mary magdalen

Why LoveDance?

I meant to write a healing book, you know the kind, a self-help manual based on my expertise… Everyone has a story: why they do what they do, how they became who they are in the world. And I have mine.

In 1984, I gave birth to a premature baby who stumped expert endocrinologists with numerous hormonal challenges. Defying medical advice, I orchestrated the care of my firstborn by learning everything I could about how hormones affect developmental behavior. My intuition proved correct—our healthy son is now a beloved teacher. In spite of my traditional training as a nurse practitioner, what I learned as a patient and a parent sparked an expertise in holistic neuro-immune-endocrinology, the interface, I believe, between the bio-physical and the psycho-spiritual being.

Through my own bio-psycho-spiritual journey, I evolved into an intuitive healer capable of honing in on the biochemical interconnections of human physiology and relating them to symbolic imbalances as lessons on a patient’s soul path. Spiritual gurus, psychological geniuses, and fully grounded but very ill patients from around the world presented themselves to gain insight on the wellbeing of their physical forms. Yet, I learned the most from the children.

In 1988, my daughter was born beautifully whole and much more work than my premature son. Although developmentally advanced, speaking by six months and reading at three, he struggled in his body, while she delighted in her humanness. Forcing us all to stay awake, she candidly shared her interdimensional experiences, in constant communication with my dead grandmother, so connected to her father that at any distance she knew what he was feeling, claiming with innocent assurance that they had been father and daughter in a past life, and like I did as a child, could lay her hands on someone and “know” what ailed them.

Meanwhile, my son struggled in school and at eight, asked to see a “brain doctor.” The psychologist insisted that with his intense brilliance, he could not have attention deficit disorder, but my son insisted on being tested with the “video game.” The psychologist was floored. How could a child know about the newly developed computer program used to differentiate learning disabilities? I just shrugged; his uncanny knowingness was part of our life. When my son agreed to submit to traditional therapeutics, “only, Mommy, if I do not lose my dreams,” again, I was challenged to find a natural solution to his dilemma. Of course, the universe presented lots of opportunities for growth as pediatric patients were brought to me by their parents.

After much research, I began treating my autistic and learning disabled patients nutritionally. While gladly mixing the “brew,” squeezing oil from capsules, carefully measuring powders, their parents asked me to create something easier. So by 1998, and after many exhaustive but futile attempts at finding the nutritional connection between genetics and the hypothalamic orchestration of the neuro-immune-endocrine system, I surrendered to the advice of my children and prayed.

Every night for three months, I had the same dream in which my most hormonally challenged patients came to drink from a chalice I held. We never spoke, but intuitively I knew they were better. I awoke every morning asking what was the golden liquid in the cup. The first answer came as seven letters, I thought were Hebrew, but later found were Aramaic. Amazingly they translated into the same single letter denotations used for the seven amino acids I had been studying related to the hypothalamus.

And that’s how my nutraceutical formula, Genesis Gold®, was born. Under its influence, I began to write about my journey, but it would be another five years before I realized the significance of initially receiving the formula in Aramaic. All through my years of healing, friends, family, colleagues, and most enthusiastically, patients encouraged me to write. They appreciated my unique take on healing, how I married eastern and western philosophies into successful therapeutics, how I seemed to know just what was out of balance to restore wellbeing, and how passionately I shared anecdotal stories from my life as a healer, wife, mother, sister, daughter. So in the summer of 2003, I began to write the book I had promised my patients.

But it didn’t go as planned. I had no idea how to put it together, no muse, no nothing, until September 15th…

I had a dream. I was walking down the dusty streets of Nazareth, fine linen flapping about my legs, my sandals gathering debris, as I hurried along anxious to meet my friend. Then I was there, in a humble courtyard, looking into the eyes of a boy I knew very well. In the dream, I was fourteen-year-old Mary, the soon to be bride of Yeshua.

Once the opening chapter was recorded, the muse did not leave my side day or night for eight months. I didn’t know why Mary’s story came to me. I wasn’t religious, nor particularly interested in history, but I was compelled to record the voice of the woman history had forgotten. I lived and breathed nearly every aspect of her story while typing like mad.

