The Birth of a Mystic Catholic in Unification
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12/23/21
PART ONE: THE BIRTH OF A MYSTIC CATHOLIC IN UNIFICATION
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "UNIFICATIONIST."
Rev. Moon once said, "once you are finished with your travel or journey, you no longer need your vehicle." I read this quote myself when I was roughly fifteen or sixteen years old, and I was so deeply moved I never forgot. One of the profound reasons I was so deeply transformed by this quote was because it affirmed what I always knew, secretly fought for in a church community increasingly becoming derailed spiritually by prioritizing "doctrine" over Unification Ideals, and tried to live with all my shattered heart: The Unification Movement is not meant to be another religion. It is meant to Unite, (hence the name), ALL religions through the Unconditional Love of God. Rev. Moon was talking about religion as a vehicle on our journey to oneness with God. Once we have reached this oneness it is impossible to separate this parent/child relationship we have with God as human beings. Hence; "once we have reached our destination, we no longer need our vehicle."
I would like to use a different word to try and illustrate this profound concept further; we no longer DEPEND on our vehicle. The vehicle becomes a holy means through which we can deeply bond with our brothers and sisters of our family of faith. "Mystics" are people who strive for oneness with God (Unconditional Love). A Mystic may certainly drive a "vehicle," but a true one is not defined by it. I am, in my truest heart or hearts, first and foremost a Mystic, and always have been. I was born into God's "Fleet" of sorts, the Unification Movement; which was founded to create a vast "Fleet" of religious vehicles of every creed and traditional roots. Recently, God has taken my deep, lifelong Mystic Heart and planted me inside a vast section of that "Fleet," where I have yet to grow and see what Heaven has in store for my Spiritual Journey there:
I've never felt comfortable with the term "Unificationist." I prefer the term "Moonie." I learned the hard way that some UC Members are wildly offended by it. But "Moonie" is like a diamond formed from coal under immense pressure. We EARNED that name! It was meant as an insult, a crucifixion even, and many of us descended into hell and rose again, and NOTHING will take that from us, not even other fellow Moonies…
"Unificationist," though I use it to not offend, is just that, so deeply incurably, sickeningly inoffensive and therefore misrepresentative. In my experience, the Real God is extremely offensive to the egoic world and institutions of all kinds, religious and secular. "Unificationist" gives our little "branch" of "religion" "legitimacy," so we can "have our freedom of faith" and "YOU can't rock our boat and we can have our little church services and UC flags and never be bothered again; by others or more importantly our own conscience... because WE are LEGIT. LEGIT! YOU HEAR ME?!?! We aren't crazy, we're a legitimate 'religion!’” (Nah Nah poo poo *stick tongue out;*) We dissolve into petty bias and tribalism. This is how we decide to deal with PTSD. That is, NOT deal with it. I've been pushed away more times than I can count by my UC family with the heartbreaking sentiment that I'm no longer part of "their religion." What…?! So many of us have missed the point entirely of Unification, and it's time we dig deep down and heal that wound. The healing of the world depends on it.
Recently, a profound fruiting of a deep relationship I've had all my life with Blessed Mother, (Mary, Mother of Jesus, ancient venerated Saint), and Mother Teresa, (a powerful Mystic Catholic in her own right and a modern, venerated Saint of the Catholic Church), has occurred, and a deepening of my religious identity that is in the process of rebirthing and renewing itself in ways only God knows entirely:
I was sitting in the kitchen one day in reflection and prayer. Many hundreds, even thousands of Soul abiding experiences throughout the years in my religious life have readied the deep root system that this next step can now be opened on my Soulful path. Ever since I left the Unification Church fold fourteen years ago, I haven't felt comfortable at all with any religious label, except that I am religious. I consider myself a part of the Unification Movement, as mentioned above, which is a religious movement. To me, being religious rather than just "spiritual" gives deep reverence to ancestral legacy and continuity; religious practice is deeply intertwined with family and heritage, while just "spirituality" tends to lack a root system and only have emphasis on individual viewpoints that can't or don't make up a whole, because those viewpoints tend to only go so far as to cover that individual's spiritual needs. In this way, embracing a religious identity engenders a need and a desire to have sanctity for the whole through sanctity in the individual.
