Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - The Girl Who Baptized Herself with Meggan Watterson

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love megan watterson is a best-selling author of mary magdalene revealed the first apostle her

Starting point is 00:00:45 feminist gospel and the christianity we haven't tried yet she's a feminist theologian with a master of theological studies from harvard divinity school and a master of divinity from Columbia University. And she has now written a new book, which is really powerful, called The Girl Who Baptized Herself. How a lost scripture about a saint named Thecla reveals the power of knowing our worth. There are so many beautiful lessons about how to access the love that we all can reach, how to find our worth, how to find our power, and maybe even how to have a new relationship with spirituality, especially if you grew up in a very religious environment and feel a little trauma from that. But we're going to be getting into all of it

Starting point is 00:01:34 in this episode of The Language of Love. Megan Watterson, thank you so much for joining us on The Language of Love. I'm excited to dive into this with you. Thank you for having me. We're going to get into your newest book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself. But I want to start with your last book, which I know you hear this every day, you know, has been so transformative for so many. Mary Magdalene revealed, you know, for me, who was raised pretty secular Jewish in a little town on the Bible Belt in Southeast Georgia, and then kind of moved into my early adulthood, trying to find some sort of spiritual practice and dove a little more deeply into

Starting point is 00:02:21 Judaism, which mostly because of my ex-husband, who was from a very religious family, I was really turned off. I was turned off by kind of this patriarchal, misogynistic everything, you know, especially in his community, which was, you know, the women and men are kept separate and women are impure for several weeks a month. And, you know, there was so much, I just couldn't hang with that. And I also had been so othered on behalf of, in the name of, let's just say it wasn't on the behalf of him, in the name of Jesus, I experienced so much ostracism and antisemitism and emotional pain growing up because I was, you know, bullied and pennies thrown at me and, you know, stupid stuff, but for a kid, really painful. So I really rejected that too. And I was just starting to

Starting point is 00:03:20 explore spirituality in general. And I kind of, right around the time your book, Mary Magdalene Revealed, came into my hands, because they were always trying to save me down there, right? And they wouldn't let me hang at their events or their parties or their dances unless I accepted Jesus as my Savior. So I actually saw Jesus as part of the path to my pain, right? And the reason, and I never really thought about people acting on behalf of him in a way that he wouldn't have wanted. You know, that didn't occur to me back then. So it was just starting to occur to me. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me just see who this guy really was. And that's when Mary Magdalene revealed, fell into my hands. And then that, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:07 obviously opened up an entirely new world to me. And I started diving into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes. And I just went down a whole rabbit hole that opened up a whole new world. And Jesus became J Money. And we became really good friends. And not in a Christian sense, per se,

Starting point is 00:04:25 but spiritual. In terms of the teacher. Yeah. In terms of a beautiful teacher and guide and a consciousness I want to embody. Yeah. As did Mary Magdalene through your book. That's what started it.

Starting point is 00:04:39 So I would love to start there. I want to get into, you know, the gospel of Mary in your words, you know, and where that came from and what that was and who she was. And then, you know, the act of Paul and Fecla, which is a similarly hidden, not talked about, but crucial text and teachings. So let's just start there. We'll start with Mary and then get into Fecla. Well, Mary really was my bridge to understanding Christ, because I was raised in a feminist,

Starting point is 00:05:19 very secular environment, very academic. And so when I had these experiences of what I can only describe as just being overcome hung with a love that wasn't something that was arriving from outside of me, which seems very strange because that's not how it appears when we think about a religious experience. I think we think that something descends or comes down from above, or there's like some sort of vision that happens outside of us. And for me, what was happening as a child and then a teenager, I was being overwhelmed by love from within me it was coming from within you know the call was coming from inside the house yeah so I was really grappling with these experiences that I didn't

Starting point is 00:06:15 know what to do with and that I personally was associating with Christ but then when I tiptoed anywhere near Christianity, it was an immediate no. Like my entire system, even physically, it was just a no. Wait, you know, what do you mean by physically? Like what would happen? Well, the first time I ever read the New Testament, I broke out in hives. I was in a Sunday school class and my mom had taken me to the most liberal version of Christianity she could find because she didn't know what to do with all these questions I kept asking, you know, about. To me, that is so cool because you're growing up. I mean, it kind of is like some of the gospels you speak of, right?

