddess, an incarnation of Sophia, the God-ess mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as being co-creator with God, called the Holy Spirit and Tree of Life. See Proverbs 8 and the apocryphal book of Sirach.

You and I have Christian goddesses! — and acknowledging them can make all the difference in our spiritual practices.

As for the Bloodline Movie, I only hope they are not gonna say that mummy is Jesus’, since we just went thru all that agony (and I believe, nonsense, call me a snob) over the Talpiot Tomb.

If they imply it is Magdalene’s body, then okay, I can handle that. I guess I can even be open to it being Yeshua’s, since I do believe after the resurrection he lived among his disciples awhile (one Gnostic text says 11 years!) teaching and getting the teachings preserved. I mean, he died to deliver that message, so it makes sense he’d want them to get it right. Okay, we didn’t said message so well back then, but he, Magdalene and their students seeded the earth’s consciousness so to speak so that now we can get the point, or at least work on getting the mystery. Digging around the ‘Net, contemplating and pondering, researching, studying ancient wisdom, is delving into those mysteries…

What mysteries are you studying, pondering or digging into lately?

–Katia

Dream Interpretation: Having unexpected baby unprepared to feed

Every week for the past 10 years I interpret two dreams for an advice column called The Dream Zone, which I co-write with Dr. Lauri Loewenberg “the Dream Lady”. I thought it might be fun to start posting them here…

BOYFRIEND IN BED WITH ANOTHER WOMAN
My dream was: I entered into my boyfriend’s room and I found him on bed with somebody else. I was able to see her face, but I was not able to recognize her. I grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the floor, and I also slapped her. My boyfriend had a smile on his face while all this was happening. Then I jumped on top of him and we start making out. Isn’t this weird? Hope you can help me interpret this dream.
Evelyn, Age 30, Miami, Florida

Katia interprets: This is a fun dream with two messages for you. Your boyfriend secretly wants you to fight for him, to show how passionate you are about maintaining your relationship. He may be a bit childish in this desire, but it is not unhealthy. The other possible meaning for you (and both can be true at once, as is the unique nature of dreams) is that the woman is an aspect of your own personality. There is a man-stealing desire within you, flirtatiousness toward other men, which you don’t like, that you want to slap around and get rid of. You know it will please your boyfriend if you conquer and neutralize this behavior pattern, probably because he is a bit jealous when you smile or are otherwise friendly with other men.

 

HAVING UNEXPECTED BABY YOU ARE UNPREPARED TO FEED
My name is Gina, 32 from California. I have this dream at least twice a month. It’s a little different each time but almost the same. In my dream I have a baby I wasn’t expecting. Like I was pregnant but didn’t know, and then all of a sudden I have this baby. And I’m trying to gather things to take care of it. In my dream I keep saying how happy I am but I am hurrying to go buy everything for the baby. But the weird part of the dream is that I keep forgetting to feed it. And the baby is crying. I bring it close to me and keep telling it how sorry I am for not feeding it. I tell myself in the dream why do you always forget to feed your baby and what a bad mother I am. Please HELP! This dream really bothers me after I wake up because I can’t seem to make sense of it.

Katia interprets:  Aha! The baby is a beloved but vulnerable part of your future, a long-term goal, a cherished project, that you feel bad about not seeing through. What future plan or vision for your life are you unprepared for? Every now and then an opportunity to nurture this vision comes suddenly and unasked into your life but you have never acted on it. You can’t keep focused enough to “feed” this wonderful thing. Is it something educational, some kind of occupational opportunity or other calling you keep passing up? The dream is trying to tell you you’re going to regret and feel guilty about this, so it’s time to take the plunge. Stock up on “food” for this great endeavor; prepare for the new and wonderful life that you very much want to give birth to. Next time this opportunity whatever it is, literally falls into your lap, you will have plenty of life force (baby milk) to energize it. The guilty feelings will be gone forever. Hard work and constant attention will be required, yes, as with all “babies”, but you are up to it. Good luck and get going!

To submit your own dream for interpretation, please visit http://thedreamzone.com