Pearl Epiphanies in my life: a personal narrative and introduction ...

Pearls first entered my life when I was four years old: a little necklace of seed pearls. They were pretty, harmless, and of no significant financial value, merely evidence of being a flower girl at a wedding; part of a happy childhood.

As a young single adult, my mother gave me a single pearl ring. I became conscious of real pearls at that time. This pearl had a ‘depth’ that I trained my eye to see fake pearls did not have. Fake pearls are like a surface reflection of the Moon Mother. My mother’s natural pearl had a setting that was old fashioned and I did not like it, at that time. I wore it only for a short while and later gave it away, only to realise the beauty of its balanced perfection after it was gone.

Later, for my engagement ring I chose a single pearl ring with a beautiful delicate floral wrap of gold on either side. That ring made me feel I belonged to the elite club of ‘chosen ones’, engaged young women whose betrothal can be identified by the wearing of a decorative ring. As fortune would have it, that pearl itself was lost many years later as I did the housework. It felt a huge personal loss but not as great as when it was replaced by a much smaller pearl. This pearl could not fill the setting space adequately and seemed shamed compared to its older sister pearl. Like an omen, it foretold the empty shell that the marriage would become.

Yet I still continued to love pearls despite the reminder of pain and failure they brought. I accumulated quite a lot of pearl jewellery, most of it given to me. I loved it all because of the love associated with the giver. So in my later life, I had a wide collection of pearl jewellery because of the wider values I chose than those I had as a young person. Ultimately I was given the most magnificent and unexpected pearl ring by an undreamed-of new lover, discovered late in life. My conclusion is that pearls have slowly illuminated my life. As I have meditated on them, I have sensed a growth in understanding of them and life.

The Epiphanies: What they are?

The grain - the revelation of initiation 

The grain of sand irritates the soft oyster which lives vulnerable, without protection, inside the oyster shell. That grain of sand is the interface of a new life, the life of a pearl: a world within a world. Just so I began as a tiny grain inside the womb of my host. At times I irritated my mother‘s body and made her sick. Every day waves of nausea washed over her, whispering of my invasion. I held my ground against the convulsions of stomach, steadily putting on covers of delicate flesh knitted in seamless perfection. I was her unseen pearl, her darling seed.

The little girl wove her dream of future beauty as she gazed on the tiny seed pearls. One day she would allow seed to grow in her and bring forth living souls to be admired by men and angels, souls whose faces shone with reflected divine glory. These pearly stones each contained a sacred name yet un-deciphered by the Hand of Fate. Her eye saw wonder in each tiny shape that portended an individual yet matched design. 

Pearls need time and patience to grow: a revelation of reciprocity.

Many dangers face the growing pearl: without enough time it will be without size or significance; its life aborted before a chance to breathe is given. The oyster, early on, can be freed of its guest and feel the continuing comfort of undisturbed existence, a soul unchallenged by proximity or sharing until its inevitable day of reckoning comes with un-trumpeted harvesting of oyster meat. However, the enslaved oyster who could not rid itself of the foreign body will eventually feel accommodated around its demanding guest only to be suddenly shed of all its patient fruit. 

Never ‘seeing’ the treasure, the traditional gold setting held, the girl now a young adult, disposes of the ring undervaluing not only the gift but the giver. She had not yet appreciated the love of her own mother but the girl’s judgement of beauty was based on the harsh light of current fashions and the sterile style of minimalist geometry. To her young mind the old ring was full of the sentimentality of poetry about the moon and the Moon Goddess, old myths of femininity and the impoverished status of satellite submission. With time she learned more life lessons about true values, the wholeness of truth and things not being what they seem. Perhaps, the metaphor of ‘things not being what they seem’ is never truer than with Nature’s metaphor of the oyster growing a pearl.

Pearls are a result of the active union of the oyster and the growing grain: The revelation of effort.

The pearl is not just the result of time but the work of the oyster is also vital. The truth of this statement is in the variety of shapes that can be produced, not only shape but colour variety. The cultured pearl has commercialised an artificial method of pearl growing. It has also minimalised the variety of pearls that are produced while multiplying the profit and lessening the work.

The oyster works blindly, just reacting to its annoying visitor, without a blue print of the final work of art and yet that is what the oyster is capable of, the finest artwork. This craftsmanship challenges human efforts. God has glorified the oyster as a tool of creation, a master craftsman though it has not even the fundamental levels of higher creatures.

The mature woman on her developmental journey, discovers an initial crown of love in her marriage where she is held in great esteem by her husband. He buys her a single pearl which fits snugly into the floral tendrils of gold on either side. The pearl like the marriage seems immovable, but it is lost through carelessness of its priceless value. Just as the love in the marriage is taken for granted and replaced with a token kind of human routine. The woman is shocked not only by the sudden loss of the ring, which is never again discovered but also by the replacement pearl which to her accustomed eye falls short of the tendrils that are fixed in the setting of the original ring. She begins to despise the meanness of the new ring and the emptiness of the marriage. The joy of the ring and the marriage are gone. Love known and love lost are bitter to her so that the meaning of pearls is changed just as others have told her they are suspicious of pearls because there is an association of grief in their making.

