We students of the Logos, who walk the way of Christian tantra with Jesus as our exemplar, do not experience the gospel as happening in the past, to someone else. It is happening now, to us. We are like blind men who experience the touch of Jesus twice. First, we can see people, but they look like trees. Later, when we see things as they are, the teaching makes itself plain. We call it the "Four Gospel Seals" and to us, these are the teachings with which all Christian Teaching must agree. [bxA]
In order to hear the crowds, first shouting hosanna, then calling for crucifixion, we need look no further than our choices and preferences. When we look intently, we see impermanence. Jesus' teaching conveyed it, and so did his life: Jesus compared the grandeur of the tiniest lily to Solomon--to remind us of our dignity, but then tells us it's "alive today and tomorrow [it is] thrown into the oven." Even Jesus, glorified in the Trinity till the end of the age, will hand all things over to the Father, and God will be all, and in all. It's not only from all creation, but from the very life of Christ himself that "you, too, are impermanent" is a message we hear, clear as cathedral bells.
In order to find the veil that was torn in the temple, we need look no further than our own ego. When we look intently, we see non-self. Jesus said "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me." Interiorly, we are always including and transcending parts of ourselves that we've repressed. We face it because we don't want to pretend our egotism hasn't, by turns, protected us and caused a great deal of harm to others. By "transcending," we mean we're conscious of the need to gently elevate the energy we're working with. Faced-insecurity becomes blame we chose to forego, blame becomes a radical taking responsibility. This is what Christ did, and as we meditate on that we are swept up in different kinds of thought about our share in divine life. Ultimately we become one with God's consciousness. We look down at the workings of ego only after facing it and thanking it for bearing the burden of our sinfulness for us.
In order to find the garden of olives, we need look no further than our own unwillingness. When we look intently, we find acceptance. Every day, every minute, every transition we experience initiates us into a grieving process. We grieve the loss of Jesus' historical body, and it makes us face our own bodily death. That, in its turn, allows us to echo St. Paul: of our egos, we said "I died daily." Grieving became, for us, a practice as daily necessary as prayer. We familiarize ourselves with its stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And we begin to allow them to happen. When we experience anger, if we can figure out what, in particular, we are grieving, we do. But we are not in the business of picking apart the process. Our job is "limit setting and self care." First, we decide where we will, and won't express our grief, and who we'll allow to see us at our most vulnerable. Then, we exercise, we take walks and drink tea. We make time to be in the woods. We pay attention to the basic obligations of job and family and friendships. We are not in charge of the process, it moves on its own. When we care for ourselves deeply, we become more skillful in helping others.
In order to find Christ's tomb, we need look no further than our dualistic minds. When we look intently, we see interbeing. Interbeing is an acknowledgement that everything is part of everything else, and each thing contains its opposite. Dualism is part of manifestation, and not to be demonized. In the Christian prayer teaching, vocal prayer and meditation should not be scorned when we're given the gift of contemplation. However, in what's often referred to as the "the figure-ground reversal," those experiences of unity flip our perspective. Every death is a rebirth. All of God's glory is given, according to the Teacher, "so that they may be one, as [the father and I] are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one."
Interbeing is akin, in many ways, to transubstantiation. Jesus said "I am the gate for the sheep." We don't believe he was speaking any less truly, nor any more metaphorically, than when he said "I am the bread of life." Interbeing is the capacity to see the interconnectedness of opposites. Jesus was a sheep gate. He is the doorway to all things being as they are, and all things being as they are, are Jesus.
We could not have seen God's presence in all things if not for his presence in the sacraments. And we could not have seen interbeing without transubstantiation. The sacramental presence that required particular elements led to God's presence in everything, visible to those who give up self. The change that happened regardless of the sins of the priest hinted at a perspective shift available to those who have faced their purgatorial predicament: the wheat is in the bread, the sunlight in the wheat, the energy in the light is both inside us and outside us.
Many of us use the Four Gospel Seals as a filter for belief. Permanence, self, denial and dualism, we know that, held too tightly, these all increase suffering exponentially. Ego and all of its works are too much of an energy drain: they take a toll too subtle to notice, and too costly to afford. Impermanence, non-self, acceptance and interbeing are the remedy and relief. The teacher says "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens." We pray to hear with the ear of our hearts, to take the yoke and learn. We are all students, learning from one teacher. Over everything, we've put on love; and when love is all that remains, it's the oneness that's his greatest lesson.
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