As a reminder, NTI Mark is a fictional story that provides helpful symbols. Our role is to derive meaning from the symbols, and then live from the example provided by those symbols. In this way, Jesus of NTI is our role model.

Today’s story begins by saying, “With each day, Jesus felt his closeness to the Holy Spirit growing. … A merging seemed to occur.”

How did this merging occur? Through discernment, surrender and kindness. These are the three practices of Jesus of NTI.

Discernment is determining the difference between personal thought and self-will, which is ego, and thought and will that arise from beyond the personal self.

Surrender is choosing to ignore personal thought and will, and following the thought and will that arises from beyond the personal self. Follow it just as it is, without adding to it or subtracting from it. In this way, one becomes the witness of life, playing his part while letting the rest be as it is.

Kindness is living and acting from love instead of fear. (e.g., the Loving All Method)

Today’s reading tells two brief stories. The first story is a story of kindness and a story of faith plus action. Jesus is kind to a woman who feels worthless. Her sense of worthlessness has affected her health. Jesus asks this woman to go home and find her inner brightness. She has faith in his teaching, and she goes home and does as he asks. In this way, she is healed.

Imagine if the woman had been happy in the moment to meet Jesus, had been grateful for his words, but then did not follow up with his guidance when she got home. She would not have experienced the same result.

This demonstrates that faith in the teaching is not enough. One must combine faith with action.

Here are two quotes to contemplate along with this teaching:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? … faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. ~ James 2:14-17

I can only tell you what I know from my own experience. When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’; find your real self’. I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon! It took me only three years to realise my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered what he told me and persevered. The fruit of it is here, with me. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The second story in today’s reading is a story about Jesus following intuition under extreme circumstances.

Jesus of the Bible was able to raise the dead. However, Jesus of NTI doesn’t have this special power. He simply discerns, surrenders, and lives from love. In today’s story, Jesus’ faith in these simple practices is challenged when he is told by a witness that a little girl is dead. The witness has seen the girl. Jesus has not seen her. Yet, when he feels intuitively that she is not dead, he trusts his intuition over the witness and others. He also follows intuition and breathes into the little girl’s mouth even though he had no knowledge of CPR.

Imagine the faith Jesus had, to trust his intuition over the witness, who was certain the girl was dead. Imagine the faith it took to see the girl, who appeared dead, and then to breathe into her mouth—to pass on the breath of life—without any knowledge of the medical practice we call CPR.

This story is told in this way to encourage us to trust our intuition over personal knowledge and over the urging of others.

I have learned from my own experience that intuition knows more than the human thinking mind. Intuition’s source is consciousness. As such, it knows everything about this moment, and it knows truth too. For this reason, intuition is much more reliable as a guide than the limited, biased thinking mind.

Here is a quote to help you consider your relationship with intuition. This is a powerful quote that can reveal a lot of clarity. I recommend contemplating this quote slowly, in parts and as a whole.

That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher. He alone is; all else only appears to be. He is your own swarupa (true Self), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are two ways to view the story from today’s reading. We can view the story as an example of how to be with others, and we can view the story as an example of how to be with ourselves.

Today’s story is about fearlessness and kindness. Fearlessness and kindness go together. You can’t be afraid and be kind too. You might be afraid and act nice, but that’s not the same thing. If you have a personal agenda—a desired outcome—you aren’t being kind; you are being manipulative. (Note: Whenever you have a personal agenda, there is an underlying fear.)

In today’s story, Jesus demonstrates kindness. He is not afraid. He interacts with the man in the story with no fear at all. He is present and genuinely responsive.

It’s fair to say there isn’t enough kindness in the world today. If we see kindness and fear as opposites, we can also say there is too much fear in the world today. That negative energy is recycled in our world through the loop of experience—What I think, I see; What I see, I experience; What I experience, I think—and unspeakable atrocities occur as a result. Genuine kindness can help release some of that negative energy, and some atrocities can be prevented.

When you read the story, notice that a woman shares a fearful story with Jesus and the apostles. The apostles pick up on the fearful energy and believe it. As a result, they are incapable of being kind. Jesus dismisses the fearful energy as meaningless, so he is able to meet the situation without fear and with kindness.

I mentioned that there are two ways to view today’s reading, as an example of how to be with others and as an example of how to be with ourselves. If we see the man in the story as the ego and the legion of demons as thoughts, then Jesus demonstrates how we can be kind with ourselves.

The same rule applies: we can’t be afraid and be kind too.

There’s no reason to fear the mind. The mind can make a lot of noise, but if we don’t give it meaning, it is a noisemaker and nothing more. You don’t have to fight against the mind. In fact, fighting it isn’t helpful. Instead, be kind to the mind.

For example, if the mind is worried about a future situation, you might say, “I know you think there’s a lot to worry about, but we don’t actually know how things are going to turn out. Relax. Let’s watch and see what happens. We’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

With kindness, you can help the mind relax and let go of distracting thoughts. That places the mind in the present. A mind that is in the present is aware, surrendered to intuition and effectively responsive in the moment.

There are two primary points shared through the stories told in today’s reading.

The first point is related to a quote I shared recently from Nisargadatta Maharaj. Here is that quote again:

All you need is to listen, remember, ponder.
It is like taking food.
All you can do is to bite off, chew and swallow.
All else is unconscious and automatic.

