The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

RS35: The Calculus of Consciousness

Underlying Principles - TimeCsmall

“Beloved God, please help me find the ways in which my mind can learn from my heart, and my heart can learn from my mind, so my body can find some peace.”

This is the prayer Jesus wrote for me in August 2011 when we started the Realspiritik series of posts, and this is the prayer I’d like to return to today as Jesus and I wrap up this particular body of thought.

As always when I write with Jesus, I’ve learned many new things as we’ve written Realspiritik together, things I didn’t know till my fingers hit the keyboard keys, things that only became clear to me as I asked for — and received — clarification on difficult ideas.

There’s a lot of ancient history in this book — more than I originally expected when we started to talk about science and faith — but there’s a good reason for this.  The full title for Book Five should really be Realspiritik: How the Human Sense of Time Is Changing Your Life.

The greatest issue facing people of faith today boils down to history.  The kind of history you study in school and read about in newspapers and books and online journals.  Not history of religion per se.  Just . . . history.  An ability to work with timelines — past, present, and future.  An ability to see yourself on a timeline.  An ability to see others on a timeline.  An ability to see changes over time and learn from these changes.*  An ability to flow with the tides of time.

It matters what people said, thought, and did in the past.  Learning about the past shapes the present human brain in healthy, holistic ways.  Learning about the past builds the parietal and parieto-temporal regions of the brain so they work smoothly and efficiently with other parts of the brain.

Want to guide the development of advanced mathematical and scientific skills in your children?  Don’t start with math and science.  Start with history.  Start with the history of relationships over time.  Allow the brain to build the connections over several years.  Then add the math and science.  You can’t force math and science skills to grow in a timeless vacuum.  You need to build the sense of time and timing before the math and science will make any sense.

Time is the glue that helps your mind learn from your heart and your heart from your mind.  It takes time for your brain to build important connections and use these connections in synchronized ways.  (Interesting that early researchers decided to call the brain’s connecting cells “glia,” which literally means “glue.”)  The connections — the glial cells — are what matter to overall brain health.  It’s the little white cells, not the little grey cells, that have to be built and maintained.  They are the key to health and happiness (within limits, of course.)  And they don’t grow or do their jobs properly unless they’re programmed (through your choices) to shrink the gaps in the calculus of your own consciousness.

The harder you make your brain work to build connections, the stronger your foundation for lifelong learning and committed relationships.  Since time-based material such as history makes your brain work harder than any other topic, the study of history throughout primary, junior, and middle school makes an excellent foundation for everything else.  Everything else is a piece of cake compared to mastering the human sense of time.

Empathy flows from an ability to work with time.  So does memory.  So does an inner sense of self.  The parts of ourselves that we cherish the most are built on our relationships with time.  If we want to find the peace we long for, we can’t do it by escaping from time (that is, by detaching from our emotions and trying to live in the moment with no regard for past or future).  We can only do it by being part of time, being part of life, by accepting our rights and also our responsibilities as children of God, by being grateful for what the past has taught us, but also being grateful for the life we live today, and the life we will live tomorrow.

Wherever the Spiral Path may take us.

I want to thank the people who have helped me in the past few years as I’ve meandered along my own journey of discovery and healing.  I want to thank my son for his most amazing support in all ways a mother could hope for.  I want to thank my parents, sister, niece, and aunt.  I know my path has been puzzling to you, but thank you for loving me anyway.  I also want to thank my friends Mary Ellen, Keatha, and Janet, who helped me even when they didn’t realize they were helping me.

I dedicate this book to Jamie and to the memory of Iain and Beckie.

Blessings to you all!

*For more details, please see the post entitled The Human Sense of Time & Timing.

 

©2012-2025 Jennifer Thomas

RS34: Walking on Water

St. Paul's Harbour, Rhodes 3

St. Paul’s Harbour, Rhodes (c) JAT 2001

Jen has reminded me I haven’t written a solo post here, so I’m going to do that today.  I’m going to talk about what it feels like to walk on water.

I don’t mean that I or any human being has ever been able to literally walk on water.  When my great-nephew wrote about “walking on water” in the Gospel of Mark, he didn’t mean it literally.  He meant it metaphorically.  He was trying to describe what it feels like when a person has entered into the Kingdom state of fullness of heart.

He chose the image of water carefully.  In Second Temple Judaism, water was a powerful and frequent symbol in Jewish texts.  Often it meant blessings from God.  In an arid region, rainfall is a blessing, and most of ancient Judea was arid.  But there was a parallel understanding of water, too, as the primal force of chaos, the place where uncontrollable monsters lived. Where female monsters lived.

The Book of Genesis starts out with the assumption that water has to be pushed back by God and held in place before the Garden of Eden can be planted.  The sea is seen as a dangerous place.  An unpredictable place.  A deep place which is formless and dark, with no knowledge in it.  God fixes this problem by first bringing light (knowledge of order and symmetry) onto the scene.  He calls the light Day and the darkness Night, but he hasn’t created the Sun or the Moon yet, so the light he brings to Planet Earth isn’t sunlight.  It’s the light of knowledge.

The men who wrote the Book of Genesis emphasize again and again that you should want to have order in your life.  Order is good.  Chaos is bad.  There’s knowledge, and God saw that it was good.  There’s careful separation of all major “elements” into their proper places, and God saw that it was good.  There’s careful naming of all creations, large and small, and God saw that it was good.  The earth itself (adam in Hebrew) is separated into two aspects — male and female — and given the breath of life.  The resulting creations, man and woman, who are made in the image of God, are God’s representatives on Earth and through them God can impose the law of hierarchy upon all other kingdoms in creation (kingdoms in a biological sense, that is).  And God saw that it was good.  By the seventh “day,” God has put a big, fat leash on all that watery chaos stuff and firmly imposed the Law of Cause and Effect upon Planet Earth, and it’s so darned good that God calls for a day of rest to honour his accomplishments.

And what is Elohim’s greatest accomplishment?  The greatest accomplishment of Elohim (“the gods” in Hebrew) is to whip that dark, watery, feminine principle into shape and force it to obey the male principles of order, knowledge, law, and hierarchy.  When Elohim creates humankind — adam — he creates adam entirely out of strong, orderly, procreative, male earth.  No water in sight.  Elohim adds the breath of life (by inference from Gen. 1:30) to his new creations, but he’s very careful not to include any of that chaotic water stuff in his perfect new creations.  Water’s okay when it’s in its proper place, but let it loose, and there’s no describing the destruction that will occur.

Oh wait!  There is a description!  Let me see now . . . of yes, that would be the Great Flood story.  The Great Flood story reminds you (just in case you need reminding) what happens when bits and pieces of the Divine Order fall out of their proper places and start to misbehave (Gen. 6:1-7) and why God’s creation of order and hierarchy is a good thing!  A good thing you really, really want!

Still, even the bad behaviour of the Nephilim was nothing compared to the fall of the Feminine Principle.  When the Feminine Principle fell out of her proper place in the heavens and coalesced into the dark, formless, watery depths that existed before God came to rescue her with his light of knowledge an’ all  . . . well, that was a real mess.  A mess that still needs fixing.  Occasionally, if things get really bad on Earth, God unleashes her and lets the monsters out, which is exactly why you need to put a Molten Sea in front of your big temple (1 Kings 7:23-26).  You need to remind your people that God has given you power over the forces of chaos by proxy.

This power by proxy comes in the form of ritual bathing in water that has been tamed.  Fresh water — including rainfall — is water that has been properly tamed by God.  Restored to its true state of purity.  Immersion in purified water allows you to share in God’s purification process.  (It also happens to make you cleaner, and therefore healthier and happier, but this is a separate question.)

Mark, a trained scholar, had all these traditions about water in mind when he chose to show me “walking on water” in the middle of his Parable of the Idol Bread (Mark 6:47-51).  He’s turned the traditional meaning of water on its head.  It’s a new relationship with water.  Nobody commands the waters of Lake Tiberias to part so Jesus can walk across on dry land.  Nobody immerses themselves in the waters in baptism.  Nobody puts the waters in big jars or little jars or cauldrons or ritual baths.  The lake is the lake, the way it’s always been the lake.  And Jesus is Jesus, the way he’s always been Jesus.  And the lake and Jesus seem to be getting along!  No fighting with the lake, no thrashing with monsters in the lake, no prayer rituals to calm the lake.  Jesus starts walking towards his companions (who are struggling with questions of understanding and true faith) and the lake suddenly calms down as if maybe the waters (the Feminine Principle) and Jesus are working together and aren’t in conflict with each other.  As if maybe the waters are comfortable supporting Jesus because he has already “taken heart and stopped being afraid.”  As if maybe the waters are not and never have been the problem.

The problem is written down in black and white as plain as you can get in Chapter 7 of Mark.  The problem is not what you touch on the outside of your body.  The problem is not the water itself or what you do with the water.  The problem is what you choose to do on the inside of your body.  The problem is what you choose to do with your own free will.

The journey to know your own free will, as I said last time in conversation with Jen, is very much a journey that resembles the stages of grief.  All people must wrestle with what it means to have free will.  They must question it, be confused by it, be angry at it, reject it, and finally come to terms with it.  As the character Job once did.  As I did as Jesus son of Joseph two millennia ago.

There’s a reason for this, a reason that has nothing to do with sin or salvation or sacraments or separation from God.  The reason for this painful journey is that God trusts you.

Human beings often wonder why they’re here and why it has to hurt so much.  Many reasons have been offered over the centuries by different religious leaders.  In the tradition of Occam’s razor, I offer this: you are here to learn how God the Mother and God the Father discovered together how to walk on water.  You’re here so you can experience firsthand what it means to use your free will in every permutation possible in the service of Divine Love.

Put that way, it sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But it’s not.  You know that and I know that.  It’s damned hard to work your way through the stages of knowing what free will means.  Not what you, as a human being, think it means, but what God the Mother and God the Father think it means.

To live from a place of pure free will is, as you may imagine, the very opposite of living in a world of pure cause and effect.  But once, long ago, long before the event called the Big Bang took place, the universe was not as we know it today, and the laws of cause and effect held much more sway than they do today.  This is hard — beyond hard — for most angels to understand, so some of us decide to incarnate here to see what this kind of existence must have felt like.  Our Divine Parents let us do this because they trust us.

When souls decide to incarnate here as human beings, they know it’s going to be hard, but when they get here they find out it’s even harder than they could have imagined.  They do it anyway, though, because they’re experiencing something important, something that’s part of their history, their past.  They want to understand their relationships with everyone at a much deeper level, and this crazy journey called “life as a human being” helps them do it.

Not every soul chooses to do this.  But the ones who do, do so voluntarily.  These are the souls who are primarily kinesthetic learners at a deep soul level.  They learn best by experiencing something firsthand, by walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes so they really “get” what it feels like.

If you’re reading this, it means you wanted to come to Planet Earth for a while so you can walk in your Divine Parents’ shoes and see for yourself what it felt like for them to work together to overturn the rule of “cause and effect” and replace it with something infinitely more powerful and mysterious: Divine Love (a.k.a. quantum physics).

The human brain (unlike other mammalian brains) has an annoying habit of trying to shed its own emotions and slip into the unloving habits of cause and effect.  (As your cats and dogs like to remind you.)  So the human brain is ideally suited to this particular journey of discovery.  It has both a great potential for learning and a great potential for unlearning.  So to state your brain gives you the option to explore every possible nook and cranny of free will would be an understatement.

I know you can think of a thousand examples of people who didn’t use their free will in loving and trusting ways.  But what about the people who have come to terms with their own free will?  Who are they and what do their lives look like?  More important, are these people “special,” or can anyone on Planet Earth find this experience of redemption?

We’ve often used the term “redemption” on this site in contradistinction to religious salvation, and I’d like to talk about this a bit more.  Any human being — regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, culture, time, place, or religion — who has worked through the grief stages of free will is a person who has experienced redemption in the way that I experienced it.  Redemption is the emotional insight that fills up a person’s entire heart and mind with the knowledge that it’s okay to never fear the Truth.

There’s Truth in the universe and there’s Divine Love.  They’re not the same thing.  Truth exists in the absence of consciousness.  Divine Love is the choice of consciousness to never hide from the Truth, to always be transparent to the Truth, to fully embrace whatever is true about another being without losing the truth of oneself.  What does this mean?  It means that Divine Love always respects the right of another person to be another person and not a mere extension of one vast cloud of self.

A human being who understands that free will holds the key to Divine Love, forgiveness, passionate creativity, and committed relationships (devotion) is a human being who has found redemption.

Such a person can be found anywhere.  And, indeed, such individuals are found in all cultures.  They are the people who simply won’t back down from the idea that all beings are worthy of respect, fair treatment, compassion, kindness, and encouragement.  They are the people who believe in social justice and due process, in democracies rather than republics or empires, in transparency in government and accountability for intentional harms.  They are the people who treat women with as much respect as men, who treat the planet with as much respect as they treat other human beings.  They are the people who treat their children as souls in need of education, guidance, mentorship, and respect instead of as property to be bartered for status or personal gratification.  They are the people who don’t whine and complain and blame God for all the travails they’ve chosen themselves.  Most of all, they’re the people who have the courage to see their neighbours as worthy human beings, not as objects of hatred, contempt, and violence.

When you really “get it” — when you understand that your ability to choose your path does not make you separate from the rest of Creation but is in the fact the very glue that holds God’s family together as a loving, trusting group — the world no longer feels to you like a place where good is fighting evil or light is fighting dark or order is fighting chaos.   It doesn’t feel like a fight any longer, but neither does it feel like mere acceptance of the way things are (which is often just resignation in disguise).  It’s not obedience.  It’s not piety.  It’s not subjugation.  It’s not anomie.  It’s not cynicism.  It’s not apathy.  It’s not depression.  It’s not escapism.  It’s just  . . . honesty.  The heart’s honesty.  The heart’s willingness to see things as they really are and, despite that, to dig deeper, ever deeper — or maybe higher, ever higher — into empathy for another person’s Truth.

There is no adequate word for this emotion in English.  “Trust” would come closest.

When you have this sense of trust, it feels as if you’re holding God’s hand and God is guiding you through the storms and worries of daily life.

It feels as if you’re walking on water.

Blessings to all,

Love Jesus

September 19, 2012

 

RS33: The Way of the Cross

St. Michael's Mount 02

“For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him (Psalm 22:24). Pictured here is the garden at St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, which for some reason reminds me of the Garden of Gethsemane. Photo credit JAT 1997.

A:  Tell me more about the practice you taught of “taking up the cross.”

J:  We got a little side-tracked last time, didn’t we?

A:  As usual.  No straight lines around here.  Always curves and meandering paths.

J:  Funny how the clearest and truest path to the heart is never straight.

A:  It took me a long time to figure this one out.  But there’s so much freedom, so much peace, in understanding that love isn’t linear and isn’t supposed to be.  It has its own strange rhythms.  But in the end it’s stronger than anything I’ve ever known.  It’s so  . . . so  . . . strong.  It’s so complex.  It’s not a pure strand of anything.  It’s this amazing tapestry, as you’ve described it before.  A tapestry with so many colours and so many songs and so many tears.  All woven together into this picture, this portrait, of life.  Life filled with passion and wonder and awe.  Life where you’re constantly surprised.  But also life where you don’t mind being surprised.

J (nodding):  It’s very important, the idea of being surprised and not minding.  It’s the “not minding” part that sets apart a person who’s listening to his/her soul and a person who’s not.  The soul doesn’t mind surprises.  The brain’s Darwinian Circuitry hates surprises.  You can tell a great deal about a person’s brain health in the small moments when surprise strikes.  The soul takes these unexpected events in stride.  The Darwinian Circuitry seizes up and panics and can’t take swift, wise action.  The soul continues to be able to act during a crisis.  The Darwinian Circuitry comes to a grinding halt.

A puzzling thing happens when the Darwinian Circuitry panics.  Inside the brain there’s a sudden “disconnect” between the decision-making centres and the movement centres.  People literally freeze like a deer in the headlights.  This is when they’re most vulnerable to lies — to words spoken aloud with authority by people who are in a position of trust.  This is when mobs can be persuaded to riot.  But it only works — and I want to emphasize this — it only works when people have already panicked.  It only works when people have stopped listening to their own souls.  You can’t force people who are listening to their own souls to join a mob.  They won’t do it.  They find no pleasure and no safety in the ridiculous idea that’s floating around of “homo duplex.”  Mob mentalities — hive mentalities — are dangerous to the goals of healing, peace, and redemption.  Mob mentalities lead to Crusades.  Crusades are never a positive thing in the eyes of God or God’s angels.

A:  It’s interesting how individuals stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions when they’ve agreed to hand over their own free will to a mob leader.

J:  For those who can’t hear the inner wisdom of their own soul, it’s a relief to hand over their free will to somebody else.

A:  It’s a difficult process, reclaiming your own free will.  (Sighhhhh.)

J:  Yes.  There’s probably no greater challenge for a human being.  Nonetheless, it’s the challenge that all human beings are called to.  They must wrestle with what it means to have free will.  They must question it, be confused by it, be angry at it, reject it, and finally come to terms with it.

A:  What you just said reminds me of the stages of grief.

J:  That’s exactly what the process is.  It’s an experience of working through grief.  And, by god, you need forgiveness to get you through it, because somewhere in the middle of the process you’re going to come face to face with the reality of all the times when you didn’t apply your free will in loving and trusting ways.  You’re going to feel like a shit.  This is where forgiveness sees you through.  Forgiveness is the act of free will that allows you to keep going, to get up the next day and keep going even when you’ve stopped denying the harm you’ve created here on Planet Earth.

A:  This is where you really need a mentor.

J:  Yes.  You need to know that somebody else has already forgiven you so you can find the courage to forgive yourself.

A:  That mentor can be God.

J:  Yes.  If a person trusts that God the Mother and God the Father forgive her even when she’s been a shit, she can lean on their strength as she struggles to learn from her mistakes and forgive herself.  It takes time to learn to forgive, but that’s okay.  People have to believe that God doesn’t expect instant results.  Indeed, instant results aren’t scientifically supportable or biologically possible.  God only expects consistent effort.  God will help you if you’re willing to make a consistent effort to be the best person you’re capable of being.

A:  Warts and all.

J:  God doesn’t mind warts.  Human beings end up covered in warts and scars and cracked bones and broken hearts in their time on Planet Earth.  God forgives you anyway.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  God sees past all the warts and scars and cracked bones and looks straight into your broken heart.  You can’t hide a broken heart from God.  Nor should you want to.

A:  It’s so difficult for regular human beings to believe they’re worthy of God’s daily forgiveness.  I really struggled with this in the beginning.  But I’m glad you persisted!

J:  It changes everything when you’re willing to accept God’s forgiveness.  Everything.  You find the freedom to move — really move.  So instead of being nailed helplessly to the cross, immobile, desperate, unable to flow with the changes and surprises of each day, you begin to be able to move.  Sure, at first you have to drag the damn cross with you, and it’s heavy, and it hurts.  But at least you’re moving!  And you’re starting to reclaim your sense of your own self, your own true potential.  After a while the cross you’re dragging around starts to feel different to you.  It starts to feel less like a heavy burden and more like . . . gravity.  A place where you can feel the weight, the seriousness, the reality of honest truth and not be afraid of it.  A place where honest truth is your ally, your very foundation.  Your centre of gravity.

A person who has chosen to pursue status (“gaining the whole world” at the expense of honest truth) relates strongly to the image of the crucifix — Jesus nailed to the Cross — because this is the way he or she feels in relation to the world and to God.  He feels trapped.  Nailed down.  Impoverished of health and happiness.  Stuck in an endless circle of pain and self-sacrifice.  So he thinks the image of the crucifix is right.

By contrast, a person who has chosen the path of knowing free will, love, forgiveness, healing, and redemption sees the cross in very different terms.  He sees a symbol of freedom from the self-enslavement of status addiction, a symbol of the courage to be yourself and know yourself and trust yourself in a world that tells you this is impossible.

To be disenfranchised from Empire is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

RS32: Resurrection of the Son of Man

free_israel_photos_jerusalem_old_city_all_1024

Old City of Jerusalem ((c) Free Israel Photos)

A:  Did you know ahead of time — before you went to Jerusalem — that you were going to die?  Most Christians believe you were prophesying your own death in Mark 8:31.

J:  Well, I did know my time was running out, but I kept that suspicion to myself.  So the question about the Son of Man in the Gospel of Mark is a separate question.  When Mark talks about the Son of Man being rejected, killed, and resurrected, Mark isn’t talking about me or any other human being.  For me, and also for my great-nephew Mark, “Son of Man” meant humanity’s highest potential, humanity’s ability to transcend terrible suffering and turn it into something positive and life-enhancing.  Not “life” as in existing and surviving, but “life” as in choosing to do what’s right with courage and conviction and respect for all creatures.

Like Job, a person who refuses to take “no” for an answer in his quest to be in full relationship with God is going to go through some difficult times.  To search for love and trust in a world that rejects love and trust is no easy task.  There will be no support from “the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes” in this quest.  Those in authority will do their best to destroy you and your dogged determination to find the truth about your heart and soul.  They certainly won’t reward you for teaching others how to hear God’s voice.  But at the end of the day they can’t stop these truths from being constantly reborn in the hearts and minds of those who believe in humanity’s highest potential.

This is the kernel of divine truth that lies at the heart of the resurrection story.  The truth about Divine Love can be temporarily crushed — killed by the elders, chief priests, and scribes — but it always returns.  It always reignites in the hearts of those who are listening to God through the lens of the heart.

A:  But Peter and James and John didn’t like what you were saying.

J:  That’s an understatement.  Compare what Mark says about choosing between status and “life” (eg. Mark 8:34 – 9:1) to what John says throughout his gospel.  For John, it’s all about the status.  Status so pure and so elevated it will save you.

A:  A lot of Christians have been confused by Mark’s statement that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life based on your teachings will save it.  But it makes perfect sense in the context of choosing between status (“gaining the whole world”) and losing your ability to love and trust (“forfeiting their life/soul”).  Seems pretty clear, actually.

J:  These passages (plus some others) in Mark have often been interpreted as an endorsement of asceticism.  I want to emphasize that I didn’t ever teach or endorse the practice of asceticism.  And I didn’t teach the practice of self-dissolution.  I taught the practice of denying the cravings of status addiction.  I taught the practice of “taking up the cross.”

A:  Can you explain that in more detail?

J:  The Romans in the first century CE were brutal tyrants, despite all their talk of honour and law and Pax Romana.  Their culture was profoundly status-oriented.

A:  As many cultures continue to be to this day.

J:  Yes.  Romans held great store in the rights of citizenship.  If you were a Roman citizen, you had special rights and privileges.  Citizenship was a sign that you were favoured by the gods.  But if you weren’t a citizen — and most Jews in the province of Palestine weren’t — you had no recourse to the laws that applied exclusively to Roman citizens.  If the Romans didn’t like you, they could crucify you.  Tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands — of people who weren’t citizens ended up on crosses throughout the Roman Empire.  Theoretically, however, citizens couldn’t be crucified.  So the cross became a symbol of disenfranchisement — of being cut off from the ancient rights and privileges that had accrued to various ancient peoples over the centuries.  Second Temple Judaism had built up a strong body of laws.  But these laws meant nothing if the Romans took a dislike to you.  A lot of disenfranchised Jews ended up on crosses.

A:  Yet you were a Roman citizen.  And they put you on a cross.

J:  Yes.  Which is why they had to take me down after only a few hours.  But the cross isn’t what put me at death’s door.  I was almost dead by the time they tied me up there.

A:  Tied?  I thought the Romans nailed people in place.

J:  It was a bit of a rush job.  They would have come back later to properly nail me down if they hadn’t been forced to take me down from the cross after an old friend alerted the authorities to the crime of crucifying a Roman citizen.

A:  Why were you almost dead?

J:  I’d been in prison for three months.  I’d been stabbed in the lower abdomen by John.  I’d been poisoned by Peter.  But I didn’t have the decency to die in prison.  So finally, late in September, James got fed up.  He bribed some officials to send me out with a batch of prisoners who were scheduled to die.  He didn’t think anyone would recognize me and raise a ruckus.  He was wrong.

A:  So your own brother was the one who tried to make you die an ignominious death on the cross.  That’s just  . . . well, there are no words for such a betrayal.

J:  My older brother Judas was in on the original plan to capture me and put me in prison.  But when the rest of the story unfolded . . . he couldn’t take the guilt.  He committed suicide.

A:  You say you’d been in prison for three months, and you were tied to the cross in September.  That doesn’t add up with the Passover timeline.

J:  John created the Passover timeline.  It suited his mystical belief that I’d been overlighted by God.  He also couldn’t remember, from a factual point of view, when I’d been arrested.  His memory for poetry and scripture was excellent, but his memory for historical facts and dates was very poor.

A:  So in his mind your arrest did take place in the early spring at Passover.

J:  Yes.  And, as always, he was persuasive in his charismatic prophecy, so people took him at his word.  He said it happened at Passover, so this date was quickly embraced by new followers after my death.  From everyone’s point of view, there was a lovely mystical symmetry — even a mystical necessity — in this date.

The truth is that I didn’t go to Jerusalem for Passover in my final year.  It was a shocking heresy on my part, but I couldn’t agree to go to the Temple to participate in a festival I believed was morally wrong.  I couldn’t agree to participate in a ceremony that celebrated the escape of one group of people through the death of innocent children — children who were murdered by an avenging God.  And all the other plagues . . . the whole thing felt wrong to me at a gut level.

A:  Starting to see why your family hated you so much.  You rejected one of their cherished traditions.  One of the traditions that gave them status.

J:  I rejected traditions founded in hatred and vengeance.  But there were other traditions worth keeping.  This is why I went to Jerusalem seven weeks later for the celebration of Shavuot (Weeks) — what Christians later called Pentecost.  Shavuot was a whole different kettle of fish.  Shavuot was about gratitude — thanking God for the bountiful gifts of food in the first harvest.  I had no use for the Passover laws, but I saw how Shavuot could be a time of real healing and redemption for Jews of faith — like an ancient but very Jewish version of Christmas, with people sharing their gifts and their hearts with each other and with God.

My problem was that I said this out loud.  I gathered my friends and family and followers together, and presented them with this “new version” of Shavuot — a supper where we would sit together as equals and invite God the Mother and God the Father to share a humble meal of bread and water with us.

A:  The Last Supper.

J:  And it was, indeed, my last supper as a human being where my body wasn’t filled with pain and fear.  I was arrested later that night.

A:  Had you decided before you went to Jerusalem that you were going to suggest this “new Shavuot”?  Or was it a last minute idea — a sudden flash of inspiration?

J:  I knew before I went.  I also knew I’d make a lot of new enemies for daring to change old customs in this way.  But it was the right thing to do.  So I did it.

A:  So you knew ahead of time you risked arrest, even death.

J (nodding):  I knew.

A:  And you didn’t try to stop it.

J:  Don’t get me wrong.  I wasn’t trying to be a martyr.  And I didn’t want to be arrested and tortured.  I saw no joy or fulfillment in that prospect.  On the other hand, I wasn’t going to back down.  I wasn’t going to lie to other people about who God is.  I wasn’t going to pretend that all Jewish traditions were blessed by God, because, you know, they weren’t.  I wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

The truth about love and trust, about humanity’s ability to love God and trust God, about God’s choice to love humanity and trust humanity, always manages to be reborn.  No death can stop it from happening.

The Son of Man always returns in the hearts and smiles and courage of those who love.  It’s our inheritance as children of God.

 

RS31: Jesus and the Book of Job

A:  We’ve been talking a lot about your teachings on life and death, healing and miracles.  Tell me why John the Baptist tried to kill you.*  It seems a strange thing for a religious prophet to do.

J:  John didn’t act on his own.  It would be fair to say that my brother James and my former friend Peter used John.  As we’ve discussed, John was suffering from major mental illness — schizophrenia combined with narcissism.  If you played on his paranoia and his narcissism, you could get him to do your dirty work for you.  This is what James and Peter did.  They used John to try to get rid of me.

A:  You describe Peter as your former friend.

“One of the ideas that sets the poem of Job apart from the Book of Job the Patient and from other ancient Near East poems about righteous sufferers is the book’s detailed pronouncement by the Lord that people who behave badly as Job’s friends need to apologize to both Job and to the Lord and to be retrained by an expert in the field, Job himself (chap 29).” (From commentary on the book of Job by Mayer Gruber in The Jewish Study Bible, TANAKH Translation, ed. Michael Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1505.) Photo credit JAT 2015, Lake Minnewanka, Alberta.

J:  There’s a reason the Gospel of Mark portrays Peter in such an unflattering light in the final chapters of his book (Mark 14).  Mark 14 should be subtitled, “The Truth About Peter That Peter Doesn’t Want You to Know.”

A:  Peter comes across as a coward and a liar and a collaborator, a man who sits with the high priest’s guards and warms himself by their fire.

J:  Yes.  “Warming himself at the fire” is an ancient idiom for “saving himself by selling out to the enemy.”

A:  Peter doesn’t seem like the kind of man you or any sane leader would entrust with the job of carrying on your teachings.

J:  Peter was a fickle, vain, posturing man — a lot like Wormtongue in Tolkien’s The Two Towers — and he only gained a position of authority in the Kingston movement after I died and he could spread his lies about his “humility” and his “chosenness.”

People wonder why Mark shows me rebuking Peter with a remark about Satan.  But it’s not a supernatural claim about Peter.  It’s a psychological claim.

A:  Mark 8: 31-33 says, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  He said all this quite openly.  And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things'” (NRSV translation).

J (nodding):  Mark is telling his audience that Peter, who later claimed to be a faithful and devoted apostle, was, in fact, “the adversary” — like the adversary named Satan who tried to ruin Job’s life with his incessant legalistic wrangling, his incessant lack of faith in the mystery of love, his incessant rejection of God’s right to choose how he (they) will intervene in the world.

Later Christians have read the reference to Satan as a supernatural claim for the Devil.  But in the book of Job, Satan isn’t the Devil.  He’s the wily Materialist who sits on God’s council of heavenly advisers and insists that the man named Job is devoted to God only because he has many blessings — healthy sons and daughters, great herds of livestock, and many servants.  Take away those blessings, says ha-Satan (the Accuser), and Job will curse God instead of loving him.  It’s simple Cause and Effect.

(c) Image*After

“Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” (Mark 12: 10-11). Photo credit Image*After.

But this isn’t what happens.  Job tries and tries to understand the Law of Cause and Effect and invoke it for his own benefit, but his efforts fail.  God — not the man named Job, and not the Materialist philosopher ha-Satan — gets the final say.  In the end he chooses to restore Job’s blessings, but only because he chooses to, not because he’s been forced to by clever and lawyerly invocations of Law.

I had a lot of respect for the Book of Job.  I didn’t understand it at all when I began my journey of faith.  I understood it completely by the time I died.  God doesn’t promise anyone an easy or pain-free journey.  Faith has no foundation at all if it’s built on the premise that you’ll escape all pain by following the Law.  Faith requires humbleness.  Faith requires respect for all life in Creation, including behemoths and leviathans and — God forbid! — daughters who are named and given land alongside their brothers upon their father’s death.

Some commentators think God is pummelling Job at the end with reminders about God’s power.  They think God requires Job’s submission to this power.  But the speeches by God at the end of the Book of Job aren’t about power.  They’re about humbleness.  Humbleness as God and God’s angels understand it, not as religious leaders have taught it.

A:  Humbleness as an intense awareness of who you are and who somebody else is.  Knowing your strengths, and being proud to use your strengths in service to others, but also knowing your limits.  Knowing who you’re not as much as knowing who you are.

J:  Yes.  This point is drilled home in Chapter 40 (verses 1 to 8):

And the Lord said to Job:
“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
Anyone who argues with God must respond.”
Then Job answered the Lord:
“See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but will proceed no further.”
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Gird up your loins like a man;
I will question you, and you declare to me.
Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be justified?” [emphasis added]

A:  “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge,” God says to Job in 38:2.  The rejection of “words without knowledge” is very strong in your original teachings.  Also the refusal to blame God for the mistakes made by narcissistic human beings.

J:  A human being who believes he/she can control the Law of Cause and Effect is not a person of humbleness or faith.  Job had to go through a lot of suffering to get this point through his thick head.  But eventually he got it.  Just as I eventually got it.

A:  So I’m thinkin’ Peter never got it.

J:  Bottom line, you can’t be in relationship with God if you think you are God, if you think you’re so wonderful and special that the very laws of Creation will bow down to your wishes.

It.  Ain’t.  Gonna.  Happen.

A:  Would it be too much of a stretch to say the Book of Job is an anti-narcissism diatribe?

J:  No, it’s not too much of a stretch.  Job’s four interlocutors — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Elihu son of Barachel — are brilliantly drawn “portraits” or “archetypes” for brain patterns that would be described today in psychiatric terms as DSM-IV disorders.  Just because ancient writers and teachers didn’t have a DSM-IV doesn’t mean they couldn’t see these patterns of behaviour through careful observation.

A:  I see a Ph.D. dissertation for somebody in that remark.

J:  The important thing to bear in mind is that a person like Peter, who was narcissistic and convinced of his “right to be right,” will always, of necessity, be a coward.  He has to be a coward, because only a coward won’t admit his own mistakes.  The refusal to admit one’s own mistakes (especially to oneself) is a hallmark of narcissism.

A:  It takes guts to be honest about your own mistakes.  That’s one thing I learned the hard way.

J:  Me, too, in my time.

A:  Yet it’s deeply healing to be honest about one’s own mistakes.

J:  It is.  This is part of the reason for the great success of the Twelve Step method — you have to let go of your denial and be honest about the harmful choices you’ve made in the past.

A:  But if another person tries to confront the denial, they can put themselves in harm’s way.  You’ve talked in the past about your brother’s narcissistic rage reaction.  I’ve been on the receiving end of similar rage reactions — most recently from one of the owners of the business where I work — and these rage reactions . . . they sure aren’t pretty.  They’re violent in a way that’s hard to describe.

J:  We talked a few days ago about the way in which a status addict tries to acquire status points by stealing part of another person’s inner self-image (Father of Lights and Mother of Breath — Again).  Narcissists are always status addicts, so this “stealing mechanism” is an important part of their psychological profile.   Narcissists are always trying to build themselves up by tearing other people down.  It gives them a sense of power.  Unfortunately, if you dare challenge the myth of their “rightful” power, they’ll go berserk.  Literally berserk.  Blood lust comes over them.  A temporary form of insanity.  If swords (or guns) are handy, they’ll use them.  If iron swords aren’t handy, they’ll use whatever they can find to try to annihilate you, to rob you of your entire being so you’ll disappear into a cloud of nothingness.  They’ll try with all their might to reach into your core self and rip out your heart so they can eat it and claim your power.

A:  Yuck.  Gross.  It’s like that gross heart-eating scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  But, you know, come to think of it, it’s exactly what my boss tried to do to me in January.  She did her best to annihilate me.  Didn’t work, though, because I forgave her for her brutal attack.  I’m still there, and I’m still looking her in the eye.

She hates that.  She hates it when I look her in the eye.

J:  She knows at a deep narcissistic level that she has no power over you.  This frightens her.  It undermines the lies she tells herself.  Your very presence reminds her she isn’t the nice person she claims to be.  So she hates you.  She has to hate you and she has to blame everything on you and the co-workers who stood up for you because otherwise she’d have to look at herself in the mirror and admit her own mistakes.  She’s not going to do that.  Not while she’s arranged her whole world to protect herself from the truth about her own motives.  She thinks she’s safer this way, but she’s not.  She thinks if she can “get rid of” the people who witnessed her narcissistic rage reaction in January (by forcing them to quit), all will be right with the world, and she can return to her merry little narcissistic belief that she’s the most wonderful boss there could ever be.

Her guardian angels have other ideas.  For more details, please refer to the Book of Job, which could also be titled, “You’re Not Going to Want to Hear This, but God Has an Opinion on Your Narcissism.”

 

* Please see the February 6, 2011 Jesus Redux post John the Baptist and Jesus and the May 15, 2011 post John, Paul, and James: The Lunatic, the Liar, and the Lord.

RS30: The Second Coming?

A:  I’d like to return, if we could, to the idea of a “genderless divine essence.”  You’ve pointed out in our discussions that the apostle Paul had an understanding of God which blended both Jewish Essene beliefs and Hellenistic philosophical beliefs — especially Plato’s teachings.  So somehow Paul ends up with an understanding of the Divine where there’s both a genderless divine essence — Spirit (pneuma in the Greek) — and a male God.  How can Paul’s God be both male and genderless?

J:  Plato had this strange mix, too.  Would it help if I told you Plato was also a member of the Seekers of the Rock?  That both Plato and Paul worked for the same organization?

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Plato’s Cave? Is this really a helpful metaphor for understanding life on Planet Earth? (photo (c) Image*After)

A:  Plato wrote his books over 400 years before Paul wrote his.

J:  Yes.  The Seekers of the Rock have a long history.  Which is no surprise when you look at the history of other religious movements.  When Plato wrote, his job was to try to pull Greek thought in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda.  When Paul wrote, his job was to try to pull Hellenistic thought (which included Jewish influence) in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda.  The heavy influence of Platonism, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Platonism on Christian theology is no accident.

A:  One thing I noticed when I read Plato’s works for my Master’s thesis is the infuriating blend of monism with dualism.  It’s, like, make up your mind, buddy!  Are we “all One” or are we split between dualistic poles of “good and evil”?  How can it be both at the same time?  I know we’ve talked about this before, but I still find it exasperating.

J:  Gnosticism in all its forms is an attempt to reconcile the inherent conflict between monism and dualism.  Paul was a proto-Gnostic thinker, in the language of recent scholarship.  In many ways, the raging debates about Gnostic heresies in the early centuries of the church were fights between Paul’s own “Platonic” brand of Gnosticism and the more floridly mystical brands of Gnosticism that sprang up from Paul’s and John’s teachings.  Both brands — the orthodox Pauline position and the Gnostic heresies — were attempts to explain how we can all “be One” and at the same time be forced to deal with the problem of evil in the world.

Anybody who starts with the idea that we are “all One” — the idea that each soul is a fragment of the Oneness, a fragment that’s seeking union and blissful dissolution in the cloud of knowing/unknowing — will be forced, logically speaking, into the dualistic position.  Otherwise how do you logically explain why you and your neighbour aren’t the same?  How do you explain why men and women are different from each other in many ways?  How do you explain evil and injustice and wars of oppression?  If you insist on maintaining the monistic position of Oneness, nothing in the world makes sense.  Nothing.

A:  Yet Paul’s group — the Seekers of the Rock — have continued to hold onto this position all this time.  When are they going to get the idea they’re wrong?

J:  Not any time soon.  They think they’re saving the world from the evil forces of chaos, etcetera, etcetera.

A:  So is this supreme cloud of knowing/unknowing the same thing as Paul’s Spirit, Paul’s “genderless divine essence”?

J:  Well, they would be the same in the ideal universe (Plato’s realm of perfect Forms).  In the ideal universe (the healed and restored universe which Paul and the Seekers believed they were rebuilding) all the lost and broken bits of Oneness would return to their rightful places in the “region above the heavens,” as Plato described it in Phaedrus.  According to Plato and the other Seekers, this is the region where the One True God lives, “being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.”*

A:  I can see from this description that the Seekers’ One True God is very big and bland and boring, kinda like a featureless cloud of hydrogen and helium atoms somewhere out in space.  But Plato doesn’t actually say that this “being which really is” is genderless.  So is the One True God of Paul and Plato genderless?  Or is this Oneness male?

J (smiling):  The One True God is male.  In fact, he’s the perfect male.  The Ideal Male.  The Pure Male.  The Form of Perfection.  The Geometric Form of Order.  The template for Oneness.  Ultimate Knowledge.  Omnipotent Mind.  Creation without Chaos.  The Source where the apophatic path and the anagogic path become the Perfect Circle outside time and space.  The Womb where only pure Truth can be brought forth.  The Mirror of Justice.  All emotion is eradicated.  Love, trust, and forgiveness become meaningless concepts, as meaningless as talking about rain in a village that has only known drought, desert, and harshness.  The feminine principle is not so much abolished as swallowed — swallowed and controlled and assimilated — so that all impulses serve the unified purposes of the One.  A lot like the Borg on Star Trek, only with a hive king instead a hive queen.

A:  And this is their idea of science?

J:  Yes.  For them it’s the perfect combination of science and religion.

A:  The part about the supremacy of the mind sounds a lot like Deism.

J:  Yes.

A:  Yes?  It’s Deism?  The Seekers of the Rock were — are — Deists?

J:  Yup.

A:  No wonder these guys seem so arrogant.  They actually believe they can control the Law of Cause and Effect because God set it up that way for them!  God set up the universe then walked away from it, so “the best and brightest” human minds can do whatever they want!

J:  Yup.

A:  And God can’t — won’t — intervene.  Except for that one time when he apparently sent his only son through the barrier of time and space to anchor that big ol’ pyramid thing.  Except you really screwed it up, according to Paul.

J:  According to Paul.

A:  So now they’re waiting for the next small window of time and space when the Logos can once again squeeze through from that higher realm to bring the Truth and reward them for their piety and hard work.  Right?

J:  You got it.

A:  And when will this next window take place?  When will the Second Coming happen?

J:  Never.  It ain’t gonna happen — not the way think people think it’s gonna happen, anyway.  Same as the First Coming never happened the way Paul said it did.  It’s a myth, a lie, a way to hide the truth about God the Mother and God the Father and all the ways they share their Divine Love and forgiveness with us each day whether we ask for it or not.

A:  What about all the prophecies?  What about the promises in the Bible and other sacred texts about chosen saviours and messiahs and prophets who’ll be coming soon to bring us revelation and salvation?  Millions of people rely on the promises of prophecy for their sense of hope.

J (shrugging):  Sorry.  Can’t help.  The kind of hope promised by Paul isn’t what angels mean by hope.  For us, hope means working together with God in trust and free will and healing and forgiveness.  Hope believes in the potential of all human beings to be their best selves regardless of what sacred texts say.  Hope believes in the power of transformation and change when people accept their own courage and their own inner strengths.  Hope is about the present, about seeing the ever-present Birth of Divine Love hiding quietly within each moment and each choice in the currents of Creation.

A:  So no End-of-Times.  No Judgment Day.  No coming-in-clouds-with-great-power-and-glory Second Coming.  The prophecies are wrong.

J:  Yup.  Prophecy’s a real bitch, eh?

 

* From the translation by Christopher Rowe of Plato’s Phaedrus (London and New York: Penguin, 2005).

 

RS29: Father of Lights and Mother of Breath – Again

Irises (c) JAT 2013

Irises (c) JAT 2013

A:  I just love Biblical Archaeology Review.  Yesterday I came home from work and checked out the latest newsletter they’d e-mailed.  I get a newsletter from them every few days, and sometimes I don’t read them.  But this one caught my eye, and I clicked on the link (http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/misogyny-in-the-bible/).  There I found a wonderful article by Biblical Studies professor April DeConick.  The full article, called “Biblical Views: How the Mother God Got Spayed,” appears in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept./Oct. 2012).  I just love everything about this article.  It’s so honest.  She dares to ask if we’re “trying to apologize for the misogny in the Bible because of our religious belief in the sacred nature of the Bible.”  Thank you for saying this out loud, Dr. DeConick!

I’d like to quote one paragraph from her article:

To begin with, humans — whether ancient or modern — think within gender categories.  And whether we admit it or not, gender never has been neutral.  Power is always involved.  In the ancient world, the female body was believed to be subhuman, imperfect — a deficient body because it lacked the male genitalia.  The male body was the perfect body.  So the male body dominated the scene, including the Bible, Christian theology and Christian ecclesiology.  In other words, the Bible came into being within a cultural matrix where the female body by definition was substandard and dehumanized.  This dehumanization of the female body affected virtually every storyline of the Bible.

She then goes on to explain how this misogynist view of the female body affected the way ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God:

This misogynist view of the female body affected the way in which the ancient people created their theologies and engaged in worship.  This is not to say that all ancient Jews and early Christians perceived God only as a male Father God.  Indeed, worship of the Mother God in conjunction with the Father God can be demonstrated to have occurred within ancient Israel.  Both the Bible and archaeology confirm this.  So it isn’t that the Mother God was absent from their worship.  Rather she was consciously eradicated from worship by the religious authorities.

Then DeConick dares to say that in early Christianity, “[w]e have records that demonstrate that the Holy Spirit was perceived by the first Christians to be not only female, but also Jesus’ Mother.”

Yup.  I just love it when good scholarship backs up everything you’ve been telling me for the past few years.*

J:  I worked very hard to distance my teachings from the religious orthodoxy of my day.  As we’ve discussed many times, I didn’t view God as a male-only figure.  I also didn’t view God as a “genderless divine essence,” as biblical scholar Ben Witherington so quaintly puts it (a thesis that’s challenged by Dr. DeConick in her article).  For Paul, Spirit/God/Christ was a genderless divine essence, just as for Plato, God was a genderless divine essence.   But this was never my teaching.  So for those Christians who want to retreat into the cowardly territory of God as “cloud of knowing” or “ground of being” instead of God as two loving people, they need to be honest about their beliefs.  They’re modern day Platonists, not followers of the teachings of Jesus.

A:  The Gospel of Mark speaks so eloquently about your lack of misogyny.  The stories about the hemorrhaging woman and the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5) break my heart.  The hemorrhaging woman seems to me like a symbol of the terrible abuse suffered by any woman whose symptoms make her “unclean” and “impure” according to religious law.  Can you imagine being treated as a pariah for years and years simply because you’re a woman and you’re medically ill?  How cruel is that.

J:  It seems hard to believe the Roman Catholic church and the strict Calvinist traditions can be so willfully blind about my teachings on women.  They can reinterpret the healing stories from the Gospel of Mark until they’re blue in the face, but they can’t erase the obvious truth that I believed women are equal to men in the eyes of God and are not unworthy or impure simply because they’re women.

A:  I love the way DeConick picks up on Tertullian’s role in destroying the self-image of Christian women for centuries to come.  Tertullian was a very nasty fellow — a status addict of the worst kind.

J:  To despise a woman because she’s a woman is a clear indication of status addiction.  To despise the idea of God as two people — God the Mother and God the Father — is another clear indication of status addiction.

A:  How so?

J:  Status addiction is a form of theft.  It’s an intentional theft of someone else’s sense of worthiness and self esteem.  In the Christ Zone model we’ve been looking at, there can be no true balance or wholeness or self-actualization unless all four major needs are met: physiological needs, safety needs, love & belonging needs, and self-esteem needs.  So important are these four major needs to human health and happiness and peace that psychiatry should reformulate its DSM bible to show disorders of physiological needs, disorders of safety needs, disorders of love & belonging needs, and disorders of self-esteem needs, instead of its current categorization system.

A status addict is someone whose brain is not functioning in balanced, holistic ways.  For various reasons a status addict can’t generate an inner sense of self.  They can’t generate a portrait of themselves, if you will, a portrait of themselves as a child of God.  Often this is due to damage in the parietal and parieto-temporal regions of the brain.

Because they can’t “see” themselves — because they can’t “plant” themselves in the firm ground of relationships and boundaries and heart-to-heart bridges among all life in Creation — they can’t rely on emotions such as trust and Divine Love and forgiveness to help them cope.

A:  Why not?  Why can’t they rely on trust and Divine Love and forgiveness?

J:  Because these coping mechanisms are all founded in the core principle of relationship — relationship between two or more people.  If you choose not to “do relationships” you also can’t “do love and trust.”  Positive, mature relationships draw on all the same parts of the brain as love and trust do.

A:  Such as oxytocin and vasopressin and prolactin levels in the bloodstream and brain.  Also serotonin.  To name a few.

J:  Yes.  One of serotonin’s jobs is to act as a mediator between the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain and the Soul Circuitry of the brain.  The role of serotonin in sustaining mood is beginning to be understood by medical science.  But it’s not the only factor in mood disorders.  A major complicating factor for many individuals — one that hasn’t been recognized by researchers — is status addiction.  Status addiction drives a person at a physiological level to seek a brief glimpse of himself by stealing somebody’s self-image.

It goes like this:

The status addict sees a woman who has confidence, self respect, and dignity.  It’s as if she’s painted a portrait of herself inside her heart and knows who she is.  Also who she’s not.  The status addict doesn’t know who he is and doesn’t know who he’s not.  But he’s jealous.  He’s jealous and angry at the woman who has something he does not.  So he endeavours to take it.  He endeavours to steal her portrait, or a piece of her portrait, and claim it for himself.  He takes it any way he can — usually through threats and physical or emotional abuse.  But the most vicious predator will try to rob the spiritual part of her self portrait, the part that tells her who she is in relationship with God.  He’ll try to rip out her entire sense of worthiness and self-esteem as a child of God.  Then he’ll take that piece of her portrait and pin it up on his own “inner wall.”   He’ll look at it and gloat.  He’ll enjoy her suffering.  The stolen portrait becomes a hazy sort of mirror where he can finally see himself. And for a brief moment, he’ll see himself as someone powerful and clever and potent.

Sixty seconds later his brain will let go of the high.   The image will vanish.  The sense of inner emptiness will return.  So he’ll have to go out and steal somebody else’s spiritual portrait.  This is how he copes with his own inability to love and trust and be in relationship with anyone, including God.

A:  Religious law as schadenfreude.

J:  Yes.  It’s a very poor substitute for reality, but many individuals rely on it.

To steal the reality of another person, to steal their wholeness, to try to steal their very existence, is a concentrated form of hatred.  It’s not purity of thought or transcendence that drives a person to say there is no personhood in God.  It’s not wisdom.  It’s not faith.  It’s just hatred.  Plain old fashioned hatred.  Hatred born of a status addict’s rage at the void he feels within himself.

To try to rip out God’s own self image, God’s own need for love & belonging, God’s own need for self-esteem (or, as we’ve called it here, God’s humbleness) is cruel and unconscionable.  I mean, where do people think we get our needs in the first place?  Do they think angels have a hard-wired need for love & belonging and self-esteem (humbleness) but God the Mother and God the Father don’t?  Do they really think God the Mother and God the Father have no feelings?

Every child born on Planet Earth tells the truth about God and God’s angels again and again and again.  Even the chromosomes of a child tell the truth.

God the Mother is real.

There’s no point fighting this truth any longer.

 

* Please see “Third Step: Invite Our Mother to the Table” and “Father of Lights, Mother of Breath


 

RS28: For Now We See in a Mirror, Brightly

A:  Okay.  To sum up so far, you rejected traditional and cultural beliefs about illness and healing, left the major urban centres, moved to a small town in Galilee — Capernaum . . .?

J:  Capernaum.

A: . . . broke countless religious rules about healing, didn’t use magic, ritual, or even prayer during your healing sessions, insisted on using observable science, insisted on building relationships of compassion with your patients, insisted on the power of faith, insisted on examining patients directly instead of using proxies, and rarely asked for anything in return.  Many patients with neurological, psychiatric, endocrine, and autoimmune disorders suddenly got better.  People thought you were a miracle worker.  You didn’t believe you were the prophesied Messiah, but many other people did.

Canadian National Parks 120

“Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but just grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”‘ He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease'” (Mark 5:25-34). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001 – 2003.

From today’s perspective, you don’t look like a religious teacher or wandering philosopher sage at all.  You look like a really gifted doctor.  In fact, you look to me like a really gifted psychiatrist.  And I ought to know what a psychiatrist looks like, since I was married to one for twenty years.

J:  I don’t deny what you’re saying.  A psychiatrist’s job, after all, is to help patients examine the parts of their biology that are interfering with their ability to think, feel, and choose in balanced, holistic ways.  It’s probably the most important field of medicine, though it’s usually the specialty that receives the least respect and the least funding.

A:  You were a physician.  A pioneering spirit in the as-yet unknown discipline of psychiatry.  Yet a religious movement sprang up around you.  Why?

J:  Because I was a man of deep faith.  I wasn’t afraid to trust God, to love God as they really are.  I wasn’t afraid to open my heart to the wonder of healing.  More important, I had a radically different idea of what illness and healing meant.  For me, illness didn’t mean “lack of perfection.”  And healing didn’t mean “acquisition of perfection.”  I had an entirely different understanding of our lives as human beings, an understanding based on my observation of the natural world.  For me, pain and death were not the enemy.  Death was obviously unavoidable.  Pain was a language, a language that spoke the truth about a person’s relationships with himself, with others, with the world around him, and with God.  I saw the loss of love and trust in God as a major source of pain and suffering in the people around me.  Their souls weren’t happy with the loss of relationship with God.  Their bodies mirrored this lack of happiness, this spiritual pain.

The truth is that all souls need God.  They need relationship with God.  They need to feel that connection, that bond of love and trust.  They also need to feel the same kind of love and trust in their relationships with their families and friends and community.  They need to feel safe — emotionally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually safe.

The world I grew up in didn’t teach anyone to feel safe in their relationship with God, or, for that matter, safe within their own families.  No community can be safe when it preaches the inferiority of women and the right to own slaves.  Second Temple Judaism was no different in this regard from the Hellenistic world around us.  Women had few rights.  And seriously ill or disabled women had even fewer.

My daughter was born with Down Syndrome.  She died at age 3 of respiratory failure.  It was probably pneumonia.  But she died in terrible emotional pain, terrible emotional suffering, because her own mother believed she was a curse.  A curse!

Her body got sick and died, but the pain of her physical suffering was small in comparison to her emotional and spiritual suffering.  She was horribly abused by her mother and her mother’s family.  Not because she deserved it but because Jewish magicians said she deserved it.  And I did nothing to protect her.

After she died — and there’s no doubt her mother and her mother’s mother were complicit in her death — I had to look at myself in the mirror and be honest about what I’d done — or rather, what I hadn’t done.  I had to own up to my complete and utter lack of courage.  And I had to deal with the constant memory of her face and her trusting smile.

I have no respect for the constant preaching from Christian theologians about the lofty preeminence of my suffering and death and resurrection.  Fuck that.  My contribution wasn’t my own death.  My contribution was to see meaning and life in the face of death, to see transformation and forgiveness in the face of death, and to really mean it.  My contribution was to find the courage to remember my daughter’s trusting smile and try to do something useful with the gift of her love.  Her love — the memory and the ongoing presence of her love in my heart — was a constant source of wonder and healing for me.

Apparently my guardian angels approved of this attitude because after I spent years learning how to forgive and learning how to listen to God’s voice and learning how to follow my own inborn talent as a physician, really weird shit started to happen around me.   I mean, really weird shit.  Healings that were more than placebo effect (which I had started to get used to by then).  I mean sudden, miraculous healings that only God can do.  I was as shocked as many of my patients.  But I understood in a logical, rational way what was happening.  So I wasn’t afraid.  I was just . . .  non-plussed.

