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The magnificent meaning and significance of Easter is to overcome matter and death! Easter is also always mankind’s victory over heaviness and inertia.
And this is true even if we do it in a completely unconscious way. Whenever we try to overcome heaviness and inertia, we bring the spirit of Easter to the world.
Some families have begun an Easter tradition of walking to a spring to obtain Easter water. They start very early in the morning before sunrise. They have to agree beforehand to be absolutely quiet on their way until they scoop the water from the spring. Beginning this practice meant for all who took part in it, an overcoming of this sense of heaviness and inertia. They had to get up very early, at an unusual time, and hold back their usual flow of words. Both mean overcoming the pull of convenience.
But there are other situations where we try to overcome these feelings of inertia and paralysis. Every morning, when we get up, we need inner power to straighten ourselves up and overcome our body’s stiffness and affinity for gravity.
There is also an inner inertia when we have to do things we do not enjoy doing. Each and every one of us knows our own inertia. But when we have enough strength and do what is necessary, we can experience a wonderful sense of completion and support. Then we may get help from another side, perhaps what we asked for long time.
On Easter Sunday morning, when the women were on their way to the tomb with their aromatic spices, they needed great strength and power to overcome their mourning and fear, for what they anticipated seeing at the tomb. And they said to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” And when they then looked at the large stone in front of the tomb, they saw that it had already been rolled to the side. The help was there when they needed it.
And the people who went to the spring on Easter morning may have experienced the joy of a wonderful sunrise, which they would never have seen, had they been asleep. Or they may have had a special encounter with an animal and heard noises that nature produces around us before they started their daily activities. All this happened, because they overcame the paralysis of convenience.
Perhaps, after a long silence, people use their words more carefully. And if they repeat such an experience, they may get an important thought and impulses for a question that they have lived with for a long time.
Easter is a wonderful celebration each year, but Easter can also be with us every day if we allow it and become aware of help from the spiritual side, once we overcome the weight of inertia.
April 22nd, 2006
Christ did his most significant work in the time between the temptation and the crucifixion, or better said – his sacrifice. Temptation and sacrifice belong together like night and day.
As adults, we know temptations very well. We struggle with it almost every day. Sometimes it is alcohol, sometimes it is caffeine, or chocolate, sometimes it is another drug. It has to do with our yearnings and cravings, and with the instability of our inner balance. We mistakenly believe we come to an inner balance through fulfilling our desires. The outside world stimulates these desires hundredfold in many different forms. Mostly we think we cannot do without them and our will is too weak to battle against them on a daily basis. We each have our very own individual temptations and problems that are caused by them.
Looking at society as a whole, temptation is present everywhere. It is bigger and perhaps more dangerous than we have recognised up to now. Many people have forgotten how to differentiate between fanatical faith and faith that you develop through the experience and effectiveness of the spiritual world in our daily life. It is a tragedy. Some young people think religion has brought so much deceit, distress and warfare for mankind that it cannot be trusted. And, on the other hand, temptation has become extremely materialistic. The power of the adversary is immense and hard to resist. Most people cannot recognise the daily effectiveness and protective power of the spiritual world. In our daily struggle it could arrive through their guardian angel, or through their already deceased loved ones.
But now, we have to pose the question: is there a chance to manage this limitless temptation, in the personal and also for society, so that it is not so overwhelming? Let us return for a moment to the beginning. I said that temptation is closely connected to sacrifice. But who likes sacrifice? In a short time, we will see – in our church [in Toronto] – the tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily by Goethe. The main theme in this story is sacrifice. The pictures point us towards a distant future. At that time it will never be night. Then we will always have day. It is important that each figure has their dealings in the tale in order that the sacrifice can work. So it is also important that we prepare the future now, otherwise one day society may collapse.
One way to get ready for the future is to practice small sacrifices. Can’t we try to give up something we desire intensely? For example, if we are totally addicted to chocolate, or alcohol, or other things, we could begin with that, only one time in the week. Perhaps one day we can learn how not to give in to another craving, perhaps a bigger one. Then one day, perhaps, we can resist a more intense temptation.
But how can society resist the temptation of having only materialistic thoughts without spiritual connection? Today, many people cannot distinguish between fananticism, and the fact, indeed the reality, that the spiritual world is continuously present. One can experience that when one is a little awake to it. Through the guidance of the spiritual world a new morality is arising for which each of us is responsible. Then we can hope that we will remind ourselves about the biggest sacrifice of and for all times, the mystery of Golgotha.
It is our hope that in the future, society will achieve the right form of harmony. But, harmony is only possible when the physical and the spiritual worlds mutually interact and influence each other. The physical world connects with the spiritual world and vice versa, when antithesis of day and night are cancelled. Of course it is something for the far future, but we have to prepare it now.
If we celebrate our daily service as a community, and give up our excessive desires, our materialistic thoughts and superfluous cravings, then we are already making possible the mutual penetration of both worlds. Our small sacrifice will build the foundation and show the way to reject temptation when it comes as a dark feeling and attacks our soul.
Our embedded childhood memories often echo the voices of our parents, or teachers calling on us to perform various tasks. Most of the time, we heard them and did what they asked. But sometimes, when we didn´t want, or pretended not to hear them, we either faced punishment, or faced difficulties.
Later on in our life, if we were awake enough, we could hear an inner call, which we felt we should listen to, because it might have had something to do with our task on earth, and in the wider sense, our destiny. For various reasons, we could not always respond to this call. And afterwards, we did not always notice the effect that this unresponsiveness may have caused. The call of destiny may have tried to reach us again and again. When we could not or would not hear it, we experienced difficulties in our life, but didn´t connect the difficulties to these calls.
And sometimes, in our everyday struggles, we may have heard about a very wise person, who wanted to lead us toward new concepts and ideas at the appropriate time. These ideas could bring fairness and brotherhood into the social life of human beings, because they came from a higher wisdom. But these ideas have to be grasped by influential persons, for example people in the government. If they are not fully accepted and implemented, life in society does not come to pass, social life becomes more and more difficult.
The workers in the vineyard all followed the demand of the master of the house, they heard the call. They were all paid the same wages, as agreed before-hand, no matter who ended up working less or more. It was fair and just, because it was agreed upon beforehand. But then they were troubled about it and felt it was unfair.
How do we feel about it? Yes it is unjust for those, who worked the whole day. They have had to put in much more effort and push themselves. Yes, we always look at work from the point of view of money. Mostly, we forget that work also has its creative and regenerative effect.
When we work in freedom by way of inner effort, in meditation, prayer or in the Act of Consecration of Man, we transform our soul and our whole being. We can certainly count on the assurance that through our inner work, if we also work through feeling such freedom in the outer world, we continually transform the earth, even if we cannot always see it. We shouldn´t forget, that we were born to do transformation on the earth. And if we forget the real reason and impulse, we will be called upon by destiny. But also, society shouldn´t walk out on the task of transforming society; otherwise, there will be more conflicts between people, or groups of people. Of course this cannot be achieved by individuals. Such tasks require the strength of whole groups of people, because after death, in the spiritual world, there is no possibility to work in freedom. Our only chance is to start our transformation while we are on earth, so that we can then enter the spiritual world fully prepared.
It could be a great help to learn this already in the childhood when we are called for necessities.