BLESSED ARE ...

Anyone who reads the beatitude who says that happy are those who suffer persecution and defamation of all kinds because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now, and not just in the future, from the point of view of the profane ego, has the impression that Jesus' message is sadistic and escapist.

Since the Kingdom of Heaven is within man, in his conscious and realized Divine Self, it seems that self-realization is necessarily incompatible with the achievements of the ego. It seems that man cannot be spiritually good without being at the same time, martyr and victim of his spirituality. And to justify this concept, the literature of the past two thousand years presents the idea that Jesus was the king of the sufferers, the man of sorrows, the martyr par excellence. It turns out that humanity called Christian, condescending and adjusted to the teachings of organized clergy, was educated in the idea that one cannot be happy here on earth and not even in heaven, or vice versa; that those who are happy here are necessarily happy in heaven.

But is it true that Jesus was the king of the sufferers?

No, but moral and psychically, yes, he suffered! His sufferings in 33 years of earthly existence do not cover 15 hours, from Thursday night when the kiss of betrayal, until Friday afternoon. His physical sufferings might last for no more than 3 hours. And all these sufferings were freely accepted because Jesus did not revolt against the sentence, stating that: "So should not the Christ have to suffer all this to enter into his glory?" And if he had not been born, lived, brought the message, the crucifixion, how would the scriptures humanity received be, would they be possible to exist?

Does that ever exist on earth a man who lived for 33 years and suffered for so little? However, what about the moral and psychological sufferings of Jesus? The misunderstanding of the people and his disciples? Judas’ betrayal, Peters’ denial and later been abandoned by them? However, he knew that his incarnation was a dive into the thick darkness of a highly materialistic world.

When we suffer freely, for the love of a great ideal, suffering loses its bitterness; the bitter taste happens only when the suffering is stupidly endured, without knowing why, without any higher purpose. Every physical or moral suffering carried out under the light of a great mission, a sublime ideal, is sweet sorrow, an "easy yoke" and a "light burden".

It was precisely in this sense that Jesus proclaimed happy those who are persecuted for the sake of the truth, because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven which is within every man.

The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be found in any distant region or in the future; the presence of this Kingdom is a fact; it is not the object of an acquisition after death, but it is the essential nature of every man. This does not mean that the Kingdom of God is present only in some men and absent in others - happens that some are conscious of this presence and in others the unconsciousness of living this presence. For some men, the Kingdom of God is still "light under a lampstand", for others already are "light at the top of the chandelier" of their spiritual consciousness.

"We are here in this world, to discover within ourselves, that dimension (the Kingdom), which is much deeper than our thoughts", says Eckhart Tolle - a German-born spiritualist, professor and writer - and Heaven, being the conscience released by the truth. Only when there is a radical change in the level of consciousness when it is envisioned and materialized this dimension, will man be integrated into the Cosmic Whole. And those who have not yet realized the presence of the light of this Kingdom within themselves - which depends solely on the right or false attitude of free will in each one - continue to suffer, for this light remains absent as if everything were thick darkness.

The ego, when it is full of joy and satisfaction, hardly cares for the things of its spiritual Self. The desire for something spiritual only awakes when the man lacks the objects of the ego. Man-ego only knows life's goals, its objectives, but ignores the raison d'être of his life. While these objectives of life are present in abundance, the profane man seeks his satisfaction and happiness on these objects, and hardly finds his reason for being, which is his inner Self.

The parable of the guests to the bridal feast is a typical illustration of this attitude: the profane men invited in the first place, do not come to the wedding feast of the Kingdom of God; one of those guests purchased a small farm and had to see it and cultivate it; another bought a yoke of oxen and had to try them; the third was married and had a party and dance at home. All of them, so happy with their objects, the materiality of life did not feel the hunger for a superior reason. Their having's and doings totally eclipsed their beings. They did not reach the spiritual plentifulness because of their material pseudo-plentifulness, which were their major vacuities.

Then, the host of the nuptial party invited the poor, the crippled, the deaf, and all those who were not saturated with the goals of life, and these comprehended the raison d'être of their existence, attending the holiness of the Kingdom of God, by self-knowledge and by self-realization.

The transition from the ego consciousness to the Christ-consciousness implies almost always in suffering, in the "strait is the gate and narrow is the path"; but once achieved Christ-consciousness, the life of the spiritual man can become an "easy yoke" and a "light burden".

--- For those on the path to becoming realized, spirituality is suffering.

--- For those realized, is joy.

The unhappy satisfaction of the profane must pass through the happy dissatisfaction of the mystic - to one day lead to the happy satisfaction of the cosmic man.

All Masters of the spiritual life when speaking to spiritually illiterate men, as is the majority of humanity, insist on the need for renunciation, sacrifice, self-denial. They insist on the transition from the profane man to the mystical man - and they refer little to the cosmic man - because for them, pedagogy has to precede metaphysics, since the illiterate of the things regarding spirituality, cannot digest the pearls of mystical wisdom and much less, comprehend what a cosmic man is. Pedagogy must precede metaphysics. If the Masters showed the compatibility of spiritual bliss with external pleasures, what would happen? The vast majority of the profanes will judge themselves belonging to the cosmic men elite; replacing the real liberation by a pseudo illusory liberation, enjoying the pleasures of life, living the illusion of being cosmic men, of having already overcome the painful ascetic-mystical period.

The ignorant and arrogant profane, easily convinces itself that its spiritual primitivism is perfection, and that renunciation, sacrifice, practices of devotion and religious meditation are overcome stages. The most difficult patient is one who considers as health, his disease. The great Masters knew this, and therefore always insisted on an attitude of renunciation and sacrifice: "Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple". Only after renouncing everything boldly, is when a man can possess something without danger - can even possess everything without being possessed by anything. But these few - where are they?

--- Mahatma Gandhi said: "Man, renounce everything you have, hand over everything to God - and then receives it back, purified, from the hands of God."

Man-ego is not honest with himself; and the biblical phrase "Omnis homo mendax" (Every man is a liar) is pure truth: man has the ineradicable habit of deluding himself, to judge being self-realized when not even the “ABC” of his initiation he had begun. Instead, to spell the “ABC” in elementary school first, he looks forward to enrolling at the University of the spirit.

Given this constant attitude of insincerity, the sad habit of lies, self-deception, should the great Master to speak as they speak, to call happy those who suffer persecution and defamation for the sake of the truth. Only then they can teach the illiterate of the spirit to learn the rudiments of spirituality.

No one can pass from the first degree to the third one without first having passed the second degree. No one can pass to the world of Christ-cosmic consciousness without having gone through the world of ascetic mysticism.

According to all Masters, the ascensional path goes through the stages of purification, enlightenment and union. If the impure profane does not become purified of its impurities, he cannot become enlightened through mystique, nor united by the cosmic consciousness. This is the inexorable mathematics of the Cosmic Laws. This is the rectilinear logic of liberation through the truth.

It is immense the legion of profane men who judge themselves cosmic - because they did not go yet through the novitiate of the mystique.

The more severely man goes through this mystical-ascetic novitiate, the more hope he has one day of entering the glorious world of the Cosmic consciousness of Christ.