Metanoia: To Go Beyond the Mind

So, for our second Sunday in Lent we have another scriptural translation to explore.

For early Christians, Lent was originally a much shorter period of fasting and preparation for baptism on Easter. This eventually morphed into an entire season (6 weeks) of repentance and penance. In other words, a time for everyone to recognize how sinful they were and make amends to God by fasting, prayer and worship.

Cynthia Borgeault, in her book Wisdom Jesus, tells us that “repent” or “repentance” has been translated from the Greek word metanoia. If you break up that word into its root words, meta means “beyond” or “large” and noia means “mind” or “thought.” So, metanoia literally means “to go beyond the mind” or “go into the large mind.”

What a difference that makes! When Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” it didn’t mean repent – recognize all the ways you are falling short or have screwed up and make sure to say your “hail Marys and Our Fathers.” Nor even repent and turn your ways around (which we’ve also heard as an option). But metanoia – go beyond your mind or go into your larger mind to be able to fully embrace the kingdom of heaven, the higher consciousness of enlightenment, which is right here, right now.

One of the key pieces of metanoia is to move beyond a dualistic mindset. What does this mean. It means a thought process of polar opposites: us and them, good and bad, black and white, etc. It’s how we human think, which is why it is so hard to go beyond this.

If we consider some of the more challenging of Jesus’ parables, we see that he is trying to get people to go beyond their dualistic programming and to think more expansively when it comes to God, others and life. If we get stuck in the smaller mind, we won’t get it. But if we get out of the box that was created for us and programmed into us, then perhaps we can start to experience more fully the kingdom of God within and around us.

Consider some of these teachings and how radical they feel, how outside of our conditioning: 

• Love your enemy
• Turn the other cheek 
• If someone takes your coat, let them have your shirt as well
• Forgive seventy times seven times
• Don’t throw stones!
• Ok to break the Sabbath when people are in need (compassion over laws)
• Do no violence
• Love unconditionally
• The Good Samaritan
• The Prodigal Son
• The Beatitudes

As one example, let’s look at one of the most difficult parables of Jesus to understand, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-15)

Jesus says something like this (my summary):

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the owner of a large vineyard who went out at dawn to hire workers to tend the vines. After agreeing on the daily wage, he sent the workers to the vineyard.

At mid-morning, the owner found others standing around the marketplace without work and told them to go along to his vineyard and he would pay them what was fair. The owner did this again at noon and at mid-afternoon. Then at late afternoon the owner found still more people standing around and asked them, “Why have you been standing around here doing nothing all day?” And they responded, “Because no one hired us.” So, he sent them to work in his vineyard even though it was really late in the day.

When evening came, the owner instructed the overseer to call the workers in to receive their pay, beginning with the last ones hired. And then the owner paid all of them the same amount – whether they worked just an hour, or whether they worked all day.

Of course, the ones who’d worked longer complained. But the owner basically said, “look, you’ve received what you agreed to. Take your pay and go home. I can do what I want with my money… or are you envious because I am generous?”

Our first all too human response is it’s not fair! Cynthia Borgeault said that she once heard a sermon on this parable where the pastor said, “Well, that’s all well and good in the gospel, but in real life human beings deserve a fair wage.”

This parable won’t begin to make sense until we go beyond the mind we have, go beyond our egoic operating system, and step into a larger perspective. This is Consciousness Training 101, Jesus style. As long as we see with the dualistic systems of this world – measuring more and less, better and worse, first and last – we’ll always see this as unfair.

However, if we can step outside of that box into the realm of nonduality, where all are one, we find that the parable is about there being enough for everyone, and that the good of all is tended to. Bourgeault says, “it was never about competition, but an invitation to participation and generosity.” Jesus is about more than just being nice. Jesus is about upsetting the apple cart of our expectations and conditioning and propelling us into a new, larger, more expansive way of being.

God loves wastefully and extravagantly! The Love Energy of the Universe sees all as one, defaulting to generosity, compassion, justice and equality.

When we begin to go beyond our minds, our individualistic, dualistic, judgmental thinking, life looks different and we behave differently.

Let me just give you one modern day example from Jack Kornfield’s book, All in This Together.

Years ago, during Occupy Wall Street, members of the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, California, went out to demonstrate. They were concerned about the inequalities of our current financial system, so they held their protest right in the center of the city, in front of a number of the big banks.

As the Occupy crowd grew, the banks locked their doors, while the bankers secured themselves inside to continue with their work. But like all banks, many of the walls were glass. The bankers could see the demonstrators outside, and the demonstrators could see the bank workers inside. Instead of exhibiting anger, the EBMC demonstration created a different kind of statement. They rounded up a big stack of one-dollar bills and stood just outside the door of one of the biggest banks in Oakland. Instead of taking money, with a bow, they handed free money to everybody who walked up.

To understand these actions we need metanoia! We need to go beyond our small mind. This story sits like a koan, a puzzle, in our brains tumbling over and over until we expand our perspective enough to understand.

The Divine is bigger than any human construct. To more fully experience the kingdom of heaven, the divine in our midst, we must continue to seek a higher consciousness, oneness, metanoia.

Lenten Blessings,

Kaye