The Mirror and the Path

From Ahab to Gethsemane: The Undoing of the Will

This reflection began, unexpectedly, with a reference to Moby-Dick among the John Moriarty community on Facebook. John had written about Ahab’s hypnotising harangue: that furious monologue of pure will, driving man and ship toward annihilation. In that moment, a contrast formed. Against Ahab’s egoic fury stood Jesus, silent in Gethsemane. One consumed by self, the other emptied of it. One demanding the world bend to his purpose, the other consenting to a deeper one. And so Jesus emerged not simply as a figure of faith. He became a mirror. In him, we see reflected both the journey of transcendence. We also see the ethical shape of a life still becoming. He embodies a path we all must travel. It is a movement beyond the confines of the ego. It leads toward something deeper, freer, and more whole. But there is a second layer to this mirror, equally vital. For while the invitation to transcend is clear, many of us are not there yet. In the space between awakening and ordinariness, Jesus offers something more grounded. He provides a pattern of how to live, ethically, courageously, and compassionately. We follow this pattern even as we are still becoming.

In the wilderness, alone and hungry, Jesus is met not by the divine but by the voice of temptation. The temptations are not crude. They are subtle and familiar. Security. Power. Recognition. Each one appeals to a version of the self that demands affirmation and control. This moment is more than a test. It is a confrontation with the ego in its most persuasive forms.

What makes this episode so striking is not that Jesus resists, but how. He neither argues nor flexes spiritual muscle. Instead, he meets each proposal with a reference to something beyond himself. In doing so, he models a profound reversal of the ego’s instincts. The self is not erased but de-centred.

This is not a lesson in moral grit. It is a revelation of the deeper path. The ego cannot be transcended by force. It can only be seen clearly and then quietly laid aside. The wilderness shows us that before any public ministry, any miracle or teaching, there must first be this inner surrender. And if we take Jesus seriously as a mirror of our own journey, this is where we begin too.

If the wilderness shows us the shape of the ego, Gethsemane reveals its final undoing. Here there is no external voice, only the weight of what is to come. The struggle is not theatrical. It is agonisingly human. “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” With these words, Jesus exposes the final temptation: the longing to escape pain, to preserve the self at the moment of greatest vulnerability.

But the next words are everything: “Nevertheless, not my will but yours.” This is not resignation. It is consent to something very deep, a type of inner coherence. In Gethsemane, Jesus does what the ego cannot: he aligns himself fully with the truth that stands beyond self-preservation. He does not rise above suffering. He walks into it with clarity and love.

For those who would follow this path, whether within or beyond religious tradition, Gethsemane remains one of the most honest scenes in all spiritual literature. To transcend the ego is not to transcend the world, or pain, or fear. It is to see those things clearly, and still choose love.

Most of us are not in the wilderness. Fewer still are in Gethsemane. We live somewhere in between, pulled by our attachments, touched by grace, often unsure what to do with either. In this space, Jesus does not leave us without guidance. His ethical teaching speaks not only to saints or mystics, but to the ordinary human heart still shaped by fear, pride and longing.

Before we are aware of the ego, or the deeper path unfolding within us, care still shows up, but often in partial or tangled ways. We love, but with strings attached. We help, but hope to be noticed. We give, but often only to those who reflect something back to us. Without realising it, we begin to use care to reinforce our own sense of worth or control. Compassion becomes conditional. Generosity becomes performative. And when it is not returned or recognised, we quietly withdraw.

I’m not trying to judge early care, but to name it. It is the beginning of something. The ego is not evil. It is simply afraid. It cares in the only way it knows how, by protecting, by fixing, by managing outcomes. But Jesus shows us another way. His care is not rooted in identity but in presence. It does not ask who is worthy, only how to love more deeply. And it begins not in the exceptional moment, but in the everyday.

The Sermon on the Mount and the “moral” teaching of Jesus do not demand enlightenment. They ask only for honesty. Do not retaliate. Tell the truth. Pray in secret. Love your enemy. Do not serve two masters. These are not grand spiritual achievements. They are daily practices. They reshape the contours of the ego slowly, gently, but insistently.

Christ never asks us to pretend we are beyond where we are. He speaks into the tension. Into divided hearts. Into lives still entangled. His parables are stories of mixed soil, of lost sons, of late arrivals. Grace, in his world, is never withheld for lack of perfection. But neither is the bar lowered. We are asked to love, even when it costs us. To forgive, even when it is undeserved. To serve, even when it is unseen.

These are the contours of a life being re-formed not by ego, but by something quieter, truer. The ethical life is not a holding pattern. It is part of the path. It prepares us, gradually, for the kind of surrender we see in the garden.

The life of Jesus does not lead us out of the world, but deeper into it. Among the Jewish sects of his time were the Essenes, a devout and disciplined community who believed the world had fallen too far to be saved. In their eyes, the only faithful response was to withdraw, live in purity, and await divine judgment. They practiced baptism. God, they believed, would set things right through destruction. Then, and only then, could something new begin.

I am not alone in believing Jesus was shaped by this tradition. The wilderness, the longing for holiness, the clarity of moral purpose are all things they shared. But at some point, he turned away from their path. His was not a message of destruction. It was a call to reimagine and rebuild. To forgive where revenge is easier. To feed those no one sees. To honour the image of God not in heaven, but in one another.

This is not the ethic of those who believe the end is near. It is the ethic of those who believe something new can still begin. Where the Essenes withdrew, Jesus stepped in. He touched the unclean. He broke social boundaries. He healed what others ignored. He did not protect holiness by hiding it. He released it through acts of courage, mercy, and costly love.

And so the invitation stands. Whether we find ourselves in the wilderness, the garden, or the long middle stretch of ordinary life, the call is the same. Transcendence will come as it must. But until then, we are given something no less sacred: the work of compassion, the labour of justice, the long courage of love.