Ascension
John 16: 24-33
Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray
from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be
fulfilled.
All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But
the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will
tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full,
knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On
that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask
the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you
have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the
Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.
I leave the sense world again and return to the
world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”
Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking
in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed
to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This
makes us believe that you came from God.”
Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your
heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be
scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I
am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.
Ascension
May 29, June 1, 2014
John 16: 24 – 33
At night we may be troubled
with bad dreams. But in the morning we rise. Our day-waking consciousness
overcomes the dream state and we understand that what troubled us was only a
dream.
Our earthly lives can have
something of the quality of a dream. We are occupied within our lives and are
immersed in them. We may even be troubled by the occasional or even recurring
‘nightmare’ situation. But we can make efforts to awaken, to rise beyond our
immersion in the ordinary dreamy consciousness in life.
Christ lived the nightmare.
He suffered and died. He rose on the third day. And he rose even further –and
descended even deeper— at His Ascension. For at His ascension, His
consciousness, His Life, spread out over the whole world. The unawakened mind
tends to make war on the way things are.[1]
Christ has aligned Himself with the world, in loving acceptance of what is.
In our moments of earnest
prayer, we rise toward Christ, who stands at peace with the world. ‘Pray from the heart and it will be given to
your heart, He says. Feel my power in your heart….so that you may find peace’. [2]Only
by wakening to a higher level of awareness can we, like Christ, embrace what is, in love and with courage. We
can recognize that our own lives are enmeshed ultimately with the life of the
whole world; and that only through Christ’s power of transformation can the
nightmare be overcome.
