The Maat Online Retreat Process
abracad, · Categories: externally authored, spiritualityAnu Sophia embarks on 40 days and 40 nights of truth with the Maat online retreat process, taken from the newly released "Nine Eyes of Light, Ascension Keys from Egypt"...
In the ancient Egyptian texts, after the body has died, the soul enters into the underworld and the Hall of Two Truths, meeting the shadowy jackal deity Anubis, guide of the underworld and the radiant Ma'at, the Goddess of truth and justice. As you approach them, looking for a way through the underworld into the eternal peace that we all yearn for, Anubis steps forward to you, smiling.
He gently takes out your heart and weighs it on Ma'at's scales against a feather. If your heart is lighter than the feather, then you can pass through into eternal rest and peace. If your heart is heavier than Ma’at’s feather, the heart is still burdened, needing the healing, nourishment, peace and open giving that the heart thrives on, that is its life blood. If this is the case, then you re-incarnate until your soul is perfected by living into, and fulfilling the open heart during your life on earth.
Healing and emptying the heart of all its resentments, judgments, wounds and fears is the Way of Ma'at. The way to enter Ma’at in the manner that the ancient Egyptians did is the 40 day Ma'at Ceremony, a practice that is a complete immersion into the underworld of the self and the truth of the open heart at the same time. It reaches down into the depths of all the times you have gone against the natural and inherent laws of your own heart, not just in this lifetime but in many past lifetimes. Ma’at is returning now to give the heart of us human beings another chance to heal and open, for human beings to return into harmony with all that is through the opened heart.
Ma'at makes the self honest, and breaks one down into a necessary humility that makes any 12 step programme look like a kindergarten project! In this process you die to your old ways of narcissistic self-centered being, immersing into humility, forgiveness, honesty, authenticity and surrender to the heart. There are 42 Doorways to the Heart of Ma’at, also known as the 42 judgments or negative confessions that we have around our self and love. It is a powerful ritual of Self inquiry that can be used every day, designed to cleanse, heal and connect many of the Egyptian bodies of light, such as the Ab heart to the Ba Soul, to the Shew Shadow and the Ka.
Armed with some highly potent liquid crystal elixirs, some precise yoga and meditation instructions and my trusty alarm clock, I committed to doing this practice every morning at 4.30am for 2 hours for 40 days. As a single mother, I wondered if I had lost my sanity by trying to attempt such a feat, but I could not ignore this call, the mantra was beating inside my heart, pulsing and resonating the truth that I yearned to live fully, reminding me of what I simply had to do. And as the days passed, it got easier to see why this path was so necessary and I could hardly wait for the next instalment to unfold.
Vocalising these 42 negative confessions in the Hall of two truths, witnessed by Ma'at, Anubis, Thoth and Osiris no less, showed me very clearly all the ways we use to hide the truth of the heart. I was directly shown many past lives and deep parts of my shadow and psyche, empowering me to amend and make peace with the light of love, freeing these dark, stuck archetypes of myself. Some of the biggest realizations of the 40 days of Ma’at were how I had compromised my own integrity. The lack of self worth and self love, the grief I carried around being a single parent and the sadness I still carried in my heart at my daughter not having a father in her current reality. Also a lot of self betrayal arose to light, where, although, I had discerned correctly, I still capitulated to another, became a sheep and denied or hid my power and truth for fear of upsetting someone in the process. One of the major confessions was "I have not put up hard walls to defend myself" and I could not read this aloud with a light heart for my heart was heavy with this truth. I had become the best in the world at putting up defenses to protect my heart which was well sealed and closed down. The key here was vulnerability and this regular confession helped me break down the hard walls to allow the heart to soften and become the gateway that it is to freedom.
The quote "I've been to hell and back and it was wonderful" had a new meaning for me, for as I drew the light of consciousness onto this dark, repressed multi-layered inner realm, I was set free, moment by moment. One day I would witness myself as a young girl, having been abused in the late 1600's: a victim. Another day I was a black magician in Samye Tibet, a perpetrator of darkness and evil. Another lifetime showed me as a woman of Christ during the time of Christ, pure embodiment of all that is "good" and so the journey went on and on... deeper and deeper cutting into the past, imagination, shadow, psyche and all that is capable within the human experience, dark or light.
Each piece of healing came together in the mandala of Ma’at to show unity in all things. As the weeks progressed, it became evident that what I was actually doing was freeing my shadow and in doing so expanding my heart as it became lighter and lighter; now the feather analogy was starting to make sense!
Another confession that hit home hard was "I have not tried to make excuses for my small self or defend my position. I have not separated human from divine and placed them apart." As this was done in an online group, we all shared pieces for each other, mirroring our own fears, wants, needs graspings and trauma's....we had been through it all, the player and the played in the play. The Ma'at process is like a huge play with real life characters and I saw myself in every single one of the group. As I branched out I saw myself in everyone on this planet... I saw all the hatred, abuse, fear, and evil in me and I saw all the love, beauty, joy and wonder, the whole spectrum of humanity... We are indeed ALL ONE and I vow to never separate human from Divine again.