Starting point is 00:07:01 Like even like feckless story, which we'll get to that. Here you are in this. There's no external encouragement at all. Your mother's not into it. Nobody's taking you to church. Nobody's talking about God or the practice of any kind of spiritual practice. And here you are, a little girl experiencing these ascension and spiritual metaphysical God-like experiences.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And you're talking to, you know, like, hey, mom, what's going on here? So how wonderful of her to like, be like, all right, let's take this kid to church. Yeah, she didn't know what, you know, what do you do with a kid who is talking about Christ and you've literally never introduced that idea to her. so I went to a Sunday school class and it was a very liberal setting and yet the text itself even as a little girl was so deeply disturbing to me that I broke out in hives and it was essentially how I can word it now and I couldn't back then but it was a mixture of fear and rage that made my skin, you know, react in that way. And I ended up leaving church. And

Starting point is 00:08:23 really from that day on, it was a question mark for me to sort of live into finding the answer of why was I so terrified and enraged at what I encountered when I finally met with the texts that are meant to be bringing me more understanding of this experience I'm already having physically within me of what I understand to be Christ. And the root of that rage and fear really came from the absence of texts like the Gospel of Mary and the Acts of Paul and Thecla, but they weren't introduced to me. There was no indication that they even existed. except i would say from the fact that i was so enraged and afraid what i mean is there was an intuitive a visceral sense for me that something was missing and that sense that

Starting point is 00:09:29 something was missing made me afraid because what had been deified and codified as truth right as this master story of who Christ is made it so that I mattered less as a girl as a female my voice mattered less and that made me less safe in the world intrinsically whereas this encounter I was having this genuine encounter I was having and that I continue to have was telling me actually every single one of us no matter our sex our gender our race our sexual orientation no matter what there is a radical equality in our humanity and the fact that we have this human beingness which is different from how we've come to understand what it means to be human which is that we are lower than gods and angels and all those ephemeral angelic realms

Starting point is 00:10:41 according to these scriptures the body is also sacred the female is also sacred the gospels of mary yes being human is an opportunity because what it actually means to be a human being is to be both flesh and spirit, both at once. Not once we finally die, which is how it's always been sort of encoded in us is that human is lowly and then the angelic realm and the divine realm is above us. Whereas the gospel of Mary and texts that were excluded also during the fourth century, like the gospel of Philip, that gospel emphasizes the fact that we need to resurrect in this lifetime. We don't want to wait until we no longer have a body. We want to use this opportunity of being a human, which means fully human, fully divine.

Starting point is 00:11:45 We want to make use of it and resurrect in this lifetime, multiple times, hopefully, again and again like the phoenix you know rising from these limited egoic ideas of ourselves these limited lives were living out or in thekla's case she was living out the expectations of the patriarchy of what her mom and fiance were expecting of her and she decides that she's no longer going to do that and she begins to answer the call of her own soul and this is what the gospel of philip really emphasizes we should do now not wait until we die and then resurrect with the soul use the fact that we are also a soul now and resurrect in this lifetime again and again and again making our lives more authentic and more new more something that's

Starting point is 00:12:38 we've never seen before yeah i think this is so powerful i remember that there's so many directions we can go but the one of the most important things i want to highlight here is when you're talking about the gospel of Philip, the gospel of Mary, the act of Paul and Feckla, the acts of Paul and Feckla, these were basically not put in. And were not codified, exactly, into the New Testament in the fourth century under Constantine. They were hidden, at least in the case of the gospel of Mary. Were the other two hidden as well? Because, and how are they found?

Starting point is 00:13:13 I mean, talk about like that. because what I, as I understand it, you know, you're a theologian, a Harvard educated theologian, you start studying, obviously you're not the one that discovered the mountain, the desert, you start studying the gospel of marriage, you really translate it for us in terms of how it can apply to our lives. Yes. I want to get into this a little bit later, but the whole idea of, you know, the center of the heart as an access point, like all of these beautiful teachings that jesus gave mary right intentionally the woman yes a woman because to talk about why he gave it to her and why they were hidden and how they were found and they still aren't codified

Starting point is 00:13:57 yes they're still considered apocrypha which that word when you translate it means of doubtful authenticity so during the fourth century the communities because it wasn't an institutionalized religion before the fourth century christianity was a group of various communities that had to meet in private and could not allow the roman empire to know they were meeting because if they did they were killed for it right because these communities did not recognize the emperor as the ultimate ruler of themselves they were ruled by their concept of the divine and they were considered themselves brothers and sisters no matter who they were or how they ranked according to the unjust systems of power within the roman empire so they were subverting those