Here was a muse I couldn’t deny. Never once did I suffer writer’s block, but it wasn’t easy to humanize the man deified by so many in the eyes of the woman the world believed was far from his wife. Yet how could I deny the intimate details that came in dreams and visions, some even…in Aramaic!

My poor husband, always supportive, feared for my wellbeing, but as my son put it: he could believe my experience was the product of an unstable mind or he could believe in my inter-dimensional connections, deepen our relationship, and thus gain spiritually himself. Fortunately, my husband chose the latter.

I struggled to write Mary and Yeshua’s journey to Qumran for what I saw was so very different than what the scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls believed, so I called my dear rabbi friend. She advised that I forget two thousand years of what I was taught to believe was history as interpreted by modern Victorian Christendom and just “be Mary.” Six months later, she called to inform me that Israeli archeologists had just discovered evidence of what I wrote. I ceased denying why this story came to me and just relaxed to birth it into the world.

Being Mary changed my life. By embodying the energy of the divine daughter, recognizing her in others, and reaping the benefits, I became my truth. I’ve always been a cup-half-full kind of person, sensually oriented and passionate, probably from my hot-blooded Italian family, but somehow through writing this book, life became even more joyful. I chose the first person present tense narrative because that’s how it felt to me. The synchronicities between writing her story and my own have been amazing—as I wrote, it would become manifest in my life.

As Mary progressed in her awakening, so did I.

I opened to admitting to my patients that, yes, in spite of my scientific training, I intuitively diagnosed and treated them. Appreciating my honesty, they began challenging me to further my healing gifts, especially encouraging me to divulge the lessons from the book. Family, friends, and even patients clamored to share in the experience, so I released chapters of the first draft for feedback. It should have been no surprise that my readers had transformational experiences, but I was in awe because that’s what happened to me.

I always believed in the profound potential within each of us. That’s how I believe healing occurs. It’s already encoded; we just have to tap in to the potential for it to become manifest.

My understanding of human consciousness is an evolution of the Mother-Father-Son-Daughter aspects of the Divine. Originally, I believe, humans worshiped the earth as the Divine Mother, her body was ours. Then we looked into the cosmos and envisioned the Divine Father as spirit. In the last two millennia, avatars teaching in parables initiated a revolution of the mind, and ever since the Divine Son has been the center of religious worship.

Now the time is ripe for the Divine Daughter to manifest in human consciousness. She is emotion weaving the mind, body, and soul into Sacred Unity with All That Is.

I believe Mary Magdalen was the original embodiment of the Divine Daughter achieving Sacred Union with Yeshua, the embodiment of the Divine Son.

Although lost in history due to the fear-based struggle between politics and religion, her story is fortunately being remembered. I am blessed to present my rendition of Mary’s awakening to you. Writing from her perspective helped me remember who I am and why I’m here. Sharing in her journey may help you gain a remembrance of your truth.

As it turns out, I did write a healing book. Everything I wished to teach—the bio-psycho-spiritual healing lessons—are in LoveDance. In story form, the way a beloved avatar taught some two thousand years ago.

Disentangle Your Cords of Attachment

We tend to become entangled with those we love, those we hate, those we have any strong emotion. The old paradigm is to cut the cords of attachment, but we can never cut ourselves off from anything in creation. The time is ripe to learn a new paradigm. Learning to disentangle from others can be a challenge and a blessing.

“As we loosen our bindings to this reality, the hayye (energy) of potential can shift. When we surrender those we love to the One, we free them to experience life without the limitations of our relationship.”
From page 453 of LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter

Here’s an article I wrote on how to Disentangle Your Cords of Attachment

May you be Free to Receive Abundant Joy,

Deborah

LoveDance is HerStory!

LOVEDANCE: AWAKENING THE DIVINE DAUGHTER reveals intimate details of Mary Magdalen’s relationship with Christ. Unlike other works of fiction seeking to cast history’s most controversial woman in the mold of accepted scripture, LOVEDANCE breaks the mold to unveil Mary Magdalen as Yeshua’s sacred partner—sexually and spiritually. History draws a one dimensional patriarchal view of the man known as Jesus. HERstory paints a multidimensional sacred feminine portrait vibrantly colored by the passion of the time.