A:  Why weren’t you afraid?

J:  Because I trusted God.  Because I could hear the voice of my own guardian angels.  Because I could feel the comfort and safety of these “events” deep in my gut.  Because people around me were crying in relief and gratitude.  Because good things were happening to regular people.  Because some of the people I helped heal began to believe in a loving God instead of a cruel, vengeful God.  Because God was obviously present in small huts and green fields and all the places where God wasn’t supposed to be present.  Because the only contribution we humans needed to bring to the table of healing was our kindness — our true kindness towards ourselves, towards each other, and towards God.  Not many people then or now have been willing to show kindness towards God.

A:  Did you understand the science of the miracle healings?

J:  You mean the quantum physics of it?  Hell, no.  I’m an angel on the Other Side and I still barely grasp the quantum physics of it!  But the science of it is there.  The truthful and logical reality of the healings is there.  Just because humans — and many angels! — don’t fully understand the science doesn’t mean it’s not science.  It’s just a really, really advanced science.

A:  A science which obviously circumvents the linear “cause and effect” of classical, Newtonian physics.

J:  Divine Love and forgiveness feel like emotional gifts, but at a quantum level, they’re both related to non-locality or, as some prefer to call it today, quantum entanglement.  Love and forgiveness also tie in with the soul’s sense of time and timing.

If you have no sense of time — no personal relationship with past, present, and future — it’s impossible for you, as a human being, to give and receive either Divine Love or forgiveness.

Trying to live in the moment — in other words, living in a state of denial about your own pain or somebody else’s pain — destroys the biological brain’s ability to process pain and turn it into something else, something much deeper and more proactive in the world, like, oh, say, like courage.

A:  So you’d define courage, then, as the ability to shift pain into some form of healing action or choice.  The ability to take action and help make the world a better place, even if it’s an emotional action, like choosing to love and forgive and trust, as opposed to a physical action, like joining the Peace Corps.

J:  Yes.  Courage is the choice to help God “build an ark.”

A:  There’s no doubt about the amount of pain that exists in the world.  So if pain is the raw material — the wooden planks — that can be turned into something deeper and more proactive, that’s one helluv’an ark we’re gonna be building.

 

 

RS27: The Way, the Truth, and the Life

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New Brunswick (c) Jamie MacDonald 2012

A:  Tell me about the healing miracles that took place around you.

J:  A lot of people over the centuries have tried to figure out the healing miracles reported in the Gospels.  Not many have noticed that the claims made by Mark are very different from the claims made by the other gospel writers.  To understand the healing miracles that took place during my ministry, the only reliable source is Mark’s gospel.  My friend Lazarus — the beloved disciple — was also a reliable source.  But his collection of essays and parables and sayings — the collection that’s been tentatively reconstructed by scholars and labelled the “Q source” — no longer exists in its original format.  So for anyone who wants to understand what I actually taught about healing and illness, they’d need to look more closely at what Mark says.

A:  I did an analysis of the healing stories in Mark, Matthew, and Luke for a New Testament course.*  My professor got very huffy with me because I launched into a very un-scholarly attack on Luke’s motives in the middle of the paper.  But I don’t regret pointing out the truth about Luke’s desire to paint you as a “Divine Patron of Healing.”  Luke had an agenda, and his agenda had nothing to do with teaching regular people how to be in relationship with God.

J:  Luke was a disciple of Paul.  Young, brilliant, devoted to the cause of the Seekers of the Rock.  He was very young — still in his mid-teens — when Paul died.  As he grew older, he earned more responsibility in the “great cause” of spreading the agenda of “The One True Religion.”  When my great-nephew wrote his anti-Pauline book — the Gospel of Mark — Luke got the job of undermining Mark’s message.  The last thing the Seekers wanted was another resurgence of interest in what I actually taught (as opposed to what they said I taught).

A:  Well, you were a difficult fellow.  And according to them, you were seriously broken.  So from their point of view they were helping you!

J (chuckling):  With friends like that, who needs enemies?

A:  You said recently (“The Messiah Who Misbehaved”) that Paul looked at the miracles of your ministry and decided you really had been the prophesied Jewish Messiah.  But not in a good way, because you hadn’t followed the proper script, the proper path that was expected of you.  So what did you do instead?  What did you do that got everybody’s knickers in a knot?

J:  Well, that’s the thing.  What I did was so simple it’s been missed by most Christians all this time.  What I did was get off my ass, stop feeling sorry for myself, stop wasting time on useless religious rituals and prayers, and go out and help people.

A:  Come on.  That’s way too simple.

J:  The complete story is that I went out and helped other people in a holistic way, using all my heart, all my mind, all my talent, and all my strength to forge a bridge of healing with others.  In other words, I helped people soul-to-soul.  I helped people recognize the “rainbow bridge” within themselves, the pathway to “the kingdom of the heavens.”  People were so shocked at this idea that sometimes they burst into tears.  This one idea was — is — so powerful to the process of healing that I could see dramatic changes in their physical and mental state overnight.  People need to know in their gut that God actually believes in them.

A:  You’ve mentioned the rainbow bridge within, and this makes me think of the sign of the rainbow in God’s covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17).

J:  This covenant between God and all Creation as it exists on Planet Earth — a covenant of trust and healing with humanity plus every living creature and the earth itself — is the only covenant that appears in the Bible that I actually endorse.  And the enduring sign of this covenant is the rainbow.  So naturally, when I spoke of people entering “the kingdom of the heavens,” I had the sign of the rainbow in mind.  In my day, the rainbow was seen by all cultures as the pathway that connected Heaven and Earth, the pathway travelled by divine messengers.  In the Greek world, the messenger who travelled the rainbow bridge was Iris.  In the Egyptian world, the messenger was Hermes Trismegistus.  In the Jewish world, the messenger was Abraham.

The main point here is that almost everybody, regardless of religious tradition, believed that God or Spirit or Source or Oneness or whatever label you used for the Divine, was somewhere far away, somewhere not of this Earth, somewhere not of this place or this time.  Sometimes the distance between Heaven and Earth could be closed, said the priests.  But this “closing of the gap” was believed to be rare, an event reserved for extraordinary events and times such as the birth and death of a great king.  It was unthinkable that God would enter the world, quietly and humbly, to heal the scabrous skin of a “leper.”  God just didn’t do that sort of thing, said the great theologians of my time.

A:  How did you see the connection between Heaven and Earth?

J:  For me, God was not “up there.”  Neither was God “in here,” in the way the Gnostic tradition speaks of “the spark within.”  God the Mother and the God the Father were — are — the world around me.  The world outside all other beings.  Neither pantheism nor panentheism, but something different.  Creation as family.  It’s the closest analogy there is.  Creation as family, with God the Mother and God the Father as parents who create a vast home for us, a home of “earth and air and water and fire,” parents who then step back from us, their angelic children, to allow us to understand and know ourselves as unique beings, unique consciousnesses within the family of Creation.  We are not them.  And they are not us.  But together we live and work together as a family.  They need us and we need them.  It’s as simple as that.

This what your inner soul believes about who you really are.

This what your inner soul believes about who you really are.

A:  So for you the world around you was not a tainted and corrupt lower sphere, a vile place to be controlled and transcended, but a strange sort of family home.  A place with many rooms to be explored and understood.  A place where God speaks in many languages and many voices.

J (nodding):  Yes!  A place where we experience the trajectory of true healing in ways that are difficult to express in words alone.

A:  Including the mysterious role of forgiveness.

J:  It felt to me, during my time as Jesus, that building a relationship with God and God’s angels is very much like building a bridge.  Building a bridge between your heart and another person’s heart, even if the other person is a person-of-soul who has no physical 3D body!  You are you, and she is she, so you can’t be that other person.  But you can build a bridge to that other person.  You can build a bridge of words and choices and actions and memories, a bridge of courage and devotion and gratitude and trust, and the bridge is a great source of strength, a way to “close the gap” between Heaven and Earth so you never feel alone.  The bridge “feels” like the rainbow that lights your heart when you look into the sky after a passing storm.  Maybe it sounds like a mushy Hallmark card, but I don’t care.  This is what it feels like to know God’s presence in your life.  It feels like this ephemeral thing of great beauty that alights upon your heart and soul in those times when you most need to feel the quiet touch of God’s hand upon your shoulder.  What travels along this rainbow bridge is not a messenger but Divine Love itself.  If you could see Creation with the eyes of an angel, you would see networks — highways — of rainbow light, bridges that connect the heart of each soul to the hearts of all other souls.

A:  Like an angel Internet.

J:  Actually, that’s exactly what it is — a world wide web of pure Divine Love that’s been built one small bridge at a time.

This is what I meant when I talked about the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  It’s not what Paul meant when he talked about the Way, and it’s not what John meant.  But, for me, the covenant with Noah was the only scriptural proof-text that made any sense.   The Way means helping God in the great and mysterious and multiple tasks of healing.

First step: help heal the physical body — the physical bodies of humans and other creatures and the planet itself — as Noah once helped God heal the bodies of all creatures on Planet Earth (metaphorically speaking, of course, since the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood was not an actual historical event ).

Second step:  start to build the rainbow bridges of the heart so you can hear what God is actually saying to you!

_________________________________________________

*Excerpt from a 2009 paper entitled, “RADICAL MESSIAH: AN EXAMINATION OF HOW THE HEALING MIRACLE STORIES ARE USED IN MARK, MATTHEW, AND LUKE”

. . .   The basic shape of Mark’s argument is presented in his opening verses (Mark 1:1 – 2:12).  These verses offer five different healing miracle stories in quick succession after a brief introduction that starts in the countryside (not the Temple) with John the Baptist (not with a priest).  These five narrative healing stories (plus eight more individual healings and assorted crowd scenes in Mark) have distinct features that make unique claims for the Jewish Messiah: (1) Jesus heals the most disadvantaged and scorned of people – the mentally ill (demoniacs), women, lepers, and paralytics (and in later chapters, Gentiles), most of whom are likely extremely poor (cf. the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20-23) – using only authority, forgiveness, word, and touch, but not prayer.  (2) He heals them in synagogue, household, and outdoor settings, far removed from any sanctioned Temple, whether Jewish or Gentile.  (3) All but one healing in Mark – the healing of the Syro-Phoenician girl (Mark 7: 24-30) – require that Jesus be physically present beside (or at least in visual proximity to) the person who is being healed, thus emphasizing the importance of personal relationship and compassionate presence as part of the miraculous healing process.  (4) He heals on the Sabbath, regardless of what Torah and priestly custom say.  (5) He rejects the purity codes of “uncleanness” as they pertain to illness, and does not equate “cleanness” with healing.  (6) He does not follow the traditional medical treatments recommended in either Greek medical texts or Jewish mishnah (Cotter, Appendices A & B), and he does not use either magical amulets or Jewish religious rituals (eg. sacrificial offerings), all of which suggest he is getting divine assistance in a novel form that bypasses all previously known ways of God’s acting in the world to relieve suffering, and that obviates the need for the Jerusalem Temple. (7) He does not ask for monetary payment, and he usually does not ask for an “honour payment” of public recognition; both of these values subvert the honour/shame paradigm.  (8) He does not heal everyone who comes to him in the beginning, only “many” of the people who gather in the crowd scene of 1:32-34 (although by 6:53-56, he is healing everyone).  (9) Jesus does not himself bring anyone back from the dead. (In the story about Jairus’s daughter, in Mark 5:21-24, 35-43, Jesus says the girl is not dead, but sleeping; and in the Passion sequence, the young man at the tomb says that “Jesus has been raised,” not “Jesus has raised himself”).  (10) All of the diseases that Jesus heals are attributable, in modern terms, to disorders of the endocrine system and central nervous system, and none involve sudden regeneration of lost limbs (which would be a truly non-Newtonian event!) (11) Jesus has no patience for “supernatural appurtenances” or the praise and honour that accompany them, yet is able to heal his patients instantly – no waiting period is required, no cleansing period is required, no special invocation of biblical memory is required, no special anything is required, except for one thing: faith on the petitioner’s part (plus, it goes without saying, divine intervention on God’s part).

Mark’s claims pose problems for the growing Christian community.  In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is clearly chosen by God to carry out a mission of (1) healing and (2) teaching, but he’s not very sellable.  He’s not very divine.  Further, he is a Jewish Messiah who is in the Torah’s face, who is blatantly cherry-picking which laws of Torah to keep (eg. Exod. 20:12-16; Deut. 6:4-5; Lev. 19:18), and which ones to reject (eg. Exod. 31:12-17; Lev. 13:9-17; 15:25-30).  (This tendency of Mark does not go down well with Matthew, who is intent on showing that Jesus  fulfilled Jewish prophecy and preached the proper understanding of Torah.)  In addition, Mark does not try to link the way Jesus healed people to the way in which Hebrew prophets such as Elisha healed people.  Elisha, by way of contrast to Jesus, never personally meets with his illustrious patient, the Syrian general Namaan, but instead sends messengers to tell Namaan that he can be cleansed of his skin disease if he ritually bathes seven times in the Jordan River (2 Kings 5:1-14).  A short while after this, Elisha punishes his greedy servant by giving him Namaan’s leprosy (as if leprosy is wrapped up in a neat little box that is within Elisha’s power to give!).  Mark’s Jesus, one intuits, would not have taken kindly to a healer who claimed to have the power to purposely afflict a man and all his descendants with leprosy (2 Kings 25-27); nor would Mark’s Jesus have appreciated the way in which Elisha commissions his servant to take the staff of the man of God (a staff presumably imbued with divine healing powers) to try to heal the Shunammite  woman’s dead (or possibly comatose) son.  Elisha’s commission fails, and only when the boy’s mother insists does he physically visit the boy to say prayers, and so bring him back to life.  According to Wendy Cotter, the Shunammite woman is not Jewish (52); however, the passage in 2 Kings shows she has faith in the god of Elisha.

At this point, it’s hard not to think of Mark’s tale of the Syro-Phoenician woman and her gravely ill daughter (Mark 7:24-30), which is the only occasion in Mark when Jesus performs a distance healing, that is, a healing on a person he hasn’t seen or touched.  This is a confusing passage.  We have some of the same elements as in the raising of the Shunammite woman’s son: a Gentile mother requests a healing from a man of God; the healer’s initial response is somewhat dismissive; the mother persists; the healer relents, and the child is healed.  If Mark were trying to draw a connection between Elisha and Jesus, he would have shown Jesus following the mother to her home and healing the girl with prayers.  Yet Mark, it seems, would rather show Jesus doing a distance healing than a prayer healing.  Remarkably, Mark places the power of faith and compassionate presence ahead of the power of prayer when it comes to healing (a point further reinforced by Mark’s reiteration in 6:1-6 of one of his major premises, where he implies that Jesus has no power to heal those in his hometown because most lack faith (cf. Mt 13:58))!  In Mark, prayer is important when it comes to Jesus’ personal relationship with God (eg. 1:35; 6:46;14:32), but Mark doesn’t show Jesus speaking prayers when “healing action” is taking place.  Rather, Mark shows Jesus using authority (commanding demons to come out) (1:23-27; 5:1-20; 9:14-29); giving forgiveness (2:1-12); speaking words that build on or interact with the petitioner’s own faith (1:40-45; 2:1-12; 3:1-6; 5:24-34; 5:35-43; 10:46-52); touching or laying on hands (1:29-31; 6:54-56; 7:31-37; 8:22-26); and using a combination of two or more of these (eg. 5:35-43; 9:14-29).  Interestingly, when the disciples ask Jesus in Chapter 9:28 why they could not cast out the “demon” of the epileptic boy (9:14-29), Jesus says to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer [and fasting].”  But does Jesus mean prayer in the midst of an exorcism (similar to a televangelist’s faith healing), or does he mean prayer of the sort he conducts in private, a practice of spiritual discipline (as we would understand that term) which gradually enhances one’s ability to hear and understand God?  It is not clear from the text.

RS26: Healing – The Gift of Love

A:  Tell me what fearlessness meant for you during your ministry.

J:  Good word.  Fearlessness.  Tricky word, too, because fearlessness for somebody who loves God isn’t the same experience as fearlessness for somebody who hates God.  Psychopaths hate God, no matter what they say.  Psychopaths also show a lack of normal fear, which is not to say they’re afraid of nothing, but that they’re afraid of very different things than non-psychopaths are.

Psychopaths aren’t afraid of hurting other people, aren’t afraid of taking huge physical and financial risks that would turn other people into quivering puddles of emotional jelly.  On the other hand, psychopaths are terrified of dying a nameless death.  They struggle against the reality of death, believe they can somehow circumvent it.  When they realize the universe isn’t going to make a special exception for them, and give them the gift of physical immortality, they try to make themselves immortal anyway in a screw-you,-God,-I’ll-show-you-how-special-I-am demonstration of might and glory.  So they focus all their efforts on “leaving a legacy.”  A big legacy.  A showy legacy.  Something tangible.  Something people can point to and ooh and ahh at — like a big temple.  Or a statue commemorating his/her reign.  Or a library with the family name plastered across the front.  A psychopath is never content to be remembered for his kind heart and consistent ability to lift others up from within.

Celsus Library, Ephesus Turkey 2

Celsus Library, Ephesus Turkey (c) JAT 2001

A:  Blowing up buildings and massacring innocent people is pretty showy, too.

J:  At the time, it seems like a good idea to the psychopath — a way to earn fame and glory.  It doesn’t look that way to the victims, of course, but to the psychopaths, it’s good fodder for the history books.

A:  You must have seen this mindset all around you in the early Roman empire you lived in.  It wasn’t a pretty place for conquered peoples.

J:  Yeah, go to your local arena and see enslaved animals and gladiators savage each other on the big screen of Real Life!  Sick stuff.

A:  Yet these displays of physical prowess were considered normal.  Culturally acceptable.

J:  Like slavery then and slavery later.  Just because it’s culturally acceptable doesn’t make it right.  The soul longs for freedom.  The soul believes in freedom.  Not libertarian freedom (the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, regardless of how it affects other people), but the freedom that comes with dignity and respect and egalitarianism.  Balanced freedom, you could call it.  The freedom to be considered a unique individual who is an important and worthy part of the larger community.  The freedom to look your neighbour in the eye as an equal.

This is the kind of freedom that psychopaths always try to strip away from others.

A:  So how does this relate to fearlessness?

J:  It’s linked very strongly to free will.  To free will and to trust.  When the community you live in allows you to exercise your soul’s free will and your soul’s trust in God in the fullest possible way, you become, in your own unique way, a healer.  Not a physician or surgeon or internist, but a healer.  A person with a unique gift that brings some form of healing into the world and into the hearts and minds of those around you.  There is no sphere of human existence where the inner impulse of fearlessness — trust and free will working together — shows itself more clearly than in the mysterious gift of healing.

A:  By healing . . . do you mean what modern Western allopathic doctors mean by healing?  Treating symptoms until the symptoms go away and “normal” function is restored?

J (shaking his head):  No.  By healing, I mean helping a person find a sense of wholeness, a sense of wholeness within themselves, a sense of worthiness within themselves that incorporates emotional worthiness, cognitive worthiness, physical worthiness, and spiritual worthiness.  All these together.  The whole enchilada.

Obviously there’s no point telling people they can find complete healing through pure physical worthiness or pure cognitive worthiness if in the next breath you’re going to tell them they’re full of Original Sin.

A:  It’s amazing what can happen to a person’s physical symptoms when emotions and cognitive function and spiritual growth are treated with as much respect as the physical symptoms.  (I speak from personal experience  . . . )

J:  Some Western physicians and health care professionals know this.  But not enough of them.  For a brief period in the twentieth century, Western physicians showed a strong blend “science and faith” in their healing relationships with patients.  But today this common sense blend has been shoved out of the way and replaced by the technological model.  It’s a pure Materialistic model, and, to be honest, I see no difference between the current allopathic medical model and the demon-model I fought against 2,000 years ago.  Today’s obsessive-compulsive focus on “germs and genes” and “fighting germs and genes” is no different than yesterday’s obsessive-compulsive focus on “demons” and “fighting demons.”  Both are attempts to control all the laws of Cause and Effect in the universe  — laws which, in fact, no human being has the final say over.

A:  When my beautiful son was battling leukemia — A.L.L. — he had little immune function for the first few months of his treatment, and then he had none at all after they blasted his body with radiation in preparation for a bone marrow transplant.  Theoretically he shouldn’t have been able to fight off any pathogens.  But theory got blown away by reality.  In the nine months he lived between diagnosis and death, he suffered from many painful and frightening events (not least a massive stroke).  But never once did he “get sick” from a cold or a flu or an infection of any kind.

When he was in hospital, he was in isolation.  But after his bone marrow started to show faint signs of recovery, he was discharged from hospital and spent the summer at home.  Our home wasn’t a sanitized and germ-free place.  It was a normal home.  I provided the nursing care for the central venous line that was still sticking out of his chest wall, and he never once got an infection at the entry site or in the line itself.  He probably should have, but he didn’t.  He was very disappointed, though, that he wasn’t allowed to eat fresh strawberries, which had been shown at the time to carry bacteria that could be harmful to immune-suppressed children.  He loved strawberries.

J:  Were you afraid while you were caring for your son?

A:  Yes.  I was terrified of his pain.  Not terrified for me, but terrified for him.  I recall with intense grief the days when he and I had to get through his spinal taps together without any pain medication at all.  He was extraordinarily brave.  He was so brave I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe anyone could be so brave and so trusting of the people who were trying to help him.

J:  Did your terror for him stop you from doing what needed to be done?  Did it stop you from loving him and showing him your love?

A:  No.  I wasn’t afraid of the procedures.  I understood what had to be done, and I wasn’t afraid of the science.  I was afraid of the grief and the pain.

J:  You were afraid of the grief and the pain, but you did it anyway.  You and your husband made sure your son spent almost no time alone in the hospital room.  Someone was always with him.  You made sure his heart always felt safe, yes?

A:  We did our best.  Though Sick Kids Hospital wouldn’t let us stay with him overnight, which was very difficult for us.  We had to stay at the Ronald McDonald House.

J:  You could have” left the room” (emotionally speaking) and turned things over to “the science” or “the law,” as so many parents have done (not to their credit).  But you didn’t.  You believed you needed to be with him and look him in the eye and tell him you loved him.  You knew he needed constant comfort.

A (nodding):  My heart said he needed us.

J:  Yes.  He needed you.  And you didn’t let him down.  This is what fearlessness feels like.  It’s not lack of fear in the face of illness and death.  It’s the choice to choose love and trust even when you feel the fear.  It’s the choice to do the right thing for somebody else’s healing.  For somebody else’s sense of worthiness and wholeness.  For somebody else’s discovery deep within that the mystery of love cannot be contained.  It’s too big to ever be held back by small rooms and the petty concerns of Law.   It fills up the smallest cracks of Creation with its wondrous powers of growth and healing and expansion.  It grows and grows within, even when the physical body itself is dying.

This is the gift of one human being to another, a gift that is eternal.

All human beings have this power within their hearts if they choose to claim it.

 

RS25: Where Love Goes, Miracles Follow

Detail of Woodpecker tapestry designed by William Morris (1885). (from Wikimedia Commons)

Detail of Woodpecker tapestry designed by William Morris (1885). (from Wikimedia Commons)

J:  I’d like to begin today with a quote from the text you were reading the other day — the scroll fragment that deals with exorcism as it was usually handled in my time (Dead Sea Scroll 4Q560)*:

Col. 1 [. . .] the midwife, the punishment of those who bear children, any evil madness or d[emon . . .] [. . . adjure you, all who en]ter into the body: the male Wasting-demon and female Wasting-demon [. . . I adjure you by the name of the Lord, “He Who re]moves iniquity and transgressions” (Exod. 34:7), O Fever-demon and Chills-demon and Chest Pain-demon [. . . You are forbidden to disturb by night using dreams or by da]y during sleep, O male Shrine-spirit and female Shrine-spirit, O you demons who breach [walls . . . w]icked [. . .]  Col. 2 before h[im . . .] before him and [. . .]  And I, O spirit, adjure [you against . . .]  I adjure you, O spirit, [that you . . . ]  On the earth, in clouds [. . .] (Translated by Michael O. Wise)

A lot of words are missing from the fragment, but you get the picture.  Illness is ascribed to demons.  Cures are ascribed to the power of magical words, words spoken in ritualistic ways by Jewish magicians.  The magicians would have used magical amulets, too, and divining tools (though technically these were forbidden by Jewish orthodoxy).  Also drugs that were transmitted in the form of incense and smoke.  People today forget that opium and other narcotics were well known in my time.

These magicians were experts in chicanery.  They worked in teams, with one man acting as the wandering magician desperate to save people from demons, and others seeding themselves into the crowds to look for vulnerable targets.  They would listen to the talk of the people around them, scope out the stories that could be copied by the scammers themselves, then mimic the symptoms so they could be dramatically and publicly “saved” by the magician.  It’s an old scam.

A:  It was the faith healing scam of your day.

J (nodding):  People today read the prohibitions in the Jewish Scriptures against magic and divining and later prophecy and other occult practices, and they assume that Jews in the Second Temple period obediently followed these tenets of Judaism.  Archaeological finds prove they did not.  From the time of the Alexandrian conquest onward, Jews became a rather superstitious lot, just like their Hellenistic neighbours.  Regular people carried magic amulets and regularly spoke magic spells and chants.  They also believed in the power of curses.  When magicians found formulas that seemed to work, they wrote them down.  This is why archaeologists have found so many ancient magical codices and scrolls.

A:  Biblical Archaeology Review has had some interesting articles on this topic in recent years.  There’s also some evidence for Jewish necromancy in the early centuries of the common era — the use of human skulls with inscriptions written on them (though these are pretty rare).

Most practitioners of magic used bowls, it seems.  According to BAR, “the largest body of inscriptions from ancient Judaism is the collection of more than 2,000 magic bowls from Talmudic Baylonia (present-day Iraq) from the fifth-eighth centuries C.E. These bowls were inscribed in Aramaic with incantations against demons.”**

I think it just goes to show that within every religious tradition there are always pockets of people who are drawn to the most extreme ways to try to control the Law of Cause and Effect — which is what magic is all about.

J:  Not that this has changed . . . There are still plenty of pious religious folk who believe far more in magic (the Law of Cause and Effect taken to its logical, gory extremes) than in compassion or healing or forgiveness.

A:  So Paul’s followers — and the John the Baptist’s followers — wouldn’t have seen anything too radical or different in the magical claims made by Paul and John.  They would have expected to hear how they themselves could participate in this new way of controlling the Law of Cause and Effect.  It wouldn’t have surprised them to hear claims about name magic and power over demons.

J:  It would have surprised them to not hear these claims.

A:  So you surprised people, then.

J:  Once I got to the point in my life where I deeply trusted God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and God’s infinite goodness, there was only one path open to me — the path of girding my loins with science and faith instead of victory and vengeance.  It’s pretty hard to keep looking for victory and vengeance when you’re absolutely convinced God loves all people equally.  I had no religious books to guide me — not ones I trusted or respected, anyway — so I had to start from scratch.  I had to start from first principles.

A:  Can you give an example of that?

J:  It’s a process of reexamining everything you once believed in, so it’s not simple and it’s certainly not straightforward.  It’s like being handed a huge lapful of intertwined yarns and being told you have to untangle all the different threads and sort them by colour and weight before you can do anything else.  At first it looks like a gigantic job, an insoluble task.  But eventually you realize that if you’re patient and observant and careful in your actions, you can gradually sort out the mess.

A:  You mean you’re not supposed to take a hatchet to the ball of yarns and split them apart in one fell swoop?

J:  That was the Roman way.  Got a mess?  Fix it with a sword!

No, this way — the angel way — was much more tedious.  The idea was not to fix things by destroying annoying people and places.  The idea was to untangle all the threads, examine them individually, see the ways in which each was unique and relevant to healing, then weave them together into something new — into a beautiful tapestry instead of a useless, tangled mess.

A:  How very un-Roman of you.

J:  It was also un-Jewish.  And un-Greek.  And un-Egyptian.  So I got in everyone’s face with my theories.

A:  I’d like to go back to the point you raised about God’s loving all people equally.  How did you get to this place of understanding?  And how did it affect your ministry?

J:  I came to understand the meaning of God’s love through my experiences as a mystic.  I didn’t set out to become a mystic, but it turned out that way.  My heart kept opening wider and wider to the experience of compassion for others, and I started noticing how much pain regular people were in — the women, the children, the slaves, the poor, the ill, the disadvantaged.   I couldn’t not care.  I couldn’t turn away from their hearts.  I decided I had to do something.  This was the “faith” part of my journey.

Once I claimed this knowledge fully, and made it part of the very fibre of my being, part of my core essence, I had the strong foundation I needed to reexamine and reappraise all questions about healing through the lens of my trust in God.  I had to take it one question at a time, but the important thing is that I was willing to ask hard questions.  I was willing to challenge cultural assumptions.  I was willing to accept the evidence of my own senses in place of somebody else’s words.

I’ve always found it bizarre that Christianity has insisted on calling me “the Word” incarnate when I was the person least likely to  rely on words or law or philosophical “truth.”  I believed in what the world of science and nature taught me.  I had little respect for words.  Hypocrisy had a way of appearing as a magic cloak of many words.

A:  Albert Einstein once said, “It is the theory which decides what we can observe.”  (I have this saying on my fridge.)

J:  Yes.  This relates to the brain’s function.  If you tell the brain that only Cause and Effect exist, it will only look for Cause and Effect.  If you tell the brain there is Divine Love which interacts in unpredictable and heart-stopping ways with Cause and Effect, the brain will be able to see what’s actually there.  It will be able to see the quantum events that are taking place all around life on Planet Earth.  It will be able to see miracles.

A:  The brain won’t reject the evidence that’s in front of it.

J:  Miracles are invisible — literally invisible — to the brain of a person who has staked everything on the Materialist view of Creation.  This includes devout Christians who uphold the teachings of Paul.  Paul was a Materialist who didn’t believe in the mystery and immensity of Divine Love — its curious blend of order with chaos, linear with non-linear, female with male, mind with heart, logic with passion.  Paul couldn’t see love.  So he also couldn’t see miracles.  Love and miracles go together like two peas in a pod.  You can’t have one without the other.

A:  Where love goes, miracles follow.

J:  As anyone who has ever known real love will tell you.

 

* Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, trans., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (New York: HarperCollins–HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 566.

** See the Book Review by Michael D. Swartz on page 70 of the Sept./Oct. 2010 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.  Swartz is reviewing an exhibition catalogue called Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic Through the Ages, edited by Filip Vukosavovic (Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 2010).

RS24: Some Thoughts on Healing From Jesus

Lilies of the Field - colour - June 2013_0003

“. . . [Jesus] said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners'” (Mark 2:17).  About the illustration: This was one of the first posts I wanted to illustrate, but at the time I had no digital camera and few art supplies on hand. I had to make due with a sheet of oversized paper and a few coloured markers – along with my own artistic need. Sometimes God asks us to help with a healing task even though we have no formal academic training and no technical equipment. It’s amazing what we can do by following our intuition, listening to God’s wise counsel, and using the few tools we have on hand. Illustration credit JAT 2013.

A:  I’ve read some interesting theories over the years to explain the healing miracles in the Gospels.  Some of these theories fall under the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” umbrella.  There’s the theory that the miracles stories are reports of true supernatural events — proof of Jesus’ divinity and sovereignty over the powers of evil.  (This theory appeals to devout evangelical Christians.) On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the theory that the healing miracles should not be understood as fact but as pure metaphor — as literary window-dressing to enhance the credibility of the main character, you.  (This theory appeals to liberal and progressive Christians, who often don’t believe in miracles.)

And then there’s the bizarre group of theories that attempts to “explain” your healing powers through analogy to altered states of consciousness as they’re understood today by some anthropologists and psychologists.  Stevan Davies’s book Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (New York: Continuum, 1995) is a particularly egregious example of this kind of thinking.  (At the bottom of this post I’ve pasted in a book review I wrote about Davies’s book for an Historical Jesus course, a review which explains why I’m not fond of Davies’s thesis.  This is the same Stevan Davies whose translation of the Gospel of Thomas we’ve been using in the Jesus Redux series of posts.)

So whatcha say, big guy?  Were you wandering around the Galilee as a Jewish magician with serious DSM-IV issues, a wannabe charismatic prophet suffering from a dissociative disorder, a delusional shaman who had a honkin’ big need for an olanzapine prescription?  Is this who you really were?

J (chuckling):  These guys make me sound like a creepy bad guy from the Criminal Minds series.

A:  Yeah, like that two-part episode where James Van Der Beek plays an UnSub who has a multiple personality disorder (Season Two, “The Big Game” and “Revelations.”)  One of his “personalities” (the really dangerous one) is an apocalyptic Christian prophet.

J:  That’s a good example.  A person suffering from a dissociative disorder is not a well person and needs intensive medical care from a team of trained professionals.  To suggest that it’s a good idea for a religious teacher or shaman to intentionally induce a state of altered consciousness (“spirit possession”) or a permanent state of dissociation in his/her followers is not only morally reprehensible but is also questionable from a legal point of view.

A:  So you didn’t try to teach your followers how to have spontaneous dissociative experiences of being possessed by Spirit.

J (shaking his head):  No.  I did not.  I taught my followers that the key to knowing God is to first know yourself.  This is, by definition, the very opposite of dissociative experiences.

A:  What about Paul?  Did Paul encourage these states of “spirit possession”?

J:  Absolutely.  He not only encouraged these states, but promoted them as one of the major “drawing cards” of his new religion — buy my Saviour and as an added bonus you’ll receive a free gift from Spirit!  Discover how with my easy salvation you can receive, at no additional charge, a special gift of the utterance of wisdom or the utterance of knowledge or faith or gifts of healing or working of miracles or prophecy or discernment of spirits or various kinds of tongues or the gift of interpretation of tongues (one gift per customer, choice made by Spirit at time of purchase, no substitutions, all gifts subject to laws of Divine Cause & Effect, this is a time-limited offer, so call one of our helpful customer service agents now!).

A:  It never ceases to amaze me how rarely Paul talks about healing in his letters.  Why doesn’t he talk about medical healing — the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves-and-touch-your-neighbour kind of healing you engaged in?  Why doesn’t he care?

J:  He wasn’t interested in helping people find healing.  He had different concerns — occult concerns related to power and order and perfectionism, as we’ve discussed.  As far as Paul was concerned, sick people were defective.  They’d already proven their imperfection and undesirability in the kingdom of God.  Corrupt mortal flesh — sarx in Greek — was an ongoing source of shame and judgment, so who cared?  Paul’s focus was the mind and the soul, which were infinitely superior to mere flesh, in his view.  To choose to heal flesh, as I did, by starting with the flesh — with the actual physical body instead of the pure Platonic Mind — was an incomprehensible paradigm to Paul.  In other words, he thought basic medical science made no sense and was a complete waste of time and divine energy.

A:  But that’s what you actually did.  You started with the actual physical body, not the pure mind or soul.  You helped heal people’s bodies so they could find the courage and strength to build their own relationships with God.

J:  Early on in my journey as a prastising mystic — not as a dissociated prophet, but as a mentally healthy mystic and channeller — my guardian angel (my daemon in the Greek — not to be confused with the English word “demon”) gave me an excellent analogy.  She said this:

“The flowers in the field that you admire, that stop your heart with wonder and beauty, are not like dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus in the field.  You cannot treat them in the ways you’ve been taught.  You must think of the flowers in the field as the emotions of God the Mother and God the Father — their memories, their feelings, their stories from times far more ancient than you or any other human being can remember.

The journey through this field of flowers cannot be like the Labours of Heracles if you want to feel the wonder of knowing God.  You must tread softly.  You must not trample in your haste to get to the other side.  You must listen with all your heart and all your mind and all your body and all your soul to the quiet whispers of the lilies.

Each person you meet is like a lily of the field.  The roots and the leaves of the lily bear the weight of the colourful blossom, but without the unseen roots and the hard-working leaves, there would be no chance for the lily to produce its harvest.

Treat the body of all you meet in the same way you would treat God’s lilies.  Respect all parts of the plant, including the most humble and least attractive parts.  Even the smallest root has a part to play.  Do not despise the leaves for the sake of the flower’s beauty.  The flower fades quickly, but the strongly rooted plant produces blossoms again if it is properly cared for.

Care first for the roots and the humble green plant, and, with time and gentle handling, it will reward you.”

This is why I rejected all religious models about the nature of the human body, and turned to a scientific model with the help of my guardian angels and God.  There was a lot I didn’t understand about the inner workings of the human body, but one thing seemed clear to me:

If God made these bodies for us, they must be worth looking after.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Book Review
STEVAN L. DAVIES.   JESUS THE HEALER: POSSESSION, TRANCE, AND THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY.  NEW YORK: CONTINUUM, 1995.  ISBN 0-8264-0794-3

Review by Jennifer Thomas    November 1, 2007

Breathe deeply before you begin to read Stevan Davies book Jesus the Healer.  There’s no index, no table of contents, no glossary, no illustrations or diagrams, not even an introduction to orient you in this book, so if you lose the thread of Davies’s argument, you have to retrace your steps.  This isn’t a book where you can jump in at any point and quickly grasp the author’s argument.  Davies’s thesis is quite complex, and he keeps adding to it chapter by chapter as he attempts (in his own words) to “bring closer together the two continents of Jesus research: historical scholarship and theological reflection” (p.18).  On the plus side, the book is a mere 216 pages long, including its 7-page bibliography.

One puzzling aspect of this 1995 book is the lack of biographical information about the author.  We’re told nothing about his education or background.  Is he a professional journalist or is he a member of academia?  We don’t know.  All we know is that he’s the author of three other books.  A search of my own bookshelves produced a copy of The Gospel of Thomas (2002), translated and annotated by Stevan Davies, Professor of Religious Studies at College Misericordia in Pennsylvania.  An internet search yielded the same information.  So we can rest assured that he deserves our attention.

Davies begins his book with a brief overview of research into the historical Jesus over the last hundred years.  Rejecting the prevailing view of Jesus as some form of teacher, Davies tackles the less well examined paradigm of Jesus as healer.  His approach is secular, not theological.  For him, New Testament reports of supernatural occurrences are a goldmine of anthropological and psychological data that other researchers have wrongly ignored.  He sets out to show us how we might reexamine the passages about exorcisms, healings, and the Son of God, and reinterpret them in light of 20th century theories about “spirit-possession” and “demon-possession.”

Chapter 2 summarizes the anthropological and psychological models Davies relies on to categorize possession: the state wherein a person’s normal persona is believed to be displaced by a “possessing” spirit or demon.  Davies is very clear that it’s the belief that’s important.  The belief makes it somehow “real” to the people experiencing it.  And this in turn makes it an “historical event.”  In other words, researchers of the historical Jesus can use biblical passages about exorcism without fear that they’re endorsing the paranormal.  This part of Davies’s thesis may prove to have more lasting value to the field than some of his other conclusions.

In Chapter 3, Davies briefly examines descriptions of 1st century Jewish prophets in Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and the New Testament.  From here, he leads into the baptism of Jesus, which he asserts is the correct starting place for understanding Jesus.  Davies uses spirit-possession theory to suggest that John’s baptism triggered a spontaneous dissociative experience in Jesus that led Jesus (and others) to believe he was possessed by the spirit of God.

Building on this novel approach, Davies looks at questions about Jesus’ healings (Chapter 5); demon possession (Chapter 6); Jesus’ exorcisms (Chapter 7); and Jesus and his associates (Chapter 8).  But all of these chapters are really a prelude to Chapters 9 and 10, where Davies tells us that Jesus induced in his followers an altered state of consciousness (ASC) called the “kingdom of God.”  The paradoxical nature of some of Jesus’ parables and sayings is proof to Davies that Jesus was using a healing method akin to the hypnotherapy techniques of American psychotherapist Milton Erickson.

In the last section of the book (Chapters 11 to 13), Davies, not content with a basic model for how Jesus might have healed others, tries to expand his thesis to explain to modern readers why the Johannine-style sayings attributed to Jesus should be considered just as historically authentic as synoptic-style sayings; why we should view early Christianity as a “missionary spirit-possession cult”; and why we must conclude that both Paul and John used “inductive discourse” (that is, intentionally confusing speech) to generate a spontaneous experience of spirit-possession in potential converts.

By the time I finished reading the book, I had found several inconsistencies in his argument, two or three outright contradictions, and an instance where the statistical figures he quoted did not add up (quite literally).  Likely these were unintentional errors.  And I can look past them.  What I can’t look past is Davies’s preposterous theory that the authors of Q and the synoptics recorded only the sayings of Jesus when he was speaking in his own voice as Jesus, and that the author of John wrote down only the sayings of Jesus when he was “possessed” by the Spirit of God (Chapter 11).  And that’s two different people, so of course the sayings sound different!

My ultimate impression?  I couldn’t escape the sense that Davies had gleefully picked fruit from the tree of knowledge in anthropology and psychology, and had tried to put it in a nice, neat gift basket he could present to other New Testament scholars as a sort of sublime “theory of everything.”  Unfortunately, he didn’t know when to stop filling the basket.  He damaged his own thesis because he failed to grasp its limits.  So I would advise caution in relying on the material in this book.

Jesus the Healer is not currently in print.

RS23: Spit-Wives and Dead Goats

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(c) Image*After

A:  I saw an interesting story on the BBC News site this week about a young Palestinian man named Ayman Safiah who is the only classically trained male ballet dancer to emerge from the Palestinian culture.*  He grew up in the Galilee in a town where Arabs and Jews treat each other well, and where some of its artists and writers have achieved international recognition.  Despite his success, he’s meeting with intense prejudice from his own community.  He reminds me a lot of you.   Knows who he is.  Doesn’t let prejudice and hatred stop him from doing what his heart and soul tell him to do.

I like the quotes from him:  “‘My desire to study classical ballet was simply beyond the understanding of my classmates,’ he explains.  ‘They only knew that it was something women enjoyed.  It was completely alien to them.'”  He also says, “‘My parents knew that ballet was going to be a large part of my life from early on . . . Even my grandfather accepted my career choice even though he didn’t fully understand what it entailed.'”

Yup.  He reminds me so much of you.  So stubborn.  So determined to break through cultural taboos that have nothing to do with God or soul or faith.

J:  Well, yes, I was told more than once I was more stubborn than a Hebron camel.  It was a saying from my time.

A:  Ayman Safiah faces huge opposition from the Palestinian community because men aren’t “supposed” to be passionate about dance.  Even the fact that he’s worked extremely hard for many years and has graduated from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in Richmond, England, has not earned him any respect from his Arab compatriots.  Some insist that performing ballet is against Islam.  Two thousand years ago, you faced the same kind of rejection and prejudice for daring to practise medicine in the Galilee.  Tell me more about that.

J:  It’s interesting that Safiah makes the link between ballet and women.  In my time, the same kind of link existed between healing and women.  Healing was something that women did, and only women were interested in learning more about it.  No respectable man in the Judeo-Hellenistic culture I grew up in would have stooped to the level of the local village spit-wives.  But I was passionate about healing.

A:  Spit-wives?

J:  A derogatory term for the women who carried on the ancient traditions of herbal medicine.  They used poultices and teas and medicines handmade from various plants and minerals.  From time to time they were known to use spit in their remedies.  Since bodily fluids, including spit, were considered unclean — religiously impure — in the Jewish religious tradition, these traditional remedies and their practitioners were looked upon with contempt.  Women from the lower classes of society shared healing information among themselves and did their best to help each other, since nobody else was willing to help them.

A (eyes rolling):  Oh come on, now.  What about all those religious temples where people could make their sacrifices and prayers for divine healing?  Who needs medical science when you can ask a priest to slaughter a female goat for you?

J (smiling):  A sentiment I certainly agreed with and talked about.  Often.  And loudly.

A:  Didn’t win you any popularity contests, did it?

J:  People of prejudice don’t like to have their prejudices challenged.  And prejudices about illness and healing were extreme in my time.  There’s a ridiculous idea floating around in liberal religious circles today that people should tolerate and excuse these ancient prejudices because “it’s just the way things were” and “they didn’t know any better.”  This is crap.  The Greek culture had a long tradition, dating back hundreds of years before my time as Jesus, of treating illness and healing as a field of science.  They’d written many treatises about the workings of the body.  Some of their scientific remedies were quite effective — not all of them, of course, but there was an ongoing interest in studying illness and healing from a scientific perspective.  This was a perspective I sympathized with, much to the horror of my pious Jewish relatives.

A:  Were the spit-wives trying to be scientific, too?

J:  Women who are desperate to care for their families and relieve the suffering of their children can become shrewd and careful observers of scientific principles.  They don’t have the time or skills or status to consult with learned scholars of religious scrolls, so they fly by the seat of their pants.  They pay attention to what works.  They remember what works.  They tell their friends what works.  They base their decisions on intuition and careful observation, not piety.  They catch on fast when you show them how to wash and dress a wound so it won’t go “green.”  They might have to do their healing work in secret, where the men won’t catch them engaging in apostasy, but they’ll do it if it means saving the life of a beloved child.

A:  In this model, it’s okay for individuals to take personal responsibility for the problems created by illness.  It’s okay for individuals to go ahead and try to fix it instead of wringing their hands and claiming that only God and the priests can fix it.

J:  Exactly.  It’s an integral part of the Peace Sequence we’ve been talking about on and off.  You’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of bringing Peace to the wider community if you ignore the imperatives of illness and healing.  For most human beings, illness and healing are the number one issues.  If you don’t have mentors who can teach others about the realities of illness and healing, there’s no way for individuals to move on to the subsequent step of the Peace Sequence, which is personal responsibility.  In the world human beings actually live in — as opposed to the world of false myths created by the likes of the apostle Paul — people have to accept that they themselves have a huge stake in this whole “illness and healing” thing.  They can’t hand over their power and responsibility for healing to any religious group, no matter how big or successful the group.

All people are part of God’s world of science and faith, and all people are considered equal by God, so all people are called upon to uphold the steps of the Peace Sequence.  A big part of this process, as I’ve just mentioned, is to apply the steps of education, mentorship, and personal responsibility to the questions of illness and healing.  This is what I tried to do two thousand years ago.  I tried to teach others that healing miracles are possible if you let go of prejudice and hatred and treat those who are ill with compassion not judgment.

Angels tread where fools fear to go.

 

*Please see “First Palestinian male ballet dancer battles prejudices” by Sylvia Smith, posted on BBC News on August 10, 2012, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19202612

Addendum May 4, 2017: For those who are scornful of the idea that ancient healers were able to devise useful medical remedies by engaging in objective scientific observation preceded and followed by powerful intuition, I found this article today which is a follow-up to an preliminary story that appeared two years ago. In a story posted by Erin Connelly — “Exciting potential: Medieval medical books could hold the recipe for new antibiotics” — the author talks about Bald’s eyesalve, “a medieval recipe that contained wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall . . . cured in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.” It sounds terrible to modern ears, but according to the researcher, it’s a highly effective antistaphylococcal agent.

RS22: Freedom and Slavery

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“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have certainty, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I many boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own ways. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor 13: 1 – 8a). This short passage, long attributed to Paul, is so unlike Paul’s teachings and is so resonant with Jesus’ teachings (especially as seen in the Gospel of Thomas), it’s amazing Paul still gets the credit. Shown here are the Pyramids at Giza, photo credit Historylink101.com (Egyptian Picture Gallery).

A:  Last time you said Paul’s religious masters feared contamination by the forces of chaos.  You then defined the forces of chaos as the forces of Love and All Things Feminine.  My first thought was to ask about the reaction from Christians who insist that Paul speaks eloquently about Love.  Then I remembered that you yourself wrote the famous ode to love in First Corinthians 13.  I also remembered the academic papers I’d read about the meaning of the word “love” (aheb in Hebrew) in Second Temple Judaism.  At that time “loving God” meant “obeying God” rather than “liking God” or “being in relationship with God.”  Love for God was a duty, a contractual obligation, a way for human beings to hold up their end of the bargain with God.

Why did Paul talk so much about love (agape in the Greek) if he didn’t believe in love?

J:  Paul was not a man who was capable of love.  What he meant by love was something much closer to the mindset you and I have defined as humility — turning yourself into an empty vessel — an obedient vessel — so you can properly receive Paul’s authority.

A:  He doesn’t use the word “humility” in his letters.

J:  No.  He uses the words “weakness” and “foolishness.”  But it’s still humility.

A:  The meaning is the same.

J:  Paul didn’t believe at all in the concept of love as I understood love.  He believed in obedience.  In orderly, obedient communities.  In pyramids of mystical power where the people at the bottom of the pyramid “knew their place” and obeyed those who were higher up in rank and authority and supported them in their “great mission.”  But he doesn’t use the word “pyramid.”  He uses the metaphor of the body — the one body in Christ.  Christ is the head.  All the members of the community are part of this one body, which makes sense from a practical viewpoint, because a body can move more swiftly if it has two healthy feet.  But make no mistake — the feet are still at the bottom of this pyramid of power.  So  slaves are loved in Paul’s community because they help bring order and stability to the community.  But they’re still slaves.

A:  Christians today read Paul’s speech about the one body (1 Cor 12: 12-31) as a rejection of hierarchical values in Hellenistic culture.  But you’re saying it’s not a rejection.

J:  It’s a different understanding of hierarchy.  For Paul, it’s a superior understanding of hierarchy.  It’s an attempt to reveal the real truth about hierarchy, the real mystical underpinnings of hierarchy that exist within all the worlds of Heaven.  It’s Paul’s attempt to bring “the one true” hierarchy into the corrupt world.  Again, alchemy.  An attempt to bring order and harmony into the corrupt physical world by controlling the powers of chaos.  An attempt to corral the behaviour of everybody so they’ll fit properly within the pyramid of power that Paul and his religious masters are trying to build.

A:  When you say they’ll fit properly, how do you mean that?  Do you mean that figuratively?

J:  No.  I mean that literally.  Don’t forget — “The One True Religion” Paul was commissioned to spread was about 3,000 years old by the time Paul came on the scene.  This group had already spent 3,000 years researching and experimenting with different ways to acquire power.  Their early attempts were focussed on external tools — projects such as the Pyramids of Giza and subsequent wonders of the ancient world.  Eventually, though, they noticed they were having problems with other people’s brains.  People had an annoying habit of trying to find freedom for themselves and their families.  Then they wouldn’t behave!

The Seekers of the Rock decided that all those busy human minds that were always getting in the way of the group’s goals were nothing more than fractured little bits of the universal Order and Perfection that Spirit had already created in pure form for the higher levels of Heaven.  Order and Perfection were envisaged as a pyramid of perfect, exquisite, divine geometry.  Each of the four sides at the base of the pyramid represented one of the immutable Divine Laws (as this group understood them).  One side — the north side — represented vengeance — in other words, the Divine Right to punish lawbreakers.  The south side represented knowledge — the Divine Right to control all knowledge.  The west side represented “mass” — great weight, strength, force, inertia — or the Divine Right to build great armies to seize what was rightfully its own.  The east side represented sacrifice — the Divine Right to demand sacrifice for purposes that cannot be understood by mortal minds.

The Seekers believed that if communities of believers could be gathered together in accordance with these four main principles, they could literally create a metaphysical pyramid that would be pleasing to Spirit.  But, as with a physical pyramid built of carefully cut stones, a mystical pyramid can only be strong and whole and worthy of Spirit’s approval if each “stone” is properly placed in relation to neighbouring stones.  The pyramid is built of many smaller stones.  So all the stones are necessary if the pyramid is to achieve its purpose.  If you remove some of the stones at the bottom, the whole construct might topple.

A:  So, for Paul, slaves are like the stones at the bottom.

J (nodding):  When the slaves know their proper place, and stay where they’ve been placed at the bottom of the pyramid, the Divine Rights of Vengeance, Knowledge, Strength, and Sacrifice will remain in balance, and Order is achievable.  But if the slaves dare step outside the bounds of the pyramid and into the frightening world of chaos that lies beyond, Spirit will have no choice but to exercise its Rights.  That’s when you get divine actions like the Great Flood.  It’s a simple matter of cause and effect.

A:  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

J:  As I said, this bunch saw themselves as scientists in pursuit of order and harmony.  Their relentless attacks on free will were highly logical, if completely inhumane.  From their twisted perspective, they were “saving” the slaves from the dire consequences of their foolish desire for freedom.  They were acting in the best interests of the group as a whole.  “We’re doing this for your own good.  This hurts us more than it hurts you.  One day you’ll thank us for this.”

A:  Something tells me Paul’s rhetoric on “freedom” is not what it appears to be.

 

RS 21: Who Knew? It’s the Clash of the Titans!

Temple of Apollo, Delphi 2

Temple of Apollo, Delphi (c) JAT 2001

A:  I’ve been mulling over what you said in “The Peace Sequence” post about Paul’s wealthy, powerful backers.  What exactly was their “One True Religion”?  Are Paul’s teachings a form of this “One True Religion”?

J:  “The One True Religion” is an ancient mystery cult that had its origins in Egypt beginning about 5,000 years ago.  And yes, Paul’s Christ Movement is a clear expression of this ancient cult’s beliefs.

A:  What were the core beliefs of this group?

J:  They believed they needed to unlock the secrets of science so they could control the mysterious powers of Creation.  They believed in the infinite powers of the human mind and they despised all forms of emotion or love or compassion.  For them, Love was the great enemy, the great destroyer of purity, order, and Truth.  They worshipped only logic and reason.  They believed that purity, order, logic, reason, and Truth were visible in the corrupt world around them through the trained observation of Divine Law.  These Laws could be observed, then harnessed, then used to acquire almost infinite power.  The Pyramids of Giza were an early physical expression of this group’s beliefs.

A:  Ooooh.  Sounds like a Dan Brown novel.

J:  “The One True Religion” never exactly disappeared.  It keeps popping up in one form or another, century after century.  So writers keep writing about it.

A:  Why does it keep coming back?  Is this constant “rebirth” proof of its truth?  Its genuine truth about the nature of Creation?

J:  It’s proof of only one thing: the thinking patterns of a psychopath.  “The One True Religion” is the perfect religion for psychopaths.  It’s all about logic, power, and eradication of compassion.

A:  It’s about “doing what needs to be done” without guilt or remorse.

J:  Yes.  For this group, the end has always justified the means.  This is how they’ve justified the use of tens of thousands of slaves at a time to build countless alchemical projects such as the Pyramids of Giza.  They have a secret cache of myths about the origins of Creation that helps them explain and justify their own unconscionable actions.  They take their religious myths very seriously.  Their religious myths are the “glue sticks” that are literally holding their biological brains together.

