Episode 86 - The True Sacred Marriage (Part Two) with Andrew Harvey, Tantric Mystic and Sacred Activist
Dr. Patti continues her conversation with Andrew Harvey, Tantric Mystic and sacred activist. Find out why Andrew believes that the birth of a new divine humanity is trying to take place in the depths of our contemporary world crisis. We will learn that whether we create such a new birth - or not - depends on the unions of many opposites that have traditionally been kept separate. Find out just what these opposites are. Learn how to create for yourselves this fusion of opposites so that you can have a living experience of the divine nature of the body. Experience the calm and glorious energies that this awareness can release. Andrew suggests how to create “networks of grace” locally, so that everyone feels empowered to respond at a personal level to the world in crisis. Dr. Patti finds out from Andrew what people can do who are yearning to powerfully open their hearts, so that they can take that next step to action. Andrew has many beautiful and practical suggestions. A deeply empowering show to be listened to many times, and shared with friends and loved ones, too.
Transcript
Transcript
Dr. Patti Taylor: Welcome to the Expanded Lovemaking show, I’m your host Dr. Patti Taylor of expandedlovemaking.com. And I teach you how to make exquisite love. This is part two of a two part series. Our topic today is the true sacred marriage. Our guest, Andrew Harvey, believes that the birth of a new divine humanity is trying to take place in the depths of our contemporary world crisis.
So today we’ll learn if we can create such a new birth or not. It will depend on a union of opposites traditionally kept separate: of heaven and earth, mind and heart, body and soul and more.
And so hi Andrew, welcome back to the show.
Andrew Harvey: Hi, yes, welcome to the sacred marriage; this is the time of the sacred marriage.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow, do you want to tell us more about why you say that?
Andrew Harvey: Well, I think that what’s happening is that we’ve manifested out of our full self, a vast crisis which is now threatening our life. We’ve created a suicidal system of exploitation and that this crisis is, in a sense, a destined crisis. And there is a great mystery because in the mystical systems, they know of a great ordeal that has to be gone through before both the divine and the human come together. And that ordeal is called “The Dark Night of the Soul”.
And what I think is happening is that our crisis is a great dark night of our species, which is not going to end in destruction of everything, but is going to end by a birth. A birth that is actually taking place as a new kind of humanity; a humanity that wants to link the transcendent and imminent, the masculine and the feminine, body and soul, heart and mind, profound love and profound wisdom with radical action. To unify the human and the divine within the human and to birth a new kind of human and through that birthing of a new kind of human birth a new kind of world.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Do you think this is actually happening right now? I’d like…
Andrew Harvey: Yes, it is.
Dr. Patti Taylor: …to think it is.
Andrew Harvey: It is happening now. I think that’s one of the things I’ve come more and more to believe. You have to develop what I call vast eyes; you have to see. There’s so many different ways in which it’s happening. I think it’s happening in the fact of the crisis itself; that the crisis is so extreme that it’s bound to be tremendously creative. It’s a birthing crisis because it’s threatening us so extremely that when we wake up to just how bad it is, which we are going to in just a little bit, we’re going to have to muster our deepest creativity to meet it and we will.
It’s happening in the amazing outburst of great technological advance and the new fuel energies that are being created; solar energy, wind energy, thermal energy. Just at the moment when we’re in the middle of destroying the planet we’ve got marvellous breakthroughs that offer us real alternatives which we could employ right now if we restructure our lives and if we had the political and moral and spiritual courage.
It’s happening in the great mystical revolution that’s taking place. We, in the last 30 years, have had the full treasures of all the mystical traditions laid at our feet. And we have the great, great gift of the supreme practices that these traditions guarded being offered to us; which is like being given the technology for transformation.
So that’s a huge, huge plus. It’s a huge gift. Then there’s the new kind of media that’s happening; this show is one of them, in which you can say what you want and you’re not being policed and you’re not being told what not to say. That’s a huge liberation through the internet and that offers boundless possibilities of galvanizing people and gathering people together. There are tremendous signs in all of the different disciplines of the world that the divine feminine is come to be valued more.
