Ash Wednesday 6 March, 2019

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the journey to the crucifixion, that strange and mysterious event when a man was nailed to a cross and bled to death. What are we to make of this in 2019?

Understanding the human I, the Self, is essential if Golgotha is to become real for us. This week we begin another forty day journey to Golgotha. Golgotha is all about making the human I-forces – the I AM – accessible to us. In the Gospel of St John, Jesus clearly says, “I AM the light” ego eimi to phos.

Listen to the beginning of the prologue to St John’s Gospel if we transpose the word ‘light’ with the words I AM.

In the beginning was the Word/Logos,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.
The same was in the beginning with God;
all things came into being through it
and without it was not anything made that was made.
In it was life, and the life was the I AM of mankind.
The I AM shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not comprehended it.

In the past these I AM forces were always accessible to some human beings, the forerunners, the high initiates, but not to the ordinary man in the street. Sometimes the high initiates would guide their pupils into the spiritual world and assist them to experience these I-forces but always under guidance. In fact Rudolf Steiner even says that at this time we didn’t even use the word “I”, if we did we would faint – such was the force of it. Since Golgotha these I-forces are freely available in ordinary life.