Serving the Christ

Earlier this week as I was searching through a box for some insurance papers, I ran across an old journal. I placed it on a shelf with some other books without much thought. Later, when I was organizing my bookshelves, I decided to read some of the entries.

My first entry was dated 18 January 2014 and the last 21 March 2016. As I read through the pages, I recognized that many of the challenges I experience today are quite like those I wrote about 5 to 7 years ago.

My first reaction was “Damn! I am still dealing with some of the same stuff (not the word I used) that I was dealing with then. Have I not made any progress? What have I been doing? I should have done…! I should not have done…! My mind began to attack me trying to convince me that I am stuck.

Luckily, I quickly intervened on the mind chatter, settled into my meditation space, and went within to ask Spirit to tell me or show me more about the dynamics of why I continue to live out patterns of thought and behavior year after year.

I assumed that I would hear what I have heard many times before, that life is a spiral and that we revisit issues throughout our lives, each time from a different place in the evolution of our consciousness. And that we work through them as we are able from that point in our journey. That is what I expected to hear. That is not what I heard.

What I heard shook me, but also excited me. I heard –

You continue to experience the same challenges and issues in your life because you continue to try to satisfy an idea of self that is not who you are. You are continuing to serve a false image of self. That concept of you will never be pleased, will never have enough, will never truly know love, will never be at peace, and will never be free.

The True Self, the essence of who you are, the Christ of you delights in all things, lacks for nothing, knows only Love, is at peace eternally, and is already free. When you truly begin to embody and serve the Christ that you are, you will realize that none of the so-called issues of the past are present. There will be no need to revisit them. You will be free.

This is precisely what our elder brother and way shower, Jesus, has been trying to teach us for the past two millennia. It is what he exampled in his life and in his death.

As we begin to observe Holy Week this Sunday with Palm Sunday, we celebrate Jesus’ example of claiming his Divinity; standing firm in his resolve to speak and live his Truth; yielding to the greater will; and surrendering his physical life to dramatically demonstrate the power of releasing the idea that we are not in any way defined or limited by this human experience and showing us that we can at any time be resurrected in the conscious awareness of the Christ that each of us is. 

Our opportunity is to be aware of when and where we are serving a limited idea of self. Any time we are feeling fear in any of its many iterations, we are giving power to a false image of self. Any time we believe that we have been harmed by another; tell ourselves we have been offended; or hold on to resentment, guilt, or shame, we are giving power to that which is not our Divinity.

Each time we recognize that we are trying to satisfy an illusory self, we can yield. We can join with our elder brother, Jesus, and say, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” Not that we are giving over to something outside ourselves, but that we are choosing to let go of our personal agenda and calling upon our Divinity, our Christ, self to take charge, to assume our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The Christ consciousness grows stronger in us each time we remember to yield to it and allow it to have its life as us. In time, we will see that we become “new creatures in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17) no longer bound to an idea of self that can never be satisfied.

We will then celebrate the resurrection of the Christ in our consciousness. We will ascend beyond any idea of a self that is separate from IT.