Daily Meditation: Sunday, March 31, 2013

Tomb, The - of a human being: their lower nature

03/31/2013

We are told in the Gospels that three days after Jesus’ body was brought down from the cross and placed in the tomb, Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James, and Salomé found that the stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away, and they went to tell the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. But the material reality of this fact is not what is most important. The essential thing is the meaning for our inner life, which the image of the seed helps us to understand. A seed that has been placed in the soil splits into two, and then it dies, having allowed the germ of life to leave its womb. The tomb stands for our lower nature, in which we must create an opening so that we can get out. Some have seen in the image of the tomb a representation of the physical body. This is not entirely wrong, but actually it is not so much the physical body that prevents the expression of divine life and of the spirit, but rather the thick fluidic shell created by all the desire, greed and conflict in our lower nature. This comes between our spirit and our physical body, continually creating all kinds of miasma and fumes. If it were not for this, our spirit would have perfect control over our physical body.