The First Rejection at Nazareth (Rabel)

(Back) Healing the Official's Son Jesus Finds Four Fishers of Men (Next)

Luke 4:16-31

If you are using your Harmony's you will see that right following the healing success, Jesus finds himself head on up against rejection. This is something we have to learn and that is how to handle the fact of life called rejection, especially when it occurs at times when we have every reason to think we don't deserve it. Rejection takes many forms, of course, being misunderstood, being looked down upon is felt as rejection, having one differ from our opinion or current conviction, and many times just a plain NO given to something that we'd hoped would be yes is felt as rejection. Again, as in the case of healing, one's worthiness or unworthiness has nothing to do with it, one's merit or demerit doesn't really determine it. Rejection seems to just be a part of that give and take process which occurs with the intermingling of souls, bodies and consciousness, and how many times have you and I when we felt rejected felt (and this is what hurts), "he did that to me, in order to do it to me, and if you were able to read into the mind of the one who did that to you, just to do it to you, guess what you might read there? Something quite different, "I didn't do anything to hurt him, I did what I had to do and he was there, that is all, so many of our hurts and our offenses come and are very painful to us because we project motivation into that person and our motivation projection is not correct, "You hate me,"says the child to his parents, that is why you donft let me eat more candy. This is very often the case when we cook up motives and make ourselves much more important to the other person than we really are. Let's take time to, instead of projecting our imaginary motives into people, let's take time to really use a bit of empathy: "If I had been in that person's place, what might have been my motives, and so forth." This particular subject is also very strong in the Chapter of Christian Healing 119, "Judgment and Justice".

(this is from Lecture 10, where Ed goes back to The First Rejection at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-31), specifically to verse 24 in relation to Jesus' use of the expression "HIS OWN".

This is the first mention in the Gospels of a term Jesus uses a number of times and always connects it with either, not being accepted, not being believed in, not being successful, and as a potential source of danger. This is the term "his own". In this first instance Jesus refers to it in this manner: (read versus 23 and 24), There are other places where he says similar things about this business of "his own". (Read also John 4:44, Luke 14:26, Matthew 10.) These examples, I am sure, suffice to show us that Jesus is using the term "his own" to symbolize something which can be dangerous, which can lead to disappointment, which is not honored in the prophets works, which is not honored on certain spiritual levels. Let's get some possible implications here. "His own," "my own," "me and mine" are in personal-consciousness, the state which in Unity we designate as personal consciousness. The key figure involved in all these expressions is ME, my personal or my current opinion of that thing called ME. This is what personal consciousness really is, it is my current opinion of that entity of which I am in charge of and which I call ME, and I feel a very strong sense of responsibility, either on the direction of taking credit for or being blamed for, what this entity I am in charge of, called Me, does or doesn't do. This state of personal consciousness really does not appear to most persons to be as dangerous or as prone to failure as Jesus suggests that it is. There is a good reason why it does not appear that way to the average person, the reason is that it has become so very very familiar state for us to be in, we just take it for granted that it is an O.K. state in which to do anything because it is the state we live in or we live with most often and also our educational system encourages a person to dwell in this state all the time, so that to most persons it does not seem to be the dangerous or deceitful thing that Jesus indicates it is. It is the old "me and mine" obsession which dominates so much thinking and feeling, an attitude forming. It contains, among other things, the belief that exclusive ownership of something or someone is very much to be desired. Personal consciousness believes self to be capable of being a source of power and that self is capable of creating one's own goodness, merit and so forth, but the truth is that among all the states of consciousness that we know of, next to down right negative state of consciousness, the personal consciousness is the riskiest level from which to attempt spiritual work, specially healing. The teachings of Jesus are very much designed to help us go out of habitual personal consciousness. The steps that we might outline mentally that would lead to an emerging out of this state of personal consciousness may be something like this:

1. First we have the personal consciousness, "me and mine," "I own," "my own."
2. Then we can through study of Truth adopt more often what we call the impersonal view point. This is a step out of personal consciousness.
3. From here we can begin to cultivate more times of spiritual view point which is a little more than just the impersonal, you can have an impersonal viewpoint without it necessarily be the spiritual. You can also equate this step with Spiritual Awareness.
4. And then, the next step is inevitably the Christ Consciousness. In this state one can be totally free from personal consciousness, you can have contact with it, you can deal with it, you can even use it to express through as you will but you no longer will be bound to it.

It is wrong when people say, "Jesus had no personal consciousness." He had it and in occasions He expressed through it but in no way was He ever, as most of us are, bound in it. Jesus also gives that rather cryptic comment, "You are going to say to me, 'physician, heal thyself.'" It isn't that Jesus himself taught that but he refers to it as it appears in the quotation. This refers to the difficulty that many persons have when working for healing for themselves. I think I am pretty safe in assuming that most of us have gone through this experience that we have encountered difficulty when we are trying to attain spiritual healing for ourselves. There are many Truth students that are very successful in healing work on behalf of others but who consistently experience delay and disappointment or seeming failure in working to heal themselves. The clue to the dilemma is again on those two words, "my own." We are often very deeply in personal consciousness when we try to work out something for ourselves. As Dr. Maurice Nichols says, "one of the easiest things in the world to bear is another person's difficulties," you see? when they become "my own,"" me and mine' almost inevitably by force of habit I am drawn into personal consciousness and very often this is the basis for the seeming stubbornness of the condition, and it isn't that the condition is so stubborn, it is personal-consciousness that is difficult to overcome. Personal consciousness is the poorest vantage point from which to attempt a valid spiritual demonstration. A very good technique to overcome this state of personal consciousness is the old fashioned "denial and affirmation" technique. May Rowland used to have all of us in Silent Unity often use the denial/affirmation, "I AM NOT BOUND BY PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, I AM FREE WITH THE FREEDOM OF SPIRIT." If you can suspect you are in the state of personal consciousness try to observe yourself; anything negative within you that realizes that you are observing it, you are not condemning it but observing it, and when it happens the thing begins to weaken its hold on you, it acts like an entity that is being caught in the act, and you begin to have a change of consciousness, it won't be "my own" but the Father's gift to me, not "me and mine" but "thee and thine" not "you belong to me," but, "all that the Father has is mine to enjoy, to share forever," "it is not I but the Father within me who doeth his works." Jesus says, "this doctrine is not mine but of him who sent me," you see? out of personal consciousness into the right relationship to the greater purpose, the Divine Plan. Often the question comes out, "can a person be effective in bringing healing to others if he himself needs healing?" Without any shadow of a doubt I am thoroughly convinced that a person in need of a finished healing himself can definetely heal others. I feel this with all my heart and there should be no delay, no procrastinating, no excuse, if your attention is brought into connection with a healing need, by all means, go ahead and use your healing consciousness. When you are having or if you ever have this resistance, this stubbornness on the part of the condition we want to heal, very often because of certain of our teachings, of course, the tendency is to think that there is something wrong in my consciousness, but wrong in the sense of just "wrongness" or negativity, some bad thought, or some negative feeling or emotion, and sometimes this is not the case, the thing that is wrong with consciousness is simply that we are locked in to the personal level, it is not a case so much of down-right bad thinking or negativity as such but simply stuck within the limitations of personal consciousness and that kind of a break-through would be the only needed thing, rather than a complete revolutionizing of thought from negative into positive, just simply a breaking out of this shell of personal consciousness about the situation and becoming a little more impersonal which will lead you to becoming a little more spiritual and then a little more Christlike in consciousness.

Text of the original transcript from the first paragraph of page 56 and the bottom of page 59 through the first paragraph of page 62.
Transcribed by Mark Hicks on August 8, 2013