 

LOVEDANCE is HERstory.

 

Author Deborah Maragopoulos FNP is an intuitive integrative family nurse practitioner who conceived her debut novel through dreams and visions.  “I set out to write a healing book but after dreaming I was Mary Magdalen, she became my muse. Forever changed by HERstory, I realize LOVEDANCE is the healing book I was meant to write.” Those who dare to open themselves to the gift of LOVEDANCE discover precious insights, layers of spiritual truths, and a deep connection with the Divine.

 

 

“LOVEDANCE takes the story of Mary Magdalen and Christ to another level… everything the characters are experiencing is described so the reader can feel it, see it, smell it…works on the spiritual level. Being that Christ had so many gifts, this seems more like how his life was…” Readers Views

 

Readers Choice Best Spiritual Fiction

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LOVEDANCE: AWAKENING THE DIVINE DAUGHTER;

by Deborah Maragopoulos FNP; 552 pages, Softcover, $25

 

Profits benefit Divine Daughters Unite

Do You Know Where You’re Going?

We each embark on a journey toward completing our life’s purpose. Some of us are conscious of our “mission” very early in life. Others discover their true purpose later. Mary Magdalen sings this to her children in LoveDance

“Do you know where you’re going?

     Do you know where you’ve been?

     Do you know you’re a part of the great, great I AM?

     So here we are on this bright shiny day

     Loving each other and trusting the way.”

From page 161 of LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter

May you enjoy this journey called life,

Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP-BC

Life Mirrors Consciousness

Becoming conscious of creating our reality is a great step in awakening to our truth. 

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I wrote LoveDance in five parts mirroring the existential questions we all eventually ask—

  • Who am I
  • Why am I Here
  • Where am I Going
  • What is my Purpose
  • When is the Time Ripe

In the book, Mary Magdalen discovers the answers to these five questions to be one joyous challenge after another.

 “Do not struggle with this being. It is her fear of the power of the sacred feminine that sharpens her tongue. Reach out to her, Mary. She is not your enemy, but a reflection of your incomplete sense of self.”

From page 152 of LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter

Life mirrors consciousness. What you see in others is your soul lesson. 

Only 222 copies of the first edition left. Order your autographed copy of LoveDance today.

May you have Abundant Joy,

Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP-BC

Intuitive Integrative Health

My Mary Magdalen Journey

ImageMy journey began with a dream…I am fourteen year old Mary dancing down the streets of Nazareth. Through LoveDance, I remembered myself as the Sacred Feminine. I became the Divine Daughter. I reconnected to the Divine Mother. It took eight months to write. And three years to publish.

In Book II, I realized that I Am The Way. I healed an ancient father wound and remembered my connection to the Divine Masculine. It took five years to write. I pray it does not take long to publish…

Each book became my life. The sensuality, the realizations, the remembrance of my gifts, the healing, the connections. Many have found healing in the pages of LoveDance. For those who have trouble connecting to the written word, I pray it becomes a movie.

I need connections to the publishing world at large, major media to really bring Mary’s Sacred Journey to Light. For her life, as I remember it, was very human, very enlightening, sensual, loving and real. She has taught me much about love, about gratitude, about commitment, about releasing fear and receiving the gift of every encounter.

Now I begin the writing of Book III. In a different vein, a more realized energy, this time even more supported by my beloved. Each book has been a deeper awakening for us. He was afraid for me when I began to write LoveDance. It is a curse and a blessing to be chosen as my rabbi friend once told me. I had a difficult time in conceiving the first book. It was hard to be Deborah while remembering Mary. I vowed to not lose myself in book II and I didn’t. Yet it took so long to write because it took so long to remember the ancient father wound and then to heal it in my own life and plant a new seed for consciousness. LoveDance is not just a women’s book. Book II is the time most known by historians and theologians yet I believe they only know the male version of the story. In LoveDance Book II, I unveil the female version for both men and women.

Ten years after beginning LoveDance, my beloved took me to the south of France for our 30th wedding anniversary. I have done little research in writing the LoveDance series. The scenes come in dreams and visions. As I dive deeper into HerStory, pieces are remembered by family and friends. Some they recognize, some they just deliver unknowing to me, usually after I meditate for an opening. It’s all good, all as it is meant to be.

