Seeing Christ is Being Christ

. . . and it's easier than it looks, no pun intended

In his book No Death, No Fear, Thich Nhat Hanh includes a beautiful meditation on Jesus Christ. In it, he asks where was Christ before Jesus was born? Where was Christ after Jesus was executed? Where is Christ now?

Jesus Christ is still manifesting in many thousands of ways. He is manifesting himself all around you . . . We need to be alert in order to recognize his manifestations. If you are not mindful or attentive, you will miss his manifestations . . . as a flower, as a drop of water, as a bird song or as a child playing in the grass (93-94).

We must be careful, Hanh writes, not to miss these manifestations or we will forget that we are Christ.

Of course, Thich Nhat Hanh writes as a Buddhist. His teaching is grounded in Buddhist thought and tradition. But I find it helpful nonetheless. There is a clarity to his insight that is practical and reassuring. Tara Singh said somewhere, Tomorrow I will teach from the Koran and you will all leave.

The Truth does not hide in this or that form of truth and it can be revealed in any of them.

As I write - at this moment - I gaze out the window at the birch tree just past the hemlocks. Its flowers are turning yellow and fluttering to the ground. The ones that remain tremble in the morning breeze. It is mid-October, fall, and evidence of change, of ending - its inevitability - is everywhere.

Am I looking at a tree or am I looking at Christ?

My answer - as a student of A Course in Miracles - is that it depends. If I am looking with the Holy Spirit, who sees beyond form and therefore does not render all things into this and that, better and worse, bigger and smaller, then I am seeing Christ.

But if I am looking with the ego - which seeks only confirmation of separation and death - then I am seeing a tree whose leaves are dying in anticipation of the long dark and frigid days of winter and the sorrow I feel has to do with my own death and the deaths of those I love.

In an important sense, A Course in Miracles invites us to take a further step than to merely perceive Christ in what is external. That is a beautiful experience - a holy and sacred experience indeed, as is the Holy Spirit’s wont - but it is not, on its own, the experience of Oneness to which the Course gently leads us.

Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept while you perceive a self that interacts with evil, and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will remain still quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself (T-31.V.15:1-5).

When I name the tree at which my physical eyes look - when I describe its appearance, yoke it to a season and hint at an emotional content for the gestalt - then I am dealing in concepts and images. Please see that there is no crime in this: it can be a very loving gesture. It can be very fruitful.

Yet there is a stage where the external ceases to hold any value because it is merely the screen upon which the movie plays. And the movie - the writer, the director, all of it - is internal. We don’t get excited about screens; we get excited about the pictorial narrative projected onto them.

When we realize that we are merely gazing at our own projection, then we can turn our attention within - to the observer, the narrator, the creator. We can see beyond Holy Spirit or ego to Christ (or Buddha).

There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source (W-pI.132.5:1-3).

Christ is an idea. It reflects innocence and clarity; it reflects unity with Creation and Creator. Yet that to which it points has neither beginning nor end. Each image of beauty and sacredness that we perceive is but a shadow of what we are in truth. It is a shadow of what God is.

If we give attention in a non-dramatic, sustainable way to life - to the birch tree in fall, to the birch tree in spring - then we will begin to see a process - a vast process - that transcends its various parts, not too mention definition. It cannot be objectified.

This vastness transcends us. We are not apart from it. But there are limits to our powers of observation; our physical senses and cognitive abilities bring forth a world, not the world. Ultimately, life and the cosmos transcend our capacity for expression and comprehension. In this, they resemble - indeed, becomes coherent with - God, as the beautiful prayer at the end of Lesson 163 makes clear.

We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life (W-pI.163.9:2-4).

We are called in this world merely to give ourselves to this simple idea: that freed of the ego's concepts, and the drives and appetites those concepts beget, there is nothing but the Peace of Christ in fulsome radiance everywhere. What we call it or how we describe it is always just an after-the-fact gloss. What matters is that is given, and that we give ourselves to it accordingly.

Love,
Sean