Risen in Christ

In his book, Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle says, “Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” Easter presents us with an opportunity to realize this truth in an expanded and meaningful way through the example of our brother and way shower, Jesus.

It doesn’t matter whether we believe that Jesus’ physical body was resurrected, or that he animated what Unity cofounder Charles Fillmore referred to as the light body, or that the stories of his appearances after his death were apparitions, or none of the foregoing. What matters is that we recognize the central message of the story – Eternal Life.

We will begin to comprehend eternal life when we realize that what would appear to be evidence of the death, even death of the physical body, as in the story of Jesus on the cross, is not death at all but simply the transmutation of energy from one form to another. Nothing dies. Even the physical body is eternal. Granted it does not maintain the same structure, but the energy which comprises the physical body does not die; it changes form.

We celebrate the resurrection because we believe that through the resurrection Jesus dramatically demonstrated the central message of Easter – Life is Eternal. Through the resurrection Jesus proved to his followers, all of us, that death is not real. Only Life is real and eternal. And, the Life that is real is the animating, vitalizing, energetic Essence that imbues all creation.

That which we call death is a name we assign to an experience that occurs at a particular point in time and space at which a transition takes place. In a person, this transition is a shift in the awareness of the individuated God-Essence from focus through a body back to a constant awareness of unity in God.

In Spirit, the concept of death is meaningless. Life, another name for ‘God’ does not die. It is constantly moving, expanding and evolving. What we think of as the body is a temporary vessel through which a specific individuated essence of Life/God expresses for a period of time. The essence of Life/God is never contained within a human body or any physical form. Life/God animates a body, but is never defined by it.

When we awaken to the reality of Eternal Life, the essential message of Easter, we are “saved.” We are saved from the “hell” that we create in our own minds because of the fear of death and our mistaken belief that we can be and somehow are separate from Life/God. We are free when we surrender to the Eternal Life that expresses in its fullness in every moment and trust that even though it may appear to us that something has died, that in truth it is only in a state of transition, whether it is the body, a relationship, a job, a hope or a dream.

Eternal Life expresses in its complete essence in every moment. The “Now” is the only moment in which Life can exist in our human awareness. If we are bound, in our minds, to the dream of a past or the hope of a future, we open ourselves to the suffering stimulated by our belief that something is absent from our lives now. This longing for a different past or attachment to a future dream is what the Buddha called “dukkha” and what we call “hell.” Both represent states of mind created by attachment to the things of the world. When we release our attachment we set ourselves free, thus we are “saved.”

We follow Jesus in the way of the crucifixion and resurrection every time we are willing to let go of pain and resentment of the past and our longing for a specific future, and instead surrender to the Eternal Life that is present in each moment. Each time we connect with, accept and allow the Life that is moving in us, through us, as us, and all creation in each and every moment, we are “saved,” and we are resurrected in the awareness of new life. That is the “salvation” promised by the crucifixion and the resurrection of our way shower Jesus.

I encourage us to allow today to be a day of “salvation” for us all. Let today be the day we free ourselves from the “hell” of our own making by surrendering to the Life that is the only enduring truth. Let us allow the pain and resentments from the past and attachments to a future to “die” away and welcome transformation.

On Sunday, as we observe Easter, let it be a day of celebration, not just in gratitude for our master teacher Jesus and his demonstrations, but for ourselves as well. Let us rise in the conscious awareness of Eternal Life as our very life. Accept the power of that Life expressing in and as every moment. Honor each moment as an opportunity to embrace our own resurrection and boldly declare, “I am risen in Christ. The awareness of Christ is risen in my heart and mind. I am free.”