Reflections on Easter

This is a powerful Time, with the Spring Equinox (Ostara), the full moon, and Easter Sunday all happening within a few days of one another.

I didn’t grow up as a Christian, so I didn’t have a true sense of the holiness of Easter Sunday. Rather, I grew up as totally secular Jew, assimilated into mainstream American Christian culture. So, we were Jews that “celebrated” Easter, not in a religious sense, but as cultural observance. The Easter Bunny came and brought me a basket of goodies every year. We colored eggs and I wore my frilly dress and Easter bonnet. My grandparents would take me to the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue, to walk with everyone in their finery and flowery hats. And, we went to the Plaza Hotel to see the giant, 6-foot tall chocolate egg.

Today I experience Easter in a very different way. So, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the significance of this day, as seen through my adult, interfaith eyes.

The roots of Easter are very ancient, predating the story of Christ. Easter gets its name from the Teutonic Goddess of spring and the dawn, Eostara (or Ostara). She is responsible for Nature regenerating in the spring. Her main symbols were the bunny (which represented fertility, due to the way they proliferate) and the egg--also a symbol of fertility and birth, and represented the cosmic egg of creation. Decorating eggs is an ancient pagan custom.

In the Celtic Faerie tradition, it was customary to leave offerings out for the faery folk. It was believed that the fairies, if not honored with gifts, would make trouble for people in their lives. So, at the time of the Eostara festival, it was the tradition to leave something sweet out for those little faires (which is probably where we got the tradition of the baskets of candy, eggs, and such brought by the Easter Bunny).

The Festival of Eostara is actually the spring equinox. The day was eventually Christianized and associated with the resurrection rather than as an earth festival. But, because the Equinox and Easter often fall close together, many Catholics and other Christians who celebrate Easter see this holiday as being synonymous with rebirth and rejuvenation; the symbolic resurrection of Christ is reflected in the awakening of the plant and animal life around us.

The way I see it, the Christ is an energy that is alive here and now.

Christ is alive in every bud that opens. Christ is alive in every tender new blade of grass. Christ calls to us in the song of every bird. Christ is reborn with every baby lamb, with every crocus that springs up out of the ground. The spring rains bring Christ’s gift of healing and renewal. Everywhere we look we can see Christ.

And, Christ is alive in us. Christ lives in every human being, as the potential for awakening, for love & compassion to arise within our hearts, for healing, for expanded awareness, for reconnecting with the Source.

Christ Consciousness, or what’s also referred to as Living Christ, is the aspect of the divine that exists in each of us as potential, as the seed of our awakening, and becomes manifest by our loving and mindful actions. This is the same as what the Buddhists call Buddha Nature, or that potential for each one of us to awaken into buddhahood.

So Eastertime is an invitation to open to and experience our own personal resurrection, which is our awakening to the Christ Consciousness within, allowing the Living Christ to work through us, to move beyond our false sense of separateness.

Christ said “I and the Father are one.” He clearly recognized the truth of non-separation from God, of non-duality.

We can go over the story of the historical Christ year after year, but I believe it is much more meaningful and transformative to touch the Living Christ within ourselves, to die into what is limiting us and experience our own personal resurrection, our own transcendence and spiritual rebirth.

The Living Christ is alive in each one of us, as potential for realizing and manifesting the magnificence of who we are. Each one of us is a unique expression of the living Christ, the living Buddha, the Divine Presence.

I’ll leave you with a poem by Edward Hayes. May you enjoy the blessings of this time, whatever and however you celebrate.

A Seed Psalm

Awaken, you buried seeds
Asleep in your earthen tombs!
Rise up with joy to break forth
The hard coffins of your shells!

Your Eastertime has come;
The song of the dove
Is heard over the softening land.
Winter has hidden,
And Spring now dances on your graves
To waken the dead.

Awaken, seeds of holiness
Buried deep within me.
Rise up to fulfill your destiny
Whose time has come.

For sanctity is scribbled
Bold within my blood and brain.
Onward and beyond
Have I been called
Even before I felt the sun
Or knew the earth around me.

May spring enchant the saint,
Shy and hesitant within me,
And set the rhythm for my sluggish feet
In a dance of holy yearning.

Time is on My Side

Time is on My Side.

I have really no idea what that expression means. All I hear is Mick Jagger’s whiny voice from decades past, as I try to “practice what I preach” about living in the present moment. Lately, I’ve been going into overwhelm mode very easily, with a continual complaint that seems to loop around in my brain with the following thoughts:

“I have too much to do.”.

“I don’t have time to_______ (fill in the blank).”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“There’s not enough time to get everything done.”

And it goes on ad nauseum. Does this sound familiar? I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not alone in feeling this way.

I have two mental images that describe what my struggles with time feel like. The first is the image of an egg carton that holds a dozen eggs. I have 18 eggs, and I’m trying to fit them into the carton. So I keep taking some out and putting others in, but, oh, no, now THESE don’t fit in, where do I make room for them? No matter how many strategies I use to move the eggs around, they will not all fit it. And I can’t squeeze them in because you know what will happen.

