RT @nick_routledge: @Sophiologist_ Bourgeault's meditation on Mouravieff's 'Fifth Way' (in 'The Meaning of Mary Magdalene' and 'Love is Stronger than Death') describing conscious love as practiced in partnership as the purest and most sublime realization of the Christian sapiential path, is quite compelling, too.
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Excerpt from Cynthia Bourgeault’s ‘The Meaning of Mary Magdalene’: Nevertheless, over the centuries there are those who have been intrigued by what conscious love might look like when specifically practiced as a relational path between romantic partners. Obviously, this exploration has been conducted mainly within the esoteric underground, since the institutional church has never been able to wrap its mind around the notion of relationship as an authentic spiritual path. One thinker who clearly believed that such a path did exist—and has existed since the very beginning of Christianity—is a relatively obscure Russian esotericist by the name of Boris Mouravieff (d. 1966), whose three- volume Gnosis appeared posthumously in English translation in the early 1990s.” Mouravieff claimed to be making available for the first time in the West the hidden teachings of esoteric Christianity on the subject of conscious love as practiced in human partnership. He called this path the “Fifth Way.”
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Excerpt from Cynthia Bourgeault’s ‘Love is Stronger than Death’: But it does exist. There is a celibacy that is a complete outpouring of sexual passion at a level so high and intense that every fiber of one’s being is flooded with beatitude. And there is also a sexuality that, clarified of its craving and attach- ment, is truly Eucharistic—"This is my body, given for you"—a drawing near to the other with all that one has and is; in conscious love; to give the innermost gift of oneself in the most intimate foretaste of divine union that can be known in human flesh. Both exist. Either can be attained—or both can be attained—with pain, confusion, false starts, forgiveness, and grace—by partners who know that the only absolute law on this path is the law of absolute self-giving.
@CarlMcColman "The great secret of erotic love—which all true lovers instinctively know—is that 'agape' is in essence transfigured desire. There are not two loves, one 'agape-based' and the other 'eros-based'...” - Cynthia Bourgeault
