WASHING THE DISCIPLES FEET BY JESUS

WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES FEET BY JESUS

The Deeper Meaning

In the Book of John, there is a story of Jesus being a servant to his Disciples. In fact the book starts off in Chapter 13 at a time just before the Passover Festival. Thee Writer of John continues to say:

 "Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."

Today we're going to go beyond the literal, and into the metaphysical. We're looking for the deeper allegorical message contained within the literal presentation of the storyline. Here is how the verse reads:

"... Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him."

~John 13:4-5

Then, after he began to wash Peter's feet, Jesus said to Peter: 

“You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

Everyone has seen the literal historical presentation of this event in the ancient scriptures (and in modern movies and books), but now lets reveal what is hidden deeper in the text. This mythos is a representation of “Spirit meeting Matter,” and the purity and cleansing of that union. You see, our FEET are where MAN meets WORLD ... what is always grounded to the Earth/Matter ... the material world of low vibrating energy. 

Our feet connect our spiritual Higher-Self, to our physical body. Just like the center of the cross represents the intersection of Spirit and Matter, so this represents a firm standing on solid ground ... while remaining Spiritually and physically clean. Man's “worldly thoughts and actions” must be cleansed in order to approach the Divine Spirit within.

This, is the deeper esoteric meaning in this passage. This shows the willingness of Divine Love to serve. To bring together the upper and the lower, the inner and the outer. As above, so below. Man ... know thyself. Scripture can bring us deep esoteric lessons and messages, want to awaken a Divine Truth from within us. You’ll know it when it hits you. For me, I just call it an AH-HA moment. Its that flash of time just when the inner message hits you, and strikes a vibe of Truth.

Just a thought ... 

Justin Taylor, ORDM. 

DEEPER LOOK AT JUDAS AND PETER

DEEPER LOOK AT JUDAS AND PETER

The New Testament Judas stands for the disloyal part of human lower self (disciple); that part which resists the influence coming from the Divine Master. And the “Master” represents the Higher Self … the Divine Christ within.

The “disciple”, lower self, has expectations as to the “Master.” If the “disciple” is not ready to renew his vision of things and enlarge his horizons, for which he needs to drop old expectations aside, he may be defeated. Actual defeat takes the form of “treason.”

Allegorically, in Matthew 26 of the Bible, the loyal disciples do not stop Judas from committing his treason. Their great stupidity, cowardice. and inability to defend the sacred Master - the source of their learning - is well expressed in Matthew 26: 69-74. There, the chief disciple Peter, flatly denies the Master three times. When asked about Jesus, Peter replies:

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

This chief disciple literally washes his hands. He swears he did not see the Master. Peter is too cowardly to be a traitor, or a true disciple - in that moment. He is but lukewarm. He will be able to recover only later in the story. 

Anyone cowardly enough or sufficiently ignorant not to make “a brave declaration of principles” and a “valiant defense of those unjustly attacked” is caught in that same situation as Peter. 

Of course, “Judas”, or “selfish impulses”, betrays his Master, or spiritual Divine/Soul, who is not defended by other disciples. Thus Judas successfully interrupts the flow of energy between “heaven” (upper Divine) and “earth” (lower mortal soul).

“Judas” is a symbol of that disciple or aspirant to Wisdom who fails in his search for Truth, and who cuts the semi-dormant link to the higher realms, which can only be found WITHIN himself. Judas is also a symbol for the selfish sectors of one’s emotional principle of consciousness.

Evil disguises itself as good. Ambiguity, disguise, and hypocrisy make the basic grammar of traitors. Judas kisses the Master on the face. Outwardly, the fake disciple expresses good wishes to the Master. But this is in fact only made in order to indicate to the swordsmen who was to be the man arrested, and killed. 

Then comes the representation of Sacred, eternal Wisdom. In Matthew 26:67, the Master is spat on his face and slapped by ignorant people. You see, the spiritual Mind is degraded and despised by the arrogance of the lower self. Once Jesus is arrested, though, and after getting his bribe of thirty pieces of silver, Judas renounces the prize for his treason. He suddenly realizes that - in the absence of Spiritual Soul, the Divine Master - everything loses meaning for him.

He had rejected the Teacher who did not fit into his own expectations … thus battling his ego. He had done so because he had not previously renounced his own narrow “self” ideas about what the Master should or should not do. 

But what could Judas do, now that he had committed spiritual suicide for that lifetime? Now that he had interrupted the sacred bridge between heaven and earth within himself, turned himself deaf to the still small voice of his own higher conscience within? There was but one thing for him to do, and he did it. He completed the metaphor of spiritual self-destruction by hanging himself.

In this highly symbolical metaphor or allegory Judas is the “disciple/self” who betrays his “Divine/Master”. This is the sacred esoteric secret. He destroys his own higher Self by giving into his own selfish ego of self-expectation. 

By the symbolism of hanging himself, Judas interrupts the life flow between head and body. Thus he destroys Antahkarana (Hindu Philosophy: the link between the middle and higher mind). This is a way of losing consciousness, or memory. Death symbolizes a form of ceasing to remember. Judas does not remember any longer the things he knew when he was loyal to his Higher Self, or inner Divine Master. 

The various factors mentioned above are present in the life of every truth-seeker, and Judas’ lessons should be useful for every one of us.

Everything, which exists in large scale, exists in small scale, too. The microcosm and macrocosm. The Universe within, and without. No one should say, or think, that the experience of Judas in the New Testament is entirely away from his own experience. The whole Universe is interlinked. We can learn from it all, if we only have the ability to do that. The lessons from Judas apply to each and every person. Look deeper into every parable, myth, or metaphor. Search for Truth. Knock, and the door shall be opened. 

Just a thought ... 

Justin Taylor, ORDM.