The Spiritual Life, topic one, Regaining the wonder and innocence of a child.

Topic one, Entering into a spiritual life.

Today is Easter. Jesus rose again into a new life. Today, after a season of lent, we recognize, acknowledge, and validate this understanding.

Jesus has left the world of the ego behind. An illusory world which didn’t want to learn what He was trying to teach, and to silence Him they arrested Him, tortured Him, and killed His body, but His Spirit rose alive and well to become One with the All and with Us who understand what He was teaching.

One of our contemporary teachers, a spiritual master, is Osho, and during this Easter season we will be reflecting on Osho’s teachings along with Jesus’ as well as other mystical traditions and describing how they can be applied in a Unitarian Univeralist Way Of Life.

Buckle your seat belts and prepare yourself for a wild ride.

People enter into a spiritual search when the path of the ego isn't working for them any more. It dawns on them one day that the idols of the ego world have not made them happy and in their angst and depression and anxiety they start to search.

Many people come to Unitarian Univeralism because it is one religion that affirms and promotes the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Osho teaches that rebellion is the first step on the path of an authentic spiritual life.

In Osho’s book, “Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself” on page xi he says,

“Maturity is a rebirth, a spiritual birth. You are born anew, you are a child again. With fresh eyes you start looking at existence. With love in the heart you approach life. With silence and innocence you penetrate your own innermost core. “

The seeker starts to renounce and shed the shackles of prior socialization and conditioning and starts to look at the world fresh again from the path of the spirit instead of the path of the ego. Jesus says in Matthew 18:3 “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”

And so the Evangelical Christians have it right when they say that people have to become “born again” if they are to enter the kingdom of heaven, but this involves more than just accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior whatever that means.

What being “twice born” means in the perennial psychology is that a person has to give up their social conditioning on the path of the ego and embark on the path of the Spirit which is Unconditional Love.

Embarking on this other path of the Spirit is what Jesus’ life was all about which is pointedly exemplified with Easter resurrection of the spirit as Jesus invited us to enter into a spiritual life and Osho encourages us and suggests ways we might do it through developing a meditative mindset and celebrating life.

Join us on this journey of reflections through the Easter season as we explore becoming "twice born" and regain the innocence and wonder of a child.

Holy Saturday, "Jesus Can Be Our Coach."

Lenten Reflections, Day Forty six, Holy Saturday, Jesus can be our coach.

Day Forty six, Holy Saturday

Jesus can be our coach.

Luke 24: 1 - 12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 

Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

The Romans killed Jesus and His disciples took Jesus’ body down from the cross and put it in a burial cave. And that was that. Jesus' physical body was deader than a doornail.

It is Jesus’ female disciples who go the first day of the week, which in that culture would have been on Sunday after Jesus died and was buried on Friday, to anoint the body with spices but when they arrive and look for the body it is not there. Where did the body go seems to be the question of the moment.

According to Luke’s telling some angelic phantoms appear and tell them that Jesus prophesied his own “rise again” which we interrupt as his bodily resurrection since there is no body there. When the female disciples go and tell the male disciples the males don’t believe them. Peter has to go and check himself and when he doesn’t find the body the story tells us Peter went home amazed.

At this point in the story, what happened to the body is the mystery. Cultural Christians get caught up in explaining the mystery of what happened to the body and this focus misses the point of Jesus’ teaching, arrest, execution, and the physical body disappearing.

Losing track of the physical body of Jesus has little or nothing to do with anything. What is significant is how Jesus died. And the story of the so-called passion, the crucifixion scenario, was that Jesus forgave His executioners. Jesus spiritually and psychologically rose above His attack and torture. It was in His forgiving of his executioners, and those who conspired to have them engage in this activity, that Jesus demonstrates the power of rising above the illusory actions on the path of the ego and focus on what’s really important which is the path of the Spirit which is unconditional love.

What happened to the body is beside the point. What is of real significance is what happened to Jesus’ spirit. Jesus rises above the injustice, the pain, the suffering, the physical dying itself, and forgives. Would that we all could be such big persons. Would that we could follow Jesus' example and rise above and forgive those who attack us, are unfair to us, abuse us. Jesus is demonstrating, in the way He died, that He is not a victim, that He had the power to choose how He would respond to the abuse He was subject to, and He chose to forgive rather than hate or freeze in fear.

Today is the last day of Lent. Lent has been about renouncing the path of the ego so that we can embark on and walk the path of the Spirit. This effort, this intention, the practices we have engaged in do not end here, but have only just begun. Lent has been the pre-season practice and warm up, and now we are ready to begin the season and play the game of life at a whole new level. Hopefully, we can move from the minor leagues to the majors, and we can succeed with Jesus as our coach.

Is There Any Hope For Us? A Good Friday reflection

Lenten Relfections, Day Forty five, Good Friday, Is There Any Hope For Us?

Day Forty five, Good Friday

Is there any hope for us?

John 18: 1-19, 42

After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” 

They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 

 Jesus replied, “I am he.” 

Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesush said to them, “I am he,”  they stepped back and fell to the ground. 

Again he asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 

Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.” 

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave's name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” 

So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people. Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in. The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man's disciples, are you?”

He said, “I am not.” 

Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing around it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself. Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching.

The time has come. The s**t has hit the fan. The Chief Priests have had an arrest warrant out for Jesus and a bounty has been placed on him. Judas betrays Jesus and the police come for him.

Peter, impetuously tries to defend Jesus, cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Jesus tells Peter to knock it off. And the armed guards of the high priest take Jesus off to the high priest’s courtyard where Peter, for the first time, denies that he knows Jesus.

Don’t we follow Peter’s example and deny Jesus all the time? Every time we choose the ego over the Spirit we deny Jesus’ teachings. Every time we are confronted with the choice of  looking out for ourselves or doing what Love would have us do, we usually look out for ourselves. If the scenario weren’t so deadly, it would be comedic.

All through Lent we have been asked to make a choice ten or more times a day between the ego and the spirit and if we are honest we have to admit that most of the time we’ve chosen the ego. We’ve done this out of habit more than making a conscious choice and yet this is what this whole story is trying to teach us - that we have a choice between the ego and the spirit.

Jesus chooses the spirit while Judas, Peter, the high priest and his henchmen have chosen the ego. Which would we have chosen? Which do we choose many times every day?

Jesus tells his disciples to stand down. Things will be all okay in the end, but the drama of the ego has to play out. It is in pointing out this choice that we call this day, “Good” Friday. It is good, indeed, to know that the suffering, the tragedy, the angst of the ego is illusory and not really real. It is stuff we must deal with and are challenged by which leads us to have to decide if we will think of ourselves as victims of circumstance or agents of miraculous transformation in Spirit.

We are seeing what choice Jesus made. If He can do it, maybe there’s hope for us.

Have Catholics and Evangelical Christians made a pact with the devil?

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Maundy Thursday, 04/09/20