Holy Week Contemplation Nr 6
Thursday—The Abundance of the Spirit-Sun
The Creating Sun is preparing Himself to be laid in the soil of the earth. In death, Christ will carry into the earth all the seed-forces that it will ever need.
The renowned scientist of the spirit, Rudolf Steiner, tells us that between one life on earth and the next, we leave the immediate proximity of the earth and expand into the far distant spaces of the universe. We forget our earthly concerns, and we are rejuvenated by being immersed in the source of all life, in the community of cosmic beings. Then, he says, we are “told to turn around” and behold the earth from that distant perspective. The earth reveals itself to be the most perfect creation in the cosmos. God has “turned himself inside out,” and poured all of His thoughts and dreams into form and substance to make an earth. He reveals himself in color and shapes and texture and sounds. All that is, is Him.
And on this earth, the Human Body is the ultimate flower and fruit, the apex of creation. In the human body, all of the creating forces of the constellations and the planets, the handwork of the creative beings, is concentrated in microcosmic image.
We are then given an unspeakable choice. Would we choose to remain with God at the far reaches of the universe, imperfect but care-free? Or would we be willing to journey once more to the realm of earth, to clothe ourselves in flesh, in the sacred temple of the body?
Through living in the body, we leave the Creating source of the world, and live in its perfect image. Here we participate in the continuing evolution of God, by learning to become conscious of Him in his “inside-out world,” the world of matter.
We evolve through a condition of consciousness in which there is every possibility that we could lose our relationship to spirit. We have been left completely free in this world of senses to seek God or to deny Him. Only in this condition, may we can become free human beings. God does not mandate us to find him in the as we struggle towards awakening, but we may hear His hope and wish in the whispers of our heart.
What is then “death”? Is it not the stage of losing God, of turning away from Him and serving only the world of matter? And do we participate in tearing this world of the senses even further away from God by failing to dedicate ourselves to spirit in all we do?
The great mystery is that is equally true that we live in the world of death here on earth and that spirit is in fact everywhere that we look. In Christ, God Himself entered the stream of Time. As Christ, the Creator entered in the Image, living in the microsmos of the body of Jesus. Esoteric Christianity teaches that Christ himself is the Creating Spirit Sun, who lived as a human being on earth and experienced everything that we do. He saw the world through his senses, tasting and touching it, and working with matter. He experienced human relationships, and engaged with them in their joy and sorrows. And in everything that He did, Spirit touched matter.
On Thursday of Holy Week, Christ Jesus celebrated the Passover Meal with His disciples.
We can find this described in beautiful language in the Gospel of St. John, in which He speaks with great love of His connection with humanity. Then, we read, He knelt at the feet of His disciples and washed their feet. When I consider this image, I am moved at the image of the Lord kneeling in service of those whom he came to serve. Spirit bows to the world in love.
Other gospels tell us then of how Jesus picked up the bread and the wine at the table of the supper, and blessed it before sharing it with his discplies. Christ said to those sitting with them “Eat this, drink this, and do it in remembrance of me.” In this, He poured all of the life forces, then, now and into the future, into the world of matter. Christ promises that He will be in matter, working as a seed force, forever. We will walk on him with our feet, touch Him with our hands, see Him through our senses. We need only choose to perceive Him, and we awaken in our selves.
This is the human journey, through death to resurrection. We must pass through the separation from God to become self-aware, but in doing so we fall into the world of death. Christ, however, is with us in all things, in the material world as living seed force, and in our souls and living Mind. We die in Forgetting: we are resurrected in Remembering.
Thursday is the day of Jupiter. We perceive its signature in the gesture of wisdom, life and abundance. In the body it rules the liver, source of good health and vitality. In language, Jupiter speaks the sound “Oh.”
To move the sound “Oh” in eurythmy, we round our arms in a great, symmetrical circle. This roundness is buoyant and light-filled, overcoming the heaviness of gravity. But most importantly, in making the Oh, our soul needs to step outside of itself. In rounding the arms we aspire to embrace the entire world, and experience that we ourselves are but one point on the circle of community. What is important is not ourselves creating the world, but rather the center of the circle that is outside of us.
So Christ, in entering the earth, created a circle of abundance. At the Last Supper, His radiant love embraced the disciples in the archetypal “Oh.” And the circle of His never-ending love continues to expand throughout the entire earth.
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Holy Week Post Nr 7