One of the radical insights in mysticism I suggest is to discover that we are already resurrected, we just didn’t know it. Coming to know this is realization, self-realization, awakening, theosis.
What is resurrection? I suggest it is the Divine Life becoming embodied, repeatedly, in the elements, formless energy taking on form, the unmanifest manifesting itself as mass, objects, and beings. And that is what we are now, each and every one, without exception. The Divine One has resurrected its Self, re-incarnated its Self, in your body and mine. This is what Life is now, here in our flesh. Look at yourself, and all beings, and behold the glory of God!
The Word became flesh, yours and mine. The breath of Life, the Divine Life, has been breathed into our nostrils and we have become Living souls. It’s not something that happens to us sometime in the future. We are already That. You and I have been resurrected to Life. The Divine One which we are in our essence came to be embodied in your body and all bodies in the present time. What may happen in the future is our personal direct realization of this already in ourself.
But what happens when we die? The Divine Spirit, this Life energy, which inhabited this body will return to Oneness with the Whole, from which it never really left, ready to be resurrected or re-incarnated again in “endless forms most beautiful.” The Divine Life is already in all things, and will always be in all things and beings. We are that Divine Life, becoming embodied in all things.
In fact, that is already happening. Energy is flowing through our body constantly, in from the food, water, the air we breath, sunlight on our skin, and out through our expending it in movement, metabolism, mind, and the air we exhale. We have body heat, which is energy continually emanating from our body into the environment. All this energy is recycled and exchanged and transformed in the cosmic circle of Life and being. We are this Life energy, this essence, this beingness, flowing through all things, often called “spirit” in traditional religion. As Paul said, “in God we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Now, already.
A wave in the ocean doesn’t wish to be reembodied as a future wave in the ocean. It is already that, right now. It is already a wave, and it expresses itself fully as a wave now. But more importantly, it is already ultimately the ocean. It is the ocean in temporal form, the energy moving in it having risen up into particular localized impermanent activity that we call a “wave.” When it subsides back into the ocean, the energy that was in it and moving through it will be recycled into new waves, new embodiments. The ocean will rise up again in new forms, new expressions, new creativity, new and glorious evolutions and creations of its Self.
I suggest this is the deeper meaning of Christ’s resurrection, and of Eastern reincarnation. They are pointing to the same Divine reality. The human form of Jesus didn’t literally wake up and walk out of the tomb on the third day. Jesus was a temporal form of the Divine One, an embodiment of the cosmic One, and he came to mystically realize this while he lived. The Father woke up in him, woke up to its Self, and his awakening was the realization of the One’s resurrection in him, in his form, in his body, in his life. Christ’s resurrection is a symbol for the Divine One, the Holy Wholly wHoly One, or Singularity, becoming embodied and re-embodied in every and all forms endlessly, including Jesus and yours and mine now, right now, and all beings everywhere and always. You are already that One, even if we don’t know it.
Know thy Self. Wake up to the One in you. Let the stormy waves of the mind settle to absolute stillness of pure consciousness so that you may witness the sea of glass that you are and that all things are in their essence. I am lifting you up from the grave of your limited and small egoic self identity now, so that you may realize yourself in the One, as the One, the One that has been resurrected as You. We are that One. As long as we identify solely with our egoic self, this particular body and mind, we are spiritually dead. We have not yet recognized our seamless identity in and as the Eternal One yet, the timeless Singularity without beginning or end, this cosmos and its Source. We have not realized the One in each and everyone that ever was, is, and will be.
We are Nature already. We are the cosmos already. We are the Source already. We are the One already. You are what It is doing here and now, as well as everywhere and everywhen. Even if you don’t know this, if you haven’t realized it, that too is what the Divine is doing in you right now, and God has a reason for hiding its Self and unveiling its Self. See all waves as expressions of this One ocean, all humans as incarnations of this Divine. You are not a wave in the ocean, but the ocean in a wave, every wave. You, the Divine, have already resurrected your Self as yourself, as this particular body, as this particular Life you are now living. O remember, remember, sacred One, who you really are.
Beloved, you are already always God’s incarnation & embodiment, the Word made flesh, the cosmos come to Life, the Divine Body, the Father in the Son, Brahman in Atman, the Buddha-nature, the wHoly One embodied, the Singularity manifested, the Transcendent taking immanent form, the unified field in excitation, the Eternal emanating in time, the undefined quantum collapsed into the definite classical, the Infinite in the finite, the Whole in the part, the One in the many, the Highest in the lowest, the Big Bang in expression, consciousness modulated into a mind, energy transformed into mass, Being having become a being among beings, the Essence in substance, the Spiritual birthed into the physical.
We are already That. We just have to become aware of what we already are. We are the Divine that has resurrected its Self into this bodily form, here and now.
What ‘is’ already is, whether we realize it or not.