A:  You mean that without their religious myths to cling to they’d fall apart?

J:  Yes.  The Darwinian Circuitry of the brain, which a psychopath relies on exclusively, has to be fed a constant diet of status and short-term logic in order to keep functioning in a reasonably stable way.  Status and short-term logic are the psychopath’s “fuel.”  But raw fuel alone isn’t enough to create “order” in a psychopath’s messed-up life.  Successful psychopaths — and there are many — must have a rigid ideology, a rigid external framework, to lean on.  Followers of the “One True Religion” have built for themselves an “ideal” ideology, a mythological Utopia that soothes and calms the troubled mind of a psychopath with its perfect blend of monism, dualism, and hierarchy.  Whenever they feel their actions and choices are being “unfairly” attacked, they retreat into their inner Utopia.  There they repeat to themselves their ancient mantras about being Divine Warriors sent to Earth to find and restore all the broken bits of “The One” that fell out of the Heavens and have to be valiantly carried back into the highest realms of Creation by the tiny band of Chosen Messengers who, alone among all other souls in the universe, have the purity and knowledge and strength to carry out this perilous task.

A:  Oh, come on.  This is sounding like really bad sci fi!  Like the film “Clash of the Titans.”  The original and the remake!

J:  Inside a psychopath’s head, it is a clash of the Titans.  On the one side, you have yer Evil Galactic Overlords who are trying to take over all Creation, and on the other side you have yer Warriors of Light who are called upon to lead all the weaker souls to victory by whatever means are necessary, even if it means forcing them to build the Pyramids, because in the long run they’ll be grateful to you that you were wise enough and knowledgeable enough to know what steps to take to save them (with or without their permission).  It’s even okay to lie to them in the short term because eventually they’ll realize that your lies were justified.  Blind faith — fideism — is therefore a necessary means to an end.  Obedience is a necessary means.  And guilt is a necessary means.

You’d be surprised how many successful psychopaths in politics, business, and religion believe this shit.  And I don’t mean they believe in this a little.  I mean they believe this myth with their whole mind — well, the parts of the mind that are still working.

A:  And they really, really believe that Love is the enemy?  The cause of Creation’s brokenness?  Now that I think of it, though, Plato had some pretty weird beliefs about love . . .

J:  Yes.  So you can see why Paul believed I was broken.  In his view, my task as THE human being assigned to carry the “imprint” of Divine Logos was to highlight this problem and fix it, not make it worse by telling people how to love God and trust God with all their hearts.  Where was the logic and loftiness in that?

A:  So poor Paul, what could he do except throw himself on his sword to correct your mistakes, your sins against Spirit?

J:  Well, you know, it’s a perilous world, this place called Earth, and every time a true piece of “The One” tries to incarnate here, what with all the evil forces an’ all, there’s always a grave risk that the divine piece will once again become contaminated by the forces of chaos (i.e. the forces of Love and All Things Feminine) and then — poor brave Warriors that they are! — these Messengers of Light will have to start over again in their brave and noble attempts to prepare the Way for the incoming Spirit of Truth!  And it takes a lot of helpers — a lot of slaves — to carry out this brave and noble endeavour, and it takes a lot of sacred rituals repeated over and over and over, so there’s no time like the present to enlist all those unwitting (and unworthy) human beings to help you with the cleansing prayer work that needs to be done before THAT DAY can take place.

A:  Go on!  You’re joshing me.

J:  Nope.  This is what they’re actually thinking.  This is what “The One True Religion” is all about.  It’s about a small group of psychopaths who are sitting on top of a great metaphysical pyramid, as close to the heavens as they can get, and waiting for the precise moment when there’s a big enough “pool” of prayer energy available to them to open up those great cosmic gates of power in the sky.  You know, thunderstorms, lightning, rainbows, sacred water, all that stuff they think they can one day control.

A:  Sighhhhhhhh  . . .

 

RS20: The Messiah Who Misbehaved

A:  Last time, you came out with a doozy.  You said — and I quote — “[Paul] would have thought of it as ‘reintegrating’ broken pieces of divine truth that had fallen out of their proper places.  Pieces such as the Logos [Jesus].  And Charis (grace), who was Paul’s God.”

Bleeding Hearts ((c) JAT)

“They said to him: ‘Tell us who you are so that we can believe in you. He replied: You analyze the appearance of the sky and the earth, but you don’t recognize what is right in front of you, and you don’t know the nature of the present time” (Gospel of Thomas 91). Photo credit JAT 2013.

That’s quite a statement.  You’re saying, in effect, that Paul believed you actually were some some sort of divine figure who was sent to Earth, but that you were somehow “defective” or “broken,” and because of your “brokenness” Paul hated and feared you and tried to “fix” your teachings.  Have I got that right?

J (nodding):  Exactly.  It’s not difficult to see the differences in theology between Paul and myself, and it’s not difficult to see that Paul was trying to found a brand new religious movement, with himself as leader and prophet.  But at the end of the day, you still have to ask yourself why he would bother including me at all.  You have to ask yourself why he would found a new religious movement, and then stick a real person — a person whose family and friends had survived him and could still tell the truth — right in the middle of it.  It was a risky thing to do.  A stupid thing to do from the viewpoint of common sense and practicality.  It would have been much simpler and more logical for him to invent a Saviour from whole cloth, as so many other religious movements had done before him.  He could have invented a new god, and nobody around him would have blinked.  The world of 1st century CE religion was full of invented gods.

A:  So why did he do it?  Why did he take the risk of putting a real person at the centre of his new religious movement?

J:  We’ve talked about some of Paul’s motives in the past.  He was a man who was deeply driven, deeply ambitious.  He was, like so many ambitious men before and after him, a man who was blind to his own issues, blind to his own extreme narcissism.  The world was a confusing and endlessly frustrating place, from his point of view.  So, like so many other narcissists, he turned to ideology to help him cope.  He turned, in this case, to the ideology of religion.  Not faith, as I’d like to emphasize, but religion.  Religion as a cultural institution with clear rules and expectations — rules that bring order and harmony into a world of pure chaos.  Rules that make sense to the head if not to the heart.  Rules that tell people their place in life.  Rules that tell people how to behave toward their neighbours and how to behave toward their “betters.”  Rules that teach people how to obey.  This sense of structure and obedience was greatly appealing to Paul.  It helped him cope with his own feelings of confusion and anger.

A:  So he just went out and started a new religion?

J:  No.  Paul’s mindset — his internal belief system — was the start of his journey, but not the end of it.  In early adulthood, Paul turned to the Jewish tradition he’d been raised in, and at first this satisfied him.  But soon his narcissism, his need for special attention and special outcomes for himself, led him further and further away from questions about compassion and healing and forgiveness.  His clever mind and his skill with rhetoric brought him to the attention of a powerful group of military and political thinkers based in Alexandria, Egypt.

A:  We’ve talked about this before.  You called this group “Seekers of the Rock.”  You said they had a plan to seize power from the emperors of the Julian dynasty in Rome.

J (nodding):  People today often scoff at the idea that such powerful groups exist.  But they do.  They’ve been a fixture of all technologically advanced civilizations on Planet Earth.   The people who found and maintain these groups always ascribe great mystical significance and merit to their work, but, in fact, they’re really just a bunch of severe narcissists who’ve got together to form a “mutual admiration society.”

A:  Misery loves company.

J:  Yes.  Narcissists feel miserable on the inside.  But they feel better if they can keep themselves busy by throwing themselves into “a worthy cause.”  And what more worthy cause could there be than joining the Sons of Light to save the universe from the dire perils of Sin and Death and Corrupt Law and their evil leader Beliar?

A:  Paul mentions Beliar in Second Corinthians (2 Cor 6:15).

J:  And the Essenes before him.  Essene beliefs about Good Versus Evil greatly influenced Paul.  But in the end, even the secret mystical teachings of the Essenes weren’t enough for him, and he embraced the offer made to him by the Seekers of the Rock.

A:  They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

J:  One of their seers told Paul he’d been chosen before birth to carry out a great mission that could help save the world and restore order to the entire universe.  There is no more tempting bait for a pure narcissist.

A:  Paul begins his letter to the Galatians by saying God had set him apart before he was born to receive divine revelation (Gal 1:11-17).

J:  Once a narcissist is convinced of such a claim, he or she becomes unstoppable in religious fervour.  He puts on a cloak of religious fervour that is understood by others as charisma — a gift of special grace from God.   He wears it 24/7 and goes without food or sleep if he’s caught up in the self-generated ecstasy of being the No. 1 Prophet and Mouthpiece of Revelation.  But, again, there’s nothing mystical or divine about it.  It’s the self-generated high — the orgasmic high — that narcissists feel when other people tell them how “special” and “chosen” they (the prophets) are.

A:  So Paul believed his own propaganda.  He believed he was a divinely chosen messenger.

J:  Absolutely.  He couldn’t have found the strength to keep going for so long if he hadn’t believed in his own message.

A:  The source of that strength was the “high” he got from being treated by others as special and chosen.

J:  Yes.  It’s an addictive high.  Eventually it damages both body and brain and leads to other forms of addiction, such as addiction to sex or drugs, but in the short term it gives a lot of energy, a lot of stamina for big performances, big bursts of charisma.

A:  Like some pop stars today.

J:  A lot like that, yes.

A:  So how does any of this relate to you?  Why did he decide to put you in the middle of the new religion he was commissioned to create?

J:  Several reasons.  One, he needed a “face” for his new Christ Movement, a movement that was being founded to compete with the Emperor Cult in Rome.  The Emperor Cult had “refreshed” ideas about the living god, the god incarnated in human form, the man who is really the son of God, deity in human flesh, god-and-emperor-as-One, that kind of thing.  These weren’t new religious ideas at the time.  Far from it.  But the influence of the Emperor Cult — which was nothing more than a calculated political ploy designed to build acceptance for Rome’s rule — had a surprising and unintended effect on people.  People began to think more — and yearn more — for an actual living god who could help them in their suffering.  Many people were open to the idea a living god, a Saviour who would come to Earth during a time of great need and save the oppressed.  It’s an idea that still hasn’t gone away.

A:  The Romans were nothing if not oppressive.

J:  Other religious movements of the time — and there were many — focussed on ancient gods and ancient prophecies.  Meanwhile, the Emperor Cult had a “new” god, a god of living flesh.  Paul saw the effect this had on people, and decided to offer them an alternative.  It was quite brilliant, actually.

A:  But why you?  Why not a prince or a member of the Alexandrian elite?  Why not a heroic general?  Why not a famous oracle?

J:  Paul chose me because he was afraid I was actually “the real deal.”  He didn’t arrive in Galilee in time to meet me in person, but he spoke to people who had worked with me, and he read the writings Lazarus and I had left behind.  He came to two unshakeable conclusions: (1) I had been the prophesied Messiah, as shown by the miracles of my ministry, and (2) I had seriously fucked things up.

A:  You always have such a way with words.

J (laughing):  Hey, it’s the truth.  It’s what Paul thought about me.  He could see from his own investigations that I knew something new and important about God, something he didn’t.  He could see I’d been using strange, new techniques to heal people.  He could see that something damned weird had happened around the time of my crucifixion and reappearance from the tomb.  He didn’t argue with the events, with the historicity of miraculous events during my ministry.  What he objected to was how I had used this secret knowledge.  In his opinion, I hadn’t behaved at all the way a proper Messiah should have behaved.  I hadn’t seized the power and the glory. So he concluded I’d got broken somehow, that I’d got broken and needed to be fixed.

A:  Which he had the skill to do, of course.

J:  Of course.  A narcissist doesn’t believe he has limits.  I was so broken he sometimes referred to me as the “thorn in his flesh.”  Other times he referred to me as “the useful one,” the slave Onesimus, as in Paul’s letter to Philemon.  He felt I’d fallen so low during my time as a man that I’d become no better than a slave.

A:  So what was this secret knowledge you had?  What were these strange, new healing techniques you used?

J:  Ah.  That would be science.

A:  You want to explain that?

J:  It’s the simplest thing in the world to put science and faith together when you trust in God’s goodness with all your heart, all your strength, all your mind, and all your soul.  When you believe in God — in God as God actually is — there’s no need to fight the science.  There’s no need to fight the objective realities of science.  There’s no need to hide behind religious laws and religious rituals.  You just go out there and do your thing — whatever your “thing” happens to be.

A:  Which in your case was being a physician.

J:  I was a physician, then and now.  It’s who I am as a soul.  It’s my calling, you could say.  It’s my strength.  Because it’s my strength, I hear God’s voice particularly well in this area.  My instincts, my gut, my heart, my intuition hear messages from God very clearly in the area of medical science.  I can’t hear God’s voice clearly in all areas, but when it comes to questions about medical science, I can hear clear as a bell.  I combined my skill as a natural physician with my faith in God and my faith in the goodness of all souls.  God’s healing angels did the rest.  I didn’t perform the miracles myself.  But I helped create a fruitful garden of the heart where oppressed individuals could believe in their own worthiness, in their own worthiness to be loved and healed by God.  My job was to persuade my friends they could find healing by working with God instead of against God.

A:  This doesn’t sound very broken to me.  It sounds pretty healthy and normal.

J:  Apparently Messiahs who are worth their salt are expected to show a lot more razzle dazzle.  More shields, more swords, more footstools, more thrones, more trumpets.

A:  Sounds a lot to me like an American reality TV show.  “So You Think You Can Prophesy”  . . .  “American Messiah” . . . “Dancing With the Gods” . . . Hey, you know, maybe we’re already there  . . .

RS19: Paul’s Trinitarian Theology

A:  Since our last discussion a couple of days ago, I’ve been pretty confused, to be honest, and I was wondering if we could go back over a few of the points you raised.  Would that be okay?

J:  Yes.  We covered quite a bit of ground, introduced some new concepts.  So ask away.

A:  Thanks.  Well, partly I’m still struggling with this idea that Paul’s religion is marketing God like a shampoo brand.  It’s just so materialistic — small “M” materialistic — and I don’t see any connection between this idea and the idea of faith.  I find it hard to believe that millions of Christians would agree to participate in such a crass pursuit.  I mean, where is the sense of faith — the sense of ongoing relationship with God — in a religion that’s selling God like this week’s special at Walmart?

J:  Well, Paul’s version of divine shampoo is more like the $4.99 brand that’s relabelled under the table and sold in a high-end salon for $89.99 as the best product for the best people.

A:  But expensive shampoo is still just shampoo.  It’s not faith.

Cockleburs - Sticky and Nasty, but Very Effective

“Jesus said: The Kingdom is like a man with a treasure of which he is unaware hidden in his field. He died and left the field to his son. His son knew nothing about it and, having received the field, sold it. The owner came and, while plowing, found the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to anybody he wished (Gospel of Thomas 109). Paul, who came after Jesus and Jesus’ confused disciples, saw the opportunity to take the buried treasure of faith offered by Jesus and lend it out to others with a promissory note for future salvation. Obedience was the interest Paul charged.  In this photo, the cockleburs that can stick to your hair and clothing as you walk through field and forest are like Paul’s teachings: covered in nasty hooks but very effective. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J:  No.  It’s not faith.  But as you and I have discussed before, religion and faith are not synonymous with each other.  Religion is an organized social, political, and economic institution, an institution that can be used under certain circumstances to create a desire for obedience among the middle and lower classes of society.  As a tool for creating social cohesion, it can be quite effective — at least, for a while.

A:  Social cohesion is good.  But people still need faith!  People long to feel that deep inner connection with God that makes them feel whole.

J:  Yes.  So within the annals of a religion such as Christianity, you see a constant tension between the people who are seeking God — that is, people who are yearning for faith — and the people who don’t give a hoot about God but are seeking to tap into the hidden power that underlies all universal laws.  The ones who don’t give a hoot about God are the ones who have dictated the path of orthodoxy in the Christian church as it’s known today.

A:  So you mean there were church leaders who didn’t actually believe in God?  Who were atheists or maybe agnostics?

J:  Let’s put it this way.  The vast majority of church leaders whose writings have been preserved were not writing about God.  They were writing about Paul’s Spirit — Divine Law writ large.

A:  I noticed in my theology courses that orthodox theologians over the centuries relied heavily on Paul and much less on Mark, Matthew, and Luke for scriptural authority.

J (nodding):  Paul is the biblical source for Trinitarian theology.  John is usually considered a source, too, but John’s personal theology wasn’t as sophisticated as Paul’s, and didn’t have as much influence.  Mark contains no Trinitarian theology, and not much usable Christology, either, from the point of view of Paul and his successors.  Paul’s writings, though, are a font of “wisdom” on the topic of tapping into the hidden power of the universe.  I say that facetiously.

A:  Of course.  So tell me more about Paul’s Trinitarian theology.  You seem to be making a link between Paul’s Trinitarian teachings and the theme of selling God as a shampoo brand.  But I confess you’ve lost me.  I don’t quite see the connection.  Could you explain that?

J:  In the time when I lived, philosophy and religion and science were hopelessly intertwined.  They were intertwined in a way that’s hard for people today to relate to.  Chemistry and physics and medicine weren’t treated as subjects that were separate from philosophy or religion.  They were treated as subjects that were subordinate to, or dependent upon, the highest aspirations of the human mind: pure philosophy or pure religious law.  But devotion to philosophy or devotion to pure religious law (as in the case of the Essenes in my day) were both attempts to understand the immutable laws that lie behind everything that happens here on Planet Earth.  So when you tried to study chemistry, you weren’t really studying chemistry.  You were looking for the hidden religious laws that governed the chemistry.  You were looking for the religious laws that applied not only to the metals you were extracting from base ores but to the people in your religious community.  You were looking for the universal principles of authority, power, dominion, status, and chosenness.  You were looking for proof — validation — that your religious teachings were correct and other groups’ teachings were wrong.  So science was usually a means to an end — a religious end.  Needless to say, this got in the way of objective scientific research.

A:  That mindset still exists in certain quarters today.

J:  Yes.  But during the first century CE, the religious leaders who had the most credibility, the widest acceptance, were the ones who tried hardest to crystallize the mysteries of Divine Law, philosophy, and science into a simplified “package.”  Paul was very good at this.  He squeezed Law, philosophy, and science together into one shampoo bottle.  Then he shook them up hard so you couldn’t see the separate strands and try to pull them apart.  He labelled the product as “God.”  But what Paul described as God has nothing to do with God the Mother and God the Father as they actually are.

A:  Still not getting it.

J:  Paul wasn’t interested in knowing who I was as a person.  Paul wasn’t interested in knowing who God the Mother and God the Father were as people.  He was only interested in his agenda of proving his own authority.

A:  His authority as a messenger of God?

J:  No.  His authority as an avenging angel, sent to Planet Earth to spread the true message about Spirit — pure, formless, timeless, insuperable Law.

A:  He wasn’t trying to teach people about God?

J:  Like all severe narcissists, Paul was incapable of conceiving of God as a person — or as two people, which is what I taught.  Narcissists can’t see anybody except themselves.  They can’t see their own children as separate, worthy human beings, so they certainly can’t see God as separate, worthy beings.  For narcissists, the world fractures into many different forms of myth — monistic myths, dualistic myths, and hierarchical myths.  This is the only way they can make sense of their own internal suffering, their own internal experience of emptiness.

A:  But Spirit is different because Spirit isn’t a person — it’s a formless cloud of endless power.  I get it.  It’s a projection!  The narcissist is projecting his own internal self-image onto the universe around him.  Spirit is pure power, pure ascendancy, pure authority — with no need at all for messy emotions like forgiveness or devotion or courage or trust!  I get it!

Okay.  So how does this relate to Trinitarian theology?

J:  Paul’s invocation of Spirit, God, and Jesus Christ is alchemy.

A:  Alchemy?  Now my head is really starting to hurt.

J:  When you try to force the actual laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and math to conform to pure religious law, pure religious authority, you’re practising alchemy.  I’m defining alchemy as an attempt to control all the powers of “chaos” for the purpose of creating order and harmony.

A:  By “powers of chaos” you mean things like  . . . entropy?

J:  No.  I mean God the Mother and God the Father as they actually are.   In Paul’s view, and in the view of many of his successors, God has not been behaving properly, and has done very illogical and unfair things such as allowing earthquakes to hit major religious centres and requiring saintly figures to die like everybody else.  This implication is so clear in Paul’s teachings that a century or so later in Rome one of his most enthusiastic followers, Marcion, would create a firestorm of controversy by suggesting there was a hierarchy of gods in Creation, with a jealous, vindictive god who rules over this world, and above him, a supreme god who is just and loving but who remains “unknown” to people on Earth except through the revelation of Jesus Christ.  For Marcion, Paul was the messenger of this great and radical truth about the unknown god.

A:  So Paul was trying to force both God and you to “obey” Spirit, which is the supreme and formless cloud of knowing and love and justice?

J:  Exactly.

A:  By squishing you all together into “One”?

J:  He would have thought of it as “reintegrating” broken pieces of divine truth that had fallen out of their proper places.  Pieces such as the Logos (me).  And Charis (grace), who was Paul’s God.

A:  Frig.  This is so complicated.  And so Gnostic.  I like your teaching about God as two loving parents much better.  Paul’s version is so  . . . so fluid.  So malleable.  So nebulous and undefined.  So conveniently changeable.  So easily manipulated, depending on the circumstances.

J:  In a previous post you described the Trinity as a shell game.  That definition still applies.

RS18: Paul’s Understanding of Spirit

A:  It’s been several months since you and I have had one of these conversations.  Thanks for picking up the discussion again.

J:  No problem.  It’s been a busy few months for everyone.

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(c) After*Image

A:  Yeah.  I’ve had an awful time at work since the beginning of May.  The current financial climate is affecting people’s brains in unusual ways.  The owners of the business where I work aren’t willing to take responsibility for mistakes they’ve made over the past few years, and now those mistakes are coming back to haunt them.  Only they don’t want to blame themselves.  So they’ve been blaming their long-time staff members — the same staff members whose suggestions they ignored when it would have done some good!  Is this normal?  Is it normal for business owners to shoot themselves in the foot — and the head — this way?

J:  Unfortunately, it’s extremely common.  But it’s not new.  It’s not a new problem.  And it’s not limited to businesses that deal in ordinary goods and services.  Religious businesses fall prey to the same issues of narcissism and lack of accountability.

A:  You mean . . . churches?  That kind of religious business?

J:  Could be.  But religion is a huge business world-wide.  Always has been.  So the same “boom or bust” cycles that are evident in world financial markets today have always existed in the profitable world of religious marketing.  Religious marketing is a business like any other.  It’s not “separate” or “sacred” simply because the item being bought and sold is God.

A:  Ouch.  That makes God sound like a shampoo brand.

J (shrugging):  In the early church founded by the apostle Paul, God is a shampoo brand.  I’m the conditioner that smoothes out the tangles.  Paul is the famous face who rakes in a few extra bucks by hawking the brand to a credulous audience.

A:  But a shampoo brand?  Isn’t that a bit . . . crass?

J:  As a metaphor, it’s not very dignified or sacred, is it?

A:  No.

J:  Nonetheless, when you strip away all the lies and circular arguments and cliches, and look at Paul’s claims about God — and me — in the cold, hard light of reality, you’re left with the fact that Paul is selling soap.  A very fancy form of soap, to be sure, but soap nonetheless.  “Buy this soap so you’ll be clean enough to escape Hell and pass inspection at the entrance to Heaven.”  This is what Paul is selling.

A:  But . . . I can see the link between Paul’s sin — “being dirty” — and Paul’s salvation — “getting clean.”  But how is God the soap, the shampoo?  How can a person buy God the way a person buys a bar of soap?

J:  Ah.  Well, that’s the important part.  In Paul’s theology, and in the theology of the Essenes who highly influenced Paul’s beliefs, God is the powerful Creator of Heaven and Earth, but God himself isn’t the highest authority.  God is subject to an even higher force: the power of Cosmic Law.  Paul calls this Cosmic Law by a name that’s now interpreted in a way that makes his original meaning hard to see.  Paul calls the Law “Spirit.”

A:  What?

J:  Paul’s theology pays tribute to God, and tries to insert a brand-friendly Saviour into the mix (Jesus Christ), but the primary focus is always Spirit.  In Greek, pneuma.  For Paul, Spirit is an anthropomorphic cloud of knowing that is literally the breath — the life — of all Creation.  The in-and-out breath of pure energy, pure life force, pure power that can be trapped and used if properly understood.   Pneuma is a higher force than John’s Logos (Word).  It’s a higher force than God himself.  God is pure Mind.  God is pure Mind and Jesus is pure Word.  Both are sacred mystical forces, and both are worthy of attention, in Paul’s estimation.  But neither Mind nor Word is the ultimate source of cleansing and purity and salvation.  The ultimate source of power is Cosmic Law — Spirit — to which even God and Jesus Christ must bow.  He who knows the Law in its purest form knows how to force God and Jesus Christ to obey his wishes.  He who knows the Law can “buy” God like a bar of soap and force God to cleanse him and let him into Heaven.  It’s simply a matter of being smart enough to make the Law work to your benefit.

A:  That’s so grasping, so greedy, so arrogant and narcissistic.  That’s not faith — that’s human greed at its worst.

J:  Yes.  It’s impossible to overstate the interconnection between narcissism and belief in occult magic.

A:  How did we get onto the topic of occult magic?

J:  Paul, the founder of Pauline Christianity, believed deeply in occult magic.  He was teaching his followers how to practise his own form of occult magic, how to recognise and control the forces of nature, how to gain control over life and death, how to force Jesus Christ and God to obey the contract laws of the universe, how to secure a place on the ladder of spiritual ascent that will lead through all the levels of Heaven until mystical union with the cloud of knowing is one day accomplished.

A:  Is any of this in the Bible?

J:  It’s all in the Bible.   A detailed examination of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reveals a bumper crop of occult teachings that are founded on his belief in the invincibility and inviolability of contract law.

A:  So there’s a connection between contract law and occult magic?

J:  Absolutely.  If there’s no contract law governing all cause and effect in the universe, then there’s no basis for occult magic.  Occult magic is based on the clear and logical belief that “effect” consistently follows “cause.”  If you can figure out “the cause” — that is, the hidden cosmic law that’s operating behind the scenes — then you can manipulate “the cause” to create a controlled “effect.”  It’s straightforward classical physics.  It’s all very logical.  Occult magic and alchemy are both founded on highly logical principles.  Both are also Materialist philosophies, philosophies that rely entirely on Cause and Effect principles, and may or may not include a belief in God.  Faith in God is not required as part of a successful Materialist philosophy.  Only confidence in humanity’s ability to understand and control the Laws of Cause and Effect is required.

A:  Except the universe doesn’t actually operate according to simple Newtonian laws.

J:  True.  But don’t tell the narcissists this.  No narcissistic wants to hear he’s not in charge.

A:  So Paul believed he was in charge?  He believed he was so clever he could actually control the forces of nature through his occult rituals?

J:  That was the point of his new religion.  The point was NOT to teach people how to be in relationship with God.  The point was to teach people how to purify themselves so Spirit would be forced to give them “special gifts” in accordance with divine contract law.

A:  You’ve said before that Paul hated and feared your teachings and wanted to undermine them.  So if he feared you so much, why would he drag you into his new religion?  Why would he name you as Saviour and insist his followers invoke your name to achieve salvation?

J:  You’ve stumbled onto it right there.  It’s all about name magic.

A:  Name magic?

J:  The deeply occult belief that if you can correctly name an entity, you can control that entity.  It’s part of the belief in the law of cause and effect.  In this case, there’s a belief that names have great power, that the true name spoken aloud around certain rituals can force a powerful figure to appear from the Heavens and obey the wishes of a human being.  Paul feared me, but he also believed I had hidden knowledge about God that I could be forced to reveal to him and his followers if he correctly named me as the Christ (Messiah or Anointed One).

A:  Did it work?

J (laughing):  Not a chance.   For starters, I wasn’t the Christ, and never claimed to be.  For another, I have free will, and nothing any Christian has ever said or done has held any power over me or any other angel.  And for another, magical thinking and occult rituals belong within the sphere of major mental illness in human beings, so angels DO NOT RESPOND to any prayers or beliefs grounded in occult magic.

A:  Including the Eucharist that Paul instituted?

J:  Yes.  Communion wafers should come with a warning tag on them:  “Belief in transubstantiation will guarantee you a seat on the slow train to redemption and healing.”  Angels can’t abide the occult intent of Paul’s original Eucharist ritual.  It’s a version of selling you divine soap to clean your dirty innards.  And the soap they’re selling is the body and blood of a divine being who’s being named, then eaten, then controlled from inside your “heart” so you can get special gifts.  How gross is that?

A:  This is one reason why I’ve stopped going to church.  I just can’t handle the abusive way God is being treated any longer.

 

RS17: Excavating James: The James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb

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The James Ossuary.  Photo by Paradiso (English Wikipedia, via Wikipedia Commons). The James ossuary was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum from Nov. 15, 2002 to Jan. 5, 2003.

In honour of today’s press release today from the Biblical Archaeology Review, with its hot-off-the-press link to Hershel Shanks’ article about the James Ossuary — “‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription is Authentic!” (note: the Biblical Archaeology Society subsequently removed this article from its website) — I’m posting a term paper I wrote for an Historical Jesus course as a graduate student in theological studies.

I call the essay “Excavating James.”  I’ve posted it here as I wrote it in December 2007, several years before an Israeli court found antiquities collector Oded Golan and antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch not guilty of forgery charges after a five year trial.* In my view, the defendants in this forgery trial ably demonstrated how scientific research can be used with dignity, appropriateness, and courage to push back against the vested interests of entrenched dogmatic beliefs.

I should also note that my Masters degree in Art Conservation (Artifact stream) offered me insights into the chemistry raised in this paper.

_________________

EXCAVATING JAMES:
BREAKING THROUGH OLD ASSUMPTIONS

by Jennifer Thomas
December 14, 2007

In October 2002, an unprovenanced chalk ossuary with probable origins in first century Jerusalem made international headlines when a press conference highlighted the possible significance of the box’s Aramaic inscription: “Ya’aquov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua,” translated as “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” (Shanks and Witherington 22).  The ossuary, commonly known as the James Ossuary, ignited a firestorm of controversy which has not yet subsided.  The scholarly debate over the inscription’s authenticity has been complicated by several factors, including its acquisition by Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan; the puzzling evidence of its having been cleaned more than once (Krumbein, “Findings: Ossuary” par. 2); its history of repair by Royal Ontario Museum conservators after it sustained damage during shipping (Shanks and Witherington 36-40); its focus in the forgery charges brought by Israeli police against Golan; its examination by Israeli police and by independent geomicrobiologist Wolfgang Krumbein, hired by Golan’s defence attorney; and its recent inclusion by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and paleobiologist Charles Pellegrino among the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries in their 2007 book, The Jesus Family Tomb.  Some of the data presented by Jacobovici and Pellegrino is intriguing and worthy of more study.  If further research can confirm the tentative scientifically established link between the James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb, then biblical scholars may be forced to reexamine some of their assumptions about the historical Jesus.  In particular, the frequently ignored Epistle of James, when read against the background of the Talpiot Tomb and its ossuaries, in the manner of Crossan and Reed, may prove to have greater value as an exegetical tool for understanding Jesus than has previously been envisioned.

When John Crossan and Jonathan Reed revised their book Excavating Jesus to place the James Ossuary in the number one spot of their top ten archaeological discoveries related to Jesus, they probably never imagined that less than five years later a Toronto filmmaker would start knocking on doors in a Jerusalem suburb and asking residents if they had a tomb in their basement.  The tomb in question was the Tomb of Ten Ossuaries, found accidentally in East Talpiot in 1980 while contractors were levelling ground for new construction.  The Department of Antiquities (later called the Israel Antiquities Authority, or IAA) was contacted, and IAA archaeologists were dispatched to perform salvage archeology.  The team physically entered the tomb, mapped the antechamber and the lower chamber with its six niches or kokhim, noted that almost a metre of terra rossa covered the floor of the lower chamber, and removed all the contents, including the red soil.  The tomb’s ossuaries – at least, the nine that were later fully catalogued of the ten that were documented on-site – were taken to an IAA warehouse.  The tomb itself was generally believed to have been filled with concrete in 1980 during construction of a condominium complex.  Certainly this is Crossan and Reed’s stated belief (19).  As we shall, however, rumours of the tomb’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

Amos Kloner, of the original IAA team, did not publish the group’s findings until 1996.  Apparently, few scholars knew before then that six of the nine Talpiot ossuaries in the IAA’s possession  were inscribed with names familiar to readers of the Gospels (an unusually high inscription rate, when compared to other ossuaries catalogued by the IAA (Shanks and Witherington 12)).  In 1996, a BBC film crew came across the cluster of inscribed ossuaries, and created a brief media stir with their story (Jacobovici and Pellegrino 23).  It is important, however, to separate media sensation from the fact of the tomb’s authenticity.  Crossan and Reed quote from a 1996 article in which Joe Zias, then curator of the IAA, said, “[the list of names from the ossuaries] came from a very good, undisturbed, archaeological context.  It was found by archaeologists, read by them, interpreted by them . . . a very, very good text” (19).  The descriptions of the ten Talpiot Tomb ossuaries (nine in the possession of the IAA and one missing) are shown in Table 1.

Summary of Talpiot Tomb ossuary inscriptions (c) JAT 2007:

What are we to do with this list of family names that includes a Mary, a Jude (son of Jesus), a Matthew, a Jesus (son of Joseph), a Joseph, and a second Mary?  Researchers tells us that Mary was a common name for daughters in the Second Temple period (Pfann 8).  Shanks and Witherington, citing Rachel Hachlili, report that from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE, Joseph was second in popularity only to Simon, Judah was third, Jesus was sixth, Matthew was eighth, and Jacob/James was thirteenth among 18 Jewish male names that appear frequently in the archaeological record (56).  In themselves, the inscriptions on the Talpiot ossuaries are not remarkable if they are viewed  independently of each other.  But they are not independent.  They are a group, and must be examined as a group. They were found together.  They were found in a South Jerusalem family tomb that, because of its size, location, and quality of workmanship, could only have been built by someone of means.

Pellegrino says in his book that Jacobovici took the list of six names to Andrey Feuerverger, a University of Toronto statistician (111-114).  Feuerverger calculated a conservative “P factor” (probability factor) “of 600 to one in favor of the tomb belonging to the family of Jesus of Nazareth” (114).  Another way to put this is to say “one in 600 families (on the conservative side) would have that particular combination of names purely by chance, based on the distribution of individual names in the population” (Mims, “Special Report” 1, quoting TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF INSCRIPTION DATA FROM TEN OSSUARIES FOUND IN TALPIOT TOMB).

In an interview with Christopher Mims published by Scientific American in March 2007, Feuerverger says, “I did permit the number one in 600 to be used in the film.  I’m prepared to stand behind that but on the understanding that these numbers were calculated based on the assumptions that I was asked to use . . . I’m not a biblical scholar” (“Q&A” 2).  One of the assumptions is that the family could afford an ossuarial burial.

The P factor would rise if it could be established, as Jacobovici and Pellegrino assert, that the James Ossuary is the missing tenth ossuary from the Talpiot Tomb.  This may not be as far-fetched as it seems.  Pellegrino worked with Bob Genna, director of the Suffolk County Crime Lab in New York, to investigate the possibility of using “patina fingerprinting” to scientifically establish provenance.  Pellegrino says this:

My idea about patina fingerprinting rests on the fact that each soil type and rock matrix possesses its own private spectrum of magnesium, titanium, and other trace elements.

In theory, the patina inside a tomb or on the surfaces of its artifacts should develop its own chemically distinct signature, depending on a constellation of variable conditions, including the minerals and bacterial populations present at any specific location and the quantities of water moving through that specific “constellation.”

If such a chemical “fingerprint” existed, scanning patina samples on a quantum level with an electron microprobe would reveal a chemical spectrum that could be matched to a specific tomb and to any objects that come from it. (176)

His proposal is gutsy but by no means ludicrous or impossible from the perspective of analytical chemistry and related fields.  At the least, it deserves further consideration.  Publication in a peer-reviewed journal would assist others in assessing its feasibility.  At the moment, though, we have Pellegrino’s anecdotal findings, some of which are published in the form of four spectra in the colour plate section of the book.  He and Genna took patina samples from the following sources: the Jesus, Mariamne, and Matthew ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, the tomb itself, the James ossuary, and a number of provenanced ossuaries from tombs known to have similar conditions to the Talpiot tomb.  His proposed method relied entirely on the availability of patina samples from the walls of the Tomb of Ten Ossuaries.  Had the tomb been filled with concrete, as some had been led to believe, it would have been impossible to retrieve an uncontaminated sample.  Fortunately – and for this we must thank renegade explorer Jacobovici and his associates, who wouldn’t take no for an answer – the tomb was “rediscovered” in 2005.  It lay beneath a concrete and steel slab on a terrace between two condominium buildings.  A tenant who had lived in one of the buildings since the beginning told Jacobovici’s team that archaeologists had left the tomb open, but tenants had built the slab on top to keep children out (150).  In addition, religious authorities had turned the tomb into a genizah, or burial chamber for damaged holy texts, before it was sealed (153).  The tomb was now carpeted with fragments of holy books.  There was concern that the presence of the decomposing texts might have significantly altered the chemical composition of the tomb’s patina over the previous 25 years; however, this was not borne out by the microprobe studies (180).

When Pellegrino and Genna used an electron microscope to examine a patina sample from the James ossuary, provided by the Israel Geological Study, they saw “hundreds of tiny fiber fragments” on the sample (184).  They concluded that “someone in modern times had given the James ossuary a hard scrubbing with a piece of cloth . . . .(184)”  They directed the electron microprobe to the fibres themselves, and got large chlorine and phosphorus peaks.  “This was consistent with the phosphate-spiked detergents that were in common use during the 1970s and early 1980s” (184).  Someone had apparently cleaned the James ossuary with a cloth soaked in a chlorine- and phosphate- based detergent.

Probes of the James ossuary patina clearly revealed the same detergent contaminants.  When these modern contaminants were factored out, the remaining spectrum was identical to those obtained from the Talpiot tomb walls and from the Jesus, Mariamne, and Matthew ossuaries (185).  Further, five probes taken of a James patina sample provided by the Royal Ontario Museum were also identical, “right down to contamination by cloth fibers and phosphate-based detergent” (185).

Meanwhile, the electron microprobe studies of samples taken from unrelated Israeli ossuaries yielded spectra that were significantly different from each other and from the Talpiot cluster, even when patina samples were visually indistinguishable from the Talpiot patina under light microscopy.  Pellegrino says, “In conclusion, it seemed that, compared to other patina samples from ossuaries found in the Jerusalem environment, the Talpiot tomb ossuaries exhibited a patina fingerprint or profile that matched the James ossuary and no other” (188).

If we were to rely solely on Pellegrino’s admittedly novel technique to “rehabilitate” the James ossuary’s historical significance, we would not have much.  However, because the box and samples from the box have been studied so many times since 2002 by specialists from different disciplines, including epigraphers, geochemists, archaeologists, art conservators, and even a geomicrobiologist, we have considerable scientific data at our disposal.

In June 2003, the IAA issued a public statement declaring the inscription on the James ossuary a modern-day forgery.  Two of the 14 Israeli scholars who were invited to prepare an authenticity report were Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel and Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology (Fitzmyer 3).  These two, together with Miryam Bar-Matthews, also of the Geological Survey, examined the James ossuary, and published their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science (Ayalon et al).  They, too, chose a method never before used to assess the authenticity of archaeological artifacts.  They took patina samples from various parts of the inscription, from other surface areas of the James ossuary, and from the surface patina and letters patina of unrelated Jerusalem ossuaries; ground the samples; used a mass spectrometer to analyse the oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O values) of each sample; then compared the results to well-dated secondary calcite (speleotherms) deposited in Jerusalem area caves during the last 3,000 years.  Since only one James letter sample (of seven) fell within the same range as the other types of samples, Ayalon et al concluded the patina of the inscription could not have been formed “in the natural conditions that prevailed in the Judean Mountains during the last 3000 years, [indicating] that the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters” (1188).

There are several problems with this paper, two of which are noted here.  First, although Ayalon et al acknowledge that the inscription had been observed in a previous study to be freshly cleaned, they do not discuss how the residue of earlier cleaning might affect δ18O values.  This is a significant lapse.  Second, they apparently base the suitability of their δ18O method on the assumption that the patina on the rest of the James ossuary was pure calcite formed in a typical Judean cave environment, that is, in an enclosed or semi-enclosed atmosphere absent of soil.  Krumbein’s report, however, conclusively demonstrates that the patina is not pure calcite, and that the presence of apatite, whewellite, weddelite, and quartz in the patina, along with biopitting and plant traces, suggests that “the cave in which the James ossuary was placed, either collapsed centuries earlier, or alluvial deposits penetrated the chamber together with water and buried the ossuary, either completely or partially . . .[rendering] δ18O isotopic tests irrelevant” (under “Findings: Ossuary”; italics added).

When Krumbein examined the ossuary, along with two other disputed artifacts, in Jerusalem in 2005, the Talpiot tomb, with its verified accumulation of terra rossa, had not yet entered the picture as the possible original resting place for the unprovenanced James ossuary.  Nonetheless, his thorough examination and reported findings are fully in agreement with the documented conditions in which ten ossuaries were originally found in 1980.

It is by no means certain, based on the scientific evidence, that the inscription on the James ossuary is a modern forgery (for a current example of the ongoing debate, see the BAR 33.6 article).  The box itself, however, seems genuine (Ayalon et al 1185).  Are there other explanations for the “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” inscription?  Of course.  It is possible the inscription is a well-meaning ancient addition to a plain box.  It is also possible the latter part of the inscription (“brother of Jesus”) was added recently to an authentic “James, son of Joseph” inscription, as some have argued (for example, Chadwick as cited by Shanks and Witherington 42).  The inscription might even be an ancient forgery.  On the other hand, the entire inscription could be authentic.  The question for historical Jesus researchers is this: If the ossuary and its inscription are authentic, what does it say about Jesus?  Can we stretch the question further to ask what it might mean if the James ossuary is the missing tenth Talpiot bone box?  Crossan and Reed have said, with regard to the James ossuary, that “like [the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices], the ossuary is now here and its presence demands discussion. . . . It is one single artifact that brings together archaeology and exegesis.  It is also one single artifact that emphasizes how such objects are of value only when embedded among all those other discoveries that give it full context and final meaning” (28).  I would argue that the Talpiot tomb findings create important archeological, scientific, and exegetical context, and that the James ossuary should be examined further in light of that context.

We can say with some measure of confidence that in the period during which ossuarial burial was practised in Jerusalem (usually given as 20 BCE to 70 CE (Shanks and Witherington 69)) a family who counted among their members a Mary, a Jude, a Matthew, a Jesus, a Joseph, another Mary, and possibly a James, had enough wealth and prestige to build a spacious tomb in the bedrock of a hill just south of the old city.  Different languages were used on the ossuary inscriptions: Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Greek, with one name (Maria) a Latin version of its Aramaic counterpart.  From this evidence, it could be argued the family was familiar with and possibly part of the wider Greco-Roman culture of 1st century Palestine.  The family also had a penchant for widely popular names, and possibly followed a custom of naming children after close relatives.

We know from exegetical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named Jacob or James.  The Gospels of Matthew and Mark both name Jesus as the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3), though Jesus’ two sisters are not named in these passages.  Matthew and Mark also refer to a Mary who is mother of James and Joseph (Mt 27:56; Mk 15:40).  Although it is not clear which Mary is being referred to in these latter verses, she could be Mary the mother of Jesus, in which case James and Joseph would again be named brothers of Jesus.  So we have two independent Synoptic sources, Matthew and Mark, that specifically name James.  The Gospel of Thomas, which is considered an independent source by some (Crossan and Reed 9), refers to James the Just in Saying 12.  Further, James appears a number of times in Acts and the writings of Paul.  Paul lists James among those who have seen the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:7), and when Paul is writing his letter to Galatians, he describes James as one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church (Gal 2:9).  The much-overlooked Epistle of James purports to be written by “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Jas 1:1).  We also have extra-canonical sources that name James, two of which report on his death in Jerusalem a few years before the destruction of the city in 70 CE (Gillman 621).  Josephus reports that James was stoned in 62 CE on the orders of high priest Ananus (Ant 20:200).  Hegesippus, writing ca. 180 and quoted by Eusebius in the 4th century, gives a dramatic account of James’s martyrdom in 67 CE (?) at the hands of the scribes and Pharisees.  Also from Hegesippus through Eusebius, we learn that “James became the first bishop of Jerusalem in part because he was the brother of Jesus” (Shanks and Witherington 96).

One begins to wonder why a man from the small peasant town of Nazareth in rural Galilee, where families “had an interest in keeping the head count low” (Hanson and Oakman 58) and the total population was probably less than 400 people (Reed 131), had such a large number of presumably adult siblings when childhood death rates were so high, and why one  sibling – James – had such a position of honour and authority in Jerusalem.  Archaeological excavations in Nazareth have brought to light no public structures and no public inscriptions from the Early Roman Period, which attests to “the level of illiteracy and lack of elite sponsors” there (Reed 131).  Juxtaposed against this archaeological evidence, we have not one but two men from the same generation of the same family who rose, in the midst of an honour-shame culture, from the humblest of origins to positions of great moral authority.  Both men knew Jerusalem and died there.  Both had friends there. Both surely possessed impressive oratorical skills, otherwise they would have been ignored.  Surely these two men started out with more than the knowledge of how to press Nazareth’s grapes into wine (see evidence for a vineyard and wine pressing vat: Reed 132).  Something does not fit with a popular understanding of the historical Jesus as an illiterate Galilean peasant carpenter wisdom sage (for example Crossan and Reed; Mack).  We might understand Jesus by himself in this way.  But by all accounts, Jesus had a family.  We must try to place Jesus more solidly within his large family, and within a culture that lived and breathed for status.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul engages in a lengthy appeal for monetary contributions to the Jerusalem church (“the collection”) (2 Cor 8:1 – 9:15).  In the course of his letter, he says, “For you know the generous act [or the grace] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).  In the Greek, Paul uses ἐπτώχευσεν πλούσιος, “the well-to-do man became poor.”  This verse is usually interpreted as being metaphorical, more akin to the christological construction in Philippians 2:6-8 (footnotes in Coogan NT 302).  But maybe Paul isn’t being metaphorical at all.  Maybe he means exactly what he says: that Jesus intentionally gave up his wealth to do God’s work.  Paul, by his own admission, visited Jerusalem and saw James the Lord’s brother (Gal 1:18-19).  If Paul had not known anything about Jesus’ family before this visit, he certainly did afterwards.  Did Paul learn that Jesus had come from a privileged family with strong ties to Jerusalem?  How would such knowledge have affected Paul’s understanding of his own divinely appointed mission, the mission he describes in Galatians 1:15-17?  Would it have been to Paul’s advantage or disadvantage that the man who spoke so clearly to the non-elite about the spiritual woes of being rich (eg. Lk 6:24) might himself have originated in a family of wealth and status?

A modern analogy might be of help in understanding the historical Jesus not as a man who came from the bottom up, but as man who had the courage to intentionally step off the upper part of the pyramid, and live as a person among persons.  Imagine, for the sake of argument, that one of the many descendants of American oligarch Joseph Kennedy suddenly had a profound religious experience, and saw for the first time how much suffering had been caused by his family’s commitment to certain values.  What if this descendent renounced his family’s elitist way of life, moved to Canada, got a regular job, and used his spare time to study scripture?  His family probably wouldn’t like him very much.  They might even lie to their friends about where he had gone, rather than face the embarrassment of being “disowned” by him on spiritual grounds.  Of course, such lies would become harder to maintain if he became known in his own right as a brilliant spiritual teacher up there in the boonies, a teacher of social and gender equality and . . . what’s that? . . . miraculous healings from God?  For this we gave him an education?  The shame, the shame.

Eventually, of course, word would get up to Canada that the guy working over there on that construction site is a Kennedy – one of those Kennedys.  And suddenly the people who had ignored him the day before would invite him over to dinner to talk about his favourite subject, God.  Even the local bishop might not be immune to the cachet of this gentleman’s esteemed lineage.  Doors have a way of opening for those who come from “the right sort of people.”

Two thousand years ago, Jesus went through a lot of different doors.  Many of those doors were owned by priests, Pharisees, scribes, and other elites who wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to a Galilean peasant on the street, let alone seek him out for questioning in public places (Mt 22:15-46; Mk 11:27-33; Lk 20:1-8) or invite him to dinner (Lk 14:1-24).  However, it is quite believable that they would talk to a man who had “ascribed honour” on the basis of his descent (Hanson and Oakman 26-31), even if they didn’t agree with his theology.  Much has been made of the evidence that Jesus ate with “sinners” and “tax collectors” and other outcasts.  But it is just important that Jesus was known to dine with the elite.  One could say that, in his ministry, Jesus swung both ways.  This may be what made Jesus unique and loved by so many.

Whatever else can be said of Jesus, no one can dispute his commitment to God.  He was a man of deep faith.  He strove to communicate to the people around him the depth of God’s love for them.  To this end, it was probably important to Jesus that he have the chance to speak in person to as many people as possible.  He was not one to retire to life in an ascetic religious community like the one at Qumran.  He was walking and talking (and dining) right up until his arrest.  So, from a purely practical point of view, it would have been shrewd of Jesus to avoid talking about his family lineage, whatever its exact nature.  The last time a devout Jewish family claiming priestly legitimacy had gathered political support from the Jewish rank and file, a rebellion had erupted that swept the Seleucid rulers from the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The Maccabean revolt, which proved the power of priestly Jewish bloodlines, would not have been forgotten by Palestine’s new Roman rulers.  Here was a clear case of discretion being the better part of valour.

Many who would argue with the thesis presented here might wonder why an educated man from a privileged family would not have written down some of his own teachings.  Surely such a man would be literate!  Where are the letters of Jesus?  Why did he not put something down on papyrus, and hand it to a trusted friend or family member?

Well, maybe he did.  Maybe his words have been staring at us all along, hidden in plain sight in the canon as part of the Epistle of James.

The Epistle of James has to be one of the least examined sources in the New Testament.  Open up the back of books written by historical Jesus researchers and examine the “Ancient Sources Index.”  Under James, you will frequently find nothing.  Nothing at all – this despite the fact that some of the most sophisticated theology of the New Testament is found in James, and despite the fact that it has obvious links to the Q source (Hartin; Johnson; Wachob).  Some might lay the blame at the foot of Luther, who famously decried James as “an epistle of straw” (Laws 622).  It seems generally to be avoided in research because its Greek is deemed too elegant for the family of a Galilean artisan (but what of a highly ranked family?); there are only two brief references to Jesus (would Jesus himself brag?); and its discussion of faith and works does not refer specifically to “works of the law” (Law 622) (is that the real message of this epistle?).  On the basis of these arguments, some declare it pseudonymous.  In terms of date, it has been placed in the second generation, or even in the 2nd century.  However, there is much evidence to support an earlier, first generation date for the epistle of James.

Luke Timothy Johnson has done considerable research in this regard.  In his book Brother of Jesus, Friend of God, he says:

        With the exception of the evidence in Paul, Acts, and Josephus, the letter is the historically most certain evidence we have concerning James.  Even if it is supposed that a composition by James of Jerusalem was later redacted by someone else, the present letter is almost certainly appropriated by early-second-century Christian writings [1 Clement and Shepherd of Hermas].  In fact, there are strong reasons for arguing that the extant letter was composed by James of Jerusalem, whom Paul designates as “brother of the Lord.”  What is more, the evidence provided by the letter fits comfortably within that provided by our other earliest and best sources (Paul, Acts, Josephus), whereas it fits only awkwardly if at all within the framework of the later and legendary sources that are used for most reconstructions [here Johnson refers to Witherington in Brother of Jesus]. (2-3)

If Johnson is correct in his conclusions, then the Epistle of James, or parts of that epistle, could well be another independent source for understanding the historical Jesus (though Johnson himself would no doubt be chagrined at seeing his work used to support a theory he does not subscribe to (Kirby 10)).

The letter of James, far from being an epistle of straw, concerns itself with teaching the difference between earthly wisdom that does not come from above versus the wisdom that does come from above, and is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (3:17).  This is an extraordinary vision of God, one that is in stark contrast to the God who clearly plays favourites in various Old Testament and apocryphal texts.  Another breathtaking vision of God is given in Chapter 1, where the author says, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.  But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it” (1:13-14).  He then goes on to say that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (1:17).  Note the complete absence of eschatological promises or apocalyptic warnings.  The author of these sections, whom I believe was Jesus, is telling readers to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame their bad choices on a God who has “tempted them.”  He is also saying they should not fear change, because God’s love never changes even when other things do.

When we place this understanding against the epistle’s opening statements – “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (1:2-4) – we can perhaps understand why its message has been so long ignored: this is not a message about justification by works alone, nor is it a message about justification by faith alone.  It is an altogether radically new message about asking for God’s help in the here and now in the difficult spiritual task of transforming pain and suffering into maturity, wisdom, and love for one’s neighbour and one’s God, not to earn salvation, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

No wonder they crucified the guy.

In conclusion, it is possible to apply Crossan’s and Reed’s “Excavating Jesus” method  (balancing archeology with exegesis) to the task of “excavating James.”  The excavated James can, in turn, shed greater light on the historical Jesus.  Recent findings from the Talpiot tomb, the James ossuary, and the Epistle of James cannot be ignored.  As a group, they demand discussion.  As a group, they have a story to tell us about Jesus.  And perhaps Jesus himself still has something to say.

*  September 2, 2015: I have two updates to report which are relevant to the material posted on this page: 

(1) I’m posting a link to a 2015 documentary that premiered on March 16, 2015 on VisionTV.  The documentary, produced by Simcha Jacobovici, and Felix Golubev is called Biblical Conspiracies 6: The James Revelation.  In this documentary, Simcha adds to his previous work on possible links between the James ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries.  He now states that the James ossuary may be a missing eleventh ossuary from the Talpiot Tomb.  (His original position was that the James ossuary was the missing tenth ossuary, which mysteriously disappeared in 1980 after the Department of Antiquities (now the IAA) excavated and catalogued the contents of the tomb.)  His new position no doubt derives from evidence presented during Oded Golan’s forgery trial which proved that he (Golan) was already in possession of the James ossuary a few years before the Talpiot Tomb was discovered.  It’s still possible, however, that the James ossuary was looted at an earlier time from the Talpiot Tomb, as IAA archaeologist Shimon Gibson believes the tomb may have been broken into more than once before its official discovery (Biblical Conspiracies 6, 31 minutes).

