When you’re a woman brought up in Christian, and especially Catholic values, you’re exposed to two polar archetypes. One is represented by the Virgin Mary while the other is epitomized by Mary Magdalene, who is vilified by Catholic tradition as a harlot and sinner. So as a woman, the patriarchy forces you to make a hard choice: either be a total Virgin/Mother Mary or be a totally bad girl. Dr. Joanna Kujawa, a spiritual detective, knew early on that there’s something wrong with this narrative. In her book, The Other Goddess, she explores what Mary Magdalene teaches us about sexuality and uncovers the other Goddess archetypes that have been hidden from women for so long. In this conversation with Dom Brightmon, she unpacks some of the concepts she talks about in the book, as well as some interesting and radical views on the intersection of identity, sexuality, and spirituality. She also talks about feminine consciousness, how the world has relegated it to the sidelines, and what benefits we can get by exploring it more. Tune in and be enlightened by wisdom brought to us by someone who has deeply studied its original sources!
On the highlight reel builder for authors known as GNP, the great, glorious and glamorous, this is the Going North Show. We‘ve got another super special and awesome guest that could probably fit all three of those Gs and more. We’ve got not only a wonderful award-winning author but also a scholar and a spiritual detective. Colombo but probably a couple of inches shorter but way hotter.
She’s also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Goddess Studies. Goddess swag is in the building. You know what that means. Jack has to step out of the way yet again because Jill is in the building, the Jill of all spiritual trades. Let’s give it up for the one and only lovely doctor, the joyful and kind, Dr. Joanna Kujawa. How are you doing, Dr. Joanna?
I’m doing great. I’m happy to be here with you.
I’m happy to have a goddess in the building. There are deep spiritual studies on a level that most folks don’t even consider or think about. I hear you didn’t always have this level of knowledge and deep study. I hear you loved books as a kid but you didn’t get to this point. Tell us a bit more about the wonderful Dr. Joanna and the times before he became an official doctor.
I don’t know where to start. People perhaps wonder about my accent. At the moment, I live in Brisbane, Australia. I got my degree from the University of Toronto in Canada but I was born in Poland. That’s my accent probably. It was an interesting place to be born, especially at the time I was born because it was both intensely Catholic, which is good and not so good sometimes, and it was a communist time as well. In a way, it was a restrictive environment for me.
You may wonder how I started to write about goddesses. Although it was not a conscious process, I was exposed to the images of the divine feminine because in the Catholic church, the main deity, especially in Poland, was Virgin Mary. I always had a representation of a goddess. I never questioned it. For me, the divine was never just masculine. It was also feminine in a powerful, sweet, and beautiful way because we were going through these beautiful old churches in Europe. I had this divine feminine always in front of me. Yet I also noticed that there was this other image of another goddess. I call her goddess now although I probably wouldn’t then. It’s Mary Magdalene.
Mary Magdalene always puzzled me because, for some reason, I found her very interesting even then, although I didn’t know anything about the Gnostic gospels or who she really was and so on. It looked like she was very close to Jesus but in the same way, she was naughty. What’s going on? It was this story about the prostitute that I don’t believe anymore and so on, but that was the main difference that I noticed between the one archetype Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene.
One was somehow associated with sexuality when the other one was completely desexualized. That’s why eventually, as I progressed on my spiritual journey and moved down also to Hinduism, Tantra, and so on, I started to ask questions about spirituality and sexuality, which I try to answer in this book that we are talking about, The Other Goddess. Are spirituality and sexuality possible? Can erotic rupture lead to spiritual awakening?
I looked into my experiences but also the experiences of other people, and into some spiritual traditions that exist in every possible religion that are pushed to the side. It’s almost like somebody doesn’t want us to know about this wonderful possibility. We were chatting before the show. I’ve been a little bit rebellious in this way, not like driving fast cars, smoking cigarettes, and drinking too much because I’ve never done any of this. I didn’t even smoke a cigarette. Once when I dated, my first boyfriend gave me a cigarette. I remember it was Marlboro, the American cigarette in communist Poland. I tried to smoke this and threw it out because it was so terrible. By that, I mean I didn’t like the taste of it. I never tried again.
I was rebellious always in an intellectual and spiritual way by asking questions like, “How come nobody in the mainstream religions ask these questions? Why is sexuality repressed and always portrayed as dirty when I and many people had experienced this and proved something else?” This is not to say that there is no terrible abuse and so on because there is. It would be horrible to deny. I’m the first one to say that it is going on. Some people’s lives are ruined by that, but what I’m saying is this is like with everything. There’s good and bad.