In the quiet of the kitchen and my heart and mind, I felt God say, "you're a Mystic Catholic." My response was really rather unsanctimonious; I said "Hehhhhh?!?!?!?!?!?!" But I knew in my deepest heart that what I was receiving was straight from God and my life was about to change forever. So I asked God, "You know that I haven't had a religious label for 14 years, but if I were to have one wouldn't it be 'Unificationist?' just asking." God, practically scoffed and replied, "there is no such thing as a 'Unificationist,' you can not have a 'branch' of Unification, that is a whole."
Thank. You. God. And all that is holy. I was emotionally thrown out, and accused by the loudest within one of the North East congregations of a "Unificationist" version of heresy (challenging authority); for having those exact sentiments. The terrible irony is that pretty much every single Moonie that ever joined was accused of some sort of "heresy." Almost none joined, having outside support, all had to join and stay because their Soul and God compelled them to do so, beyond what their intellect could understand or see, subjugated by a Higher Soulful Intelligence within them. I don't care what anyone has to say about Moonies; I've known hundreds in my life, and to have the kind of faith they did, and many still do, to endure so much misunderstanding and persecution, and still practice Love in their faith, one has to be compelled by a Higher Love.
"Moonie" is the Crown of the Triumphant Holy Warrior. "Unificationist" is the label for the petty, fearful and exhausted, because of pettiness that grew from fear, that grew from sometimes extreme hardship.
"Set down your chains, 'till only faith remains, set down your chains."(Jewel)
That evening I set down the chains of the "Unificationist" and my faith was born anew.
I know most likely many a Catholic, Unificationist, and secular groups will accuse me of their own version of "heresy." But hear me when I say, "I don't give a holy shit." I've been burned at the stake, and crucified in varying degrees of severity all my life by the religious and secular alike and I have some hard won spiritual news for you: Y'all, are in the same camps, covered in different labels. Any human being or beings who put doctrine of any kind before Unconditional Love are all the same camp. That's it, that's all. It's actually not that complicated once one sees mostly the inside of things and not the outside. However, the crucifixions don't define me and never have; the resurrections are what absolutely define The Soul and God, the Eternal Parent of the Soul; because they are The Truth. After all there would be absolutely, one- hundred- percent, NO CHRISTIANITY without The Resurrection. The crucifixion as heinous as it was, is nothing on its own. In fact, it's really nothing at all; it's a crime against the Soul, the most precious of Beings. There is no lasting reality beyond Eternal Reality.
"I'm gonna to roll that stone away and live my life my way, stand up on my faith, just like, the sun rises everyday, the tide is gonna to change, you can't keep me low...just like Jesus they couldn't keep him down." (Sara Evans)
I don't know much yet, but I feel I do know this much: The "Catholic" "Vehicle" that God has placed with me now, within my already lifelong Mystic Heart, has something very much to do with my profound understanding of what happened to "Blessed Mother" when her son was crucified. I put the Blessed Mother in quotations, because Miriam or Mary, represents something far more ancient and original than just herself; she represents the Holy Feminine, who is the Origin. If Jesus Christ came representing The Soul in each one of us, then, Miriam represents The Mother of The Soul, or, as Catholic/Christian Tradition has it, "The Mother of God."
When I was a child, and through my teens and early to mid twenties, many invasions of abusive patterns caused an immense amount of trauma starting very young in my life. I'll never forget the first time I saw a picture of Jesus' crucifixion as a second grader, and the way the image plagued my already traumatized child-self is unspeakable. Really, I don't think I'll ever be able to describe the magnifying of my trauma that took place from that moment. Around that same time period my family and another UC family moved to Salem Massachusetts. My Mother and our close family friend from the UC took us to the Salem Witch Museum thinking that it was an actual museum. But what it really was, was a horrific dramatizing and sensationalizing of the Salem Witch Trials; a true event that was a mere sampling of the crimes that were being committed during the Christianizing of the world. One of those crimes being the many waves of genocide against women on the basis of corrupt Biblical interpretation by The European Inquisition. This interpretation being; Eve or Eva, representing all women, having eaten the "Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," was now understood as being deserving of torture, imprisonment, murder and/or oppression because she "is the first sinner and led Adam to fall." Women, especially the Wise Women and Midwives all over the world for over three-hundred-years were raped, imprisoned, tortured and murdered on the basis of being accused of practicing "black magic" and "heresy."
