Easter Sunday -- April 12, 2009

Everything that Jesus did in his lifetime was intended as a demonstration for us, to awaken us to the Presence and Power of God within us. “What I have done, you will do,” he assures us. We will love unconditionally. We will heal. We will manifest abundance for ourselves and others. We will achieve this new state of consciousness most easily if we follow his guidance and example, but we will achieve it, no matter how difficult we choose to make the journey. God is not worried about the outcome.

What, then, are we to make of the RESURRECTION that we celebrate on this Easter Sunday? It is usually presented as such a dramatic and unique intervention of God into the affairs of man that it will never be duplicated – certainly not in each and every one of us.

But to believe this would violate everything Jesus taught and lived. There are no exceptions to divine law – although there are certainly higher levels of understanding and expressing that law. But to stand in awe before the resurrection is to totally miss the point. Jesus was not uniquely saved from the ravages of death because of his unique relationship with God. He was simply and eloquently demonstrating to us that we are all exempt from death, because as eternal spiritual beings, death has no reality for us at all. Jesus did not rise from the dead! He experienced death as the shadow it is, a doorway of transformation into another form of expression. And he calls us to the same realization.

We have all experienced resurrection moments, transition points after which our lives were forever altered because our consciousness, our awareness of life and love expressing, had permanently shifted. This Easter, then, let us allow the Resurrection of Jesus to remind us of our own resurrection experiences, and let us appreciate the spiritual awareness we have come to, the crucifixions through which we have released old patterns of thinking and expressing, and the wonderful new possibilities that lie before us.

With Charles Fillmore in KEEP A TRUE LENT, the book that has served as our guide through the Lenten process, we affirm today: I AM resurrected into a new dimension of the Life, Light and Power of God. Thank You God!

Day Forty-six -- Holy Saturday, April 11, 2009

In the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, which vividly describes how the creative process of God is eternally at work within us, we are told that the six days of activity and focus are only complete, and creation is only manifest, after a seventh day of rest. We do all that is ours to do, then we let go in full faith that God will do the rest. A Course In Miracles similarly teaches that our spiritual purpose is to complete all but the final step of the journey to the kingdom of heaven; the final step is God’s.

This Saturday between the crucifixion and resurrection is similarly a time of release and trust – a time of stillness in the rich and fertile silence of the tomb. A human life that began in a borrowed manger ends in a borrowed crypt, and both locations serve the same purpose. They are gateways through which Jesus Christ passes as he takes up and then puts down a human form. The silence is a silence of all possibility. “We are resting in God,” Charles Fillmore says, “and at the same time gathering strength for the power of greater demonstrations to follow.”

Mr. Fillmore could be speaking of Jesus Christ in the tomb, or of us today, at the end of our Lenten journey, when he writes these words: “A degree of cleansing, a wiping out of sense consciousness has been accomplished. By mentally reviewing our experiences, we recognize that nothing is really destroyed, but rather transmuted. Through faith we take stock of the progress we have made and find that we are getting a consciousness of radiant substance and of a higher life. Nothing is lost. When sense consciousness is raised to a higher plane, all that belongs to it is saved with it.”

Today I rest in the consciousness of completing my Lenten process. I may not yet see the changed manifestation that must result in my life from the releasing in consciousness that I have done since Ash Wednesday, but I know and give thanks that its expression is assured. I AM open to my resurrection. I accept my good. I leave the final step to God. I AM at peace. Thank You, God.

Day Forty-five, Good Friday, April 10, 2009

It is difficult to understand the real significance of the crucifixion if we think of Jesus as a divine being who was always fully expressive of the Christ within him, and who never changed through his three years of ministerial experiences. If that were the case, there would be no need for this dramatic final step – a step that he certainly could have avoided.

Jesus was always the Christ in potential, just as we are. And his realization of the Christ, his ability to express it, to be it, grew through his interactions with his followers – yes, and with his enemies. Contrary to some of the non-scriptural folk tales about a magical childhood, Jesus did not arrive in that life experience as a full-blown expression of the Christ. I believe he had achieved that level of spiritual awareness through previous life experiences, but he was willing to return to square one in order to show us our own indwelling possibility. His remembering of the Christ potential was quicker than ours, his progress in returning to that level of consciousness was relatively smooth. But he trod the same spiritual path that we do, simply to show us that it could be done.

