The Mind of Christ

Paul said “we have the mind of Christ” but he didn’t talk about it. We can infer, from the fact that the heart of Christ was drained empty, from the fact that, when the temple in Jerusalem was sacked, the holy of holies was found the same way: the mind of Christ is an empty mind. Contemplation is a temporary taste of emptiness, obedience is emptiness carried into action. Humility is emptiness that’s become an effortless default. “Christ” is the name for when emptiness eclipses identity. “I live,” says the scriptures, “but not I, Christ lives in me.” No sensation, emotion, thought or action is ours to build an ego story from. They belong to Christ: if you want to be freed from anxiety, say “always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also.” If what you can’t accept becomes Christ, there might be reason, in the end, to not only allow it, but be devoted to it. [bxA]

Turning the grace of emptiness into a virtue is quite a task. The way to do this is “learning to focus and direct intention and attention.” Focus attention and intention on sensation until thoughts of self cease: as it is written, “keep looking, but do not comprehend, keep listening but do not understand.” The way to do this is to learn the mechanics of bearing aversions and attractions. Christ became the true nature of all things seen and unseen, and half of that is terrifically unpleasant. He became strangers, the naked, the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. All of those often need more than an individual can give. He became sheep gates, light, bread and wine–things that his audience would have interacted with daily–and he did not become only those few things so that he, or God, could be accused of absence from everything else. Where is God? God is everywhere. No thought, sacred or secular, can say otherwise without proliferating suffering.

When you can finally do, instinctively, what you could never have done for yourself, Christ has come to live with you. Turning your attention toward what’s joyful without reasons for sadness being eliminated, Steeling yourself to sit the lessons of aversion, learning to let go of the temporary enjoyments of attraction, learning to use sensation to focus attention and intention, learning to pay attention to subtle variances in negative and positive sensation, to direct focus toward negative space in the body–all of these are signs of the presence of Christ.

The Trinity within becomes the mental manifestation of the invisible evolution of your consciousness. With the Father, you learn to observe ego without identifying with it. You learn to create without controlling, to be still in insecurity until the energy shifts, to be fascinated with the opportunities of vulnerability instead of fearing them. With the Son, you learn to choose compassion and reframing. You reparent yourself, and join in Christ’s recapitulation of all things. With the Spirit, your character flaws become your gifts: you turn the trauma responses of hypervigilance and impulsivity into deep presence and obedience. You see what motivates choice, action, and emotion, and can care for it.

Students who have the mind of Christ have been made aware of, and sufficiently freed from ego, attachment and craving–such that they have been rendered basically voluntary. They will have sat next to gluttony greed sloth sorrow lust wrath vanity and pride until the long term costs of following those thoughts exceeds the short term benefits. They will have sat next to self pity, shame, blame, remorse, rationalization, resentment, self-aggrandizement and entitlement until the limits of their effectiveness at meeting needs emerges. If they have an attraction response, their enjoyment of it is not clingy. If they have an aversion response, their disgust with it does not forestall learning. They have let go of security and control, faced fears and vulnerabilities, developed inner and outer hustle.

None of this is a great revelation. It’s just claiming the space that is your own incarnate wonkiness. But where self help, the help of others, solutions sought in prayer have all failed, this has succeeded: not permanently or perfectly, but in a way you those who do it can truly bank on.

The Pitfalls of the Higher Self, and why "The Name of Jesus" is the Solution

Quiet, if it is complete enough, is revelatory. But practitioners may not dig what it reveals: "Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Sorrow, Lust, Wrath, Vanity, Pride"--these are the bits that add up to the ego.  Fine and good--it's important to figure out what our relationship's going to be with our basic needs for food, shelter, security, affection.  And it's important to feel the anxious uselessness of our manipulations at need fulfillment.  Letting go will be easier if "waiting on providence and the Spirit" are the only paths that create serenity. [bxA]

Ego and God have the same name, so confusion is understandable.  The bits that God sends to clear up that confusion aren't fun: the dark night of the senses purifies our cravings for "snacks, stuff, sensuality, security."  And we get to the point where we can want them without imposing a timeline or expectations on fulfillment.  The dark night of the soul purifies our desire for things of god: consolations in prayer, ecclesial status, agendas around what's sacred--in the end they can be just the same flavor of "running the show" rebranded for the "sunday go to meeting crowd."  And there's one last dark night: the dark night of the self.  When elijah was in the cave, he kept saying "I have been very zealous for the things of God and they are seeking my life." God's response is "shush and listen."  

The "perilogismoi" or evil thoughts are insufficient to describe the pitfalls of the Christian life.  They describe initial purgation perfectly--and anyone who claims to be done with them puts himself in a dangerous situation indeed.  Incomplete struggle with the evil thoughts perfectly describes "why ego is an issue in the first place."

But there are also "pitfalls" of the Higher Self--and looking squarely at them is necessary for efficient use of the spirit's energy.  They are: blame, Shame, resentment, remorse, rationalization, self pity. self-aggrandizement, entitlement.  We see these everywhere: Jesus tells parables about folks hanging out at the Lord's vineyard "because no one has hired them"--that's resentment.  The apostles say "we have left everything to follow you, what will we have." That's a most-likely unmet expectation, ripe for creating resentment, indicative of entitlement.  The consolations we might have had, as newbies in spiritual life--they may now function as remorse-fuel. "I made a bunch of choices based on a prayer life that now looks much different, and those choices have only netted struggle."  Or "I had a sense of myself being a better bloke than I am.  Now that this path comes with no rewards, I have a real tendency to become a basket case."

What's to be done?  When you've finally "had it up to here" with your own bullshit: seek to become the kind of human who can bear with stress without asking that those stressors be eliminated.  Trying to accumulate enough comfort to offset chronic stress is a fruitless task anyway.  If God eliminates a stress, fine.  But if he doesn't and we become little monsters, what does that say about our attachments?

If you've seen your attachments and you can rouse appropriate regret for them, then there's only one apostolic solution. Only this: the name of Jesus--which is "a power mantra for letting go."  If you decide to let go, then regret it, chanting the name of the Lord is the solution.  It's "give to God the things that are within, and behold, all will be made clean for you" even if what's within makes you and me look like garbage piles with legs.  If "thinking about what could or should have been" is causing remorse, look intently at whatever's in front of you, then pronounce the name of Jesus.  Unmet needs may remain mental conundrums, but injecting "the sound of the name" will give you the feeling of vibrating sound to focus on while the contradictions gradually reduce ego and mature into paradoxes.  

And that, perhaps, is full of divine intention.  "Self" is just a thought.  Needs and desires are more real than self, but there's a real upper limit to how effective manipulation is in meeting them.  And in the end, if those tensions remain, it might be so that we'll see the uselessness of willful manipulation, so that we can see "give up self, do not judge" as the key to serenity.  So it's "the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.  You have only to carry it out."  Ultimately, it's not just the bad stuff we have to let go of.   Our teacher said "into your hands I commend my spirit,"--and that kind of surrender is our lot as well. For us who are called to everything, calm in the face of nothingness is surprisingly descriptive of the fruit of the spirit.  

As to what will get the job done, we'll only know when we become what we seek. The truth is silent:  To the pure of heart, all things are pure.  The eyes that see are not the same as  the ones that were told "keep looking, but do not understand."  The ears that hear are not the same ones that were told "keep listening, but do not comprehend."  When you know why I am lying, you will see it.  When you know how what I'm saying is lacking, you will hear.