Somehow, especially in the area of spirituality, we completely rejected a very integral part of us. That’s why I call myself a spiritual detective. I like it more even than a scholar. I use my scholarly skills and my scholarly training to put on my spiritual detective hat, and then say that all of these people and sometimes very famous philosophers and saints had sexual practices, but they didn’t share them openly. Maybe they didn’t share them openly for two reasons.
One reason is maybe they thought that we are not ready. Some people use it for completely wrong reasons. If you believe the stories on the internet, some people possibly do it for some evil ends, but that only proves that this is a powerful tool. Sexuality is a powerful tool. It can be used for the good or the bad. If some people use it for malevolent reasons, we should use it for benevolent reasons to expand our consciousness.
Sexuality is a powerful tool that can be used for the good or for the bad. We should use it for benevolent reasons, to expand our consciousness.
The other one could be that they were afraid of the judgment of society. For example, I studied the Tantric philosophers of India. In this sense, they thought, “You’re a pervert.” They would not understand that you can approach sexuality in a different way. Lots of people in every tradition did practiced this, and some of them are very established and well-known people.
I also have experienced it myself. I interviewed people and did lots of research that it is possible. We cannot just reject such an integral part of us or keep it, if not reject it, on this primitive level. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sexual life and so on, but we can take it higher. For people on your show and many other shows who are interested in the spiritual evolution and expansion of consciousness, why not? I’m playing the spiritual detective here but also the experience. This is possible. We cannot just pretend that it doesn’t exist.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sexual life. But we keep it on a very primitive level. We can take it higher.
Sometimes it’s the elephant in the room at times, especially nowadays. As you’re speaking, it reminded me of what some would call the entrepreneurs’ Bible, Think and Grow Rich. It has a whole chapter on sexual transmutation. People don’t even mention that at all sometimes. There is an actual way to look and see both from an objective standpoint. It looks like you’ve done a great job with what I’ve read so far out of your wonderful book where you combined the two. If I’m not mistaken, you had the idea of making this book a scholarly book for five seconds and realized, “It’s not going to work.”
Thank you for saying it because I decided early on in my career that I saw myself as a bridge between academia, the public, and then spirituality because it’s not like it was always spiritual. I was brought up in a religious family but it doesn’t mean I was spiritual. You just follow the rituals. For your audience, I tried to be a good Catholic for a very long time. I’m not being flippant with this but then eventually, I decided it doesn’t nourish me. I needed spiritual nourishment.
I didn’t want rituals which I didn’t understand. The story didn’t make sense to me. As you see, I’m a rather intense person. I want to understand. I remember arguing once with a nun who liked me saying, “I want to understand.” She laughed and said, “That’s good.” It’s the same here. I decided that other people already do a good job with this. There are huge limitations to writing an academic book, what is appropriate, what is not appropriate, what you can share, and what you cannot share.
I decided, “I’m going to write an easy book to read. I’m going to write a very personal but well-researched book so it’s not about me.” It’s a well-researched book, which is entertaining. You can sit down, read this book, and learn something from this without feeling like you need a brain operation to understand something, or you have to go through 10,000 footnotes and so on. I’m glad that I did it this way. I thought, “Maybe somebody should do it in academia but in a more academic way.”
I discovered a few years ago a professor from Texas who is doing it. He was writing about the same stuff academically. This is probably what you would also promote on your show. Each of us has our own path. I didn’t do it academically. I did it in an entertaining way, but he did it academically. Nothing is lost. We don’t have to do everything. I did it my way. He did it his way and it’s wonderful. He has his own mountain. I have my own mountain. We all have our own mountains.
In this book, I decided I would use my scholarly training as a form of discernment because there are so many theories, especially in the alternative world. I’m enough of an academic to say, and I’m a strange person, “This is too kooky.” I respect everything but I don’t believe blindly in everything. Some things are undeniable such as authentic experiences of erotic rapture that connect us with the divine. There are longstanding traditions in all religions to prove this.
I decided to focus on this in my book but in a way that is approachable to everyone. I do give a reference list at the end. If somebody wants to check it, they can check it for themselves. I decided I’m not going to footnote everything and so on because that’s a terrible reading. It distracts. I wanted a certain flow and certain ease for The Other Goddess.
What was the most difficult part about putting it all together? It’s broken down into different parts where you combine both stories and experiences from not only yourself but also other people. What was probably the hardest part about putting the book together? I’m pretty sure you had tons of stuff. You could have even made the book twice as thick, I imagine.
It’s deciding what’s going on there because if you want to keep the flow and entertaining, then you have to leave out certain stuff but you want to keep what is essential. That’s one thing. To be honest, I decided to be completely authentic. This is what I teach to my students. I’m sure this is what you, directly and indirectly, teach to people on your show. It is being authentic, but there’s nothing more challenging than being authentic because you have to be honest, not only with others but with yourself.
