From the darkest night to the darkest day to what? No scripture describes the experience of Holy Saturday so what do we do with this Easter emptiness? There is almost no reference to this day in the Bible, so we must really imagine strongly.
In Easter Mystery of entombment we are asked not to imagine the absence of light, but the absence of activity. Imagine the stillness of time, to imagine nothingness.
Saturday is the Sabbath, the day of rest, the day of no activity. In our etheric or life body, there is always activity – blood flowing, cells dying and being born, hormones regulating, digestion creating energy, detoxing, neural impulses executing, breathing, eyes seeing. All these activites occur in time. When the Sabbath occurs in the life body, all activity ceases and time ends, death conquers life.
This is so hard to wrap our consciousness around as even thinking is an activity that takes place over time and in time.
Imagine the final exhale. This is not like holding your breath because along with the holding is the growing desire for the next breath. In death there is no desire for the next breath!
It seems to me, that the first event of Holy Saturday, the question of what must proceed the extraordinary activity of the harrowing of hell, is the complete absence of life, desire, intention, thought, past, present, or future. No memory of the womb, only the finality of the tomb.
It is this stillness, that lasts a momentary eternity, that jolts the spirit free like a big bang in reverse.
I would love to skip over the Entombment, and leap right to Hell. Hell seems like a busy place with lots going on even if it is all suffering.
What are the questions of death and entombment that our living souls can ponder?
Holy Saturday Questions
- When has there been a profound pause in your life?
- When have you longed for a pause? or wanted to never wake up in this life?
- Have you ever stood still and had no memories nor longings? Can you imagine such a state?
In thinking about death and the entombment I ran across this observation by Herbert Spencer (Facts and Comments) and thought i’d share it:
“Those who think about death, carrying with them their existing ideas and emotions, usually assume that they will have, during their last hours, ideas and emotions of like vividness … but they do not fully recognize the implication that the feeling faculty, too, is almost gone. They imagine the state to be one in which they can have emotions such as they now have on contemplating the cessation of life. But at the last all the mental powers simultaneously ebb, as do the bodily powers, and with them goes the capacity for emotion in general. It is, indeed, possible that in its last stages consciousness is occupied by a not displeasurable sense of rest.”
Thanks, Chocolate. It is not just our emotions, it is the the absence of all the senses and the perceptions they give us of an outer reality and an inner reality.
All activity ceasing. Liminal space. Quiet mind. Still body. Open heart. Imagine if all creative action arose from this space. True nature encountering true nature. Human doings becoming human beings. Much to contemplate……..