The Consciousness of Christ

By self-surrender to a Triune God, Jesus anted up to the emptiness and impermanence of things. He waited, watched and prayed; he healed, eschewed judgment, gave up self because a transcendent, loving Other waited in the abyss. Jesus embraced self-emptying, even when kenosis was a cross, painful enough to make that "other" seem absent--and he did it because "living in the body free of ego, sin, attachment and craving" was possible. When we've ceased to judge, given up self, on the other side of a perspective flip, we will know the answer to how and why he did it. [bxA]

Tradition said to the Lord, "Hear O Israel," and it made, of his consciousness, an empty echo chamber filled with paradox. Jesus' heart was empty, we know that from the lance, the water and the blood. History tells us, when the Roman General Pompeii sacked Jerusalem, though he expected to find the inner chamber of Israel's temple full of riches, the Holy of holies was empty too. So when Paul says "we have the mind of Christ"--defining that involves paying dues to stillness, emptiness, humility, contemplation, obedience. Christ emptied himself--and in light of sayings like "all flesh is like the grass" it seemed, simply, to be cooperating with the impermanence of things. We're here to ask "how might we have the mind of Christ?" And--with deep reverence for the beauties of being, thinking, doing-- if we end anywhere other than serene silence, we end in error.

Responding generously to "Hear, O Israel" involves a discipline later tradition calls "recollection." Defined as "the in-gathering of the senses," recollection involves the disciplines of breathing, listening and feeling: the very things a modern psychologist would recommend to ground those having a panic attack. Whatever the goodness of recollection and modern psychology, we'd be remiss to forget: nervous system regulation and the wherewithal for radical grounding in the body are the foundation of Israel’s God concept.

• “Breathe” is the first command. People might disagree: spiritual materialists would say Moses saw a creosote bush aflame. Mystics would say Moses had a non-dual experience of the “light body” that was his own nervous system. No matter which is true, Moses emerged having heard the sound of a breath cycle, “YHWH,” and called it God’s name. 
• “Listen” is the second command. Isaiah took this seriously, saying “morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as one who is taught.” In his cave, Elijah had to endure earthquake, wind and fire, had to give up his pious sense of identity over and over--in the end, though, he heard the sound of "kol damamah daqah" the sound of sheer silence. 
• "Feel” is the third command. Psalm 22 says “I can feel all my bones” and Ezekiel was told to prophesy to dry bones, first about flesh, then breath. 

These three commands are an entry point for the law, the prophets and the psalms. But a question remains--how did Jesus render his identity malleable enough to undertake any of this? He did it by using the Jewish ideas of "Father, Son and Spirit"--not to justify himself, but to call forth a capacity for living with things as they are. This meant that the trinity was, primarily, an inner reality, and that this 3 person deity was an "inner other" who, when he came close, augmented the devotees emotional toolkit.

From the Father, Jesus learned equanimity. Jesus learned to wait while desire and fulfillment, stimulus and response detached from each other. He learned to watch till the abyss blinked first. He felt the difference between listening to noise and listening for silence. In life's illogical spaces, he learned to wait patiently for the realizations of intuition. He sat at the feet of aversion and attraction: letting go of what was pleasurable, holding fast through what was painful, until the lessons of both became apparent. It was Jesus' "life with the father" that made him see all of this, and having seen, unseeing was impossible.

To the Father, the Lord said said "I want to see," and though he was looking for righteousness, he saw bloodshed. But what Christ beheld was also, always, the beholder. (If it were not so, why would St. John Vianney later say of Eucharistic Adoration "I look at him, he looks at me.") When Jesus looked intently, he saw himself in everyone and everything, and vice versa. In strangers, the hungry, the homeless, the poor, the naked, he saw his own consciousness gazing back at him. Christ sought the Father in his surroundings--and in bread, wine, sheep gates, light, clear paths and grapevines, a transcendence whose consciousness felt like his own seemed to be seeking him also. The "otherness" of the abyss would blink and then disappear. All of this rendered Christ gentle, made Jesus want to find the lost. Whether or not it was pleasant, Christ couldn't unsee what he'd seen.