In addition, Simcha uses the 2015 documentary to revisit the previous analytical analysis of the chemical fingerprint of the James ossuary inscription patina in comparison to that of the Talpiot Tomb ossuary patinas.  This work was originally led by Dr. Charles Pellegrino (paleo-biologist and forensic archaeologist).  In the documentary, Simcha consults with geo-archeologist Dr. Aryeh Shimron, who takes samples not from the inscription patina of the James ossuary but from the underside and inside of the box itself (from beneath the surface patina), then compares these with samples taken from the nine remaining Talpiot Tomb ossuaries as well as samples from random chalk ossuaries.  Analysis of the chemical signatures shows strong similarities between the James ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries, though, as Oded Golan rightly points out in an April 4, 2015 New York Times interview with Isabel Kershner, this isn’t conclusive proof that the James ossuary originally came from the Talpiot Tomb; the James bone box could have come from another burial cave in the same area and still show a similar chemical fingerprint.  Samples would have to be taken from a large number of caves in East Talpiot to further refine the data.

It should be noted that Simcha’s new theory and new analytical data have no bearing on the actual authenticity of the James ossuary and its inscription.  Whether or not Simcha is right, the James ossuary remains an important and authentic piece of archaeological evidence that can be legitimately combined with other pieces of evidence in the search for the historical Jesus, as stated above.

(2) I’m posting a link to an article by Hershel Shanks which appears in the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.  The article, called “Predilections: Is the ‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription a Forgery?” reviews some of the recent debates surrounding the authenticity of the James Ossuary inscription and the forgery trial of Oded Golan.  Mr. Shanks emphasizes that Mr. Golan did, indeed, own the James Ossuary before the Talpiot Tomb was found and excavated in a 1980 salvage operation.  Mr. Shanks also comments on the recent analysis by Dr. Pieter van der Horst of the IAA committee’s own original report on the James ossuary.  Says Shanks, “Van der Horst notes that the IAA ‘appointed almost exclusively committee members who had already expressed outspoken opinions to the effect that the inscription was a forgery.'”

BIBLIOGRAPHY (as it originally appeared in the 2007 research paper)

Ayalon, Avner and Miryam Bar-Matthews and Yuval Goren.  “Authenticity Examination of the
Inscription on the Ossuary Attributed to James, Brother of Jesus.”  Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004): 1185-1189.

Coogan. Michael D., Ed.  The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with
the Apocrypha, College Edition.  3rd Ed.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Crossan, John Dominic and Jonathan L. Reed.  Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind
the Texts.  Rev. and Updated Ed.  New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.

“Demythologizing the Talpiot Tomb: family unit, group No. 1.”  Filed under “Lost Tomb of
Jesus.”  The View from Jerusalem.  May 17, 2007.  University of the Holy Land.  04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.uhl.ac/blog//?p=110>.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A.  “Update–Finds or Fakes?  The James Ossuary and Its Implications.”
Excerpted from Theology Digest 52:4 (2005).  Biblical Archaeology Society.  Undated.  04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOOossuary_fitzmyer.asp>.

Gillman, Florence Morgan.  “James, Brother of Jesus.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary.  Vol. 3.
Ed. David Noel Freedman.  New York: Doubleday, 1992.  620-621.

Goren, Yuval.  “The Jerusalem Syndrome in Archaeology: Jehoash to James.”
The Bible and Interpretation.  Jan. 2004.  04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Goren_Jerusalem_Syndrome.htm>.

Hanson, K.C. and Douglas E. Oakman.  Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and
Social Conflicts.  Incl. CD-ROM.  Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

Hartin, Patrick J.  James and the Q Sayings of Jesus.  Journal for the Study of the New
Testament Supplement Series 47.  Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.

Jacobovici, Simcha and Charles Pellegrino.  The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery,
the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History.  New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.

Johnson, Luke Timothy.  Brother of Jesus, Friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James.
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Kirby, Peter.  “Historical Jesus Theories.”  Early Christian Writings.  2001-2003.  13 Oct. 2007
<http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html>.

Krumbein, Wolfgang E.  “External Expert Opinion on Three Stone Items.”
Biblical Archaeology Society. Sept. 2005.  04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOOossuary_Krumbeinreport.pdf>.

Laws, Sophie.  “James, Epistle of.”  The Anchor Bible Dictionary.  Vol. 3.  Ed. David Noel
Freedman.  New York: Doubleday, 1992.  621-628.

“Leading Scholar Lambastes IAA Committee.”  Biblical Archaeology Review 33.6 (2007): 16.

Mack, Burton L.  “Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus.”  Whose Historical Jesus?  Ed. William E. Arnal
and Michel Desjardins.  Studies in Christianity and Judaism 7.  Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1997.

Mims, Christopher.  “Q&A With the Statistician Who Calculated the Odds That This Tomb
Belonged to Jesus.”  Scientific American.  March 2, 2007.  12 Dec. 2007 <http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=13C42878-E7F2-99DF-3B6D16A9656A12FF>.

Mims, Christopher.  “Special Report: Has James Cameron Found Jesus’s Tomb or Is It Just
a Statistical Error?”  Scientific American.  March 2, 2007.  12 Dec. 2007 <http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=14A3C2E6-E7F2-99DF-37A9AEC98FB0702A>.

Pfann, Stephen.  “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”  UHL Articles on “The Lost
Tomb of Jesus” Documentary.  University of the Holy Land.  2007(?).  11 Dec. 2007 <http://www.uhl.ac/Lost_Tomb/HowDoYouSolveMaria/>.

Reed, Jonathan L.  Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2000.

Shanks, Hershel and Ben Witherington III.  The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story &
Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family.  New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

Wachob, Wesley Hiram.  The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James.  Society for
New Testament Studies Monograph Series 106.  Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2000.

TBM 42: The Only “Secret” You Really Need to Know

The Blonde Mystic - Healing and HopeThis post is the final essay in the Blonde Mystic series.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

Of the books I’ve written so far, I think this one has been the most challenging.  It’s not an easy matter to write an introductory text that approaches old topics in new ways.  I opted in the end to write essays that speak to both your heart and mind and don’t ask you to rely on blind faith.  Genuine faith, as opposed to blind religious faith, is only possible when you’re willing to open up your own inner senses and really learn how to learn.  So my goal in this book has been to point out some new ways of learning you may not have thought of before.

Everything in this book has been focussed on helping you expand your toolkit rather than shrink it.  So I’ve purposely written this material in a such a way that it can’t be used to sustain a “closed system” of Law.  You’ll find very few rules you have to follow.  But you’ll find many suggestions for how to challenge existing beliefs in thoughtful, reasonable, appropriate ways. This is a trick I learned from Jesus, who was always much more interested in “teaching people how to fish”  than giving them daily hand-outs.

Several years ago, Jesus introduced me to his model of the Peace Sequence, his crystallized version of the correct sequence we need to follow if we want to create Peace for ourselves, our communities, and the world as a whole.  Here is the Peace Sequence in a nutshell:

First, Education.
Second, Mentorship.
Third, Personal Responsibility.
Fourth, Peace.

In other words, we can’t create lasting peace until individuals are willing to take personal responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, choices, and actions.  Yet the honest truth is these individuals can’t grasp what it means to take personal responsibility until they’ve received mature, appropriate mentorship from family, teachers, coaches, ministers, Big Brothers & Sisters, volunteer advocates, health care professionals, researchers, and the like.  Furthermore, these individuals aren’t able at a biological level to “see, hear, and remember” the wisdom and guidance of their dedicated mentors unless they’ve first received mature, appropriate education.

So it all starts with education.  It all starts with teaching the brain how to think in courageous, holistic, balanced ways.  It all starts with teaching the brain how to “fill itself up” rather than “empty itself.”

The Spiral Path of building your intuition and finding wonder, awe, mystery, love, and faith along the way begins when you decide you’re willing to take the risk of knowing who you really are, of knowing who God the Mother and God the Father really are.  When you’re ready to make this choice, your guardian angels will step in to help you.  They’ll help you move forward on the Spiral Path.  They’ll help you rediscover who you are as a soul, who you are as a child of God.  But first, right here today, you need to understand that God and your angels can’t teach you faster than your biological brain can go.  They can’t give you courage, trust, gratitude, devotion, and forgiveness, because these emotions can’t be given in the way a basket of bread and fish can be given.  All your angels can do — all your angels want to do — is teach you how to reclaim these attributes within your own core self.

In other words, your angels are happy to mentor you so you can learn how to embrace your own sense of personal responsibility in the world.  But before they can successfully mentor you, you have to be willing to learn.  To retrain your brain.  To better understand how your brain works in conjunction with your own core self (i.e. your soul).  To let go of old ideas that aren’t working and be willing to change, grow, remember, and understand.

I said in the second essay of this book — “The Spiritual Kitchen” — that I wanted to talk to you about the beginning of the spiritual journey.  The beginning for everyone must be the first phase of the Peace Sequence: Education.  There’s no other way, at a biological and scientific and practical level, for you to build your intuition or your ongoing relationship with your angels and God.  This is the only “Secret” you really need to know.

As you gradually expand the number of tools you can access in your brain’s 4D/3D toolkit, mysteries of Divine Love will begin to come to you.  You won’t have to go out looking for them.  You’ll discover them on your own doorstep.  The Spiral Path will begin to look less and less like a place “out there” and more and more like the kitchen of your very own home.  The universe will speak to you in the smallest of shy voices, and at the same time it will boom out in songs that only the heart can understand.

Don’t worry.  You’ll know it when you hear it.

Good luck to you, and many blessings!

Love Jen

***

Addendum posted April 30, 2017: A recent blog post on Scientific American’s website by psychology professor Rachel Wu describes some of her observations on how learning really works. I hope you find her “six secrets” interesting!

TBM41: Preparedness in the Spiritual Kitchen

The final spiritual practice I want to talk about is Preparedness.  Preparedness is one of the most important tools available to you in your quest to balance the 4D needs of your soul with the 3D needs of your body.

When I was growing up, I spent several years in Brownies and then Girl Guides.  Part of the Guiding motto was to “always be prepared.”  This, as it turns out, was excellent spiritual advice.

Before I say more, I want to emphasize that when I say “Preparedness,” I’m not in any way talking about “preparing your soul to meet God.”  The idea of preparing your soul is a religious claim, a claim based on the idea that your soul is corrupt and needs to be saved.  Me, I think your soul is good and doesn’t need to be rescued because it was never lost in the first place.  (Silly me.)

I’m talking here about something quite radical in spiritual circles: the idea that building your intuition and being in full relationship with God requires you to pay attention to and honour many of the small, practical, everyday concerns you may be taking for granted at the moment.

Preparedness, as I’m describing it here, is strongly linked to your capacity for common sense.  Common sense can be defined as the practical result of listening to your own intuition.

In the analogy of the Spiritual Kitchen, Preparedness is exactly what it sounds like.  It means being organized in the kitchen, keeping track of supplies you need to buy, cleaning up dishes you’ve used so they’re ready for the next recipe, remembering where you’ve stored your less-commonly used pots and pans, and taking overall responsibility for the smooth functioning of the kitchen.

dream kitchen

My dream kitchen

Preparedness in this sense is not a thought experiment.  It’s not a mystical practice of trying to reach out with your superior meditative skills to suss out the ideal Platonic Form of God’s own divine recipes.  What we’re talking about here is remembering to put toilet paper on your grocery list.

Preparedness is all about having the sense to keep toilet paper in the bathroom, milk and bread in the fridge, gas in the car, and some basic tools in the cupboard so you can fix things instead of throwing them out and buying new ones because you’ve never taken the time to learn the difference between a Robertson #2 and a Phillips #3.

Preparedness means you’re willing and able to look after the practical everyday needs of yourself and your family.  It means you’re prepared for the occasional small emergency.  It means you have actual physical, practical stuff on hand (like a first aid kit, a sewing and mending kit, a basic toolkit, a few emergency canned goods, an extra set of house keys, a list of important contact numbers, and accurate financial records properly filed in one convenient place) so you can deal swiftly and effectively with normal household accidents instead of standing there wringing your hands in panic and despair and waiting for God to step in and “fix it” for you.

In other words, it’s your willingness to take personal responsibility for your everyday needs.

Note that you’re not being asked to prepare for every conceivable emergency.  And you’re not being asked to keep enough medical supplies on hand to run a field hospital.  And you’re not being asked to keep a year’s worth of canned goods on hand.  These choices would amount to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, hoarding, and a complete lack of common sense.  Preparedness is the “sweet spot” where you have the basics on hand without crossing the line into hoarding.

I keep a sewing kit in my apartment.  I have the basic things I’m likely to need in order to sew on a button or mend a hem.  I have several spools of thread in colours that match my wardrobe.  Do I have a spool of thread in every colour? No.  I don’t need every colour.  I only need the colours I’m likely to use on a regular basis — black, brown, green, blue, and assorted beiges.  The colours in your sewing kit would be different from mine because you have different colours in your wardrobe.

I make no claim to being an expert sewer.  For expert repairs, I know a good tailor.  But I can — and should — look after my own clothes to the best of my ability.  When I take the time to properly care for my clothes, I’m showing my respect for the gift of the nice clothes I have, clothes that help me feel like “me,” clothes that keep me warm, clothes that help me look presentable at work, clothes that contribute in a small but relevant way to my daily happiness.  I’m saying to God that I don’t take my clothes for granted.  I’m saying to God that anything worth having as a 4D-soul-in-human-form is worth caring for.  I’m saying I’m not “too good” or “too important” to learn how to use a sewing needle or a Robertson screwdriver to the best of my ability.  I’m saying that my work as a mystic and channeller can wait a few minutes while I hang up my freshly laundered sweaters and clean the toilet, inside and out, so I feel better about the space I’m living in.  I’m saying that all these small things matter to my soul.

A few weeks ago, I did something kinda dumb.  I left my headlights on all day while I was at work.  When I came out, my car wouldn’t start.  And I don’t belong to a car owner’s club like C.A.A. or A.A.A. because I can’t afford it.  But I do try to be somewhat prepared when it comes to car ownership.  So I keep a few tools in the trunk.  And a couple of old blankets (because I live in Canada).  And an old waterproof jacket in case I have to stop at the side of the road in bad weather.  And a set of jumper cables.

As soon as I realized I’d drained my car battery by mistake, I jumped out of the car and flagged down my co-worker.

“Can you give me a boost?”  I asked plaintively.

“Sure,” she said.  “But I don’t have jumper cables.  Do you?”

“No problem,” I said.  “I’ll just pop the trunk and get them out.”

This is when I discovered that in newer car models equipped with computerized systems you can’t do DIDDLY SQUAT when the battery is dead.  You can’t get your computerized ignition key out of the ignition.  You can’t use the trunk release to pop the trunk.  And you can’t crawl into the trunk from the back seat because the pass-through release is inside the trunk.

What were these Pontiac engineers thinking?  That nobody was ever going to drain the battery and need the tools in the trunk?

Fortunately, in the inside pocket of my purse, I carry an extra house key and an extra key for the manual locks of my car because every once in a while I’m distracted and I do something dumb, like lock myself out by mistake.  And I figure I should carry the basic tools to fix my own minor mistakes.  The spare key saved my butt on this occasion and got me into the trunk.  Within a few minutes, my friend and I and a kind Good Samaritan (who happened to be a licensed mechanic) had my car fully charged and ready to go.

Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s just part of life.  And everybody has unexpected emergencies to deal with.  Even when you’re on the Spiral Path.

So make life easier for yourself, your family, and your guardian angels.  Be aware that Preparedness is a sound and loving spiritual choice, not something to be dismissed as a sign of spiritual weakness or a lack of faith in God.   When you choose Preparedness as a spiritual practice, you demonstrate your willingness to be part of LIFE while you’re here on Planet Earth, part of the process of living and making mistakes and learning and growing and helping each other to the best of our ability.

And man, am I ever grateful to the guy at the Canadian Tire service centre who cut me that new car key!  You saved me an expensive service call I couldn’t afford.  You made a real difference in my everyday life.

Sometimes the smallest practical gifts add up to the biggest blessings we can imagine.  And sometimes the lack thereof leads to greater suffering than we could ever suppose in a our busy, take-it-for-granted, non-prepared modern lives — as some of those wise, old fables about nails-being-lost-from-horseshoes remind us.

You just never know where the turning points on the Spiral Path will be  . . .

 

TBM40: What Sheldon Cooper Can Teach You

When the writers and producers of the hit TV comedy The Big Bang Theory first envisioned the character of Sheldon Cooper, I’m sure their main goal was to craft a truly funny show.  I’m sure they couldn’t have known their blend of spot-on writing and Jim Parson’s brilliant acting would end up creating an iconic portrait of the human brain’s Darwinian Circuitry.  But just as the writers of The Big Bang Theory are always referencing some of my favourite series — series such as Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Wars — I’m going to reference their Sheldon Cooper character as a way to speak accurately about the realities of the human brain.

Wind Turbines (c) Jamie MacDonald 2009.  Used with permission of the artist.

Wind Turbines (c) Jamie MacDonald 2009. Used with permission of the artist. Every time I see a wind turbine, it reminds me of the ruthless logic of the brain’s Darwinian circuitry.

Jim Parson’s portrayal of theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper is hilarious because it’s 100% accurate in scientific terms.  The humour works because the science works.  In this case, the science they’re showing (albeit unwittingly) is the science of a brain that’s operating entirely on its 3D Darwinian Circuitry without benefit of the soul’s gifts of empathy, heart, and dignity.

I know it sounds really hard to believe that a person can function at all without using every part of the brain.  We assume a person can function with only one kidney or one leg, but it never occurs to us to ask whether the same analogy applies to the brain.  We tend to think of the brain as a single organ — either a whole brain that functions wholly and properly or no brain at all — so we give people the benefit of the doubt with regard to their internal thinking processes.   We assume that if they can do all the basics — go to school, get a job, make everyday decisions — then their brains must be operating the way they’re supposed to.

But there’s a problem with this assumption: the basic tasks of going to school, getting a job, and making everyday decisions require the brain to use only one “software suite,” whereas it actually has two.  Basic tasks require the brain to use only its Darwinian Circuitry, a “suite” of software devoted solely to 3D biological survival.  The brain’s Darwinian Circuitry carries the programming for all things related to your body’s biological needs — food, water, clean air, sleep, protection from the elements, protection from predators, procreation (which is more optional than most people think), and relief from pain.  In our culture, school and jobs and money and status are regarded by the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain as essential tools for survival.  So anything to do with money and status are given extremely high priority by the Darwinian Circuitry, even it means pursuing a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, as our character Sheldon Cooper has done.

So efficient is the Darwinian Circuitry that it can carry out important survival tasks without any input at all from the brain’s Soul Circuitry.   Of course, without input from the soul, survival tasks won’t be carried out with empathy.  Or with trust.  Or humbleness.  Or gratitude.  Or humour.  Or anything resembling conscience.  But they’ll be done, by god, and they’ll be done with the viciousness and cold logic of an S.S. death camp commander.

These are the kinds of selfish, conscience-free behaviours that idiot atheists such as Richard Dawkins have promoted as the “truth” about human nature. I see a lot of similarities between Richard Dawkins, philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and the Christian Apostle Paul.

Dawkins has coined the phrase “the selfish gene,” and at a certain level the label is accurate.  There are stretches of genetic material in our DNA that are meant to boost our awareness of our individual survival needs.  Otherwise how would we instinctively know how to run away from danger?!  But these are not the only kinds of coding we have in our DNA.  We also have coding for unselfish traits.  We also have coding for traits such as empathy, trust, humbleness, gratitude, humour, and conscience.

In the language of personality theorists (a branch of psychology), we have to be able to account for the five universally observed dimensions of personality — Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness — and we have to be able to account for all five of these dimensions in the face of aggressive arguments from behavioural psychologists and evolutionary biologists that human beings are nothing more than a collection of selfish genes seeking to reproduce themselves in the most efficient way possible.

So here’s how it actually works.  The Darwinian Circuitry of your brain is responsible for expressing traits that fall within two of the five dimensions: Neuroticism and Agreeableness.  The Soul Circuitry of your brain is responsible for expressing the other three dimensions: Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness.

Yeah.  It really is that simple.

Sheldon Cooper is an absolutely perfect representation of what happens to a human being’s behaviour and relationships when he falls into the trap of relying exclusively on choices that score very high on the Neuroticism and Agreeableness scales, and very low on the Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness scales.  He becomes, well, he becomes a Sheldon.

This package of traits is distinctive and highly recognizable.  You get a person who’s highly controlling; perfectionistic; tense around other people; resistant to sudden change; inflexible; always “right”; quick to anger; thorough but lacking in imagination; socially compliant but lacking in genuine empathy; obsessive or obsessive-compulsive; politically conservative or right-wing; and rigidly obedient to the Law (dogmatic).  The latter trait — rigid obedience to the Law — is especially important to understand in its proper context as a Darwinian trait because it’s often wrongly confused by researchers with traits from the Conscientiousness dimension.

The Darwinian Circuitry of the brain is very good at what it does (when it’s in balance with the Soul Circuitry) but on its own it’s very “black and white” in its thinking.  It looks for simplistic “Cause and Effect” patterns.  It looks for rigid “laws” that can be applied quickly and easily in all situations.  The Darwinian parts of the brain “recognize” Materialist philosophy and codified religious texts and scientism (that is, treatment of scientific thought as an infallible religion).  There’s NO capacity in these parts of the brain for processing complex emotions such as empathy, humbleness, courage, and forgiveness.  On the other hand, logic and law are elevated to the status of the divine.  You can see these patterns plain as day in Sheldon Cooper’s self-absorbed devotion to pure logic.

If you’re familiar with the Big Five personality theory, you’re probably saying to yourself that I’ve got the Agreeableness dimension all backwards and I obviously haven’t read the material carefully.  I’ve read the material, and I think the scale for Agreeableness has been written backwards.  High scorers on the Agreeableness dimension are harder to sort out in research studies because status addiction affects this dimension more than it does the other four.  For instance, generosity and altruism may be genuine (in which case they’re coming from the Soul Circuitry and belong on the Extraversion dimension).  On the other hand, generosity and altruism may be nothing more than status-addiction-in-sheep’s-clothing (which means they’re coming from the clever tactical centres of the Darwinian Circuit, and should stay right where they are on the Agreeableness dimension, since Agreeableness  is focussed on social strategies that enhance 3D biological health).

A philanthropist who can’t donate money to a worthy cause without seeing his/her name emblazoned in big letters on the outside of a new research centre is suffering from a severe case of status-addiction-in-sheep’s-clothing.  This behaviour deserves a high score on the “I’m-doing-it-to-survive-on-the-social-ladder” scale.

Giving, of course, is good.  If you’re giving from your heart and soul, you’ll have no trouble giving anonymously and forgoing any credit for your generosity.  It should be fairly obvious, though, that giving to others so you can earn yourself lots of status points is not so good from the soul’s point of view.

Poor Sheldon Cooper.  He can follow the rules of social conventions by rote, but he doesn’t understand them.  He doesn’t understand why he’s not supposed to call his twin sister “inferior genetic material.”  He doesn’t understand why Leonard wants to be with Penny in emotional, intimate, heartfelt ways.  He laughs when it’s socially appropriate, not because he gets the joke, but because he knows at a Darwinian level that he’s supposed to.  He’s a classic Platonic Philosopher-King who believes in his own superiority and not much else.

He’s busted from top to bottom.  But this doesn’t stop him from bossing other people around and using pure logic to abuse the people around him.

Not that Sheldon thinks he’s an abuser.  In his own eyes, he’s a really nice guy.

This is why he reminds me so much of the Apostle Paul.

 

Further Reading:

“The surprising downsides of being clever” by David Robson, BBC Future, April 14, 2015

“Will religion ever disappear” by Rachel Nuwer, BBC Future, December 19, 2014

“Teaching the children: Sharp ideological differences, some common ground,” Pew Research Center, September 18, 2014

 

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

Of all the spiritual practices that have been endorsed over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders, the one that’s been twisted almost beyond recognition is the practice of gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying that gratitude is a bad thing. In fact, gratitude as it’s practised by the soul is as important as breathing.

I’m saying that gratitude is so important to the hearts of regular people that bully after bully, tyrant after tyrant, has taken advantage of this deep need and twisted it — perverted it — to satisfy the status cravings of the tyrants.

Hence, we have a long history of psychopaths telling us things like this:

“You should be grateful I’ve given you the chance to die as a slave. These Pyramids are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be worthy before you die.”

“You should be grateful you’re one of the Chosen People. These bloodlines are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to rule over the world.”

“You should be grateful you’ve been saved by Jesus Christ. These sacraments are a tribute to God, and God will reward us for our obedience to his wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be saved in the End Times.”

And on a more personal level . . .

“You should be grateful for my superiority, woman. Without men, without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful to have a job with my company. Without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful for the gift of God’s grace. Without it, you’d be nothing.”

Needless to say, this is not what the soul means by gratitude.

There are countless examples of the perverting of gratitude in all cultures and time periods. No culture and no religious tradition is exempt from the tendency among status-addicted psychopaths to seize upon a person’s heart and suck up the gratitude like a vampire drinking from a straw. This is why so many religions start out as an expression of faith and end up as a form of worship. Worship is the perverted form of gratitude.

Despite the plethora of examples to choose from, the one that stands out for me as a sort of “symbol” or “archetype” of how NOT to do gratitude is the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 21:1 – 22:19). It’s pretty tricky to come out and tell the truth about a biblical tale that billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold dear, but I gotta say — this one biblical lesson has been used over the centuries to justify more crimes against humanity than we’ll ever know.

The writers (more accurately, the redactors) of the book of Genesis want us to accept a number of claims about the proper way to be in relationship with God. Despite the fact that Genesis was probably collated and redacted in the last part of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt,* the writers were very modern, very astute, in their understanding of human nature. They were not naive. They were not poorly educated. They were not simply misguided. They knew exactly what they were doing.

What they were doing was taking the ancient texts of early Judaism —  such as the codes of ethical conduct that now appear in Exodus — and creating a mythical “back-story” to make Jewish teachings more appealing to a “modern,” post-Alexandrian, Greek speaking Ptolemaic empire. It’s no accident that, in the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham and his descendants the rightful claim to all the lands “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). That’s a big hunk of choice real estate, real estate that by no coincidence Alexander the Great had already successfully conquered in the 4th century BCE (not that anyone in the Jewish canon ever breathes a word about Alexander’s conquest . . . )

I can live with megalomaniacal claims to land and territory. They’re nothing new in the history of tyrants and emperors. What I can’t live with is the claim that God would actually tell a man of faith to sacrifice both his sons for the sake of obedience to God. God would never do that, and God’s angels would never do that. To Mother Father God, the loving care of children is paramount

So first we have God telling Abraham it’s okay for him to disown and cast out his young son Ishmael, along with Ishmael’s mother, the slave Hagar. They get turfed into the desert, afraid and alone. But, hey, not to worry — they should be grateful for this abusive treatment, because God “will make a great nation of him [Ishmael].” Then we have God “testing” Abraham, telling him directly (that’s a claim for channelling, folks!) to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

So Abraham takes his son — the son he supposedly loves — to the mountain, and forces Isaac to carry the firewood up the slope, and then ties his son to the altar and raises his knife with every intention of killing him as a sacrifice to God.

Firewood (c) JAT 2014: Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God?

Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God? Photo credit JAT 2014.

Okaaaaaaaaaay. Let’s stop right there  Let’s not go on to the next part of the story, the part where an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells Abraham not to harm the boy. Let’s just think for a minute about the first part, the part where Abraham actually believes God has told him it’s okay to scare the living shit out of a vulnerable, trusting child. The part where Isaac is lying on the altar and it finally dawns on him that his father is going to murder him. The part where Isaac experiences all the precipitating factors for lifetime post-traumatic stress order, not to mention a lifetime inability to ever trust his father’s love or integrity again. What, you think Isaac’s gonna forget something like that?

Ah, but we’re not supposed to be asking questions like that, are we? We’re not supposed to be asking questions about Ishmael’s or Isaac’s feelings or their brain health. Instead, we’re supposed to be saying to ourselves, “Who am I to withhold anything from God’s messengers if Abraham, our chosen forefather, did not withhold his only son from God?” (Never mind the fact that Abraham clearly had two sons, not one.)

The editors of Genesis and several chunks of the New Testament want us to be saying to ourselves that obedience to God’s messengers (the prophets, priests, and eventually the Apostles) trumps everything, even charity and compassion towards our own children. Proper sacrifice to God demands, well, sacrifice. After all, sacrifice and gratitude go hand in hand. Don’t they? You’re grateful to God for the blessings in your life, so obviously you want to give God a sacrifice — something tangible, something that takes money or goods or food away from you and your family, or maybe something that takes away your health and your children’s health — but the main thing is you must willingly put a sacrifice on the altar so you can prove your humility.

‘Cause, yeah, it’s . . . like  . . . a totally crazy idea that you could just say thank you to God with all your heart and all your mind and all soul and all your strength, and that God would find your genuine gratitude a good enough response.

I’m certainly not the first person to point fingers at the horribleness of the Abraham-and-Isaac “wisdom teaching,” and I hope I won’t be the last. It’s just the stupidest idea imaginable to believe that God (who created billions and billions of galaxies) would actually want you to say thank you by abusing, enslaving, or humiliating your children. If you really want to show God how grateful you are, you can start by treating children well.

Jesus knew all this. Good luck finding any reverence for Abraham in the original teachings of Jesus (as witnessed in the Gospel of Mark and parts of the Letter of James).

The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths, Bath, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

Jesus once said (in writing!) you can’t expect a spring to pour both fresh and brackish water from the same opening (James 3:11). He said it this way because in a dry and arid terrain (such as Judea) fresh water is synonymous with genuine gratitude. It’s the source of life and healing, a blessing not to be taken for granted. Brackish water is synonymous with ill health and disease, and, by extension, diseases of human nature such as hypocrisy and deceit.

Just as you can’t expect a spring to give both fresh and mouldy water at the same time, you can’t expect to find the truth about relationship with God in the midst of a story about abuse, self-aggrandizement, and forcing somebody to submit to sacrifice.

Pick one — fresh or brackish. Then be honest about your choice. Pick either gratitude or worship — but not both, because they’re mutually exclusive.

This means you have to decide whether you can live without entertainment news (worship of status addicted stars) and professional sports scores (also worship of status addicted stars).

Just don’t pretend you’re so grateful for these people (e.g. famous pop stars) that you can’t imagine living without them. This isn’t gratitude. It’s plain ol’ status addiction wrapped up in a pretty package of fakey-fakey gratitude.

Tough words.  But necessary to understand if you want to find and stay on the Spiral Path.

Good news, though — you don’t have to give up the songs or the films or the sports activities that inspire and encourage you.  You just have to give up the worship!

* For more on the history of the writing of Genesis, please see the post entitled “The Book of Genesis.”

TBM38: Heroes, Derring-do, and Mothers

Yesterday* my son treated four of the women in his life — his girlfriend, his aunt (my sister), his cousin (my sister’s daughter), and me — to an afternoon showing of The Avengers, the new action-adventure blockbuster of the year.  I had a blast.

Her Shoes (c) JAT

Her Shoes

The movie theatre was mostly filled with men, young men, and boys.  Up near the front, though, two respectable middle-aged women — my sister and I — were having more fun than all the young lads combined.  For us, the super hero characters were old friends, characters we knew from our childhood summers, characters who had taught us a lot about courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust even though we thought we were just reading comic books during those tranquil summer days of our youth.

My sister and I were very fortunate that our parents decided to buy a small piece of rocky terrain in Ontario’s cottage country and build a simple summer cottage where we could all spend our summers together.  Our family cottage is the focus of some of my happiest childhood memories.

When I say the cottage is simple, I mean it’s simple.  The first part was built in the early 1960’s, and a small addition was added a few years later.  As with many cottages of the period, there’s no foundation.  The cottage is set on a series of concrete supports that lift it off the uneven granite terrain, but the cottage was built to suit the natural setting, not the other way around.  My mother designed it.  My father built it.  The family still spends restful days there every summer.  There’s just something about it  . . . .

When I was quite young, there was no indoor bathroom.  My father hadn’t yet got round to installing bathroom plumbing.  So we had an outhouse.  I can still remember the distinctive smell of lye and bathroom wastes.  Spiders — very large spiders, or so it seemed to me when I was five — loved to spin their webs in all the corners of the outdoor john.  My sister and I were afraid to go in there after dark, so our dad would escort us out with a flashlight and wait outside the door while we tried to pee in record time.

Summers were for simple fun.  There was no telephone.  The tiny TV could only pick up one channel on its bunny ears — the CBC affiliate in Peterborough.  And no computer, of course.  But there was the lake at the foot of the hill, the lake that gave us endless hours of swimming, diving, canoeing, rowboating, waterskiing, exploring.  On rainy days, we had a cupboard filled with games and art supplies to occupy our minds and talents.  Monopoly and Sorry.  Card games galore.  Drawing.  Inventing.  Giggling.  Complaining we had nothing to do, though obviously this wasn’t true.

Early morning was for reading.  Books.  Comic books.  Old favourites.  New favourites.  Dad would get up and light a fire in the cast iron stove — the sounds and the smells of the stove meant safety and comfort to us — and my sister and I would snuggle under the blankets of our bunk beds and read until Mom called us for breakfast.  I was in the top bunk.  Sometimes I’d stare up at the knots in the cedar planks of the ceiling, and I’d make up stories about the “pictures” I saw in the patterns there.

The stories I made up were always modelled on the action-adventure-mystery-fantasy stories I loved to read while I was growing up.  I wasn’t like most girls I knew.  I wasn’t interested in stories about animals who talked, or horses, or quiet household dramas.  From the earliest time I can remember, I wanted to read stories about heroes.  So when other girls were reading National Velvet, I was reading Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes.  It’s just who I am as a soul.

My parents allowed me to read subversive stories — stories about characters who bucked convention and did the right thing.  So DC and Marvel and Archie comics were okay with Mom and Dad.  In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, comics didn’t contain sexual content that was inappropriate for younger readers.  (I wouldn’t have understood such content even if it had been present.)  But there was plenty of mystery and suspense and action and derring-do.  More importantly, there were men and women who had to struggle against pain and loss and rejection in order to stay the course, in order to do the right thing.

These stories, as it turns out, were much better for my brain than anything I could have read in the Bible.

The Avengers is a film with terrific story-telling, story-telling that says something true about all of us.  It’s not going to win any Oscars, because it’s not meant to appeal to viewers’ status addiction, but it’s going to make buckets of money because it appeals to our hearts.

Are there lots of fight scenes?  Yes.  So I don’t recommend the film for children under the age of about 10.  Are the fight scenes the raison d’etre for the film?  No.  The film’s heart lies in its exploration of character — a bunch of quarrelling, “crazy” super heroes who can’t work together as a team until each finds his/her own courage within.

Yeah, it’s not a new idea.  Some of the oldest myths we have tell this story about the dogged pursuit of one’s own courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion even while one is tracking down the evil psychopathic tyrant named _______ (insert desired name of your choice) who is trying to steal other people’s lives and free will and courage.

Yeah, it’s an old-fashioned kind of story.  But these are the stories we need.

Of course, this is the very theme of the film, as expressed by the character Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson).  It’s a theme which needs to be repeated loudly and often: old-fashioned heroism never goes out of style.  Neither do old-fashioned stories.

Some things just can’t be improved upon.  Some stories are so good they deserve to be told again and again and again.  Like the story of God the Mother and God the Father, who long, long ago and far, far away began their own quest to know what Divine Love is and all that it can be.

Happy Mother’s Day to you, Mom!  Love those action scenes with the high heels! ;)))

 

*Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 on The Blonde Mystic

TBM37: Dreams – The Courage to Trust the Science of Sleep

One thing people on a spiritual path are very curious about is dreams. What are dreams?  Where do they come from?  Why do we have them?  What do they mean?  Does God send us messages in our dreams?

Sint Maarten 2014

Sint Maarten 2014

This is a huge topic, and I can’t answer these questions in a single post, but I’d like to point out a few things you need to know about sleeping and dreaming if you want to stay healthy while you follow the Spiral Path.*

The number one thing you need to know — based not on religious teachings but on a huge body of scientific research — is that you need to get a good night’s sleep (or a good day’s sleep if you’re a shift worker).  If you want to have a healthy brain, you need to set aside a single block of sleep time each day, a single block of uninterrupted time that’s 8 hours long or so.  Your brain requires this time because it does a lot of work for you while you’re sleeping.**

I’ll come back shortly to the question of people who need to get up several times in the night for compassionate reasons — for example, young parents or caregivers who are looking after someone who’s ill.  For the moment, I’m talking only about adolescents and adults who have a choice about their daily schedule and a choice about their nighttime activities.

Chronic sleep deprivation is currently wreaking havoc on the brains of people in our society.  Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating, but this is one of those instances where I have lots and lots of scientific research on my side.  So I don’t have to apologize for my strong statement about sleep deprivation.  It’s the honest truth.

I have no tolerance — absolutely none — for any spiritual or religious teaching that barrels over the realities of sleep health like a tank on a military mission.  I have no tolerance for any religious tradition that requires you to wake up part way through your sleep cycle so you can pray.  I fully understand people’s desire to be in sincere communication with God, but if you really want to be in sincere communication with God, then please respect the way God designed your brain, and please make sure you get the sleep time God wants you to get.

You’ll be able to hear God and God’s angels much more clearly if you honour the teachings that come to you through current brain research (even though such research seems to contradict the wisdom of ancient religious teachings).  There’s a reasonthat so many studies have linked sleep disorders to a whole slew of physical and psychological health disorders.  Chronic sleep deprivation and chronic sleep interruption (eg. sleep apnea) are as toxic to your brain’s health as chewing lead paint off an old wooden spoon.  You may not notice the effects at first, but you sure as heck shouldn’t be surprised when you start having health problems.  Health problems are a biological consequence of your failure to get long blocks of natural sleep.  If you already have a sleep disorder, then you know what I mean. When this major system of your body is “broke,” it ain’t pretty.

I’ve tried to emphasize on this site that everyone on Planet Earth is equal on the Spiral Path.  Everyone has equal access to the wonder of it.  Everyone has — or should have — equal access to the basic tools.  The basic tools — free will, education, self-discipline, courage, empathy, brain health, teamwork — don’t require lots of money.  They don’t require special rituals.  They don’t require obedience to religious laws.  But they do require trust — trust in the scientific realities of God’s good creation.

The need for natural sleep is one of the scientific realities of God’s good creation here on Planet Earth.  It’s a scientific reality that can’t be circumvented by religious or cultural laws, no matter how much we’d like to believe in our own ability to “rise above” such petty biological concerns as sleep.

I know, of course, that many ambitious individuals in this world think sleep is a nuisance, and, even more significantly, that sleep is a sign of weakness, a sign shown only by needy and pathetic underlings unworthy of the right to lead others.

These ambitious Type A individuals (as they used to be called) are the same human beings who have lost all (or most) of the connections between the Darwinian Circuitry and the Soul Circuitry inside their own brains.  Their brains are operating on a steady diet of status addiction, anger, contempt for others, narcissism, and denial.  They no longer need as much sleep as other people because, to be honest, their own brains have less work to do at night.

This isn’t a good thing, by the way.  It’s never a good thing when your own brain stops working the way it’s supposed to.  It’s not a sign of strength or superiority when you only need 4 hours of sleep each night.  It’s a sign that you’ve seriously fucked up your own brain.

Those who don’t sleep well also don’t dream well.  Did you know that many people don’t actually have dreams? Not ones they can remember, anyway.  Yeah, no dreams.  It’s more common than you think.  But most people who suffer from this kind of “dream disorder” don’t want to admit it out loud because they suspect, somewhere deep inside, that it isn’t biologically normal for a person to be “dreamless,” so to speak.

I’ve noticed a pattern over the years in the type of person who’s likely to confess he or she never remembers dreams.  The people I’ve personally known who are “dreamless” are all high-functioning people in their waking lives, people who are meticulous, perfectionistic, highly rational, and bulldog-like in their relationships with others.  These people mistrust sentiment, have little sympathy for the suffering of people they don’t know, hold politically conservative views, and cherish the values of duty, honour, obedience, and denial of pain.  In psychological terms, they would score high on the “Negative Emotionality” or “Neuroticism” dimension of the Big Five Personality scale.  They would also score high on the “Agreeableness” dimension of the Big Five.

These two dimensions — the Neuroticism dimension and the Agreeableness dimension — generate traits that are linked to the brain’s Darwinian Circuitry.  The other three dimensions in the Big Five model — Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness — are linked to the brain’s Soul Circuitry.

A human being whose brain is balanced and healthy will exhibit behaviours that seem, well, balanced across all five dimensions.  Such a person is open to new experiences, but not so open that your brain falls out; conscientious without being obsessive or controlling or perfectionistic; agreeable and willing to compromise with others, but not willing to be an enabler of addictive behaviours; comfortable in relationships with other people, but also comfortable spending some time alone (as when sleeping!); alert to surrounding situations and stressors, but not preoccupied or obsessed by them.

This is a lot to balance, and it’s very hard for your brain to maintain this balance if you refuse to give your brain the time and energy and nutrients it needs so it can sort and label and store and heal the data it receives every day through your many experiences.  Dreams are a significant part of the nightly sorting process.

Human beings are born with the capacity to have three different kinds of dreams.  Each does a different job.  But they all share one thing in common: they activate the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobes.  This is why dreams are accompanied by visual images.

The first kind of dream you can have is purely biological.  It’s the kind of dream nobody remembers clearly.  It’s a sort of visual record that your brain transmits as it’s doing its nightly housecleaning.  It’s a bit like an Excel spreadsheet accompanied by pictures on little Post-It notes.  There’s no coherent story line — it’s really just a bunch of important snapshots taken at different times during the previous day. These dreams aren’t especially memorable, and they don’t have much emotional content.  (Like an Excel spreadsheet with little pictures.)  Important and necessary, but not what you’d call juicy.

Second is the kind of dream that’s more personal, more emotional, and more memorable.  If you can remember your dreams, you’re most often remembering dreams from this category. When you have dreams of this kind, what you’re really doing is talking to yourself.  Your soul is talking “out loud,” so to speak, with pictures and words and actions.  Even more important, your soul is talking about emotions — honest feelings about choices you’ve made.  The soul is nothing if not truthful and honest.  So if your brain has made some choices your soul doesn’t like, your soul will pipe up while you’re asleep and will express feelings such as fear, anxiety, or a desire to do better (i.e. guilt).  (Yes, your own soul can be afraid of choices made by the Darwinian Circuit of your own brain.  This is called conscience.  If you stop listening to the voice of your own soul — and many, many people do — your brain will stop accepting input from the parts of the brain wired to help you express your Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion.  Your brain will also stop sending you output in the form of personal dreams.  You won’t have personal dreams anymore until you heal your brain.)

The third kind of dream is the kind of dream that’s experienced least often and is written about most.  The third kind of dream is the message dream — the direct communication that takes place between you and God, or between you and God’s angels.  Message dreams are only possible if you’re in an “open” state.

If you’re never in an open state (because you’ve chosen to reject input from the Soul Circuitry of your brain) you won’t get this kind of dream.  Message dreams can only be received by a brain that’s relatively healthy and balanced.  (Sorry — no exceptions.)  So-called “oracular dreams” that come to you after you’ve used drugs or alcohol or intentionally induced trance states DO NOT COUNT.  If you use outside means to try to receive a dream message from God, you’re likely to hear and see many fantastical things, but none of them will be messages from God.

Just because you can’t receive dream messages from God, it doesn’t mean God has abandoned you.  Far from it.  God never abandons anyone.  But you have to accept the scientific reality that a closed brain can’t receive clear messages — either awake or asleep — and you have to work around this particular form of disability. There are plenty of other ways that God can — and does — communicate with you.  If you can’t dream at present because your brain is in need of some serious healing, please be patient.  Help is all around you.

Last, I’d like to return to the question of sleep deprivation in situations that can’t be helped, such as feeding and caring for an infant at night.

A young infant has strong biological and emotional needs that must be met by the parents or caregivers, and in a case like this — where you’re getting up in the night because someone else needs you and because you care — God and your angels will lend you extra support.  You don’t have to ask for this support (though a prayer of thanks and gratitude is always appreciated!!).  All you have to do is get up in the night because your heart tells you it’s the right thing to do.  As long as you stay “in the zone” of caring and worrying about another person, God will look after the relevant wiring in your brain.

If, on the other hand, you’re getting up at night solely because you “have to” — solely from a sense of duty or obligation or feeling sorry for yourself — you won’t get the angelic support your body needs.  Why not?  Because you’re not being your true self — the loving, emotionally supportive person you’re capable of being.  God has free will, and God does not enable choices or behaviours that snuff out the messages of the soul and replace those message with ideologies of perfectionism, superiority, victimhood, or obedience to religious law.  So if you’re getting up in the middle of the night to recite traditional prayers so God will be properly “assisted and nourished,” you’re shooting yourself not in the foot but in the head.  You’re ruining your own sleep cycles — intentionally and on purpose — because you believe you’re “helping” God, but all you’re doing is making it harder and harder for you to ever hear God’s quiet voice in your life.

God doesn’t need this kind of “help.”  And neither do you.

One great thing about being asleep is the quiet.  Once you’re finally asleep, it’s quiet in the kingdom of your own biological head.  It’s in this place of quiet that God’s voice is most easily heard.

God the Mother and God the Father are very quiet and shy, you see.  They love to laugh and they love to sing, but they’re both very quiet.  They laugh and sing in some places, but in other places they’re the quiet of dew-laden rose petal, the quiet of the morning mist, the quiet of deep waters, the quiet of the sun’s rays silently bearing life to this wondrous planet we live upon.

If you’re very quiet and very open to the Heart of God the Mother and God the Father, you’ll feel the joy and tenderness of their embrace as a deep inner sense of comfort and safety that’s hard to describe.

I invite you to slip into quiet sleep tonight and feel the kindness and shyness of their love.

* Since I first wrote this post, there’s been a tidal wave of articles on the importance of sleep.  Here’s a sample of recent articles that have appeared on the BBC news site:
** For more information on what your brain is doing while you’re asleep, please see “Perchance to Prune” by Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli in the August 2013 issue of Scientific American.
Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2012 on The Blonde Mystic

TBM36: Fix the Brain, Love the Soul

If you want to fry your brain and turn yourself into a person who’s incapable of living a life filled with empathy, forgiveness, healing, and humbleness, you can choose to follow the instructions given by Neale Donald Walsch in his bestselling Conversations with God series of books.  Although Walsch apparently no longer claims his “dialogues” are channelled, he still maintains they’re “inspired” by God.  A lot of people have read these books and been gravely misled by his claims.  I ought to know.  I was once one of the naive spiritual seekers who trusted his words about non-judgment and re-creating myself and being part of a great Oneness that’s really just God experiencing himself in different ways.

In Book 2 of Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 1997), Walsch is musing on the question of how he should relate to disadvantaged people. His “inspired” dialoguing partner (i.e. God) says this in reply:

“Now, within that context, when you come across a person who appears, in relative terms as observed within your world, to be disadvantaged, the first question you have to ask is: Who am I and who do I choose to be, in relationship to that?

In other words, the first question when you encounter another in any circumstance should always be: What do I want here?

Did you hear that?  Your first question, always, must be: What do I want here? — not: What does the other person want here?

. . . the reason your relationships are in such a mess is that you’re always trying to figure out what the other person wants and what other people want — instead of what you truly want.  Then you have to decide whether to give it to them . . . . In this game of I’ll Trade You, you set up a very delicate balance.  You meet my needs and I’ll meet yours.

. . . [yet] the purpose of your Holy Relationship with every other person, place, or thing is not to figure out what they want or need, but what you require or desire now in order to grow, in order to be Who you want to Be.

That is why I created Relationship to other things.  If it weren’t for this, you could have continued to live in a vacuum, a void, the Eternal Allness whence you came.

Yet in the Allness you simply are and cannot experience your “awareness” as anything in particular because, in the Allness, there is nothing you are not.

So I devised a way for you to create anew, and Know, Who You Are in your experience.  I did this by providing you with:

1. Relativity — a system wherein you could exist as a thing in relationship to something else.

2. Forgetfulness — a process by which you willingly submit to total amnesia, so that you can not know that relativity is a mere trick, and that you are All of It.

3. Consciousness — a state of Being in which you grow until you reach full awareness, then becoming a True and Living God, creating and experiencing your own reality, expanding and exploring that reality, changing and re-creating that reality as you stretch your consciousness to new limits — or shall we say, to no limit (pages 157-158).”

This quote is the essence of what Walsch repeats in a barrage of clever words and cliches spread over many books.  Again and again he insists there’s no “right or wrong,” no objective moral Truth you must obey.  You are a spark of God, says Walsch (though I can’t say for certain that Walsch ever uses the Gnostic term “spark”) and your job is to decide who you want to be and then go into the world and continually re-create yourself without being afraid that you’re doing something wrong or immoral.  In fact, says Walsch, your only real responsibility is to embrace your “right to be right.”

But . . . if Walsch decries the human tendency to decide what’s right and wrong, then surely he would also object to a person who claims “the right to be right.”

Right?

Let me ask you this . . . What does it mean to you that Walsch uses no references to other researchers in his early books?  (I haven’t read his later works, so can’t say for certain there are no such references in his later books.) What does it mean that he offers no back-up for his theories from science?  Or from history?  Or psychodynamic theory?  Or biblical research?  Or archaeology?  Or pedagogical theory?  Or neuroscience?  Or even from the dubious annals of mysticism?

If Walsch isn’t a scientific researcher, and he isn’t a theological or religious scholar, and he says he isn’t even a bona fide channeller, then what the hell is he?  Where did he get his theories, and what is the nature of his own personal meta-choice?

What gave him the right to mislead readers and imply through deliberate repetition (not to mention the titles of his books!) that two consciousnesses are having a dialogue in written form through the medium of his books: the narrator (Walsch) and God?

Did God get a say in these books?  I’m thinkin’ not.  I’m thinkin’ that Walsch likes the sound of his own voice.  I’m thinkin’ that Walsch loves the story he’s created for himself about who God is and who you are.  I’m thinkin’ he’s created an internal fantasy world to explain to himself why he felt “a vacuum, a void” earlier in his life.  He’s come up with an explanation that works for him — an explanation that helps him avoid messy emotional issues like right and wrong, forgiveness, soul blueprint, empathy, and courage — and he’s telling everyone who’ll listen that he’s right about God and everybody else is wrong.

He’s also encouraging his readers to become self-absorbed, self-entitled, narcissistic brats who can be “anything you want to be” because fighting and clawing your way up the ladder of success is really just “the act of God being God . . . Me being Me — through you! (Walsch, page 159).”

A person who is continually redefining himself/herself — continually “re-creating” himself/herself, as Walsch describes it — is a person who has no strong internal sense of self.  From a neuroscience point of view, this is a dangerous thing.

The most recent issue of Scientific American Mind (May/June 2012) has an excellent article by Carrie Arnold called “Inside the Wrong Body.”  Despite the confusing title — the title makes me think of changelings! — it describes recent research into a little known human sense called interoception.  Interoception is the awareness of the internal state of one’s own body — that is, an internal sense of self.  Interoception relies on parts of the brain I’ve written of elsewhere in the context of boundary issues and relationships: the parietal lobes, the insular cortex, and the occipital lobes.  These are the parts of the brain you can see on my own brain scan as being highly active in the normal baseline state of just kinda hangin’ and being relaxed (the so-called default network).  These parts are normally active in my brain because I have a very strong internal sense of who I am and who I’m not. (Please see SPECT Scans of the Author’s Brain.)

When a person has difficulties with interoception (i.e. when the parietal lobes, the insular cortex, and the occipital lobes don’t work together the way they should in the healthy human brain) a number of dyfunctional behaviours arise.  Those who lack a strong inner sense of self are very poor at consciously noticing their own pain, thirst, hunger, body temperature, and emotions.  They don’t notice when they’re shivering with cold.  They don’t notice they should go to bed and get some sleep unless they look at the clock.  They often become obsessive about food and eating.  (Hence a strong link to anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and body dysmorphic disorder).  They don’t look after themselves unless they’re retaught as adults.  (Interestingly, in a strict ascetic religious community, these people would be hailed as heroes and saints for denying the needs of the body — another example of the differences between traditional religion, which I don’t endorse, and the soul-and-science-based faith which I do endorse.) 

Blowing with the Wind (c) JAT 2015

Blowing with the Wind (c) JAT 2015

 

An even more insidious issue arises from interoception difficulties, however.  As author Carrie Arnold reports, “Those who lack a keen awareness of their internal state also seem to be easily swayed by the opinions of others [emphasis added].  They may evaluate their goals and attributes based on how they think others perceive them rather than by their own standards (page 40).”

In other words, if you don’t know who you really are as a soul, if you can’t recognize yourself in a mirror, if you can’t stick to your own soul purpose and your own personal story, if you can’t work from your own inner set of sheet music and be proud of it, if you can’t see your own personal boundaries and your own deeply encoded sense of right and wrong, you’ll blow like a leaf in the wind for your entire adult life.  You’ll never feel safe, you’ll never feel grounded, you’ll never feel proud of who you are because you’ve never allowed yourself to know who you are as a soul.

You have a story.  You have a soul purpose.  It’s not something you can “create” or “invent” as you go along.  It’s hardwired into your DNA, and you can’t change it.  Neither do you want to change it if you’re living your life from the core of your own selfdom — your soul.  Your soul ain’t’ broke.  So why try to fix it?  It’s just your biological brain that ain’t working so hot.  Fix the brain, love the soul.  That’s one of my mottoes.

Neale Donald Walsch wants me to believe that God has given me the gifts of Relativity, Forgetfulness, and becoming a True and Living God.  Thanks very much, Neale, but I’m real happy with my gifts of objective, non-relative, scientific reality, combined with full remembrance of God’s divine love and complete knowledge of my humbleness and courage and worthiness as one unique child of God among trillions and trillions of angelic children.

Panentheistic Oneness is seriously overrated.

 

TBM35: "The Right To Be Right?"

Two weeks ago I met with a woman named Linda who had asked me to do a Soul Purpose reading for her.  I spent only 20 minutes talking with her face to face, but I can still feel the knives of anger and righteousness she stuck in my heart.

My meeting with Linda was a timely reminder of what it feels like — emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually — to try to talk to someone who is filled with righteous anger.  You may as well be talking to a brick wall.

