#wisdom jesus

What did Jesus mean when he said, "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head?"

Focusing on the miracles and resurrection of Jesus, I dare ask the question, "why can't literal events also have metaphorical layers of meaning?"

This talk on physical vs spiritual death was inspired by hearing a discussion on "The Resurrection at the end of time," and realizing that understanding the basic premise of physical vs spiritual death would result in an entirely different understanding of this Christian language.

Lost understanding of the Strong Man Parable! As part of my explaining the teachings of Jesus in the Bible, I focus here on the parable of the strong man.  I come with new perspective, asking, "what if Jesus is not the thief in this story?" which is the most common interpretation.  

Explaining this story of Jesus in new light, I'm able to draw out deeper, "hidden" meaning than is commonly attributed to this short and seemingly simple parable.  From this standpoint, we are able to see how this relates to the process by which we suffer spiritual wounding, and how Christ is able to repair our souls into the fullness of God.

Do you want inner peace? One of the primary stumbling blocks to inner stillness and living a divine life is our own preconceived notions about religion and spirituality.  As Jesus said in this sermon on the mount, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  If we cannot see past our own ideas about what is righteous, how are we to come into alignment with the source of the rain?

Only by releasing into the space beyond concepts can we live from the peace that passes understanding.

Some of you are thinking perhaps that I have come into the cosmos to bring it peace.  No!  You do not yet realize that I have come to throw it into utter chaos through burning, blade, and battle.

Five will be living in one household.  Three will face off against two, and two against three.  Parents will rise up against children, and children against their parents, until at last they shall stand as one on their own feet.

Gospel of Thomas, 16

I used to think that it was my role to permit any kind of mental or spiritual nonsense which came into my world.  By doing so, I thought I would find peace "below" the noise and sink into an untouched realm of consciousness.

Now, to be sure, this is one of the many "mansions" within our Father's house.  That aspect of consciousness is one I hope we all find and dwell in. . . in our time.  But there is  a time for all things, and I find knowing that state, it is appropriate to go forward, changing things in ourselves and in the world.  For when we change one, we change the other.  The clearer we get in our relationship with God, the more we see the relationship of the outer created by the inner, "on Earth as it is in Heaven."  

In this passage of Thomas, Jesus responds to the oft carried belief of spiritualists, that they might sink into untouched bliss and ignore the world.

Love calls us into the world once we are established enough in presence and faith to carry the Light of Christ into the world.

It may be that change necessitates turmoil.  Certainly turmoil which is offset by the peace which passes understanding.  And one reason it lies beyond understanding is that this peace surpasses the dichotomy of stillness and chaos.  

Don't mistake me as saying this means only inner peace and outer chaos, as I've said, the inner reflects the outer.  And if we are to go about repairing the world (or the church), we must do so with intention that we cleanse the outer with the intention of repairing the inner.  Fixing the symptom and not rooting out the disease is not enough in our divine work.  

"For what reason would you only wash the outside of a cup?  Do you not realize that the creator of the outside is the one who made the inside as well?"  Gospel of Thomas 89

It can be an extremely powerful practice, that when something goes wrong in the world, to ask for revelation as for what this might represent inside ourselves.  Then we can fix the outer problem, symbolically repairing the inner.  Issues manifest on different levels, so if you're looking at a global problem you can look for a way this reflects more locally in your life.

It is often, on our mountaintops of peace, we forget the role of the world to show us our flaws.  Flaws which emanate from us, revealing parts of ourselves to be worked on.  

As our souls are refined of imperfections, God's light shines through all the more, our very perceptions and experience of life itself are changed, altered into a heavenly state.  By observing this process, we become driven to purity of soul;  even as we paradoxically witness the divine perfection as an ever present reality, which has always been and could never, in God's eyes, be compromised in any way.  And so we come to know the entire process of spiritual realization is for ourselves, and only for God in as much as it plays out through us.

And so here -- and this illustrates the peril of great teaching divorced from it's divine deliverer -- fire represents the inner clarifying effect which takes place in the world when Stillness is met by the relative.*  Though this may not be common knowledge amoung the average churchgoer, transcendental fire is commonly known (and experienced) amoung spiritual masters as a spiritual heat produced when the Ultimate aspect of Reality is approached by the moving.  (In Gospel of Thomas 82, Jesus speaks as the incarnate transcendent, saying, "Whoever comes close to me dwells near the fire.  Whoever moves away from me remains far from the Kingdom.")

Sword represents the "sword of discrimination," the keen mental awareness we gain which  allows us to know what is of God and what is of the world.  For it is not so simple as cutting away attachment to all things.  Attachment as devotion for God is rewarded in positive qualities being honed.

But attachment for the world, separated from God leads us into ignorance and peril.  So this sword represents not the severing of attachment, but the discernment between what will lead us into unified consciousness (aka Love), and what will sow division in ourselves.

The inward significance of war is the drawing up of our will, that we might expel anything which does not serve our evolution; so that we might not only serve our fellow human and glorify God all the more, but also reflect more of the bliss of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds.

Now certainly these statements of Jesus have external truths.  One of the mystifying principles of divine speech is that it often carries different layers of meaning.  We all have the experience of different understandings from scriptures at different times depending on where we are in our path.  Divine speech emanates from creation itself and 'hits' at different points, some of which, with the proper consciousness can be registered all together.  In other words, consciousness of multi-layered meanings rather than one alone.

As for "all together," the conclusion of this passage ("they shall stand as one on their own feet") comes from the Greek, monachos, meaning solitary, single, or alone.  Here it signifies the, "integrated and unified person whose being is now united and whole."1  The cleansing fire having run its course, leaves behind a changed being.  Jesus earned the title Ihidaya, the Aramaic word meaning "Unified One."2

*I distinguish the "relative"  view from the non-dual (which I sometimes simply refer to by it's prominent experience, stillness) in that relative depends on one thing relative to another.  The Non-dual is the opposite, the undivided field.  This deserves longer exposition which this is not the place for.

1.  The Luminous Gospels, Bauman, Bauman, and Bourgeault (The source of most of my Thomas translations.)