The Journey to Resurrection

In this Lenten season, we are given the opportunity to examine our lives, to release that which no longer serves our highest good and embrace the journey toward spiritual awakening. The illumination of our individual consciousness can genuinely be called our resurrection. We are releasing the past and embracing the eternal present; we are relinquishing our limited identity in favor of our Christ self.

In chapter four of A Course in Miracles, Jesus asks us to let the journey to the cross be the last useless journey and to join him in the resurrection. This is the moment when we can give up our suffering and our necessity for sacrifice. We learn to accept only joyous lessons into our lives and allow our holy minds to be resurrected from the focus on separation and death.

In my opinion, the greatest error we have made in our religious past was to focus on the crucifixion as a necessary evil in obtaining the experience of resurrection. This was not the message Jesus came to teach us. He came to demonstrate that there is no death, the child of God is eternal, and the Christ within can regenerate the body according to the direction of the soul.

Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Romans 8:11 KJV.)

The whole focus of the Lenten season is to release that which has held us in bondage to the ego and allow the spirit of God within us to raise us up as new creations. We are evolving in spirit, soul and body on a continuous basis. What our spiritual practice will afford us is a quickening of this process, a healing of our bodies and our minds, in short, our own resurrection.

The whole process is one of laying down our separate and limited identity, the “Adam” personality, and taking on the truth of our being, the Christ. Paul spoke of this to the disciples of Jesus in Corinth when he said, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”  (1 Cor. 15:20-22 KJV.)

This is one of the clearest indications that Jesus was just the first to undergo the complete resurrection of his body, mind and soul into the perfect manifestation of his spiritual nature; but he was certainly not to be the last. It also demonstrates that when we live by our “Adam” or separate self we will be dead to our spiritual reality; but when we live by our Christ self, resurrection or spiritual awakening is certain.

Lent has become a time when we can rededicate ourselves to the spiritual path, relinquish the things which do not serve our higher consciousness and emerge at Eastertime a happier and more enlightened person. It perhaps began with the worship of the one we call Jesus; but for many of us it has now evolved into the recognition of the Christ within and acceptance of our shared spiritual identity in God. This means we can joyfully skip the crucifixion this time around and journey straight into the awakening of the resurrection.

Have a Happy Journey my Friends.

Always yours in Christ Consciousness,

Rev. Tony