Here is a quote from the Third Treatise of A Course of Love (ACOL), in which Jesus further defines resurrection, the central theme of Easter:
“Resurrection or rebirth must be total to be at all…We are writing a new first page, a new Genesis. It begins now. It begins with the rebirth of a Self of love. It begins with the birth of Christ in you and in your willingness to live in the world as the Christ-Self.” (14.13, 14.14)
Here we have themes of resurrection as being reborn into a much much greater state of awareness and of agency than we had before. And it’s not an automatic thing–we have to consciously choose it. We don’t just live out our earthly lives and then die and vault into Heaven, according to Jesus in ACOL; though God is spoken of by Jesus as the most loving Force and Source there is, He has given us free will, and will not renege on that gift. So it is we who have to CHOOSE that greater existence ourselves–now or later.
Thus Easter is eternal because it represents a truly timeless potential for all us humans.
And it seems to me that Easter is also eternal because all humans that we have ever known about throughout history have contemplated death and what it means for our lives here on Earth. Anthropology tells us that much of the very earliest evidence of humans working together is around ceremonial burials, replete with artifacts suggestive of continued life for the departed in some other realm.
All parents I know of, including my wife and I, have had to field some amazing questions from our kids (when they were young I mean) about death and dying. “But where did Grandma go?,” asks your little one after Grandma’s death. And as a parent, you most likely didn’t brush your child off with an early dessert or something; instead you probably felt deeply called to handle the question with a lot of compassion and love, for you could see that your child was really serious with her honest and completely relevant question. So many of us responded in a very sincere and age-appropriate way as best we could at the time, saying something like “her body got all worn out and so her Spirit went to another place that’s really beautiful.” One parent I heard of illustrated the whole concept to their child by putting on a glove and saying “this glove is like our body, and when we die we take off the glove. Our hand is like our Spirit: it keeps on going but it looks a lot different (brilliant, huh?).
So in Jungian terms, we are talking about one of the deepest archetypes there is, obviously. It is a universal concern for all of us.
And into that deep archetypal field is born this amazing tradition of the crucified Jesus dying– for sure– and then just as surely (for believers at least) RESURRECTING, that is,actually reappearing many times to many close people after his death in a an identical, solid form, just like he had never died!
That is truly a miracle, at least for me! But Jesus then and Jesus now so clearly taught that we can and really should be reborn into the unity of the love and peace of God, with all of us feeling That and being That. Then, as if sensing that he was losing us, Jesus gave us an Intermediary–the Holy Spirit–as a living Presence that could help us spiritually to grow toward that Oneness at our own rate. Further–and for me most importantly, Jesus then promised each of us personally “And I will never leave you comfortless.”
For me, A Course in Miracles, (ACIM), has Jesus speaking to us collectively much more currently, in our time, giving us the reachability a lot of us needed in Jesus now, in our lives as we were experiencing them.
And then in A Course of Love, an even further and very welcome update, to allow for all the exponential growth of our species, which has reached or surpassed critical mass.
So Jesus is still with us, thank God! Which makes for eternal Easter!
May you be blessed with That in this Holy Season, in whatever way you receive Jesus and his great message into you life.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 