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The fifth face of the Dark One is a very particular face that you only see on the path when you are ready, and it is perhaps the most awe inspiring and disturbing of all of the faces, because this is the face that She shows you when She will put you through the Dark Night of the Soul.
This is her face as it appears in those catastrophes that are tailored by our souls for us for our evolution. At a certain moment in the path, everyone will be asked to die to the full self, and everyone's death to the false self will be in certain aspects supremely horrible it is never pretty, is always disgusting and it is always extremely painful and the one way to get through it, the one way to be able to endure it is to realize that the Queen of Darkness herself, the Dark Queen, the Black Madonna is doing the whole process she's doing it in you, she's going through it in you, she's the atmosphere in which this dismemberment and this crucifixion is happening, and she is also the mercy that is arriving in the middle of the pain and the horror and the stripping and the burning, the new illuminations, the new visions, the new insights, the new illumination it's all her. It's all the process of the Dark One. It's all her, the process itself your suffering, your illumination, the divine
it's all happening within her extraordinary and extreme crucible of transformation and the whole world now has become the crucible of the transformation of the Queen of the Dark night, because every human being who is awake is going through that dark night, and the species itself is going through the dark night of the species but the hope is
And this is an amazing hope is that the Queen of the Dark night is doing this process, and her ruthlessness is another face of love, and can take us through this with exquisite, terrible precision. That is the fifth great face of the Black Madonna.
The sixth is something that totally terrifies the patriarchy, in fact they all do have you noticed? how deeply menacing all of these faces are to all of the patriarchy within you and I? And we all have this patriarchal the first one, the Queen of transcendent mystery says to all the boys club for history you think you understand me? You'll NEVER understand me! You think you've got your tidy little concepts and your religions and your who's holy and who isn't holy and what's sacred and what's not? You haven't begun to understand anything, it's just a tiny, tiny smidgeon of awareness you have you will never get it all.
This is the last thing the boys club want to hear. That's nothing to what she says to them as the Queen of Nature. She says you think you're so amazing, don't you? Oh, my God! You've built the Trump Tower, you've invented CDs, you're inventing
as the world burns you're inventing all these idiotic little gizmos that are keeping you playing with your minds as everybody starves and animals are annihilated, and you think that makes you special? You think that makes you amazing, don't you? But what would really make you amazing is if your heart was broken open, and you could see yourself in the animals that you're killing, in the plants that you're burning to death, in the forests that you're annihilating, in the seas that you're polluting, because that would make you real, and that would make you really here.
You can imagine how much the patriarchy wants to hear THAT voice. And imagine how much they want to hear the voice of the Queen of tantra, saying: How dare you lock up my glory? How dare you lock up my sexuality? How dare you take this precious, gorgeous gift of sexual desire and dirty it with your Puritanism and dirty it with your pornography? When are you going to stand up in the flame of your human beauty and claim the wildness of that sacred ecstasy that lives in you, and live it all live it in your toes, live it in your kneecaps, live it in your groin, live it in your stomach, live it in your heart, live it in every cell of your body and BURN with it for me!
They don't want to hear that at all. No, no, no they don't want that one. And they don't want to hear the voice of the Queen of the destruction of illusions, because she's saying to the boys' club and to all the people who have paid up their dues in the boys' club, she's saying: Your world is doomed! You've created desolation in the name of progress, you're creating a nightmare in the name of evolution, you're creating a horror upon a horror in the name of your wealth, you're destroying and wrecking and massacring and you're not even happy you're not even happy! How could you be happy? How could you be happy sitting on a pile of skulls and putting into practice policies that are killing thousands of children in Iraq, how could you be happy? You wonder why you're stuffed on Prozac, you wonder why you are depressed out of your brains, you wonder why you commit pointless infidelities, you wonder why it's because in killing, you have killed yourself. Right? So, that voice isn't very, very welcome at the table of the divine
either. That isn't exactly the Queen of the destruction of illusions is not going to be invited to the White House, whatever gown she wears and she of course, could turn up looking like Angelina Jolie but as soon as she started to talk like this, men in suits would carry her out which is what they have been doing for a very long time.
The next face of the Black Queen is the one that they really don't want us to see, because when you have seen this this will really give you permission to claim your sacred anger and have you noticed? That part of the strategies of the boys' club when it's been in charge of religion has been to demonize passion and to demonize anger, and to make especially women feel dirty about their
passion, dirty about their anger as if their passion and anger were signs of a lesser evolution instead of signs of a tremendous joy in life, and belief in life and commitment to life.
There is an anger that is crazy and then there is an anger that is healthy. There is an anger without which we cannot survive and there is an anger, with which if we indulge it, will ensure our destruction and what the Black Madonna will do is to teach you holy anger, holy, savage indignation, wild outrage will give you the
passion to become really impassioned and really angry and really, really, deeply and wildly upset and properly upset and appropriately out of your mind upset at what's really coming down.
Sometimes I think when the last parish is burnt down, there'll be people just watching pornography on CNN or whatever they're doing, (laughter) or going through some re-run of some ancient comedy because you know one of the reasons that we're in the situation we're in is because we don't CARE, we don't CARE enough! We don't bleed when the Siberian tiger nearly goes off into the dark. We don't cry out when we see an old woman faint from hunger, we pass On page three on the New York times the other day, because there was a dog that had been starved by a group of
and was found in the last stages of starvation and we pass that by because we're so scared of feeling, and our feelings have been so demonized but what the Black Queen what the Queen of outrage will give you is she'll give you your outrage back, and she'll give you the holy oxygen that outrage gives, and she'll give you the passion that outrage gives and this is what's thrilling about her, it's what's really empowering about her she won't just give you that outrage and go make you crazy with it she will make you sane with it and she will teach you how to use it.
