Fair enough: but let's dig deeper. [bxA] If "the Christ of stillness" is the identity that's to be given its head. the rest of the identities must be still. In Matthew's gospel, two blind men go to Jesus and say "Son of David, have mercy on us!" Jesus says "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" If you're able to hear it, Jesus is implying a different question. "Do you you believe that I am able to do this" is also asking "have you given up doing it for yourselves?"
So, to tug at strains of thought contained in the last post: we can imagine Legion going home at Jesus' request, only to find "the gratitude he was called to" in short supply. Scripture is sympathetic--it says Legion "proclaimed Christ in the Decapolis" but it was most likely what the modern age calls "trauma dumping:" Christ had unsettled his identity, and relating to Christ becomes a way of answering the "WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED" question. It probably overtaxed even those who loved him the most: busy lives can give only so much time to "verbally hashing out journeys of becoming." The psalmsist says "friends and family you have taken away, my one companion is darkness"--and how lonely it must have been to fulfill that bit of the scripture.
To Christ, the demoniac had said "my name is Legion, for we are many." Post healing, we can imagine the flood of resentment, as his many, old identities reveal their fruitlessness. We can imagine the gradual discovery of "stores of trauma" which, since the man no longer gashed himself with rocks, he was now impelled to feel. And underneath the pain, we can imagine a store of nervous energy. And we can imagine the slow work of befriending that energy through to its gradual reframing: anxiety, see, is just the Spirit, being judged by ego instead of physically felt. The trouble is, burning alive from within is intense. Just as Elijah had a rough time getting to the point where he could bear hearing "the sound of everything"--he had to shed an identity in the doing of it--we can perhaps imagine that Legion had to do the same thing on the level of sensation. It's entirely plausible that "Feel everything, don't judge" became, with practice, possible for longer and longer stretches.
At the risk of redundancy, let's restate something quickly that--if we're making useful but baseless assumptions anyway--could also have possibly been true: the Jewish God concept is a method of nervous system regulation, and Jesus' "new spin on an old classic" was this: he used it to accept the divine lesson in painful emotions and sensations, instead of just in joy.
We've said two things, let's break them down. "The Jewish God concept is a method of nervous system regulation." Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety attacks to breathe in and out. God's name is YHWH: some scholars think that is a breath cycle, transliterated. In other words, God revealed his name when Moses was still and quiet enough to hear his own breath. Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety to name 5 things they can hear. Deuteronomy would codify "Hear O Israel" into a profession of faith. Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety attacks to name 4 things they can feel. Ezekiel was "brought to a field of dry bones"--which, for our purposes, could well have been simply "an invitation to feel deeply the sensations of his own body." Psalm 22 says "I can feel all my bones" so we know that pain, in particular, can cause hyperawareness. Lastly, any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety to pick a word and lightly hum or say it in times of stress. Mantra fills the body with "the feeling of sound." When the apostles talk about being "in the name of Jesus" it may well have pointed to an apostolic practice of "repetitively praying Jesus' name"--and doing it, not only till nervousness subsides, but until the The Name showed itself to be bigger than the one pronouncing it. As was said to the Colossians, "[Jesus] is before all else that is, and in him all things hold together...he is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead." If scholars disagree, maybe argue that "Breathe, Listen, Feel, Mantra" isn't a "method for nervous system regulation" built into a god concept, it is perhaps time to listen, instead, to the body itself. We remember the scriptures that said "the spirit, the water and the blood, these three agree."
If the Transfiguration was "Jesus mining bliss for divine lessons," we know that at some point, he began to intuit that pain contained teachings as well. Remember when Jesus said "I am troubled now, but what can I say 'Father, save me from this hour?' It is for this hour that I came into the world. 'Father, Glorify your name!'" We know that, at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept. We remember that, in Gethsemani, Jesus said "my soul is sorrowful, even unto death."
But he also said "sit here while I pray" and it brings us back to a beginning of sorts. If, in the end, the Christ within is quiet and still, he is perceivable only by becoming quiet and still ourselves. The profound surprise is this: in perhaps blinding realization, we see that he has felt, within us, what we couldn't bear to feel ourselves. He's the one who traverses the via dolorosa of our own spine, to be crucified at "the place of the skull." (The skull in question simply happens, fortunately or unfortunately, to be our own.) And it simply makes the point eloquently: we can leave the tempting "case of the 'poor me's" alone. Pain isn't ours, it belongs to Christ. Bliss isn't ours, it belongs to Christ. (It is written "always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also.) We have become willing to feel everything, and it has heightened our tolerance. In the same place the scripture says "we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed." Whether or not we enjoy it, we know this to be true.
The psalm known by latin enthusiasts as the "Te Deum" says: "Not to us, Lord, but to your name give the glory." In our flesh, our nervous systems themselves, we see God. In accepting that pain and pleasure are not two, that life and death are one, the Christ whose name we've taken for a "walking around mantra" has given us something we simply had to stop attempting to securing for ourselves. And this is what Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners, reveals for our eyes to see, for our ears to hear: Acceptance--blessed acceptance of everything, from which our egos once turned their faces. Thanks be to God, who gave Christ alone the victory while, in our own flesh, we found quiet stillness.
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