Ruins of a synagogue at Capernaum. Image courtesy of http://www.HolyLandPhotos.org.
“Then they came to Capernaum, and on the sabbath day he went right to the synagogue and started teaching. They were astonished at his teaching, since he would teach them on his own authority, unlike the scholars.” Mark 1: 21-22
This is a blog about spiritual seeking, contrasting the religious with the mystical, as reflected in right action in the world today. It has no particular religious, doctrinal basis as it is part of the nature of the seeker to test him/herself on the many paths to the Divine. However, because I am writing in the United States, and the religious emphasis here is Christianity, I will be drawing heavily on those sources as well as from other traditions. The purpose here is to encourage the seeker to gain experience in the world, among all humanity who are brothers and sisters, as part of becoming transparent to one’s ground of being.
The ethics of the seeker are based in acceptance, tolerance and inclusion; this “right action” is led by our understanding of Ultimate Concern. This is the seeker’s path. The title of this blog refers to the early career of Jesus as he taught in the Galilee. After the imprisonment of John the Baptist, Jesus went to the small village of Capernaum. There he healed the sick, exorcised demons, ate and drank with all who came to visit him. He made no distinction between those “clean” or “unclean”, fishermen or tax collectors, Jews or gentiles, at his table. Capernaum sits just to the north of the Sea of Galilee and near trade routes that were very important in Roman occupied Palestine of the first century. Picture this place, situated on the water, filled with travelers and merchants, soldiers, Roman administrators, local commercial fishermen and their families, the sick, the healthy, the rich but mostly the poor, and religious scholars. This is bustling little Capernaum, a small crossroad of influences from around the known world.
Jesus, no wandering ascetic like John the Baptist, was intimately involved in the lives of those around him. What immediately marked Jesus as distinct was that he taught “on his own authority, unlike the scholars” of the day. This understanding of authority as placed within the individual, emerging out of one’s Ground of Being, is key to the ethics of any seeker. Like Jesus, we have separated from the authority of institutions and figureheads, and struck out individually under our own intuitive direction, recognizing ourselves as existing within the Mind of God. The dependence on doctrinal law, the authority of traditional scholars, has fallen away.
Like Jesus in Capernaum, here we stand, immersed in the world, bringing the ethics of the immanent Divine to bear as we understand our brother to be ourselves. While I could have chosen other scriptural texts to illustrate these ideas (Arjuna and Krishna on the battlefield, Buddha finding his way to the 8 fold path, the Persian tavern), I think it is also time to reclaim the pragmatic wisdom of Jesus for seekers in the Western world. This blog exists in the spirit of that ancient town where seekers gathered to hear the good news.
So I say to you: Come to Capernaum! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2012 by Kathryn Neall. All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce this article in whole or part, in any form, without first obtaining written permission.
On The Path of the Adept 