You see it in the growth of ecology, you see it in the growth of animal rights, you see it in the growth of women’s rights, you see it in the growth of gay right. You see it in the growth of the passion for yoga; you see it in the growth in understanding of tantra. You see it in the new business models of cooperation, the feminine vision that is not a dominator/exploiter vision, but a vision of mutual creativity. You see these different images of health that are now being talked about seriously. The way ritualistic visions of health have taken over, really, in many, many different ways.
So there’s a tremendous seeping in of the wisdom of the divine feminine through all these different ways in our world as we speak. And you also see, and this is one of the geniuses I think of the work of Paul Ray, who wrote about cultural creatives and Paul Hawkin who wrote this great book, Blessed Unrest. You see that there is in fact all over the world, millions of people who are really starting to become more awake and are working toward a more transformative and just and harmonious system. And they include slum dwellers who are working in La Paz for justice there.
They include environmentalists who put their lives on the line to try and stop environmental destruction. They include the Doctors Without Borders who go to every genocide area and work in impossible situations. They include all kinds of extraordinary non-profit organizations that are working on no money hardly to do great work and there are millions of people doing this. And that shows that there is a great awakening of the heart and the passion to put that awakening into practice.
So I feel that it’s extremely important, as the darkness gets very dark, as we see this death explode all around us as we experience this shattering that we’re experiencing, to keep very aligned to the birth. To keep very aligned to the real lineaments of this great birth that are taking place.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, I love your vision of the possibilities for good that are happening as well, particularly in these times of darkness. Why do you think the Divine Mother is re-emerging?
Andrew Harvey: Why is she emerging? Because…
Dr. Patti Taylor: I mean she’s been repressed for so long and there’s a dark night of the soul and why? Why now?
Andrew Harvey: Well, the Divine Mother is…if the universe is a sacred marriage between transcendence and imminence, matter and spirit and between the Father that is the Transcender and the embodied Divine that is the Mother, then not to be in contact with the Mother is an absolute fatality because that’s not to be in contact with the whole of embodied reality.
And since that’s what we haven’t been for thousands and thousands of years, we’ve created a complete nightmare in which we’re destroying ourselves, destroying nature, killing 120 species a day, creating a completely unliveable world. And so connecting with the Mother is happening because it’s the last way to save us and also the best way to save us.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, so people, consciousness is waking up then is what you’re saying?
Andrew Harvey: The heart is waking up, yes. The Mother has always been here and we’re waking up to her. And of course she’s helping us because she loves us and she wants us to wake up before we destroy ourselves and there’s a great deal of danger.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, that’s clear enough. What happens to us on a personal level as the world wakes up. I mean, does that also work backwards?
Andrew Harvey: What does that mean?
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, so there was a way that were talking about when we wake up personally that we can influence the world, and we’re going to be talking about sacred activism a lot. But does it look the other way too? That as the world wakes up, it wakes us up?
Andrew Harvey: Oh, I think so. I think the situation is an immense wake up crucible isn’t it? Because even the most smug people see that the crisis is dangerous.
Dr. Patti Taylor: How can you not wake up, right?
Andrew Harvey: I think the denial will go on; clearly, the Republicans are masters of denial and we see that every day in Congress. But I think that more and more millions of people in the world are going to wake up to tremendous financial chaos and also of course to other forms of chaos.
Dr. Patti Taylor: If you don’t wake up the world will wake you up, right?
Andrew Harvey: Oh, the world is going to wake everybody up. This crisis is a crisis so extreme that everyone will have to face it soon.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, that’s kind of a good thing, isn’t it?
Andrew Harvey: Well it is if we’re prepared, but I think the problem is that we have no template for what’s coming now because it’s never happened on such an intensive scale before.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, I want to talk about sacred activism and so please stay with us. This is Dr. Patti Taylor and I’m here with Andrew Harvey. You can learn more about Andrew at his website: andrewharvey.net. And we’ll be right back.
And I just want to say for those of you just joining us, there are great streaming videos on his website which are…you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be entertained for an entire, I don’t know, evening if you want. Totally fun.