The biggest direct revelation was judgement... how harshly us humans judge ourselves, forgetting in every second that we are universal love. This was felt time and time again as my heart melted and cried itself ever more open. To actually observe what judgment does on a cellular level is to see the contraction of ALL your cells, shrinking, twisting and distorting their natural shapes and forms. Judgment is a cellular signal to cut off the flow of life from the rest of your being.
Ma’at involves for-giving: the action for life. The opposite of forgiveness is judgment. In for-giving you become fully self-responsible for everything that happens to you, as you realize that you have created everything that happens in your life in order to learn, and grow. This is a big step to take; to own everything in your life, all relationships, all actions, all wounds, all ideas of victim hood, to see everything as self-created, and self-perpetuated. To forgive and humbly learn your own lessons, not worry about the other’s lessons and perceived shortcomings, and embrace oneself, and all others who have assisted you in this play of learning, is acceptance. This sounds like a well worn spiritual truth, but the Ceremony of Ma’at actually makes you feel this directly and without doubt, directly in the heart. With Ma’at, there is nowhere to hide.
As the 4.30am start to the process went on, it became clear that guilt and shame resonate at the lowest vibrational frequency in the emotional body... this is our human 3-D anchor that prevents us from bobbing to the surface effortlessly in our true innate nature of joy, happiness and bliss. As St. Thomas said, “When you have trampled underfoot the sins of guilt and shame then you can enter the Kingdom of heaven.â€Â  Guilt in its positive sense is morality, reminding you to treat others as you would like to be treated, yet when guilt pervades the body-mind, it eats away at you, closing you down to what lies in the present as your energy is marooned in what could have been, or what should have been.
In innocence, you can never know where another person is at on their path, good or bad. It changes in every moment; the murderer you condemn today may be Christ tomorrow; the person judging may have been abused and become very wounded; the violent rapist may have been abused in his childhood; the beggar homeless in the street may have been a king; the domineering woman may have been abused. Each of them is choosing another experience at any time; ONE NEVER KNOWS!
Everything changes, that is a universal law; and everything can change in one moment. 40 days passed like one moment of truth elongated out into material existence. It was like pouring an alchemical blend of bleach and nectar of truth on to the heart and soul and wiping the slate completely clean. All was seen, acknowledged, embraced, forgiven and loved. To eradicate guilt and shame will birth a new consciousness we all yearn for.
I persevered... much to my amazement. To fully feel this takes courage and surrender, to feel your deepest wound, your deepest separation, the darkest downward spiral you can travel on, a spiral so dark that we can lose ourselves plumbing its depths. It is the most blissfully painful experience which draws the great paradoxes of life to come hurtling your way to be fully understood and embraced simultaneously.
By the last week of Ma’at, my human heart did not know what had hit it. Neither did my body or my emotions. I would regularly wake in the middle of the night in a hot sweat, spine lit up flaming like a beacon as severe rushes of Kundalini pulsed in my body. One morning the Kriya yoga cracked open my heart and I continued the exercise with deep sobbing that did not stop for the whole 2 hours of the practice. Huge released and repressed emotions were finally set free in the flow of my tears, washed away forever.
My heart had opened and flowered back to it's natural state of being, loving all, forgiving all, nudging out the illusion of all that was not of love, understanding at the deepest level possible that all dark and light is equally acceptable, loveable and easily embraced. I felt as though I had emotionally matured from a teenager into a self contained, fully emotionally aware adult woman. It felt as though Ma'at was the missing piece, her wisdom shining on me daily, her truth penetrating every cell of my bodies, her stunning beauty guiding me like the feminine mentor I had always sought.
Even years of therapy cannot come close to how precise and accurate this process is, for what was cleared in 40 days would have taken many, many years on the psychiatrists couch. There was no more judgement, all life experiences whether good or bad were fully embraced as pure creations to live and love the lessons of life. As the Dalai Lama once said. "Your greatest misfortune can be your greatest gift" and truly embracing what that means, to live in a place of complete acceptance of all that is. I stand free as a woman and a single mother, empowered, allowing the flow to take me where it will in this moment and being true to this magnificent heart that has the capacity to love the whole world in it's fragile, pure and open embrace as it is naturally designed and meant to do.
Ma’at is often depicted as a regal, majestic Queen. Her face can never be seen as such, for her role is to reflect truth to you through the mirrors that surround her. She does not want you to worship her; she wants you to see your own truth reflected through her, so you may live it. In this living, one connects to your heart-soul, Ab ba, as the gateway to truth. Ma’at serves you to see where your heart is at, and what your reflection is along the journey at any given time. Ma’at is not a sentimental, fluffy or soothing journey: it brings the light of love and consciousness together in harmony within the chamber of your heart.
Today I stand as my own Queen, and nothing can ruffle this well earned feather as all is embraced in love, the good, the bad and ugly, in purity and integrity, for it is all me... and all You.
Written by Anu Sophia Ra El and Padma Aon Prakasha
The Full Ceremony of Ma’at is found in the book†The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt†available from all good bookstores now.
weblink: www.christblueprint.com
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