I have seen scenes of Book III since the beginning. They haunted me until I had a deeper understanding and a more divine perspective. I felt drawn to the south of France…perhaps there in what was once Roman Gaul seeds of truth were buried in some of the legends. I discovered some pearls in the mud of misperception. More so, I discovered a great reverence for the Magdalen scattered throughout Provence. For that I am grateful. For Mary’s sake, for woman’s sake, for all of us.

THE DIVINE DAUGHTER’S BACK!

I envisioned this blog to be one of Remembrance. Remembering the Divine Daughter—Mary Magdalen, the original Divine Daughter and the heroine of my book—LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter—Yet now two years after the last post…I find myself needing to unveil…again… 

LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter helped me heal the Mother Wound…the original separation from the Divine Mother…as my heroine Mary Magdalen awakened to her truth as the Divine Daughter…so did I…and in doing so received the fullness of the Divine Mother. I reconnected to Her…embodied in the Earth…enlivened in the hearts of so many women here in Ojai…mothers and grandmothers who receive me…as if I am the Divine Daughter…and I feel it. I see the Divine Daughter energy in so many others…women young and old and even a few precious men… Time to feel the fullness of our emotions and allow the Divine Daughter to dance us into wholeness. 

Here’s what I wrote in the book, “My understanding of human consciousness is an evolution of the Mother-Father-Son-Daughter aspects of the Divine. Originally, I believe, humans worshipped the earth as the Divine Mother, her body was ours. Then we looked into the cosmos and envisioned the Divine Father as spirit. In the last two millennia, avatars teaching in parables initiated a revolution of the mind, and ever since the Divine Son has been the center of religious worship. Now the time is ripe for the Divine Daughter to manifest in human consciousness. She is emotion weaving the mind, body, and soul into Sacred Unity with All That Is.” 

The Divine Daughter is alive and well…Awakened now through LoveDance. On the Earth at this time—dancing her dance—her dance of love—LoveDance. 

LoveDance became my philosophy of life. I created a whole website around it. LoveDance is my expression of Self. Love is at the center of the triad of Relationships, Soul Purpose, and Health. I include Health because as a Holistic Nurse Practitioner, Health of Body, Mind, and Soul is paramount in the Process of Enlightenment. It is not enough for me to talk…but to walk my talk…or rather…to dance my truth! 

So now in the midst of this summer of profound transformation, nearly three years after LoveDance was launched, I find myself facing another wound…the Father Wound—separation from the Divine Father. Yes, I have begun Book II…LoveDance is a trilogy…and I began the second book shortly after the first was launched…and I got 1/3 through the writing…just as my heroine Mary Magdalen confronts her father wound…I could write no more! 

Why? Because until I face it, live it, breathe it, am I able to write it. What I wrote in book one became manifest for me. I did not realize the depth of the mother wound I embodied, imprinted since prenatal time, brought into this lifetime as deep karmic imprints. I had done a regression on myself many years before. Way before LoveDance…In fact two years before I dreamt I was Mary Magdalen walking down the streets of Nazareth I brought myself back to the womb…Disentangled myself from maternal karmic imprints… from the Red Cord… 

I shared this story with the Grandmothers Council of Ojai on Mother’s Day. I was an hour late for the gathering, having driven back from a mother-daughter-grandmother weekend in San Diego. It was lovely to spend time with my daughter who was born on Mother’s day 22 years ago. My mother enjoyed herself too, but on the way home her issues with her mother surfaced… there was not much to say…so I just listened…and then dropped her off at her house some 70 miles from Ojai and headed home. I needed to be with the grandmothers. But they too were reliving their mother wounds! So I told them this story: 

THE RED CORD

Years ago, before my daughter entered puberty, I vowed to get a hold of my eating disorder. If you are a fan of this blog, you know all about it, if not…here goes… 

I was anorexic before Karen Carpenter died and the psychiatrists had named it. I was hypnotized, medicated, and psychoanalyzed. To no avail. Anorexia transformed into bulimia. Not the typical eating disorder because I did not fit their psycho-patterns. No, I had not been molested, no incest, only a father’s great expectations passed onto me of being perfect. Yes, I was the straight A student…and did great things with my life, but there was more. 

