ILLUSIONS
More on white-washed tombs. I now see my dualistic notions of surrender and resurrection were holdovers from my youth, from those days when I first sought God in earnest. If I’m honest with myself, I must confess I've always sought God on some level because I wanted him to fix me. So I'd show up in my fashionable fig leaf ensemble, promising to stand naked before him once he'd mended me. On some occasions, the false self would even feign surrender - quite convincingly I might add - in secret anticipation that rebirth would come in its wake. Only it didn’t, because dualistic thinking simply cannot comprehend or receive unconditional love.
What I find striking about the death/rebirth duality (and almost all of my spiritual thinking in general) is how much of it is still so focused on outcomes. I want things to be a certain way; specifically, I still covet spiritual transformation. The little boy in me still weeps at night, crying out to be fixed. And yet, God keeps telling me I'm missing the point. Outcomes are useful for little more than showing us God's infinite love was there all along. When the death/rebirth duality is transcended and the two collapse, it’s clear one is in the other and both become the very shape of love itself. God's love his here, in the eternal now, longingly asking me to set down my own self-defeating conditions and dance. If I could but accept this, all my illusions - the fig leaf-wearing drama, the long-suffering waiting to be mended, and the conditional surrender - would dissipate like a mist.