Let me describe this brick wall.  It’s a wall that a person, either male or female, chooses to build brick by brick, layer by layer, inside his or her own brain to keep out all data, all memories, and all learning experiences related to empathy.  This brick wall is a conscious construct.  It is not, as so many people would like to insist, an involuntary process or a fluke of nature except where documented major head injury is involved (eg. a car accident, an assault, or a Phineas-Gage-type occurrence).  The brick wall is built on purpose because the person in question has decided he or she doesn’t want to “hear” or “see” any information that would inconveniently contradict an internal set of beliefs.

The brain, as I’ve discussed before, operates like a symphony orchestra that needs both the sheet music (your meta-choice*) and the conductor (you and your conscious will, choices, and actions) to keep everything running smoothly.  The brain cannot hold itself together without a solid set of sheet music for all the parts to follow.  If you don’t give your brain an opportunity to work from the sheet music you were born with (your own Soul Purpose and Soul Blueprint), it will make up a set of sheet music.  It will invent something.  It will pick a story — a set of beliefs, a set of software instructions — and it will cling to that story for the simple scientific reason that any software is better than no software as far as the brain is concerned. 

A brand new CPU loaded with all the latest memory and video card and wireless capability is a useless piece of junk until goal-specific software is loaded.  The software tells the hardware how to handle incoming data, how to assess it and organize it and store it and use it.  Without the software package, there’s no interface between the data and the hardware, no “meta-choice” to guide the processing of huge volumes of data.  There’s no framework.  There’s no sheet music.  There’s no internal cookbook.  There’s nothing to guide the processing.

The brain must have a coherent set of sheet music to follow.  Otherwise, it can’t decide what to do with the vast amounts of data that come into the human brain every day — data from your hearing and your seeing and your movements and your relationships, etc.
  
The brain can’t keep everything.  There just isn’t room.  So it has to “triage” all the incoming data.  It has to rank the data in terms of relevance and usefulness.  It does this by comparing data at almost lightning speed to your internal software package, your internal set of sheet music, your internal set of beliefs.  It compares the data to your meta-choice and then decides what data to keep (and where to store it) and what data to dump with the nightly trash pickup.  (When you sleep, your brain is supposed to do its nightly mopping up of unwanted connections between brain cells — which is why you need a good night’s sleep every night if you want your brain to stay healthy.**)

So you can see why the story you tell yourself inside your own head is so important.  The story you tell yourself about your own life — your meta-choice, your sheet music — is guiding the way in which your brain builds itself.

In other words, inside your own head, “your wish is your command.”

If you say endlessly to yourself that nobody loves you and nobody treats you fairly and nobody listens to you and you have a right to be angry and vengeful, then your own brain will respond at a scientific level to preserve the “truth” of your belief system.  Your brain will do what you’ve told it to do.  It will triage all incoming information.  It will keep all data that seems to “prove” your belief that you’re a victim.  It will dump everything else in the trash bin.  At a scientific level, you literally won’t even “hear” or “see” the neighbour who is treating you with kindness.  You’ll hear and see only what you want to hear and see, instead of what’s actually there. The brick wall you’ve erected around the Soul Circuitry of your own brain has no doors or windows in it through which you can feel another person’s heart.  So you believe your own propaganda, and you walk around telling anyone who’ll listen how unfair life is.  It’s like you’re living in your own little fantasy world.

November 5th Delphinium

I found this lone delphinium blooming away in the garden on November 5, 2014. No self-respecting Ontario delphinium flowers in November when the nights are cold and the leaves have already fallen (as you can see in the background). This perennial blooms in the warm weather of Ontario summers. Right? If you’re determined to be right, you’ll have to conclude that I doctored this photo. After all, delphiniums just don’t do that, right? It’s not normal, right? For the record, I didn’t doctor this photo. Photo (c) JAT 2014

It took me years to understand this simple biological reality.  It took me years to understand that a person who has chosen righteous anger as a personal belief system is impervious to divine love.  It took me years to understand that the last thing a righteous person wants to hear is anything resembling objective Truth or objective reality.  His or her brain simply can’t handle it.

I’ve seen it said again and again by well-meaning (but untrained) spiritual teachers that if you always treat other people with unconditional kindness and never challenge other people’s beliefs (“turning the other cheek”), they’ll feel the truth of your love and they’ll be changed by it because everyone is already trying as hard as they can to be loving.

This.  Is.  Bullshit.

I treat everyone with unconditional forgiveness, but this requires me to be honest about their actual meta-choices.  When I meet someone like Linda, whose meta-choice is righteous anger — in other words, someone who has an entrenched belief that “she has a right to be right” — I stop talking.  I don’t try to persuade.  I don’t try to cajole.  I don’t try to sweet talk.  There is nothing I can say that will penetrate the brick wall.  I will defend myself.  I will speak honestly in my own defence (as I did by e-mail when I got home from my painful meeting with Linda).  I will speak honestly in defence of others.  But I will not tell people such as Linda that all their beliefs are worthy of respect when some of those beliefs are abusive.  Some belief systems really suck.  It’s naive and not very loving for those on a spiritual path to pretend otherwise.

It’s not my job as a spiritual teacher to spare people’s feelings by hiding the Truth.  If you want a teacher who’ll never ask you to wrestle with your own mistakes and your own belief systems, there are plenty of them out there who’ll take your money and never teach you a darned thing.  Learning means change. Learning is only possible when you decide for yourself that you want to take charge of your own brain and your own ability to change.  Learning means you’re willing and able to deal with new data that conflicts with your existing belief system.

No one has “a right to be right.”  No one.  This is why we have bodies of law written over time by large groups of people on a consensus basis (one hopes).  No one is infallible.  Not even famous religious leaders you may be thinking of.  Democracy flourishes wherever individual leaders understand that the road to hell is paved with libertarianism.

As a human being, does God give you any rights?  Of course.  You have a right to be you (the real you, meaning your soul self, with your own individual quirks and traits).  You have a right to use your own free will.  You have a right to learn, change, grow, and love.  You have a right to consider yourself worthy as a child of God.  But you don’t have the right to assume that you have all the answers and that you don’t need anybody else and that you can do whatever the hell you want in this world because you think you’re right and everybody else is wrong.

Right now the newspapers are filled again with stories about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian psychopath who consciously set out to prove his “right to be right” last year by killing 77 strangers in cold blood.  Perhaps you think this example is too extreme.  After all, many people have filled their own heads with righteous anger, but only a few of them have gone out and actually killed someone.

Well, you know, physical assault and homicide aren’t the only ways to bring suffering into the world.  Emotional and spiritual and intellectual assault also bring suffering into the world, and these effects far outlast most physical effects.  Right now, Anders is trying to use his very public trial to continue inflicting harm on others.

People like Anders Breivik don’t turn themselves overnight into mass murderers or serial killers.  They start small with righteous anger, and when they’re not challenged or corrected, their behaviour escalates.  The belief system is allowed to grow like a cacophony of brittle drums inside the brain of “poor little Anders who must never be told he’s made a mistake because it might wound his self esteem.”  Meanwhile poor little Anders never learns how to deal with his own emotions, and, more importantly, his own mistakes.  He never learns he has a much more effective blueprint or set of sheet music inside his own DNA.  He never learns how to use his own brain.  So it runs amok, lost in the fantasy world of righteous anger he himself has created, unable at a scientific level to cope with any “conflicting data” at all.

Note, however, that Anders Breivik is not a stupid man.  He’s fully capable of planning and organizing and getting what he wants.  He knows what he’s doing.   He knows how to deceive. He knows how to use anger.  He knows how to manipulate other people’s guilt.  He knows how to use technology.  He knows how to use geography.  He is not mentally incompetent in a medical sense.

He’s just very, very sure of his own rightness. 

 

* For more on intent and meta-choices, see “Knowledge” versus “Truth” and Pelagius and Personal Responsibility

** For more on the importance of sleep to your brain’s health, please see Jason Castro’s article called “Sleep’s Secret Repairs” in the May/June 2012 issue of Scientific American Mind.  See also “Perchance to Prune” by Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli in the August 2013 issue of Scientific American.

TBM34: Trekking With God on Planet Earth

 

Today is Easter Sunday, a day when many people around the world reflect on the mysteries of resurrection, healing, transformation, and new growth.  I’d like to join this discussion by sharing with you a powerful moment of insight and poetry that came to me one day last fall when I was poring over a book given to me by my son.

The day he brought the book over, he was coming because I was hosting a birthday lunch for my sister.  He showed up with a card and present for my sister, but he also arrived with a gift for me — a book he thought I’d really enjoy.  And he was right.  (Male intuition at work.) It’s called Across the Tibetan Plateau: Ecosystems, Wildlife, and Conservation by Robert L. Fleming, Jr., Dorje Tsering, and Liu Wulin (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007).  It’s filled with beautiful photos and informative text about successful efforts to conserve habitats and animal species in Tibet.  Learning about these ecosystems is my idea of good time.  I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the wonders found in nature.

The chapter about the wet southeast of Tibet (who knew it wasn’t all mountains and high desert?) caught my attention with the truth it tells about all Creation.  This is the experience of life I’d like to share with you. PageLines- 081008151104-large.jpg

Through the southeast region of Tibet flows a river called the Yarlung Tsangpo, a river which has carved one of the deepest gorges on Earth.  At the bottom of this gorge, the biome is tropical, with wild bananas and bamboo and plentiful rain.  At the top of the peaks that lift above the gorge, the zone is perpetual ice and snow.  If you start a journey on the Himalayan heights and walk down to the river, you’ll pass through “five biological zones of flora and fauna within a distance of 60 kilometers (37 miles) (page 18).”   In a distance that can be hiked in two or three days (if you’re in good shape) you’ll experience mountain-tundra, then cold-temperate, then warm-temperate, then subtropics, and finally the lush tropics of the river valley.  Wisely, this experience has been preserved within the Medog Nature Preserve.

Vastly different biomes hover next to each other here in a way we don’t normally experience on Planet Earth.  Usually we have to travel hundreds of miles to experience a completely different habitat (at least, in Canada we have to!).  But in this mysterious corner of Tibet, we can traverse many of Asia’s natural wonders within a few short miles.  It’s deceiving.  Where does one biome end and another begin?  Where does subtropical turn into warm-temperate?  Is there a black-and-white line on the ground, a clear-cut division between one habitat and its neighbouring zone?  No.  The changes are subtle.  The zones blend slowly into each other.  All you really notice as you’re descending the path is that eventually certain plants and trees become more and more scarce until they finally disappear; yet the loss is accompanied by change and new growth as they’re replaced by other equally beautiful (but different) plants and trees. As the vegetation changes, so do the resident populations of birds and animals and insects.  Each species lives within the ecosystem it’s best suited to.  It’s natural and harmonious and perfect.

The universe we live in, with its vast expanses of space and energy and matter, is a lot like the Nature Preserve in the Yarlung Tsangpo River region of southeastern Tibet.  Within God’s Creation lie many different ecosystems, many different biomes.  But, as a trekker in Tibet would discover in walking the long path, there are few clear dividing lines between these biomes, and no one biome is better than another.  All are mutually interdependent.  All are equally beautiful — equally beautiful but very different from each other.

When we choose to incarnate here on Planet Earth, we’re choosing to live for a temporary time in one of God’s many biomes.  You can take your pick as to which biome you think we’re living in while we’re walking through this 3-dimensional corner of Creation.  Some would imagine we’re living in the lush tropical zone.  Some would be convinced we’re all at the top of a cold and barren Himalayan mountain.  Still others would imagine we’re somewhere in the middle.  It doesn’t really matter where you think we are right now.  All you really need to know for sure is that all living creatures on Planet Earth are sharing a temporary journey of discovery and growth in a biome that’s different from our usual Home, but no less beautiful and no less important to us than our usual spot in God’s Spiritual Kitchen.

Spring Sky (c) JAT 2014

Spring Sky (c) JAT 2014

Life on Planet Earth is filled with beauty and pain and sacredness.  But life here doesn’t end when our physical lives reach the end of their temporary measure.  Like the trees and plants in the Tibetan gorge, there are limits to the places our physical bodies can reach and grow.  A fig tree cannot grow in mountain tundra, while the cool-footed rhododendron sags in tropical heat.  This is all right with God. There is no judgment from God in the death of the physical body, a death that must arise when it’s time for the trekker to pass into the biome where he or she more naturally belongs.

Does it hurt when a person makes this trek to another place?  Well, that depends.  Does it hurt physically to make the trek?  Well, no.  It doesn’t hurt physically.  It feels kind of weird (I’m told by my angels) but the journey doesn’t last long.  God the Mother and God the Father swoop us up in their loving arms and carry us Home almost before we know what’s happening.  There we’re greeted by the people — the angels — who are closest and dearest to our hearts.

Does it hurt emotionally to make the trek?  Well, yes.  Of course it hurts to leave behind the people you love.  You miss your Earth-time friends as much as they miss you, because the heart is the heart is the heart.

So there’s a lot of crying on both sides of the path when someone makes the journey Home.  There’s joy but there’s also a lot of grief — for everyone involved.  But the journey has been accomplished and the soul is quietly proud. The soul’s senses are widened, the soul’s mind is broadened, the soul’s heart is filled with the knowledge and memory of love, a love that grows, like rare and precious flowers, in all the nooks and crannies of the strange place we call Planet Earth.

Blessings to you at this time of reflection and regrowth.  Always remember you are a true child of God, a person-of-soul filled with a courage and devotion you may scarcely remember in your present life, though God remembers.

God always remembers.

God knows how wonderful you really are.

TBM33: The Need for Dignity

Last week I wrote about small miracles like buying groceries with the help of your guardian angel because I figured, hey, people should know what it feels like to be “in the zone” even when there’s no emergency or sudden crisis.

So, of course, soon after I wrote the Miracles post I had to deal with an emergency . . .

(C) Image*After

“As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation'” (Mark 12: 38 – 40). Photo credit Image*After.

I work at a business where there often are only two staff members on duty. The business is owned by an older couple who don’t believe in spending money on surveillance systems or up to date phone equipment, but usually it’s not a problem for us because our clients are honest, above board, and old-fashioned.

A few days ago, while I was working with only one co-worker, Janet, a man entered and asked if he could use our phone to call his dad for a ride. Janet said okay. It went downhill from there.

Michael (whose name we know because he introduced himself right away) is an immense mountain of a man, the sort of fellow they might cast as Paul Bunyan for a film. He’s at least 6’4″ and packs a huge number of pounds on a hefty frame. His eyes are intelligent and piercing, his voice, booming. To say that Michael is physically intimidating would be an understatement.

And Michael decided that while he was waiting for his dad, he’d like to spend some time interrogating Janet and me.

I worked in the mental health field in a clinical setting for almost five years, so my alarm bells instantly went off. Michael was clearly mentally ill. But he was also trying very hard to intimidate Janet and me through verbal means, and we both felt threatened. We could have tried calling the police, but I’m not keen to involve the police in cases of mental illness unless there’s an imminent threat. My instincts — my intuition — told me he could be persuaded to leave the store voluntarily if he was treated correctly.

For the next fifteen minutes, I used every ounce of my training, experience, and intuitive capacity to stay “in the zone” while I tried to make a link at a heart level with Michael. I had no time to stop and ask my angels what to do. I had to trust in the fact that they were right beside me, guiding me. And I had to trust in the fact that Michael’s angels were right there, guiding me. My job was to focus 100% on Michael — on his face, on his voice, on his body language, on his emotional intent. The angels’ job was to fling “quantum packets” at me that would come out of my mouth as the words Michael most needed to hear.

I’ve seen people’s behaviour when they’re suffering from major depression. And the manic phase of bipolar disorder. And the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia. And OCD. And narcissistic rage reactions. But I’ve never seen anyone whose pattern is quite like Michael’s.

Michael informed me every chance he got that he has autism. I seriously doubt the accuracy of this diagnosis. In my humble opinion, Michael is suffering from an obsessive compulsive personality disorder, though I didn’t come to this conclusion until I’d had a chance to review his behaviour after he’d left. (He had plenty of narcissistic features.)

Michael is a person who’s absolutely desperate to feel some sort of real connection with other people, some sort of real empathy. His need is genuine. His method of trying to get it is dysfunctional and dangerous. He’s been going around confronting people, demanding to know whether they care or not that he has autism. When people are rude to him (as they usually are) he responds by leaving nasty messages on their answering machines. He told us he’s also considering the idea of death threats to make people pay for being mean to him.

Yeah. Scary stuff.

So Michael tried his schtick on me. He expected the usual response — somebody trying to placate him with soothing lies so he’ll just go away. (It’s not like you can use brute force to tell this guy to leave.) What he got from me, though, was different. What he got from me was the truth.

It’s very easy to tell the truth and not get trapped by lies when you already have a habit of speaking the truth from the heart. So I told the truth, which is what my angels were urging me to do. (I could “feel” this guidance deep in my gut.)

Michael tried and tried to find a way to trap me in a lie. Maybe you think I’m “interpreting” his intent in a way that’s convenient for me, but I’m not. His goal was to interrogate me and trap me in a lie so he could prove to himself that, once again, he had not found anyone who cares. He revealed this himself when the content of his interrogation shifted. Suddenly he seemed less confident in his verbal attack. He started to say things such as, “So you think I shouldn’t leave nasty messages anymore,” and the real kicker, “So you’re telling me the truth.”

Near the end, our conversation went something like this:

“So you’re telling me the truth.”
“Yes, I’m telling you the truth.”
“I don’t like this truth.” (I had told him a minute before that he’s responsible for the way he treats other people despite the fact he has autism.)
“I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“Can you change the truth?”
“No, I can’t change it.”
“But I don’t like it.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that. Other people have difficult things to deal with, too.”
“You’re an honest person.”
“Yes, I’m an honest person.”
“And you’re telling me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever meet an honest person” (as he was going out the door).

He actually said that out loud (surreal as it may seem) and I immediately thought of Diogenes travelling around ancient Greece in search of one honest man. (My son called the whole thing a Socratic nightmare.)

Michael’s problem, you see, is that he has an uncanny ability to sniff out the difference between truth and lies. He wants someone to tell him the truth from the heart — that is, truth spoken from a place of empathy and forgiveness, not anger and denial. Truth that gives him dignity and helps him believe in his own ability to make more loving choices. Truth that he can feel in his own battered heart. But people are afraid of him because he’s so big. So they don’t tell him the truth.

While he was standing there, I wasn’t afraid. (He could probably feel that, too.) I looked him in the eye and told him he’s a human being and a child of God and he can do better. The expression on his face was one of surprise. I don’t think anyone in his life has told him this before. But I believe it. So I said it.

Dignity is a powerful need for all human beings. Giving someone dignity is not the same thing as giving someone worship. Giving bows to the queen or the pope or your boss at work is a form of worship. Looking a mentally ill person in the eye and conveying with your whole heart your belief in his or her worthiness as a human being is dignity.

Telling someone that you care, while inside your own head you’re thinking they’re damned or weak or corrupt or full of sin or in need of true salvation or marked with the mark of Cain, is NOT giving dignity. It’s giving a friggin’ lie. Even if you don’t speak your judgmental thoughts out loud, your angels can hear them, and so can people like Michael.

Dignity comes from the heart. Dignity is received by the heart. Dignity is only possible where one soul says to another, “You and I are loved equally by God. Right now. In this moment. Together. We are both forgiven.”

When you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

God bless you, Michael.

TBM32: Three Spectrographs of Consciousness

The human brain is sometimes called the 3-pound universe, and for good reason. There’s a lot more going on in there than you realize.

Your brain is a one-of-a-kind creation, the one place in all Creation where you can be you, the one place where you actually get to decide what you want to think, feel, do, and create. It’s the place where you feel love. It’s the place where you feel your tears and your laughter. It’s the place where you experience your relationship with God.

But brains are more than just a bunch of uplifting words and pretty pictures. Brains are hard science. Brains are physics, chemistry, biology, and math. Brains are quantum theory — probability wave functions, conscious observer rights, non-locality, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and all the other forms of quantum weirdness you may have been reading about if you’re a science geek.

Hey, I’m a science geek, and proud of it. Blondes can have fun with quantum theory. Who says you have to be a white male German physicist (or theologian) to understand the real science that lies behind all Creation?

Why am I bringing up the topic of quantum physics? Because there’s one aspect of this field that has deep relevance to your everyday life as a regular person trying to walk the Spiral Path hand in hand with your guardian angels. The aspect I’m interested in is wave theory — the behaviour of probability wave functions. You need to have a basic understanding of wave theory (in a simplified form) so you can understand how your own sense of intuition works and why it sometimes seems to fail you.

Don’t worry — this isn’t going to be as scary as you think.

Take a careful look at the three diagrams below. The first is a schematic of the major kinds of choices made inside the biological brain of a typical adult Status Addict. The second shows the major kinds of choices made by an guardian angel (which would include you, as a person-of-soul, when your time on Planet Earth is complete). The third represents the major kinds of choices made by an adult Whole Brain Thinker — a person who’s relying more on input from his/her soul and less on the purely “Darwinian” kill-or-be-killed choices made by certain parts of the biological brain.


Each of the spikes on these “spectrographs of consciousness” represents two things: (1) a particular “radio channel” that your brain, operating as a wireless Blackberry-type device, can pick up, and (2) the strength of each “radio channel.” A short peak means there’s a signal you can pick up, but it’s not strong. A tall peak means there’s a signal you pick up clearly and consistently with little interference (almost as if the transmission tower is next door). The absence of a peak means your own personal Blackberry-brain can’t pick up this particular station at all, no matter how hard you try.

Compare the diagram of the Status Addict to the diagram of the Guardian Angel. The Status Addict, over time, has chosen to change his brain’s priorities so he can focus on getting more status points. This means he’s had to give up certain other choices. He’s had to give up empathy, forgiveness, and humbleness because these would interfere with his belief that he’s better than other people (i.e. his belief that he deserves more status). He’s decided to use the tools of denial, narcissism, anger, and contempt for others to prevent himself from feeling empathy, forgiveness, or humbleness. He’s practised using these destructive tools a lot. And now he’s so good at it, his biological brain has stopped generating any energy waves that would come across to other people as genuine empathy, etc. So now he can’t give empathy to others, but even importantly, for our purposes here, he can’t receive it, either. He has no channel left inside his biological brain where he can “hear” the intent of empathy. He can’t receive on this channel because he’s told his brain — repeatedly — to stop making this particular wave.

In wave theory, you see, there’s all this interesting stuff about waves being amplified and waves being quenched. If you take two tall empathy peaks and add them together, you get — surprise! — one combined peak that’s tall. If you take one tall empathy peak and add it to an equal-sized “trough” in the empathy spectrum, you get — oops! — invisibility. The trough cancels out the peak. So in the Status Addict’s brain, the trough in the empathy region of his spectrograph spells trouble for his guardian angel. His angel can send him all the empathy waves she wants, but his brain isn’t going to hear them. Because it can’t. There’s no channel there.

Meanwhile, the Whole Brain Thinker above has worked very hard to keep his empathy, forgiveness, and humbleness circuits well exercised. Sure, he still makes mistakes, and he still has some anger, narcissism, and denial to work on, but they aren’t very strong compared to his other choices. So they don’t interfere much with the incoming waves of empathy, etc., from his guardian angel. This man can “hear” his guardian angel loud and clear — NOT in the form of words, of course, because most people who are hearing actual words are suffering from hallucinations and need immediate medical care. But the Whole Brain Thinker can “hear” others (including angels) who speak the language of empathy and forgiveness and humbleness. He can both give and receive on these channels. These are the mysterious feelings of the heart.

In the case of our Status Addict above, his guardian angel doesn’t have much to work with, to be honest. I’ve shown small peaks for courage, self discipline, and service to others on the spectrograph above — as you’d see in the profile of a typical evangelical Christian who has listened to traditional Church teachings on humility. These three channels are the only channels where the guardian angel has any hope of being “heard” — and not very clearly at that. This person can go to church every day, say prayers for hours at a time, memorize the whole Bible verse by verse, and STILL not be able to feel God’s presence because he hasn’t built strong useable soul channels inside his own biological brain.

So who is responsible for this lack of useable channels? The status addict or God?

Well, the status addict is the one who holds the responsibility. Why? Because your consciousness (which includes your brain while you’re here on Planet Earth) is the only part of Creation that belongs entirely to you. It’s your own little Kingdom (as Jesus once called it). It’s your corner in God’s Spiritual Kitchen. It’s yours to cherish, yours to care for. It’s also yours to heal — with help from others, of course.

You may not want to hear this, especially if you’ve got to the point in your life where you’ve lost all control over your own thoughts, feelings, actions, and creativity (as happens to too many people, in my view). But healing follows insight. And insight follows facts. So you need to know the facts so you can figure out what to do with them.

Healing a brain that’s fallen into the destructive patterns of status addiction is no easy task. So unlike most of my theological peers, I promise no easy fixes for you if you decide to go out and look for God. Easy fixes are a favourite food for status addiction. So you can imagine what I think of faith healers’ promises! On the other hand, I can promise permanent emotional healing if you’re willing to slowly and patiently regain control of the parts of your brain that are causing you so much suffering. This may require medical intervention, but such intervention is okay with God and your guardian angels. There’s no shame in needing help. Everyone needs help! Learning to receive help with gratefulness and humbleness is a big part of the journey.

When you compare the spectrographs of the Status Addict and the Whole Brain Thinker, you may be tempted to say it’s impossible for the brain of a Status Addict to ever be transformed to the pattern of the Whole Brain Thinker. You may be tempted (as so many religious teachers have been) to claim the Status Addict was born this way, and nobody can change it, and you may as well resign yourself to it. You may be tempted to say that only a saint who’s specially chosen by God could ever manage to do all that hard stuff like . . . like . . . caring about other people every day.

Fortunately, this miraculous transformation is not restricted to saints. And it’s not restricted to those who seek help from ordained clerics. It’s open to anyone, because all of us are children of God, and all of us are equally worthy of God’s help as we struggle with the difficult challenges we endure as human beings.

Trust in the fact that inside your confused and miswired human brain is your true self — you as a soul — who already lives and breathes everything you see on the chart for the Guardian Angel. You, as a person-of-soul, DO all these cool things like empathy and forgiveness and service and humbleness and self discipline and courage. You DO! You may not remember today, and you may not remember tomorrow, but that’s okay — just hang onto this uplifting divine truth about you as a child of God.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. The brain science speaks far more loudly here than any religious text that’s ever been written. Science is one of God’s many languages. Don’t be afraid of it. The love and the science go together in one astounding package of wonder and mystery and awe and creativity (not to be confused with creationism, which is bizarre beyond bizarre).

What’s this? Talking about God the Mother and God the Father as if they’re brainiac scientists who know what they’re doing when they bring quantum waves and particles together in new creations that actually work?

Yeah . . . such a kookie idea.

TBM31: Miracles: Big Love in Small Places

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(c) Image*After

A while back I talked about intuition and how it works during a crisis.* Today I’d like to try to describe what it feels like when you use intuition as a normal part of your everyday life.

I suspect that if you gathered a group of, say, 100 people and asked each one to speak in private about an experience of Divine presence during an emergency, you’d get about 20 who’ve had a deeply personal experience of a comforting presence, and another 25 who know they got out of a scrape but aren’t sure how, and slightly more than half who attribute their escape to their own personal brilliance.

Still, there are a lot of people out there who’ve gone through something very scary and have felt, without even asking, the presence of a wise and loving angel, if only for a few life-changing moments.

We’ve been conditioned in our culture to accept that maybe — just maybe — God and God’s angels will “be there” for us during an acute emergency. So we pay attention to news stories about people who’ve defied incredible odds and somehow managed to survive. These are the events we call “miracles.” If you’re a person with an open heart, you can feel the reality of the miracle even if you can’t understand it with your logical mind. You can feel the reality of the miracle even if the Church dismisses it because no saints were invoked. You can feel the miracle even if the atheists insist you’re a gullible, superstitious fool.

It’s not easy in this culture to believe in miracles or in God’s loving intervention when you’re being attacked from all sides (including attacks from conservative Christianity). So it’s understandable that a person of faith might be pretty nervous about widening the net of miracles to include everyday activities rather than just emergency situations.

This is why I think this post may be more difficult for many readers to process than anything I’ve written so far — because this post is about everyday miracles, the miracles nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to acknowledge because the implications are so darned real.

Human beings have a knack for shifting their own thoughts and feelings to every place except the place where they’re standing right now. Psychotherapists have accurate labels for these destructive psychological habits. Among these habits are projection, denial, reaction formation, fantasy, displacement, suppression, intellectualization, and rationalization. These strategies are used by individuals to help them avoid being honest with themselves about their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and inner wisdom. In one way or another, each of these strategies is a form of lying — a form of lying to oneself.

On the surface, it seems a person who’s using projection or denial is lying to other people — and, of course, such a person is lying to other people. But before she can lie with malicious intent to other people, she has to be lying to herself with malicious intent. She has to be trying with all her might to ignore the inner wisdom of her own soul (which has no malicious intent).

Meanwhile, a person who’s trying to balance the complex needs of the 4D soul and the 3D body, who uses all parts of his or her brain instead of only some parts, who has a well-developed sense of intuition and timing, has no need to lie to him/herself. Why would he/she? The whole point of being a Whole Brain Thinker is that you can consistently weave the needs of heart, mind, body, and talent into a tapestry of courage, devotion, trust, and gratitude. Therefore there’s no need to engage in energy-wasting psychological defences such as projection, denial, etc. There’s no need to waste precious biological brain resources on building and maintaining a collection of lies. The brain therefore has more time and energy to spend on more important matters — matters such as improving your health by learning to pay attention to cues from your guardian angels.

I’ve had many years of practice in working with these cues. These cues don’t come into the brain and central nervous system the way you might imagine. The authors of many, many TV shows and films and books and religious myths have attempted to describe how these cues are experienced by “the chosen ones.” I’ve seen few authors who get it right, and those who do are usually writing about some other aspect of the human condition and stumble accidentally on the experience of intuition as it actually exists in us poor ol’ non-chosen slobs.

One of the few dramatic series to get it right is the recent 5-year story arc of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one). One of the few written pieces to get it right is the 1989 novella The Last of the Winnebagos by science fiction author Connie Willis. These stories pursue the very ordinariness of intuition, and the great transformative power of it, wrapped together within the borderlands of love that exist where two or more people open their hearts to each other.

It’s the ordinariness of intuition and the ordinariness of Divine intervention that most people just don’t want to hear about. They don’t want to hear about the “quantum Post-It notes” your guardian angels can attach to a bag of oranges at the grocery store so you pick up the bag that’s best suited to your own health needs. They don’t want to hear about angels helping you find a pair of shoes that fit. Or a shampoo that’s on sale. Or a newspaper that has an article you really need to read that day. But, in fact, this is the way intuition is supposed to work.

When I say, “quantum Post-It notes,” I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that literally. I mean that when I pass my hand slowly over the pile of bagged oranges at the grocery store, I can feel the one my angels want me to pick up. I feel it as a faint “aha” feeling. More like a creative impulse than anything else — a sense of knowing something is right. That’s it.

It’s NOT (as you might suppose) an experience of hearing voices or “seeing things” or feeling detached or “floaty” or “blissed-out” or “connected to all Creation” (as so many authors have speculated). I mean, I’m at the grocery store, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like I’m ascending on clouds of ecstasy or anything. I’m just buying groceries!

At a neurophysiological level, I suspect the brief “aha” feeling would show up (if it could be studied in me or others) as spikes of gamma brainwave synchronization. But neurophysiology aside, these intuitive cues from my angels are also accompanied by feelings of calmness, compassion, and trust (so oxytocin is probably also involved in the “aha” experience).

Weird, eh?

Weird it may be, but I can’t imagine my life without these daily intuitive experiences. Those who are close to me are used to me and my weird way of doing things. They just kind of roll their eyes when I say my angels pointed out a gorgeous $495 Anne Klein size 6 summer weight wool blazer marked down to $5 that fits me perfectly. (Don’t worry — I kept the sale tags in case anybody wants me to prove it.) I feel fantastic when I wear this blazer, as my angels knew I would.

I wear a size 6, and sometimes a size 4, not because I starve myself (I’ve never dieted — never once in my life) but because I listen carefully to what my guardian angels suggest for me and my own body’s needs. My food regimen probably wouldn’t be the same as yours, because each person’s body is unique. But my food regimen works for me. So I put cream in my coffee. And I eat cheese and butter every day. And I bake (and eat) chocolate chip cookies. And I drink lots of fruit juice that contains Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and calcium. And I never count calories. The only thing I pay attention to is the quantum Post-It notes that appear on specific food items at each meal.

My approach to healthy eating isn’t something you’d want to rush out and try without first being sure your own intuitive circuitry is working properly. It’s a lot smarter to practice your intuitive skills on something with fewer possible health consequences — something like shampoo brands (because not every shampoo is right for every person).

Believe it or not, your guardian angel would be thrilled to help you find the right shampoo for you. No, I’m not kidding. Guardian angels don’t EVER want you to practise using your intuitive circuitry on “the big stuff.” It’s too risky for you and your loved ones. It’s too easy to “mix up your signals” and assume you’re getting an intuitive cue when you’re not. (God gets blamed all the time when religious folk try to overextend their intuitive circuitry and end up causing great harm because they don’t understand their own limits).

So start small. And be grateful for these ordinary, everyday miracles. These are the stuff of everyday relationship with God and God’s angels, unless you happen to be an astronaut on the International Space Station or a regular feature on the slopes of Mount Everest. Maybe you think it would be boring for your angels to help you find shampoos and oranges, but trust me — they never find it boring to help you be as healthy and as happy as it’s possible for you to be on Planet Earth.

Divine love is so big it fits in the smallest of places. That’s why it’s Divine love!

* Please see Guys, Intuition, and the Gut  from April 2, 2011.

 

TBM30: Death, Divine Love, and the Heart

I’d like to make it clear from top to bottom and all points in between that some of the medical disorders we experience are related to the choices we make as human beings and some of our medical disorders are part and parcel of the DNA we’re born with. (Still other medical disorders are caused by external sources, such as car accidents or physical assault or other examples of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but these aren’t the forms of physical suffering I want to talk about today.)

Every day children are born into families around the world, and every day some of those children are born with DNA-related disorders that will bring many challenges into the lives of these children, their families, their medical care-givers, and their communities. There’s nothing wrong with these children as far as God and their guardian angels are concerned. I want to emphasize this point because too often in the past families have been told by religious leaders that any form of medical challenge in a young child is a curse or a sign of God’s displeasure.

Iain 1988:

Iain 1988: Two months before he was diagnosed with leukemia

My younger son was diagnosed with leukemia (A.L.L.) when he was 2 1/2. Were the seeds of this dread disease present in his genetic structure when he was born? I don’t know. Maybe. I know that in 1989, when he was being treated in hospital, our pediatric oncologist told us they’d done a particular test (don’t ask me what) that showed two bits of genetic material had switched places with each other. The presence of these “jumping genes” was known to be linked to treatment resistance and poor outcomes for children with A.L.L. That’s all I remember now about the test. But they were right about the outcome. My son’s leukemia was highly resistant to treatment. Even a successful bone marrow transplant from his brother wasn’t enough to hold back the cancer for long. My beloved boy died nine months after he was diagnosed.

I can tell you I was some mad with God. Our son hadn’t done anything “wrong,” and it seemed, from our perspective, that God was being cruel and unfair to him and to us. Of course, we were practising Christians at the time (High Anglican) and fellow Christians we spoke with kept telling us to pray and to believe. So we kept praying and believing, and we welcomed visits from the hospital chaplains, and on Easter Sunday of 1989 we took our son to church to be blessed during a brief period when he was released from hospital.

The emotional support we received from our families and neighbours and fellow Christians was deeply important to us then, and remains so to me to this day. We couldn’t have got through this time of agony and fear without the emotional and practical support of our friends, family, and medical caregivers. The casseroles that appeared on our front doorstep were a healing balm for us. The consistent and sincere offers to babysit our older son showed a generosity and compassion that changed us forever. The tears that others shared with us told us more than we’d ever dared know about the people around us — ordinary people who found an extraordinary capacity for courage and love already within them when they recognized the desperate need of one frantic family. The prayers, though . . . the prayers made things worse, not better, for us.

It was a long time (years, in fact) before I could muster the courage to wonder about my relationship with God. But eventually I started to notice I wasn’t the same person I’d once been. My priorities had changed. My internal priorities. The external realities hadn’t changed. We still lived in the same house, still had a stable family income, still cared about raising our older son in a responsible manner. But inside . . . inside I was feeling a lot less arrogant and lot more . . . I don’t know . . . more understanding of other people’s pain and loss.

I was still here, struggling each day to figure out my life as a human being, and my younger son was not. That was a fact. He was dead, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I understood this part. But there were other parts of the grieving process I didn’t get, parts that are still hard to put into words, parts that continue to evolve even after all these years. These parts were — are — the parts that deal with the heart.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you allow yourself to feel your own heart, the journey of trust and discovery and gratitude doesn’t end with a person’s death. It just . . . changes. It changes in the same way a caterpillar changes when he weaves a cocoon and sits there quietly for a while, allowing the transformation to take place. When he emerges, he’s the same caterpillar he was. But he’s changed, and he can’t interact with the world in the same way he once did. His relationships with others have changed. Forever.

Being open to your own heart is like this. Being open to your heart means you’re willing to allow other people to change you. It means you’re willing to be inspired by others, willing to feel awe and wonder in the presence of their courage and abundant gifts. It means you’re willing to feel other people’s pain and then take action to help them relieve their pain. It means you care about your neighbour, even if you don’t know your neighbour.

The heart is a truly mysterious place (which is perhaps why poets and painters and musicians and playwrights have had more success expressing it than prose writers have). You wouldn’t feel full inside if you didn’t have this mysterious place in which to store your memories of wonder and awe, gratitude and divine love. At the same time, the heart is the heart because there’s no limit to its ability to grow. So although it’s full, there’s always room for more. There’s always room for another smile, another hug. (And this is before we get to the weird quantum realities of the heart!)

Last weekend I watched a DVD my son brought over. It’s a film called The Way Back. It blew me away.

The film is loosely based on a book about some prisoners who escape from a Siberian work camp during WWII and walk 4,000 miles together before emerging from the Himalayas in Northern India. (There’s debate about the truthfulness of the original book.) There’s a lot of walking in this film — walking through snowstorms, walking through wild northern forests, walking through deserts, walking through mountains — but really it’s a film about a small group of people who help each other reclaim their broken hearts. I bawled my eyes out at the end.

Did they lose some of their friends on the journey? Yes. Did it make a damn bit of difference to their hearts? No.

Their friends had forever changed them. Their friends had forever inspired them. Their friends had forever healed them, even though their hearts hurt like hell because they missed their cherished ones so much.

Don’t be afraid of medical illness and medical disorders (not at a soul level, anyway). Shit happens to everyone. Take what happens and try your best to meet the unique challenges of your life with the courage and trust you’re capable of. Do the best you can until you can’t do any more, and then accept that God will be there to take you or your loved one Home when it’s time.

To love fearlessly is the best any of us can do. But you know what? It’s a pretty impressive choice in the grand scheme of things, and is probably a big part of the reason we’re here on Planet Earth. So don’t diss it.

Blessings.

 

TBM29: Intuition and Whole Brain Thinking: Filling You Up Inside

So what happens when you combine the practices of humbleness, forgiveness, and balance with the idea of a loving God and a loving soul?

You get a really healthy brain and a powerful sense of intuition that works.

In the Spiritual Kitchen, this is the equivalent of sitting down at a four-course meal with appetizer, soup, main course, and dessert. You get to enjoy everything in the company of friends and family, and you absorb most of the nutrients you need in order to stay relatively healthy. Inside, you feel all filled up instead of lost, empty, barren, and abandoned.

The honest truth is that most other religious and spiritual teachings you’ve come across don’t teach you or anyone else how to recognize — let alone enjoy — a four-course meal. Most religious traditions have become rigidly focussed on teaching you how to make just the soup or just the dessert while ignoring the other courses. According to these teachers, you can eat a steady diet of only cream of potato soup or only cream puffs and still feel “full” inside. When you finally notice you never feel full (because you’ve never received all the nutrients you need) your minister/monk/priest will then blame you for not trying hard enough.

Peonies 2013 (c) JAT:

Peonies 2013 (c) JAT: For those who want to enhance their sense of God’s presence, I recommend gratitude and reflection on the beauty and fullness of nature. Reflection on the Eucharist (a man-made ritual) upsets your soul because the original intent of Paul’s Eucharist was so creepy.

I’d like to emphasize — really, really emphasize — that when I use the metaphor of the four-course meal to describe the sensation of feeling full, I’m talking about the spiritual practices themselves as the source of the nutrients you need. I’m not in any way suggesting a cannibalistic ritual of actually eating God to get your nutrients. (If you’re a Christian who believes in the Eucharist, you need to know that Paul instituted this ritual, not Jesus. You also need to know that Paul’s Eucharist was an occult ritual, a cult ritual based on the idea that God could be eaten and thereby controlled. Gross, eh? Yeah, bet they didn’t tell you that in Sunday School class.)

The feeling of being full inside doesn’t come to you because God has entered you and filled up your “empty vessel.” The feeling of being full inside comes from your own brain chemistry, from your own choice to use your whole brain, not just certain parts of your brain. The feeling of being full inside comes when you realize that some parts of your brain work better with the appetizer and some parts work better with the soup and some parts work better with the main course and some parts work better with the dessert. So in order to feed your whole brain, you need to get all the spiritual nutrients, not just some of the nutrients.

This is the way your human brain is designed. You can’t change this reality, despite what you’ve been told by countless spiritual gurus. Your sense of intuition — that is, your ability to reliably and consistently “hear” what your guardian angels are saying to you — depends on the extent to which you’re a Whole Brain Thinker.

At a scientific level, there’s no way for a human being to be highly intuitive if he or she is not a Whole Brain Thinker. There’s no special prayer or ritual or secret vitamin that will boost your intuitive processes while allowing you to keep your less-than-loving habits. God the Mother and God the Father have designed the brain and central nervous system in such a way that all the parts are dependent on each other (as you’d expect from a loving God). You can’t boost one part at the expense of another part. If you try, you’ll trigger biological responses that you won’t like very much — responses such as migraines, pain disorders, immune dysfunction, sleep disorders, eating disorders, addiction disorders.

The medical disorders I’ve listed are just that — medical disorders. Medical disorders are a fact of life for human beings. It’s so difficult for us to find the right balance — the “sweet spot” where the needs of the 4D soul and the needs of the 3D body are perfectly matched — that people’s bodies are always falling out of balance and expressing this imbalance through medical disorders. So of course we get sick. And of course we get autoimmune disorders. And of course we get neurological disorders. But this is no cause for blaming people for their illnesses, for accusing them (falsely, of course!) of being filled with cosmic sin or ancient karma or negative entities.

Medical disorders are not a divine punishment. They’re not a sign of “impurity” or a sign of separation from all that is divine and sacred and good and true. They’re not even a sign that you’re failing to try hard enough. Most often, medical disorders of the type mentioned above indicate there’s something you don’t understand about your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. There’s a lack of knowledge, perhaps, or a lack of insight. Perhaps there’s a lack of help available to you even though you have a partial understanding of what’s troubling you. Goodness knows there’s precious little information available to you at the moment to help you understand the complex interaction between brain chemistry and the soul’s needs.

Most people I’ve spoken with — intelligent, educated, sincere people — have zero idea about the functioning of their own brains. Most people spend far more time worrying about their toes — the health of their toes, the comfort of their toes, the look of their toes — than they ever spend on the most complex system of organs they have: the brain/central nervous system.

I once did a seminar in theology class about the spiritual brain. (This was a novel idea for my classmates.) To begin the seminar, I asked each person in the room to take 30 seconds to make a list of all the body organs they could think of (eg. heart, lungs, liver). I timed them. I then gave them 60 seconds to make a list of all the parts of the brain they could think of (eg. cerebellum, corpus callosum, hypothalamus). I gave them extra time for this exercise because brain names take longer to write. Didn’t matter, though. They couldn’t come up with much. Why not? Because we’re not teaching people how to think about their brains, and we’re especially not teaching people how to think about their brains as an assortment of pots and pans and nutrients and ingredients in our own Spiritual Kitchens. So people continue to feel frustrated and angry and empty inside.

So what do most people do? They get angry with God. And angry at their own guardian angels. They try to pray, but they pray for things God won’t give them, so they get angrier still. This upsets their souls, and the upset triggers chronic levels of stress hormones. The stress hormones damage their brains and immune systems, and make it harder still for people to use their own intuitive circuitry. So they get sick. And they get even angrier. So they pray harder. And nothing happens. And they don’t understand why. So they figure God isn’t listening and God doesn’t care. And then they get so angry they stop trying to listen for God’s small, still voice. And they figure they can go it alone. So they decide to stop believing in God. And they choose some form of atheism or agnosticism or non-theism. Except this really upsets the soul, because the one thing the soul knows for sure is that God the Mother and God the Father are always with us, always loving us, always worrying about us. So now the body’s DNA allows for the release of huge doses of stress hormones, and the body can’t cope, so it looks for biological ways to cope with the stress, and most often these days it stumbles upon the transitory wonders of status addiction as a way to self-medicate. And now you’re totally screwed as far as your intuition goes, because status addiction and intuition mix like oil and water.

Sound familiar?

TBM28: When You Are Forgiven, You Are Forgiven

Over a year ago, in a post called “More Thoughts on the Soul,” I wrote that it’s better to be confused for a while on the Spiral Path than be caught in a nightmare of perfectionism and Divine Law.

So today I’d like to tell you a bit about the early part of my journey, a period when I felt confused most of the time.

The year 2000 was a challenging time for me. This was the year when I learned to develop my natural channelling skills. This was also the year when I left my husband after 20 years of marriage. Sandwiched between these two major events, I got quite ill. In June 2000, I had an acute episode of gastrointestinal inflammation. At the time, I assumed it was an exacerbation of the chronic ulcerative colitis I’d been suffering from for 20 years. But there were some extra symptoms, too, including intense nausea and vomitting that weren’t part of my normal pattern of G.I. upset. I treated my symptoms at home (apart from one brief visit to the emerg for rehydration), which meant, in the context of my spiritual studies at the time, that I spent a lot of time praying and calling upon Reiki energies and asking my guardian angel, Zak, to help me “clear” the negative energies that I assumed were the cause of my acute illness.

In retrospect, this was a dumb thing to do. But, you know, I was so sure I was right.

Eventually my body managed to heal itself — no thinks to my arrogant spiritual assumptions. There were, of course, no attacks taking place upon me from negative energies (e.g. past life karma) or negative entities (e.g. fallen angels). On the other hand, it seems there were plenty of attacks initiated by me upon me by my very own self.

In other words, I was doing it to myself. I was stressing myself out and didn’t even realize it. I was freaking out my own soul with all my untrusting, unloving, cruel talk about negative energies and negative entities, and my own soul was speaking up — speaking up through the biological medium of stress hormones. It was my own stress hormones that were making me sick in the early summer of 2000.

Many of us these days have accepted the reality that stress hormones are something of a mixed blessing. During times of great external stress, we’d be toast if we didn’t have stress hormones to kick us almost instantly into overdrive. But during times of great internal stress, we can pump out so many stress hormones for such a long period of time that we start to damage our own biology from the inside out. This is why stress has been linked to so many autoimmune disorders (including the one I used to suffer from, ulcerative colitis).

You can read more about the long term effects of chronic stress on learning, memory, immune function, rate of healing, and brain repair (neuroplasticity) by googling the topic. It’s not my intent to go into the medical research here. It is my intent, however, to highlight for you the biological reality — the actual biological effect on your brain — when you insist on accepting as “truth” certain theories that your own soul abhors.

Your own soul doesn’t like it at all when certain parts of your brain and central nervous system (what Jesus has described as your “Darwinian Circuitry”) try to gather “proof” for theories about God and the soul that feed the ongoing cravings of status addiction.

There’s coding in your DNA that’s designed to trigger the release of stress hormones within your own body when the Darwinian Circuitry of your brain tries to “take over” and muscle out the messages of your inner Soul Circuitry.* Naturally, this is an excellent design strategy, because it means you always have access to the natural wisdom of your own soul. Live according to your soul’s needs and you stay relatively healthy; reject your soul’s needs and be prepared to wage war with your own body’s DNA.

In short, you’re always getting feedback about your footing on the Spiral Path from your own biological body. If your immune system is constantly fighting infections and internal inflammatory processes, it means you’re out of balance. It may also mean there are too many stress hormones circulating in your body.

So finding different strategies to help your body reduce its levels of stress hormones will be highly beneficial for your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Many well-established stress-reducing practices make excellent spiritual practices, too — practices such as getting together with friends to play old-fashioned board games or shinny hockey, watching uplifting films that make you laugh and cry, sitting outside in the fresh air and sun with a good book, having an afternoon nap, and giving and receiving hugs each day.

You can try meditation if you like, as long as you keep this practice in balance and don’t exceed the “total of 2 hours per day” rule. I should tell you, though, that I myself don’t meditate. At the stage in my journey when many spiritual masters would have urged me to meditate in earnest, I tried something entirely unexpected at the insistence of my guardian angel, Zak. I tried the practice of forgiveness.

Learning to give and receive forgiveness was the very first spiritual practice I embarked on that Zak actually endorsed, encouraged, and insisted on with unrelenting and exasperating diligence. He just wouldn’t let up on this one. And because I was a channeller by this time, and could hear every word he said on the topic, I had to listen to him go on and on about the importance of forgiveness to, well, to everything I hoped to achieve on my spiritual journey.

Very early on in this series of lessons, Zak had me write out and stick to the fridge this note:

When you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

This simple truth left me in agony for months. But each time I went to the fridge, I had to look at it. And be reminded of it. And struggle with it emotionally and intellectually.

It was a very sneaky tactic on Zak’s part.  But it was also extremely effective. I couldn’t get away from the issue. I couldn’t sweep it under the carpet and pretend I hadn’t heard Zak. Several times each day I had to think about forgiveness and what forgiveness might actually mean.

Learning to forgive was not an overnight epiphany, let me tell you. I really had to work at it. I had to question old assumptions. I had to be honest with myself about my own past mistakes. I had to find my own courage. Most of all, I had to be willing to receive forgiveness from Zak and from God and from other human beings, which was the hardest part.

It’s not easy to believe you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness, especially once you start to be deeply honest with yourself about harm you’ve created for yourself and others. In fact, it’s so painful to stare your own mistakes in the eye that you absolutely MUST learn forgiveness FIRST so you have the inner means to cope with your own past, your own history, your own mistakes.

You also need somebody to help you with this part of the journey. You need a mentor, somebody you can talk to in trust and faith, because during this part of the journey a lot of painful questions will rise to the surface. It’s best not to try this alone. A professional counsellor might be appropriate. Or a small group of trusted friends who operate according to the principles of the Twelve Step program. I wish with all my heart that I could recommend your local minister or priest, but I simply can’t, because I have yet to meet an ordained cleric who understands what forgiveness is.

God’s forgiveness is one thing you never have to ask for. God the Mother and God the Father forgive you for the mistakes you make even before you’ve finished making them. There are no words to describe the immensity of this gift. But their forgiveness is a source of great inspiration and a never-ending source of awe and wonder for us all.

Once I understood with every shred of my being that God really did forgive me and wasn’t going to take it back — once I could trust that for God forgiveness is a permanent act instead of a conditional choice dependent on my “perfection” and “obedience” — I found the courage to move forward on the Spiral Path in the absolute certainty that I would continue to make mistakes as I struggled to learn what Divine Love means.

As I also said early on in these posts, God doesn’t expect you to be perfect. God only expects you to try hard each day to be the kind and loving person you really are as a soul.

Knowing God is in the trying.

Finally! After several years of study, I earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice -- one made easier and more productive because I can forgive myself.

Finally! After several years of study, I finally earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice — one made easier and more productive because I forgive myself for not being perfect.

 

* For more on the Darwinian Circuitry and Soul Circuitry of your brain, see The Christ Zone Model: Introduction.

TBM27: Prayers Your Angels Will Refuse to Answer

Last time I said I’d talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. Many readers are not going to like this post.

Before you can understand the ways in which your angels can help you, you need to spend some time thinking about the ways in which your angels cannot help you.

This statement in itself will shock some people, because we’ve all been told again and again that God can do anything for us if we ask in the right way. Hence, the many books and workshops and rituals around prayer. We’ve been conditioned to believe that prayer is a powerful form of mystical energy, as it were, a powerful form of mystical energy that can change the world if properly invoked.

Indeed, so central is prayer to the experience of conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christianity that if you were to remove all the prayers from the worship services (e.g. the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), there’d be precious little left.

Which is exactly my point.

In a world where human beings are called upon to juggle the 4D needs of the soul and the 3D needs of the body in a balanced, holistic, seamless way, there’s something wrong with a religious experience that lets you off easy if you say a bunch of prayers. In most cases, you don’t even have to write the prayers yourself. You just have to copy what the prayer leader is saying!

Thutmose III offering two containers of incense to the god Amun. Reproduction from the 18th Dynasty (15th century BCE) original at Deir el-Bahri, Egypt, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The idea that you can open the door to God’s blessings by saying the right prayer or offering the right gift is very, very old. As Jesus tried to point out, the fact that a religious idea is old is no guarantee that it’s right.

I’ve taken university theology courses that teach prospective ministry students how to design worship services and write prayers, and believe me, there’s no great mystery involved. Ya just gotta follow the traditional prayer formulas and string together a lot of popular cliches about faith and peace and love, and, presto!, ya got yerself a pretty new prayer to recite on Sunday. Piece of cake.

The real question is, will God or your guardian angels pay any attention to you as you dutifully recite these prayers?

Well, this depends on two things. The first factor is your own personal intent or “meta-choice.”* The second factor is the relationship you already have with God. These two factors are intertwined with each other.

Maybe I should start by explaining that although I’m a practising mystic, I stopped praying to God years ago. In place of traditional prayer, I’ve learned to communicate with God.

But aren’t prayer and communication with God the same thing, you’re saying?

They’re only the same thing if (1) part of your personal meta-choice is to learn each day from your own mistakes and if (2) you have faith that God and God’s angels are going to intervene in your life whether or not you ask for help.

Prayer, as it’s traditionally understood, starts with the assumption that God hears and acts upon the words you say in prayer, but that until you actually “open your heart” by speaking the prayers, God is standing helplessly but hopefully on the other side of the divine door as he waits for you to ask.

In my rather large collection of books that contain what I feel are “toxic teachings,” I have a gem called Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To by Anthony DeStefano (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 2007). On the cover there’s a stamp that says, “Endorsed by the National Day of Prayer,” so right off the bat you can tell I’m going to have a problem with the content.

DeStefano outlines what he sees as the top ten questions people ask in their lives. He then offers a prayer you can use to answer each of these questions in turn.