Starting point is 00:15:02 very entrenched ideas of who we can be and who we have to be defined by our sex and gender they were challenging all of that. And so they were considered seditious, according to the emperor. And if they admitted that they were Christians, they would be martyred. They would be killed by the Roman empire. So before the fourth century, Christianity was a radical tradition that was subverting the patriarchy, subverting the unjust systems of power that existed in the world and they were practicing a form of worship together in these supper clubs that they met in private in small groups to nourish each other and to offer each other hope and companionship and literal spiritual nourishment at a time when they were collectively

Starting point is 00:16:02 oppressed by the Roman emperor. So during the fourth century, when Constantine wanted to make this tradition the empire's religion, it was recast and remade into a tradition that looked far more like those very unjust structures of power that the earlier christians were challenging so you're saying supper clubs and those before constantine decided to codify it and a lot of these things were hidden taken out shoved aside right that those supper clubs those meetings those teachings were not patriarchal hierarchical they celebrated as much as you know and and correct and they were challenging as we see so clearly in the acts of paul and thekla challenging these entrenched ideas that to be born female for example means you are property you are less than

Starting point is 00:17:11 Your physical being is worth less than a male's being. Based on their teachings of Christ, this is what they were practicing. They were saying that, oh, no, actually, Fekla can decide for herself. She can choose a life other than becoming the property of who her father assigns her as a husband. Like, she does not have to be a commodity. She can choose a life that's dictated by her own soul and that's guided by her own soul because the fact that she has a soul makes her just as worthy as any male in this economy of worth, you know, that she's born into. Okay, so, and we're going to get into, I want to get into all of that in her story with Paul, but just to kind of get clear on how these things were erased, right? So we're back, Constantine wants to codify this as the religious Roman Empire.

Starting point is 00:18:15 Yes. And it began with Constantine, but it really took a series of councils for hundreds of years. But it began with the Council of Nicaea and in the fourth century with Constantine of beginning to gather together all of these texts that were just as authentic and just as sacred as, you know, the gospel of Mary is no less authentic than anything that was codified in the New Testament. It's just that the gospel of Mary indicates that there's a precedence for female leadership in the earliest version of Christianity. And if Christianity was going to become patriarchal, then that scripture would not work in this idea and formation of Christianity moving forward from the fourth century. And also that God is within us and that heaven is on earth and that heaven is really a state we could enter while we are in the human body. Yeah. How can you become a gatekeeper of the divine if every single one of us has access to the divine? Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love, and relationship therapist for over 30 years, and the main question I always

Starting point is 00:19:39 get asked is, how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous relationship? Well, if you want to take your love life, your sex life to the next level, whether you're in a relationship or not, check out my free course on quantum sex. It's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level capable of full body orgasms, how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner. Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage, the quantum sex free course. Check it out. Let me know what you think. So all of those scriptures that gave us that form of empowerment, that form of direction, they were all deemed apocryphal during that process of codification.

Starting point is 00:20:44 Even though we have to look really with clear eyes as to the agenda that those male, exclusively male bishops were deciding what was orthodox and what was apocryphal, right? There was an expressed desire here, an agenda that unfolded in eradicating these scriptures that pointed to a very different interpretation of Christ's teaching. And so by the end of the fourth century, there was an edict that went out for all of these scriptures that had been deemed apocryphal to be destroyed. So fortunately, what happened was that there were unidentified monks or people at that time who saved them. They buried them instead of destroying them in urns and in caves in Egypt along the Nile. So at various points throughout history, they've been recovered. Now, the Gospel

Starting point is 00:21:50 of Mary was not found at that treasure trove that you referred to earlier, the Nag Hammadi treasure trove that was found in 1945 after World War II. That was a huge collection of these scriptures that were deemed apocryphal and that gave us a greater understanding of this earliest form of Christianity before the fourth century. So fortunately, we have all of those and we have the Gospel of Mary, which was found separately, buried in urns along the Nile. And we have them now, but what's so enduring is that that label, apocryphal, still stands, even though we have the scholarship. We even have the formal apology from the Catholic tradition saying that mary magdalene was never the prostitute that has been formally corrected and addressed and yet

