"Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know when the Master of the House will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockrow, or at dawn, or else He may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: 'Keep awake!" Mark 13:35-37
"Yeshua says, I am the Light shining upon all things. I am the sum of everything, for everything has come forth from me, and towards me everything unfolds. Split a piece of wood and there I am. Pick up a stone and you fill find me there." logon 7- Gospel of Thomas
These two scripture readings address the question of our posture toward Christ. Sadly in the religious education of many, the question of this posture is one of loyalty and external affiliation to the correct religious ideology and institution as proof of one's alignment on the "right" side of history when Jesus comes in the second coming or the parousia. For many this is a fear based proposition, a kind of "hedging" of bets or religious life insurance. It presents Jesus as a pathetic authority figure whose sole concern seems to be your unquestioning loyalty rather than the state of your commitment and transformation in the life of love and service. This is the state of conventional religious consciousness.
Here we see two important things. In the first reading Yeshua is the "Master of the house." The house is the self. The Master is the Life that animates the self. To see this from an esoteric and mystical understanding then is to see that we are invited to a state of spiritual attentiveness and receptivity at all times so we will be receptive and open and awakened to Christ's presence within us bursting forth. He is the bridegroom of the soul, the Fire of the Heart or true spirit.
The second reading is much more deliberately focused on the interior life. Here Yeshua's message is clear that the revelation of his true nature depends entirely on the state of our receptivity. Hence real spiritual practice is the cultivation of this receptivity, not by adding anything but an awakened attention to the Light that manifests in all things. When we open to the true essence or Light in each moment of every day life, in animate and inanimate things, we open to the Light of Yeshua's essence. They are the same. Hence the mystics have always said, our true nature is Christ. And the journey of a lifetime is one of Christosis, becoming Christ in all things.
If the praxis of this interior life of communion with Christ were the focus of religious denominations they would cease to be interested in the power and the standing that comes from being an "intermediary" and instead be a companion. They would understand that the "second coming" of Christ is this moment and the next. The true measure of life would then be our capacity for loving kindness in the world rather than the purity of our loyalty to religious institutions and our deference to their ideologies and pretensions of authority.
Many blessings,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net