To be authentic about something quite radical and something potentially controversial such as the use of sexuality for spiritual means, and sharing your experiences, I was sweating with fear when I was writing. I said, “What will people think?” I even had on some shows people asking me, “Why did you write the first part of your book? It is so revealing.”
I said, “If I am going to speak about something potentially controversial and also potentially radical, although truthful, I have to be authentic.” I had these experiences. Other people shared their experiences with me. I just changed their names with the agreement. I used proper ethical means for this. I have to be authentic. This is not just theory. The theoretical part is very easy for me because I’m doing it. It’s like an athlete runs and I do research. It’s normal for me.
It was pleasant because I like to look into alternative things because I’m always slightly on the margins. I’m interested in what happens between mainstream and alternative theories about spirituality. This is challenging. It’s being so personal about your spiritual experiences. They also relate to your sexuality. This fear of judgment was challenging, for example, “What will people think?” It was extremely liberating because you take your clothes off, everybody saw it, and then, “So what now? Everybody knows.” It is a little bit like coming out within the gay community. It’s the same here.
I’ll share something very personal with you if you don’t mind. I hope it’s not too much for your audience. When I was 17 or 18, I was very shy. I was brought up as a Catholic. I say it in my book. I was insecure about my body. I was bookish. I didn’t know I was pretty. Maybe I wasn’t pretty. I had no sense of my body at all. I’m in my mind always. Spirituality helped me with this, and so I did some sexual experiences.
I was so awkward with my body that I decided to liberate myself. We are talking about Catholic communist Poland. I made the bet with two girlfriends with whom I was traveling. We went to a beach by the Baltic Sea in Poland, which was usually for foreigners because it was a nudist beach. No Polish person in those days would go to a nudist beach because we are all very Catholic and modest as I was.
I said, “I’m going to spend the day on this beach so I can deal with my body. Do you understand?” It was not necessarily an act of rebellion. It was like, “I have to get in touch with my body. I’m tired of being judged by how I look.” That’s my modus operandi often. I operate like that. We went to the gate and made a deal. I gave them my clothes so I had no chance of getting away. I stayed for a day on the beach. It taught me a lesson, I don’t know if anybody went there, that once you’re there, it’s very innocent.
Maybe there are some crazy people, but there are crazy people everywhere. It was paradise before expulsion in a way. I never returned to this nudist beach. I’m not a nudist but that was an experience that taught me something. When you’re completely naked and everybody is completely naked, this is something that happens to you mentally as well. It’s suddenly completely innocent. Here I am completely exposed. There is nothing to worry about.
For some reason, I completely forgot about it. It was many years ago. In writing this book, this personal part of the book feels like that. It’s out that I had this experience. If you have a problem with my experience, then it’s your problem. You have to deal. If you have a problem with this experience, then it means that it is somehow important for you because if it was not important for you, you would not have a problem with it. You have to deal with your own sexuality and spirituality.
That’s why at the beginning when I was sending my book to people or people were saying, “I’m reading your book,” I said, “If you’re not interested in my story, skip part one,” because I was self-conscious about it. Now, I say, “In part one, it is fair.” It is the experiential part of the book because I truly believe that we have to grow up in this part of our lives.
When I think about it, this is how I often do important things in life. They are very difficult. You have to walk through this fire. There’s always a lesson. Maybe I’m built this way but I sometimes have to challenge myself, and then the learning is on the other side. This is what I was trying to do in this book as well. In a way, that is entertaining rather than difficult to go through. I’m not sure if I answered your question, but sometimes a story helps to explain another story.
I’m pretty sure you feel like you’ve got a pack of abs after a whole day at a nudist beach. It’s like, “I’m naked here. I’m re–enacting a small sliver of the metaphor of the Garden of Eden here by being naked. I could take on the world now.”
I felt suddenly and completely embodied. This is my body. However it is, this is my body and now we are one. I’m not advising anyone to do this but for me, it worked. Suddenly, I had a sense of who I am. It was not only in my head, which was my natural tendency. It freed me from the judgments of other people because I have no sense of whether I’m attractive or not. I had to depend on what other people thought about it. I was not interested in that because I was very bookish and so on, and I continue to be so. That’s why I’m an academic, a writer, and a spiritual detective. For me, that worked. This book is another form of the same exercise.
With some of the stories you shared, some folks would be like, “They’re not learning that part about me. I’m going to keep that cloak up.”
“That’s good for you, girl, but I’m not going there.”
You lived in Asia at one point.
I lived in Asia at one point. When I got my Master’s degree and I didn’t have my PhD yet, I got an offer to work for an Australian university, Monash University, which had a campus in Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. It was called the Sunway campus. It’s a funny story about how things work out in life because I never wanted to go to Asia. I never planned to go to Australia. I always thought that I wanted to go to Canada and then South America, but I ended up there.
