“If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that relationship and emphasize instead the calamity of the event. But crucifixion is not a calamity if it leads to new life. Through Christ’s crucifixion we were unshelled, which enabled us to be born to resurrection. That is not a calamity. So, we must take a fresh look at this event if its symbolism is to be sensed.”

-Joseph Campbell

The symbols of Easter are universal, arising from the deepest and most eternal processes of the soul. The torment and submission against the cross, the triumph of Life through its struggle, of rising free from the dark cave, the egg, the tomb, to be born anew. Jung said, “One speaks of rebirth; one professes rebirth; yet one is filled with rebirth.”

This process is in itself a Great Mystery. Like the long wasteland and struggles of winter so often we come to a point where the soul finally dies to the old life and ways of seeing, into the new life. Like the chick emerging from the egg, or Christ from the tomb, the soul finally rises once again, through the dead ice of ego like a sapling in Spring. Freed from its suffering caused by it being nailed to the oppositions and trials of the mortal condition. Resurrecting into a greater, and perhaps even divine, consciousness.

Both ancient pagan and Christian symbolism unite as one at Easter – on the first Sunday after the first full Moon, after another cross, that of the seasons at Spring Equinox. The symbols Campbell speaks of: the cross, the crucified world saviour, the hare of fertility, the gestating egg, tap into the deepest, most universal processes of the psyche. While Christians believe it represents a true and deeply sacred event in history, we might also consider how it reflects the true and deeply sacred processes that must be endured during the journey of the evolving soul, while in the world. The many deaths and rebirths we must suffer in one lifetime, as we find ourselves pinned to irreconcilable circumstance, to terrible trials or opposition, with no choice but to finally submit to the will of a greater consciousness.

And like the chick that breaks finally from its restrictive egg. That has grown strong in its long, winter-like struggle against the darkness of unyielding walls, the symbols and processes Easter celebrates hold the kernel of our Greatest Potential. The walls do not grow weaker, it is in the struggle that the chick grows stronger; until finally – with no promise but only the soul’s call to endure, its beak breaks through into Light. Life becomes infused with the divine. Of the “enlightenment” that comes each time we go through such deaths, such rebirths, finally stepping free of our restrictive caves of perception into broader visions and understanding. And into the revived personality.

As Goethe said: “Unless you are constantly practising it – this dying and being reborn, you are only a guest on this planet.”

Easter reminds us of this. Of the price of a higher or more divine perspective – and the price of wisdom.

The full price of being alive.

~Rachel Alana

thinking of you too….

inquiry for today~ to be with life as it is…..

from heaven to earth…..

Listen, are you breathing just a little,

and calling it a life?

~Mary Oliver