Let’s discuss the spiritual meaning of Easter eggs, since we’re getting close to the annual Christian festival.
I want you to realise that Easter eggs aren’t just fun gimmicks for children: they actually point to the deep truths that are at the core of Christ’s teachings.
And, though most proponents of the Christian faith won’t tell you this, these symbols actually point to something deep and fundamental about YOU.
Introducing The Spiritual Meaning of Easter Eggs
You might simply interpret Easter eggs as representations of the rebirth of Jesus Christ, the human, 2000 years ago. This seems like a natural conclusion because it fits with the familiar mythic Easter story.
Sure, assuming that these myths and stories are faithful to history, it makes sense that we’d buy and decorate Easter eggs.
However, I believe that all the Easter symbols actually point to something much deeper: transformative spiritual truths that only a small portion of Christian followers understand. This includes apparently innocuous items like Easter eggs.
Christ’s entire life story can be seen through a lens of spiritual transformation, including all the common myths that we know so well. In fact, I’d argue that this is the true meaning of these symbols, even though they also cater to mythic belief.
All Christian symbols point to some facet of spiritual transformation, of us discovering God for ourselves and embodying that discovery. They’re like spiritual catalysts communicating truth concisely, forcefully, and yet in a way that is beyond immediate comprehension. Easter eggs are just one pointer, and they point to a particular facet of our awakened nature; rather, they invite a particular facet of our awakened nature to disclose itself.
Jesus was an historical person, a human becoming; but Christ, the Christos, is an eternal transpersonal condition of being to which we must all someday come.
john white
Let me briefly summarise my views on the spiritual meaning of Easter eggs:
- like all spiritual teachings, they point to fundamental truths not about Jesus Christ, but your own divine nature, your inner Christ;
- they describe the qualities of yourself when you discover your inner Christ: light, pure and whole;
- they symbolise God itself: oneness, sovereignty and fullness;
- they point to your rebirth after awakening to your inner Christ consciousness;
- they remind us to be awake to the naked, innocent Babyness of ever-creating Creator and ever-renewing Creation.
If you wish to believe in the comfortable traditional view of Christianity, then you may wish to continue to believe that Easter eggs simply represent the rebirth of Jesus, the historical figure. However, if you prefer a more inspiring, more transformative view, stick around.
You might like my episode on Spiritual Walk v Spiritual Talk.
The Problem with the Traditional View
The traditional interpretation of the spiritual meaning of Easter eggs, which is that they represent the historical Jesus Christ’s rebirth, has one major issue.
I’m not here to debate whether Jesus’s life did indeed unfold as we were all told it did, or even whether Jesus existed at all. In my opinion, these questions are simply irrelevant, because the profound Christian teachings still remain with us, however they got here. We’d do well to stop debating about the historical Jesus and simply mine the ore of truth that “Jesus” bequeathed us, whether historical human or mythic archetype.
The fundamental problem with this view is that as soon as we imagine that they represent his rebirth, we immediately separate ourselves from the profound truths that they conceal. We make it about a person that supposedly lived over 2000 years ago, rather than about our own spiritual path.
We get lost in “graven images”: worshipping a historical figure as though they were separate from us and above us in terms of spiritual pedigree. We feel small, sinful, unworthy of the profound salvation and sanctity we believe that Jesus experienced.
No: as we’ll discuss, Easter eggs point to YOU. Not the ego you, not your personality, but the Christ You: it points to who you truly are, as all worthwhile Christian symbols do.
In the end, you end up worshipping an egg, thinking it represents an inspiring historical figure, and remain entirely ignorant to the profound realities that the Easter egg is trying to point to.
This is one of the tragic results of mythic Christianity in general: practitioners end up believing in all kinds of things, but rarely come to realise their inner Christ or the profound reality of Christ.
So, What is the Spiritual Meaning of Easter Eggs?
As I said above, there are several facets to the spiritual meaning of Easter eggs:
- like all spiritual teachings, they point to fundamental truths not about Jesus Christ, but your own divine nature, your inner Christ;
- they symbolise God itself: oneness, sovereignty and fullness;
- they describe the qualities of yourself when you discover your inner Christ: light, pure and whole;
- they point to your rebirth after awakening to your inner Christ consciousness;
- they remind us to be awake to the naked, innocent Babyness of ever-creating Creator and ever-renewing Creation.
Now I want to look more carefully at each of these points.
Let’s begin with my first claim, that Easter eggs point to our inner Christ, which is our divine nature.
Why Easter Eggs Point to YOU
First of all, we must acknowledge that in ultimate instance, Christianity is at its core a set of spiritual teachings or pointers to the ultimate nature of reality.
