I can nourish myself on nothing but truth. ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX
(The one guarantee: awakening to the Kingdom already here)
There’s only one guarantee that Jesus gave: if you can receive and awaken and embody what he is speaking about, then your life will never be the same again. Then you will realize that you’re already living in the Kingdom of Heaven.
each one of us is the son or daughter of the living God. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world.” [Gospel of Thomas 24] That light within us all is that which you intuit when you sense that something about you has remained unchanging throughout all the days of your life. If you put your attention on it, if you meditate upon it in stillness, it can open up and reveal that indeed it is the divine light, that which lights up the whole world. In fact, the more awake we become to our own divinity, the more we feel revitalized by a living presence, by that which reveals that life is sacred. Human life is sacred; all of life is sacred.
The beauty of this story is that it reminds us: keep your feet firmly planted on the soil, keep your consciousness and your heart open, and stay available to this relative world and all the human beings within it.
The teaching here is about what it looks like to stay aligned—aligned with the vital force of the universe, aligned with your love, aligned with what you really know to be true.
People are drawn to him because he represents the spiritual reality, the radiance of divine being; when one has fully realized divine being, something about that person becomes compelling. Such a one is no longer primarily a person but a radiant presence. There’s a type of charisma, different than the charisma of a celebrity or a public figure. It resonates deep in the hearts of human beings, because human beings resonate with one who shines with the divine reality. People are also terrified by it, because they don’t know exactly what it is. They’re drawn toward the radiance of awakened consciousness, but they also pull away because an awakened being is not predictable, and they don’t operate the way we might expect.
(Ego as fracture, aspiration as the clarifying arrow)
The egoic state of consciousness itself is a fractured state made up of multiple personas. It’s a state in which many psychological forces are at odds with each other. This creates psychological friction, and our name for psychological friction is suffering.
As a teacher, I’ve seen this to be true. That’s why the very first point of my teaching is to help people clarify their aspiration. In other words, what do you want? What do you value? Because if you’re not clear on what you ultimately value and where your allegiance lies, then even if you open up to the divine presence, your divided mind will instinctually turn away from it. You will throw it away almost without knowing you’re throwing it away. There’s a type of inner unification that occurs, where what you want and what you hold as most valuable is like an arrow pointed in one direction; it doesn’t waver all over the place. In the egoic dimension of consciousness we often have many competing wants. We want and value lots of things, and some wants and values are at odds with other wants and other values. An important part of spirituality is coming to a sense of clarity about what we ultimately want, what we ultimately value—and what we’re willing to give up for it. And this is what Jesus is talking about in this explanation of this parable. Jesus says that those who are rocky ground receive the word with joy, but because they have no root in themselves, when tribulation or persecution arises, immediately they fall away.
Have I become more interested in appearing to be spiritual or holy than in really seeking the heart of the transcendent mystery? Am I personally ready and willing to be truly transformed?”
Fire burns away the old structures, the façades, and all that is illusory. It is a purifying force, a force that cuts much deeper to the bone than most people imagine. And the transformation that awakening can bring is much deeper than a lot of people may be prepared for. But Jesus understands the depth of this transformation, and he is ready to live out his destiny.
(The Last Supper as transmission of spirit and vitality)
After the bread comes the wine, and this wine is a very powerful symbol for the movement of spirit, of life force, of vitality. Think of blood, how it moves through our veins and carries the vitality to every organ, every muscle, every nerve ending in our bodies. When Jesus offers the wine and says, “This is my blood,” he’s saying, “Drink of my spirit, drink of my essence. Drink the living source of vitality, which is eternal spirit. Take me into you.”
Jesus said, “The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and rest.” GOSPEL OF THOMAS
When someone is aligned with their fate in this way, it gives him or her a real sense of invulnerability, a sense of fearlessness and purpose. You sense that Pilate is both frightened and confused by Jesus, because he embodies a kind of fearlessness that
Pilate has never met before in his life. Pilate has the power to take life, while Jesus has the much greater power to fearlessly give his life.