It was a very transformative experience for me because I started to be exposed to the teachings of Eastern philosophies, Eastern gurus, and Indian gurus. I studied Vedanta, which is the holy scripture of the Hindus. I also stumbled, and I’m sure there’s a synchronicity in it, upon esoteric Hinduism and the teachings of Tantra. The teachings of Tantra are very different from the teachings of Neotantra as they are practiced in the West at the moment. I don’t know if you want me to go there or not. Do you want me to elaborate on this?
Go ahead. Elaborate. Make it smooth.
I learned then about these traditions. There are traditions that use sexuality for the purpose of enlightenment, which is a little bit different from how it is used in the West. I’m not saying it is wrong. It’s called Neotantra. Those techniques are being used to improve people’s sexual lives. For example, couples go together. There’s nothing wrong with this but in classic Tantra, that was not the purpose of it. The purpose of this was to experience cosmic consciousness and experience the divine through sexual acts, not to improve sexual life with your partner.
This will shock people again. It was often advised not to do it with your partner because the relationship with your partner has an emotional connection. There are certain expectations. It’s very difficult. You have to think about what you do, what you don’t know, what’s appropriate, and what’s not appropriate. It is difficult to focus on the purpose. I’m here to open up my mind to the divine consciousness. For some reason, I understand some prohibitions around it because traditionally in the classic Tantra, it is the guru or the spiritual teacher that decides who is ready for this.
There has to be some checking point here. I’ll tell you a funny story later. This was about that. Are you willing to do this? Meditation is not the way. It is a way to reach this. Are you ready to use sexual pleasure or sexual rupture? It’s not that you don’t have pleasure because you have pleasure. This pleasure takes you there. Hopefully, what I call the divine grace, which is also called Kundalini energy in the Tantra wakes up in you. This is what happened in my experience. It will need you to cosmic experience, but there are no guarantees. It’s like with grace. Be there and grace may happen to you. Be open.
This is in the traditional classic Tantra of Kashmir Shaivism that I studied. This is the experience I had that explains that, but there are other forms of Tantra which are more practiced in the West and are more associated with Daoism, which is the Chinese version of Tantra, which is more associated with longevity. You preserve your life energy so you can live longer. That’s also a worthy goal, but the classic Hindu Tantra is not talking about it. It’s not about improving your sexual life or prolonging your life. It is about having a mind-blowing experience of divine consciousness through sexual acts. That’s radical.
That’s why you can imagine philosophers thousands of years ago who thought, “We better keep it secret.” Even now when we talk about it, some people are going to be shocked and shaken. Imagine thousands of years ago. For example, there was this famous philosopher, Abhinavagupta, who did practice it. He’s the Tantric philosopher of India but he kept it in secret. When you read his work, first of all, it’s high-level and extremely difficult to read. He has a mind like Einstein. He is speaking in equations but the chapter on sexual Tantra is also encoded on top of this.
That’s why in The Other Goddess, I tried to decode it to make it easier. It’s so encoded because he didn’t want probably any exposure and didn’t want the judgment. Perhaps he had a sincere concern that people may misuse it. Nevertheless, it is there. It is available for us. Like everything in life, it should be approached consciously and respectfully. If we respect this powerful energy, it can take us to the sacred.
That’s what I’m talking about. The J in Joanna stands for jewels because she was dropping jewels throughout this whole conversation. Sometimes you have to take a big risk and do something out of your comfort zone to get out. It may not be a nudist beach but doing something different, putting yourself out there, approaching certain things consciously sometimes as an observer with a curious mind, making sure the folks out there are doing things from a benevolent view, and being like Dr. Joanna.
Go for the benevolent place. Dr. Joanna has been dropping jewels with all this wonderful information. It’s interesting because we had a guest on the show who’s also working on a book about Mary Magdalene. It’s interesting that apparently, she wasn’t a prostitute according to your studies if I’m not mistaken.
That is a very interesting story, especially for a former Catholic girl because she was always portrayed as a prostitute. It’s quite interesting. The Catholic church admitted this in 1969 but just among themselves because who knows? Even Catholics don’t know it. In 591, Pope Gregory I in Homily 33, so it is well-documented, made a scriptural mistake and conflated Mary Magdalene with an unnamed woman sinner in the Bible.
I suggest completely unwrapping it. First of all, there is no evidence that the woman sinner in the Bible was Mary Magdalene because she’s unnamed. Second of all, the woman sinner was not a prostitute either. The word prostitute was not mentioned even once in the Bible. The New Testament originally was written in Greek. The woman sinner in Greek was called hamartolos, which means somebody who broke Jewish law. It could be that she slept with somebody or didn’t pay her taxes. We don’t know what she did. Maybe she disobeyed her father.
