April 5th. Palm Sunday.
The morning enters through the window not as light, but as a question—quiet, insistent, devoid of the sharpness of demand, yet heavy with the weight of being. The room smells of damp willow and that particular stillness that precedes the great storms of the spirit. I look at the silvery buds on the branches in an old vase and think that Palm Sunday is not merely a ritual plucking of nature, not just another "stripping of every willow in sight," as we often turn it into in our vanity. It is something much deeper, more terrifying, and more beautiful. It is a cartography of the human soul, stretched between the ecstasy of recognition and the cold-bloodedness of betrayal.
Today, "Hosanna" is sung in the temples, but in the unconscious of the crowd, the future "Crucify Him" already echoes. And this is not about a historical event that occurred two millennia ago in the dusty streets of Jerusalem. It is about the here and now. About my Jerusalem. About yours. About that inner space where Truth enters gently, riding a donkey, and we welcome it with palm branches, only to betray it before the sun has set on our illusions.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, this crowd is a metaphor for our fragmented sub-personalities. Within us lives that part which longs for salvation, for authority, for a father figure to liberate us from the tyranny of fear. These are the "people of Truth" within us—the pure core that recognizes the Divine. But immediately beside it, in the shadows of the psyche, lurk the "people of lies." These are our defense mechanisms, our ego, which feels threatened by the radical sincerity of Truth. Because Truth demands change. It demands the death of the old personality. And when the ego realizes that this "King" it welcomed has not come to crown it, but to crucify it, it turns against Him with the fury of a frightened animal.
We crucify the Truth within ourselves every time we choose a comfortable lie over painful realization. We pretend to be "struck by a wet rag"—bewildered and oblivious—when our conscience whispers something we do not want to hear. This feigned ignorance is the most dangerous form of spiritual lethargy. In psychoanalysis, this is denial—the stubborn refusal to accept reality as it is. But the law of the spirit is inexorable: what you deny in yourself overtakes you from without as fate. Jung said it so clearly that it hurts. When we flee from our internal battle, it materializes in our lives as a series of "accidental" misfortunes, like a wall we hit again and again. If you play blind to the God within you for long enough, fate strikes you for real—not to punish you, but to wake you up. For pain is often the last language God can speak to us when we have grown deaf to the silence.
For Jesus, everything happened on a physical, painful plane. The blood was real, the wood of the cross—rough and tangible. But for us, walking in His footsteps centuries later, this is primarily a battle of consciousness. It is the clash between the dual reality in which we live and the Unity to which we belong. We are like buoys in a stormy sea—one moment tossed up by the wave of self-exaltation ("Hosanna!"), the next submerged in the abyss of self-hatred and self-crucifixion ("Crucify Him!"). How easily we pass from praise to spit. One moment we feel chosen, holy, enlightened; the next, we collapse into the wretchedness of our own vices and punish ourselves with a cruelty we would never show to another.
In this sense, each of us carries within the entire script of Holy Week. Within us is Judas, calculating the price of loyalty. Within us is Peter, swearing love but trembling before the handmaid of fear. Within us is Pilate, washing his hands of the responsibility for his own life. But within us is also Christ—that quiet, unshakeable Light that knows victory is found not in avoiding the cross, but in passing through it.
We must understand one thing: God will always win. Not because He is "stronger" in the human sense of the word, but because He IS Reality. A lie, no matter how loud, is simply the absence of Truth; it is an illusion that requires a massive amount of energy to maintain. The ego is exhausting. It demands constant evidence, defenses, masks. But God is simply Presence. He waits for us to recognize Him amidst the noise of our internal marketplaces.
Palm Sunday is the moment of choice: where do you choose to position yourself? In the buoy of dual reality, bobbing between the poles of "good" and "evil," "me" and "others," "success" and "failure"? Or at the center of the cross, where the vertical of the Spirit meets the horizontal of matter and reconciles them into one eternal NOW?
As long as we are in the traps of the mind, which is "now this way, now that," we are in the trap of sabotage. We stifle our own growth because we are afraid of the freedom that comes with Truth. Psychoanalysis teaches us that a person is often in love with their chains because they provide an identity. "I am unhappy," "I am a victim," "I am misunderstood"—these are convenient labels. But on Palm Sunday, God enters the Jerusalem of our consciousness and tells us: "Take off the labels. Bow to that which is greater than your ego."
Praise from the crowd is dangerous because it is external. It depends on whether you fulfill expectations. But recognition before God is intimate. It is the bow of the people of Truth. This bow is not made in temples of stone, but in the temple of the heart, where there are no witnesses. There, in the absolute solitude of your own being, you decide whether you will trust the process, no matter what you are passing through.
Life often leads us through dark valleys. There are moments when it seems we are abandoned, that "Crucify Him" is the only cry the world has for us. But it is precisely then that trust becomes a spiritual technology. To trust God when everything is falling apart is the highest form of alchemy. This is the moment you transform the lead of suffering into the gold of wisdom.
I look again at these willow branches. They are soft, they bend, but they do not break easily. Perhaps this is the lesson of Palm Sunday—to become flexible like the willow. Not to become rigid in our dogmas, in our hurts, in our ideas of how life "should" look. For when we are hard, we break under the blows of fate. When we are flexible and humble, we can accept both praise and insult with the same inner peace.
Within us is Palm Sunday, within us is the Crucifixion, and within us is the Resurrection. These are not sequential events on a calendar, but simultaneous states of the spirit. Every day we pass through these cycles. The morning may be Palm Sunday—filled with hope and light. By noon, we may be on the cross—stretched thin by tasks, conflicts, and inner demons. And in the evening, if we have the courage to let go of everything, our small Resurrection can happen in the silence of sleep.
The question of this day, which I record in this journal with a trembling hand, is: Am I ready to stop sabotaging my own light? Am I ready to stop running from the Truth, masked behind social roles and intellectual clichés?
God is within us and He waits. He is not the judge with thunderbolts, but the still, small voice inviting us to come home. But the way home passes through the admission that we are lost. It passes through the tears of repentance, which are nothing but rain washing the dust from our eyes.
Palm Sunday is a feast of recognition. To see God in the other, in yourself, in pain, and in joy. To understand that nothing is outside His providence—even those parts of us that still cry "Crucify Him." For in the end, they too will be transformed. They too will find their rest in the ocean of Divine mercy.
I choose to remain in the silence. I choose not to cling to the branches, but to the One who created them. I choose Truth, even when it crucifies me, for I know that only a crucified heart can hold the whole world. Only a broken vessel can be filled with light.
Today is a day for bowing. Not to symbols, but to the Living God within us. To the Truth that sets us free, but only after it has made us miserable by revealing our lies. And in that misery lies the seed of the greatest joy—the joy of being authentic, of being whole, of being His.
Everything is to show us how the battles and the victories happen within our consciousness. Never forget, my soul, that after every Friday comes a Sunday. But to reach Sunday, you must have the courage not to climb down from the cross on Friday. You must drink the cup to the dregs, with the trust of a child who knows their Father is holding their hand, even in the deepest darkness.
Palm Sunday is our promise that the Light is here. And that we, despite all our duality and all our flights, are loved. Infinitely loved.
I close the journal, and the scent of willow remains—like a breath from another world that has always been here, waiting for us to open our eyes. Where do you choose to position yourself? The question remains vibrating in the space. And the answer is not a word. The answer is life itself, lived in the Truth.
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