Confine Yourself to Infinite Life
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
John 15:1-12
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
Responsive Reading - Psalm 139:7-10
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
Read the written message below with music videos
Sometimes we think that accepting our current situation (or life’s “confines”) is a limiting proposal, but our sages tell us that our inner light already has the freedom and fulfillment that we are looking for. Therefore, finding it in our present situations opens our inner door, which opens our outer. Often, we are so caught up in how we want things to be, or this feeling of lack or that, that we never truly start to turn and enjoy the freedom of the naturalness of our spirit, one with the Spirit. Indeed, the Great Spirit is often misunderstood to be something distant from us, but as Christ tried to teach us (like Krishna, like the Buddha), God is within us, and we should remain in this infinity of God beyond words, instead of always “branching out” into false, stilted living. This means knowing ourselves as Christ knew our true selves and himself to be, as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” inherent in all things as the light of being, living, and consciousness.
On the spiritual journey, we can get caught up in the process of getting somewhere, whether we call it regeneration, or healing, or growth. And yet, our greatest sages tell us that this type of thinking is actually antithetical to the fulfillment of the Spirit in our thinking, because it is already fully present, any need to grow is a delusion and stems from worry. Worry in itself comes from a part of our thinking that isn’t quite yet sure that we are one with the Divine, sometimes not even hearing the core message of so many traditions in the world because our religiosity often masks it: our light is from God, every good and living thing is one with the Life, the Truth, and the Way, known by many names.
Christ tries to teach this in our reading today with his wonderful metaphor, albeit with a caveat. He says that we should remain in him as a branch of him, the True Vine, because otherwise we will die, naturally. What we have tended to miss in this teaching is that he wasn’t talking about having to believe in a historical person. We often make it about the person of Jesus, whereas he himself was repeatedly telling us that he is the full expression of Divinity in everything (i.e., the Way, the Truth, and the Life). He even says that of himself he can do nothing and that he only does what the Father does.
When Jesus spoke, it was as an expression of God, not limited to one human body. In fact, he spoke as what he had come to know himself to be, one with all Life and Truth. He was no longer caught up in silly differentiations of whether he was a reincarnation of this prophet or that, he knew and he knows himself to be the very light that shines through the prophets and each of us. And he wanted us to know that as well, about ourselves! He said to remain in him as he remains in us.
How profound. In other words, he knew that a lot of our thinking and behaving stems from a place not connected to the True Vine of Being, the Great I Am that I Am. And he was naturally cautioning us that centering in a place of limited thinking and behaving will eventually be wiped away because that isn’t our true Self. Like the Buddha, he cautioned against identifying with passing form and our addictive thinking and feeling, because that is the root of suffering and must eventually come to an end. This was to limit our own suffering as well as that of others, and more so, to empower our natural heavenly nature into full spring.
The great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, wrote that in his visions of heaven, human beings and other life forms (now called angels) had come to know that all their gifts of being and expression came from Divinity, the Divine Love and Wisdom of the Great Spirit. This was a root knowledge that allowed them to find their inner angelic expressions and, thus, live in their own community within our shared heavenliness now made manifest in the afterlife. Meaning that although the infinity of God is at our core (expressed as the heavenly sun and moon in the afterlife, among other things), our personal expressions are always a specific representation of that Divinity, situated in heaven based on its qualities relative to the rest of heaven. We are each one with the infinite but our expressions are always seemingly finite in time.
All that to say, we can’t escape the limited nature of our expressions and surroundings, but in truth, we can transcend them. Meaning, like the angels, we can centre in our knowledge that our life is sourced by something beyond limitations. In fact, our awareness of our limited and changing circumstances is a light that we all share, beyond limit and change. Open, like a sanctuary and like a child’s mind. Whether we’re talking about a cockroach or a human, our minds arise before an open consciousness. Seeing this more and more fully allows us to love others as ourselves… because they are.
The problem lies in living “beyond the vine,” which can’t be said to be living at all. Each of us is called to explore what this might mean for ourselves. But what I can say is that our pet “sins” are often just a symptom of our lack of what Swedenborg might call “angelic thinking” about things. Sometimes we treat the teachings of Christ and other saints and sages like ignored and underappreciated pets, to be played with on a rainy day but not worth serious attention. But as Christ said, “Why say ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I have told you to do?” He’s calling out the Christians, the Mystics, the Religious, and the Scientists, to live up to our greatest ideas, to allow God to trim the detritus. To not look past the deeper wisdom of whatever we have seen the truth in, but to empower it in our living and thinking so that we can empower Being. Because at the end of the day, the Truth is beyond words, more like the very vine of life in which we should always remain.
Peace is you,
Cory