Dear People of the way of Wisdom,
A blessed Easter to you. We have made it alongside Yeshua through this sacred passageway at the heart of the Christian tradition, the mysteries of all mysteries as Cynthia Bourgeault says. In speaking of these three days in her book The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia says Yeshua encourages us too to “make the passage into unitive life…both modeling and consecrating the eye of the needle that each one of us must personally pass through in order to accomplish the ‘one thing necessary’ here, according to his teaching: to die to self…to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood…a sacred path of liberation” (pg.106). This is what the practices of prayer, fasting, repentance and self-examination throughout the thin time of Lent leading to the Easter Triduum seem to grow and strengthen our human nervous system’s capacity towards. But the thin time of Easter continues on.
Now we are about to embark on the fifty days following Easter, Eastertide or Easter time, which are historically considered to be one big Sunday, one great feast. Yet as Cynthia points out, there is still work to be done. Yes, the conditions of this realm fundamentally changed through the willingness of Yeshua to lay down his life. During his journey to the heart of the earth, there was “a ‘pan-cosmic’ saturation of his being into the deepest marrow of this created world… without in any way denying or overriding the conditions of this earth place, he is interpenetrating them fully, infusing them with his own interior spaciousness, and inviting us all into this invisible but profoundly coherent energetic field so that we may live as one body” (pg. 134). But we must still follow his kenotic path. We must not rush too quickly to celebration and assuming that we no longer carry some responsibility for how we continue on in this life. It was during the first forty days of this season that Yeshua was on the planet in his more subtle second body (also called kesjdan, world 24, Kingdom of Heaven body) still working with his students, encouraging them to carry on his path, take the spiritual training wheels off, and do greater things than he.
This same encouragement is extended to each one of us during this spiritually charged season of Eastertide and we can stay close to this. Cynthia has said that we too have within our creaturely bodies a second /world 24 body that we must learn to develop an awareness of and live more fully out of now. In a previous challenge to her students during Eastertide she said,
“Christianity was literally founded in the second body, by second bodies on fire and fully animated with the light of truth and truth of lightness that they received from their Risen Lord during those forty days. The Kingdom of Heaven, altering the world’s causality “from within” by the very force of its higher coherence and potency. Each of you also has a nascent second body—in many of you much farther developed than you are comfortable admitting. I know, I know, it sounds conceited and misguided, like claiming to be “permanently enlightened.” But it’s actually way simpler and more humble than that and, god knows, more serviceable. We are INTENDED to be well acclimated to it by the time we’re rounding toward the second half of life, and it is through this body—and only through this body—that the real causal energies—faith, hope, love, gentleness, joy, peace, courage, conscience, compassion, integrity, forgiveness—enter and change our world.”
She charged us to use this season “to acknowledge, explore, and live out of our second or kesdjan body these next forty days.” We must “get to know it and BE it” as well as live from World 24 (Imaginal realm) “obedient to its causality, open to its grace” as we live within World 48 (this earthly realm). “That is the “path between the worlds” that Jesus bushwhacked for us during these three days in the heart of the earth. It will never be more open and assisted than it is now. Almost like a moving walkway.”
She encouraged several simple yet difficult practices that we may want to revisit, or visit for the first time, during this season. I will somewhat paraphrase them here:
Fast from the human story of yourself. Essentially this is about noticing when you are completely identifying with yourself at the level of world 48 or below and letting go of any narrative that anchors you first and foremost in your human identity.
Learn to remain consistently within your atmosphere. Our atmosphere is the sphere of energy surrounding us on all sides extending from our skin about three to five feet. Much like the earth's atmosphere, it has currents and waves based on our inner climate. When we are collected and concentrated within it, returning quickly when we have been drawn, pulled, or knocked out of it we will taste our more subtle, world 24 self directly.
Rest from thinking, analyzing, strategizing and above all, introspection. At the level of world 48 this often reinforces the human story of ourselves and keeps our understandings too small. What we are to receive in this season cannot be “understood from our world 48 self; it must be directly seen with world 24 eyes.”
Practice three-centered awareness every day in everything you do. This is about including your three centers in all of your responsibilities and activities “i.e., not simply sequentially, like three hours of headwork followed by three hours in the garden, but three hours of headwork fully in the body followed by three hours in the garden not zoning out.”