In those formative years of my life, I was being emotionally, verbally and physically abused in my household; receiving unwarranted and inappropriate levels of punishment, and would continue to on varying levels into my early twenties. Both the images and dramatization of the Christ (Anointed One) and mothers being tortured and killed invaded my tender, young self. In so many ways, my life has paralleled these women, Miriam, The Christ, and these men, especially when I was raped at nine-years-old.
One day when I was about nine-years-old I just couldn't bear it any longer and I remember really "having it out" with Jesus about how much he scares me and how tortured I am by how he died. In my own way, I was crying out for the love I was desperately starving for in my childhood. Not so long after, a UC member came to our home selling metal etchings and let us pick one. I picked the one of Jesus holding a little girl and a white dove- the little girl looked just like me. I have no doubt in my Soul and Heart that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, (In the Divine Principle, the Core Unification Scripture, is understood as the Divine Feminine/Mother/Holy Intercessor), healed me that day and ever since. What I understood from a very young age through the processing of the trauma and horror of my life's trials is this: A mother is crucified the moment her child is. They become sealed in the tomb together, and they overcome those unspeakable crimes against them, together- through the Resurrection, which is Rebirth; and Rebirth happens through the healing of The Mother's Heart.
PART TWO, THE BIRTH OF A MYSTIC CATHOLIC IN UNIFICATION:
GUADALUPE: THE ROOT MOTHER RISEN FROM THE TOMB OF CATHOLICISM
In deep meditation one night, I sojourned with Blessed Mother to a place within myself I'd faced many times, but this time to depths of healing I didn't know were possible:
Miriam, Mother of Jesus, held me close and tight to her small, wiry, yet powerful, veiled body. Her stride held a deep, holy strength that one's heart dare not resist, and yet trembles with the unknown of where it is leading them. We were headed towards Calvary, where the three crosses, now empty, were standing. My heart urged me to trust the Blessed Mother and not resist the journey forward. I focused on surrendering to her completely. We made it to the foot of the crosses, where she had been two thousand years ago, witnessing something most mothers would never recover from in their lifetime; the brutal murdering of her precious son by their own people. She turned to me and took my hands in hers, and as she did so the crosses dissolved into sand and became part of the hill. The sun was setting and a heartbreakingly beautiful sunset was on the horizon. Miriam's hands were rough, very rough, and her feet, I only noticed at this moment, were also very rough, and bare. She looked straight into my eyes and the tears that were pouring from her fearless gaze were tiny diamonds, and every once in a while, a tiny ruby also fell among the diamonds.
Her voice when she spoke to me seemed to vibrate from her whole being, not just her vocal cords, and she said, "These tears and many drops of blood I've shed from the day I received my mission from God to conceive and give birth to Jesus, to this very moment; over the last two thousand years, through cycles of unimaginable pain, grief, torment and triumph, have become spiritual diamonds and rubies derived from Soul, of heavily, concentrated Divine Maternal Wisdom and Experience. There is a tribe of women and mothers in the earthly and spirit realms who have been through the unimaginable, the unspeakable, but no matter how broken we were, or how hopeless our situations seemed, we never gave up. There is a part of all of us, with deep scar tissue that contains tremendous power, and at the same time feels the pangs of terror that we will remain broken forever, that we are hopeless. That we will always be defined by our grief and pitfalls. That part of our deepest selves is constantly being brought through the fire, and put under tremendous pressure- the way diamonds and rubies are formed in the mountains. That scar tissue, formed from our deepest anguish, is made to endure tremendous heat and pressure without tearing or shattering. This tribe of women and mothers is the tribe you belong to. The Mystic Catholic isn't identified with the 'rule books.' The Mystic Catholic's Soul belongs first and foremost to our tribe; the tribe of women and mothers whose scar tissue bleeds at times, but it bleeds rubies, no longer a hemorrhage. The tribe whose eyes cry not just the rivers, but the diamonds that make up the structure of the river beds-we make up the body of the Blessed Mother. Many speak of The Body of Christ; but just as a child is made from his mother's flesh, blood and bone, so too, is Christ's body (all souls that love with Christ's love), made from the Body of the Blessed Mother. Her tribe is The Tribe of The Great Scarred Woman, who is The Root Mother; the first woman and mother to be crucified, and laid in a tomb, pregnant with Christ's Body (The Love of God in Human Souls), and resurrected when her womb- the Cosmic Cradle of Life- gave way to The Light of the World; A Human Child, the Hope of God and Humankind."