So for the No. 1 Question — “I Wish I Could Believe” — DeStefano says you should use this prayer — “God, please show me that you exist” — again and again until “God starts to reveal himself to you (page 22).”

Says the author (pages 23-24):

“And it all starts with one simple prayer: God, please show me that you exist.

There is a beautiful nineteenth-century painting that illustrates this point well. It’s called The Light of the World. In it, Christ is shown holding a lantern, standing outside a little cottage on a dark, stormy night. He is knocking on the door of the home, waiting to be let in, but the occupant, unseen behind the door, does nothing. The figure of Christ, bathed in a golden green light, is supremely serene and looks as if he is prepared to stay outside the cottage door knocking forever. It is a striking image because of what it says about the light of truth in a dark world. But the really interesting thing about the painting is that there is a curious detail missing. If you look closely at the door of the home, you will see that there is not a knob or a latch anywhere to be found. Why? It can’t be that the artist forgot to put it in. Rather, he was making a sublime theological point: the door to the human heart can be opened only from the inside. God will never force his way in.”


Oh, let me swoon for the wonder of having a divine father who’ll stand outside knocking on a dark and stormy night because he cares whether or not I’m going to make it into heaven (page 4)! He cares what will happen to me on Judgment Day and doesn’t want me to have to go to Hell! Because he loves me sooooo much that he created all sorts of stupid things he can’t do anything about — things like Judgment Day and Atonement and angels that fall (like Satan) and Original Sin and Hell! I’m just so lucky that he cares enough to stand outside the door knocking, knocking, ever so patiently knocking!

Yeah, this sounds like Divine Love to me . . .

DeStefano thinks that after you open your heart to God, God will step through the door and into your heart. Once this happens, of course, you’ll become an instrument of God — which is Prayer No. 2 in this book. When you say repeatedly that you want God to make you an instrument (i.e. an empty vessel of service and “mercy”), what you’re actually asking for is religious humility. (Just so we’re clear on the intent of the “God, make me an instrument” prayer).

And then, because you’re now an empty vessel through whom God works, you have to use four of your “Top Ten” Prayers just to fill you up with various graces from God: “God, forgive me (No. 5). God, give me peace (No. 6). God, give me courage (no. 7). God, give me wisdom (No. 8).”

If you start your journey on the Spiral Path with the same assumptions that DeStefano advocates, you’re going to have some serious trouble understanding the messages of your own guardian angels. Why? Because angels don’t believe any of this shit. They’re operating from an entirely different set of truths, and they ain’t gonna budge on their truths, no matter how much you think they should.

Your angels know that God never enters your own core being, your own soul (i.e. “entering your heart,” as DeStefano describes it), because to do so would be a terrible violation of your own personal boundaries as a core consciousness and child of God. God is God, and you are you, and ne’er the twain shall meet. God will tap you on the shoulder. God will frequently hold your hand. God will sit beside you and talk to you for hours. God will sometimes pick you up and carry you for a while. But don’t EVER ask God to “come inside and fill you up,” because from God’s point of view this request feels like a creepy and incestuous form of contact. (Sorry to be so blunt, but you need to know what it feels like from God’s perspective, not from your status-addicted preacher’s perspective.) This is one of the few permanent rules you should keep in mind as you move forward on the Spiral Path: always treat God the Mother and God the Father in the respectful manner you’d treat your human parents. They’re your parents, not your lovers.

Your angels also know that it isn’t up to God or God’s angels to give you peace or courage or wisdom. You already have those strengths inside your core self, your own soul. Your job is not to ask to be given those things, but to ask how to remember those things which are already part of you.

(If this sounds like the plot of The Wizard of Oz, it’s because The Wizard of Oz has some timeless things to say about the spiritual journey.)

Third, your angels don’t wait for you to ask before they intervene in your life. They step in whenever and wherever they please. Why? Because they care about you, and they know it’s difficult and confusing to live as a 4D-soul-in-temporary-human-form.

If angels see a problem brewing, they don’t stand there knocking endlessly on the other side of the door (like Sheldon knocking on Penny’s door in The Big Bang Theory). I mean, what would be the good of that? Do you really want a guardian angel who stands there wringing his hands helplessly until you use the “right prayer,” the one with the “right mystical energy” that suddenly opens the door so God can walk in?

In my experience, angels don’t beat around the bush. They come right out and say what they’re thinking — even if (as is usually the case) you don’t want to hear it.

God and God’s angels are always talking. They’re a very chatty bunch, in fact. And they like to talk to each other — you know, pass along information about what you’re actually thinking and feeling instead of what you say you’re thinking and feeling.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and a few of the people all of the time. But you can never, ever fool a guardian angel.

They always know your true intent. And they always have an opinion on your true intent. Which is a good thing, because this way they can guide you to the people and ideas and books (etc.) that can help you learn more about healing, forgiveness, and redemption.

As I said in an earlier post, angels aren’t wusses.

* For more on intent and meta-choices, see “Knowledge” Versus “Truth” and Pelagius and Personal Responsibility.

 

TBM26: A Practical Tip For Getting Along With Your Angels

Here’s a super-practical tip for people walking the Spiral Path: don’t ask your guardian angels to help you get more status.

Probably the single biggest mistake made by spiritual seekers anywhere (and I mean anywhere) is to assume that God and God’s angels are remotely interested in anything resembling status.

I know that countless religious tomes have told you otherwise. I know you’ve been told that God needs your worship and sacraments (i.e. status points for God). I know you’ve been told that God needs your prayers (i.e. status points for you). I know you’ve been told that angels (if they exist at all) are bound within a strict Celestial Hierarchy — escalating angelic tiers of seniority and importance and proximity to God. (Thanks for nothing, Pseudo-Dionysius). I know this is what you’ve been told again and again. But if you look at the evidence for success among pious devotees of these beliefs, you’ll find precious little in the way of consistent, positive, demonstrable outcomes such as improved health, improved standards of living, or improved family and community safety.

Which is how God measures these things.

God the Mother and God the Father know that your task here is to see what it feels like to juggle the needs of the 4D soul with the needs of the 3D body, with lots of chances to practise forgiveness thrown in (’cause it’s never too late to remember how). So God is very interested in helping you and your family achieve a state of relative good health (both physical health and mental health) until it’s your time to Go Home (colloquially known as dying).

Naturally, a God who’s interested in helping you stay healthy is going to be very worried about the painful effects of addiction in your life, since addiction is one of the major causes of suffering among human beings. Addiction issues create physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, family suffering, and community suffering. Addiction also creates financial suffering and educational suffering and job-related suffering. It gets in the way of everything that’s positive and selfless and healing.

So . . . it should take you all of about five seconds to realize that God and God’s angels are not going to be supportive of choices based on status addiction.

Even if the myth surrounding the status addiction is a religious myth.

The general assumption seems to be that God is tolerant of all religious beliefs and all religious myths because, when push comes to shove, these religious traditions have one thing in common: they confer status points on God.

Only an emotionally immature person would conclude that God actually wants status points.

Unfortunately, all too many emotionally immature individuals have gradually fallen into the trap of status addiction, where, mired in the swamps of narcissism and bullying, and looking at others through the characteristic tunnel-vision thereof, it seems perfectly logical to conclude that the correct way to approach God is to offer status points. After all, the giving and taking of status points is a normal way of existing (though not a normal way of living) for many human beings on Planet Earth.

As humans, we don’t like to hear that angels have free will, but they do. Your own guardian angels use their free will to decide when, how, and if they’ll respond to your requests for aid – even if it means you have to go through some rough patches to get where you need to go.

So don’t do it. There aren’t a lot of strict rules to follow on the Spiral Path, and even this one isn’t really a rule, since you can ignore me and do whatever you like because you have free will. But before you make that choice, you need to know there are consequences for the choice to seek status on the spiritual journey. Here is the consequence: your guardian angels will stop helping you. They’ll still love you. They’ll still forgive you. But they won’t enable you as you rejoice in the high of an addiction disorder — any addiction disorder, including status addiction.

Just as family members of a person with addiction issues know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional behaviours, angels know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional and harmful behaviours. It’s courageous and loving and forgiving of them to refuse to enable the choices of status addiction. And why would we want it any other way?

Angels will help you find healing once you make the choice to be honest about your addiction. They’ll guide you to people and books and learning experiences and medical treatments that will help you heal. But they’ll let you fall flat on your face over and over until you accept the truth that your status addiction isn’t pretty and isn’t divine and isn’t acceptable to anyone, including your core self.

During my theology classes, I was required to read the teachings of Christian theologians from the time of Paul the Apostle to the modern day. I read many different explanations for why human beings suffer, but never once, except in the teachings of Jesus himself, did I come across the one explanation that fits all the facts: God refuses to be an enabler of status addiction.

The communities in the world today that have the highest standards of health, the highest standards of living for the middle and lower classes, the lowest levels of crime and corruption, and the highest standards of ethical, legal, and interpersonal conduct are the communities with the least cultural emphasis on status acquisition.

Too often it’s assumed the recipe for success in these communities is the abolition of faith, a rejection of belief in God — that is, atheistic societies built on humanistic values without religious superstitions to hold people back.

Faith in God never holds a person back. But religious institutions which are deeply committed to the preservation of status addiction can and do hold people back. This is a biological reality.

Keep the idea of God. Ditch the idea of status acquisition and status addiction in all its nasty and insidious forms.

As a spiritual practice, it’s simple. It’s sane. And it works.

Because your guardian angels are thrilled to help you when you aren’t being such an ass.

Next time I’ll talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. I think you’ll be very surprised to learn what matters to them.

 

TBM25: Awe and Wonder – Gifts of the Soul

There’s a long tradition in all major world religions of teaching people that life on Planet Earth is some sort of cosmic punishment. According to these theories — theories from such esteemed thinkers as Plato and the Buddha and Paul and assorted Gnostic teachers — the very fact that you’re living here on Planet Earth proves that you haven’t advanced very far in your spiritual development as a soul. These thinkers start with the assumption that life as a 3D human being totally sucks from beginning to end. So anything you can do to “escape” from the suffering proves that you’re smarter and faster and better than your “ignorant” and “unworthy” peers, who are too stupid to understand the need for escape.

(C) Image*After

(C) Image*After

Hey, don’t get mad at me. This is what these teachers actually taught!

See, now, I think all these teachers were completely wrong. I think these teachers never understood for a moment what it means to love. I think they saw the world from their own narrow, shrunken, unloving perspective. They failed to see the potential of all creatures on Planet Earth, the potential of all creatures to live lives of great courage and devotion and learning and teamwork. They failed to see the potential for love, which means they lived their own personal lives in a state of depression and blame and victimhood, and then they died without ever understanding why they were here and what they could have done with their human lives, but, you know, that’s their problem. You’re not responsible for their failure to see the “big picture.” You’re not responsible for their limited imagination or their limited faith in God or their limited courage. These teachers had more education and more opportunities than most people on Planet Earth have ever had, and they blew it. They chose not to learn about love. But you don’t have to follow in their footsteps. You can follow a different path — the Spiral Path of learning, love, and wonder.

Incarnating as a human being on Planet Earth, far from proving your inadequacy as a child of God, proves the very opposite. The fact that you’re here says you’re made of incredibly tough stuff — the kind of stuff that makes it possible for you to learn to juggle not only your soul’s needs but also your biological human needs. At the same time. With limited tools and limited resources. And a limited time frame. And a lot of days where you seem to spend more time UNlearning the errors of your past than anything else. And a lot of confusion and frustration. And more questions than you can answer during your life as a human being. And more ways to know your own love and courage than you ever thought possible.

It’s a friggin’ hard juggling act. But also an awe-inspiring juggling act. The people who get it figured out inspire awe and wonder in others. Not worship or blind obedience in others. (I repeat –the goal is not to try to induce worship or blind obedience in others.) It’s just a simple childlike awe and wonder towards others. The same childlike awe and wonder that we, as angels and children of God, feel towards our beloved divine parents, God the Mother and God the Father.

In other words, divine love has a large component of awe and wonder in it. You could also use the words “gratitude” and “humbleness” to describe the feelings of awe and wonder we express towards other souls in Creation, including the two souls who are God.

I often feel awe and wonder in the presence of other people when they’re choosing to bring a sense of balance into the world through their daily actions. These are the people who understand boundaries and appropriate limits, who understand when to say “yes” and when to say “no.” These are the people who know what they’re good at, and work hard to create something meaningful with the talents they have. They’re not threatened by other people’s talents. They know how to play when it’s time to play. They know how to cry when it’s time to cry. Most important, they think their highest spiritual calling is to treat other people with dignity, respect, compassion, politeness, and divine love at every opportunity each day.

Oh, and they’re not afraid to learn new things.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’m not ever inspired to a feeling of awe and wonder in the presence of status addicts. I take no inspiration from the choices of a person who is consciously seeking to climb the ladder of fame, power, or wealth. I feel no awe when I hear the contestants on American Idol trying to out-sing each other. I feel no wonder whatsoever when Donald Trump’s contestants come up with brilliant new business schemes. To be honest, the Olympics leave me cold. The cost of winning a gold medal is simply too high.

I’m all for the pursuit of excellence as long as it’s not confused (as it so often is) with the pursuit of status. I think it can be cogently argued that anyone who makes it into the Olympics has long since passed the threshold of excellence and crossed into the territory of full-blown status addiction. How else to explain the agony of defeat when the margin of loss is measured in mere hundredths of a second? There is nothing in this obsessive pursuit of perfection that I admire.

I do admire individuals who love a sport and actively participate so they can be in respectful, non-competitive relationship with others. I admire the people who use sports as an effective teaching modality. I admire the people who go outside to walk and bike and hike and camp and canoe (etc.) so they can be closer to their families and to God. I don’t have a problem with any of this. In fact, I think these activities are incredibly healthy and beneficial for both the soul and the biological body.

But don’t ask me to care which athlete has the fastest time or the best score. The soul doesn’t care about raw scores compared to other people’s scores. The soul only cares that each person raise his/her own bar as high as possible and keep working consistently to achieve the difficult goal of finding holistic balance between the soul’s 4D needs and the body’s 3D needs.

Please don’t assume from the previous sentence that I make a dualistic distinction between the soul’s 4D needs and the body’s 3D needs. These aren’t simple little boxes (despite what the Materialist philosophers would have you believe.) The three dimensional universe and the four dimensional universe are intertwined within each other — enfolded within the implicate order, as physicist David Bohm described it (or tried to describe it, since it’s so hard to conceptualize our complex reality by using our 3D pea-brains (no offense intended)).

Dimensions don’t have clear-cut dividing lines between them with perimeter signs that say, “Warning, you are now entering 4D Space! All shoes purchased with your credit card must be surrendered at the border!”

The thing is, when you die, you can’t take with you the actual pair of ruby slippers you loved during your human lifetime, but you can take with you the memory and the feeling and the love of your favourite ruby slippers, and strangely, in the mysterious way of this vast Creation we live in, you’ll one day find again a tiny bit of Creation that feels exactly the same way to you. And you’ll love your “4D shoes” just as much then as you love your 3D shoes today.

Such is the wonder of divine love. Spirals within spirals. Love within love. Ever entwined. Ever enfolded. And ever filled with wonder and awe.

Thank you, blessed Mother and Father, for the gift of your amazing love! We love you!

 

Addendum February 7, 2018: Recent research into positive emotions is showing how the emotional experience of awe may help lower the body’s levels of interleukin 6, a cytokine molecule which is a marker for inflammation in the body. Cytokines are important proteins in the immune system, but research has shown an association between high, sustained levels of cytokines and a number of diseases such as type-2 diabetes, major depression, and possibly Alzheimer’s disease. Of the positive emotions included in the study — amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, joy, love, and pride — it was awe that showed the most statistically significant association with lower levels of interleukin 6.

 

TBM24: Juggling the Needs of Heart, Mind, Body, and Talent

bouquet On the Spiral Path, you’re always trying to find the “sweet spot” where the needs of your heart match the needs of your mind, the needs of your body, and the needs of your talents. The sweet spot is the place where you feel whole, balanced, calm, and complete.

Too often I’ve read books that tell you how to find the needs of your heart while ignoring the needs of your mind. Or books that tell you how to find the needs of your body while ignoring the needs of your heart. Or books that tell you how to find the needs of your mind while ignoring pretty much everything else. (There are a lot of books about the needs of the mind.)

On the Spiral Path, you need a plan that takes you forward bit by bit in all spheres of your being, not just one or two select spheres. You need a holistic plan, a balanced plan that has a little bit of everything in it.

In the Spiritual Kitchen, you’d soon fall into a rut if you had to make the same ol’ cream of potato soup every day. Not that cream of potato soup is a bad thing in itself. But every day? Three times a day? Wouldn’t that get pretty repetitive, pretty obsessive-compulsive after a while?

The recipe for healthy eating, as Canada’s Food Guide tells us, is to eat something from each food group at each meal, and, furthermore, to switch up the foods that are chosen from each food group. This way we get a wide variety of necessary vitamins, trace elements, amino acids, fats, anti-oxidants, and calorie sources.

This same sensible, balanced approach applies to life on the Spiral Path. There are four main “energy groups” you have to think about each day: (1) your soul’s heart (2) your soul’s mind (3) your soul’s body and (4) your soul’s need to use your own talents and strengths in service to others. All these are equally important to your overall health.

It would be easy to say, “Oh, so our emotional health is linked to our hearts, and our physical health is linked to our soul bodies.”

This would be the easy thing to say, but not the correct thing to say. It’s much more complicated than that because you, as a 4D-angel-temporarily-incarnated-as-a-3D-human-being, are much more complicated than that.

When, for example, you look after the needs of your soul’s heart, this improves your health at all levels: your physical health, your emotional health, your intellectual health, and your spiritual health. Why? Because you’re a holistic organism. You’re a complex biosystem with many interconnected parts. The one thing you are NOT is a bunch of different coloured Lego blocks or widgets or mechanical pieces that can be removed and treated in isolation from all the other parts. You are much, much more than the sum of your individual parts.

One body of spiritual thought I object to in every way possible is the idea that your eternal “energy self” is made up of a bunch of different layers or “astral bodies,” with some layers being “heavier” and therefore less “advanced” and less “enlightened,” while other layers are of a “higher” and “more desirable” vibration that’s closer to the Divine.

This is pure crap. It’s a form of anagogic mysticism, and, if you’ve been reading my other blogs, you know I have no use for either anagogic mysticism (the path of vertical spiritual ascent) or apophatic mysticism (“we are all One” — literally).

Your soul has a lot of different “systems” and “organs,” just as your biological human body has a lot of different systems and organs, and all of them are equally important to your ability to function as a complete and entire angel. Your soul heart and soul mind couldn’t exist if you didn’t have a soul body to hold everything in place. So your soul body is just as important to your overall consciousness as your heart, mind, and talents are. It needs just as much attention and care as your biological human body does.

Keep it simple, keep it sane, as my guardian angel has been telling me for years.

When you make the decision, as an angel-in-angel-form, to undertake the difficult task of incarnating here on Planet Earth, you have to somehow be able to squish your core consciousness — your unique blend of heart, mind, body, and talents — into a small and temporary biological package. This small package is your DNA, which carries in its helix an entire blueprint for constructing your biological body. Your DNA is unique to you because you, as a soul and child of God, are unique in all of Creation. Even identical twins, who are currently thought to have identical genes, are a unique expression of consciousness. (Poorly understood epigenetic factors play a much greater role in development than previously recognized. This is one reason why identical twins, while remarkably similar to each other, even when raised apart, are still very different people. Plus they have different souls!)

You are who you are who you are. You are who you are because you can’t be any other way. Nor do you want to be any other way — not as a soul, at least. As a soul, you’re very happy to be who you are. As a human being . . . well, as a human being you’re also supposed to be happy with who you are. Except that few people are.

Most people I know, and most people I’ve read about, have no idea whatsoever how to be happy with who they are. That’s because they can’t read their own soul blueprint. They don’t know how to interpret the inner whispers of their own heart, mind, body, and talents. Heck, most people don’t even know they have a soul blend of heart, mind, body, and talents. They think they’re just . . . existing.

The soul is not a “single substance,” despite what famous philosophers and theologians of the past have said. Nor is it unchangeable. The soul does change with time, because no one who is learning and loving and giving and creating can stay the same. Even as souls, as children of God, we’re changed by our experiences and our relationships. And this is always a good thing.

One of the great mysteries of consciousness, however, is the fact that although all of us change over the course of time as souls, none of us change in exactly the same way. We’re unique in the way we absorb new experiences and process them. We’re unique in the way we remember them. We’re unique in the way we share them. We’re all different, and at the same time, equally beautiful.

We’re all equally beautiful, but this is not to say we’re all identical or all “One.” We’re as different from each other in the way we grow and flourish as the many different kinds of flowers on Planet Earth. When we’re all put side by side, we make a breathtaking garden of passionate blooms, some short, some tall, some showy, some shy. All different. But all equally wondrous.

In no way does the family of God resemble endless neat rows of identical, unchanging wheat plants ready to be harvested by the master.

Our willingness as souls to be changed by our relationships with other souls is not limited to angels. God the Mother and God the Father are also learning, changing, growing as they live in daily relationship with us, their children. They’re expanding the size of their Spiritual Kitchen to make room for their ever-growing family of angels — core beings, core consciousnesses who reside for most of their existence within the complex folds of space and time that we, as 3D human beings, simply cannot see with our human eyes.

This is not to say, however, that they’re invisible to the heart.

 

TBM23: Beauty in the Home As a Spiritual Practice

Yesterday, in response to Lesson #1 in the Workbook for Students in A Course in Miracles, I got talking about chairs.

Today I’d like to talk more about “chairs,” and, in a broader sense, the importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul.

The importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul has been seriously underestimated by religious authorities as a source of both spiritual practice and spiritual healing.

In other words, the place where you eat and sleep and pray and live matters.

It matters a lot.

I’ve mentioned in my profile that my mother is a well-known Canadian watercolourist. But she wasn’t a watercolourist when I was growing up. When I was growing up, she was a professional interior designer, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art’s Architecture and Interior Design program. Everything in our house and everything in our small summer cottage was expected to work from a design point of view. Even the colour of the Kleenex box had to be right.

So I was raised to appreciate art and art history and fine furniture and also the museums that showcase said topics. Of course, the really expensive stuff could only be admired from afar, as my family was far from wealthy. But window-shopping at fine furniture galleries cost nothing. And if there was a piece my mother really wanted, she was prepared to save her money until she could afford to buy it. Or she would buy a piece of “junk” at an antique store and make my father refinish it, which he did often and well. (Both my parents carried the weight of Depression Era attitudes towards money and buying things.)

Still, for all my mother’s keen interest in art and design, she wasn’t really a spiritual person in a conscious sort of way, and it never occurred to her that her passion for creating balanced, harmonious environments could be considered a spiritual practice.

It was my own guardian angel who introduced me to this concept in 2002. At the time I was struggling mightily with questions about spirituality and money, asceticism and humility. I really believed I was supposed to be letting go of all my attachments to beauty, sentimentality, comfort, and safety in my own environment. Needless to say, as the daughter of an artist, and as an artist, art historian, and art conservator in my own right, I felt I was being asked to give up the very essence of my soul (which, in fact, I was being asked to do by various New Age idiot teachers).

In 2002, my ever-so-wise guardian angel conspired with other guardian angels to keep me in touch with my soul’s need for beauty and art by doing an end-run around my semi-ascetic beliefs. He told me that I would be opening a spiritual healing centre in partnership with my “spiritual mentor” Grace (of whom I’ve spoken before.) In the context of this spiritual healing centre, said he, beautiful and harmonious decor would not only be allowed by God but would be required by God as a necessary way to help put other spiritual seekers at ease.

This is how he talked me into buying the ornate piece of furniture pictured here:

Early 20th century oak cabinet (c) JAT

Early 20th century oak cabinet (c) JAT

Now, if ever there were a piece of furniture that would not qualify as ascetic, it’s this piece. It’s made of solid oak (so it weighs a friggin’ ton), and it’s covered in beautiful carving. The foliate carvings are done in a different wood (possibly walnut, which has a much finer grain than oak and is therefore easier to carve). There are also some burled panels (which I find utterly fascinating in pattern and texture). A previous owner of the piece had removed the original dark stain and covered most of the exterior surfaces in a white-wash finish that I just love. Even better, the cabinet has lots of good storage space, making it both practical and, to my eye, strikingly beautiful.

When I first saw this piece in the dark basement of a junk shop in 2002, I’ll admit that in the first few moments my heart literally leapt with joy and excitement. Why? Because this particular piece is a perfect match for me as a soul. (Among my favourite artists are Botticelli, Gustav Klimt, and Vermeer, which explains why I’m attracted to a piece of early 20th century Art Nouveau influenced furniture.)

About five seconds after my heart first leapt with joy, my mind took over. “You need this cabinet like a hole in the head,” said my logical mind. “It’s too big,” said my mind. “It’s too fancy,” said my mind. “What will other people say?” “It’s not modest. It’s . . . it’s too . . . ” My mind stopped to grope for the right word. “Too gorgeous?” supplied my heart before I could stop it from piping up.

“Okay,” said my logical mind. “The ticket price says $600. If we can talk the owner into selling it for $500, with free delivery, we can perhaps consider it. Possibly. Maybe. But only because we need it for the foyer of the spiritual centre we’re buying. Only because it makes sense from a business point of view.”

Yeah, right. From a business point of view.

Anyway, as you can see, the cabinet came home with me, and I love it every bit as much today as I did in the first moment I saw it. It’s an important part of the spiritual space I live in — a spiritual space that helps me live a balanced, holistic life where beauty and practicality and gratitude all blend seamlessly together in a way that’s right for me.

Since 2002, I’ve rarely had this strong a reaction to a piece of furniture, but when I do, I pay attention to the sense of connection that pops into my heart. Most often, this sense of connection is all I’m going to take home with me, because I live in a small apartment and I’m on a tight budget, so there’s no room and no money for more furniture. But the sense of connection tells me more about who I am as a soul. It tells me more about my unique “likes” and “dislikes” as a child of God. It tells me more about how I can live as a human being in full relationship with God and, well, with furniture designers and wood carvers!

Furniture designers and wood carvers are no less worthy of God’s love and devotion than all the saints who’ve ever been named. I thank these artists for the lasting gift they’ve given me. Their talents are much appreciated.

Amen.

TBM 22: Why I Don’t Endorse "A Course In Miracles"

In the past few days, I’ve been busily researching the well-known text called A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace, Publisher. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. 2nd ed. Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992.).

The Three Magi (felt panel (C) JAT)

The Three Magi (felt panel (C) JAT)

I purchased this book at Chapters a few years ago. I’m not sure exactly when I bought it. It was probably in 2004 or 2005. In more recent years, I’ve made a habit of noting the date of purchase on the title page of my new acquisitions, and there’s no purchase note in my copy of ACIM, as it’s commonly known. But I picked up a copy when I saw it at the bookstore because I like to have primary sources on my bookshelves — books written by mystics rather than books written about mystics. I like to read for myself what famous mystics and channellers of the past have written in their own words.

You can tell a lot about a person’s internal brain architecture by reading what they’ve written or what they’ve “transcribed” in a mystical state.

Although no author is listed on the title page of ACIM, it was written between 1965 and 1972 by a New York professor of medical psychology named Helen Schucman. She was aided in this process by her colleague William Thetford, who was also a professor of psychology. (You can read more about it by googling ACIM, Helen Schucman, and William Thetford.)

Schucman was 56 years old when she went through a four-month period of “unusually vivid dream sequences” and “unusual waking experiences.” She gradually began to discern an inner character, a voice who spoke to her and identified himself as Jesus. At first she heard this voice only in her dreams. One day, however, she was sitting in her home when she heard the same voice say to her while she was awake, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”

So she took notes. Lots and lots of notes. She used shorthand to write down what the inner voice was dictating, and her colleague Bill Thetford transcribed the notes onto a typewriter as she read them aloud. Apparently she at times needed a lot of reassurance from Thetford to keep going with this process. Thetford eventually edited the material with the help of a third clinical psychologist, Kenneth Wapnick.

I have a lot of concerns about this material. I have concerns about the state of Schucman’s mental function when she was hearing the inner voice. I have concerns about the motives of Bill Thetford, who coaxed her into continuing to “channel” even when she repeatedly expressed her uncertainty. (As a clinical psychologist, he ought to have known better.) I have concerns about the extent to which other people — including Thetford and Wapnick — oversaw and edited the raw material and helped popularize it through a Foundation created on the other side of the country. I have concerns about the report given by Benedict Groeschel, a Roman Catholic priest and psychologist, who knew Schucman well. Groeschel said that in the last two years of her life Schucman was suffering from a severe psychotic depression. (She died in 1981). If she were writing this material today, I would want to see her current brain scans and I would want to investigate through conventional medical means the possibility that at age 56 Helen Schucman was showing early signs of a dementia with dissociative features.

If you open up any page of A Course in Miracles, what you’ll find is stream of consciousness poetry that resonates with the words and the imagery of ancient mystical texts. It is apophatic mysticism in one of the purest forms I’ve ever seen — a sort of modern day Gnostic Docetism.

Here is an example (one of many, many examples) of the Docetic/Gnostic content of ACIM: “It should especially be noted God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its Oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then can the meaning of wholeness in the true sense be understood. Any part of the Sonship can believe in error or incompleteness if he so chooses. However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement (Chapter 2, Section VII, para. 6).”

Sounds very lofty, very wise, very ethereal, eh?

Small paragraphs taken out of context in ACIM sound this way much of the time, which is probably why the text has been so popular with spiritual seekers who are fed up with traditional religious teachings. The book seems to have so many helpful insights! The problem comes when you try to paste all the paragraphs together. When you paste them together, you don’t have a coherent body of thought with a logical structure and a strong foundation in science. What you have is a circular stream of cliches, cliches that were robbed from other writers (albeit unwittingly) and pasted together in a hamster wheel of Wisdom (“Sophia” in ancient Greek).

A Course in Miracles will take you round and round in circles, but it won’t help you move forward along the Spiral Path because it’s not grounded in reality.

The “Workbook for Students,” which follows 666 pages of “revelation,” contains 365 lessons for spiritual students. Three hundred and sixty-five lessons! (Does anyone need that many?) In my opinion this isn’t a one-year course in miracles — it’s a one-year course in how to become dissociated from your own free will, your own thoughts and emotions, and your own soul’s inner wisdom.

I mean, come on, if you tell your biological brain for a whole year that “nothing I see in this room means anything” (Lesson #1), what do expect your biological brain to do with that? If you tell yourself for a whole year that “This table does not mean anything. This chair does not mean anything. This hand does not mean anything. This foot does not mean anything. This pen does not mean anything (page 3 of Part II),” what do you honestly think your brain is going to do? Your brain — whose job it is to follow the instructions you give it — is going to stop assigning meaning to anything.

Just as you’ve told it to do.

I don’t know about you, but I see one of the greatest causes of suffering in this world as people having too little meaning in their lives, not too much.

When I look at a chair, I see lots of meaning. In the chair I see chemistry and physics at work. I see God the Mother and God the Father sharing baryonic matter with their children who are incarnated here on Planet Earth — children who need all the help they can get! I see an important household item that adds to my sense of comfort and household beauty. I see a medical device, if you will, that helps support my back so I don’t get a backache. I see a product of economic health and well being. (I had to pay money for the chair.) I see the hard work of many people — the people who designed the chair, tested the chair, manufactured the chair, transported the chair, and sold the chair — all people who deserve to make a living.

I see relationships in the chair. And I feel grateful for these relationships.

Relationships are real. Relationships are the very foundation of everything that’s real and meaningful in our lives. I refuse to accept any spiritual or religious teaching that tries to force me to stop seeing relationships in the world around me.

Recently I spoke with a young woman I’ve been acquainted with for the past couple of years. When I saw her a few weeks ago, she looked distracted and unfocussed, and her affect was sort of “flattened.” I asked her how she’s been doing.

Terrible, she said. In the past two months, she’s been to eight funerals. One was the funeral of her elderly grandmother. But the others were all suicides. Suicides of “successful” twenty-something year olds.

I was shocked and horrified to hear her speak of friends she’s known since day care who are choosing to hang themselves.

People choose to hang themselves for a lot of different reasons, but it’s not something people tend to do when they feel there’s a way out of their sense of emptiness or hopelessness or depression. Seeking help from others, speaking about major mental illness, accepting appropriate medical treatment, and finding an ethical spiritual mentor are all ways that can help people restore a sense of faith and trust and love in their lives and in their relationships — including their relationship with themselves.

But telling people who are already suffering from emptiness or hopelessness or depression that their suffering isn’t real and is only an illusion . . . that’s just plain cruel.

This is why I refuse to endorse any of the teachings or methods of A Course in Miracles. In my view, the Course is just plain cruel.

 

TBM21: Humbleness: Excellence Without Status

Last time, I said that “humility” and “humbleness” aren’t the same thing. So here’s my definition of humbleness:

Humbleness is your ongoing choice to feel grateful for the soul talents your neighbour has.

Cosmos (c) JAT 2014

Cosmos (c) JAT 2014

Hmmmm . . . so . . . to unpack this a bit more, humbleness is an expression of gratitude . . . but it’s not gratitude for your own talents . . . and it’s an expression of relationship with your neighbour (because you actually have to pay attention to what your neighbour’s talents are if you’re going to feel gratitude for his/her talents) . . . and it’s kinda the opposite of envy (because it’s pretty much impossible to be truly grateful if you’re gnashing your teeth in envy) . . . and it’s kinda the opposite of worship (because as soon as you put somebody on a pedestal of worship you’re providing fuel for status addiction) and it’s kinda the same as empathy (because you can put yourself in your neighbour’s shoes and imagine how happy he/she is to have a talent to share with others) . . . and it’s kinda the same as seeing yourself as a complete and worthy person even if you don’t have the same talents as your neighbour.

So, in the end, it IS a form of gratitude for your own talents, but it’s a radically egalitarian feeling that refuses to apply adjectives like “better” or “smarter” or “more worthy of God’s love” to anyone.

It’s a form of gratitude that’s built on honesty and truth-telling. And on strong interpersonal boundaries.

Humbleness means you know exactly who you are. You know where your own boundaries start and end. You know what your talents are. You know what your talents aren’t. You use everything you are to the best of your own ability. You don’t try to “be” your neighbour because you know you aren’t your neighbour. And this is okay with you. Ideally, it’s also okay with your neighbour.

What’s really interesting about the experience of humbleness is the lack of fear you feel about going about your daily life and doing a damned good job at what you do. You lose the fear that your neighbours will envy you and try to take you down a notch or two because they believe you’re trying to “show them up.” (They may, indeed, decide to take action against you, but if this happens you understand it’s not your fault if they take offense — it’s their own fault — and you then forgive them).

Christian teachings on humility create a constant climate of judgment and tit-for-tat comparison among neighbours. The Christian bar of humility is set low — very low — and anyone who tries to exceed this “oneness of mediocrity” will be harshly accused of pride, hubris, and a lack of surrender to God’s will.

What they really mean when they say “you don’t know your place” is that you’re being a pain in the ass, and you’re showing through your own hard work and courageous conduct that the bar is set too low.

Humility breeds obedient, unquestioning doormats who believe religious propaganda about their own unworthiness. Humbleness, on the other hand, leaves no room for excuses or blaming other people for your own mistakes or sitting around on your butt while other people are doing the hard work of healing individuals, families, and communities.

Humbleness assumes you ARE worthy. Humbleness assumes that your own Soul Purpose is just as important as your neighbour’s.

Humbleness assumes that you ARE a soul — a child of God with a unique soul blueprint and a unique way of contributing to the lives of your brothers and sisters in divine love.

If you’re like most people on Planet Earth, the greatest obstacle for you on the Spiral Path will be the many myths and the many lies generated by status addiction. Status addiction and humbleness are mutually contradictory paradigms. And right now, status addiction has a much greater grip on your life than you probably realize. Please don’t judge yourself for this. We’re all in this together. We all created this problem together, so no one can fix it alone. We have to work together in teams and groups and communities to heal this massively painful issue. We need lots of teachers and mentors and healers to carry this work forward.

It’s my great hope that individuals will begin to form small groups to heal this issue using the established Twelve Step method.

Hey, look at that! The Twelve Step program is already using the humbleness paradigm!

Thank goodness for that.

 

TBM20: Definition of Status Addiction

One of the great advantages of walking the Spiral Path in fellowship with God and your guardian angels is that you’re constantly being encouraged to learn new things and meet new people. You’re constantly being encouraged to let go of belief systems that are holding you back in your quest to know your full potential as a child of God.

“Living your full potential” is another way of saying “living your soul purpose.” It’s a positive, hopeful concept, one that Jesus son of Joseph taught his own followers 2,000 years ago. Jesus described the quest to know yourself and live according to your soul purpose as “entering the kingdom of the heavens.” It’s not really God’s kingdom you’re entering (though parts of the Bible describe it as such). It’s your own little kingdom — your own little corner of God’s spiritual kitchen. It’s the truth about yourself you have to understand so you can better help other people.

The Apostle Paul hated and feared Jesus’ teachings about “the Kingdom.” He was determined to snuff out Jesus’ teachings on the nature of the soul because he (Paul) wanted to help preserve the status quo. The status quo protected the rights and privileges of the people at the top of the social pyramid — the priests, the kings, the lawmakers, and the chosen bloodlines of their families.

Things haven’t changed much since then, eh?

The danger in Jesus’ teachings was — and is — the lack of “fuel” for people who are addicted to status. By that I mean people who are physiologically addicted to status. People who are biologically addicted to status. People whose dopamine receptors and orexin receptors (to greatly simplify) respond in imbalanced ways to an ingestion of “status points.” (You can read more about this in the post called “The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction.”)

Unfortunately, not much useable research has been done on this topic, but I’m hopeful that, in time, researchers in cross-disciplinary studies will come together to discuss the reality of status addiction from all angles: neuroscience combined with psychiatry, education theory, sociology, parenting skills, and Twelve Step programs.

Status addiction, like any other addiction disorder, isn’t a black-or-white psycho/social/medical issue but a spectrum of need. At one end of the spectrum are the people who only occasionally use the substance. Sure, they have cravings, but other factors in their lives help them keep a lid on their using.

At the other end of the spectrum are the full-blown addicts, the ones who can’t get through a few hours let alone a few days without a fix. The behaviour of a full-blown addict makes sense only to the addict himself or herself. To everyone else, the status addict’s behaviour is cruel. Lacking in empathy. Intolerant. Judgmental. Perfectionistic. Demanding. Controlling. Angry. Abusive. And in a constant state of denial.

Sound familiar? Everyone knows a person who’s chosen the path of status addiction. They’re the bullies, tyrants, narcissists, and psychopaths of the world. They’re the ones who thrive at a biological level on the idea that they’re better than other people. Better or smarter or faster or stronger. Nicer. More generous to others or more obedient to God than you. More deserving of praise, reward, health, and wealth than you.

It’s not in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that God doesn’t play favourites. Nor is it in a status addict’s best interests to agree in principle with the idea that human beings are responsible for their own choices, including the choice to be angry, cruel, and abusive.

b3_humanoids007 01

Being around a status addict makes you feel as if you need a gas mask and protective armour. ((C) Image*After)

It’s important to understand that the Apostle Paul was convinced God plays favourites. Paul’s Letter to the Romans explains in gory detail who will be saved by God and who won’t (or who won’t be saved at first, anyway). For Paul, there’s no question that Christians are better than other people. There’s also no question, when you read Paul’s convoluted thesis about “Sin,” that he himself was trapped by the selfish behaviours of status addiction.

If you find all the places in Romans where Paul talks about cosmic “Sin” and replace the word “Sin” with “status addiction,” you’ll quickly realize that Paul was a man in a state of denial about his own addiction issues. He didn’t want to take responsibility for his own choices, and he was prepared to invent ever more status-soaked theologies to explain why he wasn’t responsible for the way he felt inside his own head.

I want to emphasize an important point, though. Paul knew what he was doing. He wasn’t mentally incompetent in a legal or moral or medical sense. He maintained a grip on many of his mental faculties, including his ability to write cogently and logically; his ability to manipulate and coerce others in subtle, sophisticated ways; and his ability to stay clearly focussed on tasks and goals. He wasn’t dysfunctional in the way that a person with a serious, untreated psychotic disorder is dysfunctional. He knew what he was doing and he wanted to do it so he and his followers could acquire more status points.

Paul, in fact, was so shrewd in his observations about human nature that he understood what tyrants such as Pol Pot have failed to understand. Paul understood that if you want to build a stable social structure to support the status needs of those at the top of the pyramid, you have to put an effective leash on the status-seeking behaviours of everyone, even the people at the top. Otherwise, chaos runs rampant as countless individuals seek a “hit” of status at the expense of their neighbours.

Paul’s leash is humility. And it’s as effective a scam today as it was 2,000 years ago, judging by this quote from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002)):

“Cultivating community takes humility. Self-importance, smugness, and stubborn pride destroy fellowship faster than anything else. Pride builds walls between people; humility builds bridges. Humility is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. That’s why the Bible says, ‘Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.’ The proper dress for fellowship is a humble attitude.

The rest of that verse says, ‘. . . because, God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.’ This is the other reason we need to be humble: Pride blocks God’s grace in our lives, which we must have in order to grow, change, heal, and help others. We receive God’s grace by humbly admitting that we need it. The Bible says anytime we are prideful, we are living in opposition to God! That is a foolish and dangerous way to live (page 148).”

Humility and humbleness. Are they the same thing? I argue they’re not the same. Humility is what Paul and others have taught as a leash on the selfishness of status addiction. Humbleness, on the other hand, is what Jesus taught as a tonic for the wounds caused by status addiction.

Warren says, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves (page 148).”

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

(I loved the TV show Lost in Space when I was a kid.)

If you try to always think of others, and never think of your own needs, you’ll become one messed-up puppy.

I tried this whole dissolve-yourself-in-service-to-others gig for three whole years in the “middle phase” of my spiritual journey, and guess what happened? I ended up being an enabler for status-addicts.

There’s nothing a status-addict loves more than having an obedient, admiring, selfless acolyte to kick around. (Well, having a whole group of acolytes would probably be better than having just one doormat to wipe his/her feet on, but even one servant is better than none.)

Humility is not the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness is the oil that smoothes and soothes relationships. Forgiveness and tough love are closely linked to each other because both require you to dredge up your own soul-given courage. Knowing yourself and trusting yourself also require great courage.

Being a doormat and an enabler of status addicts may be the easy way out, but it’s not the divine way out.

Did you know that Paul almost never discusses forgiveness in his known letters? Yeah, that’s because if you tell people they have the power within themselves to forgive themselves and each other, they may discover on their own that we’re all equally amazing children of God and nobody — but nobody — is “chosen.”

Couldn’t have that, now, could we?

______

P.S. After I posted the body of this article, I was prompted by my guardian angels to look closely at the index of Rick Warren’s book. His book is divided into a preface plus 40 chapters (one chapter for each day of the “journey”). There are many footnotes. Most of the footnotes give scriptural references to support Warren’s argument, and a few refer to recent Christian publications he admires.

Of the 787 footnotes in this book, only 7 refer to the biblical Gospel of Mark (with one footnote listing 2 different verses in Mark). (There’s a ninth footnote reference to Mark, but this is for Mark 16:15, which is generally believed to be a later addition to the gospel).

The Gospel of Mark is a troublesome book for evangelical and conservative Christians because this is the story of a physician-scholar who gives up his status and breaks a lot of religious rules in order to help the poor, the disenfranchised, and the sick. It can also be called the Gospel of Forgiveness, ’cause that’s what Jesus does throughout.

As I said, it’s a troublesome book. (You can read more about the dispute between Mark and Paul at “Choosing Between Paul and Jesus,”  “The Case for Mark Versus Paul,”   and “Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength.” 

 

TBM19: Soul Purpose – Your Corner of God’s Spiritual Kitchen

Rick Warren, evangelical preacher and founder of a religious empire built on the bestselling Purpose-Driven books, has stumbled onto an important truth. People want to know why they’re here on Planet Earth. They want to know what their life purpose is.

Warren’s book called The Purpose-Driven Life has apparently sold over 30 million copies.* That’s a lot of people looking for purpose.

I bought the book in 2004, shortly before I flew to Orange County, California, to participate in a Normal Brain Study. While I was there, I decided “what the heck, I’m so close, why not drive over to see Rick Warren’s church?” So I found myself, one weekday morning in December 2004, walking into his humongous building to check out the feel of the place.

My visit to Saddleback Church helped me better understand why I don’t agree with most of Warren’s teachings,** and why I particularly dislike what he says in The Purpose-Driven Life.

The blurb on the back of copy I own says this about the book: “This book will help you understand why you are alive and God’s amazing plan for you — both here and now, and for eternity. Rick Warren will guide you through a personal 40-day spiritual journey that will transform your answer to life’s most important question: What on earth am I here for? Knowing God’s purpose for creating you will reduce your stress, focus your energy, simplify your decisions, give meaning to your life, and, most, important, prepare you for eternity.”

According to Warren, you’ll find all these benefits if you understand you’re here to fulfill five main purposes. You need to know that (#1) you were planned for God’s pleasure; (#2) you were formed for God’s family; (#3) you were created to become like Christ; (#4) you were shaped for serving God; and (#5) you were made for a mission.

Well, you know, I couldn’t disagree more. This is not a recipe for finding your soul purpose. This is a recipe for finding humility, a recipe for eradicating all knowledge of your core self. This is Paul’s religious recipe, not Jesus’ recipe. (You can read more about the differences between these two sets of teachings in the Jesus Redux series of posts.)

This watercolour was painted by my mother in 1983. You’d never know from looking at this piece that she had cerebral palsy. It was mild compared to what some people face, but it made her hands shake and prevented her from participating in team sports. These things never stopped her, though. She knew from an early age that her gift was art, and she didn’t let anyone get in the way of her plans to go to art college in the 1950s (at a time when nice girls from good families didn’t do such things). As soon as she sat down at her drafting board to work on a watercolour, she had incredible control of her hands. It was through her watercolours that she was able to share a deep, calming, gentle love of beauty with others. She was lucky to find one of her life purposes.

Warren, like so many religious teachers, is adamant that you can’t get to know God by focussing on yourself or your own self-actualization: “[Y]ou cannot arrive at your life’s purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. You must begin with God, your Creator. You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God for God — and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead end (page 18).”

See, Warren’s whole argument rests on his assumption that human beings are made by God for God’s pleasure and God’s own purpose. You don’t get a say in this. Once you stop fighting this “truth,” says Warren, you’ll find contentment.

I read this and what I hear is a man telling you to accept your lot in a life as a slave. A slave who is owned by a powerful master. A slave who exists only to serve the needs of his master (i.e. the need for worship and glory). A slave who has no rights of his/her own. A slave who should be grateful to a master who provides air to breathe and food to eat and nothing more. Amen.

Of course, the Bible says this very thing about our relationship with God in many different ways, so it’s not surprising that an evangelical Christian (who believes the Bible is God’s infallible “word”) would conclude that people are empty-vessels-waiting-to-be-filled-up-by-God. After all, this is what the Bible says — both the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament.

According to this traditional Christian view, there’s only one Spiritual Kitchen in the universe, and it belongs exclusively to God. No other kitchens exist. And no other chefs exist, either. There’s only one chef, and he needs a lot of kitchen slaves to bring him the ingredients he needs so he can make his big, fancy souffles.

God is apparently too stupid to make his own eggs and apparently too selfish and vain to share the kitchen with anyone else.

Iain standing on a chair so he can reach the kitchen sink (c) JAT 1988

Iain standing on a chair so he can reach the kitchen sink. Photo credit JAT 1989.

When my younger son was a toddler, he became enthralled with water — especially running water. He would stand on a chair at the kitchen sink while I was preparing meals and he’d play with the water from the cold water tap. He’d hold a plastic cup under the stream of water, wait for it to fill, pour out the water, and start over again. This would go on for half an hour or more. (He had a long attention span). He seemed to find it both fascinating and soothing.

It was fascinating and soothing for me, too, to see him standing there, so intent on his task, so trusting, so happy.

He was very different from his older brother (a fellow who was born to move). Early on, Iain showed a deep interest in Newtonian physics. He would discover a principle of mechanics, then test it repeatedly. “Fan on, fan off,” he would say aloud as he turned the wall fan on, then off, again and again, using the switch on the lower part of the wall. It’s amazing he didn’t burn out the fan’s motor. On the other hand, two expensive tape decks had to be taken in for repair after he pulled off the tape compartment doors in his quest to understand how the machines worked.

He could run the VCR by the time he was two.

I have little doubt that, had he lived, he would have grown up to be an engineer — maybe electrical, like his grandfather (my dad), who trained as a chemical engineer but worked for an electrical engineering firm for many years. It was there right from the beginning, our son’s true soul talent. Nobody “gave” it to him. He was born that way. He was hardwired from birth to focus on the things in the world that he recognized, that were familiar to him in the essence of his consciousness because of who he is as a child of God.

By the time Iain was born, our house was overflowing with all manner of toy vehicles — “cars and trucks and things that go” (which was also the title of a Richard Scarry book adored by our older son). But wheels weren’t on our younger son’s “soul recognition list.” He had his own list of things to learn about and share with others, things he’d “brought with him,” so to speak, because they’re part of his true soul blueprint.

People speak of the mind’s eye, but I believe we have a heart’s eye, too. In my heart’s eye, I see my little boy standing with me in the kitchen, propped up on a chair because that was the only way he could reach the tap, talking to me, listening to me, sharing his deep love of learning with me, and bringing so much love and joy into my life because he wasn’t afraid to be himself.

Our loving divine parents — God the Mother and God the Father — have a kitchen like this, only it’s really, really big because our divine family is really, really big, and there has to be a spot for everyone. Over in one corner are the kids who love to play with the kitchen pot set, and over there are the kids who have an Easy Bake Oven, and over there are the kids who love to make sticky, gooey messes while they learn, and over there are the older kids — the teens, as it were — who are helping keep an eye on their younger brothers and sisters as they stand beside the stove with Mom and Pop and learn how to safely cook with gas.

This is what our relationship with God feels like to me. This is what our relationship with ourselves feels like to me. So few adults can remember who they were as young children. So few can say with any certainty what they recognized in their early years as their own little corner of the spiritual kitchen. But you have a corner. You have a spot that belongs just to you. It’s the place in God’s creation where you feel both happiest and safest, and, at the same time, most able to give of yourself to others.

When you’re in the right place — not the place your parents tell you, not the place your status-addicted peers tell you, but the place your own soul tells you — you can begin to make a lasting difference in the world.

When you fill your cup with your soul’s own truth — your courage, your gratitude, your devotion, your trust, your forgiveness — you’ll discover you can see these truths and feel these truths and KNOW these truths in others. Including God.

As they say, water seeks its own level.

 

* Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
** Naturally I have no quarrel in principle with Warren’s efforts to address worldwide issues of poverty, illness, education, and environmental care. However, I disagree with his suggested methods.

 

TBM18: Some Thoughts on Soul Purpose

Soul purpose is one of the least discussed issues of mainstream religion and one of the most poorly understood issues for New Age teachers.

The concept of soul purpose is so deeply intertwined with Divine Love that it can’t be separated from other core spiritual values such as forgiveness, healing, courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be possible for you to know courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion without your own unique “envelope” of soul purpose to hold all these blessings together inside your own consciousness.

That’s a bit of twist on your understanding of soul purpose, isn’t it?

I’ve read many different theories about soul purpose, theories that attempt to explain why you’re here on Planet Earth and what you can do about this painful reality. The core teachings of Buddhism (the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path) are devoted exclusively to the question of soul purpose, even though these teachings don’t include the word “soul.”

Traditional Christian teachings, which are founded on Paul’s theories of sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation, are similarly devoted exclusively to the question of soul purpose, though they never actually say so.

The honest truth is, you don’t need a religion founded on a promise of “Escape” from your own corrupted soul unless you believe in the first place that you ARE a corrupted soul.

I grew up in a household that operated according to Northern European Protestant teachings on the sinful nature of humankind and the absolute duty of every individual to crush sinful thoughts through hard work, suppression of emotions, obedience, lawfulness, and the pursuit of excellence.

So my sister and I, we always felt guilty. We weren’t quite sure why we felt so guilty, but we did, and we tried very hard to behave correctly so we wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.

In the Protestant culture I was raised in, it was assumed that individuals, including children, are not capable of generating a sense of duty and service to others — that is, a sense of soul purpose — from within. They’re not capable of finding and living a sense of soul purpose on their own. Duty must therefore be imposed from the outside by the laws and traditions of the culture, we’re told.

This assumption comes, in part, from the orthodox teachings of the Protestant Church, as expounded by men such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and John and Charles Wesley, to name a few. These men believed that human beings don’t have anything to brag about. Ever. They believed that all people are born sinful at the core, and that we as human beings can best serve God by never thinking for a moment that there’s anything good inside us that we can claim as our own. We must, according to these thinkers, take full responsibility for all the “bad” we think and do, but we are never, ever, allowed to take full responsibility for the “good” we think and do. To believe in our inner goodness would be pure hubris — a terrible violation of the laws of humility.

If you’ve been reading my other blogs, you know what I think of the Church’s traditional teachings on humility.

So it would be fair to say that the search to find your own soul purpose is the search to let go of religious humility.

It’s impossible to simultaneously live your own soul purpose AND accept religious teachings on humility (that is, intentional eradication of the self). You have to choose between wanting to learn to like and trust yourself (soul purpose) OR wanting to become “an empty vessel in service to God” (humility). The former choice will take you forward on the Spiral Path. The latter choice will derail you. But the choice is still up to you because you have free will.

When I entered graduate studies in theology in 2007, my original goal was to seek ordination in the United Church of Canada. This was before I discovered that the United Church requires its ministry candidates to choose humility.

I just can’t understand why the Church believes a minister can only be of true service to God if he or she submits to a process of eradicating the core self that is the good soul.

I can understand the Church’s desire to insist on high standards of ethical conduct in its ministers. I can understand the Church’s desire to identify and arrange treatment for addiction problems and major mental health issues. I can understand the Church’s desire for ministers to be reliable and trustworthy and empathetic and genuinely interested in serving the needs of others.

But, you know, the only way to accomplish these worthy goals is to ensure that ministerial candidates know more about themselves, not less.

And this goes for other religions, too, not just Christianity.

The inner soul of every human being is desperate to be kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, and not addicted to status. Every. Single. Human. Being.

Young children (under the age of 2), except for those raised from the get-go in an abusive environment, are naturally and instinctively kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, and not addicted to status.

I had to wait until I became a mother myself to see this lesson right in front of my face.