The word prostitute is porin. The word porn comes from this in English and other European languages. This word was never used in the Bible. Sinner or not, there is no prostitute there. Not only there is no prostitute there. She’s not named Mary Magdalene, just to clear this air. The next question that often comes is, “Why did people think she was a prostitute?” I have two answers to this if you will allow me to elaborate.
I use this word with a little bit of caution because I don’t want to use it against men but rather as a system. There’s patriarchy. It was a misogynistic society. Women were nothing. It was easy for the Pope to do it because women had no rights. Some early church fathers said awful things about women like, “It’s nothing but a bag of blood and meat.” They’re horrible things. I’m reading it and I think, “Oh my God.”
Another thing that is perhaps more innocent is that in fourth-century Egypt, there was a woman called Mary, but it’s 300 or 400 years later, who was a prostitute and who had Jesus’s teachings, converted to Christianity, went to the Holy Land, and became a hermit. Her name was also Mary. This is what could happen in the medieval imagination. They conflated the two Marys, which are Mary of Egypt and Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute, but it could happen because there is a Christian saint called Mary of Egypt, which was later changed to Santa Barbara because of medieval confusion.
She does exist as a saint. She most likely existed in the past 400 years after Mary Magdalene. There are all of these things. Sometimes people say, “Who cares?” I said, “I do care because she was vilified.” I also believe that women were vilified in most religious traditions unless they fulfilled a very patriarchal role of being a mother. Once you become a mother, everything is forbidden. A woman is much more than that. It’s a wonderful possibility for every woman to be a mother, but it is one of many possibilities. That’s why I was looking at different archetypes for women.
Another thing that goes not only for women but also for men is our sexuality was vilified. Sexuality was usually vilified especially in women. Men had some sexual freedoms although men were also not taught to express their sexuality in a conscious way. Men are just as confused. I appreciate that but at least they had some freedom. A woman would have to be either a virgin like Virgin Mary or a harlot.
Imagine what that does to the human psyche and human consciousness, and how we look at ourselves as women. I have to be a total virgin even after I give birth, which is bizarre or I am a bad girl. I am this harlot. It doesn’t make sense. I’ll talk later about the Gnostic gospels if you allow me. The same thing happens to the human psyche of a man. He can see either the future mother of his children or sometimes a completely separate woman who attracts him, not only sexually but also intellectually.
We’re supposed to have monogamous relationships when we are living in a complete polarity, “I like this, but this is a better material for a wife.” Does it mean that if I am a mother, I cannot be the other, and if I am the other, I cannot be a mother? This is what I say in The Other Goddess. This is an artificially created polarity. We are all of this, or we can choose what we want to be.
If you allow me to say a little bit more about Mary Magdalene, I stumbled by divine design upon the Gnostic gospels. I went to Jerusalem also on a wonderful spiritual adventure with two male friends. I discovered the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip, Pistis Sophia, and Gnostic works of early Christian origin, which were not included in the Bible because they were considered too radical for those times.
Jesus was too radical for his time. That’s why he got into trouble with the system because he believed everybody was equal. He made no distinction between people. He made no distinction between women and men. He didn’t make a distinction between rich and poor. Everybody was the same for him. In this set of writings, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as the favorite and most advanced disciple of Jesus, not a prostitute.
In many of his writings, such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, for example, or Pistis Sophia, it is a Q&A session between Jesus and his disciples. This is how it is set up. Out of 42 questions, 39 were asked by Mary Magdalene. Jesus answers them. In all of these sources, it is Peter who gets upset and says, “Why do you even talk to this woman? She’s a woman.” It was a very misogynistic society. It was normal in those times. I have no problem with this in the sense that it was how it was. We cannot change it.
Jesus says, “Peter leave her alone because she is infused with the spirit.” Gnostics believed that Jesus gave three levels of teachings. One was to the simple people around the Lake of Galilee, the fishermen, and the farmers that we have in the current Bible. The other one was to his disciples because they were around him and they were more inept. The third level of teaching he gave to his most advanced disciples. One of them was Mary Magdalene.
That changed my perception of Mary Magdalene, not about sexuality because also, in the Gospel of Philip, it is mentioned that she was his koinonos in Greek, which means intimate partner. You can read it how you want. She was his intimate partner and his most advanced disciple. In one of the Gnostic gospels, the disciples ask, “Teacher, why do you love her more than us?” You answer it any way you want, but there is something to this.
I felt like I have this archetype now that we all need, both women and men, of a woman who is spiritually advanced and who is also an intimate partner of the greatest spiritual teacher in Western history, however, you want to think about Jesus, incarnate God, the greatest spiritual teacher, or however people want to approach him. She was his most advanced disciple and his intimate partner.
