Christ’s Ascension: A Cosmic Invitation to Climb Consciousness | 04.17.2025
As we approach the crescendo of Holy Week, I wanted to offer a gentle invitation to explore the concepts of resurrection and ascension—not just as historical events, but as living patterns for the soul. What if these mysteries are not reserved for the end of life, but are available to us, again and again, in every moment we choose to rise?
What if resurrection wasn’t just something that happened to Christ—but something that happens in us? And not just when we close our eyes for the last time.
On the third day, the stone was rolled away—not so Jesus could get out, but so we could see in. The tomb is empty, and in its stillness echoes the most radical truth: that death, separation, and despair do not get the final word.
This is the mystery we are invited to live into. Not just on Easter Sunday, but in every moment we choose Love over fear, union over division, light over shadow. Christ’s resurrection is more than a miracle to be admired. It is a pattern to be embodied.
We call it resurrection. Scripture calls Him the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15) and firstborn from among the dead (Col. 1:18). Christ did not just come to save us from death—He came to show us how to rise. To show us how to embody resurrection in every choice, every breath, every encounter with the shadow.
The Descent: Death and the Shadow
Before resurrection, there is always a descent.
The Apostles' Creed tells us that Christ “descended into hell.” Ephesians 4:9 echoes this, describing how He “descended to the lower parts of the earth.”
But this descent was no detour. It was part of the arc.
Even the psalmist wrote, “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there”(Psalm 139:8). There is no place so hidden that Love does not pursue.
We often imagine hell as an external place of punishment, an eternal damnation. But what if it is better understood as a contracted state of consciousness? A place of soul estrangement, shame, resistance to grace? In this light, hell is not God’s vengeance, but humanity's resistance. A reality felt whenever we are cut off from the Source of Love.
Christ entered that, too.
Resurrection is not merely waking up; it is becoming whole.
As Jung writes, “the unconscious collaborates too and often makes decisive contributions.” Christ did not just descend into what was visible—He entered the hidden realms, the unacknowledged, the unconscious. The shadow within each of us is not something to fear, but to illuminate. Just as Christ entered Sheol, so too are we invited to explore the exiled places within our psyche and bring them into the light of Love. Resurrection is not merely waking up; it is becoming whole— integrating our shadows, accepting them.
The Third Day: Breath and Rebirth
The resurrection is not a rewind. It is a transfiguration.
The Gospels tell us, “He is not here; He has risen, just as He said” (Matt. 28:6). The resurrection wasn't just about returning to life—it was about entering into new life.
In Romans 6:4, Paul explains that through baptism, we are buried with Christ into death so that “just as Christ was raised from the dead... we too may live a new life.”
This is not metaphor. It is spiritual reality.
Jesus is described as the firstborn from among the dead (Col. 1:18), the firstfruits of resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). Just as the tithe was a holy offering from the harvest, Christ is the holy offering of a new creation.
The tomb becomes a womb. What emerges is not just a man, but a blueprint.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17)
In Greek, this “new creation” is kainē ktisis — not simply a fresh start, but an unprecedented kind of being. This is not self-improvement. It is a complete re-patterning. A new species of humanity, united with divine Love.
And it is meant to begin now.
Many Christians cling to the hope of “one day in Heaven” as if transformation is postponed until death. But resurrection was never meant to be a ticket out. It is the door in. When we wait for the glory without participating in it, we deny the invitation to become the unprecedented creation Christ died to reveal.
As Jung once noted, to change the collective, we must first change ourselves. He wrote, “Even today people are largely unconscious of the fact that every individual is a cell in the structure of various international organisms, and is therefore causally implicated in their conflicts.”
This echoes Paul’s own metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts... so it is with Christ”(1 Cor. 12:12). Each of us, then, is not an isolated soul, but a living cell within a greater spiritual organism. When we step into coherence—when we tune ourselves to the frequency of Love—we bring the whole Body into greater alignment. Resurrection consciousness is not an individual achievement. It’s a cellular awakening that ripples across the entire Body, and indeed, across creation itself. Resurrection consciousness begins with the dissolution of separation and the awakening to union. This is how we become the tuning fork of Love—humming with coherence, inviting others into resonance. When we attune ourselves to Christ, we entrain the atmosphere around us. Like singing bowls vibrating into harmony, our lives become the echo of heaven made manifest on earth. This is the true ascension: not escape, but embodiment. To live raised is to live with Love at the center—and in between every frequency.
Ascension: Consciousness Lifted
The resurrection leads to ascension. Not just Christ’s, but ours.
Paul writes, “Since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above... For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1-3).
To set our hearts on things above is not to abandon the earth, but to lift our awareness into its divine context. The phrase “things above” doesn’t point to clouds and sky—it points to higher ways of being: love, unity, compassion, wisdom. It is a spiritual reorientation. A new vantage point.
