Mark 4:38 Meaning He Himself Was in the Stern

The part of the mind that already knows it is safe can rest untroubled while the storm rages, for it does not share the belief that anything real is in danger. To the frightened, that calm looks like neglect. They are certain they are perishing and cannot understand how love could sleep through their emergency.

Yet the accusation reveals only where the fear lives. The mind that believes in threat assumes love must be as alarmed as it is, and takes stillness for indifference. What looks like a teacher who does not care is simply the awareness that the crisis was never what it seemed, waiting quietly to be asked.

Ship: the mind carrying itself across the appearance of danger, the vessel of a life that seems adrift Pillow: the untroubled rest of the part that knows it is safe, peace undisturbed by the storm Master: the awareness within that does not share the belief in threat and can be woken to answer it

The storm is real, the waves are real, and yet in the midst of it one man sleeps in perfect peace. This is not indifference. It is the stillness of someone who is no longer identified with the endless turbulence of outer events. The others cry out, carest thou not that we perish, because to them the drama on the surface is everything; their whole sense of self is bound to the body and its survival, so every wave feels like the end.

But there is a dimension in you the storm cannot touch. When your attention rests there, in the still awareness beneath your circumstances, even a genuine crisis cannot rob you of your inner peace, because that peace was never dependent on the waves growing calm.

The ship is the body carrying a person across the waters of feeling, and the storm is emotion risen up until it seems it will drown the whole vessel. The Christ asleep in the stern is the higher self lying dormant in the lower brain at the base of the skull, present but not yet roused, while the surface faculties panic and cry that all is lost. The pillow marks how deeply that center rests beneath the noise.

The waking is the turn a person makes when the frightened mind at last calls on the calm it forgot was there. That center was never in danger; it had only to be summoned to still the water.

Ship: the body carrying a person across the moving waters of feeling and thought Hinder part: the lower brain at the base of the skull where the higher self lies dormant Pillow: the deep untroubled rest of that center beneath the surface storm