And so, as Charles Fillmore writes in his Good Friday Lenten lesson, “Jesus’ crucifixion on Calvary was a final step in a work that had been going on in Him for thirty-three years.” Fillmore also explains that crucifixion is “a mental process with a physical effect,” which helps us to more clearly see the crucifixion experiences that we have been called to move through ourselves. When we ‘cross out’ in consciousness patterns of error thought that have become deeply ingrained as fixed states of mind, we are experiencing crucifixion. It is a process of releasing the mortal to reach the immortal within us, dissolving the limits of the physical realm to more fully express our spiritual nature. And it is an unfailing characteristic of crucifixion that moving through it is much, much less painful than thinking about it in advance. That’s why Jesus” most difficult moments were in the Garden of Gethsemane, before the drama began to unfold. Once it did, he moved gracefully through it, certain of the Resurrection that was to come.

We can be equally certain that our Resurrection is guaranteed, so long as we neither run from the cross nor cling to it. Crucifixion is not the high point of anyone’s life. It is simply a necessary step to the spiritual glories that lie beyond. Thank You, God.

Day Forty-four -- Holy Thursday, April 9, 2009

Evelyn Underhill writes in her book The Mystery of Sacrifice that “the creative spirit of God is a redemptive and cherishing love; and it is as friends and fellow workers with the Spirit, tools of the divine redemptive action that we are required to live.” It may not at first seem like a redemptive and cherishing love that we see at work in the events we commemorate today and tomorrow, but in fact that creative spirit is very much present and at work.

As he sits alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ has decided to set aside once and for all time every appearance of limitation, to stand forth in his true spiritual identity as a shining example for all of humanity of the God Presence eager to express through each of us. What is often referred to as his agony is, I think, simply a regretful realization that nothing will ever again be the same. He has richly enjoyed his human experiences as Jesus, he would gladly continue it longer if that were possible, but he accedes to the Will of God, the spiritual energy that moves him forward.

We can easily identify with that bittersweet awareness that change is inevitable, that our comfortable and secure existence is about to take a turn into the unknown. We may know, as Jesus surely knew, that only greater and greater Good awaits. But we also know that every step into a new spiritual dimension seems at first to produce confusion and disruption. Emily Cady, in her classic book Lessons in Truth, called this process “chemicalization.” It is brief, but it can be intense. “There are always deeply rooted error thoughts stored away in the subconscious,” Charles Fillmore writes, “and on their own account they come forward to crucify the new unknown power, the indwelling Christ,” just as soldiers and accusers come for Jesus in the Garden. Fillmore continues that “this breaking up and passing away of old error states of mind and making ready for the new is a process in soul evolution of all those who are faithfully following Jesus” in his full expression of the Christ.

As we agree today to surrender those error thought that do not conform to our new spiritual awareness, we give thanks that they have now passed away. Affirm: I am a new spiritual being, centered in and expressive of the Christ Presence within me. Thank You, God.

Day Forty-three -- Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The details and importance of the Seder, the Passover meal, has changed very little for Jews in the 2,000 years between Jesus’ time and now. From its ritual questions and answers to its traditional food and drink, it carefully focuses on the central event in Jewish history, the deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt through God’s active intervention on their behalf.

Wine and unleavened bread are both important elements of the Seder meal, and had been for hundreds of years before the time of Jesus. As he promised in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus did not repudiate Jewish Law, including the Seder traditions. He carefully honored them during the final Passover celebration of his life. But he added to them a different dimension. He moved the emphasis from group obedience to individual responsibility. He used the pure power of his unconditional love to demonstrate a new level of spiritual awareness within every person.

Thus the Seder meal took on a new dimension of communion. “Take and eat,” Jesus said of the bread, “for this is my body.” “Drink,” he said of the wine, “for this is my blood.” Charles Fillmore explains that the bread symbolizes substance, a body of spiritual ideas. The wine is life, the circulation of divine ideas that will purify our mind and heart and renew our strength. “Through the appropriation and assimilation of the substance and life in our own consciousness,” Fillmore writes, “we blend our minds with God Mind, and there is a harmonizing of every fiber of our body with the Christ body, which is life and light.”

Today we affirm: The pure life and substance of God are constantly renewing and rebuilding my body, which is God’s holy temple, and regenerating my mind, which is God’s creative channel. Thank You, God.