Sure, the teachings are interpreted at many levels of consciousness, and many times their real depth is obscured by myth, but fundamentally this is what Christianity attempts to do, however we come to conceive that ultimate reality. It follows, then, that any Christian symbol or story is a teaching that forms part of this larger tapestry.
Now, it has been well established to the point of cliche, that all spiritual systems ultimately point to the same realities, even if those systems originated in different eras and different places. Aldous Huxley famously coined their shared focus “the perennial philosophy”. Though often hopelessly obscured and bastardised, there are certain profound truths that lie at the heart of all spirituality.
A fundamental tenet of serious spiritual systems is that of inner transformation. It’s not just that we learn about these truths; we transform ourselves to the point that we understand and embody them on our own.
This transformation occurs not simply change at the level of personality, but of identity. Some systems are very explicit in this, like Buddhism with its “no-self” doctrine. Even in Christianity this is present, albeit described in a way that seems foreign and distant to us. The death of Christ actually symbolises the death of our identity to make way for a new, divine identity.
That is what Jesus taught and demonstrated—cosmic consciousness, the Christic consciousness, the peace that passeth understanding, the direct experience of divinity dwelling in us and in all things, now and forever, creating us, living us, preserving us, urging us on to ever more inclusive states of being.
john white
If we combine these points, we realise that all Christian teachings actually invite you to a transformation of identity. As such, Easter eggs are simply a pointer to your true identity, to your inner Christ. It’s natural and obvious that this is the case, given they’re an important feature of a millennia-old spiritual system.
Notice that the egg contains the potential for new life: the potential for a totally new YOU once you discover and embody your inner Christ. It is a rebirth, a death, a crucifixion, but not of the physical body due to old age or due to sinfulness. It is a life-transforming reidentification, away from the separate self-sense and towards ever-deeper levels of God consciousness.
The Spiritual Meaning of Easter Eggs: They Describe Our Divine Nature
Now, we’re ready for the exciting part: a close look at how the qualities of an egg reflect the qualities of God and of our awakened self. We can draw some very immediate but profound conclusions.
An egg, like a sphere, is one complete surface. It has no edges, has only one side, and is self-contained. This is God. Our truest, fullest identity is absolutely all-encompassing and present right here, right now. As George Harrison sang, somewhat ungrammatically, “there are no edges and there is no sides.”
The egg falls short in one regard, because it still has a boundary, but we should focus on the fact that it has one side, and we can never leave that side.
Analogously, The no-edged, one-“sided” Egg of your consciousness contains everything. You are it! You ARE Christ.
Before you know anything, you know this. Before I AM anything, there is simple I AMness, in and of itself, just so—and you are aware of that I AMness right now, yes? Before you are aware of anything, you are aware of this. Before you feel anything, you feel this. It is constantly unknowable, this knowledge of All. It is too complex to be known; too simple to believe; too present to be grasped; too here to be felt… The entire universe is arising within you, and deny it as you will, it always has. Just look: you are not in this room, this room is in you… Likewise, you are not in this Kosmos, this entire Kosmos is in you.
Ken wilber
They Describe Your Awakened Self
What’s also well-documented in all spiritual systems is the transformation that occurs to the personality when a person discovers and starts to embody their inner Christ. In fact, I believe that Jesus is an archetype that represents our best enlightened self: wise, compassionate, loving, generous, fearless, profoundly detached yet fiercely engaged.
In the egg, we see some of these qualities. An egg is…
- smooth (read: gentle, loving), rather than jagged or prickly, just as Jesus Christ supposedly was;
- whole (read: fulfilled, realised, complete), rather than fractured, confused, torn apart;
- light (“my yolk is easy and my burden is light”), rather than heavy, impinging;
- full of potential, just like us.
In this episode, I discuss the true meaning of the Christian Cross.
The Spiritual Meaning of Easter Eggs: The Reality of Moment to Moment Experience
The true yogis and meditators out there will appreciate this final point. I believe eggs play a powerful symbolic role in pointing us to the reality of our moment-to-moment experience.
We know that absolutely everything we can possibly perceive arises from God and returns to God. As such, our I AMness, that is our first-person experience, is constantly renewing. It is never stable. It is only habit, ignorance and our rigid self-sense that creates the appearance of stability.
The egg reminds us that the born is constantly arising to and returning to the unborn; Brahman is constantly returning to Atman. In Buddhist terms, emptiness is no other than form, yet form is relentlessly renewing itself.
Like a baby chick born 0.01 seconds ago, the All, the Universe, the Kosmos, the Born, Brahman, is ever new, so long as we have the divine eyes to see it.
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