YouTube: The Easter Transformation
Reading Material: Meditation/Meditation Exercises
[Excerpt from The Easter Transformation] If I were to put the Easter message into a single line, I would say something like this: Let go of the lesser so that the greater spiritual potential in you may come forth. Become willing to allow the lesser—the body-based identity or ego, the man of the flesh—to die and to let the light of your true, spiritual identity come forth, to define you, to define your interests, to define your purpose on this planet.
This is what the crucifixion and the tomb represent. It’s the process of transformation, that period when the man Jesus was put to death and entombed. But this is no more the end of the story than when the seed is dropped into the ground and covered. What looks like death, is a letting go, a surrendering to the process of transforming from one condition to another.
In Unity we advocate the practice of meditation. Meditation is really the application of the principle embodied in Easter. We close our eyes and relax our body. We turn our attention away from the demands of the body and our external circumstances. This is a kind of symbolic death. We die to our more surface-oriented self and turn our attention to a more subtle, quiet center of our being. Though we’re talking about something very natural here, it is not easy to describe what we’re actually seeking in this time of quiet. With practice, we begin to experience a spiritual quickening that brings the awareness of our unity with something greater than our normal thinking. Like the seed, we do not grasp for this something greater. We surrender, we let go, we trust that the divine intelligence of God is doing its perfect work in us, opening our mind and heart to the larger, spiritual context.
We’re undergoing a symbolic crucifixion and death. But there’s nothing negative about it—no more than when the seed is dropped into the ground.
Paul wrote of the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest. This mystery, he said, is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:26, 27). But when he refers to Christ, he’s not talking about the man Jesus. He’s talking that divine self that Jesus discovered and referred to as the kingdom of God that dwells at the heart of every person. In the same way the seed’s transformation into a full-blown plant remains a mystery, so this Christ, this divine self that abides in every one of us, knows how to do its perfect work through our consciousness. It knows how to break through this limited seed identity, this body-based self-image with all its fears and limitations. It knows how to bring into the light of our awareness the potential to live our life from that image and likeness of God that we are.
To resurrect means to restore to life. If we think of the process of resurrection as a miracle, something that belongs to the realm of the supernatural, then we’re missing the point. To restore to life means to consciously reclaim a living energy that has never been absent. To raise it from the dead means to bring it out of the tomb of our own indifference and let it come forth into the daylight of our normal thinking. Though it has been hidden for ages, so to speak, this living energy of our Christ potential is present and fully capable of doing its transformative work.
In one sense, it is a miracle that a seed, possibly dormant for many years, can spring to life, expand as a full-blown plant, and produce enough seed for many generations to come. But there’s nothing supernatural about this. It is so natural, in fact, that we take it in stride. We see the living plants all around us resurrecting from their winter sleep. The living force that displays as this natural resurrection is just as involved in each one of us. This understanding transforms Easter from a religious holiday to a personal event.
I would encourage each of you—especially in this time of self-isolation—to fully engage in your own Easter experience, to spend time in quiet introspection of this transforming, living energy, this Christ in you that is so often hidden in the busyness of daily life.