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes away except God. ST. THERESA OF AVILA
One of my teacher’s definitions of enlightenment was simply “standing in your own two shoes.” It sounds easy, to stand up in our own life, but in order to really do it, first the divine radiance has to burn all the old conditioning that opposes spirit out of our system. This conditioning goes very, very deep; it alters all of our perceptions, all of our thoughts, our entire orientation to life. To have that conditioning not merely transcended but literally burned out of our system—that’s really what the transfiguration is all about. This is the death of the ego. And when that happens, something extraordinarily unique can begin to bloom in you. What blooms in you is not a product of the past; it’s not a product of simply what you’ve experienced up to that moment; it’s not a product of your culture, of your society, of your religion. It’s the way that spirit manifests when it’s no longer being confined by any conditioned view. This is what the transfiguration symbolizes.
In a certain sense, the whole process of awakening is going toward a truer and truer and truer identity. It starts with our awakening from ego to divine being—that’s a shift of identity. And then our experience of divine being gets more unified, simpler and quieter, and our sense of who we are and what we are changes as our essence of divine being gets clearer and clearer. Ultimately, we reach a point when we are ready to let go even of that beautiful, subtle sense of self. It’s like stepping off a cliff, because it’s such a radical departure when self suddenly disappears, when consciousness turning and looking in disappears.
(The crucifixion as the death of self, not just the body)
The death of self that Jesus graphically embodies in the crucifixion is the falling away of the transfigured state of union with God. When self falls away, any personal relationship with God falls away with it because all relationship only happens within the context of self. When we talk of my thoughts, or my feelings, or my opinions, we are essentially talking about a me that is in relationship with one’s perception and experience.
What cannot be fully understood at the moment of the falling away of self is that what you are losing is your inner life. This is an extremely difficult thing to describe in anything other than negative terms, and yet with the falling away of self, there arises, or resurrects, a whole new life. To most people to have no inner life is inconceivable, and yet it is simply the absence of consciousness reflecting upon the constant narration of the mind. What’s left is a seamless flow of unity experienced not by a self, but by the unity itself. As the fourteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
In a mythic sense, male energy is often portrayed as big and strong and fearless and courageous, but underneath that pretense and bluster, there is a weakness. Often times when we’re pretending to be fearless or to be courageous, we pretend because deep inside we actually are afraid. Deep inside, we’ve touched upon a sense of insecurity, so we fake it, and try to look courageous or fearless. Feminine energy has a very different dynamic. Feminine energy is very connected with the world.
(Resurrection as radical intimacy with all things)
What remains is a great heartfulness, a great sense of compassion for the world. Even though the word resurrection implies a rising, it’s not as if we rise above everything and everyone. Resurrection is the rising from the death of self, but there’s no hierarchy in it. There’s no sense of being better than, or nobler than, or more elevated than anyone else—all of that belongs to ego and self. There’s just a simple, profound intimacy with all things, and with all beings, and with that which transcends all things and all beings. Life is experienced in all of its original completeness and unity.
The Kingdom isn’t far away. The Kingdom is right here and right now. The challenge of Jesus’ message is that it constantly asks of us: Can you see it? Can you see the kingdom right now? Right in the midst of this very moment, in the midst of this very life that often seems mundane and ordinary—can you see eternity? Have you allowed your self and your world to be rendered transparent to the underlying divinity that shines through it?
What would that mean for you if you were to live from the living of your own life, if you were to live from that vitality source that peers through your whole existence? What kind of boundary lines and false separations does this story ask you to go beyond? How might your life be different if you really embodied the spirit of love pouring itself into the world of time and space? How might it be different if you embodied the revolutionary spirit that moves boldly and fearlessly through life and always lives within the question of truth, the central question of our lives?
quote from the Gospel of Thomas that reads, “There is light within a man of light and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness.” [Gospel of Thomas 24] This presents a challenge to each one of us. Within each one of us is the divine light; the challenge is to bring it forth—not to keep it hidden, or dimmed down out of fear, but to open ourselves so that that transcendence, that infinity, can experience itself fully as this human incarnation. As Christ said, if we don’t do this, we will live in darkness. We will have fallen asleep to our own light, to our own life. As the Jesus story shows us, when we live from our own light, from the deepest sense of vitality within us, life does not necessarily always feel secure. It requires courage and openness to constantly lean in to the cutting edge, to what really feels true and real.