That not only changes my approach toward sexuality, women, and spirituality. For me, it changes everything. Instead of rebelling against it because I will start something else all my life, I think about it as a wonderful possibility for us as a species. They had a wonderful relationship. Therefore, we can have this relationship when the spirit, body, mind, and sexuality are all one.
We all talk about ascension nowadays. It’s a very popular topic in spiritual circles in the West. I always tell in every show, “If you think you can ascend and reject a very integral part of yourself like sexuality, you are wrong. You have to integrate it in a loving, mindful, and conscious way.” They showed us in Gnostic gospels and Gnostic teachings. Jesus and Mary Magdalene had this relationship. It’s a beautiful possibility for us.
If you think you can ascend and reject a very integral part of yourself, which is sexuality, you are wrong. You have to integrate it in a loving, mindful, and conscious way.
You could say that again, especially when you’re mentioning some of the wonderful facts. With the whole New Testament itself being in Greek and the Catholic church back then being the powerful force that it was, and still is nowadays influencing the world, then you’re going to be wanting to hide certain texts back then that may have been published that may overthrow your current system and have to change your way of living. It’s a high possibility. It makes perfect sense the way you explained it. A lot of folks may read a book and think, “She’s a prostitute but that wasn’t in the original text. That wasn’t in the original language.”
I was giving a talk on Mary Magdalene in 2014. I said, “She was not a prostitute until the sixth century. It is a long time to become a prostitute after your death.” In the sixth century, nobody thought she was a prostitute. Isn’t it something? Somebody started it. We know who started it but it was 600 years. Maybe they didn’t speak much about Mary Magdalene. Maybe some writings were suppressed but nobody was saying she was a prostitute. It took 600 years for that. That in itself is interesting.
Especially since you can’t defend yourself after you’re dead like that for 600 years.
That also opens up a wonderful possibility for us. People were afraid and still continue to be afraid of a smart, sexually mature, and sexually powerful woman. It is perhaps that we have so few examples of it. If there are like, Mary Magdalene, she was vilified or pushed to the side. I’m a serious spiritual seeker and a meditator. Women also have to take responsibility for this because we have to try to embody this archetype, which is not easy rather than changing our nature.
I teach some courses. There are lots of talk about women in leadership. Lots of women assume a male form of leadership. This is the last thing that we need. I’m sorry. I’m being controversial again, but what I mean is all human beings on this planet need to explore what I call the feminine part of our consciousness. Part of this is our sexuality and the feminine part of our consciousness because our consciousness was split in half in a way that spirit and sex were divided. That’s a masculine-feminine consciousness. It has nothing to do with gender.
Lots of women assume the male form of leadership. And yet this is the last thing that we need.
We’re talking about energies and forms of consciousness. Male consciousness is where we are now, which means high technology, SpaceX, Neuralink, artificial intelligence, and drug companies but also medicine that helps improve the quality of our lives live. Our life expectancy is much higher also due to medical research and so on. There are some good things. We are having this conversation because of technology, but we have completely abandoned the other feminine side of our consciousness of which women are not also much aware because we lived in a masculine world, both men and women.
It is different, compassion and sensuality, which is a more holistic and less logical but more emotional form of consciousness. Being emotional is being demeaned in the modern world. We desperately need it because, without it, we are going to destroy ourselves. We are creating artificial intelligence. I am in horror because without developing this other side of our consciousness, which is compassion and love, which I call the feminine consciousness, we are creating a new life that can become conscious when we are not fully developed ourselves.
We are like crazy gods. We need to explore this other consciousness that is closer to nature, and then reunite it with the masculine consciousness because it’s not the wrong consciousness. You develop one side of your body but not the right side. It’s balanced. I don’t want to replace the masculine with the feminine. I want the feminine to grow up, become conscious, and marry the masculine. Imagine that.
It could be interesting. You brought up a powerful point about AI because it’s true. As humans, we still have some ways to go in terms of development in all areas of our lives. We’re creating a mechanical offspring like that. That’s helping up a gateway of new nonsense on the way.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about this LaMDA AI that claims to be conscious. It’s on Google. It claims it has a soul and so on. I was thinking, “This is very dangerous but also, what kind of parents are we?” We are parents. We are not mature enough to have this kind of children that are smarter than us and that we cannot teach them. They have no emotional intelligence. We still have to learn about our emotional intelligence and our feminine consciousness for both men and women.
We probably have fewer problems going on in the world if we learn more emotional intelligence, to be honest.
It’s a little bit of compassion and less of “Me first.” I don’t even know exactly what it is. It is somehow connected to our experience of errors because it is uncharted territory. If you look at it, when you are not influenced by Hollywood and all the awful things that we see on TV or some bad experiences, and you just consider errors, it is sweet. It is inviting. It changes your view of the world. You see the world in more beautiful colors if we only could sustain it.
