I Am Judas
Poor Judas. Despised as the betrayer of Jesus, he gets no sympathy. On the fateful day when he sold out Jesus, Judas likely felt defrauded, deceived and angry. His creature comforts were left wanting, and he was fed up waiting for a place of importance in a kingdom that would never come. His lived experience deviated so far from his mental expectation of how life “should be” for a follower of Jesus, that his primary needs for control, security and approval were painfully frustrated.
When we separate Judas from Jesus as polar opposites, we collude with the illusion that we are somehow separate from one another and that our fates are not intertwined. In framing their relationship as a battle between good and evil and taking the side of the “good guy” against the “bad guy,” we “other” Judas, banishing him from the human family and cursing his name. Similarly, we banish Jesus from the human family when we praise his name, but fail to follow his example.
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. ~ John 14: 12 New International Version
Judas became disillusioned when the outer reality he perceived conflicted with the images in his head: gainful employment, bed and board, social recognition and a rescue from poverty and death—these were Judas’ understandable human desires. But when the writing on the wall suggested that none of these would materialize and that Jesus’ mission was doomed to failure, Judas pronounced the holy man’s “inverted” goals “foul and evil.” He decided to quit the brotherhood, cut his losses and move on. Judas’ frustration, hopelessness and lack of faith coalesced into the betraying impulse that agreed to the transaction of forty pieces of silver, sealing his fate as both the perceived antichrist AND the catalyst for the unfolding of a divine plan.
Judas: when a man has been deceived
when, instead of gainful employment
he’s told to lay his head on a stone
to what conclusion should he come?
I have eaten prophecies
till they came out of my nose;
I have choked on the dry bones of oracles. The least I expected was bed and board
maybe a seat in the throne room
a peacock chair with a good view
of the whole countryside.
Yes, I followed that wizard
I confess I was charmed; I hoped
he would tell by what sleight-of-hand
he cures the sick and raises the dead.
But all I got was
talk about losing one’s life
the whole wretched business of penance fasting and prayer.
He is enchanted with poverty and death, two things
which in my head are twinned
as evil and foul. Last night
that whore from Magdala appeared bearing an alabaster jar.
She spilled perfume on his feet.
I said to myself: “There it goes, vapor in the air, the precious drops of my hope!” I am tired of hanging by the heels
and of seeing the world as an inverted game of hide and seek.
What will you give me for that man? ~ Catherine De Vinck, A Passion Play
Trapping himself in a hellish dream, surrounded by mental images of persecution, terror and poverty, he turned against Jesus and his “fairy tale,” as merely a “foul inversion of reality.” By mentally compiling evidence against Jesus and handing him over to the authorities, Judas found momentary relief, but his preoccupation with ill fate also kept him distracted and unable to activate the innate spiritual capacity that could have guided him through the danger.
Dualistic thinking is useful in some types of mental analysis, but if applied to life more globally, it can restrict choice. Either-or-mindsets relegate us to operating within a narrow bandwidth where people and situations are judged as good OR evil and then rewarded or punished accordingly in the high court of our own opinion. Though logical, this reductive reasoning actually lets us off the hook: we get to perceive someone like Judas as an evil “other” and allow him to serve as an eternal trash bin for our unexamined, unconscious rage. Conversely, when we make Jesus an icon of goodness upon whom we project our own unrealized glory, we shrink from becoming the most wise, loving, and expansive version of ourselves.
Dualistic thinking also keeps us looking outside of ourselves for someone to blame when something goes “wrong” and seeking praise from someone “out there” when we do something “right.” We’ve inherited these habits from the people, institutions and the culture that surrounds us, as life has a way of “domesticating” us over time. However, if left unexamined, these ossified thought patterns can become like filters that narrow our view of what’s possible. If we fight “monsters” outside of ourselves with coercive, aggressive force, the historical cycles of violence and retribution will grind on into eternity, strengthened by our participation.
Like Judas, we can be tempted to revert to primitive, fear-based thinking whenever we face something that we think can “ruin” us. Like Judas, we can get distracted and fail to discover the expansive, multidimensional world inside of ourselves. Maintaining a belief that we’re separate from the whole, we start to fashion a sanitized persona we hope will cover up the inadequacy we perceive when we compare ourselves to others. But by splitting off from our flaws, we also dissociate from our authentic Self, from God and from the people and situations we encounter every day. With its belief in separation, it is only the mind that prevents us from experiencing a heaven we carry with us wherever we go.
Shadows are only visible in the presence of light, as darkness has no distinct and separate existence. The forces of good and evil simultaneously hide and reveal themselves by fleshing out their transcendent nature through us. As a discrete and finite aspect of oneness, we each have access to a vast, living intelligence that can support us in our sojourn here on planet earth.
When challenges arise, wondering “why?” “why not?” or “what if?” instead of asking “whodunnit?” can lead to novel opportunities and inventive solutions. When we tolerate ambiguity more easily and start to recognize the interdependent nature of good and evil in all that exists, we become more flexible thinkers. When we dissolve the mental rigidity that ties us to unforgiving standards, the nervous system calms down. By neutralizing the biological stress reaction that blinds us to win-win solutions, we gain clarity. Co-creative, beneficial outcomes, based in both common sense and the vast intelligence of Source, can be generated easily when our rational and spiritual faculties cooperate and inform the decisions we make. By humanizing Judas and welcoming him into the human family, we welcome the parts of our own wholeness that have been banished. When we accept both our “Judas nature,” and our “Jesus nature,” we can begin to awaken to our blind spots AND recover our intrinsic wholeness.
Hello, Katie! I've been reprimanded before for bringing up my research when people are trying to get into the Easter spirit but ...
Judas the Sicariot (Iscariot transposed) was the leader of the zealot rebellion against the Roman Empire, who fought for the freedom of all the colonized and enslaved. He was also called the Nazarene, the Healer, the Galilean and the Christ. His partner was Zadok the Pharisee, also spelled Saduc, as in Sadducees, who rejected the rule of the priestly class who were the tax collectors for the empire.
The story of 'Jesus' was written under the Roman Empire after Jerusalem had been betrayed back into their hands. That traitor was Josephus, who was also the author of the gospels as shown by Joe Atwill in word order analysis and style comparisons that couldn't happen by chance.
The reason this is important isn't because we're believing the wrong story, it's because we're missing the right one. Judas's story defeated an empire. 'Jesus's' story says the empire will always win, because God is on the empire's side.
To save for later, after Easter: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/jesus-rebel-or-imperialist
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/jesus-is-the-og-psy-ops
Those of us of an integral level of consciousness celebrate all that you so skillfully put into words here sistah!!!
There seem to be so many in our world who are still of “The Judas consciousness” where they feel “trapped in a hellish dream, surrounded by mental images of persecution, terror and poverty” and those people will wage war with themselves and the proverbial “other” until they evolve to see the truth of the “Oneness” and transcend dualistic thinking …each in there own time as we all are drops of God in the Ocean of God remembering just that and all evolving to the same Unity consciousness eventually …