Matthew 3:3 Meaning For This Is He Who Was Spoken

The wilderness is the mind that has wandered into its own thoughts of separation, a barren place because love has been shut out of awareness. A voice still calls there, the quiet certainty of truth that fear could not silence, asking that the crooked ways of judgment be set straight.

To prepare the way is to clear the mind of the grievances that block the memory of love. Nothing must be built and no one must be impressed. The path is made straight simply by laying down each attack thought, so that what was always present can be recognized again.

Wilderness: the mind emptied of love's awareness, the dry landscape of thoughts that believe in separation Voice: the steady witness of truth within the mind, calling past fear to be heard again Paths: the habits of perception the mind travels, straightened when judgment is released

A single voice sounding in the dry country is the first stirring of awareness that a person is more than the animal life he has been living, the awakening cry that comes before any real change. To make the path straight is to align the crooked nervous system and quiet the wandering thought so the higher current can rise unobstructed along the spine. John himself is that raw urge toward truth arriving before the fuller light, the herald faculty that clears ground it will never occupy. The whole scene is one man's inner terrain being readied for a life that is already pressing up through it.

What sounds like a man shouting in a desert is the moment a scattered consciousness begins to prepare its own body for the awakening coming up inside it.

The wilderness: the untended inner life, the uncultivated mind before any discipline has cleared or watered it. The way: the channel through the body along which the higher current travels, straightened so nothing blocks its rise.

The voice ringing out of the wilderness is the whole, true self announcing that it is near, a deep pattern of wholeness breaking up into awareness from far below.

John is the kind of figure the inner life sends when a person is close to real change: someone who has heard what the crowd ignores, a call that speaks to him plainly, saying, 'This is what will and must be.' Dreams were once called the voice of the Unknown, and John carries that same role while wide awake. The wilderness is the uncharted deep within, and making the paths straight is the ordinary preparation a person does before the holy can be received.

A single articulate voice can call order out of the wilderness. One man stands in the wasteland, the place where structure has not yet reached, and speaks clearly enough to prepare a road where there was none. Speech cuts the first road through chaos. The wilderness is not only a desert but every unformed region of a life that no path has yet crossed.

To make the paths straight is to remove the crookedness in yourself before the highest thing can come. A twisted road delays what you most need to arrive. Set your own way in order, honestly and in advance. What is worth receiving comes to the person who has cleared the ground for it.