Sin is the belief that I am only human. Sin is the idolization of the ego at its present stage of development, pretending that this is the reality of things. Sin is the denial that I am the divine in form. Sin is a degrading of self. Arrogance is just a cover up for a deeply held belief in inferiority and inadequacy. Jesus saw through the arrogance and its underlying inferiority and saw the divinity in man. Jesus aroused in people a long lost sense of attractiveness and desirability, but it could not be sustained. The love of even the greatest human lover is not enough to combat our degraded self-estimate. When they lost Jesus' presence, their confidence died. Something else had to happen. They had to experience the absolute total presence of the spirit within and without. They were transformed, not just aroused. A human love may arouse you but it will not transform you. Arousal, however, is an important step. Some kind of eros arouses us. Some kind of eros stimulates an ancient memory of the experience of paradise. This paradise, however, was not known to be total. It was a pre-knowledge experience which seemed to have been destroyed by the human experience. And so this human experience seemed to be reality, and we built our sense of desirableness on what we thought reality was, and who we thought human beings are, and what we thought love was all about.

Rumi give us some strong medicine on this subject when he says:

Those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.

Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering.

A shock is required. Something radical. Transformation requires a shock, an expansion of our wanting and loving to a degree never dreamed of.