Part III: Gazing Into The Mirror of Truth
A Christian Contemplative Series. Part III:
During our final days at St. Catherine’s Monastery, we pondered this woman who was powerful enough to have this important place named after her. We wondered what her message for humans who would come into a world much different than hers would be. We hadn’t been taught anything about her from the monastery, really, but a quick internet search would bring about a story as great as any on the silver screen.
Is it merely a coincidence that in every epic tale that survives any particular culture, or any Hollywood film that transcends generations, that, in every one of these stories the hero is the allocentric character and the villain the one who is corrupted by selfishness? I don’t believe it has anything to do with coincidence or selling tickets, but instead I believe it exposes something fundamental to the fabric of reality. Like Joseph Campbell expressed in his discovery of The Hero’s Journey in his famous books, “The Hero With 1000 Faces” & “The Hero’s Journey”, which George Lucas used to create Star Wars—if we look, we’ll find there’s an essential process of growth and virtue development which we are all a part of, like it or not.
A universal process activated simply by showing up and being willing to play the role our characters are destined to play on this great stage called life. You’ve seen it portrayed in 100’s of movies yet you may not have considered they are all stories about you and the battle between good and evil going on inside you right now. You are the chosen one. You are the hero/heroine the world has been waiting for. But, you can only respond to the call if you’re present enough to meet its subtlety with your personal power.
“The Hero’s Journey” - a universal system which all myths seem to pattern.
Can you awaken to the mythical dimension of your life? To your many cycles through your own personally customized Hero/Heroine’s Journey?
Through these journeys, virtue is strengthened. Through our ability to see that, whether we are living a “good” or “bad” aspect of the adventure, we are always being served—by being instructed in the ways of Love (life lessons). When we choose to embrace that story consciously, we soon realize we need our entire capacity in order to meet the demand the epic-ness a Hero’s Journey requires. Our intellect, our open heart, and our body’s intuitional energetic intelligence are all required to overcome life’s great obstacles; transmuting challenge into great wisdom.
The story of St. Catherine, whose namesake the Monastery we stayed at is dedicated to is a fascinating, albeit unfortunately short-lived Heroine’s Journey. At age 18, Catherine publicly rebuked the emperor for his cruelty and defended her faith. In response, he summoned 50 of his best pagan philosophers and orators to debate her. Catherine not only won the debate with her sharp logic and knowledge of Greek philosophy but also converted several of the scholars, who were immediately executed by the emperor. While imprisoned and subjected to various tortures, she reportedly converted over 200 people, including the emperor's wife, Valeria Maximilla, and his chief general. After she refused a marriage proposal from the emperor, he sentenced her to be executed on a spiked breaking wheel—a device designed to shatter bones and cause a slow, painful death. According to legend, when Catherine touched the wheel, it miraculously shattered (or was struck by lightning), saving her from that specific torture. Unable to execute her on the wheel, the emperor ordered her to be beheaded around 305 AD. Tradition states that milk, rather than blood, flowed from her neck. Later, her journey lived on through another as she was one of the divine voices that Saint Joan of Arc claimed spoke to her.
A painting of Joan of Arc, communing with the spirit of Saint Catherine
I’ve spent substantial time researching the great Christian Mystics of olde and I’ve found a pattern of suppressing the stories of the feminine heroines again and again. We need more real-to-life stories of virtue like Saint Catherine’s to breathe inspiration into the Marvel-laden fabulist heroicism internalized by the younger generations. Where have our real virtuous leaders all gone? In fact, right now there seems to be a new “me too” movement-like wave confronting spiritual leaders (Deepak Chopra, Joe Dispenza, Vishen Lakhiani, etc.) via the narcissistic shadows they’ve casted into the teams who’ve supported them.
Perhaps it's time for us all to confront the fact that spiritual ascension, no matter how authentic, yields rotten fruit if we aren’t willing to take an honest look in the mirror to compare Truth with our truth, Goodness with our goodness. A deep look that releases the image of ourselves as a do-gooding healer-to-all and a confrontation with the impurities of our character. A reckoning with the fact that, while we are out there do-gooding, attempting to heal the world, we are distracted from the other good that needs to be done. Not in changing others but in “being the change we want to see in the world.”
We would do well to confront the inconvenient spiritual truth that: transcendent egoless realization means little if it doesn’t bear virtuous fruit, which can only be tasted via the emanation of our actions. What we treat others with is our professional business, but how we treat those we profess to be treating is our collective Soul business. Our Soul responsibility.
One aspect of St. Catherine’s story worth contemplating I believe is the angle of her intellectual fortitude. I think generally, we all at some point in our awakening journey come in contact with teachings or experiences that seem to degrade or defame the intellect. If we aren't careful, we can make a near enemy of the ‘head’ or the mind and start to think the journey is about ‘all heartedness’ but I think this is the incorrect impulse. Without great intellect, would we have the sublime poetry of Rumi? The architectural wonders of Egypt? Or the great and tragic story of Saint Catherine? No, we wouldn’t. We would do well to celebrate intellect but with a critical twist: intellect is only great when it is in service to a force greater than itself.
What is your intellect in service to?
“Someone who is all heart is just as much of a monster as someone who is all head” –Anonymous
Power is a tricky thing. Take money as an example. Money is a generally accessible physical symbol of real metaphysical power. Like the power of political influence, money is here to offer us all a test of our virtuosity.
What motivates you? Do you do it ‘for the money’ or is money simply a byproduct of your pursuit of manifest goodness?
It doesn’t take a genius to see that most every politician has failed these tests by becoming corrupt to some degree, regardless of how much they deceive themselves or the public. Politicians often use their power of intellect in service to their own personal power over people and processes—to make themselves and those near to their orbit of self-interest more powerful, more loyal, and more comfortable. This pursuit of external power and love of money becomes their compromise, the root of their evil.
St. Catherine on the other hand put her intellect in service to God’s goodness, disrupting status-quo corruption, and she paid the ultimate price when she refused the compromise offered in marrying the emperor.
Are you made of that kind of grit?
We should all consider ourselves fortunate if we ever get such a grand opportunity to be tested. It would be more than grace alone if we were to pass such a test with such flying colors as she.
In every small moment you are training for big moments like these. Every time we make time to gaze into the mirror of truth, we make room for virtue to bloom. This is what it means to employ your intellect in service to the Universal Heart.
Tiny daily compromises—betraying our standards, worth, promises, lies-by-omission, keeping secrets, avoidance, justification, blame, laziness, self-deception, ignorance (ignore-ance), taking the easy way out, etc.—in seemingly small ways is how we etch away the strength of our virtue and how we get comfortable walking the path of corruption.
If we don’t make regular action to root out the weeds of corruption in ourselves, by catching ourselves in our own reflection of self-honesty, we will fail the big tests where the greater suffering of humanity is placed on the scale. The best way to realize the power of the descending current that tethers our every step to living heavenly principles on earth is to enter a Spiritual Partnership.
It is the nature of consciousness that, if there is not a situation present which calls forward our greatest capacities, our most sacred virtues, those qualities will remain uncalled. When we act as a responsible member of a community, we commit to a structure which draws us into powers greater than we alone possess. Spiritual Partnerships and their great accomplishment, Divine Unions are the next stage of our evolution—beyond transcendent realization there is transcendent actualization, here and now through you. Visit Relationship Yoga to learn how to build this next chapter of your heroic evolutionary story.
Cass & Cory at the top of Mt. Sinai
