The Wild Reed: From Spiritual Death to Rebirth

– “Love and Sacrifice” (detail)
by Salem Beiruti

This year for Holy Week I’ll be sharing a series of excerpts from Marianne Williamson’s 2004 book The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life. These excerpts are from chapter 9, “From Spiritual Death to Rebirth.”

The you that has been invalidated, put down, suppressed, violated, hurt, endangered, smeared, humiliated, mocked, brutalized, abandoned, lied about, stolen from – on and on goes the list of ego delight – such is your crucified self.

The crucifixion is not specifically a Christian concept; metaphysically, it is a pattern of energy, demonstrated physically in the life of Jesus but experienced psychically in the life of everyone. Energetically, it symbolizes a pattern of thought. Death is its mission and life its enemy, for it is the mind at work against God.

Thus the drama of every human life, as love is born into the world and then crucified by fear. But the story does not stop there. Resurrection, like crucifixion, is a metaphysical truth: it is God’s response to the ego, or the ultimate triumph of love. All that is ever going on, in any situation, is that love appears, it is crucified, and ultimately love holds sway.

. . . There is a dark force, not outside us but within us, always at work to destroy the love that God creates. That force, or ego, is held in place by our belief that we are separate from God and from each other; it expresses itself constantly through judgment and blame. It is every unkind word, attack thought, or violent action. Sometimes it whispers, as in a mere glance; sometimes it shouts, as in the genocide of a people. But it is always active, as long as it has fear to fuel it. And today it has its eye on the biggest prize of all – the prospect of global annihilation.

Sometimes it’s other people who string us up on the cross, and at other times we do it all by ourselves. Frequently, it seems to be a combination of both. The ego does not discriminate so much as it seeks to harm whoever it can reach. But the part of us that can be crucified is not the part of us that is who we actually are. The ego can destroy the body, but it cannot destroy the spirit.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from The Gift of Change:
Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life
HarperCollins, 2004
pp. 185-187

NEXT: A Vortex of the Miraculous

The Wild Reed’s 2022 Holy Week posts:
• “The Most Authentic Statement of Created Life”
• Good Friday Reflections
• “This Spring, May We Renew the World”
• Easter for Mystics

The Wild Reed’s 2021 Holy Week post:
• The Final Say

The Wild Reed’s 2020 Holy Week posts:
• Holy Week, 2020
• God’s Good Gift

The Wild Reed’s 2019 Holy Week post:
• In This In-Between Time . . . of Both Loss and Promise

For The Wild Reed’s 2018 Holy Week series (featuring excerpts from Druid author and speaker John Michael Greer’s essay “The God from the House of Bread” in the 2012 anthology, Jesus Through Pagan Eyes: Bridging Neopagan Perspectives with a Progressive Vision of Christ), see:
• The God from the House of Bread: A Bridge Between Christianity and Paganism (Part 1)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 2)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 3)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 4)

For The Wild Reed’s 2017 Holy Week series (featuring excerpts from a 1999 interview with scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey, accompanied by images that depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ), see:
• Jesus Our Guide to Mystical Love (Part 1)
• Jesus Our Guide to Mystical Love (Part 2)
• Jesus Our Guide to Mystical Love (Part 3)

For The Wild Reed’s 2016 Holy Week series (featuring excerpts from Richard Horsley’s 1993 book Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, accompanied by images of Juan Pablo Di Pace as Jesus in the 2015 NBC mini-series A.D.: The Bible Continues), see:
• Jesus and Social Revolution (Part 1)
• Jesus and Social Revolution (Part 2)
• Jesus and Social Revolution (Part 3)