Finding Life by Losing It - Crucify the Ego

Zhuangzi, the great Taoist philosopher, woke up from a dream one day and felt confused because he dreamed of himself as a butterfly. The dream was so vivid that he felt realistically fluttering his wings, flying among flowers, plants, and trees, and enjoying the gentle touch of the evening breezes.

He felt unnatural to wake up as a human, wondering whether he was a butterfly dreaming of a human or a human dreaming of a butterfly. Zhuangzi told this experience to his students, asserting that he was unsure which one was real—whether he was a human or a butterfly.

What do you think? Sometimes we say, “Life is like a dream.” Is our life on earth just a dream? Will we all one day wake up to our reality? The French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~Pierre Teilard de Chardin

If that is true, our human experience is just a dream. Like King Solomon said, “All is vanity.” If true, all the strife and bickering about life become meaningless. If you can attain that perspective, you will discover that most of life’s problems are but struggling against the storms in a teacup.

You are listening to this message because you believe life is more than a human experience. You feel there’s more to life than swimming in this little stormy teacup of this fallen world. That’s the story of Job. With all his suffering in the awful fate of his life, he was liberated at the end when he realized his experience was but a storm in a tiny teacup compared to God’s grand scheme of things.

We can strive for two things in this world—to maximize our human experience or to magnify our spiritual experience. However, there is a quantum paradox. Jesus said if we maximize our human life, we will lose it, but we will find it when we lose it for his sake. He said,

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16:25).

What does it mean? Putting it in the context of Jesus’ entire teaching, to lose your life for his sake means to seek the kingdom first. He said when you find the kingdom, everything else is given to you as well (Mt 6:33). You actually have both. Your spiritual enlightenment will enrich your human experience.

It’s simple but not easy. You still need to let go and let God. Letting go is the cross we must carry daily because, again, it’s simple but not easy. So, today, we will explore how to find life by losing it based on Jesus’ teaching in this week’s scripture lesson. Let’s begin!