[BREAK]
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, we’re back and we’re talking about the true sacred marriage. So, I want to find out now what we can do to…when we see the world is up in flames and our heart is broken open?
Andrew Harvey: Well, I think the most important thing that anybody can do is to really get real about what’s going on and realize that we’re all being challenged now, to put love into action. And when you decide what you should be doing at this moment – what I always ask people to do is to get up early one morning, at like 3:00 in the morning and just look around at the pain in the world and look at it calmly and simply. And just ask yourself the question: What, of all these different sufferings, what breaks my heart the most? What is the one that really makes me want to weep and say, “Oh my God, oh my God, please let this stop, please le this stop!”
And what I ask people to do is to follow that heartbreak. So imagine that heartbreak you discovered in asking yourself that question is a torch. Go down into this dark room which is like the center of your heart, go down with this torch of heartbreak and you’ll see that there’s a letter on the floor. And that letter is the letter that your heart and your mission has written to you. Just pick up the letter and you will find that in it is written something you can do about that heartbreak in your own local community.
So then start to do something real in your local community about something that you really are heartbroken about. And I have many causes but the two that really break my heart open are animals and the environment. So a lot my work is devoted to animal rights and to environmental action because without respecting the animals as sacred and without respecting the environment as sacred we are truly doomed.
So what is your passion? What is your heartbreak? Find your heartbreak and start doing something simple and local about it. And you’ll find that your life will really be transformed with meaning.
The other thing I suggest to people is that they start creating what I’ve called our “networks of grace”. I bought this domain name and I’m creating a website which is going to link networks of grace all over the country and, I hope, all over the world.
And what networks of grace are going to be, I hope, are cells of people, probably around six or twelve people, that have gathered around a profession or a great passion or a great heartbreak and really want to encourage each other, pray together, meet together, to start infusing and enthusing each other to start doing great things all around the world.
So this networks of grace are people who can be, say, lawyers who want to get a kind of law through in a particular challenging situation or doctors who want to start meeting to help the poor who haven’t got medical insurance. Or therapists who want to donate free time to activists who need therapy to deal with the difficult situations that they’re dealing with. There are so many different ways in which this could work.
I’ve started this vision of networks of grace because the future is going to be created by grassroots radical evolution of the heart and people realizing that they are powerful when they work together. And that they can, working through heartbreak with others, praying and rejoicing and celebrating and loving together and sustaining each other, then amazing things can be accomplished.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I think that is really, really beautiful. Now, I have a question for you: what would you tell a listener who says, “I would love to do it but my heart is not open” or “I am so overworked that I don’t have the time” or “I need to get to that step where my heart is broken open. How do I break open my heart?” Do you ever get that question?
Andrew Harvey: No, I think it’s a wonderful question. I think the truth is probably that everybody’s heart is somewhere broken, it’s just that we’re not noticing or we’re distracting ourselves from it.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So what’s that the step that someone could take to tune into that? I mean I love your network of grace. Could someone join a network of grace and say, “You know, I’m really intested in this subject but I’m not there yet” or “I just want to follow along” or…?
Andrew Harvey: Yes, I’m sure they could, but the – I think the truth…
Dr. Patti Taylor: I think we’re so numbed out, you know, a lot of us I’m guessing, I don’t know.
Andrew Harvey: I think a lot of people are numbed out but I think if anyone seriously needs to get in touch with their heart, the first thing they need to do is to make some time for sacred practice. You can’t really connect with that profound heart center before you really started having a sacred relationship with the Divine. Just open your heart in prayer, start talking to God. Start asking to feel your heart. Start asking to have your heart cleared of its undergrowth. Start having silent periods where you are by yourself and you can really start feeling all your own feelings without the millions of distractions that stop you from feeling your own feelings, like ours.
