Becoming Ripe
A Reflection on the Beatitudes
The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) unfold a way of life that is “blessed” or “ripe”: capable of sustaining growth and bearing fruit in the midst of life’s changes and chances. This way of life is focused on breathing, awareness, and heartfelt relationships.1 Here, Jesus unpacks his core teaching about metanoia, showing us the process of conscious transformation.
Breath is foundational. It is all that we have. We depend upon our breath for life. To be “poor in spirit” is to cling to one’s breath (“spirit” also can be translated as “breath”), to dissolve our inflated egos through a simple return to the breath, so that become aware of our connection to the breath of God, the vision and power of life, that flows through us.
We need to keep breathing, remaining open to this vision and power, even when we are confronted by our limitations: our confusion, our grief, our fear. Continued awareness and breathing bring these intense emotions into the light of consciousness. We move through them into renewed life. If we keep breathing, even as we descend into the darkest depths, we discover a bottom that holds us and allows us to push back toward the surface with a greater sense of clarity and possibility. This is what it means to “mourn.”
Such experiences soften what is rigid and defensive in us. We become gentled, fluid, receptive. In this state, we can readily receive and absorb the inherit strength and healing that is our birthright as beings embedded in nature. The “meek,” the “gentled,” are open to receive their inheritance: the ever-renewing and sustaining life force of the earth.
When we are open in this way, we discover what we really, really desire, beyond the rigid beliefs and self-image we have internalized. What we hunger and thirst for is balance, integrity and justice within us and around us. Our good and the common good are intimately related, and we realize this intimacy as our deep desire for wholeness. When we are in touch with this desire, we become a container capable of holding the balance of energies that connect us to life in a healthy way.
The realization of this desire releases the generative power of love. We become “womb-like,” birthers of life and the love that energizes it. We are awash in a sea of mercy, of womb-like love. Love begets love begets love begets love. In this state we are completely in or within heart. We are in touch with the unitive center of our being – our heart-space. It is the center from which life flows: the energies of sensation, feeling, consciousness, and compassion. Centered in our heart we discover ourselves aligned with the very heart of God. We perceive reality through a divine lens.
The illumination gained by this new perception allows us to see holistically, beyond the binary opposites that get us tangled in envy, greed, competition and violence. We experience an inner harmony that is reflected in an outer harmony: peace. Our lives become an invitation to remembrance of the unity the precedes and dignifies our diversity, and in which we celebrate our oneness. We become channels through which the divine energies flow to reweave the tattered threads of our common life.
As we ripen in this way, we will encounter resistance – both within us and around us. We will be pushed beyond our limits for the sake of the balance, integrity, and justice that is emerging from within us. As we flow like a stream over and around the rocks of resistance, we open up new channels, and are renewed in the vision and power of the divine creativity all around us. Even when others speak untruthfully about us, out of envy because of our connection to the way of Jesus, we will continue to ripen and bear fruit.
We can rejoice and let go of everything that constrains our growth, our heartfulness, as our soul-connection to our ancestors on the path deepens, and we are drawn into the stream of vision and power that continues to resonate through them. We are one with this life-giving stream and cannot be separated from it. This is the spiritual path that Jesus unfolds in his teaching of the Beatitudes, the ripening of our souls.
Breathing.
Awareness.
Compassion.
It is by means of contemplative practice that the “kingdom of heaven” emerges from the inside, out. The shalom of the world must be planted in our hearts. From there it will take root and grow.
You can return to your breath right now. It is all you really have. It is through your breath that you connect with your soul, the divine energies uniting the phenomenal world and the inner landscape of the heart. Breathe through your woundedness to connect with this life-giving energy. It is your birthright, your inheritance as an earth creature.
Allow yourself to soften, to absorb the healing power that already is yours. Let your hunger and thirst for wholeness shape your desire and perception of reality. Identify with your heart-center so that this power can flow into the world through you. Become womb-like, birthing love. Unite with this stream of mercy flowing from your ancestors, the Abbas and Ammas who have loved you into life. It will carry you through all resistance, all calumny, all persecution for the sake of the healing of the world.
Just breathe. God, the Merciful One, is continually renewing you in love.
In what follows I am following the translation of the Beatitudes from Aramaic provided by Neil Douglas-Klotz, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 2022), p. 47-68.