Starting point is 00:22:54 that idea of her that story of her still in mass applies and is how she's portrayed from the pulpit to this day not as christ's companion not as an apostle she's considered an apostle to the apostles, whatever that is. It's like a mascot. It's like an apostle mascot, you know, but her title was rehabilitated by Pope Francis. And that's the actual word that was used, rehabilitated from the penitent prostitute to the apostle to the apostles. But she is still not considered an apostle herself. And her gospel, what has happened and why I get so passionate about women really reclaiming their worth is that that story of Mary being the penitent prostitute and that erasure of her gospel. It's really important to see and hear from these earliest witnesses to

Starting point is 00:24:01 Christ in female form. Bethlehem and Mary, they have something very unique and different to share with us about Christ's teachings because they're speaking from a place of powerlessness, right? The male apostles were speaking from a place of power. They already had power. So they have, these female saints and mystics have something very unique to teach us where it's how do you reclaim power at a time when you have none? How do you reclaim a sense of worth in your physical form when you are externally considered less than, and you are treated as less than. And for me, it's so important that we understand that that all had an impact. For me, this is the way I see it, and it's why I'm a theologian, is because our ideas of the divine

Starting point is 00:25:01 affect the status of women and girls the world over. That to me is just the elephant in the room. I've always felt and understood and, you know, it's the passion behind everything I do is that I really ardently believe that if we can really fully reclaim this understanding that our worth is inherent, it's not something we ever have to prove or justify or sacrifice ourself in order to demonstrate our worth our worth is inherent simply in being human as we exist yeah simply because we exist we are inherently worthy of that existence and even if and i think fekla demonstrates this in her story so profoundly even if our life is about living out our own desire just living out not pleasing others, you know, living based on what our own true soul, our heart's desire.

Starting point is 00:26:10 We are worthy. We are worthy. We spite everyone around us. And that's really, I think, one of the most powerful aspects of feckless story. And even Mary's story at the end of the gospel, when she, she's in the tomb, Jesus rises, has, you know, basically tells her all the secrets. This is how you access me. This is how you see me. And she goes back and tells the apostles and they're like, no, we don't really believe you. Right. I guess it was doubted.

Starting point is 00:26:41 One of them, Levi, said, listen, he comes to her defense. Worthy. Right. If the Savior considered her worthy, who are you to disregard her? But they still disregarded her. They still disregard her. And this is the most important part. we still disregard our own feminine existence, our own inner voice that arrives from within the

Starting point is 00:27:09 heart. And this is what's so enduring about this legacy of her erasure is that we still discount and discredit this voice that arrives from within us, this voice of love and truth that's trying to guide us, we discredit it. And we try to find that guidance and that truth outside of us or in someone that we consider wiser or having more authority. And that's the enduring legacy of having lost her gospel and lost the image of what that means to see, yes, there is Christ and there are the male disciples, but yes, also there is Mary Magdalene right here, up here, equal to their sense of spiritual authority and arrival she is up there and so we can understand whether we're male or female that it's both right it's meant to be both and we need to honor both the

Starting point is 00:28:09 external displays of spirit and spirituality that that we practice and also the internal effort of clarifying the heart of hearing what's true for us. That's the divine feminine. That's the other half of the equation. That's the other half of the story. Which is so important. And in the Gospel of Mary and in the book, Mary Magdalene Revealed, you get into the seven powers.

Starting point is 00:28:38 Yes. In the girl who baptized herself, you get into the seven stages. Yes. Transformation. And I want to talk about that a little bit, But first, let's just dive into the girl who baptized herself, Bekla, in the Acts of Paul and Bekla, which were, once again, not in the Bible. And this idea, I mean, you can describe it better than I, but it really is about a woman who is in this patriarchal world where she's seen as chattel.

Starting point is 00:29:07 She's her mother's daughter and she's the source of, you know, she's a product. She's a property. A commodity. Yes, absolutely. and so she they've now arranged a marriage for her she has a fiance she sees paul preaching and sharing the quote-unquote good news sharing of jesus and it inspires her to have her own kind of awakening which catalyzes all of these consequences yes i love that in this scripture we hear Christ referred to as the beloved, because I think that's really powerful and

Starting point is 00:29:48 important. And something that resonated with me and my story, the sort of origin of my encounters with what might be considered Christ or Christ consciousness was this sense of the beloved and feeling beloved. So she is sitting in this little red brick house at the beginning of the acts of Paul and Thakla and she's refusing to move, which I just find, I mean, I fell in love with her from the start, but really she had me right there at refusing to do anything because there's something so radical about that level of stillness. It's sitting still for longer than what's normal or what's comfortable and her mother and her fiance and her mother of course is the embodiment of the patriarchy right she is someone who has fully integrated

