See with the Light of Joy
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Matthew 8:28-34
When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”
He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.
Psalm 22:1-5 (group reading for live service)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
Read the written message below with music videos
The thing that helps us the most in any given moment may surprise us. How are we to know what may help? And what does that even mean? Ultimately, we’re all fundamentally looking for happiness. Whatever our goals, whatever our desires, at the root level these things are what we believe will help us to find some kind of happiness, or whatever’s closest to it in our experience. Unfortunately, our idea of happiness tends to be connected to passing pleasures, and we tend to allow moments of discomfort destroy our sense of happiness. Our sages, however, tell us that happiness is our very being – we’ve just come to identify so much with the passing phenomena in our lives we miss it. Sometimes, to wake us to this truth prophets and sages, from Jesus to Krishna, have to shake us a bit, and many across the millennia have used methods that at first and at certain moments don’t seem too happiness-inducing.
I think we trip ourselves up when we think someone else’s purpose in life is to make us happy, whether it be our spouse or our psychologist. Someone could hire someone for this express purpose, but I think the likelihood that job works out to be very low! No, our mistake is a mistake that most of us share – we believe that happiness comes from outside of us and largely agree that our own joy is dependent on external events. Indeed, pain is dependent on external events, but if we start to get to know ourselves better, we may find that our general suffering and our happiness has more to do with how we think about life.
Interestingly, in order to wake us up to our inherent happiness, sages and mentors will often do things that seem at odds with our joy. They may tell us a hard truth, or just generally not pander too much to our passing concerns. And sometimes, it is that hard truth that starts to allow us to truly look at ourselves and uncover that wellspring of joy that is our very light.
In our reading today, Christ casts out demons from two men and in response, the residents plead for him to leave the area. What a trip! Perhaps it was because these two men were relegated to the caves, and so no one really knew them or their issue. And the pigs that the demons consequently jumped into were a resident’s pigs, and so when they jumped off the cliff there was a bit of upsetness going around. But whatever it was, Christ had done something that wasn’t sitting well with people.
And that’s Christ! Let alone me or you. He had spent weeks or more performing miracles in this region, healing the sick, and at the end of it they asked him to leave. How crazy. And yet, that’s our nature. We tend to place all the value in life on our passing reactions and thoughts, as well as our inner stories and imagination, not truly realizing that there is so much more to who and what we are in any given moment. We become so accustomed to our seat of judgment that we don’t realize that our identification with these thoughts, our unawareness of our true selves, keeps us from enjoying life as it is. This makes us feel further reactive, making joy even harder for ourselves and others. Thus, we seek passing pleasure, and we worry and try to escape the reality of the present moment (kicking out Christ).
Further, Christ’s love-centered messages weren’t always the best received. He was criticized for many things about it, but mainly for the audacity of seeming to know what he was talking about, and that what he was talking about was unity with God and each other. The messages our greatest teachers give aren’t always going to sit well with us at first, and we don’t do ourselves any favours by expecting anyone to please us all the time. Even with our marriages or closest friendships, we should drop the expectation that the other person is meant to make us happy.
This is for our own sake. How can we uncover the joy at our core if we are so caught up in stretching for it? The sages tell us it is the very light that we experience life in, our awareness itself, that will bring us the greatest joy once we get to know it. This light of life is the very light of God, how could it not be? Could the light of God be experienced as something less, or as something greater than life and love itself? And, in fact, we experience this light as all the myriad forms that we perceive, in thought, feelings, intentions, smells, taste, and sight. Everything that we experience appears to us in consciousness as consciousness. What substance are we experiencing with each passing thought? What are all of our senses (all at the same time) and our ideas appearing in? Look for it. Is it distant from you?
When we look at our experience, dropping our pre-conceived ideas of what’s going on, we start to notice that what we truly are is a type of open awareness – like a cup but able to hold all the infinite moments and infinite forms of experiencing that pass us by. Those infinite moments we call the present moment, and it never jumps ahead or behind: the future and the past are but ideas that describe how the present moment seems to behave. But in the end, all we have is always this moment, and all we know is always awareness, the light and love of God.
Folks didn’t always appreciate Christ’s teachings. We still often don’t, which may be part of the reason Christianity has so often behaved with an “in-group” mentality instead of embodying his teachings. But there’s something there even then, which may be what keeps the churches with the most heinous of histories kicking (their coffers don’t hurt either). Christ pointed us back toward what we are, telling us to turn away from our false thinking and ignorance, back toward the love that we find knowing that we are one in God’s light, as God’s light, thanks to God’s light. Let’s take this seriously, not expecting it to bring us passing joy, but allowing ourselves to uncover what’s always been at the core of experience, beyond words, shining in every moment as every moment.
Peace is within you,
Cory