These words appeared on my cell phone last week, sent by my wife to encourage me during what was a challenging week. Life can be tough…in fact, if we’re honest, it just plain is tough. Yet, life can be infused with holiness in the present moment…as we breathe this breath, and this breath, and this one…
I read bits and pieces of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle this week, out of curiosity. What I found was a kind of universalist approach common to contemporary, New Age-ish spirituality….but there is truth there as well. Tolle writes about the true self and the false self, and describes the spiritual journey as primarily about letting go of the false self and living in the present. Our false selves are full of woundedness, narcissism and judgment…where the true self, which is intimately linked to the essence of life, is beauty and freedom. When we can become observers of that false self, stepping out of it and into truth, we become free. He’s on to something here…yet he paints a limited picture.
There is a part of each of us that is false…fallen if you will. This is where our guilt and shame reside, our needs for comfort and power, our pain and our self-centeredness. Yet, the bible teaches this fallen self isn’t the whole story. Adam and Eve were originally created for relationship and freedom, not for brokenness. Contrary to those who proudly tout their “sinner”-ness, I think as images of God, we are more accurately thought of as inherently good…not inherently bad. So, when the bible talks about Christ coming to dwell in us, the picture Tolle and others paint of freedom from false self becomes clearer. The false self is the broken self, but not the whole self. We were created for relationship. When we release the burden of the old Adam and acknowledge the reality of the new Adam (Christ) in our life, we are claiming our true selves.
This is a call to live fully in the present reality of our restored relationship with Christ, not to continually struggle with sin and our broken nature, seeking forgiveness and screwing up again and again. We are whole already…we only need to acknowledge it…moment by moment, breath by breath. If God is love, and Christ is in us and we in Him, then we can be free from the false reality that we are defined by our sin. Sin hardly matters…in fact, if you believe Romans 5:20, which says, “where sin abounds, grace abounds more”…then sin is only the shadow side of grace, and grace is grace, however you try to look at it.
Tolle is right…most of how we react to life on a daily basis comes from our false self…and through building awareness, we can begin to see that for what it is. We can let go, and fall back into the gentle arms of Truth…and live in freedom. However, truth is not a hazy notion of some benign universal consciousness…is it Personal. I am who I truly am only in light of who Christ is. When I breathe His breath right now, I enter into reality…the incomprehensible reality of Relationship.
I choose to breathe the breath of Christ that makes all life holy. We can choose to live His life in us…for we exist in the context of our relationship with Christ, just as He exists in the context of His relationship with Father and Spirit. It’s not something to be grappled with theologically or explained intellectually…we need to let go of those impulses to control and define. Relationship is personal, and Christ is right now waiting, with us and in us…all we have to do is breath…
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