Starting point is 00:30:46 and believes it she has understood the assignment she is you know the epitome of the patriarchal mother and she is instilling the patriarchy into her daughter so her mother is throwing shade calling her strange, a mad woman, you know, what are you doing? Why are you sitting like this and answering nothing? And then her fiance is freaking out and tells her she should feel ashamed, you know, and she turned back towards them. And the reason why this all hit me as contemporary, right? This is the Acts of Paul and Thackla dates, according to some scholars, to 70 AD. So this is ancient scripture, but for me, it was landing in the modern world for so many of us who feel trapped in a life where we are constantly meeting the expectations

Starting point is 00:31:44 of others and the scraps of our day are what we get for ourself, right? The scraps of time that are left over after we have served everyone except ourselves, We have these scraps of time for ourselves. And here Thecla is refusing to agree to that life anymore, to that idea that to be born a girl is to fulfill the expectations of what it means to be a girl, which is to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others. And so she refuses to do that as she's listening to Paul tell stories about the beloved. and it's three days and three nights three days and three nights so this is what to anyone not

Starting point is 00:32:33 looking at them totally silent listening to Paul and will not respond to their shame to their shade to their threats to their pleadings to their problem all those hooks right that we all know so well those guilt hooks to try to reel us back into this or where at least where we feel like we have to defend ourselves where like turn around be like listen you know where you engage she wouldn't even engage she wouldn't even answer why is she doing this she wouldn't even say she wouldn't even say which to me is like such a demonstration of true power i mean how many of us only do what we need to do for ourselves after literally you know hours of explaining why we have to do it. I always tell women, you don't need a reason to want what you want. And we spend so

Starting point is 00:33:22 long rationalizing what we want. And justifying, here's why I have earned more than a scrap for today for myself, you know, but she's not having any of it. And that three days and three nights to me as a theologian, as a scholar made me so excited because of course this scripture is Paul and thekla, right? And for those of us who've had exposure to Christianity, we all know about Paul's road to Damascus moment where he's blinded, right? For three days and three nights. Well, here's a conversion story, a road to Damascus, spiritual transformation story we've never heard before. It's from the perspective of a girl who has absolutely no power in the world around her. Paul had lots of power when he went through his whole being blinded.

Starting point is 00:34:19 And then by the end of it, he started off as Saul. And then by the end of it, he's called Paul when he regains the sight. So that's the measure of his spiritual transformation. With Bekla, she is this teenage girl about to be married off to a man that her parents had arranged, which was the common scenario for all girls in the first century and is still common for many girls, millions of girls, the world over right now. And she, for three days and three nights, does nothing to perpetuate that idea that she has no choice in what happens in her life. She completely shuts down. She goes inward. So this is a spiritual transformation, a conversion

Starting point is 00:35:10 story we've never heard before. And all it takes is literally staying still for longer than what's normal. Because the three, of course, it's a spiritual number. It's to indicate to us that a death and a rebirth has happened in the space of that time. And for Thakla, all it took was staying still. So what that's saying to all of us, no matter who we are or what situation we're in, okay we have access to this right because a state of unconditional love exactly no one can keep us from it no one can say oh here it is or there it is or you have to jump through this hoop or you have to become this kind of person or do these types of things in order to reach it this is saying further up is farther in. And you can reach this level of spiritual transformation

Starting point is 00:36:05 simply by disengaging to all those limits and all of those, you know, contracts, those egoic bindings that you have agreed, you know, that you've participated in before now, disengage with all of them go inward and really locate inside yourself where true love rests, right? In the womb, right? In the womb. Exactly, exactly. Spiritual eye of the heart. Right, the spiritual eye of the heart.

Starting point is 00:36:39 So that's what he said is there is the treasure. That's in the mind of the heart. That's where you can find me. And that's where Thecla went. Right, exactly. So if you have the gospel of Mary, you can understand exactly what that was doing in meeting with everything that she has to meet with inside of herself. You have to clarify the heart because you need to reach that voice that's deeper than

Starting point is 00:37:05 the voices that we've internalized of the patriarchy, of our sense of self-worth, of like our mother's voice or whatever voice of the oppressor. We've internalized that. We all have. We all have. We don't even question it. We just don't even question it. And until we go inward and really face it,

Starting point is 00:37:26 it's hard to discern that voice from a voice that's truer than it. Yeah. And you write a lot about, in the Gospel of Mary, about the seven powers. I love the word power instead of sins. Yeah. Right. But those are things that, and I want to talk to you about this because I love the way you speak about it, but these are things that almost act like filters or barriers to really

Starting point is 00:37:51 accessing the mind and the heart, right? So the more you can clarify, that's really removing, not removing because we're human, we're going to have the seven power. They're going to come back. Yeah, we're going to be muddled by them again and again and again. But yes, the point is to clarify the heart so that we can hear the voice of our soul with a sense of distinction, with a sense of knowing, okay, this is actually what's true for me in this situation.