This is what it means to climb consciousness—not to ascend into arrogance or bypassing, but to anchor our perception in the mind of Christ. To be rooted in heaven while walking on earth. It is to see through the eyes of love, to speak with the voice of peace, and to embody a reality where heaven and earth are no longer strangers.
This is what it means to ascend—to climb consciousness with humility and clarity. Not to escape the world, but to see it rightly. Through the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), through the veil that has now been torn (Matt. 27:51).
The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere we go when we die—it is within us (Luke 17:21).
Romans 8 deepens this truth: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed... in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-21).
Creation itself is groaning—not to be destroyed, but to be renewed through us. The resurrection is not an individual exit strategy. It is a cosmic renewal, initiated in Christ and extended through the unfolding of consciousness in His Body.
Hell, then, is not a distant future realm, but the dissonance of disconnection. Heaven is the soul in attunement. The Spirit in flow.
Ascension is not about leaving earth behind. It is about being fully here, fully alive, fully attuned—with nothing separating us from the Love that made us, always within us, and at times wholly forgotten.
But there's a trap here: a temptation to pursue higher states of awareness without facing the depths of our own pain. This is what some traditions call spiritual bypassing—using transcendent language to avoid immanent healing. True ascension doesn’t skip over the sorrow or the shadow. It moves through them, led by the One who descended first (Eph. 4:9) so that all things might be lifted.
To ascend is not to transcend humanity—it is to become more fully human, remade in the likeness of Christ. Grounded in compassion. Guided by wisdom. Rooted in truth.
Anything less is just another escape. But the risen Christ walks with wounds still visible—a reminder that resurrection carries the marks of love, not the illusion of perfection.
And maybe that’s the greatest proof of divine humility: that Christ did not return glowing and untouched, but wounded and radiant. His scars are not erased—they are glorified. A reminder that Love suffers, heals, and remembers. Resurrection does not deny pain; it integrates it, transfigures it.
Living Raised
I see this invitation most clearly in the everyday work of mothering. When my daughter unravels in a spiral of frustration—tiny faces twisted in unnamed emotions, voice rising with emotion—I feel the echoes of my own childhood surface. My loop wants to meet chaos with control, to match her noise with my own. Because that’s how I was met.
But the recursive interruption is this: I meet her instead. I soften. I breathe. I anchor. Because she is not the problem to be solved—she is the soul trying to make sense of her kaleidoscope of budding emotions. And when I choose presence over reaction, I am not just shaping her. I am being resurrected, too.
This is what it means to live raised. To pattern our nervous systems after Christ. To co-regulate with the Holy Spirit. To be attuned enough to let the old scripts die, and let a new creation rise in their place.
When we find ourselves in a contracted state of consciousness—shame, fear, pride, grief—our invitation is not to suppress or escape it, but to bring it into the light of Love. These emotional constrictions are simply places in the soul asking to be sat with, witnessed, and met with their antidote.
Shame dissolves in the presence of honor. Fear softens in trust. Anger relaxes into understanding. Grief is companioned by love.
This is not a bypass—it is baptismal alchemy, a process of transmuting pain into presence through the refining fire of Love. The old dies. The true self rises. Sanctification through the resurrected Christ.
Next time a contraction rises, don’t run. Sit with it. Breathe into it. Ask Love what it’s here to transform.
To be in Christ is to be a new creation, an unprecedented expression. (2 Cor. 5:17).
The stone is rolled away not just in history, but in us. The tomb of our old self cracks open, and Light floods in, illuminating the darkest shadows we forget we harbor. We rise when:
We forgive.
We choose mercy.
We refuse to be ruled by shame.
We breathe through fear.
We remember who we are.
Every moment we align with Love, we live the resurrection again.
Every moment we walk in step with the Spirit, we ascend.
Christ didn’t rise to show off power.
He rose to show us the way home.
🕊 A Benediction for the Risen Ones
May you descend without fear,
knowing Christ has gone before you into every shadow.
May you rise, not to escape,
but to embody Love in its most radiant form—
wounded, remembered, glorified.
May your breath become prayer,
your stillness become sanctuary,
your presence become resurrection.
And when the stone rolls away—
whether with thunder or the hush of dew—
may you recognize the garden you’ve always belonged to.
Let the third day dawn in you.
And for those who find an intriguing resonance here, but fear a departure from Divine Truth, explore the Scriptures Referenced:
Colossians 1:15, 1:18
Romans 6:4, 8:19-21
Psalm 139:8
Ephesians 4:9
Matthew 28:6, 27:51
1 Corinthians 15:20, 2:16
Colossians 3:1-3, 5:17
Luke 17:21
2 Corinthians 5:17
In light + love,
April
