I had a great Inner Lent conversation with a wise Canadian friend today.  She asked me to explore this question:

Why is giving up something so difficult?

Can you give up your addictions to whatever thoughts, feelings, behaviors numb you to the pain of your present sufferings.

Can you give up your fantasies to being rescued, to achieving something meaningful without suffering, to becoming you at some vague distant moment in the future?

Can you give up your prejudices and the attachment to your own way of seeing things, to your identification with certain points of view that you formed in your past and use to define your present and future?

We say "give up".  We don't give down, we give up.  We give something up to a higher power. But at Lent, if we are to follow the model of Jesus Christ, we are to give down - to surrender our spirit to full earthly embodiment. Only through embodiment do we come to know willingly, and with fierce understanding, gravity and weight, boundaries and limitations, resistance and reluctance, endurance and forebearance, wholeness and integrity.  

Embodiment is the purpose of the 40 days in the desert/wilderness. Christ did not spend those forty days contemplating Spirit, he was attending to the mysteries of being human and contemplating material containment and the challenges of survival in space and time intimately. He had just put on physical and emotional garments of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, pain. He needed to experience imbalance, self-consciousness and neediness.  He needed to carry the weight of the world, be without any comfort, and face the greatest temptations of body and soul. He had to become the Son of Man to understand and suffer the sins of man. He did not incarnate to remain beyond individual human consciousness, but to enter within the frailty and strength of daily existence. To gift us with the model of incarnating the divine within our human individuality.

The three temptations occur to "test" the fullness of His humanity and the acceptance of earthly limitations. Each of the temptations tries to seduce the Christ to step out of his role as Son of Man, out of the experience of ordinary existence, to excarnate and reclaim his godhood and to relinquish his humanity and the very essence of his Deed. How do we meet these temptations today, 2000 years later with our modern souls?

 If we look at all the "40's" in the Bible, we want to look at forty as a symbol.  Four symbolizes complete manifestation as in the four elements, the four seasons, the four directions. Zero is a place holder for transition.  40 days symbolizes what ever amount of earthly linear time it takes to complete the manifestation of a new stage of existence and cross the threshold to a new consciousness.  To give up something old to become something new. (Pregnancy, the forming of the body, is 40 weeks!)

Inner Lent offers 4 sessions (as are most of the Inner Year programs). The zero or undefined element of Inner Lent is the degree to which Inner Lent gives you a new sense of embodied self free of uncertainty. Inner Lent is not a guide to the season of Lent, but a presentation of the ways we can apply a Lenten consciousness to our own personal manifestations, experience the challenges and the great gift of embodiment of our divine purpose and vanquish the inner tempting demons of addiction, fantasy and prejudice. Inner Lent brings esoteric insight and personal connection to every element of the forty days. It offers surprising reflections on the biological realities of the three temptations. It encourages a new maturity of self-knowledge and a deepening of self-compassion.  Whatever stands in your way of showing up in the world can be recognized and overcome through a personal, inner understanding of the three temptations and the awakening of personal Lenten integrity. Inner Lent is not a dogma or an inflexible design, it is a suggestion and a creative possibility for you to find some new healing, liberating and encouraging resonance between your own sufferings and the mysteries of the Christ Deed.

Session One will explore the personal necessity and benefits of forty days in the wilderness or desert. Make distinctions between the inner desert and the inner wilderness. Consider wild beasts. Take a look at fasting, denial, embodiment, isolation and temptation. It is an overview of the elements of Lent.

Session Two will take up the temptation of turning stones to bread and the role of addictions. Addiction is the belief that some substance, belief or behavior will transform emptiness to fulness.  We all suffer many addictions which weaken are ability to feel.  We will consider the personal meaning that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

Session Three will penetrate the temptation to cast yourself down from the pinnacle and let the angels rescue you.  This temptation takes us to our inner experience of fantasy and the weakening of our will forces. We are not to put God to a test - yet we do this all the time.  Why? How do we ground our inner lives, experience the gravity of our deeds and live a practical and purposeful life?

Session Four takes us to the mountain top where we are offered dominion over all the kingdoms if we will serve Satan.  This is the temptation of prejudice, that a perspective or perception known in a moment can hold lasting dominion over living truth, living beauty, living goodness. Satan is served by fixed thoughts, fixed feeling and habituated behaviors - past is forever present.  We will explore the ways we can let go of our past as we declare "Get thee behind me!" We will close with a look at the ministering of the angels and the celebration of the embodiment of divine within the human and a look at the beginning of the deed.

I hope you will join me.  You will need to give 4 hours of your time and $47 to participate. Remember you will receive recordings of the four presentations and four sets of questions to consider as you develop you Lenten integrity and capacities.