Starting point is 00:38:20 How do you get there? I mean, we could have a two-hour conversation about that. It takes practice. And there's no other way around it. It's you have to, every single day, make some form of effort of meeting with that voice. And then, you know, as that relationship grows, like any relationship, you begin to trust it enough to actually act on it. And when you can act on it, then you see the difference. You see the difference between just being led blindly by the ego, right? And how things unfold. Whereas

Starting point is 00:38:58 when you consciously connect to a decision, to a choice that you feel and know is arriving from within you, from the voice of what I describe as my soul, there's a qualitative difference and you become more aware and sensitive to the difference of when you're moving the way love might have you move versus the way you're moving the way fear has us move. Yeah. And it's the practice of discernment. And for me, it's been one of the most, as a recovering codependent who tended to put all of my power outside myself, the way that I try to describe it to people, which I think is really beautiful, gels with what you're talking about. is like, cause people will say, well, how do I know that it's really the voice of my soul, you know, speaking versus, or my higher self or God or whatever, versus just something I'm telling myself or, and it's really in the heart. Like I always say, run it through your heart.

Starting point is 00:39:58 You can tell, and it's very subtle at first, but there's an opening, there's an opening expansion that happens when it's the truth, B with a capital T. There's a constriction that happens when it's not. And that becomes the compass. Right. That's my experience too. But what's so fascinating is that we each have to arrive at that distinction

Starting point is 00:40:24 and that awareness of how we know the difference on our own. We can't have somebody outside of us tell us, oh, here's how you know, and this is it. You know, there is no, which I love. Because it means none of us are the guru. None of us are the ultimate truth. We each have access to what is true for us from within us. Being guided by a love that connects all of us and is greater than all of us.

Starting point is 00:40:52 But we have to find our own way within that. I think this is a great segue into what kind of led you to really dive into the story of Bekla. You know, and you beautifully shared a lot of your story in the book, you know, and it kind of dovetails with the story of the Acts of Paul and Beckler's story in particular. But this, you know, you were, it was the start of the pandemic. Yeah. Going, the whole world was going into silence. And stillness. And you were in this repeated kind of negative cycle with your ex.

Starting point is 00:41:31 I'm trying to remember exactly how you said it, but it was like the heartbreak. You were seeking the key in this heartbreak. Yes. Well, it felt like everything that was meant for me was on the other side of figuring out how to become a love that he didn't want to leave. Yes. And what I came to understand in studying the acts of Paul and Tehla and in really looking at these stages of spiritual transformation that she goes through in the course of her

Starting point is 00:42:02 transformation from being this teenage girl with little to no power in the world around her, being forced, you know, to live a life she didn't want to live, to at the end of her story, baptizing herself and empowering all the women around her to join in and to realize the power that they've always had within them to claim. I really saw this theme of the ways that I had been accepting crumbs of love as if that was all that I was worthy of. And I had been giving all of my power over to my partner to choose me rather than understanding that the real question was, why did I keep choosing this?

Starting point is 00:42:54 Why did I keep choosing a love that was going to leave me? And the opportunity that was presented to me in this equation was actually, how do I become a love for myself that never leaves? Yes. Amen to that. That is the ultimate goal for me, is to become that love and to marinate in that love and to possess that love. Because that's the only true love.