The other image is a little more dramatic: When I feel like I’m racing against time to keep up with my to-do list, I get this feeling that I’m in one of those dungeons with moving walls. All four walls are closing in on me (is that even mechanically possible??), and oh my gosh, I’ve got to get all this stuff done before …SPLAT!

So this mind loop, with all these thoughts and images, has pretty much been the prevailing attitude in my head over the past several months.

Sometimes, in order for something to shift, one has to “hit bottom”, as they say in 12 step programs. And the other day, I crashed.

After a good session with my life coach and a good cry with my husband, I realized that all this feeling of overwhelm is simply a habit I’ve learned. It’s where I channel all my nervous energy, and it becomes an excuse not to live fully, not to step powerfully into life.

And, I began to open to the possibility that perhaps this idea that there is not enough time is NOT REAL. It’s a thought that I’ve believed and perpetuated, a groove that’s worn deep in my being.

My friend Jill, a minister from Philadephia, is one of those people who just does everything and seems to get it all done. She works full time and does her ministry work after hours, publishes a newsletter, and leads spiritual study groups. I asked her once how she finds time for it all without being frazzled, and she said, “It’s a spiritual practice. I just tell myself that there is enough time to get all the things done that really need to get done. I just don’t allow the idea that there’s not enough time to enter my mind.”

So yesterday morning, with the Spring Equinox, I prayed and asked Spirit for help around finding a healthier, more positive relationship with time. I asked God to give me the willingness to try something different, to step courageously into a new mindset. And from that clear mind, perhaps some action steps may come clear around how I move through time and the commitments I make.

What came through is that I can try this as a fun experiment. Yes, the “F word.” Fun.

And, just the day before, I was getting a massage, one of the things I’ve found to be an essential part my self-care. I was telling Kellie, my massage therapist, that I was all tense because I’d been feeling overwhelmed, and that I was having a difficult relationship with time. At the end of the session, she touched my feet gently and said, “Okay Jody, time is on your side.”

Somehow, the way she said it, and perhaps the relaxed, receptive place I was in to receive it, made it feel like a mantra given to me by a great sage.

Time is on my side.

So today, I hold it in my consciousness as a practice, as play, as my new experiment. I’m keeping my mantra steadily in my awareness. Even though it still sounds like Mick Jagger.

The moment you enter the Now with your attention, you realize that life is sacred. There is a sacredness to everything you perceive when you are present. The more you live in the Now, the more you sense the simple and profound joy of Being and the sacredness of all life.

~Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

The “I” of the Storm

This morning in meditation, I sit with the age-old question, “Who am I?”

Not that I am trying to get a definitive answer—spiritual teacher Adyashanti tells us that the question “who am I?” is not designed to get an answer, but rather to dissolve the questioner.

As I sit in stillness with “who am I?” circling gently like an eagle in the sky of my awareness, an image comes to me. It is the image of changing weather patterns. Snow, changing to sleet, changing to rain, then clouds giving way to a shining sun.

If I were to ask, “What is Ithaca, New York?” I couldn’t answer snowy, or sunny, or rainy, or cold, or muggy. It is all of those things, and none of those things alone. There isn’t any one weather report that encapsulates the whole picture of Ithaca.

My aliveness is also a changing weather report of sorts—sometimes stormy, rainy, balmy, sweltering, mild. As I sit in meditation, I see an image of myself as a storm system, perhaps a hurricane or tornado. Just a movement of swirling energy, emotions, thoughts, feelings, life force (Prana, in the Yogic tradition), ideas, creativity—all just passing through.

My job is to bring my awareness to the place in the Center, the eye, where there is calm and spaciousness, rather than being whipped around in the whirlwind of emotion, thought, etc. My practice is to stay in the Center, where I can calmly view all these changing winds from a vantage point of stillness and peace. Sitting in the eye of the storm—that is what it means to be “centered.”

Now, the question remains: Who is it that sits in the Center? Who is it that is watching the whirling energy? This is the next layer of inquiry…

Later, I share these thoughts with a neighbor of mine, and he refers to me as “Hurricane Jody.” It’s a funny image, and often a true one, as I blow through my world with thoughts and emotions frenetically spinning, sometimes leaving messes that I later have to go back and clean up.

I’d like to think that my spiritual practice is mitigating some of the damage I do as I pass through, that I’m not just a destructive wind, but also an eye, a center, an oasis of peace. And, as I move through time and space, I invite others to dwell in that peace, to join me in living from the Center.

Sometimes we may get sucked in by centrifugal force into the dramas, fears, addictive behaviors, and confusion of human existence, but that calm Center is always inviting us back.

Divine Spirit, may I live in peace today, in the centered stillness that is my true nature, and may the stillness I cultivate be a living invitation to others to join me there.

Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to practice.