It's in relation to the Father that Jesus saw that he could become nobody and still manage to breathe, listen, feel, and love. He gave up his "will to avoid discomfort," accepted the father's call to an "everything" that included suffering. He surrendered his spirit to a Father who seemed absent when pain and the limits of energy rendered spiritual work and bearing suffering mutually exclusive. Without control or security, Christ bore suffering in the absence of certainty that he was capable of it. He gave up his physical form, with only prophetic clues that the Son of Man would rise.

And in relation to the Father, he learned that he couldn't, and didn't have to make it happen: all that is written in the law, the prophets and the psalms was coming to pass, whether he wished it to or not. Because it was for "this hour" that he'd come into the world, he had long learned not to say "save me from this hour--" but instead, said "Father, glorify your name." He knew that his deeds of power could be done apart from the faith of the crowds, and that the sign of Jonah meant, primarily, that he himself would spend three days in the heart of the earth.

As he grew in his understanding of divine sonship, Jesus saw all that is distant and impersonal become immanent. Assimilation of divine sonship was measured in "how personally you hear the messages of scripture."

• For Jesus, in the Scriptures, time collapses into now. (If it were not so, why would St. Paul later say "Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.) Unless they led to remembrance of God's goodness or hope, past and future were useless. Passover remembrance was useless unless it made the past present. "Why is this night different from all other nights?" 
• For Jesus, all places were here, and all distance was the distance between the way things were, and our acceptance of it. (If it were not so, why would the psalmist have said "I lift my eyes to the mountains: from where shall come my help? My help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.) It didn't matter that the Lord was in his temple in Jerusalem if the body wasn't "the gate of heaven and the house of God" to begin with.
• For Jesus, and in the scriptures, all potential was realized, and must be realized. This wasn't all good. (If it were not so, why would Christ, who knew no sin, have become sin?) For every three youths whose suffering lead to "one who looked like a God," there had to be a Nebuchadnezzar. And those voices were, somehow, parts of Jesus' psyche. In this way, Jesus cathected the grace of sacred history, and used its evil as material for shadow work in preparation for bearing the great suffering of the cross. 
• For Jesus, in the Scriptures, all agency was personal. The question "whom shall I send" didn't matter if the answer was "someone else." It only mattered to the extent that the answer was "here I am, send me." 
• In the scriptures, all dualism collapsed into sameness. (If it were not so, why would Laban and Bethuel have said "The thing comes from the Lord. We cannot speak to you bad or good.") Psalm 139 says "if I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there." After a while it didn't matter whether it was height or depth we're talking about, but only being with the Lord. 
• For Jesus, in the scriptures, links between cause and effect were shaken. The Galileans whose blood pilate mixed with their sacrifices were not worse sinners than others. The man born blind wasn't a terrific sinner, nor were his parents, to merit blindness.  Jesus essentially said "Spend more time thinking about repentance and less time thinking about cause.  Spend more time thinking about God's glory, less time thinking about blame." 
• In the scriptures, for Jesus, all desire collapsed into need, and it completely undermined the utility of power and control.  (If it were not so, why would Jesus have said "I thirst"?) Jesus hoped to free us from worry: "This very day your life will be required of you" he said, "And the things you have laid up, whose will they be?" And again "do not say 'what are we to eat, and what are we to drink. Your Father knows that you need these things." Just as they did with Christ, the collapses of time, place, agency, potential, dualism cause and desire serve to make each of us, personally, ready to live in the now, reconciled to the past and willingly prepared for what was to come.

As he became increasingly conscious of the spirit, Jesus also grew in suffering. Both suffering and bliss made him hyperaware. Action was motivated by thought. Freedom on the level of action entails paying attention to thought. Thought was motivated by emotion. Freedom on the level of thought entails paying attention to emotion. Emotion was motivated by sensation. Freedom on the level of emotion involves paying attention to sensation. Sensation was motivated by energy. Freedom on the level of sensation involves paying attention to energy. Energy is something we judge. Freedom on the level of energy involves giving up self and not judging.