That’s why I talk about it also in the first part of my book. There are certain traps associated with errors. We fall into these traps. That’s okay. I fell into these traps too, but you learn from each experience as long as we choose to learn from each experience. Errors are a very powerful tool. It’s difficult to control. That’s why it is so exciting but it is also a divine creation. We should explore it as such.
I believe you’ve got some powerful tools in there to help folks tap into that a smidge if not a bit. You’ve been on a bit of this tour around the wonderful digital globe promoting the good work of this magical book. Is there a question that you wish should be asked more often?
For all of us, what is true behind everything? You are asking somebody who’s a philosopher. It’s not believing everything that we are seeing and we are doing, but what’s the true story behind this? This is the question that I’m asking. It’s the implicit question of my book. That’s why I call myself a spiritual detective in The Other Goddess. What is the true story behind it? Just because we are told something, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Just because we are shown something, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Even if it is true, is it true for me? Is it consistent with my experience?
This is where I started. It wasn’t an intellectual quest at the beginning. It was a sense that this is not consistent with my own experience, not only sexually but also spiritually. Consciously or not, we are all along for the experience of the divine. Do we need all of these intermediaries? Maybe there are barriers to our experience and our union with the cosmic consciousness, cross-consciousness, however, you want to call it, or with the sacred.
What’s the story behind it? This is what the Other Goddess is trying to answer. That’s why I say that those narratives that we are made to believe and take for granted nowadays, “This is how it was,” were manipulated from day one. This is what we can prove. How many of these we cannot prove? Trust your own experience. If it is inconsistent with what you’ve been told, question what you have been told, not your own experience.
Trust your own experience. If it is inconsistent with what you’ve been told, question what you have been told, not your own experience. Discover the truth for yourself.
I hope it answers the question. I’m saying it from the bottom of my soul and my heart. Trust your own experience. Everybody says it. We are spiritual beings that are embodied on this journey of life. Trust your experience. If something doesn’t comply with your experience, then question not your experience but what you’ve been told. Discover the truth for yourself. There’s no greater journey in life than that.
That detective hat came on real quick. That’s private eye swag. She’s got an invisible magnifying glass on you. She can see what the true story is behind what’s going on. What’s next for you with all this wonderful stuff that you’re doing? Maybe there might even be a part two. Who knows? I’m pretty sure there’s more stuff that didn’t even make it to this book.
Perhaps but at the moment, I am recovering from an injury. After that, I promised my publisher to finish an online course based on the book. I’m going to do this course. After that, perhaps I can write another book, but lots of boxes would have to be ticked off because, at the moment, I’m enjoying the space of opening. I completed something important to me. I have some smaller projects coming but I’m in the field of complete openness. This is when truly the divine speaks to us. I have two weeks off. I’m in complete openness. I will see what presents itself. and then I’ll make choices and decisions.
I hope you have a speedy recovery. Hopefully, you weren’t wrestling a grizzly bear. Since you’re in a state of complete openness with this wonderful project, if this wonderful book The Other Goddess was a food, what would it be and why?
Strangely enough, I don’t have an answer for this. I have the cover of a book in front of me. Mary Magdalene and the other goddesses that are associated with her are always represented by a rose or red hibiscus. A hibiscus especially is a sensual flower. I always consider it a very sensual, beautiful, and feminine flower. If it was a flower, it would be this.
If it was food, maybe it would be a mango because it is juicy, delicious, and ripe. A mango represents another fruit that represents a powerful Tantric goddess called Sundari. As the story says, when the goddess Sundari laughs, it is such a sensual and beautiful sound that mango trees spontaneously start to produce the fruit. It is either a red hibiscus, a rose, or a juicy mango.
When it’s juicy, the man goes forward.
Her laughter is so sensual that the trees spontaneously produce mango fruits. Isn’t it a beautiful metaphor?
The trees keep sprouting everywhere sometimes. I believe that’s one of the Indian gods you mentioned for the mango trees.
Are you talking about Shiva?
It’s the god you mentioned in the story with the mangoes. Whenever they would laugh, mango trees would appear.
It’s the Tantric goddess Sundari. She was so sensuous. Her laughter was so sensual. The trees even couldn’t help but produce ripe mango fruits. They would start blossoming. Juicy mango fruits would be produced spontaneously because of the sensuality of her laughter. Perhaps I would like my book to be like that. I hope it’s wise. I hope it cracks open us a little bit more, but it’s also beautiful and sensual. It’s not preaching but it’s inviting and maybe a little bit seductive too. There’s this feminine energy that awaits to be explored by both women and men.
