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Essays on Discover the Power Within You
The Meaning of Easter
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[Essays on Discover the Power Within You] [Unity
on the Web Home Page]
Chapter 9
The Meaning of Easter
"The Greatest Parable"
Over the past two thousand years, millions of individuals have studied
the recorded words and deeds of Jesus Christ, and yet we have no consensus
about what it all means. Was he God, or man, or both? Are we like him,
or was he a special case that we can never completely imitate?
He utterly transformed the world forever. He innoculated the literal-minded
masses with the microbe of metaphor. We live in a world of symbology because
of him.
By his example, we have been taught to transform our thinking.
He destroyed and replaced the complacent relation to God of the spiritual
thinkers of his day. Surely he destroyed and rebuilt the temple of the
Lord in the three days of his death and resurrection.
What does this resurrection mean? To some, it is the proof of God's
ability to resurrect a physical body after death - but usually those people
who are so literal minded also believe that Jesus was by nature different
from any other man who has ever lived, so it is not proof after all.
To truly understand Christ's message, we must use Christ's method. His
method is to speak in parables. Each story is a picture that conveys an
inner meaning. Certainly, if he forsaw and directed his own death and resurrection,
he planned it as the greatest parable of all.
I believe that Jesus came to teach us how to change. He was born into
a highly structured society that had great spiritual pride, and yet had
been humbled by the Romans, who were much more primitive spiritually.
By his condemnation, death, and resurrection, he showed us the example
of our own process of change. Through fear, we surrender the inner understanding
to the outer ego, and try to kill it. Yet the idea that animates this change,
the principle, lives on.
We identify so much with our thoughts and their outward expression,
that we get confused. We think "If I change what I think, then I will no
longer be me."
Jesus, whose name means "conqueror", wants to show us that the real
self continues through the outer change. To change what I think does not
change who I am. When the outer consciousness asks us, "are you the Christ?",
the inner spirit that integrates and loves the total self, we can answer
with Jesus, "I Am".
[Forward to What is Reincarnation?]
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