Note Details
- Stage: seed š±
- Type: note
- Topics: spirituality beliefs religion
ā Iāve been pondering this, and how we get the train back on the tracks. It seems to me that Jesus never intended to promulgate a ābelief system,ā but rather that, through his teachings, embodied and spoken, he was inviting people into a transformed mode of being and seeing, rooted in love (aka āseeing-from-onenessā). The meaning drift in words over the centuries isnāt helpful eitherā āābelieveā once meant something more like ābeloveā or āto give oneās heart toāā ; it had little to do with intellectual assent to solely cognitive concepts.
And it may sound shocking to say, but Jesus wasnāt interested in morality either. He was interested in transformation. Morality is a happy byproduct of transformation, but morality without transformation simply leads to self-righteousness. Itās why Jesus called those he perceived to be religious hypocrites āwhite-washed tombsā (āwhited sepulchresā in the KJV)ā āall clean and stately on the outside, but filled with rot on the inside. Itās why in the Sermon on the Mount he brushes past outer actions like murder and adultery and focuses instead on anger and lustā ānot because heās moralistically upping the ante, but because he wants us to meet our actions at the point of their arisingā āwithinā āand do our work there.
This is why spiritual practice and inner work are so criticalā āare the path itself. Until we can stand in our own inner wholeness, or at least have the desire to do so, we wonāt have a clue what Jesus is talking about. And weāll go on dividing the world up into āus vs. themā with all the subsequent attempts at external control that always follow suit. And so, whatever spiritual technologies you are drawn toā āmeditation, zhikr, yoga, centering prayer, plant medicine work, sacred chant, etc. (not to mention the essential work of cultivating patience, listening, and understanding in your relationships)āput your own growth toward inner wholeness (and outer alignment with that wholeness) front and center in your life.
How do we stand undivided in ourselves, in these times? How do we diffuse the polarization in our own being, so that we work for justice and healing from wholeness and not anger? When we truly begin that work, Jesus will start to make sense again. Otherwise, we just turn him into a tribal bludgeon. Christians once proclaimed āJesus is Lordā in opposition to the imperial slogan āCaesar is Lord.ā It was a way of uplifting power-with and dethroning power-overā ācentering love rather than domination.
Then Christianity merged with Empire, and the subversion in that statement was lost. āJesus is Lordā began to mean instead āJesus is Caesar.ā Thatās what weāre still facing with American, theocratic, capitalist āChristianity.ā Our best hope for healing the world, however, is not an angry war with the divided (to whom we then belong), but a transformation of our own being into wholeness. And so, letās re-center love and work to see from oneness. ā