Saturday, March 01, 2008

The Sermon on the Mount, Part XXVI and XXVII of XL

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TEXT: Continuing with Matthew 6:
22. "The eye is the lamp of the body.
So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness.


COMMENTARY: This is not a reference to the physical eyes, but to interior "in-sight," or "interior sight." This is made possible by the opening of the sixth chakra, the so-called "third eye." (It is also known as the ajna chakra.) The only way that this interior "vision" is triggered is through regular meditation, through quieting the "monkey mind," the part of the humanimal mind that is continually jumping around from one topic, thought, or memory to another. This kind of mind never knows rest, or peace.

TEXT:
If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!


COMMENTARY: Again, as usual, Jesus seems to point a barb towards the selfrighteous and hypereligious, who consider themselves "enlightened," or filled with the Light of Love (Holy Spirit). But this egocentric attitude of selfcongratulation actually makes their interior darkness even darker, more impenetrable to the Light of Love.



The Sermon on the Mount, Part XXVII of XL
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TEXT:
24. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.


COMMENTARY: "Mammon" was the ancient demon of gold. So, Jesus repeats more strongly and dramatically his clear and previous warning against materialism, whose influence can be subtle. Like Mammon in Jewish mythology, it is indeed a "demon" that can master you and take over your heartmind and life. The people of Love are unique precisely because they avoid service to this demon, which permeates most business and money-making enterprises. So, beyond the minimum necessary for life and comfort, Jesus prohibits what most people would regard as "material success"!

TEXT:
25. "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?


COMMENTARY: Jesus is actually forbidding worry! And the only Way to overcome the demon of fear, expressed as worry, is to center the self, repeatedly, in the eternal now. The past is dead, and does not exist.
The future is not yet born, and also, does not exist. Only the now actually exists. And it is paradoxical: It is so tiny that, as soon as it is thought, it seems to disappear into the past. But it is so huge that it contains everything! And it is always now! So, the free and enlightened person of Love liberates herself from slavery to the past or future by altering her thoughts.

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