The tomb of "Catholicism" is filled with the crucified, in Christ's name. The Pentecost recorded in the Bible, was the victory of Love over the crimes of evil. It gave those touched by The Holy Spirit; the Holy Feminine and Love's Intercessor to the broken human heart-the framework for Unconditional Love to spread to the world. Instead, even after having endured hundreds of years of persecution themselves, Christians and the Catholic Church became the European Colonists that would become directly or indirectly guilty of the indiscriminate rape, torture, enslavement, and murder of millions of women, children and men all over the world. I have met many, especially those of European descent who seem to think that becoming cut off and even cynical about their Catholic/Christian roots is the solution to the healing of crimes inflicted by their ancestors. But in my experience; through the crucifixions, resurrections, and Pentecosts of my own life, severing oneself from one's ancestors is first of all, impossible, though one can pretend, and secondly, an act of cutting oneself off from The Body of Blessed Mother. The Tribe of Women and Mothers described above by Miriam, make up the root system, starting with the Root Mother, of the Ancient Tree of humanity. History unfolds many times brutally, because of the human condition, but the Ancient Tree stays the same. The Body of the Blessed Mother are the women and mothers throughout history that were able to do one major thing, despite many times unspeakable circumstances: Carry history forward, and did so, by doing what they had to do to protect their children, survive, and pass on what they knew and what they could, even at the risk of their lives, or ultimately offering their lives; for the knowledge of Soul.
The Western World suffers from a habitual and collective psychosis that believes that "cutting off" what the ego considers "shameful," "unclean," even just "old," or "inconvenient" is the solution to healing or starting anew. Blessed Mother's Tribe knows better, in fact, Blessed Mother's Tribe knows that there is only one Tree, the Tree of Humankind. She knows that even in the hell fires that sometimes burn hot; spiritually or physically, there is only the way THROUGH. One can't go back. The Body of Blessed Mother emerged from the tomb of Catholicism in Mexico as "The Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe," five-hundred-years ago, and appeared, not to a Spanish Colonialist Bishop or even priest or nun, but a Mexican Indian peasant, by the name of "Speaking Eagle" or his Spanish Catholic Saint's name, "Santo Don Diego." She showed all the conquered and oppressed of Mexico and now all over the world that Cosmic Sacred Symbols, Motifs, Persons, Saints and Truths echo in Eternity. The Catholic Faith can not be "groomed" by "Catholicism." The Catholic Faith, like all faiths, are "pieces of the shattered Truth, that Truth, a mirror in the hands of God, the "One Love." (Rumi) The Ancient Goddess, manifested in The Root Mother, The Saints, Sages, as the Eternal potential in all women, and mother of all men without exception, transcends the four walls, steeple and altar of any church; as she is the same Cosmic Mother of the ages, incarnate in the Body of the Blessed Mother.
Speaking Eagle's ancient culture that was shattered by the Spanish Conquerors knew Blessed Mother in her pre-Christian forms. She and her children were crucified and they entered the darkness of the tomb. She rose again, as she has for the last two million years, giving birth, life again to her Child of Light; in the people and cultures she comes to heal, comfort and lead out of the darkness, transforming the tomb, by moving forward, back into the Cosmic Womb. Her Womb.
There is only forward. I am not defending or beating the drum for Catholics, or any particular group. I am a grain of sand on the sea, the Sea of an Ancient Cosmic Work, the work of Unconditional Love. I am, in my earthly form, a Mystic Catholic in Unification. My Soul is what all Souls are; God Incarnate, The Children of the One Love and Light, God.
Religious Cultural Tradition, through the major faiths of the world are sacred vehicles that through the work of the Holy Spirit are drawing human Souls ever deeper, ever more awakened to the Love and Light of God-Unconditional Love and Source of All Things. Because of the human condition, corruption is always a possibility, and the need for rebirth and renewal of these powerful vehicles has been a constant work through the ages, and will continue to need vigilant and dedicated Souls to stay attuned to the ever-changing work of the Ever-Constant Love.
"Once one has reached their destination, they no longer need their vehicle." (Rev. Sun Myung Moon).
A Mystic, strives to be one with God. Our vehicles should serve the Will of Love, and nothing else.
There is a HUGE difference, between a Mere "Unificationist," and a Moonie Mystic. Trust me.