Everyone Living Resurrection Now
Integral Consciousness – Part 5
The Personal Body of Christ
“I AM the resurrection and the life” – John 11:25
In the timeless unity of our divine source within,
from the wellspring in the depths of our spiritual womb
in the source point at the inbreath of our becoming,
in the mystical union of divine being that springs forth into our own unique existence,
We say,
I AM the resurrection and the life.
Resurrection is not simply a resuscitation of a dead body, but the renewal of that which was previously dead, the awakening of new life which has already come.
You have been raised to new life with Christ. (Col 3:1)
You have already come from the divine womb into the resurrected life, here and now.
For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3)
The resurrection of Jesus was not a one-time event that we hope will one day be repeated for all in a distant future. It was a waypoint to the resurrection of the Body of Christ that is already living and breathing, that is continuously being created and springing into further becoming at all times.
The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.
This is not a statement of causality, of an if-then mental trade-off.
What if the cross is not something that we all must endure over and over, but that Christ did indeed already die for us? Not to cleanse us from sin, but to allow us to be reborn in the resurrected Body of Christ?
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)
Could we believe it? Might it be possible that the Christian, religious life is meant to be so free of shame, guilt, mortification, and penance?
“Will the church of the crucified become the church of the risen?”
—Jean Gebser
“White Crucifixion” by Marc Chagall
Crucifying the Ego?
Ah yes but what about that pesky ego? That predominating self? Don’t we need to put that to death first in order to come into our true self and personal experience of resurrection?
I’m not so sure.
At its worst, the cross applied individually is an extension of the purity mindset and the religion of the unclean, seeing this torturous death as a sacrificial ritual necessary for the cleansing of sin. This is a terrible theological mistake that has had drastic effects on Christianity. For these camps, the resurrection is more of an after-effect. Something that only happens long after physical death. The cross remains the focus and has for centuries.
Slightly different is seeing the crucifixion as a spiritual model for ongoing emulation. That each one of us must personally take up our own crosses and follow the journey toward a death to self, to die to our egos and be resurrected into a life in the true self. But is this really what Jesus did? Was Jesus dying to his false self on the cross? Or just implying that was what everyone else needed to do?
His words about “denying yourself and taking up your cross” spoken to the disciples before his crucifixion have sometimes been taken to mean an interior, individual journey—when at the time the implications would have been far more political and social. It was a statement about courage and not hiding from persecution, losing your vital life by seeking to save your physical life. After all, it was the occupying Romans who crucified the oppressed—not a means of self-transformation.
Tellingly, this statement also comes in the book of Matthew right before Jesus’ transfiguration. He did not need the cross to transform into the fullness of his awakened being. To imply that we cannot come into our divine participation without an ego crucifixion is another subtle denial of the original goodness of incarnated humanity. It comes from the self-mortifying religious approach that defers and denies people participation in the divine life already. How long must we continue to be crucified?
Of course, we all have our own journey to realizing our partaking in the resurrected life, sometimes a long one. This is not about instant gratification or not recognizing the necessary work of spiritual growth and practice, but rather a misapplication of the meaning of the cross out of an existential struggle with the ego in the now deficient stage of mental consciousness.
Gebser was rather strong on this, affirming that the ego was the great gift of the mental structure of consciousness. And any way through and beyond its deficient limitations will not come through a total denial of the ego, but rather its integration with our other structures of consciousness.
We can’t integrate that which we are crucifying.
This is a fight against the ego as the shadow element of our deficient mental structure. And as we know from shadow work, whatever we are against will continue to define us.
Yes, the ego can interfere. It will want to take over. We should be leery of self-righteousness and self-exaltation. If we are over-identified with or entirely attached to our mental ego it will predominate, and self-denial is an important spiritual practice at times. Not my will but yours be done.
But for too long we’ve tried to see it crucified, which is an act of killing. This is an overly dualistic and violent self-attack that is fundamentally opposed to mystical consciousness, in that it is another self-made barrier to divine participation in the here and now.
The mystical path to union and communion in divine, integral consciousness is already present, already continuously coming forth in resurrected reality in the upspringing now. Our limited self can keep us from seeing it, from participating in it—but it is already here, if we can become transparent to the barriers, integrating our deeper structures of consciousness.
The crucifixion is over. It is finished.
Can we embrace the resurrection in our lives now, today?
(You don’t even have to wait for Easter on the calendar, this year or the next!)
“Resurrection is not limited to Christ alone, it is the vocation of all of us...
Resurrection is ours, it is now.”
