Easter was the day for the first pretty dress of the year. I always remember it being just a teensy too cold for my flowery Laura Ashley, lacy Betsey Johnson or fresh Ann Taylor; me: chilly in the pastel debut of the season, early years shakin’ in white patent leather mary janes, later in demure nude pumps. Easter was kielbasa and vodka at home, served in crystal glasses, followed by fancy downtown hotel brunches. For Polish people, Easter was, like any holiday, a gorgeous reason to drink.
Although I went to Catholic school in Chicago, when we moved to the suburbs, 80% of my junior high was Jewish, and we eased into “C + E” Catholicism, hitting church on just the two big days of the year. The Passover/Easter/Lenten season was more about what what we could and couldn’t eat (fish stick Fridays, no ice cream during Lent) rather than a spiritual study as to why we were adopting these (fish sticks?) well, let’s loosely call them “practices.” I asked my mother if she would make me peanut butter and jelly on matzo, feeling left out at school. Why did my Jewish friends eat matzo during Passover? Because they can’t have leavened bread. Why are we eating fish sticks? We don’t eat meat on Fridays. That was the end of the explanation.
Fish sticks, pretty dresses. The holiest time of the year was always skin deep.
Manhattan, yesterday: I gathered peeps for what is the most advanced process in the work that I do, and mulled the exquisite irony that holy Saturday would for the first time actually be Holy: five hours of woo extreme that left us blessed, bonked, raw and grateful. A serious experience of the Divine, of Ultimate Reality. Quite a step up in devotion from Ann Taylor and fish sticks. We dispersed, but not before I let them know, hey, tomorrow is Easter, text me when you’re resurrected. I was joking. Kinda.
I thought I ‘d be remiss if I didn’t offer a holy weekend parallel to our evolution in consciousness.
So…
Is this what we have been waiting for? Is the three-day stretch between crucifixion and resurrection the metaphor for today, right now? Thanks Bible for keeping that tale around for two millennia, btw, and are we now ready to collectively glean your wisdom, for reals?
Crucifixion. I think we can all agree that’s pretty much as bad as it gets. We could go toe-to-toe debating torture methods, but as violent as some parts of the world are these days, I have yet to hear of people towing crosses. And Jesus did this willingly. We can’t know of his mind’s resistance, but in action, he did it. It’s there. Say what you like about Jesus, love him or maybe he doesn’t float your boat, but the main fact is: suffering extreme was presented to him. He faced it. He died. He was resurrected. (Ok, that last bit is up for debate, but the first two we can all agree on.)
His death is a symbol of the death of our ego. Some would say the death of the mind. And not the death of the mind as in the useful bits (the bits that lead our hand to our mouth so we brush our teeth rather than our eye, or that help us in a business negotiation) but rather the death of our attachment to the mind as “us.”
Awakening is just another way to say: the mind stops using us, and we start using the mind.
Jesus faced his suffering. Presumably, being Christ and all, he could have at any moment disintegrated into heavenly bliss, but instead chose to not run (or evaporate) from his pain. Was this really the message he was here to send? A Course in Miracles calls “sin” a misperception, so to say Jesus died for our sins is to say he died to show us we were perceiving Reality from a mad/egoic mind. Jesus had no structures of the mind/ego, or if he did, they fell away and had no hold in his complete surrender. There is nothing for the mind/ego to latch onto when you say: ok life, I take you as you come.
There was a three-day period. Jesus was buried in a cave. “On the third day he rose again, in fulfillment of the scriptures, and ascended into heaven.”
He rose again. He was resurrected. His resurrection is our resurrection. His resurrection is “one in being with the Father.”
In modern terms, this is being one with all that is.
Call it God-realization.
Call it oneness.
Call it our evolution to being so connected with everything else that we communicate through our minds and hearts as supercomputers traversing a collective web of thought, emotion, experience.
Does that sound too grand?
Too out of reach?
Mix it up with you you’re hanging out with then, because this is happening.
Jesus weekend. That’s the formula. Suffer + face it. Surrender. Resurrect.
Here’s how I like to see it:
Be authentic with where you are/don’t run from your experience.
Let go into the flow.
Be graced with enlightenment.
Easy to write. Hard to do.
And there are people who will say, no no no, I have control over my mind. And I choose and I can make myself happier, it’s ALL in my hands. I. Don’t. Want. To. Let. Go.
And that’s just dandy for those people. That’s where they are. Perf McGurf. But that faction is not yet ready for this experience or conversation about awakening or enlightenment.
Some might like the idea of oneness, or a collective web of unconscious thought, or love in all things, but even the idea of letting go completely is more bitter than dandelion on the tongue of a two-year-old.
Cool. They can go sit with that for a while, see how it works out, and then come back in a month, 6 months, a year. The conversation, the unfolding is, and will be, always happening.
If you think you’re somewhere between suffering and resurrection, I invite you to consider the possibility that there is something that knows better than you do.
Here is the main crux. (Pardon that play on words, but I just couldn’t resist.)
How insanely devoted are you to your highest and best Self?
Whatever it is that you believe, Jesus, marptha, angels, zen nothingness, the collective web…
Do you love it enough to let it take you over?
Resurrection sound too Christic for you?
How about Samadhi?
How about enlightenment?
How about presence, NOWness?
Ultimately it is knowing and moving from our Self, right?
But do you love that highest version of yourself so much that you are willing to solely operate from your heart and not your mind?
Because that’s where it all happens.
And guess what? When it happens from your heart, it’s gorgeous and perfect but it is the freefall to end all free falls. You have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next and you have everything you have ever wanted. Quite a paradox. That’s how Truth works. That is how Being works.
If we’re looking for control, that’s the only decision we can make.
That is what we can decide:
How ready are we for our own resurrection?
I’m ready. Want to join me?
Today I will don my flowery dress, led my heart lead me and maybe even give a nod to my polish roots with an adult beverage in a crystal glass.
Today I toast, to our resurrection. To our freedom. This is my Easter.