Starting point is 00:43:22 Right. It's so hard. It's so hard. It's so hard, especially if like me, you have a history of trauma and a history of not being chosen. And if being put in situations where you very much feel like you're not someone of worth, it is so hard. It is so hard. So I just want to validate for anyone who is listening to this and feels like that, you know, is just impossible. Like letting go of what I'm saying is so hard is letting go of the crumps. It's by the sounds of it, right? It's like a given. Yeah, of course. Why are you still with someone who literally is just breaking your heart in the exact same way again and again. Like, why are you repeating this insanity? You know, this pattern, like, why can't you get free of it? And it's what we know, you know, it's,

Starting point is 00:44:30 it's still something. It's familiar. And there's a part of us that feels that's all that we can expect. And I think it's so powerful because so much of what you talk about in both books is, and I want to talk about this a little bit, is this idea that of embodiment, which I am huge on, peeps here know, and that the way that we access the divine, the way that we access this love that you're talking about is being in the body, not leaving the body and going up to them, in the body. And then that it's through that embodiment that the healing that ultimately can give us more access or let us really release the crumbs is often found in the body too. So you share how you went into somatic therapy, into somatic experiencing, which is in the body.

Starting point is 00:45:21 And then you went back to some early trauma that began that pattern of seeking the love that won't choose you. Right. And that was integral to being able to release it because you really have to reach the origin of it. And still it was difficult because it's hard to let go of what we know when it's all we've ever known. And we can't even imagine what else there could be. So one of the stages of transformation, right? You can't be who you used to be, right? You have to die. You literally have to die to that. You have to die to that. So there's a moment of like how I understand faith is that you're releasing what has been, even though you don't know what else there can be. It's just that that guidance I received from those experiences and

Starting point is 00:46:29 that reality of the fact that love is something that exists inside of me and it's always here for me to access, that was a constant practice all throughout that healing process of releasing that past, releasing that trauma, releasing that pattern. The way that I moved through that was constantly going inward for those sips of that love and for those moments of just blind trust and faith that if this love exists within me, at some point, I believe that it will also arrive outside of me. But what's so important is the integrity of really having that alignment and releasing all those things that are not that. And so that support of having Bekla's story

Starting point is 00:47:26 was so critical because she was demonstrating for me what's possible, that I can arrive at a reality that my ego can't even grasp, that my ego can't even imagine. That's a possibility. and that if I continue along this path that she really exemplifies and models in her story, that I can arrive at a place

Starting point is 00:47:57 where I am authentically merging that with that sense of truth and love within me and living from it. It's a beautiful story and you tell it so beautifully and even just understanding and how it weaves through the seven stages of her transformation and where it leads to her baptizing herself in this really dramatic way, which is really profound. I won't spoil, even though it says in the title that she baptized herself, I won't spoil this story.

Starting point is 00:48:32 But I want to ask you before we run out of time, I know you share a lot of this that Mary learned from Jesus in the gospel of Mary and in this book as well. how to access the mind of the heart, how to go to that place that for you as a little girl, you know, I'm sure this is part of your soul contract. Like you came here to have this experience as a little girl to kind of harness it and cement it and access it and feel it

Starting point is 00:49:00 that would lead you down this path. And even having the mother and the legacy of the feminist perspective, which informs all of your work. I mean, all of it is just so perfect. If you look at the larger meta design, you know, of what could be your soul contract. I just love that stuff so much. And even the wounds and the AFGEs, as I call them, another fucking growth experience, those tragedies,

Starting point is 00:49:22 you know, being catalysts to that. Right. For someone who really wants to start to go into the heart, into the new, into the mind of the heart, into the love that is there for every single one of us, no matter who you love, no matter how you act, no matter what gender you are, what color, what breed, every single one of us, if you exist, you have access to it. It is yours. Yeah. How do you begin to, what would you say is a way to begin to access that from your experience and learnings? So for me, there's no way around it other than to go inward. And for some people that's so threatening and confronting because I think for many of us, we sense that we know so much more than we let on and that we're aware of so many desires that if we lived them

Starting point is 00:50:21 out, our entire lives would be transformed. And so going inward and really meeting with that then almost makes us more responsible for living out those things that we already know. We can't pretend like we don't know who we are or what we want if you go inward enough. I think that there's so many different meditation practices and paths that whatever one calls to you, use that. I don't think that there is a best way to do it. For me, it can be as simple as, and especially when I was first starting off, It began with a desire to somehow take sips, as I referred to it earlier, of that feeling that

Starting point is 00:51:07 used to come to me uninvited when I was younger and when I was on various pilgrimages that I've been on throughout my life. I would enter cathedrals sometimes and do incredibly embarrassing things beyond myself. Like my body really guided me and my body would go into deep hours, hours long meditation where literally all I'm doing is just fully embodying the love that's right there already within me. That's all that would be happening. Now, people around me would describe it as something else or something more spiritual or, oh, she's, you know, having like an angelic, I can't remember. There was different phrases that when I was on various pilgrimages, you know, that people

