Born Again, and Again
The long Christian Easter season is now over, and everyone is where they should be. God and Jesus are in Heaven, the rest of us are down here. Remember, Jesus was heaven incarnate, the son of God. He was a native of the heavenly realms that took a tour of duty in our perilous territory. He was not an explorer, but more like a gardener that had to tame some wild vines. Or so the story goes.
When I think of resurrection, I imagine shining lights, trumpet calls, and gathered crowds gasping below. Logically thinking about it tarnishes the majesty. To be brought back to life you had to live in the first place. You die, and only then can you finally be resurrected. Resurrection is therapy for dead people.
Death is not a big mystery. Mysterious beliefs aside, dying appears to be pretty straightforward. We see things die every day. Flowers, plants, pets, cars, and computers kick the bucket all the time. We even curse dead batteries and blown bulbs. These are things we lose, so we lament.
Our own death is a serious condition. Somehow it is different from a wilting bouquet or a fly on the windowsill, it seems much bigger in scope. This is also a straightforward appearance. We are generally selfish, and hate to lose things. Losing our self makes all the efforts of keeping possessions moot. Because of this fear, the promise of resurrection, going to heaven, or living forever is very seductive.
The real problem is that we TRY to live, and end up dying after years of dodging it. We are merely attempting to live half-heartedly without seriously thinking about death. Some even make a life out of delaying death. Death avoidance may be genetically developed to give us an evolutionary advantage, but that does not excuse an irrational fear of it.
The dance of life and death is the occupation of a soul, or a self. Once this fundamental mirage is seen as the hollow appearance it is, you are not only finished with death, you are finished with living too. At least, in the narrow sense you used to live and die. This is a different kind of resurrection, or living again.
From the perspective of selflessness, there is only big-life and the concept of you as a person pales in comparison. There is no escaping big-life, because you are part and parcel of it. Our job is to quit pulling ourselves out of big-life and snap back into the flow. Great death is seeing how distracting, vain and fruitless those efforts really are. Living a particular life is lost in living big-life. You stop trying immediately. The freedom from your self-made prison is the restoration of your native clarity. This is resurrection. Only when you are free of trying to live can you actually accept big-life. You never died, you just thought you had.