MARY

When human beings lose the "feminine" within their own hearts, they seek the aid of Mary (Isis, Venus, Astarte, Guanyin...). Mary always responds to this call with gentleness, manifesting in the form of various friends, acquaintances, or strangers. Yet, there is no true remedy, no real path, other than awakening the Mary within oneself.

Mary is the part of human nature that can lose with nobility and grace—the side that, in truth, conquers by yielding. She is powerful because she allows herself to be vulnerable. She is so piercing, so unyielding, that she can enfold even violence within her compassion. Because she can embrace her own death, she is radiant with life, and from her absolute solitude, an immense vitality is born.

Mary’s compassion is the compassion of the Divine Mother. Yet, there is, of course, such a reality as the compassion of the Divine Father. While Mary embraces the darkness with gentleness, another force dives courageously into that darkness, fighting it to the death. It never surrenders; it accepts no defeat. Indeed, sometimes its battle is grander than its victory.

A person starved for compassion, yearning to receive, may sometimes bring forth a Divine Father from within and give, and give, and give. For they cannot establish a balance otherwise. They complete their own lack in another; they quench their thirst through someone else. That same person, if they choose, can shift toward the side of the Divine Mother, absorbing and carrying everyone’s burdens, excesses, and sorrows. They become a partner to another’s pain, a remedy, a source of healing.

These two are, in essence, a single energy moving in different, even opposite, directions. Either a person opens up and permits themselves to be helpless, inadequate, or unable to cope on their own—thereby receiving what is necessary from the outside—or, while giving, they cease to wrong their own soul, remembering to distribute what is due to its rightful owner with justice...

The highest path is to release your burdens, your excesses, and at the same time, your gifts with every exhale (giving the alms of your love, your compassion, and whatever your richness may be), and to accept what your heart desires and calls for like an inhale—with joy, gratitude, thankfulness, and a full awareness of your worth, from the velvet hands of life. Though, of course, everyone’s path, search, and discoveries are unique and sacred. As I said, they are all the same energy moving in different directions from the very same source. Water overflows from its spring, travels through infinite paths into the unknown, and inevitably returns to its source—infusing the flavor of the entire journey into its essence.