So it’s very important to begin there, I think. To begin with a commitment to your own spiritual revolution and then your own heart will emerge. Your true heart will be shown to you.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, I think that’s so important with the mass suicide and the personal suicide. It’s like, you know, that’s the tipping point, just getting off of this…
Andrew Harvey: The tipping point is you’re seeing how dangerous the situation is and realize that you’re being challenged and called to be a midwife of a new kind of living and to realize that you have to do this to continue as being enslaved by the machine, to actually be committing yourself to death, you might as well go into the middle of the street and lie down.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well that kind of puts it out there pretty graphically doesn’t it? [laughs]
Andrew Harvey: It’s true. In a culture like ours, not to be working on your inner development and not to be really thinking of ways that you can really be of use is to really waste this chance. A crisis like this isn’t going to happen again for the simple fact if we don’t survive it, we won’t survive.
So let’s use the ferocity of the crisis as a tremendous chance to become truly, truly absorbed in our innermost self in the Divine and truly, truly be absorbed in acts of service to other people. Nobody has the excuse to be so busy that they can’t think about the world because if they were to just use that excuse then the world would collapse and they won’t have any money and the world would be in such a chaos that they would wish that they hadn’t been born. So let’s get weeping now.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, well I’m just wanting to be a midwife too and be a support to my listeners that are going, “God that sounds so good but I’m just trying to make that connection from my 15 hour a day job and then I’m driving to and from” it’s like…
Andrew Harvey: Well then say to them, I would love to say to everyone who is feeling like that right now, I would say right now, don’t make it so dramatic, this connection to the Divine. Just start saying the name of God in your heart when you’re driving. Just sit in your car and if it’s Jesus you love, say Jesus in the heart. Or if it’s the Buddha – there’s a mantra you love.
I have a very busy life and what I do to stay centered is to constantly say the name of God in my heart. And I find that if I’m doing it when I’m walking to the post office or to Starbucks or waiting in a queue in the bank or doing anything I can immediately connect.
So nobody – there’s moments of dead time throughout the day, even in the busiest life, when you’re in the car or walking, where you can just connect with reality by breathing. Or another one, a wonderful practice that you can do is just breathe in and breathe in the golden light and breathe in the Divine peace and beauty. And when you breathe out, breathe out everything in you that is sad or worried or exhausted. Just do this nine or ten times six or seven times a day. You’ll find that the whole day will be different.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, so I really like that. So if you start there, does it build from there? Where you start, you call the name of God or you breathe in – does it like a snowball rolling down the mountain, it gets bigger and bigger?
Andrew Harvey: Yes, because one day you’ll find out what saying the name of God really means and you’ll feel this huge opening in your heart taking place. You might even see Divine light. The Divine is very, very tender to those who call out to it. And you’ll discover how sacred this process is. And that will open a new world of relationship to you. But you have to begin, the mystics tell us this, they are the experts and believe them and just do the work and you’ll see why you’re doing the work because you’ll feel so connected and overjoyed.
And you can use it right in the core of your simple, ordinary life. That’s where it’s meant to be.
Dr. Patti Taylor: And how about talking to a partner? What if you have a partner? Would that help too, just taking five minutes?
Andrew Harvey: Oh God, I think it always helps in every deep relationship to have a meditation practice on both sides, especially if there’s any kind of conflict. Really to pray over it, to meditate on it and take it deep into yourself. And if possible not to confront the other person from a place of rage, always trying to from a place of loving compassion while being honest.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, we will take a brief break and we’ll come back. This is Dr. Patti Taylor and I’m here with Andrew Harvey. And you can find out more about Andrew Harvey and sacred activism at: andrewharvey.net.
[BREAK]
Dr. Patti Taylor: We’re back. So I just wanted to talk a little bit more about the sacred marriage. What does it look like when someone has really got it together with the sacred marriage? What is that evolved? I guess there is no limit to how evolved you can be, but what could we aspire to?
Let’s say we’re more active in the world, we’ve practiced more tantra.
Andrew Harvey: Well, I think that if the universe is the one manifesting itself through the sacred marriage, then being in connection with both the transcendent Father and the Divine Mother, consciously being the Divine Child of the Father/Mother, is to be a being that is divinized in the center of life, in the core of life.
