Suddenly the way narrows. It’s okay – I asked for it. The Upanishads say that only once in a thousand times a thousand years does a soul awaken. But something is happening now that doesn’t neatly map to traditional religious expression. Jesus would not recognize the man on the cross in our churches. Nor why the cross is so prominent. But this is not an argument.
The crescent moon at six a.m. yesterday was beautiful, a thin bright crisp of light just over the gap in eastern hills the river pours through. Who needs a lover? Who needs diamonds or a Cadillac? I mean this: what is enough? How will you know?
For a long time, happiness was conditional, and those conditions enabled me to indulge an interior control addict whose Narcissism is legion. I want it this way! I won’t accept it any other way! If life was a party, then I was its host. Certain invitations were made, others withdrawn. But when you track Jesus through A Course in Miracles along the Road to Emmaus, then eventually you realize that happiness isn’t actually what you’re after. Nor is unhappiness, by the way. Nobody really wants to suffer.
Rather, you’re after a distraction from the truth of what you are. There is something you don’t want to see and that something is you. It sounds simple – and, in a way it is – but we’ve complicated it quite a bit. It’s a human move – not a Greek move or an Aramaic move. It’s not Catholic or Hindu. All of that is downstream of the fear of self-realization because all of that emerges as a solution to that fear. Right identity – right tribe – right practice. We’ve all been there. But if you’re not clear on the problem, if you think the problem is simply you’re not happy – and if you think it’s your job to fix it, which you do – then the many solutions will only make things worse. I wanted to be distracted from the truth, because I thought it would disappoint me. I thought that God and my self – whatever those words point to – would disappoint me. And I couldn’t bear disappointment so I joined the resistance. You know.
A world appears, lives appear within it, wars and famine, peace and plenty. The kids grow up and move away, the horse goes blind, the goldfish spirals to the bottom of the tank. Years pass. Lifetimes, even.
We cannot truly follow Jesus – because we cannot truly respond to Jesus, be in relationship with Jesus – without healing our mind of the disease of separation. But we cannot heal the mind without living – in a clear intentional way – the life that is right here and now uniquely ours. “I” is an effect of a split that is ancient and embedded but not inevitable. We know the truth – it’s given – but we’ve hidden it. Ignored it? Forgotten, in a way, and the forgetting itself forgotten. But even kids get bored of hide and seek eventually. What if the way is stop seeking? What if the way is, just be helpful, in whatever way you can? What did Jesus mean when he said that the Kingdom of God was already among us? Really try and answer that!
Advent is, are you ready to follow Jesus? Advent is, will you travel into the space of readiness? Even if it’s costly? Even if it seems impossible or irrational? Even if it seems ridiculous? Bethlehem is a state of mind in which our potential for redemption – for reconciliation and repair – realizes its divinity. This is the way. You have to trust the signals you’re sending.
Advent is, are you ready to heal your mind? Are you ready to help create a world in which healing is all that matters? Discipleship is that and nothing else – the study and practice of love in a place and a community that has forgotten love. It cannot be done alone.
Did you see the moon yesterday? Or a flower maybe or a smile? Briefly – before concepts of beauty arise, before the impulse to write, before the desire to possess – is a wild interior joy that (without any input from “you” or “me” or “I” at all) is a natural effect of the presence of beauty and clarity. It happens in us the way flowers blossom or chickadees sing. Happiness is a gift, not an accomplishment. Yesterday, that luminous crescent fit perfectly a soul that longs only to be perfected. The way narrows – it’s okay, I asked for it – and every step along it is Heaven.
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Sean – You reference that consequential set of verses from Luke (17: 20-21). about the Kingdom of Heaven. Luke was educated and fluent in both Egyptian and Greek, so he knew the difference betweem “among” and “within”. If he had meant “among”, he knew the Greek expression for this meaning was en meso. Instead he used the expression entos umin which strictly means “within’, given the context. When I first learned this, I was startled — because it seemed to refer to us as “already sacred,” and that would have been a stark contradictiion to the meaning that Augustine was giving to mankind. Yet Luke said otherwise. It was then I found how definitively ‘other’ the affirmation “I am” in fact is. We don’t need to beg in order to achieve some holy station or redemption from wickedness. And since “within” denotes our actual condition, our task then becomes LETTING GO the self condemnation many of us carry. How potent a single word can be!
DJB
Daniel, thank you. I love this comment and this kind of analysis 🙂 Also, it is kicking me back into Luke just in time for the Christmas narrative and, for me, Luke IS the Christmas gospel.
Thanks for being here & sharing.
~ Sean