{"id":17700,"date":"2019-01-18T09:36:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T14:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17700"},"modified":"2019-01-18T09:43:09","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T14:43:09","slug":"the-path-of-descend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17700","title":{"rendered":"The Path of Descend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jesus: Wisdom Teacher<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/the-path-of-descent-2019-01-18\/\"><strong>The Path of Descent<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Friday, January 18, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/w9kqQxvsnc4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus teaches the art of&nbsp;<em>metanoia<\/em> or \u201cgoing into the larger mind.\u201d Underlying all his teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in consciousness: away from the alienation and polarization of the egoic operating system and into the unified field of divine abundance that can be perceived only through the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But how does one make this shift in consciousness? It\u2019s one thing to admire it from a distance, but quite another to create it within oneself. This is where spiritual praxis comes into play. \u201cPraxis\u201d means the path, the actual practice you follow to bring about the result that you\u2019re yearning for. I think it\u2019s fair to say that all of the great spiritual paths lead toward the same center\u2014the larger, nondual mind as the seat of personal consciousness\u2014but they get there by different routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Jesus is typical of the wisdom tradition in his vision of what a whole and unified human being looks like, the route he lays out for getting there is very different from anything that had ever been seen on the planet up to that point. It is still radical in our own time and definitely the \u201croad less traveled\u201d among the various schools of human transformation. Many of the difficulties we run into trying to make our Christianity work stem from the fact that we haven\u2019t realized how different Jesus\u2019 approach really is. By trying to contain this new wine in old wineskins, we inadvertently missed its own distinct flavor. In Jesus, everything hangs together around a single center of gravity, and we need to know what this center is before we can sense the subtle and cohesive power of his path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What name might we give to this center? The apostle Paul suggests the word&nbsp;<em>kenosis<\/em>. In Greek, the verb&nbsp;<em>kenosein <\/em>means \u201cto let go,\u201d or \u201cto empty oneself,\u201d and this is the word Paul chooses to describe \u201cthe mind of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is what Paul has to say (Philippians 2:6-8):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though his state was that of God,<br>\nyet he did not deem equality with God<br>\nsomething he should cling to.<br>\nRather, he emptied himself,<br>\nand assuming the state of a slave,<br>\nhe was born in human likeness.<br>\nHe, being known as one of us,<br>\nhumbled himself, obedient unto death,<br>\neven death on the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this beautiful hymn, Paul recognizes that Jesus had only one \u201coperational mode.\u201d Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further, \u201ceven unto death on the cross.\u201d In every life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying\u2014or to put it another way,&nbsp;<em>descent<\/em>: taking the lower place, not the higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jesus: Wisdom Teacher The Path of Descent Friday, January 18, 2019 Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher. Jesus teaches the art of&nbsp;metanoia or \u201cgoing into the larger mind.\u201d Underlying all his teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in consciousness: away from the alienation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17700"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17703,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17700\/revisions\/17703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}