All people who challenge the status quo are made to suffer by those who uphold it. Jesus challenged it and was persecuted by the rulers of his day. Jesus knows they will kill him. When Jesus shares with disciples his consciousness of this timeless truth, they are confounded. However, they ask no further questions to raise their own consciousness. Proving their lack of consciousness, they then argue about who is greatest among them. The disciples are not yet aware that the ambition for rule is the crux of the problem. It includes a desire for greatness which they express. In time their collective consciousness is raised. They learn how Jesus’ Way solves the problem of rule: “If anyone wishes to be first, they must be the last of all and the servant of all.” Too, they learn Jesus’ Way solves the problem of greatness: “Taking a child… and putting his arms around her, he said: “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.”
There is a growing consciousness, across the world, of the problematic nature of rule and greatness. Some people, even some nations, are developing a collective consciousness about solving both problems. For example, in the refugee crisis people are being of service and risking mutual vulnerability by reaching out to those in need. Can the U.S. be among them? At present, the U.S. rules the world and wants to. It asserts greatness and takes pride in doing so. The nation’s ambition for rule and its desire for greatness are primary causes of the refugee crisis flowing out of the Middle East. The U.S.’s destruction of Iraq, its economic torture of Iran through sanctions, and its alliance with Saudi Arabia for invasions in the area are causing the problem. (This is also true of the matching ambitions and desires of Russia in its support of Syria’s President Assad. It’s also true of Turkey’s capitalist developments damning off the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters producing downstream drought in those same countries.) A society cannot rule the world and seek greatness through violence and also be a servant to the people of the world. Nor can that same society be vulnerable or receive others who are vulnerable. Rule and greatness show the willful ignorance of Militarism. Service and vulnerability show the collective consciousness of humanity. Any person, specifically one living in the U.S., can raise their consciousness as to the difference between these two expressions. So too any society can grow in its collective consciousness to be of service and be vulnerable.
“A new kind of collective life … can only come by the … growth of its individuals… (being) “not merely a member of a human pack… (but) a soul, a being, who has to fulfill individual truth and … (fulfill their) assigned part in the truth of the collective existence.” “(T)he coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal … existence of (humanity), but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves (and) to lead others to it.” (Sri Aurobindo)
Prayer: Source of All; lead me to be of service and embrace the vulnerability it creates.
Question: What collective consciousness do I want to help realize?
September 20, 2015 Mark 9:30-37 Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time
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