Pay attention to the movement of the subtle body within you—the kesdjan flow within your outer being body. Commit to working with one of the Gurdjieff Exercises daily and do not try to do all of them. “Spiritual gluttony of any kind will drag you right back into your World 48 self” which is what we are trying to see through.
Fast from counting. As you are able, let counting (calories, days, etc) go and let this be an opportunity to see how counting is so deeply embedded in the mental/rational underpinnings of our Christian intense self discipline.
You can read this challenge in its entirety here. Together lets keep leaning into the mysteries of this thin time, allowing ourselves to be assisted as we learn to live more from our world 24 selves.
Eastertide Love,
Heather
Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Monday of Holy Week, March 25th with Catherine
Reading: “We have much to learn from Mary, and she will educate us if we let her.
Mary won’t be much mentioned during this week’s readings, but she’ll be there nonetheless. She’ll be present for her Son, but she’ll be there for us, too. . .
When we accompany Mary through this week, she’ll show us how to remain steadfast …even when our universe is shaken. … She’ll show us how to love even when our hearts are being torn apart.”
Music: “Stabat Mater” (from Josquin des Prez ‘s Missa de Beata Virgine)
Tuesday of Holy Week, March 26th with Catherine
Reading: “…the (Easter) mysteries are intended to bring us into a lived experience of the sacred reality of which they are revelations. The most profound and awesome rites, for which our ancestors prepared with all-absorbing prayer and fasting, are now routine rituals that we walk through with very little consciousness. So much of our religion is either legalism, social habit, family tradition, or ethnic identity. All of these are travesties of the original intention of the mysteries to be an utter transforming contact with the Transcendent.” — Beatrice Bruteau, The Easter Mysteries
Chant: Kyrie Eleison (while making the sign of the cross)
Holy Thursday, March 28th with Catherine
Readings:
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES ARE GATHERED FOR THEIR LAST MEAL
“When the hour came, he took his place at table with the apostles.
He said to them, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover meal with you before I suffer” — Luke 22:15
WASHING OF THE FEET – This action turned the social order upside down (Beatrice Bruteau)
“He rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.” — John 13:4
EUCHARIST – Do this in memory of me – feed each with other with your lives as – as I have done (Beatrice Bruteau)
“Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.”
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.” — Luke 22:19-20
LAST TEACHING – again the tenderness
“My children, I will be with you only a little while longer…So now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” — John 13
IN THE GARDEN – In his vulnerability
“Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” — Mark 14:34
Chant: Watch oh watch the time has come, be still my soul and pray
Good Friday, March 29th with Catherine
Jesus lived and died at the intersection of eternity and time – in harmony with the great I AM that he named Father, at the same time fully engaged in human life with all its limitations, the laws of world 48
So the cross can signify this teaching, this mystery, for us as we seek to live from the center of the awakened heart - that intertidal zone where world 48 and world 24 exchange.
A traditional part of the Good Friday liturgies is the veneration of the cross. Perhaps this tradition can have new meaning for us - evoke gratitude for the Way Jesus teaches us to live… a new meaning for “the way of the cross”... a new meaning for the simple sign of the cross.
Chant: We venerate the Cross (from Vox De Nube - Norin Ni Riain and the Monks of Glenstal Abby)
Holy Saturday, March 30th with Chris
Reading: “One of the greatest medieval mystics, Jacob Boehme, made the challenging assertion, “God cannot enter hell, but love can enter hell and there redeem it.”
… I suddenly understood what Boehme meant and what Jesus was up to during that pivotal moment in the passion drama. He was just sitting there—surrounded by the darkest, deepest, most alienated, most constricted states of pained consciousness; sitting, if we can imagine it, among all those mirroring faces of the collective false self that we encountered earlier in the crucifixion narrative, … sitting there in the midst of all this blackness, not judging, not fixing, just letting it be in love.
And in so doing, he was allowing love to go deeper, pressing all the way to the innermost ground out of which the opposites arise and holding that to the light. A quiet harmonizing love was infiltrating even the deepest places of darkness and blackness, in a way that didn’t override them or cancel them, but gently reconnected them to the whole.”
— Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, p. 123