My two young sons were really nice people. Sure, they were small and physically helpless. But they were so observant. And so quick to learn. And so kind to me. And so nice.

And soon I would discover, when my younger son was diagnosed at age 2 1/2 with leukemia, that my sons were not only nice, they were trusting and courageous at a level that astounded me. That stunned me. That told me they knew something important that I didn’t — or that I’d long since forgotten.

My sons weren’t “special” or “chosen.” They were just being themselves. They were being their core selves — good souls, kind souls, loving children of God.

Unless you’ve seen for yourself the unrelenting forgiveness offered by a child who’s been trapped in a hospital isolation room for months and given searingly painful medical treatments again and again, who has suffered a massive stroke but relearns to walk anyway without complaint, who is prevented by medical protocols from playing with other children or living a normal life despite his great love for other people, you may not believe me. Until you’ve seen for yourself the courage of a 5 year old boy who gives his bone marrow to his little brother without ever complaining or doubting, you may not believe me.

But I’m telling you the truth my children told me. I’m telling you that you were born this way. I’m telling you that inside your own battered head lives a kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, status-free angel who doesn’t need any law books or contract clauses or religious codes to know the difference between right and wrong. I’m telling you that your core self is real and can never be taken away from you. I’m telling you it’s okay for you to believe that, as a soul, you’re a person God not only loves, but that God actually likes and trusts. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.)

You’re richer than you think.

1988 - Boys in Blue

From the earliest months of their lives, my two sons were completely different from each other in temperament and talent. Yet both were kind, trusting, curious, and true to their soul selves. They were my greatest teachers. Photo (c) JAT 1988.

 

 

TBM17: Learning to Understand Your Own Angels

This piece called “Dream Cloud” is carved from a single piece of boulder opal in an ironstone matrix. It measures 8 x 6 x 4 centimetres, weighs 1167.5 carats, and is believed to have been carved in about 1915 CE. My intuition tells me that the artist who created this piece had some divine inspiration along the way. “Dream Cloud” is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017

Learning to communicate with your guardian angels is a tricky, tricky business.

If you go into the New Age section of your local bookstore, you’ll find quite a few books about how to talk to angels. Most of these books are written by people who are in the early stages of their spiritual journey. They don’t yet have the knowledge or experience or scientific training to teach others how to understand the messages of angels. Therefore, a lot of information in these books is flawed.

However, some New Age books are well-meaning and contain the odd useful nugget. This is more than I can say for books about angels that are written by evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, who want to pummel you with the idea that your soul is filled with sin and your angels are part of a vast celestial hierarchy whose only purpose is to worship God. It’s pretty negative stuff when you stop and think about it.

There’s a history behind these traditional teachings I won’t go into today, but suffice it to say that conventional Christian theories about angels won’t get you very far on the Spiral Path. In fact, Christian theories will slow you down. You’re better off to start with a simple model based on observable facts.

Fact #1: Learning to communicate effectively with anyone — including your angels — takes time and practice and patience. It’s not something you learn overnight. It’s not something you learn at a weekend workshop. It’s something you have to work on bit by bit, day by day. In other words, you need to know from the very beginning of your journey that you won’t be able to understand your angels’ messages right away. You’re going to have to practise.

This doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact. What you’re trying to develop is a complex skill — a way of thinking and feeling and acting that’s holistic and grounded and peace-filled. Because it’s a complex skill, it takes time for you to develop it. But this is a good thing, right? All complex human endeavours take time and effort. People don’t learn how to become jumbo jet pilots by going to a weekend workshop. Cirque du Soleil artists don’t learn how to scale walls by going to a weekend workshop. And adult men and women don’t learn how to communicate effectively with their angels in a few short hours, either.

If you meet a spiritual teacher who claims to have had an experience of instant conversion to a state of full communion with God or God’s angels overnight, you should be very, very wary. The story in the Bible’s Book of Acts about Saul’s sudden conversion on the road to Damascus is exactly the sort of religious claim that should raise an alarm bell in the back of your head. The story of Saul (who becomes Paul) gives people the idea that God chooses certain special people and then swoops into their heads to instantly rewire their brains so they can serve as special receptacles for divine revelation.

Yeah, okay, so God is just going to dump a few terabytes of new data into your head from one minute to the next, and you’re not even going to get a migraine?

This is just goofy. Not to mention abusive. The story of Saul on the road to Damascus describes an abusive God who seizes hold of one man and forces him to instantly convert to a new vision of God. Saul doesn’t get a say in this conversion, according to the Bible. Instead, he’s forced by God to accept his “destiny.” His “fate.” His chosen status as a messenger of God.

And where in this story does Saul apply his own free will and make the choice to seek redemption?

Nowhere.

This leads us to Fact #2.

Fact #2: Learning to use your own free will is a real bitch. I’m not going to lie to you. A big part of your journey to understand your angels’ messages will involve the journey to understand your own free will.

See, this is another reason I’m suggesting you avoid traditional Christian teachings about angels and souls. According to these traditional teachings, you don’t really have free will. Well, you sorta do, in so far as you can choose to commit sinful acts. And, of course, you’re allowed to apply your free will to choose salvation through Christ. But, other than that, the Church says you’re basically an unworthy piece of shit who can’t choose redemption and can’t really forgive others and can’t be a good person unless God has chosen this destiny for you. But good luck trying!

Fortunately, a great many individuals have figured out the Church is wrong.

Among the people who understand the true potential of your free will are your very own guardian angels. All angels, whether in 4D form or in incarnated human form, live and breathe the concept of free will in its deepest grandeur. So you may as well know from the beginning of your journey that if you try to tell your angels that you can’t change because you don’t have free will, they’ll put on their angel earmuffs and loudly proclaim, “Sorry, we can’t hear you. La la la la la.”

Why are angels allowed to ignore your pity parties? Because angels have free will. And they don’t have to agree with everything you’re saying.

Which leads to the last point I want to highlight today.

Fact #3: All guardian angels are equally competent and equally well qualified to guide their respective charges. There’s no such thing as “defective” or “inferior” guardian angels. The angels who are watching over you are the angels who are best suited to you and your unique needs. Period.

I’ve read a number of New Age books in which authors claim you can break a contract with your guardian angels if you believe they’re not “pure” enough or “advanced” enough for you. According to these authors, you can insist on being teamed with a “better” angel or spirit guide, someone who’s higher on the ladder of spiritual ascent . . . like, say, an archangel instead of a plain ol’ guardian angel. Like maybe even Archangel Michael himself!

Hah!

You may have noticed that in my last post (Angels Aren’t Wusses) I described angels as being more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the winged, ethereal, transcendent beings of traditional Western art. This is because angels ARE more like the crew of the Enterprise. They come in many different sizes and shapes (think Klingon, Betazoid, Vulcan). They come with many different combinations of talents and strengths (think strong Klingon, empathic Betazoid, intellectual Vulcan). They come with absences of strengths, too (think gentle Klingon, non-telepathic Betazoid, weepy Vulcan — say what?). So angels always work AS A TEAM, with each angel offering his or her strengths, and each one deferring to others in areas where he or she lacks a strength or talent. (Not coincidentally, the same observation applies to human communities at their best — people with different “sizes and strengths” coming together to work as a team.)

No one incarnates on Planet Earth before a full and appropriate angelic team has been assembled for the particular individual who has chosen to incarnate.

Gosh, did I just say “has chosen to incarnate”? As in “wasn’t forced by cosmic forces beyond my control to be here living this lousy human life?”

Yup.

As I said above, all angels have free will. This free will extends to the choice to either incarnate for a while or to not incarnate for the time being.

Angels choose to incarnate for a variety of reasons, but all these reasons are positive and hopeful and courageous and loving. At the moment you may not remember or understand your own reasons for choosing to incarnate as a human being. But you did choose to be here. And your guardian angels support your choice and are doing far more than you realize to help you achieve your soul’s own purpose.

Next time we’ll talk about soul purpose, ’cause, as the Scotiabank’s TV ads say, “You’re richer than you think!”

 

TBM16: Angels Aren’t Wusses (Spirituality for Guys)

Son with Snowbirds

My son up close and personal with a Snowbirds CT-114 Tutor

Want to make a guy squirm? Tell him out loud he has a guardian angel.

Lots of women I know will talk about guardian angels. But it’s pretty rare to find a man who’s willing to stop and ask for directions from a guardian angel. Most guys would rather drive in circles for their entire lives than admit they need to stop and ask for help to read the map of the Spiral Path.

I say that as the mother of a 28 year old man. My son is a wonderful fellow, and he’s as thoughtful and responsible a man as any mother could wish for. But at the end of the day he’s a guy. A real guy. His eyes kind of glaze over at the thought of anything cool that moves and has lots of power (like cars, bikes, and planes). He’s an athlete (a sabre fencer, actually). He tries really hard to remember birthdays and anniversaries but sometimes he needs a friendly reminder. He leaves his socks in little piles all over the floor, and his socks almost never match. He loves action movies. He watches chick flicks with his girlfriend because he wants to share things with her that she enjoys. (Thank you, son). He loves to be spoiled with a big home-cooked meal (though he’s happy to do the dishes afterwards). He thinks South Park is funny.

Son with Kawasaki

My son with his Kawasaki

He has no problem expressing his individuality or his masculinity. Nor does he have a problem expressing his own thoughts and feelings in respectful ways. He loves to talk politics, history, philosophy, science, and spirituality. He’s not afraid to tell the truth when the truth needs to be told. He believes that being a man means doing the right thing rather than the easy thing.

But, ya know, despite all that, and despite the countless conversations I’ve had with him over the years about my own experiences as a mystic/channeller, he’s still kind of squeamish when I say the word “angel” out loud.

He chokes on the word. He really does. I don’t know why, but guys-of-heart just can’t seem to get past this word.

I think this may be part of the reason there’s so little material available for men who are seeking the Spiral Path.

Most of the books about angels are written by women for women. To make matters worse, these books are almost always illustrated with “chick flick” drawings and paintings. You know, lots of soft, flowing, pastel gowns. Butterflies. Gardens full of pink flowers. Unicorns. Fawns and kittens and puppies.

Okay. So maybe . . . maybe I’ve just stumbled onto part of the problem. Maybe part of the problem is the way angels have been depicted over the years.

I mean, really, if you’re a guy who likes to rip apart engines and put them back together, are you going to want to relate to your own guardian angel as a fat little Rococo baby with a naked butt? Or as a flowery, wispy, butterfly creature who breaks into tears at the first swear word you utter?

I’m thinkin’ not . . .

So here’s something I’m going to share with you based on my own long experience talking to various guardian angels over the years.

Guardian angels are tough as nails. If I had my way, paintings of angels would show them as they really are — more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the ethereal star children you’ve been seeing in recent books and films. These angel dudes, they’re committed and courageous and courteous and team-oriented, but if you choose to aim your weapons of hatred and prejudice and anger at them, they’ll put up their shields and deflect your attacks. They won’t put up with any bullshit from you.

Yes, it’s true that angels are very loving. Yes, it’s true that angels are completely forgiving. But it’s a mistake to equate love and forgiveness with meekness and mildness. No angel I’ve ever met can be described as meek and mild.

Least of all God the Mother and God the Father.

Over the centuries mystics and religious leaders have made a complete hash of their teachings on angels. There’s so much bad information out there in New Age and mystical texts that I can’t think of a single reputable book to recommend to you for further reading on the topic of angels.

So here’s what I’m going to suggest to you. In this day of internet connections and Skype and wireless phones and texting and instant imaging, we’ve all got used to the idea that it’s possible for us to have ongoing relationships with people who aren’t physically present in the same room with us, but who can be “seen” and “heard” via wireless connections.

Think of your biological brain as a highly advanced Blackberry or other wireless communication device. And think of your guardian angel as the guy who’s texting you on your Blackberry from a remote station, a remote station you can’t see with your physical eyes because it’s somewhere around a bend on the Spiral Path.

Just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he isn’t there.

And just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he can’t hear you or answer your questions every day of your life.

He hears you plenty good. And he’s texting you and Skyping you all the time. While he sits on his angelic Harley and listens to the angelic hard rock station he loves and brushes down his angelic jeans and black leather while he waits for his cue to ride in.

Okay, so maybe this last paragraph is a description of Jesus (’cause I know him so well by now and I know he’s a hard rock kind of guy) but you get the picture.

Angels aren’t wusses.

 

RS16: Angels in Blue Jeans

(c) Jamie MacDonald.  Used with permission of the artist.

(c) Jamie MacDonald. Used with permission of the artist.

A: Some people who are reading this discussion might say it’s unfair of us to suddenly throw brain science onto the same page alongside spirituality, to insist your teachings 2,000 years ago were built around ideas that have only been proven by science in the past few decades. How would you respond to that?

J: Well, the thing about science is that scientific research always lags behind the human mind, the human imagination. Research only evolves because somebody somewhere has had a great idea and wants to push the idea out of the 4D realm of consciousness and into the 3D world of physical reality. So it doesn’t phase me at all to hear people grumbling about the brain science. The honest truth is that I was a pioneer in the deep interconnection between science and faith. Sure, my ideas were rough around the edges, as early theories usually are. But that was the focus of my ministry.

A: I can hear the scornful scoffing from here — the outrage from pious Christians.

J: Well, I wasn’t a Pauline Christian. Never have been, never will be. Nor was I a devout Jew. So pious Christians and pious Jews can be as angry as they like. It won’t change the fact that I tried to found a radically new religious movement based on the most loving values I could find, regardless of where I found them. I was equally happy to gather insights from folk medicine as from Greek philosophy. In fact, I found more truths about God in the medicine chests of Galilean peasants than I ever found in Plato or Aristotle. Philosophers who live their lives inside their heads instead of their hearts have rarely contributed anything of value to the betterment of human lives. If I had a time machine (which I don’t, of course) I’d go back in time and invite Plato to spend a month in the copper mines and then ask him if he’d like to revise his bloody Republic.

A: Just a month?

J: He probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a month. The mines were brutal places.

A: There’s nothing like walking a mile in a slave’s shoes to understand how unjust slavery is.

J: Yes. I never became a slave — not in legal terms — but I went from a life of great privilege to a life of great hardship, and it altered all my ideas of, well, of everything. I wouldn’t have been able to see the truth about the Divine Heart if a lot of very powerful people hadn’t kicked the crap out of me.

A: Tell me more about that.

J: I’d been raised on a lot of insufferable ideas about how “important” I was and how “special” I was. I got it with my morning olives, you could say. “Yeshua, remember who you are. Yeshua, behave according to your station. Yeshua, don’t talk to those . . . those . . . filthy peasants. Yeshua, remember who you are!”

A: So who were you?

J: I was a descendant of the High Priest Onias III. One of many descendants, I should add. He had a lot of fertile children. John the Baptist was also a descendant of his. So technically speaking, John and I were cousins, though so distantly related that it only mattered to fanatical devotees of genealogy.

A: Was anyone keeping track of these things by the time you were born? Did anyone care that your great-great-whatever-grandfather had been High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple?

J: Oh yes. It was a big deal. It carried a lot a cachet. It was like saying today, “I’m a descendant of Queen Victoria.” The children of Queen Victoria married into many of the royal houses of Europe, and her descendants are spread all over the place. My family — on my mother’s side — was kind of like that. Our bloodline was considered “sacred.”

A: Even though your father was Greek.

J: Even then. He was talented and ambitious and indispensable as far as the Romans were concerned. He had a real talent for math. He could do complex calculations in his head, and he had a wonderful eye for architectural design. His name isn’t remembered in the annals of Roman architectural history, but he built some pretty memorable streetscapes in the newly conquered lands of Syria and Palestine.

A: He added to the status and prestige of Augustus.

J: Yes. His acceptance among the Romans made him a good match for my mother as far as my Jewish grandfather was concerned. Strong political connections. But, strange as it may seem, my parents’ marriage was a love match. They loved each other deeply. After my father died, when I was about four and my oldest brother, James, was sixteen, my mother lived as a widow in mourning for the rest of her very long life.

A: She was a widow during the small window of time when Roman marriage laws gave a measure of independence to widows who had at least three living children.

J: Yes. Few people see the significance of the list of my family’s names that Mark includes in his gospel. Mark 6:3 says, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters [plural] here with us?” There’s no mention of my father. There’s no mention of a step-father, either. Mark is clearly telling his audience that Mary had full property rights as a widow under Roman marriage law. It means she was wealthy and well connected, because only wealthy people could afford to provide the physiological needs and safety needs required to raise such a large family, and only well connected women could side-step the economic and cultural pressure on them to marry again. It’s right there in Mark. Plain as day.

A: In an era when infant mortality rates were high and most adults didn’t make it to “middle age” as we define middle age, it was important to note your family’s size and health and economic situation. It told readers something about who you were.

J: I grew up in a family that had enough money and enough prestige to guarantee that I had good nutrition and shelter while I was growing up (i.e. provide for my physiological needs); to protect me from being abused by robbers or slave-holding masters or religious masters (i.e. provide for my safety needs); to provide me with a family setting where I felt loved and respected (i.e. meet my needs for love & belonging); and to insist that I receive a strong education in Greek and Jewish philosophy, law, rhetoric, and geometry (i.e. give me the tools to build my self-esteem).

I may have made a lot of mistakes in my youth, but because of my upbringing I had a healthy brain. This gave me a considerable biological advantage compared to many others in the first century culture I lived in. My healthy brain made it possible for me to learn from my mistakes and ask new, harder questions about our relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. My healthy brain made me tougher and smarter than most of my peers.

A: Because you were using all parts of your brain in a balanced way. A holistic way. Not a rigid, fearful way.

J: When human beings stop being afraid of learning from their own mistakes — when they’re willing to be humble — they can do amazing things in the world.

But first — and this is the big stumbling block for status-addicted pious folk — first they have to get over themselves. They have to let go of every shred of religious chosenness and religious purity and religious salvation. They have to be willing to look God right in the eye. That’s what humbleness is. That’s what true faith is.

A: I love the way young children look their parents right in the eye and tell the truth out loud. That’s the way it should be.

J: That’s the way it actually is for angels-in-angel-form.

A: This morning my angel team shared a fascinating dream with me. They were talking about their own observations on the difference between Pauline Christianity and the kind of faith you tried to teach.

In the dream, they compared Pauline Christianity — orthodox Western Christianity — to a store that insists we each buy a fancy, expensive tuxedo. According to the store, you need to have a tuxedo on hand for that one-time-only day when you come face to face with God. You might never wear it during your lifetime as a human being. But, by golly, you better spend the money to buy it NOW so you can lock it in your closet and keep it safe for “That Day” in the future when God comes calling.

Of course, the store gets your money today . . .

You, on the other hand, would look pretty great in a tuxedo, but I know you well, and you’re no tuxedo-in-the-closet kind of guy. You’re a blue jeans kind of guy. Put on your blue jeans and go out into the world TODAY to see where you can help God TODAY. No standing on ceremony. No false humility. Just a guy with a big heart who knows what’s important in life.

Thanks, big guy. Thanks for saying what you needed to say in the way you needed to say it. We need more of this kind of courage in the world.

And thanks to my angel team, too. Couldn’t do it without you.

 

Food for thought (added March 3, 2015): On February 27, 2015, the National Post offered an article and video about a Canadian man who is a descendant of Queen Victoria. Hermann Leiningen carries a title, but in every other way is a normal Canadian.  His story reminds me of Jesus’ story, right down to the excellent manners, quick mind, and good education.  Please see “The Canadian who would be king: What it’s like to be the great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria.”

RS15: The Human Sense of Time & Timing

(C) JAT

Rivers of Time (c) JAT 2013

J: Today I want to talk about the human sense of time and timing.

A: Okay. I’ve had my first coffee, so my typing fingers are warmed up and ready to go.

J: When you were growing up, what were you taught about the human senses?

A: Oh. That’s easy. We were taught there are five senses — sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. I think this is still the conventional wisdom.

J: Right. And if I were to ask a group of people today what the “sixth sense” is, what would people say?

A: Intuition. Second sight. Psychic messages. Something along those lines.

J: Right. People in this culture are taught to think of the “sixth sense” as intuition — as something vague and on the fringe.

A: There’s also the famous movie called Sixth Sense. That’s a bit more than “being on the fringe.” That’s right into the Twilight Zone.

J: The problem — the problem I want to state clearly for the record — is that all human beings are born with an additional physical sense that hasn’t been recognized for what it is. This additional physiological trait is a scientific trait, not a paranormal trait. It’s 100% verifiable and 100% crucial to the healthy functioning of the human brain. It’s so important to the healthy functioning of the human brain that when it isn’t properly supported during the first few years of a child’s life, it causes lifelong problems in most facets of daily living.

A: You’re talking about the sense of time & timing.

J: Yes. This poorly understood aspect of the biological brain is so important that you could almost call it “the missing key” — the aspect of human consciousness that, if properly developed and used throughout life, generates an inner experience of wholeness and completion, an experience that so many people are lacking in their lives today.

A: Can you define the sense of time & timing?

J: It’s the ability of the human brain to correctly place “the self” on a timeline. It’s the ability to distinguish between past, present, and future. It’s the ability — quite literally — to tell time on an analog clock.

A: Ooooh. A lot of younger people today can’t tell time on an analog clock.

J: True. And it’s symptomatic of a much wider issue — the growing choice in Western culture (and other cultures) to stop teaching children about their own sense of time & timing. The parietal lobes of these children are not developing properly in early childhood. The parietal lobes of the brain are not developing the strong interconnections they need with all other parts of the brain. The cost here will be very high. Very high for these children, very high for their communities.

A: You don’t pull your punches, do you? Most people have never even heard of the sense of time or the parietal lobes of the brain, and here you are telling them the high cost of not developing these aspects of themselves. Are you talking about a spiritual cost? Changes in the parieto-temporal regions of the brain have been linked to certain mystical or spiritual experiences. Is this what you’re talking about?

J (shaking his head): It’s not that simple. The sense of time & timing takes six to seven years — years — to develop in a healthy child whose core needs (the core needs of the Christ Zone model) are all being met.

A: Starting when?

J: From the time of birth. The template for the sense of time & timing exists at birth, but it takes six to seven years of consistent exposure to the flow of time for the human brain to finally “get it.” When the brain finally “gets it,” analog clocks suddenly make sense. They make sense because they demonstrate in a mechanical way the forward movement of time. Digital clocks don’t “model” the forward flow of time. Digital clocks show a bunch of numbers in a particular order, but they don’t show time.

A: I can remember clear as day my son’s gradual struggle as a young boy to master the sense of time. He could read a digital clock at the age of four (“You can come and get Mommy when your clock says 7-0-0”) but it didn’t mean anything to him. He was simply memorizing the numbers.

J: You’d be surprised how many adults try to get through life by memorizing the numbers. It’s a scary feeling when you don’t understand the concept of time, but other people think you do.

A: I remember my son’s favourite TV cartoon when he was four. It was Ghostbusters. It was a half-hour show, and he just loved it. He even dressed up as a Ghostbuster for Hallowe’en one year. When he asked how long something would take, his dad and I would frame it in terms of Ghostbusters. “The church service will be two Ghostbusters long.” He seemed to be able to cope with time when we used his favourite show as a yardstick. Finally, when he was about six, he started to be able to use an analog clock without help. At the time, I had no idea how significant this was.

J: His ability to relate in a rudimentary way to time through the yardstick of his favourite TV show is absolutely crucial to what I’m trying to convey about the human sense of time. Healthy human beings don’t read time the way you read a digital clock. Healthy human beings read time as a history of relationships. It’s all about the history — the learning, the memory, the growth, the change. Time is more than just a bunch of numbers. Time is . . . well, it’s almost organic. It moves forward (never backward) but it flows like a river, not like a geometric line of numbers in sequence. Numbers are two dimensional (literally). Time is fourth dimensional. It can’t be thought of in strictly linear terms, because nothing in the fourth dimension of physics is strictly linear.

A: That’s pretty complex.

J: Time is very complex. It’s intertwined with all aspects of consciousness, whether that consciousness exists in angel-form or in angel-as-human form. All of us — God the Mother, God the Father, angels who are God’s children, angels who are temporarily incarnated as human beings — all of us have strands of time woven into our very being. None of us can escape time. And none of us would want to. It’s our ability to remember events in time, to remember moments of love and joy and sorrow, that makes it possible for us to exist. The soul exists precisely because time moves forward, ever forward, like a cosmic river. The river grows, changes its course, develops new tributaries, slows in some places, rages in others, picks up sediment, drops it, creates fertile fields where new crops can grow, breaks its banks, shrinks to a trickle, but always, always flows with sound and beauty and marvels of construction. So it is with time — time as angels know it, time as God knows it.

A: So you really have to be on your toes with time. You never know where it’s going to carry you next.

J: Yes. A person who has mastered the human sense of time is, by definition, a person who is flexible and adaptable. Someone who can cope with change. Someone who isn’t frightened by the thought of learning something new.

A: I know quite a few people who are terrified of change, can’t cope with new ideas or skills, and want their lives to “stay the same.” They get really angry when they’re put in a situation where they might have to admit they don’t know something. They don’t want to say, “Sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”

J: When the parietal lobes haven’t been fully developed, the human brain does what it’s programmed to do — it shifts to its secondary circuits to pick up the slack. This is what redundancy and neuroplasticity in the brain are supposed to do. If one major circuit goes off-line, or is underactive, you temporarily shift the load to a different circuit till you can fix the main problem. Anyone who works with complex electrical engineering systems will know what I mean.

The difficulty here is that the brain shifts the load to secondary circuits (for example, to the anterior cingulate cortex), but the main problem in the parietal lobes never gets fixed. The load stays on the secondary circuits — circuits that aren’t designed to take this kind of load on a long term basis. Eventually, these secondary circuits start to break down, just as you’d expect. The cost of this begins to appear in a person’s thought, mood, and behaviour. In other words, serious mental health issues and serious neurological issues begin to arise. It’s inevitable.

A: Meanwhile, your parietal lobes are still underactive, which means you can’t learn from your own mistakes, and life is endlessly frustrating.

J: It makes you feel as if there’s a big hole inside you, a big void, that goes round and round without beginning or end. It’s feels like a hamster wheel, and you’re trapped on it. It feels awful, but after a while you start to believe it’s normal. Even worse, you start to believe that everyone else must feel the same way inside — empty and trapped and hopeless. But it’s not true. This isn’t the normal state of inner experience human beings are designed for. God is a little smarter than that.

A: Not that the Church has ever said so . . . .

 

RS14: Balance As a Spiritual Practice

A: Last time you finished by saying there’s only one path to love and belonging, and that one path is balance. That sounds way too easy.

(c) Image*After

(c) Image*After

J: If it were easy, the vast majority of human beings would already be living lives that are full of love and belonging, but few people are. Living in the Christ Zone is a path that’s logical and clear and consistent regardless of race or gender or age, but it’s a lifelong challenge. It’s an everyday way of living, not a “one-off” experience. It’s something you have to keep working at your whole life.

A: There you go, using those annoying words like “life” and “living” again! Readers might start to get the idea that you’re promoting the radical idea of full engagement with life! Gosh, wouldn’t that be heresy? ;))

J: Orthodox Western Christianity has been preaching Escape for two thousand years. Gnostic Christianity and other forms of Gnosticism have been preaching Escape for even longer. I didn’t preach Escape. I preached compassion, forgiveness, and healing — all of which arise out of the practice of balance.

A: Hang on. You’re saying that living a life of balance is a form of spiritual practice. What Christians would call praxis?

J: You bet. And it’s the only form of spiritual practice that actually works.

A: That’s a bold statement.

J: Fortunately for me, I have science on my side. That’s more than the apophatic and anagogic mystics can say.

A: Okay. So can you try to explain why it works when other forms of spiritual practice don’t (according to you)?

J: It works because it flows with the grain of scientific law instead of against it. Traditional mystical practices have always flowed against the grain. Traditional mystical practices such as lengthy fasting, rigorous asceticism, intentional segregation from others, self-induced or drug-induced trances, sleep deprivation, celibacy, begging for alms, withdrawal into cloistered communities, and veneration of saints are all practices that damage one or more circuits of the biological brain.

It’s a straightforward task to draw up a list of traditional spiritual practices, such as fasting, and compare this list to the needs of the Christ Zone model. Right off the bat you can see that fasting is going to seriously interfere with a person’s physiological need for ongoing nutrition to fuel the brain. Chronic sleep deprivation makes mincemeat of the brain’s circuits. Celibacy causes damage on all fronts, and impairs the functioning of the immune system. Same with asceticism. Being forced to beg for alms is an affront to one’s dignity and sense of self worth (the soul would much rather be working for a living). Intentional segregation snuffs out all hope of building on your love and belonging needs to create full, mature, transformative relationships with others. Self-induced or drug-induced trance states — including those brought on by prolonged periods of prayer, meditation, chanting, scriptural study, recitation of the Psalms, praying the Rosary, and contemplation of icons — all force the brain to divert important resources to parts of the brain that are of little or no use to people in their everyday lives.

Those who devote their daily lives to these practices are not balanced. They can’t be. It’s impossible to be balanced if you don’t choose balance on a daily basis. Balance isn’t a magical gift from God. It’s a daily choice that requires you to use all your best attributes in combination with your God-given free will. It’s a daily choice that draws upon your soul’s great courage.

The most toxic spiritual practice of all — one that’s unfortunately all too common in major world religions — is the goal of eradicating the self so one can become an empty vessel. This is the dumbest, stupidest, most dangerous practice imaginable, and I can’t state strongly enough how much we, the angels, want it to stop. But people have got it in their heads (thanks to mystics and mystery schools) that the people who have detached themselves from their own core selves are somehow more saintly, more virtuous in their spiritual devotion than regular folk. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A: So what’s the end result of these traditional practices? People join a cloistered religious community to get closer to God and end up getting farther and farther away from God because of damage to their brains?

J: Couldn’t have said it more clearly.

 

RS13: One Path to Manyness NOT Many Paths to Oneness

A: A few days ago I was talking to you — complaining to you, actually — about the idea of religious Oneness, the idea that all major world religions teach the same core values through many different paths. You responded in typical Jesus fashion. You said, “There are not many paths to oneness, but one path to manyness.” You wanna talk about this new Yeshuism? (I think I just invented a new word.)

J: As an angel, I’m getting pretty tired of listening to all the excuses and all the lies that are being told by devout conservative thinkers of all religions. And I’m not alone in my exasperation. God’s angels know what human beings are capable of, and you know what? Not many people these days even care. Most people are not being raised by their families or communities to know or care about human potential.

The current trend in the West is to put all religious leaders and religious texts on an equal footing, which is to say they’re placing them all on a sacred pedestal of immunity — immunity from scrutiny, immunity from common sense. It’s a misguided attempt to prevent anyone from having their “feelings hurt.” God isn’t in the business of preventing people from having their feelings hurt. God is in the business of forgiveness and transformation, of helping each child of God to reach his or her true potential.

Closeup 304

A: When you say “his or her true potential,” what do you mean by that? Do you mean some sort of evolutionary advancement in human consciousness, as recent writers of popular fiction have been saying?

J (smiling mischievously): Hey, it’s a great way to earn some big bucks, but it ain’t no way to make your guardian angel smile.

A: I’ve been noticing over the past few years that the writers who make the biggest promises are the ones least likely to know what it means, what it feels like, to live in the Christ Zone. I’m very suspicious of anyone who tries to sell spirituality and faith as something that exists outside the realities of normal everyday life.

J: Most people live hard lives. They suffer a lot. Their children suffer a lot. They need ways to cope. One of the most popular ways of coping is Escape. Escape with a capital “E.” Many people use alcohol or drugs to escape. Many use sex. But many, many people escape through storytelling — through books, films, plays, or religious mythology. Religious mythology and plays have both been around for a long, long time. They’re popular. They’re traditional. But this doesn’t make them true — not in a literal sense. They may be true in an allegorical sense. They may help people express and cope with their own feelings, and in this sense the stories are useful and helpful. But for human beings to make up stories about God and then peddle them as literal truth . . . this is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable to God and unacceptable to the soul of each human being. A religious tradition that teaches its children elaborate, fantastical histories of Creation — when it’s actually not possible for any human being anywhere to understand or convey the scientific history of Creation — is not teaching its followers about God. It’s teaching the path of Oneness. It’s teaching the path of narcissism and contempt for God. It’s teaching children to blindly obey their human leaders. This is mind control, not faith.

A: I’ve been working for years with you on the question of Creation as a scientific and historical reality, and the more I learn the more I realize I don’t understand it. I have no interest in going “on the record” with the tiny bit I’ve learned so far. This would be hubris, in my opinion.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You’re saying that faith and blind obedience are mutually exclusive choices.

J: Exactly. Faith, as you and I have defined it, is an experience of enduring relationship with God in the absence of sacred texts. This means that an individual who has never read the Bible is fully capable of being in mature relationship with God on a daily basis.

A: A lot of people would say it’s impossible to know God or be in relationship with God if you don’t have a sacred book to guide you. Sort of like trying to find your way to the North Pole without a map.

J: Well, here’s the thing. Everyone — and I mean everyone — is born with an inner map. The inner map is hardwired into your DNA and expresses itself through your brain architecture. If you’re raised in such a way that your biological brain is reasonably balanced, guess what? The map lights up inside your head even though you’re just a regular guy/gal who’s trying to live a humble life. In fact, the map will only light up inside your head if you’re a regular guy/gal who’s trying to live a humble life. This is the way God designed the biology of the human brain. The human brain and central nervous system are designed in such a way that there’s only one way to achieve a state of mature relationship with God. This one way is to balance the competing needs shown in the Christ Zone model.

A: Juggling the physiological needs with the safety needs, the love & belonging needs, and the self-esteem needs.

J: Yes. It is an indisputable scientific fact that when a child is raised in a way that consistently balances and honours these four main needs, this child will grow up to be remarkably stable, responsible, mature, organized, practical, funny, humble, and interested in building strong relationships with others, including God.

A: Why these attributes and not others? Why not competitive, aggressive, focussed, dedicated?

J: Because mature, responsible people aren’t competitive and aggressive. They’re hard working and competent without being competitive and aggressive. Furthermore, they don’t want to be competitive and aggressive. They prefer to be humble and happy.

A: So competitive and aggressive don’t fit on the same page with humble and happy?

J: Nope. “Competitive and aggressive” fit very nicely on the same page with traditional orthodox Western Christianity, but not on the same page with what I taught.

A: Hmmmm. The Crusades spring to mind. Plus Christian slave-owning. And Christian evangelism. I’m not too fond of Christian preaching on sin and salvation.

J: If you look closely at Paul’s theology of sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God, what you see is a systematic attempt on Paul’s part to undermine all four needs of the Christ Zone model. You see him savaging the soul’s need for self-esteem by telling people they’re full of sin and can’t get rid of it no matter how hard they try (which is why they need Christ’s intervention). You see him crushing all hope that regular people can be in full relationship with God — in a state of love and belonging with God — except maybe on the future Day of Judgment. You see him steal away people’s sense of safety and trust in God by preaching about grave perils and dangers and demons and cosmic forces such as Sin and Law. You see him even try to rob people of the chance to add meat to their diet through fear of committing idolatry. Small portions of meat protein are important to the physiological health of most human beings. Same with healthy, respectful sexuality, which Paul also tries to undermine by playing the guilt card.

Of course, one of the biggest tip-offs about Paul’s true intent is his attitude towards slavery. He doesn’t say that slavery is wrong, that it’s morally reprehensible. He side-steps all the brutal realities of slavery, which include the frequent withholding of proper food and shelter (physiological needs); the complete annihilation of all safety needs (safety of the core self, the psychological self, the sexual self, the relationship self, the trusting self); the replacement of true love and belonging needs (i.e. the “one path to manyness”) with false teachings on love and belonging (i.e. “we are all one in Christ” or “the many paths to oneness”); and as for self-esteem . . . well, come on, now, self-esteem is intertwined with egalitarianism and wholeness and self-respect and empathy, and a slave isn’t offered any of these things by his masters. It’s a rare slave who finds the inner courage to overcome all these obstacles on his or her own. However, it does happen and can happen. Human beings are extraordinary and awe-inspiring when they decide to take full possession of their own inner map and follow it instead of these numbskull religious teachings.

A: Just now you linked true loving and belonging needs with the one path to manyness. Can you explain that in more detail?

J: All people need love and belonging. They need to belong to families or communities or friendship groups. It’s normal and healthy. In fact, they can’t be in full relationship with God if they’ve never had any of their love and belonging needs met in their everyday human lives.

A: Why not?

J: Because their brains have never learned over time how to have relationships with anybody. They’ve never learned how to listen with all their heart to another person, how to maintain respectful boundaries with another person, how to communicate clearly without getting angry and controlling, how to compromise. Again, this is all scientifically verifiable. Thousands and thousands of books have been written on these topics. This isn’t New Age fluff I’m talkin’ here. This is the stuff of real life, real psychology, real change. People’s lives get better when they learn how to do relationships. People’s lives get worse when they ignore their relationship needs. Nobody gets out of this reality. Nobody. God doesn’t intend that individuals should be able to find their own inner map by going off into the desert to live alone for months or years. It isn’t normal and it isn’t healthy. You can only see who you are in relationship with God if you know who you are in relationship with other people. You have to love your neighbours — your neighbours on Planet Earth — if you want to know what it feels like to love your God.

A: Because God the Mother and God the Father are NOT you. They’re not One with you. They’re part of a family WITH you. But they’re not you. So you have to get to know them the way you’d get to know any of your other neighbours.

J: Yes. Angels walk side by side, hand in hand. We are the many who share the values of divine love, courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust. We are the many who are a family united in love. We are the many who can flourish in our own distinctiveness because there’s only one path to true love and belonging.

That path is the path of balance.

 

RS12: How the Christ Zone Is Unwelcome in the Church

A: I think there’s a danger in posting the Christ Zone model. I think there’s a danger that many Christians will glance at it and assume this model isn’t new and isn’t different. I want to be very clear, for the record, that this model has nothing in common with the traditional teachings of orthodox Western Christianity. Many devout Christians want to believe their religion has always taught people how to live a life of balance and humbleness and self-actualization. But the truth is, it hasn’t. If Christians want to heal the church of the third millennium, and help people of faith understand more fully how to be in relationship with God, they have to be honest about the psychological abuses perpetrated within the halls of Christendom over the centuries.

Fenced (c) JAT 2014

Fenced (c) JAT 2014

J: Living your life according to the Christ Zone model — or, as I called it, “entering the Kingdom of the Heavens” — appeals tremendously to anyone who cherishes values such as gender equality, egalitarianism, humbleness, self-respect, and service. It should go without saying that many religious folk have been taught by their religious leaders to be suspicious of gender equality, egalitarianism, humbleness, and self-respect (though service work is usually endorsed). So let’s be honest — most conservative religious leaders do not ever want to hear about the Christ Zone model. If they had their way, they’d bury it. Permanently. It flies in the face of everything they’ve been teaching.

A: This was true 2,000 years ago when you first introduced your Kingdom teachings.

J (nodding): Here’s the problem: individuals who live their lives according to the Christ Zone model do not and will not play the “Status Addiction Game.” They have too much common sense and too much faith in God to listen to religious bullshit about Chosen People and Salvation and Sin and Special Sacraments and Atonement and Judgment Day (that is, doctrines which feed status addiction). Their brains work really well — the way God intends — and they have no tolerance for cruel or unjust treatment of anyone. They see Creation as a beautiful and good place, a place to appreciate and learn more about. They see God as a person* with feelings who cares about all beings. They’re natural-born social democrats who scoff at ideas such as special royal bloodlines. They make very poor slaves.

A: You don’t have to put metal chains on people to enslave them.

J: No. In fact, the best chains are the invisible ones. The mental and emotional chains that come with indoctrination of regular people can serve a tyrant for a lifetime. Very useful as far as a psychopath is concerned.

A: This morning I was thinking about the early 6th-century Rule of Saint Benedict (see also Humility: Vice or Virtue?). I had to read the whole Rule for one of my church history courses. This helped me pinpoint the ways in which traditional Christian monastic practice has done everything in its power to prevent individuals from feeling what it’s like to live in the Christ Zone — to prevent people from living in relationship with God. Everything about Benedict’s Rule seems almost designed to obstruct a person’s chances of balancing the four main needs of the Christ Zone model.

J: Actually, your observation is accurate. It’s an intentional design. It’s a Rule for Living that’s intentionally designed to break an individual’s sense of self and force him (or her) to be a willing and obedient slave to his master’s authority — and by “master” I don’t mean God or Christ; I mean the abbot, bishop, or land-owning aristocracy. Benedict’s Rule has nothing to do with being in relationship with God, and everything to do with crushing the human spirit so it won’t rebel against injustice.

A: Well, that’s a pretty picture!

J: I don’t want to make it sound as if Benedict “invented” this system of control through religious teachings that beats humility and obedience into people’s heads. Far from it. This method of controlling potential troublemakers through psychological means has been around for at least 5,000 years. In my time, the Essenes were the Jewish group that “rediscovered” these teachings and embraced them. But the Essenes didn’t invent this method of control. Just as Paul, when he founded a new theistic religion based on a Saviour called Jesus Christ, didn’t invent this method. Just as Paul’s orthodox followers didn’t invent the “humility and obedience” paradigm. But it’s time for Christians to be honest about this gruesome intent among early orthodox Christians. It’s time for them to recognize that the orthodox Western church has never wanted regular people to imitate the kind of life I actually lived. God forbid that anyone should be allowed to think God likes them!

A: One of my theology classmates a few years back was a devout Roman Catholic. One day in a small group discussion he asserted (with tears in his eyes) that God doesn’t need us. Not any of us. Apparently, God only needs Jesus. This is what the Roman Catholic church has taught him. And he believes it.

I was horrified. Shocked to the core.

The worst part is that millions and millions of Christians would agree with him.

J: These teachings help destroy the ability of regular people in the Christian community to seek the path of wholeness and humbleness that I found during my ministry. My heart goes out to them in their suffering. The church is abusing them — spiritually abusing them — and they’re going to keep paying the price for this abuse until they decide to walk away from it.

The good news is that you can walk away from the church’s teachings without walking away from God.

God is always with you. Whether you like it or not!

* The English language doesn’t easily allow the use of plural verbs, pronouns, and adjectives when referring to God. But when I type the word “God” I’m always thinking of two people rather than one — God the Mother and God the Father working in love together for all we know and love in Creation.

 

RS11: The Christ Zone Model: Introduction

Celtic Cross in Brompton Cemetery, England ((C) tracy from north brookfield, MA, USA, Flickr)

A: In January 2005, you dropped a bombshell on me. That’s when you responded to my persistent questions about human evil by explaining the Christ Zone model to me. I think this would be a good time and place for us to talk about this scientific model and what it can mean for human beings who are trying to heal their hearts and minds and bodies.

J: Sure thing.

A: I want to make sure that readers understand this model is an original model, an original philosophical and scientific model, that arose directly out of my channelling work with you. It’s not a rehash of ancient teachings. It’s not a cut-and-paste job from the writings of mystics, new or old. There’s no attempt in this model to give an answer for every world problem. The model has limits, because it’s just a model, NOT a “Complete Handbook That Will Solve All the World’s Problems.” But it’s a very useful model, and I’d like to make sure that credit is given where credit is due.

J: You sound a bit hot under the collar here.

A: Last time you were expressing your exasperation that people won’t take responsibility for what they put inside their own brains. Today I’m expressing my exasperation at some of the reactions I’ve had from certain Christians about my work as a channeller and mystic. Some people seem to believe that if I actually am talking to you, Jesus, then I ought to be able to get solutions from you for every problem afflicting the world today. Like the cure for cancer. And all I can do is shake my head and repeat what I’ve said before: I’m just one person. I have a human brain. I have limits, like everyone else. I’m not even trying to get all the answers. I’m just trying to understand a few things really well.

J: I think the recent inundation of books and films and TV shows about the almost “limitless” potential of the “evolving human mind” has created a lot of unrealistic expectations. Those who’ve never had an experience of faith or deep connection with God can end up having some very peculiar ideas about what these experiences feel like.

A: I’ve never been skydiving or deep sea diving, so I don’t think it’s right for me to have an opinion about what it feels like to be an actual skydiver or deep sea diver. Yet many Christians I’ve spoken with believe it’s okay for them to have an opinion about what it feels like for me to be a mystic-channeller. They feel they “know” what’s going on inside my head — what my intent is, what my methods are — without ever actually asking me. I don’t like being pigeon-holed like this. I don’t like being told I’m making grandiose claims when I spend a lot of my time making very ordinary, un-grandiose claims (such as the claim that everyone is born with their own powerful intuitive circuitry, circuitry that obeys the same “use it or lose it” imperative as any other part of the human brain).

Anyway . . . now that I’ve had my little rant . . . back to the topic at hand. The Christ Zone. Let’s talk about the Christ Zone.

J: The Christ Zone model is a simplified schematic that helps provide a framework for understanding the complex interaction between the soul and the biological body. Each person who is incarnated in 3D form on Planet Earth (in other words, everybody in the world!) is a marvel of divine engineering. The engineering part is seen in the diverse functions of human biology, from RNA and DNA all the way through stem cells and reproductive functions to, well, life. Life in human form. Consciousness living in temporary form in a 3D body. Soul-and-body temporarily intertwined. Fully intertwined. Not easily intertwined, nor permanently intertwined. But fully intertwined, fully integrated in a holistic way, if all goes well in childhood and adolescence.

A: Which all too often doesn’t happen.

J: Yes. This is the painful reality. Far, far too many children are raised by their families and communities in ways that make it impossible for young people to grow up to become mature, loving human beings.

A: How do you define “mature”?

J: Ah. Thank you for that leading question. I define a mature human being as one who is able to balance in a reasonably consistent way the competing demands of both the Darwinian Circuitry of the brain and the Soul Circuitry of the brain.

You know that diagram you created in Wordperfect of the Christ Zone?

A: The one that would make a PhotoShop artist shudder?

J: Yes. Let’s post that right now so people can see what we’re talking about.

A: Okay. If you think so. (Now our readers will know for sure that I practice what I preach about not living for status points, ’cause this diagram ain’t no brilliant artistic production, that’s for sure!)

Okay. Here it is. Sigh . . .

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs


J: It’s not that bad. It gets the point across. The main point in the first diagram you’ve posted here is that this triangle is not the Christ Zone diagram. This triangle is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow, a humanist psychologist who had a positive view of human beings and their true potential, proposed this “triangular” model to explain what he perceived as an overall pattern of human behaviour. He noticed that everyone tries to meet the physiological needs that form the base layer of the triangle — needs such as food, oxygen, water, protection from the elements — but only a few people seem able to arrive at the pinnacle of the triangle — the human experience of connection and completion and purpose and transcendence he labelled “self-actualization.”

A: His theories have met with some success, though Maslow couldn’t come up with a rigorous method of testing for self-actualization. He had to rely a lot on self-reporting of these rare human experiences.

J: Yes. These experiences are considered sporadic and hard to quantify by most researchers.

A: Just as mystical experiences of unio mystica are considered sporadic and hard to quantify.

J: Yes. But the peak experiences described by Maslow and others aren’t the same internal experience as unio mystica. They aren’t synonymous. In fact, peak experiences are almost the opposite of mystical experiences of “oneness” with the Divine.

A: In what way?

J: During peak experiences — experiences of self-actualization — the sense of self isn’t lost or dissolved. If anything the sense of self is heightened. Accompanying this heightened sense of self is (paradoxically) a vast awareness of your own humbleness. Not humility (as religious thinkers have defined humility). Just . . . pure humbleness. A sense that you’re very, very important in the universe, and at the same time not important. That is, not more important than anyone else. During a state of self-actualization, you lose all interest in status, chosenness, pessimism, and self-pity. You just really feel connected. Connected to everyone and everything in Creation. But without losing your sense of self. You’re able to handle the truth that it’s okay with the universe for you to be you. You no longer have to hate yourself for being “different.” You’re able to like yourself, perhaps for the first time in your human life. Once you’ve nailed this truth, you can stop worrying about all your so-called “deficiencies” and “imperfections” and get on with the business of living — living with integrity, joy, trust, and courage.

A: You stop sweating the small stuff?

J: Mmmmmmm, well, no, it’s more like you can start focussing on the small stuff that matters.

A: Like eating nutritious food with your family at the dinner table each evening. Talking together, sharing events of the day, working out problems. Spending time together as a family.

J: Yeah, like that. See, eating dinner is an important part of meeting your physiological needs — the essential needs Maslow placed at the foot of the triangle because of their importance to human survival. But getting your daily nutritional needs met isn’t the only thing that’s happening at the dinner table. Hopefully, anyway. If you’re eating dinner at a table with people you love and trust, and who love and trust you, then you’re also meeting your needs for safety and belonging & love.

A: That’s too simple. Too logical.

J: And, if you live in a family where people believe it’s important to lift you up every day instead of slamming you down and constantly criticizing you for your mistakes and imperfections, then the dinner table conversation will probably also help you meet your need for self-esteem.

A: So you can find most of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at the family dinner table?

J: If it’s a family where individuals are emotionally and spiritually mature, yes. The important point is that the family dinner table isn’t a ladder. It isn’t a vertical ladder of ascent. You don’t meet these diverse needs one at a time by first sitting silently at the table while you eat your fats, carbs, and proteins, then sitting in a self-restrained state to show your trust, then reaching out to give and receive affection and emotional support, then taking turns saying one thing out loud to dole out self-esteem the way you might dole out vitamin pills. The family dinner table is messy. It’s complicated. If you’re all healthy and happy and sane, you’re giving and receiving all these needs at the same time. Without a script. You just do it because it feels right. It’s spontaneous, it’s a bit chaotic at times, but it’s also kind and polite and respectful. Like real life.

A: I hate to say it, but that sequence you’ve described — first you do this, then you do this, and God forbid you should do them all at the same time! — this sequence sounds a lotttttttttt like the Christian worship services I’ve attended.

J: Christian worship does a very poor job of modelling the Christ Zone for anyone. Living in the Christ Zone means you have to balance all your main needs simultaneously, not sequentially. You have to balance your biological needs (physiological and safety needs) with your soul’s emotional needs (belonging & love, plus self-esteem). You have to respect both. You can’t place your body’s biological needs above your soul’s needs; neither can you ignore your body’s legitimate needs as you strive to meet your soul’s needs. God expects you to look after both. At the same time. Throughout your whole life. Until you die.

After you die, your full consciousness returns to its soul state, but even after you return Home to live as an angel-in-angel form, you’ll still have a soul body to look after. So there’s no getting out of the truth that mature, responsible, loving angels have to look after themselves. It’s a way to show God the Mother and God the Father how grateful you are to be you.

A: Here’s the diagram I made in Wordperfect of the actual Christ Zone model:

The Christ Zone Model (non-hierarchical)

It’s pretty self-explanatory. If you want to feel peak experiences, self-actualization, connection to God, or true faith (all pretty much synonymous with each other) you have to live a life of balance.

J: Yup. If you want to enter the Kingdom of God as I taught it, this diagram is the basic roadmap.

A: No wonder the Church doesn’t like you.

 

Addendum August 24, 2017:

I’m including a few links to articles that can help you get started on learning more about the brain and how the brain actually works (as opposed to way most of us assume the brain works). The closest parallel to the Christ Zone model is the theory of mind called Dual Process Theory. I hope that eventually researchers will see the link between Dual Process Theory and Big Five Personality Theory. In the meantime, the links posted here may help you open your mind to, well, the wonders of your own biological brain. God bless.

“Will religion ever disappear?” by Rachel Nuwer

“The Creativity of Dual Process ‘System 1’ Thinking” by Scott Barry Kaufman and Jerome L. Singer

“The Differences Between Happiness and Meaning in Life” by Scott Barry Kaufman

“Openness to Experience: The Gates to the Mind” by Luke Smillie

“Teaching the Children: Sharp Ideological Differences, Some Common Ground” by Pew Research Center

 

 

 

RS10: The Soul’s Blended Logic

A: Hey, I like that new maxim you wrote a few days ago when I was grousing and complaining about the landlord I was stuck with until recently: “The measure of a man is how he decides to behave when the Law is placed in his hands. The righteous man uses the Law as a club to beat others down. The humble man sees that if he places the Law upon the pedestal of his own courage he will have a lever to raise others up.” Yeah, that about sums up my experience with my ex-landlord, Shane. When Ontario rental laws were “on his side,” he was all for quoting the law to his tenants and telling them the law prevented him from doing anything to resolve tensions or disputes. Of course, when the law was on our side — the tenants’ side — that was different. When the law was on our side, we were just troublesome, difficult tenants, in his view, not important enough to respond to in a timely and ethical fashion when there were issues. Not a nice man.

J: You think so. But inside his own head he thinks he’s the most wonderful guy in the world. A real “people person.”

A: If he were the most wonderful guy in the world he wouldn’t have treated me the way he treated me when I gave him notice I was moving out. He wouldn’t have treated the other tenants the way he’s been treating them. He would have responded promptly to the serious maintenance issues that have arisen in the building over the past few months. He would have kept the building in good shape, as the previous landlords did. He wouldn’t have tried to pass the buck to other people. He’s a real pro at passing the buck.

J: What I’m about to say probably won’t cheer you up much.

A (sighing): Go ahead. I’m ready. I think.

J: The way your ex-landlord operates is considered normal, acceptable behaviour by many “successful” business people. And it’s nothing new. This kind of behaviour is as old as humanity itself. In each generation there’ve always been some people who think it’s okay to climb their way to the top by kicking other people down. Any history book will reveal this reality.

A: And a lot of films, too.

J: In my day it was no different. I didn’t have to go very far to see it and feel it, either. Within my own family there were plenty of unfortunate examples of this kind of behaviour. I was raised to think in positive ways about slavery, about treating other human beings as property. This was normal. Commonplace. Acceptable. If you came from a family of honour, you just didn’t think of slaves as people, as individual beings with their own thoughts, needs, relationships, and dreams. They were there to serve you. The Law said so. Religious, political, and economic law all agreed on this (though in my time these forms of law were hopelessly intertwined with each other). The Law said it was proper to own slaves. So we owned slaves. As did almost every aristocratic household in the first century Mediterranean world. It was wrong, of course, for us to endorse slavery. It was profoundly abusive and morally unjustifiable, but hey, the Law said it was okay. And the Law couldn’t be wrong, now, could it?

A: From time to time I come across Christian writings that enthuse about the “enlightened” Laws of Jubilee in Leviticus. Yes, right in the Bible it says that every 50 years a man who lost either his property or his freedom to debt-holders will get it back in the Jubilee year. “Each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family” (Leviticus 25:10).

