Kenosis — The Self-Emptying
The Teaching
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant. Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit. — Philippians 2:5–7; John 12:24
Commentary
Kenosis, from the Greek for emptying, is the move Paul ascribes to Christ: the divine renouncing its own powers to enter the finite. Watts read the whole teaching as a single instruction in letting go. The clinging to immortality, to status, to the preservation of the valuable things, is the disease. The release is the cure.
This is the structural opposite of the effort the commandments seem to demand. You do not reach the divine life by the will achieving the divine act. You reach it by the will abandoning itself, so that what acts through you is no longer the separate self straining to be good. The grain held above the ground stays whole and stays alone. Dropped, broken, given up, it becomes a field. The self that will not fall remains exactly one seed.