Recently eating disorder research has led from blaming the father to blaming the mother. 

Still, I had an excellent relationship with my mother. Had learned from her mistakes. And felt loved, adored by her and my father. My grandparents too, especially my grandmother. No, it wasn’t a parenting problem rooted in childhood. It was something deeper. 

I had begun research on the hypothalamus which led to my dream of Genesis Gold and had been taking the Sacred Seven amino acids for a year when I felt it was time to get to the root of my problem. 

Bulimia was a coping mechanism for me. And while I could stuff my anxieties down with food then purge them into the toilet and flush them away, many, many times, my fear was not my own. How many times had I felt driven to binge just to purge a fear that was greater than me. So what was this fear, I asked. 

I will tell you…it’s not the father, it is the mother…but it’s not about blame. It’s not what you think. 

In a dream, I regressed myself. 

Into the womb, I went. Looking down between my fetal thighs, I was surprised to see NO penis! No blade! How could I accomplish my mission in this form? I felt a pulsation deep in my belly, putrid fearful, coming not from me, but through the umbilical cord—the Red Cord. 

It was my mother’s fear. I felt her. Her world as she perceived it….the struggle with her parents, her new husband, her fear…her fear of her mother, then… 

I was in my grandmother’s womb feeling her fear through the red cord. And then in her mother’s womb feeling her mother’s fear and her mother’s and back and back in time. Like a video montage, yet I could feel the fear…yellow and acidic as bile….the pain, tears, terror…of losing children, abortions, stillborn babies. Of being raped, used as chattel, traded like beasts. Of husbands, and fathers and lovers beating us, blaming us. Of too many babies, of hunger and pain, of sending our sons off to war and our daughters into the same traps we found ourselves. Of burning at the stake, of drowning, of torture for being our truth. Of giving away our power. 

Through my mother’s womb, through hers, and unto the beginning of time. Back to Eve. All of women’s woes…that was my fear. The fear I had been purging forever. 

Time to release it. I awakened with a clear intention and pure desire to release my mothers’ fear, all of my mothers. 

Synchronistically that day, I had an appointment with an energy healer. She was working with another powerful male healer. He stood at my feet, she at my head. I didn’t tell them of my vision, but lay there fully intending to release. And I did. Like a volcanic eruption of black tar, the energy exploded from my belly into the atmosphere. I felt lighter and freer than ever. I opened my eyes and laughed. I sat up. The two healers were plastered against the walls of the healing room. “What was THAT?” 

“That was fear!”  And it’s not mine! 

Then I headed to the beach, and lay on the sand, my feet in the water, the sun on my naked skin and was held by the Great Mother. My Divine Mother loves me…I am everything she ever desired in a daughter. I no longer need to purge the fear of my sex.

 

So here we are back from the summer of 2001 to now—2010. A summer of great transformation lies before us. Today is truly the first day that it feels like summer here in Ojai. Finally hot…it’s been so mild…perhaps now we can burn the illusion away and unveil the truth. My neck aches from all this typing, but purging on paper (or rather, online) is a sweet means to a sweeter end. Yet my aching neck reminds me that it’s time to heal the Father Wound.

19 Remembering Mary Magdalen: If Mary can do it, so can I

April 9th, 2004  Since so much that I’ve written has happened, I wondered… if Mary can read minds why can’t I? Of course I know what Steve is thinking, but we’ve been together so long. So at Border’s I was in line to get a latte and a few moments later it felt like my pants fell off! I twirled around and the man directly behind me backed away guiltily. “You better watch what you think,” I warned and he tuck-tailed it out of there! Sipping my latte, I told the universe that was too much information.  

April 18th, 2004 Steve dreamt of the compound then and in the future, slipping through the portal and enacted a scene nearly identical to one I wrote about Teoma even naming the characters, the events. Still he has yet to read anything I have written. I must quell my passion to keep from slipping more and more into the parallel universes. There is no time, all exists in the now. Often I am in both places here in Ojai and there in Galilee, so much poetic remembrance. I am blessed to be connected to sacred unity slipping in and out of bliss while I travel my path.  