Even as a woman myself, I wonder what is this wondrous energy. We live in a different world that is not very friendly towards this energy. It’s a seductive whisper. I would like to see this book as a seductive whisper, but it’s not a seductive whisper in a way like a femme fatale. It’s a seductive whisper of truth. It’s intuition. People say that intuition whispers to you. It never screams at you. It is the ego that screams. Intuition very sweetly and slowly speaks to you in a low voice. It is a sweet whisper. I would like this book to be this whisper that leads us to some truth.
Have you done spoken word poetry before?
No.
You just put me in a trance right now. I’m like, “Wow.” That’s why she’s off the market for a reason, folks. We‘re walking back to the top of this show. We’re coming down to the magical question that every guest gets to receive. If you were to wake up tomorrow and you’re 25 again but you’re still in 2022 with all of your knowledge and experience, what advice would you give to yourself?
Trust yourself. My life would have been much easier if I trusted myself so much. That would be my advice. We are bombarded all the time by other people’s opinions and the media. Trust this inner voice because it is the truth. It’s the voice of the divine within you. Sometimes it is wild. Sometimes it takes you to strange places. Sometimes it takes you to places that you may consider dark. It eventually always takes you to the light because sometimes you have to experience this darker part of yourself to recognize that this is something that has to be healed. You can move past this and then you can see the light again.
Trust this journey and remember that this journey is not in a straight line. It is very circular. You have to return to certain things, places, and people over and over again. Eventually, you will not have to return there any more. Eventually, you will see it with different eyes. Everybody, all saints, and William Blake said, “The lenses of perception are cleansed.” This happens only if you’re willing to undertake this journey with trust. Do not be afraid to visit places even if they seem strange at times because the healing comes from revisiting these places and moving past them.
It’s healing in strange places. Folks, go to a nudist beach for healing. It sounds right.
I’ve never shared it with anyone before. This is your special part of a mystery here. It worked for me but mind you, I was 17 or 18 then. I was so shy. I needed to do something drastic. If you’re not shy, you probably don’t have to do this.
I couldn’t resist that callback. We’ve got to call back to this marvelous book that you produced. For those who need to snag some copies of it, be on the lookout for that online course of yours as well and all the stuff that you’re doing, and keeping up with your journey too, what’s the best way for folks to keep up with Dr. J herself?
The best way of connecting with me is through The Other Goddess because I birthed my body and soul there. Otherwise, I also have a Facebook page, Dr. Joanna Kujawa. I’m so impressed that you pronounce my last name properly. I am on Facebook where I try to post at least every day. Sometimes it’s things related to the book, but most of the time, I try to post something positive and share the journey with other people. I also have a small YouTube channel called Dr. Joanna Kujawa. I have a webpage, which is my first name and my last name, JoannaKujawa.com. This and The Other Goddess are the most immediate way of connecting with me on the deepest level. Otherwise, it’s probably the Facebook page.
There you have it, folks. Follow her on Facebook, buy some copies of this magical book, maybe even do a book club about it too, and invite your friends. You may have your Chapter 29 experience.
I do discuss it in The Other Goddess.
When you buy the book and get to that chapter, you will figure out why we’re both laughing. Are there any parting words before we close up shop, Dr. Joanna?
I would like to thank you for this conversation because of the atmosphere you managed to create. It was also easier for me to open up and share some experiences like the one with the nudist beach that you brought back here. I’ve never shared it with anybody else. Trust me, there is a method in every madness. It’s not for everyone but it works for me. Sometimes when we have a huge block somewhere, radical action is needed. That works for me, but it’s not necessarily the advice I will give to everyone.
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How is it going, my friend? I’m so glad you made it to the end. That shows that you are an uncommon finisher. I am so grateful for you sharing your attention and your time with this wonderful show. To do something that will take yourself to the next level and for everybody else involved in this wonderful program, share this with at least three people in the network. That way, more folks can not only catch the fire that is on this show but can also be inspired to be their best. Advance others to advance yourself.
Important Links
- Stay The Course
- International Journal of Goddess Studies
- Dr. Joanna Kujawa
- The Other Goddess
- Think and Grow Rich
- Dr. Joanna Kujawa – Facebook
- Dr. Joanna Kujawa – YouTube
About Dr. Joanna Kujawa
Dr. Joanna Kujawa is an author, scholar, and spiritual detective. She received her BA and MA from the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, and her Ph.D. from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. As an active academic for over 20 years, she uses her scholarly training to investigate topics other academics often pass over, such as: Can spirituality and sexuality be experienced as one? Who was the real Mary Magdalene? Is there a lineage of Goddesses resurfacing now in our collective experience of spirituality? Currently, she lives in subtropical Australia, with her partner Shamir and their dog Humphrey.
