The Way - the will of the Father
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” John14:6f
“I am the way”, the word ‘way’ in the Greek is ‘odos’, it means the natural way, the way to go. Metaphorically it is a course of conduct and way of thinking.
A ‘way’ always has a destination and this time the destination is the Father. Not the father Abraham that the Jews spoke of at the time of Christ but God the Father, the originator of the I AM.
In these words, “the way, the truth and the life” dwells the Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The ‘way’ is the Father and requires the will; the ‘truth’ is Christ the Son which requires thinking; and the Holy Spirit is the ‘life’-giving spirit that is felt. Willing, thinking and feeling are the tools which the I AM uses to spiritualise that which has become too earthly, too physical and too instinctual.
It is Thomas who is asking “how can we know the way?” The same Thomas who wanted physical proof, not just to see Jesus’ wounds but to put his hands IN them. He is so engrossed in matter that he can’t see that the I AM is the ‘way’. This ‘way’ is also the journey of the prodigal son, leaving the father, mucking around with the pigs and then returning to the father.
John the Baptist also impresses on us the importance of the ‘way’; “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” John 1:23
We are, of course, in this wilderness - the solitude - cut off from the spiritual worlds and we are groping to find the ‘way’. We are blind and our consciousness is dull. The way stretches out ahead of us but it also stretches back to the past. In our blindness we think that the way stretching back to the past is much safer than the one ahead. After all, it is familiar territory for it is the way we came.
If only we had the courage to trust the way ahead; the I AM is the way ahead “no one comes to the Father, but by (me) the I AM.” This ‘way’ is the way of freedom. We simply decide in the full clear light of consciousness to take this ‘way’. It is a free action which is made out of the I AM to take the way forward to the Father, not retrace our steps back to the primal Father. Not to take the way back to the Garden of Eden but forward to the New Jerusalem.
Even though we only have a tentative relationship with the I AM we do know that it is a reality. We know that when we say “I” we can only mean ourselves. If we hear someone else say “I” we know that they are not meaning us. So when we say “I” essentially we name ourself from within ourself. This is our inner world and so the “I” - the ‘God’ within us begins to speak.
We haven’t always been able to call ourselves by this sacred name “I”. Not so long ago, a few thousand years, we would have literally fainted if we even heard the name “I”, we certainly didn’t refer to ourselves as “I”. Before Golgotha, before Christ united with the earth, only the initiates knew and used the sacred name “I”. Since Golgotha not only do we have an increasingly intimate relationship with our I AM, we have the opportunity to Christen our I AM. In fact not to Christen your I AM leads to greater isolation. Christ in you, the hope of glory means Christ is IN us, in our inner being. This is the ‘way’ now, I AM is the way.
While we learn to engage fully with our I AM, this real self, it is kept for us by our guardian Angel. Rudolf Steiner in lectures to the first Waldorf teachers in 1919 said something surprising: “What do most modern people mean when they say “God”? What kind of being do they refer to when they speak of God? What they mean is an Angel, their own Angel, which they call God! This is only how far we have come along the way since Golgotha.” So not until we take our I AM into ourselves can we see past the Angel to God the Father.
When we unite with our I AM, the God within us, then we can know the Father, not before. “If you had known the I AM, you would have known the I AM’s Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.”
It is in our Christed I AM that we also find the ‘way’ to look at the past, at the ‘way’ we have conquered and prevailed. We see that when we may have been angry, distressed, sad etc. that now through I AM-infused eyes we have a new way of looking at these character-building episodes.
Then we come near to the glorious point of “Not I but Christ in me.”
The I AM shines through our struggles
Hi Kristina,
Uniting with our I AM, ah but the road is not easy. The more we work to unfold our higher self, the more the path becomes difficult. Sometimes truth shines through, often after we have gone through a difficult episode in our lives. When our life is graced with our way made smooth, we look with love on the world and with divine happiness, but when our way is made as a rough sea, we may still see great beauty but we live with great questions also. If you are living a good life, you have good health, home, family and friends, and you look at the millions suffering in our world, you ask questions. Sometimes I think karma is too abstract a word to apply to the suffering we see in our world. Then I think perhaps all the suffering is presented to us as a challenge to wake up, get out of our own little cocoon and really see what is in our ability to serve others, to serve our world in whatever capacity is given to us. Finding our I AM does not make our life easier, but you become armed with the consciousness of responsibility.
Thanks again for all you share here. It's a beautiful day in the northeast of America, with all of nature putting on a magnificent demonstration of love and beauty. When I think of the suffering of the Christ as man, sometimes it is a little overwhelming.
Love,
Patri