A woman from the crowd said to him, “Blessed are the womb which bore you and the breast which nourished you.”
He said to [her], “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breast which have not given milk.’”
I will share with you a profound secret the Christian initiate understands within him or herself. Whatever blessing the Holy Mother has, it is our very own blessing, inasmuch as we allow the Holy Spirit to enter and to give birth to the Word of the Lord in us. The birth of the Messiah is not so much an event of the past as an ever-present reality. Arising beyond space-time-consciousness and entering into the consciousness of the infinite and eternal, God’s labor of ten thousand years ago and God’s labor of ten thousand years in the future are but one and the same labor in Spirit. So the labor of the Lord God here and now is the same labor; there is no difference.
To the degree that we are holy virgins unto the Lord, the Word is born in us and through us, our body and life becoming the matrix of the Divine presence and power. But what is this holy state of virginity in which all blessings of Mother Mary are our own blessings? I tell you, it is the state of emptiness and openness to the Spirit of the Lord, so empty of oneself that there is no other desire than the holy desire of the Lord, and so open to the Spirit of God that none can enter in but God itself. The holy virgin is one who is pure and pristine, natural and spontaneous in Spirit, as the Lord created her to be, having no desire but the desire of her Beloved, and opening herself to no other but the Beloved. She is completely transparent to her Beloved; therefore, she herself becomes the Beloved and is the Beloved, and there is no difference between herself and the self of the Beloved. When our soul abides in this way in its natural purity, it is the holy womb in which the Christ is born and our body itself is the holy womb that births our soul to eternal life.
So sweet and full of glory and Grace is the Holy Mother that she freely gives to her children everything they ask of her, and, indeed, she has everything to give. For the heavenly Father, who is the hidden cause of Creation, has put the Word in her. Therefore, all is hers to give to those who ask of her. Who is the Holy Mother? She is the personification of the upper Shekinah and primordial Wisdom. She is the speaking silence of the heavenly voice uttering the Word of Life, and so she, herself, is the Life and the Light of the world, inseparable from the Holy One who has come from within herself as the matrix of Creation. Who is the Mother of God but God herself?
Now this woman misses the mark, for in the presence of the Lord, she departs the present and falls into the past and personal history. She is not speaking of the Holy Mother, but of her own name and form, ignorant of the soul as both male and female, yet neither male nor female in its true essence. The holy mysteries are completely lost to her, as the moment of the Light-transmission is in the present always, but she departs the moment entering the dreamlike past. The Master, however, brings balance and speaks of the future, not to take her into fantasies of futures that do not yet exist but to bring her back into the present where the Living Word of God is, so that she might receive the real blessing in store for her. She speaks of a fond dream of the past and the Master speaks of the darkness and horror of the future. She speaks of the pleasure of conception and the Master speaks of the pains of labor in birthing. Until the pains of labor pass and Christ is born in oneself in full, the conception of Christ is as yet incomplete, for it is the birth that is the fruition of conception and surely the greater joy of the Mother.
What does it mean to hear the Word of the Lord and to truly keep it? Once again, the Master is saying that spiritual practice and spiritual living is the enlightenment experience itself. The true Christian will understand this; practicing and living the life of the Anointed One, he or she experiences and knows the Spirit of the Lord inwardly and therefore experiences the enlightenment of the Messiah in daily living. To remember and practice the Light and Truth is, itself, the great blessing the Lord has promised us. Let those who have ears to hear, listen and hear!