In this special edition of Eponaquest News, author Linda Kohanov reflects on the wider cultural significance of Easter, offering a unique view of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, emphasizing his ability to act as a transformational figure who introduced nonpredatory power and wisdom during one of the most brutal times in history. This excerpt from her 2013 book The Power of the Herd: A Nonpredatory Approach to Social Intelligence, Leadership and Innovation is from Chapter 12, which focuses on what Linda calls the Four Stone Age Power Tools. The passage below comes at the end of the chapter, showing how Jesus introduced alternatives to destructive patterns that are still widely used in the 21^st century.

From The Power of the Herd starting on page 223:

The Power Behind Nonviolence

At the height of the Roman Empire, an innovative social activist and religious leader named Jesus spent three years on the “lecture circuit” encouraging people to evolve beyond an extremely violent, predatory way of operating in the world. While he offered parables and overt directives on the causes and recommended solutions, he also understood the concept of shame as a block to transformation.

Jesus knew that people would feel intense, debilitating shame and guilt as a result of “waking up” and recognizing the “sins” perpetrated daily by anyone adhering to a predatory-dominant lifestyle. The skills he outlined verbally and the behaviors he modeled nonverbally were so sophisticated that civilization is still trying to catch up.

Reading accounts of his words and deeds, we see the following skills and principles in action:

1. An ability to reach out to objectified, marginalized populations
2. A courageous, uncompromising use of nonpredatory power.
3. Rejection of all retaliatory behaviors, including revenge, grudge holding, and aggressive or defensive responses to insults, shaming tactics, betrayal, and, during the last few days of his life, physical violence and pain
4. Compassionate engagement with all cultures and social classes, which encouraged people to change hurtful behaviors without rejecting their deeper state of being or their potential to become something greater
5. Emotional heroism
6. Extremely high tolerance for vulnerability
7. Unwillingness to use others’ vulnerabilities, mistakes, and “sins” against them
8. Forgiveness in the face of injustice.
9. Unwavering faith in the ability of humanity to move beyond fear, aggression, oppression, shame, blame, and pain to a compassionate, awakened, harmonious state of being and behaving
10. A graphic, multifaceted, highly symbolic use of what the Fulani tribes later called the sharo — an act of physical, mental, and emotional endurance that, in Jesus’s case, engaged a compassionate form of power that could embrace death itself

The last tactic was so complex and multilayered in meaning and intent that it is often misunderstood. For instance, I’ve heard skeptics say that if Jesus had actually been a divine incarnation of God, he would have magically conquered his enemies and avoided death on the cross. Some Christians, on the other hand, have used this episode to scapegoat the Jews for the role that a few Jewish individuals played in the events leading up to the Crucifixion. When we read the sketchy details outlined in the Bible, however, it’s clear that Jesus did everything possible to guarantee that he would endure this challenge — with an incredibly sophisticated, group-consciousness-altering goal in mind.

Riding between the Worlds

Throughout history and across all cultures, significant innovations in emotional and social intelligence have often been accessed through what we now call “shamanic acts,” techniques that induce altered states of consciousness bridging the gap between consensual physical reality and the more fluid, creative, spiritual realities that visionaries tap to bring something new into existence. While some shamans use trance drumming, dancing, or psychedelic drugs, others employ fasting, physical endurance, isolation in nature, or a combination of these to jump-start significant transformative states. Major religious innovators, from Lao-tzu to Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, appear to have done this with a wider social agenda in mind, moving from personal shamanic acts (such as wandering through the desert, fasting for forty days and nights) to creating group shamanic experiences that help others see and process life challenges from a more expanded perspective.

Whether you see Jesus as a divine incarnation or not, it’s clear that he had an unusual talent for drawing large groups of people into transformative experiences, particularly those promoting nonpredatory wisdom, mutual aid, and emotional heroism. From his birth in a barn to the sacrament of Communion (in which he offered his “flesh and blood” to disciples, encouraging them to carry this highly symbolic ritual forward), Jesus underlined his intent to act as a “sacrificial lamb” for all of humanity, not just his own culture or tribe.

Enduring the public spectacle of the Crucifixion, however, was an even more brilliant, intensely courageous move. By performing an extreme sharo of conscious self-sacrifice — demonstrating compassion and self-control in the face of death itself — Jesus transformed Rome’s ultimate intimidation-torture tactic into a symbol of triumph over oppression. From a cathedral-thinking point of view, embracing the cross served yet another purpose: By encouraging people to project their shame, weaknesses, and darker qualities onto him, he invited these painful by-products of transformation to “die with him,” promising a clean, pristine rebirth into a more expansive, empowered existence. In this effort, he literally offered to diffuse shame and guilt for the people who participated in the events leading up to his crucifixion. At the same time, he made it clear that he was ritualistically offering to release these same debilitating emotions in future generations — through the timeless archetype he enacted in the passion play of death and resurrection.

In researching his life on a more practical level, however, I was surprised to realize that during his brief time on earth, Jesus actively preached against and/or avoided all four of the Stone Age Power Tools covered in this chapter (Chapter 12). Not everyone was willing to embrace his innovations, of course. But history shows that as news of his words and gestures spread beyond the Middle East, they tempered the “conquest and revenge” cycle proliferating throughout the world.

While countless individuals and communities have taken to heart the principles he introduced, civilization still condones and even promotes predatory behavior, despite attempts to outlaw it. Sometimes, ironically, dominant individuals adopt Christianity as a social control to oppress and shame large populations into submission. The good news is that anyone can access the original text directly — engaging with Jesus’s innovative parables, sayings, and behaviors while also using the ever-present archetype of his death and resurrection to release shame and embrace transformation.

New Moon Rising

But what happens after we remove fear, shame, blame, objectification, projection, revenge, and predatory dominance from the equation? What does power look like when the shackles are removed?

Here’s where an all too often ignored dimension of history foreshadows an unexpected answer: Among Alexander the Great, the Buddha, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, George Washington, Katherine the Great, Geronimo, Winston Churchill, and many other influential leaders who were also exceptional equestrians, a pattern emerges. For thousands of years, the invisible forces of charisma, bravery, poise, focus, endurance, and conviction have been most reliably bolstered by a silent, nonpredatory tutor. Recognizing the horse’s multicultural importance, not just as a beast of burden, or even a companion of kings, but as a teacher of kings, conquerors, heroes, and pioneers, is an essential first step in wresting this wisdom from obscurity and purposefully exercising it in the future. (It seems no coincidence that in the Book of Revelation Jesus himself is depicted riding a white steed.)

The horse stands at the place where all trails come together, and a new moon shines upon us. To retrace the steps of sorrow and injustice, courage, compassion, and innovation — elevated by a being that has been used for both conquest and freedom — is to know the dark and light of power.

To become a student of the horse — rather than a calculating, disconnected master — is to master our own predatory tendencies, reclaiming our original calling to move beyond instinct in partnership with nature, tapping our potential to become visionary leaders capable of rallying endlessly evolving, fully conscious forces of a truly empowered herd.

Copyright 2013 by Linda Kohanov from The Power of the Herd. (This excerpt was edited slightly for clarification.)

For more information on Linda’s books and workshops, see www.eponaquest.com.