Who wants to live for ever?

It’s Easter – a significant time of death and rebirth. A time that warrants a suitable ritual.

So, what have we come up with?

Not much, apart from the frenzied supermarket shop, the traffic jam, and the mainlining of chocolate.

If we think Christmas has lost all meaning, there isn’t much hope for Easter. Jesus’s birthday is at least celebrated on the same day each year, whereas the anniversary of his death changes with the cycles of the moon – a political masterstroke to keep both Pagans and Christians happy. Things were just so much easier when the electorate couldn’t read or add up.

Christians could be offended by this analogy.

I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGISE TO

ANYONE I HAVE NOT OFFENDED.

PLEASE BE PATIENT.

I WILL GET TO YOU SHORTLY.

Jesus wouldn’t be offended, because he lived at a higher altitude. And of course because he wasn’t a Christian.

Christians came along afterwards. And by interpreting his high level, mystical truths through the lens of low level, budget consciousness, they created a religion. Just as the Jews did 2000 years earlier and the Muslims did 500 years later.

Let’s face it – it’s a mess.

We could go so far as to say that unless we deconstruct all these literal, religious interpretations and make the leap to a higher level of consciousness, the world truly will go to hell and there may not be any hand baskets.

The new rule for all religions.  (Man up)

We are creative spirits, temporarily inhabiting human form. We are more energy than matter. We all know this by now, thanks to science and microscopes. Energy changes, but it doesn’t die. Water, when frozen becomes ice, when heated becomes vapour. Without science we would think that the water, when heated, disappears.  Primitive man might think “Wow it’s a miracle!” But with the benefit of a neo cortex, we know otherwise.

So, it stands to reason that if we evolve further, miraculous events could become every day occurrences. Because at the higher altitudes the laws of time and space no longer apply.  (So that’s how you walk on water!).

Who’s ready to rise?

Who isn’t!

We love stories of alchemy and transformation – Harry Potter is a huge franchise! We love stories of living forever – The Twilight Saga is a license to print money!

Sadly, just as we have done with Christmas and Easter we’ve taken the mystical and brought it down to a commercial level… again.

There may be no bank holiday traffic jams on the super highway to higher consciousness, but there is definitely a toll to pay – it’s self-discipline.  And in the tradition of all great rituals, there is a sacrifice to be made – it’s the death of the ego.

We have come at this a little backwards.  We want self-indulgence! And a body that lives for ever!  The Spa is our new Cathedral.  Anti ageing treatments are the new religion.

Let’s look at this through the lens of evolution, as it’s always helpful to get a little context, and to see exactly where we took the U-turn.

We started off superstitious, primitive creatures, living in a world we didn’t comprehend – though we did understand death and rebirth, as it was all around us in the natural world. We worshipped the Goddess of Nature.

Pruning ensured that plant life could rise even more gloriously the following spring.

Next, we developed our brain (good!) and with it, our ego (not so good!).

Now our ego has gone bonkers interpreting the metaphysical world.  Here are some of its pronouncements…

“I am God.”

Yes, Jesus did in fact say “You are Gods” but this was only to take the focus off Him being idolized.  When he bent the laws of time and space and did miraculous things like walking on water, his attitude was one of Why are you so impressed with this?   He said “This you shall do and more!”

Instead of saying “You are Gods” he probably should have said “You are Gods in training or Gods in potential… but you need a little pruning”. In some cases quite a lot of pruning, but Jesus was benevolent to say the least. For pruning read ‘spiritual discipline’ or ‘ego slaying’.

“I just need more energy.”

We see energy as something to get, not something we are. We like to see the outcome of creative energy in acquisitions – buildings, art, technology, money, because we can ‘own’ these things and because we can keep them for ever. (Haha! In our dreams – they can all get wiped out in a nanosecond).

When we think of our own energy we are usually referring to the energy of the body, or adrenaline. We go to the church of Starbucks – one on every block for spiritual re-fueling. “I can’t possibly write that editorial/put together a proposal/think of the next project without CAFFEINE”.

“Death isn’t real.”

But we’re only interested in eternal life for the body, not the soul. Yes, we are that narcissistic that we think we can create a cure for death!

Come up with a product that holds back the ageing process and venture capitalists will fight to throw money at you.  But a scheme to raise the consciousness of the species – forget it!

Jesus is probably rolling his eyes, wondering how things could have gone so pear shaped. His teachings were simple. Learn to love (that alone could take a lifetime of discipline) and exercise the power of choice wisely.

Choice allows us to create. We can know ourselves as spirit/soul and create consciously or we can know ourselves as body/mind and create unconsciously. This is a complex principle to explain to a bunch of fishermen, so as we have seen, things didn’t turn out too well, and a lot of stuff got lost in translation.

It being Easter, one of my favourite Jesus sayings, occurs in the scene with Pontius Pilate. Pilate is still trying to get Jesus to engage in a power play, so asks him if he’s King of the Jews.  Jesus replies “It is as you say it is”.

This is a profound truth. In other words… You are responsible for your own projections.  You are attributing the meaning to whatever it is you’re perceiving.

Of course Pilate didn’t get it. And for the next 2000 years, millions more people failed to get it.

But we have a chance to turn things around and save the species… before the world ends and we have to start all over again from scratch!

Either way Jesus doesn’t mind. When you’re an eternal being, you have all the time in the world.

But I think it would make him smile if 2012 was the year we turned things around.

It’s Easter.  The Ego is dead. Long live the Soul.