We know that Jesus refused to use "this is my beloved son" as a pathway to control. Psalm 2 says "ask and I will bequeath you the nations...with a rod of iron you will break them"--and Jesus most likely intuited that "if fulfillment involves being violent, you're being bamboozled by ego." In his refusal to bow down to Satan in exchange for the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus knew viscerally what God was saying to him in Psalm 2's last line, "I have said 'you are my son,' it is I who have begotten you this day." Jesus would later say "The law, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled,"--and if Christ let go of his divine sonship, we'd be forgiven for guessing that, for us as well, "self-emptying" is a core aspect of that fulfillment.
We know that Jesus quotes psalm 22, which says "why have you forsaken me"--and that this psalm also says "I can count all my bones." So pain and trauma--just as much as blissful altered states of consciousness--can fragment a psyche, make a person hypersensitive to physical feeling. We know that, in order to let go of thought, Jesus used the tools for nervous system regulation that are built into Israel's God concept. Jesus breathed (Moses taught that the name of God was the spelling of a breath cycle.) Jesus listened (Elijah kept listening until fire, wind and earthquake--as well as his own pious self-story--went quiet.) Finally, Jesus felt the sensations of the body (Ezekiel's dry bones, where he prophesied to the flesh and the breath, this vision at least testified a need to troubleshoot our "self talk" which Jesus would have felt along with everyone else.)
We know that, at times, Jesus was so busy LIVING that "self" fell away. He kept looking, but didn't comprehend; he kept listening but didn't understand. This was dissociative, and dissociation became material for self-emptying. At times dissociation felt negative--Christ's disciples would describe him, quoting the psalm that said "I am a worm and not a man." At times it felt numb--Jesus died abandoned by his disciples, and the same mouth that prayed "you have taken away my friends" also said "I have born your trials, I am numb." But dissociation was never meant to remain negative--the suffering servant, perhaps more than others, would have appreciated the line "let me hear rejoicing and gladness, that the bones you have crushed may thrill." The SELF that grasped for control or security by labelling or examining sensory phenomena--this is something Jesus became increasingly able to let go of. Christ got to a point where he could invite Thomas to inflict pain on him by probing his wounds. That shows Christ was grounded in the body whether or not it was pleasant. And that letting go allowed him to handle his attractions and aversions with ever increasing ease, to accept the range of emotions involved in becoming everything.
Prayer was "watching and waiting" while focused on negative space. (This is why St. John Vianney could later say, of adoring the Eucharist, "I look at him, he looks at me.") Waiting for a "figure ground reversal"--the perspective shift when the background becomes foreground--this reveals that "God's sentient mystery lives in the world as well as in us." All of the metaphors about the bridegroom coming when you least expect him, or the master coming at a late hour to virgins with untrimmed wicks--these are exhortations to maintain attention and intention in a state of basic readiness for the moment when the internal energy shifts on its own. And not only that, the source of those energy shifts is "other, intelligent, transcendent." This is why it was God's doing when, on the cross, instead of being judgmental, Jesus said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Consciousness, before being surrendered, expands. The teacher saw himself in everything, and everything in himself. He was in bread, wine, light, vines, shepherds sheep gates. He was in the poor, the stranger, the hungry the homeless, the sick the imprisoned. This palpable sense of "consciousness outside himself" enabled him to abandon himself completely to the unknown--especially when the suffering of the cross led Jesus to pray "into your hands I commend my spirit"---to a father who had just been asked "why have you forsaken me." Jesus' trust was only as real as God's apparent absence was palpable.
We know that he experienced both bliss and pain in his body, and that he increasingly bucked preference and allowed "what is" to exist. Not only did he say both "I am troubled now, but what should I say?" and "it was for this hour that I came into the world." He also said "Let this cup pass from me" but also "Thy will be done." Preference and choice, being subject to judgment--these are all functions of an ego that we spend a lifetime becoming aware and letting go of. To endure the effects of an ego you've ceased to identify with is a very loving gesture. So Jesus taught "give up self, take up your cross, and follow" as well as "do not judge lest you be judged." But that didn't excuse him from self, and it doesn't excuse us. To us, regarding ego, Jesus said "If it is my will that he tarry till I return, what is that to you?" It's also to us that he says "come follow me," so we'd better, for Godsakes, get on with it.
For Jesus, prayer was not intellectual or driven by reason. It was intuitive, driven by realization at the prompting of the spirit. The teacher said "the Spirit blows where it wills, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." Long before the famous mystic (known simply as "the cloud author") spoke of surrendering everything to the cloud of unknowing, Jesus' prayer life was unafraid of "not knowing." Indeed, it goes deeper than that: believers felt safe saying things like, "I believe, help my unbelief" in part because Christ, within each individual and in the Christian community, took on the johanine moniker--he embodied the title of "one in your midst whom you do not know." It's "the unknown humble one" who, within us and in community, is capable of being, doing, praying when our groans are too deep for words. When Jesus says "return to me" and "remain in me" he's asking us to get grounded in the body enough to accept that, within each of us, unknowing is a persona, and for each of us, humility is acquaintance with that persona.
Finally, the disciples understood that Jesus relativizes identity. Paul said "I live, but not I, Christ lives in me." Regarding the difficulties of "letting go of attractions and accepting aversions," Paul reminds us that "sensations don't belong to us." Physical feelings belong to Christ, they aren't material for an ego story. The epistles say each believer is "always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also." When Theresa of Avila said "Christ has no hands but yours" the hearts of believers swelled with positive feeling. The scandal is this: we default to assuming believers will play host, bodily, to the bliss of charity. But believers' bodies are also the only place Christ can feel anger, anxiety, nervousness, and pain. Christ's sacrifice is perpetuated, not just in the heavenly inner life of some circular dance of trinitarian functions, but in our nerve endings themselves. The good news is contingent on acceptance: If we can allow the discomfort of it, we'll live, move and have our being in God. If we can let go of the bliss, allow prophesies and tongues and knowledge to cease; when love is everything that's left, everything seen and unseen will be Christ-made-present.
Egos masquerade behind many necessary roles. Each believer can rightly say "my name is Legion, for we are many." Martha was told "you are worried about many things." The adulterous woman's sins were, at worse, as numerous as her judges. Even when Peter, James and John wanted to make three tents at the Transfiguration, they did not know what they were saying. Christ says "there is need of only one thing" and again "sit here while I pray." By and by, the cloud of concerns will dissipate, and its host of fears with it: Christ alone is the prayer. Being, doing, knowing are completely one in him, and he can only be here, now, in all creation and in his people.
Oneness is Christ, and Christ is oneness. He must increase, we must decrease. It is worth the silencing of tongues, even when they're ours.