Resurrected to Personal Particularity
If we are integrating our ego rather than crucifying it, we will have a much stronger, solid sense of our holistic self. Our individual, separate self—which is rooted in the mental structure—will become more personal as it finds a fuller embodiment and interconnectedness. We experientially discover the reality that we are not separate, individual beings, but also that we are particular and necessary expressions of reality coming forth in our precious personhood in the wholeness of our full being.
This happens through a greater connection with others through the inter-personal coherence of hearts in the mythic structure. A communion—union together—a We made up of many Thous, each precious and necessarily present.
It happens through the bearing of life from our spiritual wombs, becoming makers in the magic structure of consciousness, the divine identity springing forth from deep within, continuously creating and flowing into personal expression through your own unique, particular gift to the world.
It happens through our incarnated presence in our bodies, accepting with gratitude and care our unique home in the world, given to this particular time and place. Receiving that we were born into who we are, and that we are Christ manifestations of the resurrected body of God, alive and moving in the world today.
All of these bring us to a decidedly pointed particularity. That who we are matters, deeply. This is the “I” nature of incarnation. Owning our God-given personhood rather than fighting against or diminishing ourselves through shame, fear, guilt, or any other narrow ego-shadow-games.
After Jesus’ resurrection, he told his disciples, “It is better for you that I go.” He was making space for the disciples to come into their own resurrected life, in their own personal and communal expressions.
He said we “will do greater things.” How else would we do that if we were not living into the divine, resurrected life coming through in our own particularity, in the fullness of all of us offering our own spiritual giftings?
Giving Your Gift
“Participation in the divine life, whereby each individual will find, by conscious union with a Supreme Personal Being, the consummation of his [sic] own personality.”
—Teilhard de Chardin
Participation in the divine life of the resurrection is the mystical embodiment of our personal incarnation coming forth in all of its fullness and vitality for the love of the world.
This is the life to the full that manifests in the particularity of each unique expression, each person who would awaken to their own vitality, who would stand up in the fulness of who they are and what they were meant to give in this life.
Every particular matters. You matter.
This is the divine life coming forth not just from underneath our particular identity, not separated from the “messy” enfleshment, the enculturation, the enmeshment with the world. But in and through our very life and being, intimately wrapped up with the “imperfections” and “limitations” that make up our expressed lives.
We are always growing and deepening, becoming better, more loving people, tuning in and tapping into our lived expression from the deepest core and center of our selves—and our lived expression and offerings can and must come from us wherever we are in that process. We cannot wait and hold back until we are ______, until we have ______.
To be the resurrection and the life now. This is our courage to bring forth our gifts in the world.
Coming into being faithful to the life that is springing forth from our own personal being. We can learn to trust our own deepest intuitions from the arising, from our inner generative creativity and vitality deep in the source of our spiritual womb. And also emerging from the collective and shared womb of a sacred community, the resonance we feel when a voice strikes in tune with our deepest cords within.
Bringing this gift to bear in the world in our precious uniqueness is how we live into our personal, embodied incarnation of the resurrected life of the Body of Christ.
Teilhard de Chardin called this our “super-personalization”:
“My life’s work . . . is much more fully represented by what I succeed in producing, deep within myself, that is incommunicable and unique. My personality, that is, the particular centre of perceptions and love that my life consists in developing—it is that which is my real wealth. And in that, accordingly, lies the only value whose worth and whose preservation can call for and justify my effort. And in that, again, consists the supreme portion of my being which cannot be abandoned by the centre in whom all the sublimated treasures of the universe converge.”
The Body of Christ
This is the unique, personal expression of the Body of Christ living its resurrected life in the world today, springing forth from the vitality of divine life in the source of our being.
Of course, the I AM resurrection and life in the Body of Christ is not just for the individual, but is also communal and universal—which we’ll explore in the next two writings.
But as we move to the WE and the ALL, it is crucial that we have a strong and vital sense of our personal, particular core of being. That we are unique, personal expressions of this divine life. That this integral consciousness comes forth in our lives as necessarily distinctive and unique.
Gebser was clear that this intensification of consciousness cannot be a dissolving back into the amorphous “we,” losing our self and identity.
We are not aggregates. Not just one in the crowd, adding to the faceless masses ebbing and flowing with the tides. Not just a drop dissolving into the ocean to be free of any personal responsibility, particular suffering, or unique significance.
Jorge Ferrer agrees: “The mystery unfolds from a primordial state of undifferentiated unity toward one of infinite differentiation-in-communion.”
Our integral consciousness in the life resurrected will be a coherence of individuality and community, of the personal and the universal in communion. Where we can live from a place of being that is not overly-boundaried, but still distinctively and solidly personal.
The I AM life resurrected, living and breathing in you. In us. In all of us. And today, this day, in you particularly.