Further Up is Farther In
There’s a legend that Mary Magdalene lived in a cave in the south of France on what is referred to now as La Sainte Baume, “The Holy Mountain.” It is said that she was lifted up 7 times a day from the cave to high above the cliffs of the holy mountain.
Artistic depictions of this legend have Mary Magdalene being lifted up physically by at least four (presumably fit) angels. I’ve found that one way I distanced myself from Mary’s humanity is to imagine that this happened for real, that Mary was actually lifted up to the mountain top by winged beings wearing togas and smelling like cotton candy or fresh soap.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Saint Mary Magdalene Lifted by Angels, c. 1740
It was such a wild and miraculous moment when I realized from her gospel that these angels met Mary from within her own heart. That like Joan of Arc and Mary of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene perceived the Good from within her. And that the reason the legend mentions 7 times a day is to reference the 7 powers of the ego that Christ reveals to Mary in her gospel.
Ascension is defined as “rising to an important position or a higher level.” What we’ve misunderstood about spiritual ascension is that further up is actually farther in. The highest position there could ever be for anyone is to return to the depths of the love that’s within them.
We forget that the Good is not distant, above and beyond us. As if the Good is way, way up there in heaven, too high for us to reach in these “lowly” human forms. As if we have to physically rise, ascend in vertical height toward heaven to draw nearer to God.
The Good has always been right here, within and among us. The Good does not exist on a vertical axis, where the higher you are the more spiritually important or powerful you are. The Good is what’s between us and within us.
It’s such a wild and miraculous moment when we realize that further up is farther in. It has the power, if we let it, to change our ideas of what it means to be human.
If we are not separate from the Good, you and I, if we are not lowly, and beneath heaven, and the Good, and those winged beings–if there’s actually a universe of love that beats right here beneath our skin, then being human is the Good’s unique chance to be here, to love through us, through our hands, and through our very messy human hearts.
It’s such a wild and miraculous moment when we realize that the Good has never been above, and beyond, or fully outside of us. It’s such a wild and miraculous moment when we arrive at this truth that the great big unsayable love that is the Good is right here within us, in this fleeting body, in this bramble of an ego, like an indestructible rose perpetually at bloom in the center of who we are.
With only more love,
M.