On Being One with Christ and Christ with Me

      "Yet I'm not asking just about these, but also about those putting their trust, through their word, into me, so that all would be one [thing], just like You, Father, within Me and I within You, so that also they would be one [thing] within us, so that the world would trust that you sent Me. And I gave them the splendor which You gave Me, so that they would be one [thing] just like We [are] one [thing]; I within them and You within Me, so that they would be having been finished into one [thing], so that the world would know that You sent Me and loved them just like You loved Me." (John 17:20-23)

     "Jesus spoke to him, 'I am with you [all] for so long of a time and you haven't known Me, Philip? The person having seen Me has seen the Father; how do you speak, "Show us the Father?" Don't you trust that I [am] within the Father and the Father is within Me? The words which I speak to you [all] I don't talk from Myself, but the Father staying within Me does His works. Put your trust in Me that I [am] within the Father and the Father [is] within Me; yet if not, believe because of the self-same works." (John 14:9-11)

     "Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as have been baptized into Christ Jesus, have been baptized into His death? We then were entombed together with Him by means of [our] baptism into [His] death, so that just like Christ was awakened from the dead by means of the splendor of the Father, in the same way we also should walk by means of a brand new life. Because on the one hand if we have become grown together with Christ by the likeness of His death, then on the other hand we we also be of His resurrection." (Romans 6:3-5)

     One. Those of us who have been baptized into the death of Christ Jesus have been made one with Him. We are like trees, Christ and each one of us, whose seeds have been planted side by side and, as they grew, grew together so that they become a single tree. We are like embryos in a womb, initially separate, which become joined to one another, perhaps like a chimera, and are born as a single child. This is what it truly means to be "reborn" as He said in John 3:-5. We who are baptized into Him are already one with Him in a way so intimate that it cannot be any closer than it already is. We are one with Him, in the same way that He is one with the Father. Not the same person, but the same thing, the same existence. and because we are one with Him as He is one with the Father, so through Him we too are one with the Father as He is. This is already an established fact, a reality, upon baptism.

     So then why is there a barrier to experiencing this? Who is maintaining the walls keeping us from experiencing this singular, intimate "oneness." We are. Or more specific to myself, I am.

     Yes, you read that right. He is not the one maintaining any separateness between He and I. I am. Through my clinging to all those things which I think makes me distinct and unique, through my clinging to what I identify as a distinct "self," and protecting that "self," I am putting up the walls keeping me from experiencing the reality, the established fact, of being one with Christ, and through Him, the Father. 

      In my meditation today, as I was reciting my "mantra" that, "I am one with Christ, and Christ is with me," this is the thing which struck me most. I am already one with Christ, and Christ with me. We are thoroughly integrated in this way already, but I am the one putting up the walls between us through stubbornly clinging to the delusion of my own identity separate from Him. Any time I exert this self identity, I erect a barrier between Christ and I, and because I erect a barrier between Christ and I, I erect a barrier between the Father and I as well. Either He increases and I decrease, or I increase and He decreases. Either my psychology is in control, or His is. Either the tree draws from one side's sap or the other's. Both cannot be sourced at once. It just doesn't work that way. There is no middle ground here.

     If I want Him to increase, then I must drop this delusion of separateness from Him which is creating the barrier. I must internally accept and understand that He and I are one, and everything which goes with it. This illusion of a separate self apart from Him must be cast aside as dead.