My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world.11
His self-knowledge is the catalyst necessary to awaken his disciples’ self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the fundamental therapy, that healing of the soul which is the meaning of salvation. Carl Jung said that the crucial element in the relationship between analyst and patient is the therapist’s own self-knowledge. This is a continuously evolving consciousness which derives much of its life from the therapist’s interaction with the patient. We benefit (‘receive grace’) from the self-knowledge of Jesus in a way analogous to any deep human relationship. Because it is human and therefore reciprocal, we can even say that Jesus benefits from his relationship with us. Through us, with us and in us, he also comes to fulfilment. In St Paul’s letters Jesus now lives in the ‘Body of Christ’ which is the whole of humanity and even co-extensive with the material universe. And so all individual human development, as in the growth of a community, contributes substantially to the building up, the completion of his Body.
God’s ‘need’ for humanity can be glimpsed in Christ’s love for us. It has been one of the great insights of Christian mystics down the centuries that if love is mutual, the love flowing between God and humanity somehow shares in the pain and joy, longing and fulfilment of the human condition. The more pedestrian theologians of the day were outraged by Meister Eckhart’s witty exploration of this insight. Playing with words and paradox best conveys it. Julian of Norwich has this same mystical sense of humour and lightness of thought. She shares the same sense of the profound delicacy of divine love. She speaks of God’s thirst for human well-being and the ‘courteous’ and joyful way that that thirst expressed itself in the suffering and resurrection of Jesus. It is ‘inevitable’, she says, that we will sin ‘because of our weakness and stupidity’12 yet there can never be any anger in God towards us. She conveys the entirely unconditional nature of God’s love by describing God as Mother. She applies this to Jesus as well. As much as any mother ‘our Mother Jesus’ needs to feel loved by his children. In her great work, Revelations of Divine love, Mother Julian drew her response to his question and her experience of his continued life. Because of it she cheerfully accepted the sufferings of life.
Thus he is our Mother in nature, working by his grace in our lower part, for the sake of the higher. It is his will that we should know this, for he wants all our love to be fastened on himself . . . And this blessed love Christ himself produces in us.13
Everyone must work hard at coming to the self-knowledge necessary to know who Jesus is. The harder we work the more we are helped. Then our personal growth in turn builds up his Body. Individual spiritual practice is thus saved from the danger of spiritual egotism. It is never for the individual alone but through the greater Body of Christ that spiritual practice benefits the whole of humanity. Mother Julian knew that when she risked describing her experience and said that it had been given her for the cheering of others.
Self-knowledge, which can hurt like hell at times, is nevertheless essentially joyful. And it always has the element of surprise. It is never predictable because it is never going to happen. It is always here. To realise that it is, and has always been here, is like finding that the glasses you have been looking for everywhere have never left the top of your head. We are surprised at finding them and maybe feel a little foolish. But we laugh with others, in joy and relief, because it is so clear we were never really separated from them.
Self-knowledge is also like freedom. It cannot be forced or cajoled. Being complacent and denying problems do not facilitate it. Forgiveness and love, on the other hand, can make it flourish. Repressive power structures, social or psychological, slow down the process. True spiritual practice, like good art, enhances human freedom. It develops the taste for freedom and a passion to let others enjoy it. So eventually it overturns every egotistically driven power-structure whether internalised within us and institutionalised around us. The spiritual path will therefore cause conflict, or bring it to light, within and outside us; but it also resolves conflict and accelerates growth. The process of self-knowledge develops discipline, perseverance, patience, all of which are necessary for freedom and justice. Because it is a process rather than an event, we may not know the dates and times of our awakening any more than we know when we will die. But we can see it happening within us and we can see its influence on the world we inhabit.
We also learn soon enough how impatience slows us down. As soon as you begin to practice a serious spiritual path, to listen to the silence, you meet inner resistance. To continue to meditate is then to struggle with all the innumerable conditioned habits and patterns of the ego, our individual and collective narcissism. The East calls them the countless vasanas. Soon after the first turn on the spiritual journey, one that can be accompanied by feelings of bliss and many sweet consolations, it all seems to get blocked. It feels as if some inner negative force is complicating and spoiling what had felt so simple and delightful. A demonic curve seems to be thrown into the divine directness. This is where the grace of the teacher is indispensable.
And be assured, I am with you always, to the end of time.14
Even with the rabbuni so close–closer to us than we are to ourselves according to St Augustine–the power of self-deception and illusion can be overwhelming. Often the path disappears beneath us as we struggle with the demons of anger, fear, pride, greed and ignorance.
At times we may even glimpse embarrassingly the absurd envy of the ego towards the guru. Being jealous of Jesus is the Judas-reflex in the human psyche, the dark side of the luminous night of faith. It has shown itself in many powerful minds like Nietsche. The ego only slowly learns, like a difficult child, that there is no need to compete with Jesus. It is eventually stopped in its tracks when it discovers that there is no competition anyway. You cannot argue for long with someone who is silent when you expect them to retaliate. You cannot fight forever with someone who turns the other cheek. You cannot push someone over who gives way. Every predictable power-structure which the ego seeks to defend is overturned by the humility of the true Self. As our own experience of the Self awakens we see how we do not have to prove ourselves equal to Jesus. He has already renounced his superiority. He has called us his friends.
I call you servants no longer; a servant does not know what his master is about. I have called you friends, because I have disclosed to you everything that I heard from my Father.15
Friendship is perhaps the most evocative way of describing our relationship with Jesus.
Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king and Jesus did not deny it. But made it clear it was a different kind of kingship from any that Pilate had in mind. Every friend is a king in the sense Jesus used: a benevolent ruler, protector and educator in the life of the one befriended. Friendship expresses itself in precise acts of love, concern, and intimate thoughtfulness. Jesus performed one of these before the last meal that he was to share with his friends. He washed their feet. Peter, who thought he knew who Jesus was, recoiled at this offer of menial, humiliating service. Jesus insisted. And when he had finished the ritual he asked them if they had understood what he had done for them. Clearly they had not. History went on to show how often his later disciples would also miss the point.
You call me Master and Lord, and rightly so for that is what I am. Then if I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example: you are to do as I have done for you.16
Later during the meal, the first Eucharist, Jesus opened their minds further to the meaning of what he had done, of who he was for them. He told them they were not his servants, his devotees or acolytes, but his friends. Friendship needs to be expressed and grows through its signs. His sign of friendship was that he had disclosed to them everything