Holy Week Contemplation #3
The Seven Days of Holy Week. Monday, the Day of Reflection
How did the days of the week receive their names? As manifest in the laws of musical harmonies, the laws of the chemical period table, the story of Creation as told in the Book of Genesis, time, space and evolution unfold in a seven-fold pattern. This seven-fold pattern resounds in the seven primary planets in our solar system, in the seven primary organs in the human body, and in the seven-year cycles we honor in child development. These all follow the archetype of what is known as the seven stages of Cosmic Evolution. The ancient teachers commemorated these stages by allowing our earth-time to be measured in seven-day weeks, punctuating the flow of time with rhythmical, cyclical procession.
The seven stages of Cosmic Evolution correspond to the seven major planets, and each of these is recognized in the names of the days of the week. All unknowingly, we commemorate this evolutionary cycle in a microcosmic way every week.
SATURDAY is dedicated to Saturn, the outermost of the major planet. It commemorates the beginning and the end of all things
SUNDAY is dedicated to the Sun, the radiant living source of life, love and light.
MONDAY is the day of the Moon, whose serves exists in reflecting the light of the sun.
TUESDAY is the day of the red planet Mars, which has long been associated with masculine, self-assertive and even aggressive actions.
WEDNESDAY is the day of the planet Mercury, whose short and agile orbits around the sun cause it to be seen only rarely, peeking out sometimes in the evening and sometimes in the morning, but always close to the sun.
THURSDAY is the day of Jupiter, understood of old to be the home of the great and generous god Jupiter, or Thor.
FRIDAY is dedicated to Venus, the bright morning or evening star associated with the forces of kindness, love and peace.
The story of Holy Week begins on a Sunday. On Palm Sunday we considered the Lord entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, praised by the people who lined the streets. The jubilant crowds saw in Christ-Jesus the hoped-for hero who would solve all their political and social problems. Yet this was not the task of the Christ. In esoteric language we can understand that the people were imagining that salvation would come to them from without. They had not yet understood that humanity was finally ready for a new step in evolution. THE OLD CREATION WOULD NOW COME TO AN END, SO THAT THE NEW CREATION COULD BEGIN.
Christ was not interested in solving the social problems as a hero or authority. Everything that He did was born directly out of the Source of all being. He bore within himself the intention to take all the power of Creation with him right through the most condensed, the most concentrated, the most tragic human experience, even through death—–so that He could wrest from it the power of life and rebirth. His intention was to give to humanity everything that we need to take our next evolutionary step. When we follow His intentions, we can begin to cultivate new levels of consciousness in ourselves. With our minds, our heart, our bodies we can now become the Seeds of a New Earth.
As Christ walked through the last week of His life on earth, his deeds imprinted new archetypes onto the signatures of the seven planetary powers.
If we choose to, we can make a yearly practice of honoring the days of Holy Week through cultivating a new and conscious relationship to the planets.
On Palm Sunday, we could honor the life-giving forces of the Sun, from which still stream the light and life and love of the world we live in.
Today, on Monday, we meet a new archetype. The Moon represents above all the gesture of reflecting the light of the Sun. Moon consciousness does not yet access pure Source, but lives only out of Maya. Moon consciousness is content with images instead of reality, with information instead of wisdom, with brain thinking instead of heart thinking. In this sense, Moon consciousness is dream consciousness, but not in a modern or positive sense. It may rise from body instincts, from subliminal messages, or even from eternal authorities whose sources we cannot trace.
Human consciousness has grown from the soil of Moon consciousness. We had to begin our process of cognition by through dreams, through instincts, through associative thinking.
Now, however, the new mind is awakening. Now hearts will learn to think. Now we will begin to understand the sources of things, not only the surfaces of things. Clear, illumined Sun-thinking is born out of resurrection powers. Humanity is now ready to develop the new thinking, the new mind. This thinking lives in a state of consciousness that will not die. This consciousness lives in the sources of eternal life.
On the evening of Palm Sunday, Christ withdrew with his twelve disciples into the quiet of their inner room. No more would He be heralded as the long-awaited hero. On Monday, he began his task of showing to humanity the futility of lazy thinking, of mediumship, of dogma, of external authority, of power. Step by step in this week we are called to discover in ourselves the workings of our shadow mind, so that we can lay it aside and recognize the new, germinating capacities within that enable us to step into eternal life.
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