+Marc's Magical Mandala Tour: Part 1

A friend (with friends like this who needs enemies) recently turned me on to the Timothy Leary of the Episcopal church, Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California. He is an incredibly cool and hip dude who is exploring the mystical realms of Christianity through mandalas, cosmological powers, maximal maternal affection, and the new Cosmologies. In Part 1 of this series, feed your head on "Maximum Maternal Care" from +Marc's blog (link to +Marc's blog),

“Those who receive maximum care and affection from their mothers will always have the trace of this in them, no matter what happens to them in life.” — XIV Dalai Lama, teaching in Louisville, Kentucky, May 20, 2013

When I heard the Dalai Lama say this yesterday in Louisville in the Yum! Center, I immediately thought of the work I’ve taken with the Christ Mandala — to relate the cosmological powers to the archetypes of the Cosmic Christ.

What could be more the expression of the maximum maternal affection and care than the originating event of the universe, the Great Flaring Forth? Fourteen and a half billion years ago not only did all that is come into being, but all that is came into being as inter-being, deeply interrelated. The originating event of the universe made us a universal family.

Jesus had a terrific mother and father, who showed him, it seems, maximum care and affection. But he was also raised, it appears, in a fairly hostile, censorious community that made his relations difficult. Particularly, there may have been continual pushing at Jesus when he was a boy about his questionable parentage. Mary’s saying that the Holy Spirit had brought the child might be accepted in a contemporary urban community like my home, San Francisco, but there are many tight-knit communities where that would be greeted with incredulity and censure.

So at some point, Jesus had a mystic experience, the first of many that told him the truth about his parentage; “I have no father, I have no father, I have no father…Yes, my father and the father of all is God!” This is a statement of deep truth, and one we can understand in a new way, benefiting as Christians from the New Cosmology.

We can find the traces of the maximum parental affection and caring, the love of God in the deep interrelatedness that remains as the birthright of all beings in the universe, and of the universe itself. “Are we not all offspring of the Divine?” asks St. Paul, and we, with Jesus can say, “Yes!”

Today, pray to see the traces of the maximum maternal care and affection for you that is woven within you, from God.

+Marc

May 21, 2013 2:27:55 PM

Consider yourself enlightened.

Coming down off the spiritual high I experienced from reading this blog post, I went into a real spiritual downer. I found myself searching my brain for scriptural references to the "Christ Mandala" and how it relates the "cosmological powers to the archetypes of the Cosmic Christ." And then I realized that the source of my angst was due to my maternally implanted desire for precision. You see, the source of the "Great Flaring Forth" was a book about the "Primordial Flaring Forth" by Brian Swimme, and I just hate to see things mis-quoted, it just, like draws away some of the coolness energy from the man, you know.

And then I searched high and low for the mystic experiences of Jesus that told him the truth about his parentage. Was it his baptism, or was it the forty days in the wilderness? Doesn't my need for details and facts also represent a trace of the background glow of the great flaring forth of maximal maternal affection? Are not the orthodox also offspring of the Divine?

Can one offspring tell the other he is just plain nuts?

In Part 2 of this series we will have our minds expanded through +Marc's vision of the Christ Mandala in Christian history and art.