Not to be used by it, she will teach you to use it as a passionate fuel for your work. What she will teach you is the alchemy of outrage, which will help you get in touch with your outrage, arouse it and arise it in her, know that that outrage is not duty or human lack of limitation, but actually it's your capacity for love, and your capacity for justice claim it, and then you can turn to her and say: please don't let me be mastered by this, let me master this, let me mistress this so that I can really ride this tiger instead of being eaten by it, and so it can become the fuel for my talking, for my living, for my acting, for my voting and not be something that
makes me demonize my enemies.
Love your enemies! But, for God's sake don't think that they're a beautiful lot, they're a crazy lot and their will to the destruction of the planet don't hate them, don't demonize them but use your outrage at what they're doing to totally galvanize everything that you are to do everything that you can to stop the madness. Do you see? Taking the force, not killing the force as they want you to do what do they want us to do? They want us to remain stupefied in the great coca-coma, they want us to be on a morphine drip of fake pleasure so we're kept just stupefied enough, just entertained enough not to realize what's really happening not to get outraged, not to claim our power, not to go out there and claim in the name of the Mother the new forces of passion and righteousness that will transform the planet. That's what they want but this is what the dream of outrage will not permit, because she strangely enough is stronger than the whole lot of them. The whole lot of us.
And she will shake this world until enough of us are really outraged enough to start doing the radical, real work to stop the killing. You can imagine how they want to hear that voice, can't you? None of us want to hear any of these voices, actually it takes a long time to be able to stand meeting her even once. Let alone take her into the core of your life.
The seventh face of the Black One is a face I call the face of the burnt woman, and I get this phrase by a poem by a great Franciscan mystic called Iacoponi di Todi who is a follower of Francis, and this phrase, "La Donna Bruchetta" refers to Mary, condemned to watch her child being tortured and then killed on the Cross, being condemned to feel at every level the extent of the killing, the murder, the massacre, the cruelty because her heart is infinite and cannot close unlike ours.
And what this emblem of the Black Madonna, this face gives us is what I call heartbreak in action, because when you connect with the burnt woman in her, you connect with the burnt woman in you the being whose love has been betrayed, the being whose love for the world has been mocked and derided, the being whose passion for justice has been called insanity, the being whose been taken through ordeal and ordeal and ordeal and just cried out in the night for a real ransformation and a real transfiguration of the world and been told that they were idiots because they didn't know how the world was everything in you that has gone on loving and suffering through everything has constituted that burnt woman, whose primordial emotion is a massive heartbreak that sees the reality for what it is, which is a crucifixion of life on every level at this moment. And will not look
away, and will not deny but will stay in the pain of it because she knows that that pain is not your enemy that pain is your deepest friend, because it will give you access to unending and boundless compassion for all of life.
Imagine, just for a moment, how the patriarchy wants to listen to the voice of the burnt woman. So, do you see now what letting her in will mean? It will mean that you connect immediately to the mystery beyond imagining, and all of your life becomes a humble serving of that mystery so that you can be incarnated and incarnated in ever greater levels of power, it will mean that you will be connected in the deepest level to nature through your animal self and in a relationship of profound passionate love with all that lives it will mean that your desire will wake up as a holy force of Shakti, a holy transfiguring golden energy and changed everything that you are and everything that you see, it will mean that you will be able to get access direct access to that force of clarity in you which constantly, constantly subverts your fantasies and agendas the fantasies and agendas of a false self that is addicted to all the addictions that this culture is dedicated to.
It will mean that you will get direct connection with the power of passion that has been demonized in you, been humiliated in you a power of outrage in which you can stand and say a huge resounding "NO" to crazy injustice and the madness of everything, and it will mean that you gain the precious diamond of real, radical
heartbreak at the core of your life, which will keep you awake and stop you going to sleep and stop you stuffing yourself with the marzipan of false mysticism and the addictions of a society that wants to keep us passive, stupefied and stupid.
So, this seven-faced Dark Feminine is a huge revolutionary force that will shatter you, remake you, initiate you and give you access to holy new energies, energies of sexual, erotic power, energies of deep passion for justice, energies of courage to stand up for justice and the tortured and energies that come from radical eartbreak, energies of enormous tenderness and compassion altogether.
In other words, if you open to these seven faces of the Black Madonna, you will be born on Earth in the authentic Christ consciousness, which has nothing to do with the addiction to transcendence that they've been talking about, but everything to do with arriving right here in the middle of the nightmare, knowing it's a nightmare but knowing that something new can be born in the middle of the nightmare if you love enough, if you suffer enough, if you rejoice enough, if you work enough, if you give enough and if you are devoted enough to the scariest aspects of the Dark One.
Be still my heart, I think I just need a pause and I'll just give you a pause to take that in, because I'm now going to turn and show you what I hope comes out of that engagement. Caroline said something so beautiful this morning, she said: I'm not pessimist and I'm not an optimist, I am a realist and if there is one force that symbolizes that realism on the highest level, it's the force of the Black Madonna. A realism that is aimed like a javelin of flame at our hearts, to pierce them open and to pierce through all the illusions behind which we cower, to protect our hearts from really seeing what's going and really dedicating ourselves truly, truly to the transformation that is our last and best hope.
So, maybe we could all just summon her back into the room, and open to her, I'm going to chant "MA" again and just come to this place so that I can pour out to you my vision of sacred activism, a vision that would arise if you let the Black One in because if you let her in, she will make you a madman, you see what happens? (Laughter)
You sweat in your expensive, borrowed suit in front of human beings but I think you can stand that at this stage of the game, would you like me to be a little bit more sort of tame and adorable? No?
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