“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life, would lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” —Luke 9:23
From my perspective, when Christ says, “If you follow me,” I don’t think he meant following him as a person, walking around Jerusalem. To follow Christ means to follow the truth, to follow what is real, with Christ as a representative of truth, of the real. To follow the real is to follow the truth and to recall its essence: God, reality.
So to follow the truth, one must deny oneself and take up the cross daily. This is a very advanced, tricky, and subtle statement because we generally believe that we can have two masters, even when we are committed to the truth. We believe we can live for the truth, and at the same time we can have what the self wants. We can fulfill and gratify the self. A large part of the Work is working out this struggle. What are the demands of the truth? What are the demands of the self? We basically compromise most of the time.
Christ’s statement says that if you live your life for the self, or try to compromise and serve two masters, it won’t work. You will lose the life that you feel you are saving. You will lose the life that you think you are going to have. To lose your life means that whatever life you are living will not be a real life. It will be a false life, an empty life, a meaningless and unfulfilled life. So it is not a life in any real sense. You might as well be dead.
There is another word for this condition. Rather than “dead,” I usually call it “undead.” That’s how life of the ego is. It is the life of the undead. It’s not really a life, but you are not physically gone. You’re still walking around, but you are dead. You are undead.”
— A.H. Almaas