When the apostles asked Jesus to describe the kingdom of Heaven, he shared two parables. Both were about seeds growing into plants. At another time, Jesus describes the kingdom of Heaven as being like yeast put in dough.

Jesus’ parables point to this:

Truth realization dawns upon the one who is willing to take time for contemplation and meditation. The one who rushes through life, always doing but never contemplating, misses the truth that is everywhere waiting to be seen. It’s like living locked within one’s skull, instead of opening up to existence and seeing, “I am that.”

We need time alone—quiet, contemplative time. If we allow ample room for that in our lives, realization will occur naturally, “unconscious and automatic.” But if we are too busy to slow down, “bite off, chew and swallow,” the seed is not planted, and it is not watered, and so it cannot grow.

The second point from today’s reading addresses confusion about what we are.

In today’s story, Jesus and the apostles are in the middle of the Sea of Galilee when a storm comes and frightens the apostles. They are afraid of losing their lives. The apostles do not see themselves as anything more than body-personalities.

In the story, Jesus is aware that:

Just as sure as the storm began, it will end.

This is a metaphor that points to truth. Let’s look at the metaphor more carefully.

Here is a story that I call The Journey of Water:

In the hot summer sun, some water evaporates from a lake known as the Sea of Galilee. The evaporated water forms a cloud. The cloud journeys through the air and drops rain in another location. The rainwater flows on the downward slope of the land and joins a creek. The creek flows southeast and merges with the Jordan River. The Jordan River flows south and dumps into the Dead Sea, where some of the water evaporates in the hot desert sun and becomes part of a small cloud. The cloud drifts northward and is drawn into a powerful storm system. The passing storm tosses a small convoy of boats on the Sea of Galilee, and raindrops fall to merge with the lake.

In this fictional story, we see that the water is ongoing and the storm is a temporary manifestation.

When Jesus refers to the “Son of God” in today’s reading, he is not referring to a single temporary body-personality. He is referring to what we are, the Great Ongoingness, of which the body-personality is a temporary manifestation, just like the storm is a temporary manifestation.

We are the Great Ongoingness—ongoing like the water in The Journey of Water. Transcending everything in form, ongoingness has nothing to fear.

In today’s story, people clamor after Jesus seeking physical healing, but Jesus doesn’t want to heal a never-ending crowd of ailing bodies. He wants to teach spiritual clarity, which he perceives as true healing.

Others may see Jesus of NTI as a master, but he sees himself as a student. He knows he is still awakening, and so he pays attention to himself. When he notices an error in his thinking, he corrects it.

Today’s reading says, “… it was the good news he yearned to share.” And then it goes on to say, “Jesus bowed his head to give the circumstance to the Holy Spirit.”

In other words, Jesus noticed this yearning to teach as self-will. “I” wanted to teach. Jesus knew “I” was ego, so he bowed his head to let go of self-will and to surrender.

When he surrendered, Jesus made sure that self-will was completely dissolved—dissolved to the point that he was willing to do anything  he was guided to do. He was willing to go back into the crowd and heal bodies. He was willing to teach. And he was willing to leave without doing anything. Having no conditions on what he would or would not do, Jesus knew he was genuinely surrendered.

Surrender yourself to the universal
and you will be absorbed in the universal.

~ Ramana Maharshi

The heart of today’s tip comes from three sentences in today’s reading:

A house divided cannot stand.

A house divided cannot stand.

Look within yourself and find what keeps you from being healed,
that you may overcome that thing and be healed.

Today is another day of self-examination. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, we tend to “do and undo at every step.” We need to get in the habit of looking at ourselves to see how we are out of harmony with our desire to awaken. Where do we “undo” our own good work?

As a reminder, self-examination isn’t about judging ourselves to be good or bad. It’s about realizing what we want, and then looking to discover how our current way of being is in our own way, hindering us instead of helping us. It helps to see self-examination as a process of ongoing gentle refinement.

Just as a house that’s divided can’t stand, a ship that’s divided sinks. Let’s find where we are divided against our own purpose, and then see where we are willing to “tighten the portholes and batten down the hatches.”

Ohhh! The previous reference to leaking water reminds me of a Sufi story about Nasruddin, the comical spiritual master:

One day, a student of the legendary wise fool, Mullah Nasruddin, went to visit him at his home. Already expecting some crazy behavior on Mullah’s part, the student reminded himself not to react. Another spiritual teacher once told him, “If you react unconsciously, you push the lesson of the moment away.”

When Mullah opened the door, he was overjoyed to see his student.

“My friend! Just in time! You can help me draw water from the well! Here, take this bucket and follow me!”

The student followed Mullah to the well and watched while he began to pull water from the well and splash it into the bucket that the student held.

After a few minutes, the student noticed that the level of the water in the bucket was not rising very quickly. Where was all the water going?

The student glanced underneath the bucket and saw that the bucket was leaking almost as much as Mullah put in each time.

Not appearing to notice, Mullah continued to put water in the bucket. The student was exasperated.

“Mullah, you idiot! Can’t you see that the bucket is leaking?”

My friend,” Mullah responded, “I was only looking at the top of the bucket. What does the bottom have to do with it?”