John 13:5 Meaning Then He Poured Water Into the Basin

Washing the feet is understanding cleansed of ordinary human belief. The feet are what a person stands and walks on, his settled convictions about what is possible, and these are exactly what must be washed. The disciples are the faculties of the mind, and each is bathed of the assumption that the outer facts hold the final say.

Water poured out loosens old ideas so a new state can be received. The one who washes has girded himself to serve, because the creative power in you takes the humble office of clearing away your own disbelief. This act adds nothing. It removes. When the mind is washed clean of the conviction that things must stay as they are, an assumed state meets no inner resistance. Whatever you accept as done is then left free to become fact.

Truth is poured over the lowest part of the mind to cleanse it. The water is truth, the second stage of consciousness, and it is set to work on the feet, the part of a person that touches the earth and carries the soil of ordinary thought. The higher awareness bends and reaches down to the ground of the being, washing the mind where it meets the world so that what is dusty and heavy can rise clean.

This is the same inner purification that struck and remade the man on the Damascus road, the lower self broken open and cleansed so the higher can take its place. The one who serves is girded, wearing the band of restraint, and with that same cloth he wipes the feet dry. Truth comes to the lowest thoughts, not to leave them wet with feeling, but to clear the earth from them so the whole person can turn upward. The cleansing starts at the ground and works up.

Water: truth, the second stage of consciousness that cleanses Feet: the part of the mind that touches the earth, the lower thought that gathers the world's soil Towel wherewith he was girded: the band of restraint worn at the center, used to wipe the lower mind clean