Allow Yourself to be Lifted by Your Greater Nature
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Luke 10:25-37
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
John 6:37-39 (Responsive Reading)
“All those the Father gives me will come to me,
and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will
but to do the will of him who sent me.
And this is the will of him who sent me,
that I shall lose none of all those he has given me,
but raise them up at the last day.
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son
and believes in him shall have eternal life,
and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Read the written message below with music videos
We often hear Jesus’ words, “Do this and you will live,” and take it as a future promise. But like many sages across traditions, he was speaking actively – that we can truly live today if we love our neighbours and love Divinity with everything we have. How do we love both God (or whatever you want to call the Creator Spirit) with everything, as well as love our neighbours? Sometimes it takes quite a bit of strength and patience to love our neighbours! Well, this hinges on what the scriptures mean by “neighbour” (and “God”) and if there actually is a separation between Divinity and the reality of who and what our “neighbours” are. Perhaps these are also synonymous with finding the naturalness of life, what some call finding regeneration, resurrection, and rebirth, escaping our enslavement to the machinations of the superficial social and personal pressures around and within us.
In the story of the Good Samaritan, we hear Jesus highlighting what the neighbour is to a questioner. He says, through analogy, that the neighbour is the propensity in someone to help and support others, and more specifically, the downtrodden. In a way, he was also highlighting what God in action looks like as well! When we remember Christ’s calls for unity with the Great Spirit, we can see that what he calls the neighbour is also what he means when he calls us “children of God:” the inherent goodness and life of all being made manifest, brought into being and behaviour.
In the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, we see him finally admonish the devil in his ear, “Get behind me, satan!” Something we ourselves may say to bad habits or temptations that we’re trying to kick, “Get behind me! I wish I was over this and it was in my rearview.” The religious who use the word “satan” a lot, tend to use it with a capital “S.” But whatever we believe, in our experience, like Christ’s, satan is the voice of the so-called serpent of our lower nature in our ear, what we often call our “minds” and “ourselves:” our “thinking, feeling, and desiring.”
Put into a place of power, it is the serpent (our very thinking mind) that draws us out of the naturalness of the Garden of Eden – it is the “Egypt” which enslaves our “Israel.” Scriptures use the term “serpent” because it represents our lower nature (i.e. it’s shallow, without the complex power of the human body), no offense to actual serpents! This is why the symbolism of healing and spiritual growth is often depicted as a serpent rising up a staff, just as Moses lifted up a serpent to create his powerful staff, and also like the symbolism inherent in the cross. These ultimately depict God drawing our minds up into spiritual harmony.
In our reading from Luke, we hear another depiction of this same symbol if you think about it. The injured “half-dead” man represents ourselves when we don’t centre in being, in Spirit, in the naturalness of life. The Samaritan is this very same life within and around us, picking us up, healing us and anointing us with “oil and wine.” The Samaritan represents God and our unity with God at our core, our very light of life and consciousness! This is quite the symbolism, and even more remarkable still as the Samaritan was considered somewhat of a Jewish heretic to Christ’s typical audience. He was showing that anyone can truly embody God’s presence and that God’s presence is in everyone, even those outside of our religion or typical idea of this.
Everyone you see has God’s light as their foundation, who doesn’t operate from the light of consciousness? Our problem is that we typically identify with some aspect of what we see (our thoughts, our feelings, our histories), instead of truly seeing for ourselves that we are most truly the light that naturally shines on these things: the spaciousness of being. in fact, there is no true separation between who and what we truly are. Our habit of being caught up in our sense and idea of separation is the root cause of our issues, our yearning, our judging. Which is perhaps why it’s depicted as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: every time we eat of this tree we are overinvesting in our sense of personal judgment, the natural fruit of our belief in division, the whisper of the serpent of this tree. If there is a Providence and a Divine Will, or even a Universal Will, how could anything manifest that didn’t play a part in the manifestation of that Will, and by inference, that didn’t manifest directly due to Providence? Even our state of being “half dead” is part of the intentional experience of God; it is ultimately the Great Spirit of Light that suffers it and that overcomes it – the selfish stuff is an illusion, a storm cloud just passing, eventually for each of us never to be seen again.
How different is each of our senses of separation? Some may be starker or more prevalent, but how truly various is that sense of lack, anger, and isolated self? This is a shared burden that our minds carry when they’re overpowered, AKA taken too seriously. This is because our minds can’t help but act from a place of limited scope, they are an object with a limited perspective, but true wisdom and true knowledge must include information from all perspectives and must transcend what we’ll sparingly call “objectivity.” And further, how various is our sense of openness, peace, and connectedness? It’s true that our idea of connection varies from person to person, but in those moments of true connectedness and peace, how different are our experiences than the next person’s in those same moments? How different are they to our past experiences of peace? Experientially and naturally, in our sense of being we are fundamentally one, fundamentally in unity, which is why Christ told us to love our neighbours AS ourselves. As we realize this, we start to see the fundamental flaw in our minds’ perspectives, so we give its ramblings much less weight, which quiets our minds and increases our sense of the naturalness of our inherent peace, love, and joy.
The more we return to our sense of being, the more we are aware of our universal self. The openness of being that is shared by all life. You know, one of our Church of the Good Shepherd members pointed me toward an article about dogs learning to talk by pressing buttons with specific meanings. Have you seen this trend? It’s one that TikTok introduced to Alyssa and me some time ago. People will introduce their dogs to buttons with a specific word spoken when pressed. They will then teach the dog to associate pressing that button with a specific meaning (I.e., an event). For example, when they go outside, they press a button that voices “outside” until the dog gets the connection and starts pressing it on its own! Some have even taught their dogs to use dozens of these buttons. We as a society are often surprised by the intelligence and light inherent to the beings around us, the animals in the brush, and even ourselves.
The neighbour that we are to love is the fundamentally loving and Divine aspect at the core of each of us, which manifests in our good actions as well as our very being. When we remember this aspect in ourselves we are noticing the place that we see from, the sanctuary of Spirit. And when we remember this in others, in all the life around us, we are noting the very light that we all share, that we all truly are. In Christ’s parable from today, he ends not by saying, “Love only this kind of neighbour,” but by saying, essentially, “Go and be this kind of neighbour.” Go and pick up the downtrodden. Go and allow your own shallow aspects of mind to be lifted up by your greater nature, by the power and the light of the God of peace and love.
Peace and love,
Cory