Mid-century illustration of a calm sea at dawn

Mark 12:26 · World English Bible

Mark 12:26 Meaning But About the Dead

But about the dead, that they are raised; haven’t you read in the book of Moses, about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

What does Mark 12:26 mean?

"I am" is not the start of a sentence about a person. It is the naming of presence itself, the awareness looking out through you now, which has never belonged to time.

From the Ego v. Being reading below.

Mark 12:26 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

"I am" is not the start of a sentence about a person. It is the naming of presence itself, the awareness looking out through you now, which has never belonged to time. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were forms that came and went, yet the same "I am" that lived in them lives in you.

This is why the dead are said to rise. What you essentially are was never born and cannot die, because it does not live in time. When the body ends, that presence is simply no longer bound to one passing form.

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Ego v. Being lens

Live Mark 12:26 today

  1. Sit quietly for one minute and say "I am" without finishing the sentence, without your name, your job, or your worries attached. Rest in the bare fact of being here.
  2. Look at someone you love today, a parent, a child, a friend, and see past their age and their role to the aliveness looking back at you. Say something true to that part of them.
  3. When a deadline or a worry makes you feel small and temporary, feel your feet on the floor and remember that the awareness watching all of this was here before the worry arrived and will be here after.

What in you has never changed, through every version of your life?

The same truth in other traditions

Hinduism · Chandogya Upanishad

The sages say: that essence, that is what you are. The self at your center is not a thing time made, so time cannot unmake it.

Bhagavad Gita 2

That which is real was never born and will never cease to be. Bodies come and go the way clothes are changed.

Zen

A teacher asks what your face looked like before your parents were born. The question points to something in you that has no date.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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