The sacrifice principle of love is seen in the oyster and the pearl: The revelation of death.

If the oyster just grew the pearl, accumulating it as a manifestation of its pain and irritation would be negative and meaningless. So it is if we just accumulate wealth. No, we are meant to be givers and the oyster is included in that. The oyster is a reluctant giver, the epitome of a stubborn man. It never gives in just keeps working at making that pearl. The oyster also has to be forced to give up the pearl, it does not do so willingly.

Older but as a single woman again, I was able to appreciate pearls. Again they simply became things of beauty. I could not wear the small pearl anymore but stored it away in a small box, not knowing what to do with it but thinking it could be redesigned later. A new relationship brought a large new pearl. The death of the old marriage prepared the way for the possibility of a new marriage, just as the sale of the man’s entire wealth in the parable enabled him to buy the pearl of great price. No longer could the man, in the parable Jesus told, love or hold on to any of his wealth. To do so would mean he was not able to purchase the beautiful new pearl, so too we are taught not to hold onto our possessions or material things but to embrace spiritual values. Metaphorically letting go is a kind of death. So the final revelation of the pearl comes through death: the oyster must die to release the treasure he has unwittingly created; so too we must let go our riches and even our poverty and problems so we will not be held back from embracing the new future, the greater treasure, the final truth.

The Pearl of Great Price: The central message, being at the highest level.

The Teacher.

So the pearl is the great teacher in nature about initiation, reciprocity, effort and death. Therefore, the pearl is a metaphor of the cycle of life and death. If we meditate on it, we can understand life with our hearts and not just our eyes, but unfortunately we could be like the oyster and stay inside our dark shell resisting, resisting anything that is not ‘of us’, resisting anything that is not harmonious with our own doctrine. The consequence of the choice of exclusion of every grain of new truth, every breath of change will be to give away our treasure and to miss out. Just like the oyster accumulates pearls that others eventually enjoy. To lock out the world as the oyster does, thinking he is protecting himself, is to lose. 

The Treasure

Not only is the pearl our teacher but it is our treasure. The man in the parable recognised the value of the pearl that enabled him to sell all his wealth and purchase it. This is a situation of making no compromise: the price of the pearl is so great that it costs all our accumulated riches. The decision has to be made between the pearl and wealth. If we do not purchase the pearl of great price by selling up/ giving up our present pile of understanding, money or any gifts we have, we will miss out and someone else will own it. The oyster can never have or enjoy the pearl, it does not even know what a pearl is, all it knows is irritation and discomfort, negative emotions. He wants to lock out the world, the oyster is the perfect picture of selfishness. The selfish cannot buy wisdom. The selfish do not recognise one greater than themselves.

The Moon

Once a connection of truth is made with Nature, there are many connections that can be made. The full moon is the image, the original image, of the pearl. The greater Nature connections must be meditated on to be seized through a heart understanding. At this higher level, the connection of the pearl to the moon can be seen directly. It can be seen through the oyster. First, the open oyster with the pearl inside is the picture of the human eye, its structure: eyeball within a lid and socket casing. The pearl then is like an eye, the moon is like an eye. Thus the whole of nature becomes poetry. Pearls are pure poetry in the sense that they carry the truth in pictures. To further explain this thinking, the pearl becomes the seed, the eye, or the initiation of further revelation. The moon and its nature will help us to understand the world we live in. The pearl epiphanies become a cycle. The moon causes the tides, it also controls the sea which is the habitat of the oyster. The oyster depends on the moon. The oyster produces the best work of art about the moon and therefore reciprocates the gift of supplies provided by the moon. The effort of the moon providing the tides is matched by the oyster’s effort. Each month the moon dies and is reborn just as the oyster must complete its cycle of life, but in a sense its life is reborn in the creation of the pearl. Thus the cycle of epiphanies is at this higher level as well.

The Engagement

 Pearls are the embodiment of wisdom because they teach us the inspired truth. The final step in the life of the oyster is the pearl itself. When the pearl is removed from the oyster, when it is recognised for its great beauty and is no longer a secret, that is when the pearl finds fulfilment. For a young man, to find someone to share his life, to give himself, once he is mature and perfect, makes the struggles of coming to maturity worthwhile. The undiscovered pearl is worthless. The pearl to the oyster is worthless, even lower because it is a nuisance. The oyster misses out just as the selfish miss out on the joy of giving. The young man looking for a pledge of his sincerity can take the pearl ring and give it to his beloved. Thus finally it becomes a symbol of his word, a pledge of his worth, of the worth of his life. To accept the ring the young girl (whatever her age) becomes captive to the man, she also becomes rich and finally she becomes enfolded with love, set in beauty like the pearl wrapped in the delicate fronds of gold of the original engagement ring. Ultimately at the higher level, this relationship is played out between the earth and the moon: the earth binds the moon to itself but the moon lovingly serves the earth and its creatures, faithfully loyal to them as predictably as the changing of the tides and the cycle of the moon phases. 

For the earth to lose the moon would be sure death.