What that means is, through the marriage of inner and outer heart and mind, body and soul, sacred prayer and sacred action, the being that is being married in these ways, through these opposites coming together becomes progressively more the Divine Human, progressively more wise, more impassioned, more tender, more full of joy, more full of purpose and more consciously aligned with the Divine consciousness in everything he or she does.
So this is a birth of a new kind of human being. The return of the mother is to make the sacred marriage of opposites possible to us, the matter of marriage of spirit, the matter of sacred consciousness and sacred action, the marriage of soul and body, the marriage of prayer and profound service, so that we can become married beings, sacred divine children, beings in profound conscious contact with absolute reality in a very humble and tender way creating a new world through that radical new contact and the powers that come through it.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow that is so beautiful. That is something we just spontaneously start doing after a while, that just comes naturally to us?
Andrew Harvey: No, it’s something you really do have to work for because you really do have to have a serious spiritual practice, the three kinds of practice we talked about: the cool practices, the warm practices, the hot practices. You need to have a very deep reverence for your body and you need to be really involved in something in your life that is dedicated to service, that is dedicated to serving others.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well I meant that if we were doing all that, eventually we would be that divine child that you described.
Andrew Harvey: I think yes, that we would be putting ourselves in the field of that transformation, yes we would. And that Divine would help us. It’s a tremendous transformation; it never ends.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Oh that sounds so beautiful. So I want to ask you one more thing. You have just a little bit on your program was on sacred activism. You have a year long program and I was just wondering if you could share a little on that.
Andrew Harvey: Well at the moment I’m really creating a global curriculum because we’re trying to get this vision out to the whole world and all the different aspects of it. So we have four initiations: one into the fundamental mysticism and the practices we’ve been describing. The next into heart wisdom, the kind of wisdom of the heart that you’re going to need in the Great Crisis. The third is the understanding of the systems that are working and the solutions that are also being proposed: energy solutions, political solutions, business solutions – to change businesses from destructive to creative.
And the fourth initiation is really into the sacred body. So people who take the four initiations will be, we hope, will be given a really strong basis to become sites for the sacred marriage for this great birth, for this new human, for this great divine in action. That’s what we’re trying to help people – birthing themselves and then their world.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well that sounds wonderful. Well I want to be one of those divine humans, I’m putting my hand up. [laughs]
Andrew Harvey: Well I know everybody can be. Truly so much grace is being offered to us at the moment because the Divine never puts us through individually, or as a culture or as a world, the kind of thing that we’re going through without offering so much grace of transformation, grace of revelation, grace of help, grace of elimination. It’s all being offered to us.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, OK. I really so honor and admire the work you’re doing in the world Andrew. I just have to tell you that. Such a message of hope and inspiration and action.
Andrew Harvey: Thank you.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So we are going to bring our show to a close. I wanted to invite you to leave us again with some inspirational words for our listeners.
Andrew Harvey: Well I would love to leave you the poem by Rumi.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK.
Andrew Harvey: The grapes of my body can only become wine after the winemaker tramples me. I surrender my body like grapes to his trampling so my innermost heart can blaze and dance with joy. And although the grapes go on as being blood and sobbing, I cannot bear anymore anguish, I can’t bear any more cruelty. The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears and says, “I am not working in ignorance, I am the master of this work. You can deny me if you want, you have every excuse. But when through my passion you reach perfection, you will never be done praising my name.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow.
Andrew Harvey: That’s what I think we’re in. we’re in that process right now.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you.
Andrew Harvey: Thank you dear heart.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you so much.
Andrew Harvey: Bless your work.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you so much. So with that we’re bringing our show to a close. I’m just going to invite my listeners to fill out a survey for me: survey.personallifemedia.com to tell us who you are. And with that I want to say thank you for listening. Please send me email: [email protected]. For texts and transcripts of the show and other shows on the Personal Life Media network, please visit our website at personallifemedia.com.
Also please visit me, Dr. Patti Taylor, at expandedlovemaking.com, where you can join my mailing list and find out more about my products and services and events. So that’s all for now, I remain yours in ever expanding lovemaking and I’ll see you next week.