What Easter taught me

I have always struggled with the concept of sacrifice as a key element of spiritual growth. It didn't make sense to me. Why on earth would God ...the Source of All, and All That Is ...care if I sacrificed something? Why would He-She want me to give up animal foods at Lent, or even more confusing, why all this business about blood sacrifices?

It's not just the whole Jesus on the cross thing. Bloody sacrifices of the most holy, of God's messengers, or of self (usually through the proxies of unwilling animals) were around thousands of years before Jesus the man arrived. Could so many seekers of god be so wrong?

After a period ...a few years of my early youth... of chewing over this profound mystery, and intently reading and re-reading stories from all cultures on blood sacrifice, bloody martyrs and really gross stories of deities cut into pieces and their parts sown together, and many terrifying nightmares, I finally decided that yes, they all had it wrong. With the wisdom of my 20 years, I sadly concluded that much of humanity was, and had been deluded by some inexplicable bloodlust into surrounding the Divine with death and blood. Given the state of the world, I resigned myself to the stupidity and callousness of most human beings ... or at least, of those in charge.

The Christian symbolism of the crucified Christ was particularly difficult to swallow. How could someone's death save my soul? What sort of God would conceive of such a thing, and what kind of person could find solace in the belief that someone had suffered so much for his or her sake? Christianity had it wrong, I decided. Jesus the man came as a messenger from God to remind us that we are souls inhabiting bodies, knowing full well that ungrateful humans would cause him to suffer. And his followers decided to make of that suffering something holy and meaningful.

Well, it wasn't meaningful to me, no matter how I looked at it..symbolically or literally. So I turned to Buddhism...it seemed much more reasonable and bloodless. But I could not let go of question...why blood? What is the mystery of blood sacrifice? and And why could I not let go of it?

Finally, I have an answer. Not the answer, because mysteries are always indefinable and somewhat chaotic, but after 50 years of searching, it's good enough for me. It allows me to make sense of this awful paradox: a compassionate God and a loving universe expressed through time and many cultures in the symbolism of blood sacrifice. It's an awkward resolution, because I crave clarity and certainty, and symbolism is neither clear nor stable. But it's uncertainty that I can live with.

My understanding is this, as far as I can put it into words. Like all mysteries, it is really beyond the grasp of language, so I can only tell you what I can.

Blood represents the material self.....the body. It is naturally and inherently sensual and self-absorbed, and therefore prone to seek its own gratification. Our minds, which are both in the body and also the soul, are always pulled two ways - towards the body and its gratifications, and towards the soul and spiritual development. Were it not so, were we instead 'built' to be either wholly physical or wholly spiritual, then we would not have free will. This two-way pull between the physical and the spiritual is good: it lets us experience being not-soul so that we can more fully experience being soul.

It's like light and dark. We could never experience light if we did not also experience dark. Just like in the photo I attached for you (Good skies in my neighbourhood!).

The soul enters the body in order to more fully experience itself, and to use the unique opportunities provide by the body to become more fully self-aware and to grow. In so doing, it 'forgets' itself as soul for a while, and either chooses to find the path back to god or not.

Again, it's a matter of free will. If one never chooses to evolve as soul, then one chooses to be only the physical, which dies. The way back to the godself (soul) and to God is the way to life (God is life...eternal life). But we are given more than one chance to make that choice and to take the necessary action. God doesn't force. God whispers and waits, with infinite patience. But we must always make a choice one way or another. The old 'good and evil' is really the choice between rejoining God, or not.

Now for the blood stuff.

If I choose the path of soul, I must overcome or put aside that which binds me firmly to the physical (body and physical mind). I must learn to put aside greed, pride, wanting to be superior to others, the desire for power over others, selfishness, dishonesty...all the things that serve only my physical existence. Instead, I must develop those qualities that will develop my soul: compassion, selflessness, love, patience, inner strength, wisdom, truth, courage etc.

In the early stages, it might be enough to just be a 'good' person. But if I wish to develop further, there comes a point at which I must make a commitment to become my soul self even as I inhabit my body. I must transcend the desires and cravings of the body, and give myself over to god as much as I can.

Jesus the man showed the way. He showed me that if I have the courage and willingness to sacrifice my material self (and all its selfish pleasures, cravings and fears) for the sake of my soul (God in me), I can be spiritually reborn as a soul in the world. I need no longer fear death, for I am already a living soul here on earth, knowing the god in me and the me in god.

It's not a matter of despising or rejecting the body. Rather, it is the decision to recognise that I am a part of god, one particular expression of god; that I have no real existence outside of god. With it comes the realisation that the body is made to serve the soul and god. My body is the temple in which this part of god (me) has come to know itself more fully, and through which god can express itself. To become a vehicle for god on earth, I must crucify those gratifications and desires of the body (materiality) that draw me away from the godself. I transcend the physical, even as I inhabit it. I do this not to reject the physical, but in order to realise and express through action my soul self which is part of god.

In my youth, I mistook the idea of transcendence for total disregard for the body. Now I understand that the body is the instrument, the path through which I can transcend the material. It serves me well, and I try to honour it as the temple of my soul - of God in me - and through it, I let God act in the earth, bringing love, compassion, joy, service to others, and hope.

It is not an easy path, and one that I find myself wandering from again and again, but it is a path that every soul must either choose to take or not, in whatever form. It requires that I sacrifice the material self in favour of the soul self. That which binds me to the body is crucified so that the soul can arise, unfettered, and live here on earth. When that has happened, death is nothing at all.