This Gospel passage isn’t about flipping the system upside down, it’s about abolishing the system all together.
Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector
9 Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: 10 “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer[a]: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! 12 I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ 14 I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Neti, Neti, Neti
In the first six months or so of practicing yoga, my studio hosted their yearly Lenten yoga challenge. We all committed to a special diet and daily personal practice for 40 days. Each week there was a special workshop of sorts after one of the regular weekly classes. We would do an exercise designed to support our Lenten journey and deepen our practice.
The most impactful of these was an evening where we were instructed to write out a list of all the things we thought we were. We were encouraged to make the list as long as we possibly could good things, bad things, ideas, habits, thoughts, names, history, goals, anything. Then we were guided through meditation where we were instructed to go through, in our minds, everything we put on our list and then repeat “Not that, not that.” The neti, neti practice.
Neti, neti (or “not that, not that”) is a practice that has been used for thousands of years to help devout practitioners understand themselves as something other than the mental constructions they think they are. By simply calling to mind deeply held beliefs about who we are and then affirming that we are not that, we start to find a freedom and openness to understand ourselves as something completely different—something more akin to nothing.
I’m not who I thought I was…
After that first experience with “neti, neti,” I’ve watched how this practice has quietly shaped so much of my work as both a yogi and a practitioner of the Enneagram. It feels like at nearly every turn, I’m realizing I’m not who I thought I was. The Enneagram showed me all the ways I think and feel and move through the world that were merely shadows of my true self. Everytime I caught myself in the act, the unspoken mantra was always, “not that, not that.”
Gurdjieff was always encouraging this same shedding of the ideas of Self. In his school of spiritual development he taught the practice of “self-observe, non-identify, self-remember.” We must first have awareness through scathingly self-honest self-observation, then we must realize what we are seeing is not “us” at the deepest level by non-indentifying ourselves with what we observe, and then realizing that our only true identity is found in the Ground of Ultimate Reality (aka self-remembering).
I’m truly amazed at the ways I have come to accept my fullest and truest self, despite the fact that looks nothing like what I would have wanted or hoped for myself when I started this journey. Like clockwork any time I’ve found myself leaning too hard into any aspect of my identity, it crumbles beneath me. While this process is often painful, it is always an invitation to understand more deeply the truth of who, or more accurately what I am. If I am thinking to highly of myself, I’m brought back to earth. If I’m being too hard on myself (which is honestly more often the case), I’m lifted back to level ground.
Not switching sides, putting us all on the same side.
For as long as I’ve been reading the bible, I’ve interpreted this passage and the other ones like it as a call to be humble. I certainly still believe this on one level, but the beauty of any ancient scripture is that it’s alive and can mean more than one thing at any given time.
It seems like most interpretations of this passage infer some sort of flip-flop of social position once we all get to heaven, which is certainly backed by plenty of other passages throughout both the old and new testaments. But when I read through this passage while thinking about my own personal journey I got the sense that Jesus might not have been trying to play “life-swap,” but instead was calling us into something deeper and quite possibly more real.
What if Jesus wasn’t just promising that people would “switch sides” or that now a different person would be “on top”? What if instead, Jesus was telling us that we would all eventually find our way back to the Ground of Our Being? What if this parable is another iteration of “neti, neti”?
The Pharisee thought himself righteous, Jesus says, “not that, not that.”
The tax collector thought himself lowly, unforgivable, Jesus says, “not that, not that.”
Our culture is obsessed with upward mobility, and “growth,” but the spiritual realm is not so occupied with these linear ideas. We assume that because the Pharisee is going down and the tax collector is going up that we should be like the tax collector and the Pharisee is screwed. But when read through the lens of this practice and my own personal journey, it feels much more like Jesus is encouraging both characters to move into a space where they understand themselves as something other than merely their ideas of themselves.
I find this interpretation to be more aligned with what I believe the Christ Consciousness came to earth to do, not to simply switch sides, but to put everyone on the same side, to erase the lines all together.
In our wildly polarized political moment, I think it’s easy to fall into the hope that this passage is about a cosmic turning of the tables. We want the other side to lose so we can win! But like I shared in last week’s post we only win if we all win. Of course, this passage does a great job of highlighting how this “winning” looks different for different people, and may not feel like winning at first because of our cultural conditioning. But if I know anything for sure it’s this: the few fleeting moments I’ve stumbled into this profound understanding of who/what I really am have always been worth whatever got me there, and I would bet it’s the same for you and everyone else as well.
So, the question begs to be asked: who do you think you are?
If you’re interested in more opportunities to explore who and what you aren’t and discover what you really are, consider joining next year’s cohort: Enneagram Expedition. You can find more info here: www.consciousenneagram.com/enneagram-expedition