Starting point is 00:51:57 would describe it as, but I didn't identify with it. And it didn't feel like it really named my experience. The experience itself is just actually being fully in my body, fully in the moment, fully in the present and feeling all of the love that's seeing out through my eyes, rather than, which is the way that most of us exist day-to-day, grocery shopping, you know, getting all the things done. We don't really think about or connect with who's doing the seeing, right? The presence that's seeing out through our eyes. And most of us fall into this illusion that love is what comes from outside of us. Love is in this direction, right? When I was in these states, these like bhavas,

Starting point is 00:52:48 you know, states of really merging with that love, I just fully understood that all that's seeing out through my eyes is the presence of love itself. Like that's all at the core that I am, You know, like I have a name, I have an address, I'm wearing clothes, but ultimately all I am is this, you know, itty bitty fraction of light that's just seeing out through my eyes. I am love, right? But like, I don't need to find it. I just need to sit still and merge with it. So what I wanted to do was to begin to have these small sips of those states that, you know, when I was a single mom, newly divorced, living in New York City, trying to start a writing career, you know, and I couldn't breathe. I was so overwhelmed with my life. I could barely even breathe.

Starting point is 00:53:43 The way that I began a very deep abiding spiritual practice was to simply do three breaths because I had before then learned about the Hesychasts, which are these desert ascetics who I believe were deeply connected to the gospel of Mary and understood. They write about the new, they write about the spiritual eye of the heart, which is what Christ refers to as the treasure in the gospel of Mary. And they say that this spiritual eye of the heart, all we need to enter is to go inward, is to draw all of our focus and attention into the heart. So I had been practicing some form of that leading up to that very intense time in my life when I was a new, a single mom, newly divorced. I didn't have time to do this long drawn out meditation, you know, and to go

Starting point is 00:54:38 inward. Like I had to change diapers. I had to try to make a living. So all I did was something called the three breaths. That's all he did because that's all I felt like I had time for and could do. So the first intentional breath just brings you into the heart. The second intentional breath connects you to it, right? And then the third just allows you to surface again. Sometimes I would just do that in the course of the time of brushing my teeth or like taking a shower or when I was on the subway or waiting in line at the grocery store. It was just any moment I could. No one has to know you're doing it. No one has to know you're doing it. It's just connecting to that truth that I knew that felt at times lost to me, right? And distant from me,

Starting point is 00:55:27 returning to that truth that no, everything I could ever want and desire is already right here inside of me. And so just taking those three moments, those three breaths, and what began to happen is that you crave it. The more you do it, the more you crave it because the mercy you meet with in that second breath is the equivalent of gold. I mean, it's what it's gold pills in comparison to the worth of what you feel when you allow yourself the mercy of what waits for you in the heart. And so you crave it. It's like the way you start to crave eating good foods or working out. It's clarifying the heart becomes something you crave because it gives to you a gem, a treasure. You know, Thomas Merton refers to it, the new as a diamond blazing with the invisible

Starting point is 00:56:18 light of heaven. That's the quality of what we can meet with. And it just takes practice. Just, yeah. And I think the more you, I have noticed with, you know, I go there, what you're describing. And I also go in and around there, which I call it kind of called the quantum love zone frequency, sort of our natural state. The more time you spend there, it's like your body and your mind create a memory for it. Yeah. So like at first you have to kind of work a little harder. You have to dig to get down there. Then it's like a set inside. It's used to it. You just go. Yeah. You can go right in there, which is so cool. So That's another beautiful part of practicing.

Starting point is 00:57:02 It is not just that you can feel it more fully, but that it gets easier and easier to go to those places quicker and quicker. Yes. Beautiful. I could talk to you for two hours. There's so much I still wanted to get to, but we'll put both books,

Starting point is 00:57:16 especially the newest book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself, in the show notes. Where else can people find... I know you do workshops, you do all kinds of things. Where else can people find more information on you? My website has all the places

Starting point is 00:57:34 that I'll be teaching this coming year. And I love Instagram and Substack. So those are other places too. All at Megan Waters, right? Yeah. We'll put that all in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending time with us, for your beautiful, heart-centered, powerful work

Starting point is 00:57:53 that you're doing in the world. For all of us, for the Divine Feminine, which we're needing more than ever, bringing that back into the forefront of our consciousness. I'm really grateful for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - The Girl Who Baptized Herself with Meggan Watterson

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