I remember so many incidents of Iesous learning more and more about how society treats women. It wasn’t easy for him — for me it was just normal life. When he began teaching me to do energy healing, some of his other followers objected. “Master,” they would say, “she is a woman. And her past…”
“Her past is why she understands suffering,” he would reply. “How better to heal than through wounds that have already been transformed into wisdom?”
Once I said to him, perhaps if I cut my hair and bound my breasts tight and be covered all the time they will stop. He said, “And then? What would your presence teach them?”
He taught me everything — how to read bodies and soul-minds for signs of distress, how to channel healing energy, how to speak to the disembodied souls who hover near the sick and dying. How to stop malipsyches from inhabiting weak people. But more importantly, he taught me to trust my own inner knowing, the wisdom that my harsh life had planted in me.
Sometimes we would go days without speaking, walking the dusty roads in comfortable silence. Other times we would talk through the night, his answers sparking new questions in an endless dance of discovery. He never treated me as less than any male disciple. If anything, he seemed to delight in my stubborn internal struggles, my refusal to accept easy answers.
“Why do you let me challenge you so? I feel ashamed, so many times. And sometimes I speak more than the other students,” I asked once, after a particularly heated debate about the nature of Karma.
“Because you’re not really challenging me,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “You’re challenging your own understanding, because you’re open to change. You can and do change your mind. That’s what a good student should do. Why you get so loud and animated about it, so much that you apologize frequently, well, that changes by the moon, by the wind, and by what we eat. One day you will know to manage your energies and always be even-minded.”
“I’m sure you would like that, sir. When that time comes,” I offered, hanging my head for recognizing myself.
He looked at me with earnest eyes, “I pray to the Father and the Mother for them to call me back before life gets boring like that. Change for your own sake my dear, but slowly please.”
“But why do I burn with such fire when I struggle to understand, sir?”
“Think of how a tree grows,” Iesous said gently. “Its roots run deep into the earth, anchoring everything above. That is like your Muladhara soul-mind. The roots of the soul. That is where people hold their beliefs. When you question deeply held beliefs, it is like pulling at those roots. People become fearful, even angry, because these beliefs are the foundation of their whole world. This is why some lash out when their beliefs are challenged — they fear everything they know might crumble. But you, Mari — you have the courage to examine your roots and let them grow stronger.”
“I know people who have no beliefs, what of them,” I said.
He said, “They are like waterside plants. They do well when its wet, not so well when seasons change, and when strong winds or heavy rains, they are uprooted and swept away.”
How then do people change their beliefs if they cannot be uprooted, I wondered by myself. He read my mind, he said, “Think of yourself as a tree. Yes, uprooting is hard. You were planted in a nursery for seedlings, in Magadha. Then you were uprooted and planted in a place, with harsh conditions. It made the young plant hardy. Then came along a good gardener, uprooted you and planted you in very good soil, rich with cultural manure and decomposing waste that people shed. And now you bloom, and your fragrance sets forth, inviting women and children to come to your shade and comfort.”
I shall never forget that. I so love the teaching.
But his teaching went far beyond words and wisdom. In those first years of travel, when my body still carried the rhythms of womanhood, he would appear silently at dawn with clean cloths, as if he had divined my need before I spoke it. During nights when memories stalked me like wolves in darkness, when I would wake gasping and trembling, he would materialize beside my pallet. His presence alone seemed to anchor me to the present moment, his quiet voice teaching me how to find solid ground when the past threatened to drag the hidden teenage me under.
The endless walking left all our feet blistered and raw, but I remember one evening with particular clarity – the way he knelt without ceremony, bowl of herb-scented water in his hands, and began to wash my torn feet. The tenderness in his touch brought tears I couldn’t explain.
“The Master shouldn’t serve the student,” I protested, my voice rough with emotion.
His hands never paused in their gentle work as he replied, “When the master teaches, he is serving the student. True teaching is among the hardest labors there is.” Then he looked up, his eyes holding that infinite compassion that could break open the hardest heart. “But I’m not serving you. Only soul-people see kindness through the lens of power - master and servant, high and low. Spirit-people understand that God the Father and God the Mother in Heaven are the greatest of servants, sustaining the Butterfly Path and souls in the school of life moment by moment, yet theirs is the greatest power of all.”
In those words, in those hands that had healed lepers yet did not disdain to bind my blistered feet, I began to understand what real power looked like. And slowly, watching him day after day, the others in our group began to see it too – how true strength shows itself not in dominance, but in the capacity to serve with an open heart.
Some students stayed for a few months, then went home to serve People of theWAY in their countries. I watched him closely, learning not just from his words but from how he moved through the world. How he could be gentle with the broken yet terrifyingly fierce with those who broke them. How he could debate philosophy with scholars in the morning and play with children in the afternoon. How he could be fully human yet somehow more than human at the same time.
He had ultimate power, but never called on it. I remember once when a scoundrel grabbed a bag of food and a bag with scrolls, Iesous ran after him but without touching him from behind, made the man stop. Iesous stepped in and took our bags. The scoundrel tried to kick and grab at the Lord. Iesous looked at him sternly and said, “Don’t fight me, fight her,” and pointed to me. The next moment it was as if four invisible people punched the man from all sides, while he looked at me in painful disbelief as if I was the one doing it. Iesous said, “Give him some food if you think he deserves it.”
I gave the man some flatbreads and a dried fish, and I said to him, “Next time, be nice. Ask. And if you want to punch someone, always remember how this little girl punched your face, and you cried.”
I began to understand that Iesous can command immense resources from Heaven, from true and real gods. He can command immense resources from at least one king that I know of. But he only needs the resource of being human, he is doing it all just by being an exemplary human. Calling on friends to beat the scoundrel up was just for a smile, and teaching him a lesson in a language he understands. I learned the gods have a well-developed sense of humor, and several languages that different people understand.
And I began to understand something else — something that both thrilled and terrified me. He was preparing us for a time when he would no longer walk beside us in flesh.
“All things change, Mari,” he said one night, after healing a dying child had left him unusually weary. “Even this body must serve its purpose and then return to dust. But what I truly am — what we all truly are — that is eternal.”
I wanted to protest, to deny the shadow I sometimes saw pass over his face when he spoke of the future. Instead, I asked the question that had been growing in my heart:
“Who are you really, my Lord?”
He turned to me then, and for a moment the human veil dropped away entirely. I saw him as he truly was — a being of such light and power that my mind could barely comprehend it. A son of Heaven, temporarily clothed in flesh to help souls find their way home.
“You know,” he said softly. “You’ve always known.”
And I had. From that first moment in Srinagar, some part of me had recognized him. Had recognized something in myself too — a capacity for devotion I’d thought long dead, transformed now into something deeper than any human love.