April 20th, 2004  Eight moon cycles to the day, I am finished! We celebrated with dear friends who I believe were with us in the past. Since the conception of this book they’ve remodeled a home in Palm Springs like those of Qumran, sharing with us their love for the desert.  I wonder why? J The synchronicities never end!

Author Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP Wins Best Spiritual Fiction Book in Reader Views 2007 Annual Literary Awards

“LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter” was selected as the best Spiritual Fiction Book of 2007 by Reader Views Annual Literary Awards. Reader Views Annual Literary Awards were established to honor writers who self-published or had their books published by a small press, university press, or independent book publisher.

 

“Reader Views reviews more than 2,000 books per year from budding authors who have worked hard to achieve their dream of being published,” Reader Views Managing Editor Irene Watson says. “Our Annual Literary Awards recognize the very best of these up-and-coming authors, all talented writers who we know have very promising writing careers ahead of them.”

 

The Reader Views Annual Literary Awards are granted in 20 fiction and 30 nonfiction categories, as well as 15 specialized, sponsored categories. The entries are judged by Reader Views reviewers, all avid readers with a wide range of experiences, considered experts in the respective fields.

  About LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter is an intimate unveiling of Mary Magdalen as a woman awakening to her sacred feminine power. LoveDance reveals the grace and the beauty of the times as well as the passion and the sorrow. Mary’s awakening will touch your heart and heal your soul.  

Celebrity actress Kathryn Ross described LoveDance as “a lovely and timely book… Mary’s story is a parable for all of us. It’s time to get back in balance. Amazing that even 2000 plus years ago we were swayed or coerced into certain beliefs by politics and male dominated religion. Not too different from the present.”

 History was written by men. LoveDance is HERstory. LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter may be purchased at www.lovedance.com 

13 Remembering Mary Magdalen: Family Ties

Dec 23rd, 2003  Off to Utah for the family holidays. Anxious premonitions of my beloved Santa cup breaking. After 20 years of keeping them safe for my sisters, I tried to pack them carefully, but one tumbled out of the car, so I traded my unscathed cup for the fractured one. This trip is about breaking attachments, perhaps to things, but yet deeper, as Yeshua says, to what I believed my sisters to be. As I am coming to know myself as joyous passion I shall recognize who they are as love. So many sister dreams lately. Since childhood, I have flown in my dreams stringing them along like Peter Pan, barely able to get them off the ground. Lately in my dreams, I do not hold their hand, but try to teach them to fly on their own, but they resist. I feel tired, saddened. Will my sisters throw me out like Yeshua was thrown out of Nazareth? Strangers can be more accepting than those closest when you change too rapidly. 

  Dec 26th, 2003 A snowstorm traps us in the house, playing games, memories abound. On Christmas Eve, I experienced the power of the loving-kindness prayer. The family gathered around my sister’s large kitchen island arguing about the Cody Bank’s rape charge. When the manner in which the victim dressed was blamed, I felt the urge to jump into the fray, yet stopped and silently asked that my fear be lifted and I be filled with light and love, then asked the same for each and every one of them. When I got to Kyra, she looked up and mouthed, “What are you doing?” “Blessing us” I silently replied. The tension melted. The brothers-in-law about to engage in fist a cuffs, laughed at another’s joke and all was well. This morning my youngest sister hugged me fiercely claiming she thinks about me every day. Lately I can say the same. I wish I could see beyond the possessive love in this family, the competitiveness, the criticism, the ego…especially mine—my ego is much too overwhelming. My muse is on holiday, but lots of purple around me, my aura brilliant whenever I close my eyes. Torn between gluttony and deprivation, defenseless in the face of my family without bulimia to protect me. Trapped in a house of mirrors. One: reflecting unforgiving close-mindedness, one: emotional, temperamental, quick to strike, yet a core of love, one: distant, shallow immersion, non committal, one: lost in a world of self, one: poor self esteem, critical of all, not knowing when to hold her tongue, my brothers-in-law, my nieces and nephews clueless bystanders, my husband supportive, policing my behavior. This journal my only escape…