April 11, 2004
Easter Sunday was special to me as a child. Oh, not like Christmas or even Thanksgiving —but special nonetheless. I remember going to Grandma’s after church. I got to dress up in a pretty dress and see family. Easter also signified spring’s arrival. The long cold winter was over and soon school would be out. Not being particularly religious, the deeper meaning never affected me much.
But perhaps due to the media attention Christ has gotten this year or due to the beliefs of those around me—I find myself pondering the meaning of Easter. Christ died for our sins. How does that affect me personally? I find it difficult to believe that God was ready to keep wiping us out until he gave his holy son in human flesh and sacrificed him. Perhaps I struggled with this idea because I kept trying to understand it literally.
I think that Christ was the embodiment of the human collective. Through Jesus’ death might been physical and brutal—like in the movie The Passion—for most of us that death is emotional. It is about the death of the Ego. It is about surrender. Spiritually everyone must suffer loss and endure pain before they can find release. Death comes in many forms. Only when you hit bottom can you rise up. You must be emotionally and spiritually reborn, perhaps even physically if you consider reincarnation. We all have our personal long dark nights that eventually lead to personal growth and illumination. It is no accident that Easter falls in the Spring. Following the Pagan traditions, Winter is a time for silent preparation and conception. For Christian’s death is not harvest time, but during Spring. It is a time of renewal and rebirth after death.
Interestingly my darkest hour came in March of 1993. Also I read that suicides occur more in the Spring—not in Winter as one might think.
The Matrix movies examine the idea of Neo as Christ. The first Matrix questioned reality, mixing Gnostic, Christian and Zen elements into it. The 2nd questions the origin of the Matrix—the reality as we know it here on earth. It explores the idea of God as the great programmer and the attack on Zion as Armageddon—one of many in human history. I guess the majority of the movie goers have little or no knowledge of such things—most don’t even care.
This brings us back to God wiping out everyone and how Jesus put an end to that. I suppose, in truth, by sacrificing our ego’s we are allowing ourselves to go back to that collective unconscious. This act of selflessness keeps us from destroying ourselves. This is how Easter works for me. I follow the example and obtain the Christ-Consciousness
carilynn27 