Yeah, right. Like that was ever going to happen. People willingly giving back land and slaves to the original owners after many decades? Don’t think so. And just who were the original owners? If you think about it logically, and add one Jubilee onto another, all property would have to revert to the one who owned it all “originally” — like, maybe thousands of years ago. So whoever could establish the strongest and oldest legal claim to the land would own everything, presumably, if you follow the logic of Jubilee. Which sounds pretty on paper but has no basis in human reality.

J: As you long as you appear to be doing something Lawful to protect slaves and indentured servants, you can still pretend you’re a nice person who cares about others. A real “people person” who’d give your shirt off your back for a complete stranger.

A: You know, there are all kinds of theories these days about the Historical Jesus — who you were, what you were teaching, what kind of relationship you had with the Pharisees and Sadducees and Romans. They try so hard to squeeze biblical verses into understandable boxes so they can define the boundaries of the particular box you were in. They seem to think that if they can define the right box they can finally define you. But it’s not like that. You weren’t living in a definable box, where certain Laws told you what to do and when to do it. You were that guy with the pedestal who wants to use the Law as a lever instead of a club.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: When people are raised up instead of beaten down they always surprise you. You can’t predict what amazing things they’ll do. You just have to step back and let them do their thing. Human beings at their best are totally unpredictable, yet they’re not in any way illogical. Human beings at their best live according to the blended logic of heart, mind, body, and talent, and this logic is amazing. It’s the blended logic of the soul. Creative. Spontaneous but also cautious. Organized but not obsessive. Funny as hell. Capable of tears. Capable of quiet reflection. Capable of great action — but not constantly so. Deeply grateful for a relationship of love and faith and trust in God. Able to tell right from wrong.

A: Which does not describe some of the people I know.

J: Exactly so. A great many adolescents and adults have stopped using the parts of their own brains that are dedicated to advanced emotions such as creativity, spontaneity, grief, contemplation, trust, and the biggie everybody wants to know about . . . divine love. The less functional a person’s brain, the more obsessive he or she becomes about the Law. The traditions of Law — including “family honour,” which is Law in its worst incarnation — are crucial to those people who’ve stopped listening to input from the Soul Circuits of their own brains.

A: Why? Why do people become righteous about the Law when they lose access to their own empathy?

J: A full answer to that question would fill more than one book, but the simple answer is that they’re frightened to death of the void they feel inside themselves. There’s a huge cost involved when you choose to ignore big chunks of your own brain. If you were to tie your dominant hand behind your back and refuse to use it for years, there’d be a huge cost to that, too. First your hand would weaken, then it would wither, and eventually you’d get ulcers and infections, possibly leading to incremental amputation, even system-wide sepsis and a swift death. Would this be a good thing? Would a sane person do this? Probably not. Yet every day human beings choose to do this kind of thing to their own brains. They choose, under societal pressure, to stop listening to input from the smartest parts of their own brains. Then they’re surprised when they feel like crap! They profess to be totally mystified by the sense of emptiness they feel inside. Well, ya know, that’s gonna happen when you force your own brain to shrink — to literally shrink in size within the confines of your own skull.

A: You don’t sound very sympathetic.

J: I have forgiveness for their choices, but I also have a lot of exasperation. I mean, come on, folks. What you put in your brain matters!

A: A favourite theme of yours.

J: Many people get caught in a vicious cycle. They choose to stop listening to the input of their own inner wisdom. Then they start to feel restless and empty and confused.

A: And angry.

J: And angry. After a while, they may get tired of feeling this way, so they look for answers that make logical sense to them. At this point, many will stumble across various forms of religious Law. The Law gives them answers that seem to make sense if they’re suffering from big holes (literally) inside their brains, holes that make them feel lost and listless and helpless. The Law gives them an external framework to cling to. However, the more they choose to lean on the Law, the less they use the parts of their brain they most need to “hear” — their intuition, their common sense, their empathy and faith. This leads to an even greater sense of futility and disconnection from God. So they redouble their efforts to “properly understand” God’s Law through more prayer and more self-denial and more study of scripture. Which means they’re again ignoring their own inner intuition, common sense, empathy, and faith. Which leads to further imbalance in the brain’s functioning. Which can lead directly to the anguish felt during “the dark night of the soul” — a never-to-be-sought-after state of severe neurophysiological breakdown. Famed theologian Augustine of Hippo arrived at his conclusions about God and the soul through this very process.

A: No wonder Augustine’s teachings on Original Sin make no sense.

 

RS9: Jesus and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

A: I read recently on a Christian forum the assertion that if you were alive today, you’d be right in the thick of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. How do you respond to that?

J (sadly shaking his head): I’d say that anyone who believes I would willingly join the Occupy movement has no understanding of who I was or what I taught.

A: Many of today’s compassionate Christians feel some sympathy, some resonance with these anti-capitalist protests. The underlying message seems to fit in well with assorted attempts in Christianity’s history to renew and heal the church by simplifying church practices. Trying to root out corruption. Trying to make the church look more like your vision of church (as they imagine your vision to be). Francis of Assisi is a famous example of a well-to-do Christian who gave up all his worldly goods and chose a mendicant life of service. Francis believed with all his heart he was doing the right thing. He believed he was following your own example of how to live a spiritual life of charity and love and humility.

J: You know, the Occupy Movement reminds me a lot of the radical first century Jewish group called the Zealots. I wasn’t a Zealot (or proto-Zealot) then and I’m not a Zealot today.

A: The Zealots were very anti-Roman. They were one of several factions in the Jewish civil war that took place in the 60’s CE in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. They burned down the city archives in Jerusalem to try to destroy all the tax records and debt records. They thought this would end the grave imbalance of wealth between rich and poor, and bring about a more egalitarian economic situation.

J (nodding): What starts out in the beginning as a group of people with legitimate social and economic and political concerns can quickly devolve into rigid sectarianism: “We’re right and they’re wrong.” Black and white issues. Black and white solutions. Things are rarely that simple. Once you start burning down buildings, even for “a good cause,” you’re on the slippery road to war.

A: A few years later, there wasn’t much left of Jerusalem. Not after the Romans sent their troops in.

J: Yes, but the Jews themselves had done a fine hatchet job on themselves before Vespasian (and later Titus) arrived on the scene with their legions.

A: Okay. I think most compassionate Christians would get the idea that you didn’t — and don’t — support the idea of burning down buildings as a way to bring about change. But the protestors in the Occupy Movement aren’t burning down any buildings. They’re occupying public land and protesting peacefully. So isn’t that a positive thing?

J: During the time they’re hanging around in parks and beside churches, talking to reporters and making lots of noise, are they hard at work producing goods and services and taxable income that will help strengthen their local economies?

A: Um. Maybe some of them are. There’s probably a black market economy at these sites already.

J: Do black market economies put tax money into the communal pot so roads and sewers and schools and public hospitals can be built for the benefit of everyone in the community?

A: Uh, well, no. The whole idea of a black market economy is to stay off the grid so you don’t have to pay taxes.

J: Right. So this terrible evil — capitalism — which ultimately pays for the roads and sewers and schools and public hospitals must be brought crashing down so that . . . what . . . so that no one in America can afford to build public schools?

A: I see your point.

J: The problem today isn’t Wall Street — not at the deepest level, anyway. The traders and bankers and investors whose foolish actions led to the initial financial crisis in 2008 aren’t dealing in money or capitalism. They think they are, but they’re not. They’re dealing in the one thing I attacked with all my strength: they’re dealing in status. These financiers and traders are status-addicted individuals trading in the only thing that matters to them — status points. Like all addicts, they think only of their next high. This is why they seem to have no empathy for the people whose lives they’ve destroyed with their business actions. They’re simply unable — at a physiological level — to place the needs of others ahead of their own need for an addictive high. It’s that simple.

A: That’s pretty scary.

J: Scary, but consistent with the facts. These individuals have demonstrated clearly and repeatedly through their own actions that they’re not able to self-regulate their own behaviours. They’re not able to act in ways that lead to the greater good because — bottom line — they’re not interested in the greater good. They’re interested in acquiring status, and they can only get it at somebody else’s expense. This means people have to get hurt. Average Joe has to be hurt so Mr. Banker can feel he’s smarter and stronger and faster and better than Average Joe. Mr. Banker gets his hit of status by making Average Joe miserable. It’s just part of the reality for those who are addicted to status as their drug of choice.

A: Dopamine response in the neural pathways devoted to pleasure? Same as with cocaine addiction? Status addicts get a high when they make somebody else suffer?

J: You bet.

A: Schadenfreude.

J: Schadenfreude — enjoying the suffering of another person — is one manifestation of status addiction. But it’s not the only one. Status addiction can manifest in a number of different ways. In its most extreme form, status addiction becomes synonymous with psychopathy. But, as with all addictive disorders, there’s a spectrum or continuum of dysfunction, with some people in the more manageable range of the disorder and others in the range of treatment resistance. Like any other disorder, status addiction can present with a variety of signs and symptoms. Each case has to be looked at on an individual basis. It’s one of the hardest things to sort out from a medical point of view.

A: Interesting that neither psychopathy nor status addiction is included in the DSM-IV — the bible of psychiatry.

J: There’s no inclination among researchers to examine the reality of status addiction. It’s the garden rock nobody wants to lift up. Once you lift it up, you’re going to find a whole lot of human creepy-crawlies hiding there you don’t want to deal with. Most of these creepy-crawlies have a vicious bite and a toxic sting.

It can be dangerous to confront an addict’s core addictions. Status addicts can react in violent ways — emotionally abusive and sometimes physically abusive ways — when they suspect their supply of status is about to dry up. I know this from firsthand experience.

A: On October 15, 2011, the Globe and Mail published a fascinating article by Ira Basen called “Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics.” It begins with mention of Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, who were recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2011.

The article says, “. . . no one who’d followed Prof. Sargent’s long, distinguished career would have been fooled by his attempt at modesty. He’d won for his part in developing one of economists’ main models of cause and effect: How can we expect people to respond to changes in prices, for example, or interest rates? According to the laureates’ theories, they’ll do whatever’s most beneficial to them, and they’ll do it every time. They don’t need governments to instruct them; they figure it out for themselves. Economists call this the ‘rational expectations’ model . . . Rational-expectations theory, and its corollary, the efficient-market hypothesis, have been central to mainstream economics for more than 40 years. And while they may not have ‘wrecked the world,’ some critics argue these models have blinded economists to reality: Certain the universe was unfolding as it should, they failed both to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008 and to chart an effective path to recovery.”

J: The rational expectations model and the efficient-market hypothesis both start with the simple assumption that human beings are all fully functional in terms of their brain chemistry. In other words, there’s the assumption that all individuals will make decisions on the basis of logical principles. This in turn will lead to logical — and beneficial — outcomes for everyone (as the theory goes).

But addiction disorders don’t operate on logic. Neither do they operate on common sense or fairness or empathy. They have their own internal logic that makes sense to them at any particular time, but the logic of an addict is like quicksand. It’s always shifting. There’s no solid footing underneath. Decisions are made for the wrong reasons. And there’s no willingness to take responsibility for the terrible consequences of these decisions once they arise.

Even worse, a status addict can’t learn from his or her own mistakes. He or she can’t self-regulate these behaviours. At the worst possible time, when she’s under the greatest stress, she’ll feel a desperate need to acquire the high of fresh status points — whether through a crazy trade or an impossible-to-keep business promise or a pump-me-up session of “positive thinking” bullshit or the purchase of a new luxury car or twenty-five visits to Facebook that day. Such a person (despite university degrees and impressive credentials) is the one least likely to be able to think clearly and effectively during a financial crisis, since a key source of her status is under direct assault.

Of course, like anyone suffering from an addiction disorder, a status addict is responsible for his or her own choices, and is responsible for undertaking the choice to change. Denial of the problem is no excuse for the harm that’s been caused.

An addict needs help to overcome the addiction, of course — lots of responsible, mature, non-judgmental help. It takes courage to confront addiction. Courage and time and commitment. And God’s help.

It’s never too late to confront the problem of status addiction. This is what I taught 2,000 years ago. This is one of the reasons that forgiveness and healing figure so prominently in my teachings.

It’s pretty hard to overcome the suffering created by status addiction without forgiveness and healing to help keep you on the path of recovery.

Been there, done that. Can’t recommend it enough.

 

RS8: Timeless Courage and Kindness

A: Last Thursday (Sept. 15, 2011) my 87 year old dad had surgery at a publicly funded hospital in the Greater Toronto Area. It was a planned surgery — a knee replacement — but it was still a big deal for us. You worry when an 87 year old is having major surgery! Anyway, my mom and I got to sit for several hours in the surgical waiting room and watch all the people going about their day at this major teaching hospital.

As you’d expect there were people of all ages and all ethnicities. Different faces, different voices. But all focused on a common issue — the care and healing of sick people. I think my favourite moment came when a group of new student nurses went past with a supervisor. Ten or twelve young women, all different ethnicities, but all sporting long, shiny hair tied back in a ponytail. Black hair, blond hair, brown hair. United by fashion, I guess you could say.

Anyway, it was a positive environment. A real environment. Very grounded in our lives as human beings, human beings who need each other’s help. Coming so soon after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it seemed like the right sort of answer to the question of why we suffer as human beings here on Planet Earth. We can’t stop change. But we can bring healing to those who are in pain in the aftermath of change.

J: Most days there’s more healing in the pinkie finger of a publicly funded hospital than in the entire body of orthodox Western Christianity.

A: The staff we met at the hospital were upbeat and positive about my dad’s procedure. They were starting with the assumption that if they did a good job on the surgery and he did a good job on the physio and follow up care, his quality of life would probably improve. I liked the fact that self-pity wasn’t encouraged or condoned. They expected my dad to be a full participant in the process of healing.

J: It’s an interesting scientific fact that people’s attitude toward their health and recovery plays a major role in the trajectory of their healing. In particular, anger and self-pity interfere with the healing process because these choices prompt the body to sustain high levels of stress hormones. Stress hormones such as cortisol can damage crucial areas of the brain. In other words, if you choose to hang onto your anger and self-pity, you can damage your own brain.

A: Canadian physician Gabor Mate has written a very readable book on the connection between stress and health — especially how too much stress is linked to illness. (Gabor Mate, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (Toronto: Vintage Canada-Random House, 2003)).

J: Though fans of Richard Dawkin’s “selfish gene” won’t like what I’m about to say here, there is intentionality on God’s part in the design of DNA on Planet Earth.* All human beings share the same basic DNA, so all human beings are affected by the problem of brain damage caused by stress hormones and other neurophysiological imbalances. As researchers are grudgingly beginning to recognize, the human brain — and thus the wider human community — works a lot better when people make the choice to love and heal and forgive and learn from past mistakes. The human brain also works better when men and women, boys and girls, pool their respective talents as part of a team of different-but-equal individuals. No person is an island.

No matter what pond you happen to be living in, we all look to the same God for love, forgiveness, healing, and guidance. Photo credit JAT 2017

A: Especially not religious leaders.

J: God doesn’t single out certain individuals to be “chosen” priests or ministers or religious leaders. Those who claim to be chosen by God must answer to their communities for the choices they make. They must answer for their claims that God would want to blow up certain buildings or that God would want to take revenge on certain people. Why would God, who love all their children equally, be in the business of choosing one group over another? The inner heart knows God doesn’t play favourites. It cannot be any other way.

A: In the summer I stumbled across a wonderful article in the Toronto Star about a village in Pakistan where, for decades, hatred and violence between Muslims and Hindus had become the norm. (Rick Westhead, “A life-saving gift: How a Pakistani village plagued by sectarian attacks was transformed by one Hindu man’s blood donation to a dying Muslim woman,” Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011, p. A3). As reporter Rick Westhead describes, a difficult life in a desert environment was filled with fear because certain people had decided it was okay to beat and rape and even kill their neighbours on the other side of the religious divide. This all changed “in a moment” when a young Muslim mother desperately needed a blood transfusion and the only willing donor was a Hindu man. As word spread of the man’s offer, a group of Muslim men, incensed that medical staff refused to provide separate facilities for Muslims and Hindus, led a charge on the medical clinic to try to kill the blood donor. The doctor intervened. He told the attackers the Muslim woman would die without the transfusion. The leader of the Muslim attackers suddenly had an epiphany. He saw how generous the Hindu donor was. He suddenly felt remorse for his own hatred, and the next day he apologized to the donor: “‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Latif says. ‘I remember thinking that here we were refusing to even shake hands with the Hindus and he was willing to give us his blood. It was a marvelous thing he did. It was the turning point of my life.'”

Today the village is a place transformed by kindness and empathy and mutual assistance — all because of the bravery and compassion of one Hindu man and one Muslim man who were willing to let go of a longstanding “tradition” of hatred. Plus the doctor who stepped in the middle and said what needed to be said.

This reminds me a lot of you when you were healing the poor and the excluded in the towns of Galilee.

J: This is the great truth about God’s children. No matter who you are or what your religion or what the colour of your skin, you’re a child of God. You’re capable of astonishing feats of compassion and courage. It’s who you really are. When you look at your neighbour, whether Muslim or Christian or Jewish or another religion, you need to look at them through God’s eyes. You need to see them as your brothers and sisters, as your family-of-the-soul. Because this is the way God looks at all people — as individuals who are equal but different.

A: I’d like to remind readers of the My Fellow American interfaith initiative that can be visited at http://myfellowamerican.us. When I was watching the 2-minute video yesterday, with its clips of ordinary Americans who happen to be Muslim, I kept thinking of the waiting room at the hospital. I kept thinking of all the people who were there because they share the same human capacity to care. We’re all the same when we’re trying to heal and trying to help others.

J: Two thousand years ago I wrote the parable of the Good Samaritan to talk about this timeless issue. I was once the man who was beaten up by the side of the road (quite literally), and through the kindness of strangers I discovered to my shock that people can actually choose to be the loving and forgiving children God knows us to be. I would never have found my faith and my trust in God without the help of these kind, humble strangers. The people who helped me weren’t famous. They had no status. They had no wealth of the earthly kind. But they had that most mysterious of treasures — the heavenly heart.

A: It’s extraordinary how one act of great kindness and courage can change the world, isn’t it?

* This statement isn’t meant to lend support to Creationists or the Book of Genesis. Far from it. Scientific evidence about the age of the universe and the age of Planet Earth must take precedence over “revealed” teachings from sacred texts.

For more thoughts on the My Fellow American project, please see http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-fellow-american-interfaith.html

 

RS7: More of a Skeptic Than James Randi

Great Blue Heron at Sydenham1 - June 2014James Randi is one the of the world’s best known skeptics. He’s an experienced, talented magician who can spot a trick, gimmick, or fake at 20 paces (metaphorically speaking). He’s made it his mission to “out” all the paranormal tricksters who are stealing people’s money and trust through clever use of misdirection. I have no quarrel with him in this regard.

For several years he was offering one million dollars to anyone who could prove he/she had a paranormal ability. (He was quite confident he’d never have to pony up.) Later he changed the conditions of the “test.” He said he would only test somebody who has a media presence (I assume he means somebody like Sylvia Browne). I haven’t checked lately to see whether the prize is still being offered. I don’t know what he’d do with somebody like me.

James Randi also writes a column for Skeptic Magazine. This month he takes aim, once again, at psychic Sylvia Browne. Apparently she has a new book out (Afterlives of the Rich and Famous). I’ll take his word for it. I have little interest in anything Ms. Browne says. I own only one of her books, which is plenty enough for me to see the intent that lies behind her writings. I’m in agreement with Mr. Randi about the fatuous nature of her book material.

Mr. Randi is a trained magician, and he objects to Sylvia Browne’s writings because he’s suspicious of her motives and methods. I’m a trained mystic/channeller and I also object to Sylvia Browne’s motives and methods. But probably not for the same reasons that Mr. Randi objects.

Mr. Randi doesn’t seem to believe (if I’ve been reading him correctly) that anything atypical can occur in the Newtonian world we live in. In his view, if anything “weird” happens, there must be a simple, logical, Newtonian explanation for it. Either there’s a scientific phenomenon that hasn’t been fully explored yet, or the person who reported the “weird event” is lying or is being duped by a clever manipulator.

This makes life very neat and tidy. But not very real.

The honest truth is that we don’t live in a Newtonian world. We live in a quantum world, a quantum world we barely understand at all with our somewhat limited human thinking capacity. I say “limited” because the human brain, while complex and sophisticated and quite a marvel when it’s working well, can only go so far in grasping the nature of quarks and bosons and probability wave functions and gamma rays and dark energy and dark matter and on and on and on. I think it’s important for us to continue to develop our scientific understanding of these phenomena. At the same time, I think it’s important for us to be humble about our own abilities. It’s important for us to remember that we actually don’t know everything (though we’re often tempted to think we do). It’s important for us to remain both open-minded and open-hearted.

Each human brain and central nervous system (hereafter the brain), as Jesus and I have said before, is its own mini-universe, its own small kingdom of the soul that exists separately from but contiguous with other kingdoms-of-the-soul (i.e. other people). Within any particular human brain, the principles of quantum physics apply — including the principles of the conscious observer (in each case, the conscious observer is the person who “owns” that particular brain) plus Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. When consciousness is understood from this point of view (instead of from the Materialist point of view), it’s a lot easier for us to accept the challenges that are part and parcel of “being human.” We have a better starting place for understanding why we do the strange things we do — for the simple reason that we’re not expecting easy cookie-cutter solutions. We’re not expecting easy Newtonian instruction booklets that can guide us through the complex quantum realities of our own brains.

Psychic-medium Sylvia Browne is doing some strange things, to be sure, but I doubt very much she has the level of intentionality James Randi ascribes to her.

She has her very own kingdom of the soul — her brain — and she’s using her brain as the primary tool for her “psychic work.” Regardless of what she says about her sources of information, at the end of the day all the information she “receives” goes through the circuits of her own brain. She can’t detach herself from this scientific reality. Her brain is the processing centre, the combination of hardware and software that determines how data is perceived, analyzed, stored, and transmitted. She’s responsible for maintaining her own hardware and software. All of it. This is what it means to be the master/mistress of your own Kingdom.

It’s her own brain that decides what information she’ll pass along to other people. She’s responsible for what she decides to tell other people. It isn’t her angel’s responsibility to decide, and it isn’t God’s responsibility to decide. It’s her own responsibility. Her brain belongs entirely to her, not to some cosmic force that’s guiding her or taking over part of her brain as an “indwelling spirit.” (Believe it or not, this is a frequent claim among mystics, psychics, and prophets in all religions.) Whatever Sylvia Browne chooses to put on paper is her responsibility — not God’s — just as whatever I choose to put on paper is my responsibility. Sylvia Browne is choosing to try to write about the quantum universe without knowing a darned thing about the quantum universe. (If you’re looking for hard science in her books, you’ll be looking in vain.) I would love to see what her brain looks like on a SPECT scan while she’s talking to her spirit guide, Francine. If she’s certain of her ability, she has no cause for concern.

The International Olympic Committee requires that all athletes who win medals at an Olympic event be tested for banned drugs. I would suggest that anyone claiming to be a mystic or channeller or psychic or prophet or whatever be required to undergo rigorous medical assessment and have his or her brain scanned by an objective third-party professional. This would immediately root out the psychopaths and the seriously mentally ill, such as the woman I tried to learn from in the early years of my spiritual journey.

Grace had a personal history of mental illness, a family history of serious mental illness, and a history of being horribly abused as a child. She was a binge drinker, had a probable eating disorder (she weighed about 250 pounds when I last saw her), took antidepressants and Andriol for a mood disorder, and was easily triggered by rage. (Her own rage, that is.) She was also manipulative, cunning, and adept at “cutting and pasting” other people’s ideas into “new and divinely revealed tapestries of spiritual truth.”

Yet never once did she come up with an original insight. She couldn’t. Her brain was too damaged to do anything except copy. She could barely learn any new facts from the newspaper let alone learn new facts from her guardian angel.

She said she was a channeller. She very much wanted to be a channeller. But she couldn’t pass the very first test of ethical mysticism, which is the ability to feel empathy for others. (Schadenfreude was one of her favourite ways to brighten up the day. Even better than a few shots of vodka, thought she. And cheaper, too.)

I hope she’s been receiving the professional medical care she needs. She went through a lot of horrible things during childhood, and I hope she’s been able to find some healing and forgiveness.

God bless you, Grace.

P.S. The brain’s hardware is very sensitive to alcohol. If you meet a mystic or channeller who abuses alcohol, run for the hills. This person has damaged his or her brain and is in need of healing. Chances that he or she is a bona fide mystic are pretty close to zero. People who can’t or won’t look after their own brains are in no position to give you advice about how to look after yours (though your compassion for their suffering is always important.) Spiritual connection with God depends on the brain. Look after your brain and you’ll be surprised at how much inner common sense you actually have!

 

RS6: SPECT Scans of the Author’s Brain

Day 1: Baseline SPECT scan, 3-D Active View

Day 1: Baseline SPECT scan, 3-D Active View

 

amen-scan-concentration-no-date-resized

Day 2: Concentration Task SPECT scan, 3-D Active View

 

amen-scan-channelling-no-date-resized

Day 3: Channelling Task SPECT scan, 3-D Active View

 

In December 2004, I flew to Orange County, California, to participate in an ongoing Normal Brain Study at the Amen Clinic.

Dr. Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist who finds it remarkable that psychiatry is the only field of medicine that doesn’t actually look at the organ it’s treating before starting treatment. He has amassed the world’s largest database of SPECT scans of the brain. Somewhere in this vast database are the 3 pictures of my brain posted above.

I first became familiar with Dr. Amen’s work shortly after the publication of his book Healing the Hardware of the Soul: How Making the Brain-Soul Connection Can Optimize Your Life, Love, and Spiritual Growth (New York: The Free Press, 2002). Dr. Amen has published several other books since then, but the 2002 book continues to be the one I find most helpful. Most recently he’s been working on a project to talk about the dangers of head injury, especially concussion. I think this is very important work.

You can check out the homepage for his clinics at http://www.amenclinics.com. He has tons of information there. He also has an on-line version of his professional SPECT image atlas. If ever there were a place where a picture is worth a thousand words, this would be it. You can check it out at http://www.amenclinics.com/brain-science/spect-image-gallery.

In the summer of 2004, I was scrolling through Dr. Amen’s website when I came across the call for subjects to participate in a Normal Brain Study. I immediately wrote to the Research Director. In the initial e-mail I sent, I was candid about the fact that I’m a channeller. This didn’t seem to phase the Research Director, who promptly wrote back and asked for more information.

Because I was asking to be enrolled in a Normal Brain Study, I had to meet the criteria that applied to all members of the study — no history of head injury, no major mental illness, no family history of major mental illness, and so on. The questionnaires were quite detailed. In addition, psychological assessments were carried out, both by phone interview and by additional written questionnaires (some of which went to a family member and to a non-family member who knew me well). After several weeks, the research team agreed that I could come to California and have my brain scanned as a research subject at no cost to me other than my travel costs.

At that time, the procedure was for research subjects to come to the clinic on two consecutive days. On the first day, a final interview was carried out, then the subject was injected with a radioisotope and asked to lie quietly in the SPECT scanner and “not think about anything in particular.” (In other words, try to rest and relax while staying awake). This was the Baseline scan that gave information about which regions of the person’s brain were most active during a resting but alert state (which tells a great deal about overall brain connections). My Baseline scan is the top series of 3-D Active Views shown above.

On the second day, research subjects would return for a second scan, this one designed to capture the function of the brain while focusing on a concentration task. A computer tossed random symbols onto a screen, and the participant was supposed to press the space bar on the keyboard when one particular symbol appeared. I remember that on the first few tries I was trying to anticipate ahead of time when the right symbol would appear, and naturally I was flubbing the test. So I made a conscious decision to be “present in the moment” and wait patiently for each symbol to appear before I made a decision on how to act. Whatever that conscious decision was, it improved my test scores immensely, and the corresponding brain activity which resulted from that decision is reflected in the second series above, the Concentration Scan.

Normally the testing would have been over at this point, but the research team asked me to come back for a third test. This was done the next day. They wanted to record my brain physiology while I was channelling Jesus. This was no problem for me, because I channel when I’m fully awake and alert, and I need no special preparation or external tools in order to talk to Jesus through my channelling circuitry. They asked me to ask Jesus a specific question and then “listen” for the reply. This process was captured in the third series above, the Channel Scan.

After the team reviewed the results of all three scans, they told me I have a very healthy brain, and my scans would be suitable for inclusion in the database of normal brains (as opposed to the database of dysfunctional brains).

They gave me copies of all the scans, which is what you see posted here. I had my birthdate removed from the information column for privacy reasons. Other than that, these scans appear exactly as they did at the Amen Clinic in December, 2004.

I haven’t yet included any of the surface views (the highly colourful scans posted all over Dr. Amen’s website) for the simple reason that I haven’t got round to scanning them into my computer yet. I’m really not all that comfortable with computer stuff. So first I have to figure out how to use my new scanner. (Not my idea of a good time. I’d much rather go read the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.) But for those who already have some familiarity with 3-D Active View SPECT scans, you can see right off that I have full, even, symmetrical activity, and all major parts of the brain are intact and fully interconnected.

Aren’t you already curious why my primary visual cortex is so active in the channelling scan?

And I’m not even a visual channeller.

 

RS5: Faith: A Relationship With God That Endures in the Absence of Sacred Texts

Acacia in the Negev, Israel ((c) Free Israel Photos)

Acacia in the Negev, Israel ((c) Free Israel Photos)

A: This morning it seemed clear that you and I need a simple, solid definition of what we mean (that is, what you and I mean) when we use the word “faith.” So this is the definition we came up with today: Faith is a relationship with God that endures in the absence of sacred texts. So let’s talk.

J: The religious folk out there won’t like this discussion.

A: And neither will the Christian atheists, who believe there isn’t an actual person we can think of as God.

J: It’s interesting that in the raging debates between atheists and conservative religious believers, everybody focuses on the sacred texts. Atheists attack traditional religious claims on scientific grounds (as they should), and conservative religious folk counter with their own interpretations of the sacred texts. Both sides act as if the sacred texts actually have authority. It’s sheer folly to accord any authority to sacred texts when the testimony of these books is challenged every single day by the realities of God’s own language — the complex, highly sophisticated language of God that interfolds science with art and music and time and joy. You can no more speak cogently about God using only science than you can by quoting only scripture. Black and white thinking about God has got to go.

A: Some Progressive Christians want us to reject the idea that God is a person, and they want us to reject the idea that you, Jesus, ever lived as a real person (a favourite thesis of Tom Harpur), but they want to keep the Bible and interpret it in “new, symbolic ways.” How do you feel about that?

J: Well, it’s a choice that can be made. But it’s not a choice that leads to faith as you and I have defined it, because the focus isn’t on relationship with God. The focus is on the sacred texts. When push comes to shove, there’s a desire to keep the authority of sacred texts, and dispense with anything that gets in the way of that authority. Even if it means dispensing with the idea of God as a person (well, two people actually).

A: I suppose this seems easier than confronting the narcissistic intent that fills so many pages of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

J: The Bible is like a very old backyard sandbox that’s filled with the religious detritus of many centuries. If you dig in it long enough, you’ll find some good stuff — some treasures and trinkets of spiritual wisdom from years gone by. But you’ll also find lots of rusty metal that carries tetanus plus broken shards of glass that will cut you if you’re not careful. You can’t brush aside the harmful potential of the rusty metal and the broken glass by deciding to “reinvent” the rusty metal as “proof that the ancients understood the cosmic patterns of Creation” or the broken glass as “a hidden gem of lost mystical knowledge.” Rusty metal and broken glass are what they are. Excavate them. Be honest about them. Put them in a museum if you must. But don’t pretend they say something wise and mysterious when they don’t.

A: I think a lot of people are afraid that if one takes away the sacred texts, there won’t be any starting point for people to be in relationship with God. They won’t have a framework for understanding God’s language.

J: If they’re looking for a framework for understanding God’s language, they won’t find one in these sacred texts. Not a framework that God agrees with, anyway. The Bible doesn’t reflect God’s ongoing voice. The Bible reflects the need of human leaders to acquire authority for their own narcissistic purposes. Most of the Bible, especially books such as Genesis and Luke/Acts, have a human agenda. Of course, as I said above, there are passages in the Bible that do have something meaningful to say. But it’s very hard for regular people to find these passages.

A: You said all these things 2,000 years ago.

J: Yes.

A: I’m amazed that the majority of Progressive Christians I’ve conversed with, both on the Progressive forum and in my university classes, see no conflict in stating they embrace the teachings of Jesus and in the next breath stating they don’t believe in a theistic God.

J: If they say they’re embracing the teachings of Jesus, it justifies their continuing admiration of scripture. That way they can keep the sacred texts and dump the personal responsibility they have to try to be in daily relationship with God.

A: That’s a nice way of saying they’d have to try to listen to what God is saying to them today.

J: A person of faith is never afraid to hear what God is saying, even if change or confusion or temporary pain accompany the honest truth being conveyed to them by God.

A: If a person pretends there really isn’t a God, or if he/she pretends God is too far away from us to hear us or care what we’re thinking and feeling and doing, there’s no motivation to try to be in relationship with God. There’s no motivation to listen to God’s ongoing suggestions.

J: And when things are really going badly, you can always blame God for not being there to help you. That way it’s never really your own fault — it’s always somebody else’s fault, and you’re off the hook as far as loving, forgiving, and learning go.

A: I’ve known some 3-year-olds who were more mature than this.

J: That’s because most 3-year-olds still know how to love, forgive, and learn. Most 3-year-olds still have faith. Most 3-year-olds can’t read anything, let alone the sacred texts, but this has never stopped them from living their faith.

A: There you go with the Kingdom teachings again!

 

TBM15: The Necessity of Forgiveness on the Spiral Path

So far, you may be feeling that I haven’t said anything new or different. This would be very disappointing, since it would mean there’s nothing new here for you to learn.

Aren’t you tired of that feeling — the feeling that no one is giving you straight answers to hard questions? It’s easy to find “easy answers” — 10 minutes to a perfect life! Just send 5 easy payments of $99 to the phone number on your screen! — but it’s not so easy to find straight answers.

The one straight answer you almost never hear about is Forgiveness. If you want to travel more than a few feet along the Spiral Path of healing, you’re going to have to be willing to work on Forgiveness.

Forgiveness can be described in a number of different ways.  One way is to think of forgiveness is the dishcloth you use to clean up your mistakes.  Another way to think of forgiveness is like learning to ride a bicycle under marathon conditions.  At first, it's really hard.  After a while, though, it becomes second nature to you and you can do it for the rest of your life without really thinking about it -- just like learning to ride bike.

Forgiveness can be described in a number of different ways. One way to think of forgiveness is like the dishcloth you use to clean up your mistakes. Another way to think of forgiveness is like learning to ride a bicycle for a marathon. At first, it’s really hard. After a while, though, it becomes second nature to you and you can do it for the rest of your life without really thinking too much about it. It becomes a natural part of your skill set — just like learning to ride a bike.

The mystery of Forgiveness is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where your soul straps on your walking shoes. Where the parts of your biological brain that are wired into your soul’s energy start to take charge again (as they were supposed to be doing all along). Where you begin to recognize your core identity, your core purpose, as a soul.

In the analogy of the spiritual kitchen, forgiveness is the dishcloth that allows you to clean up your mistakes as you go along.

Yup, the dishcloth.

Forgiveness isn’t the lightbulb that brings illumination to the kitchen. Forgiveness isn’t the secret family recipe for the Colonel’s special chicken or Grandma’s Christmas shortbread. And forgiveness isn’t a magical clock that turns time forward so you don’t have to look at or think about yesterday’s fallen souffle.

Forgiveness is the mundane dishcloth you pick up with your own hands and use to wipe the spilled cocoa from the counter. It’s the tool you use to clean up a mistake once you’ve admitted that you’ve made a mistake. (Or once you’ve admitted that somebody else has made a mistake.)

It’s not very mystical-sounding, is it?

No. Which is why you so rarely hear about it in religious or New Age teachings. Forgiveness is not magical and it’s not secret and it’s not reserved for just a few select, chosen, special students. So it doesn’t have much mystical razzle dazzle. It can’t be bought or sold, so it has no commercial value. It can’t be patented or put in pill form, so it has no pharmaceutical value. Instead, it’s an inner state. Both a choice and a gift. Once it’s yours, it’s yours, and it can’t be taken away from you. Ever.*

So right away you can see why it’s of no interest to Big Religion or Big Business.

One of the reasons the practice of forgiveness isn’t taught by mainstream religion is the embarrassment factor. The embarrassment of mistakes. The average person doesn’t want to admit his own mistakes, let alone the mistakes of his family and clan and revered religious tradition. In fact, there are few things in the human experience that cause more suffering than the refusal to admit one’s own mistakes.

The strange part about this stubborn refusal to be honest about mistakes is that it’s NOT intrinsic to your soul’s true nature. You weren’t born this stubborn. In fact, when you were a young child, you were constantly making mistakes, but it never slowed you down in your learning process because each time you made a mistake, you forgave yourself, learned from the mistake, and moved on.

Most people don’t remember this part of their lives. They think they’ve always been stubborn and unforgiving and quite willing to lie through their teeth in order to avoid the embarrassment of admitting a mistake.

My boss at work is quite willing to lie without blinking an eye whenever somebody close to her points out a mistake she’s made. She can’t deal with honest truth when the honest truth is directed at herself. She’s quick to point out other people’s mistakes, but she’s not good at taking responsibility for her own mistakes. She has a reflex action of trying to shift the blame to somebody else if she can. I don’t think she even realizes what she’s doing. It’s a learned biological response, a trained reflex, not a natural part of her true soul self.  But she’s been doing it for so long she doesn’t question it anymore. For her, it’s normal. Nonetheless, it’s hurtful. Hurtful to herself and hurtful to those she tries to blame for her own mistakes.

She and I don’t get along very well some days because I have a bad habit of being honest with her when she makes a mistake, and then forgiving her right on the spot. I’m also honest with her about my own mistakes. I try to communicate clearly and honestly about mistakes without holding grudges (since holding grudges is the very antithesis of forgiveness). I try to learn from mistakes — my own and others’.

Surprising as this may seem, my boss doesn’t like being treated this way. She doesn’t understand me because I don’t play by the grudgefest rules. She’s used to living in a world where people hold grudges. She knows how to respond to this sort of behaviour and she enjoys playing cat-and-mouse games of revenge (where she’s the cat and her staff members are the mouse). A few of us at work are refusing to play mouse. She finds this quite stressful at times. But, you know, that’s her problem.

When I say I forgive her, I don’t mean I choose to ignore the harm she’s created. I don’t mean I make excuses for her behaviour or pretend that bygones are bygones. I remember what she’s done. I remember her behaviour as clearly and objectively as I can. But I don’t “hang onto” the past. Instead, I allow the past to guide me and teach me so I can deal more effectively with the present. I understand that she’s responsible for her own choices, and I understand that she could be making different choices if she wanted to. It doesn’t do either of us any good to pretend otherwise. Pretending otherwise is just another form of lying. Forgiveness requires honesty.

I choose to love the person and reject the behaviour, rather than rejecting the person. This takes a lot of will power, especially on difficult days when somebody is REALLY not being his/her best self. There have been a few times for me in recent years when I don’t know how I would have got through the day without the decision to forgive, forgive, forgive. Forgiveness keeps your feet planted solidly on the Spiral Path. Forgiveness combined with courage helps you take a deep breath and keep on going, even when the terrain all around you is hostile and cruel (as it sometimes is). Forgiveness is the choice that allows you to move from the glass-half-empty-with-sour-lemon-juice to the glass-half-filled-with-sweet-lemonade.

Of course, you’re the one who has to supply the sugar.

 

* You can read more about what forgiveness feels like at Forgiveness: The Divine String of Pearls or Forgiveness as a Present Reality or Summing Up: Finding the Kingdom of God.

RS4: Challenging the Apophatic Path

A: In the last week of August I returned for a brief time to a Christian forum I used to post on. It didn’t take me long to remember why I left two years ago. Most of the recent contributors are people I’d known there before, with a couple of newer members who seemed to fit right in.

Theatre at Epidaurus, Greece, 4th C BCE ((c) JAT)

Theatre at Epidaurus, Greece, 4th C BCE ((c) JAT)

Some of these people are now assistant moderators with hundreds of posts to their credit. They need a lot of moderators on this forum because they have strict codes of etiquette — which I don’t mind in principle. What I mind is that this diverse group of Christian Atheists and Christian Deists and Christian Buddhists and Process Christians are all required to be polite to each other, but nobody is required to be polite to God. Which you’d pretty much expect from a group of people who say they’re Progressive Christians, but really don’t seem interested in discussing theism and faith in the same breath. Many of these contributors are cruel — cruel to God in ways they’d never contemplate being cruel to their fellow human beings. Not in a public forum, anyway. I just couldn’t take it.

J: The more things change, the more they stay the same. In my day, we would have expected to see this group sitting on the edge of the marketplace and nodding sagely at the words of their Hellenistic wisdom teacher. They wouldn’t actually do anything to confront their own issues. They’d just talk and talk and talk. They would frequently impress themselves and each other with a particularly fine piece of philosophical poetry. But philosophical poetry is no substitute for faith.

A: The talk seems to go round and round in circles. As far as I could tell, the long-standing forum members — the ones I wrote with years ago — are still asking the same questions and answering them in the same vague ways. There’s been no movement, no forward-moving change or transformation or insight. It’s like they’re stuck in a hamster wheel.

J: Like the character in the beginning scenes of Groundhog Day.

A: Yeah. Just like that. They’re still angry, and they’re still in a state of denial about their anger.

J: Denial is the key word here. They deny to themselves that they’re angry — angry with others, and angry with God — and at a psychological level they’re repressing that anger behind “wisdom words.” Lots and lots of wisdom words like “peace” and “oneness” and “love.” A person in denial can make a highly effective smokescreen or “veil of mist” around the anger by throwing up constant jets of wisdom. But these are only words. Words without honest inner intent to back them up.

Words without matching intent don’t make the world a better place. You can tell other people how kind and inclusive you are — and they may even believe you — but if you spend a big part of your day throwing slings and arrows at God (as if God can’t hear you and has no feelings) then you’re probably not as kind and inclusive as you say you are.

A: The apostle Paul was very good at employing this strategy.

J: Yes. Except that Paul wasn’t really in a state of denial about his own motives. He knew what he was doing. He co-opted the language of the Hellenistic sages, but not their message. He had a different agenda, an agenda to devise a new theistic religion from whole cloth. Well, okay, not exactly whole cloth — more like a patchwork quilt. A “crazy quilt” stitched from a bit of this, a bit of that. This is what Pauline Christianity resembles.

A: One powerful insight popped in for me during my brief sojourn on the forum site. You guys helped me understand that the uniting theme for the long-time members of this site is apophasis — the path of trying to know God by unspeaking or unsaying all that is known about God, the path of dissolving the self to become one with the transcendent cloud of unknowing/knowing.

J: Yes. It’s a path that leads to tragedy. The world starts to shrink for these individuals. It gets smaller and smaller as they struggle to maintain the position that there is no position. They stop using big chunks of their own brains, a choice that creates serious consequences for their biological health and well-being. They become dependent on the power of words — words without intent or praxis. They become “people of the Word,” people who live behind a veil of self-deceit and denial. They start to “float” in a place where nothing is real and everything is relative. They stop believing that “right and wrong” exist. Needless to say, this can have tragic consequences.

A: You can’t fix something if you insist it ain’t broke.

J: My sentiments exactly.

RS3: Learning to Like God

A: Jesus, why do you think there’s so much resistance to the idea that God is actually two distinct people, two distinct consciousnesses, a Mother God and a Father God working together to bring new life into being?

Learning to Like God Doesn't Mean You Have to Stop Having Fun (c) JAT 2013

Learning to Like God Doesn’t Mean You Have to Stop Having Fun (c) JAT 2013

J: I don’t think there’s one simple answer to that question. Human beings have been struggling for thousands of years with questions about who God is. The important thing to bear in mind is that people of faith have usually been in conflict with people of religion, regardless of place or time or culture. People of faith, wherever they live, are the people who listen for God’s presence with their hearts and bodies and minds and souls and courage. People of faith have a tendency to get sucked into groups run by people of religion. I’m defining “people of religion” as those who choose to obey the Laws and the Prophets.

A: Whose laws and whose prophets?

J: Everybody’s religious laws and everybody’s religious prophets when those laws and prophets contradict the obvious truths which God speaks to all people of the world each day.

A: Such as?

J: Such as the obvious truth that relationship is the foundation of all life. Human babies aren’t plucked from trees like ripe figs. At some time, there has to be an intimate relationship between male sperm and female ova. Even if this connection takes place in a test tube.

A: That hasn’t stopped scientists from cloning animals. And trying to clone human beings, I’m sure, though I doubt they’re talking out loud about this kind of Mengelian research.

J: The media have been creating the impression in the popular imagination that cloning is an easy, harmless, reliable, Newtonian process that obeys simple laws of Cause and Effect. Why, soon there’ll be home cloning kits for you on the shopping channel! Just think! You’ll be able to clone dear ol’ granny! The reality of cloning is much more complex, however. Beyond all the hidden struggles in labs and the fudged data and the attempts by major corporations to try to patent DNA that doesn’t belong to them, there have been serious failures and inexplicable weaknesses in the cloned creatures.

A: How do God the Mother and God the Father respond to these cloning projects?

J: The same way they respond to other acts of human psychopathy. They allow observable consequences to unfold so other people can see for themselves what a stupid idea it is.

A: Boy, sometimes it takes an awful lot of pain to get regular people to see the observable consequences of a stupid idea.

J: Human beings have free will. They can choose to be greedy and selfish, as many corporate researchers are choosing to be, or they can choose to be compassionate and clear-headed. Many of these corporate researchers see no contradiction in also being practising conservative Christians or Jews or Muslims because Abrahamic orthodoxy insists that God has given human beings special rights and privileges as “sovereigns” over all creatures of Planet Earth (Genesis 1:28 and, by inference, Genesis 2-3). Many, many religious people have assumed this means they can do whatever the hell they want on Earth, and God will simply nod and smile and say, “My, what a good boy you are!” Obviously, there’s something wrong with this picture.

A: Nuclear weapons spring quickly to mind.

J: Yes, plus toxic wastes poured into the ground and water. Diversion of major fresh water sources. Drilling for oil in unsafe and harmful environments such as thousands of metres below the sea bed. There’s not a lot of common sense or clear-headedness — let alone compassion — in any of these choices.

A: Yet you’re not advocating that we give up all technology and return to an ancient agrarian lifestyle.

J: No, I’m not asking people to give up their phones and their cars and go live on a barren mountaintop to get closer to God. On the other hand, a little balance might be nice. People might spend a little less time with their phones and their cars and a little more time with their children.

A: But that would mean spending time on their relationships.

J: It never ceases to amaze me that pious folk who refuse to treat anyone but themselves with respect will turn around and insist they have all the answers about how to be in relationship with God. How can a person who knows nothing about relationships claim to be an expert in relationships? How can a man who treats all women as inferior claim to know who God is? It’s narcissistic bullshit, nothing more.

A: These guys are too busy throwing themselves on their status-saturated swords to notice they’re not very nice people.

J: In orthodox Western Christianity, the image of God is very much one of the old bearded guy in the sky who’s throwing himself on his status-saturated sword for the sake of all those little peons who are too weak and sinful to make any good relationship choices ever.

A: God as the ultimate narcissist. No wonder so many people of faith have rejected the traditional Christian image of God. What’s to like?

J: It’s pretty hard to love and trust somebody when you believe there are no grounds to even like him or her.

A: So . . . it would make sense for the church of the third millennium to show people ways in which they can like God the Mother and God the Father as people and as divine parents. That way they can start to build a solid, respectful, daily relationship with God.

(c) Image*After

(c) Image*After

J: Naturally, it will come as no surprise that having a respectful relationship with God is no different than having a respectful relationship with your neighbour. If you can’t treat the one with kindness, you sure as heck can’t treat the other.

It’s only common sense.

RS2: The Importance of Ethical Mysticism

A: The universe has a sense of humour. Two days ago, on Thursday morning, you and I decided this blog site would try to focus on the question of science and faith. Thursday afternoon I went into work, and there on the lunchroom table was a newspaper article by Tom Harpur entitled “Where science meets the Divine.” Interesting timing.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: As I remember it, you weren’t too happy when you read Mr. Harpur’s article.

A: No. As readers of the Concinnate Christianity site will know, I’m not too fond of Harpur’s neo-Gnosticism. He and I don’t agree on much. He seems to be yearning for mystery, but when he’s presented with an actual mystery — one that confounds his belief system about God — he rejects it without first carefully examining it. At least that’s what he did with me, when I wrote to him in May and June of 2005, and he responded in writing that he didn’t accept my experience of mystical conversation (i.e. channelling). Hey, I understand people’s suspicion, and I support the idea that a mystic should have to prove he or she isn’t floridly psychotic, etc., etc. There’s no ethical mysticism without ethical scientific investigation. But for a spiritual writer and researcher to not take the time to ask a few thoughtful questions of a modern-day practising mystic . . . to my way of thinking that’s just sloppy and a waste of information that could turn out to be quite useful.

J: Your problem is that you told Mr. Harpur in the beginning you’re channelling me, and he doesn’t believe there ever was a me. So he wouldn’t find it useful to learn that he’s been incorrect about me.

A: After you’ve published a book like The Pagan Christ, it’s pretty hard to back down from the position that the historical Jesus never existed. So I can understand that from his point of view it would’ve been much more convenient if I’d never written to him.

J: There’s those Popperian black swans again. Showing up to bug the hell out of both theologians and scientists.

A: I find it interesting that in this week’s article Harpur wants to make the point that religion and science need each other and are both part of a cosmos that is an “infinitely vast, interconnected unity in which every aspect of every facet and particle is knit from all the others.” He’s certainly very poetic. But unless I’ve missed something about his academic training, he is not and never has been a scientist — that is, a person standing in a lab mixing solvents and solutes and running analytical tests on the products. He’s a philosopher, writer, theologian, and former professor. Which is great. Except he’s not a scientist, and he doesn’t think like a scientist, so he has to rely on what other people say about the intersection of science and the divine. He can’t decide for himself about the scientific merit of certain arguments because he doesn’t work with primary sources in science. He doesn’t read that particular language. Philosophy of science — which is Harpur’s area of interest here — isn’t the same as science itself. Plato was a philosopher of science. Aristotle was a philosopher of science. But these guys weren’t and aren’t scientists.

Harpur’s thesis about the unity of the cosmos sounds no different to me than Plato’s anogogic and apophatic mysticism from Phaedrus and Timaeus. For God’s sake, can’t we hear something new about the relationship between science and faith? Can’t we be honest about the fact that faith and religion have as little in common as science and religion? Do we have to live in the hamster wheel that Plato devised 2,400 years ago? Do we have to cling to the mystical teachings of Paul and the Gnostics? These people were barking up the wrong tree before. Why do we suddenly imagine that quantum physics is going to prove that Plato’s tree was the right tree after all?

J (chuckling): Don’t forget the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals would like those trees to be real, too.

A: Harpur has an interesting quote. He says, “What is most striking about the complete revolution in physics that has taken place over the last century is that the old materialist philosophy of the past has been given the axe.” I find this ironic, since Pauline thought and Gnostic thought are both forms of Materialist philosophy, and Harpur is nothing if not a keen fan of Gnosticism.

J: Materialism still reigns in almost all spheres of human thought and human activity. Certainly most physicists would rather cut off both legs and both arms than admit to the audacious idea that non-locality exists as a verifiable force within the universe. They’re trying very hard these days to redefine non-locality and lessen the overall message it conveys.

A: What message is that?

J: The overall message of weirdness in the universe. Of instantaneous communication between consciousnesses. Of a very annoying measure of unpredictability in the way things work. The quest for a Grand Unified Theory is an example of scientists’ desperation to avoid the non-materialist implications of non-locality.

A: I’m not a physicist, and I’m not up to date on the mathematics of current quantum theory (not that there’s any agreement on current quantum theory), but I know one thing for sure: Einstein was wrong about non-locality. He was wrong to reject its existence. Every day my experiences as a mystic teach me that Einstein couldn’t have been more wrong.

J: Yes. Theologians who want to unite science and religion find a lot of support in Einstein’s theories. The problem is that Einstein was wrong about a number of things, so his theories are of limited use for a theologian who wants to talk about Divine Science. Flawed scientific doctrines are no more useful for helping people of faith than flawed theological doctrines. There has to be constant reexamination of both scientific and theological doctrines as people of faith move forward in the third millennium.

A: The operative word being “forward.” Not “backward,” as in looking to Plato for answers.

J: A strange thing sometimes happens to highly educated, highly intelligent physicists and theologians. For years they operate on the assumption — the absolute conviction — that the universe obeys strict Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. They shape all their research, all their “observations,” all their conclusions on this assumption. They’re certain of their rightness.

One day, they have what might be called an epiphany. They have a sudden awareness deep in the gut that maybe there is a God, that maybe there are more levels of connection in the universe than they once dreamed of. This insight is good. It means the biological brain has finally got the message the soul has been whispering for years. But they tend to stop right here, right at this point. They stop at the very beginning of the journey. They think the awareness of interconnection is the end of the journey. In fact, it’s the very first step. They haven’t begun to ask the questions about relationship and learning and growth and change. Let alone the questions about redemption and forgiveness and the mystery of divine love. They stop dead in their tracks at the idea of “Oneness.” Of unio mystica. Of unified field theory. They don’t continue along the Spiral Path to find out what it really means. They never learn that the universe only works — only holds together — precisely because it is NOT a Oneness. It is, instead, a relationship. A relationship of mutual respect. A relationship where boundaries are everything, because without boundaries there could be no individual consciousnesses, no individual souls, no individual children of God, and no God.

A: Without clear boundaries there could be no God?

J: God isn’t a force field. God is two people. Two actual consciousnesses. Very big and very old compared to us, their children, but still people. They have bodies (just as we have bodies). They have minds (just as we have minds). They have talents (just as we have talents). And they have a heart — a big, mysterious, blended place of shared love and learning and tears and laughter that we call the heart. It’s God’s choice to create the sacred shared place of the heart that allows all souls to exist as separate but interconnected children of God. If you try to speak of God as Divine Mind while ignoring the other aspects of God — body and talent and heart — you’re not really speaking about God. You’re speaking about human narcissism, the kind of narcissism that imagines logic and reason and the Materialist laws of Cause of Effect form the core essence of the cosmos. These thinkers never speak about the chaotic and unpredictable nature of divine love. Thus, they never speak of miracles. In their view, miracles are impossible. Miracles can’t exist.

A: Yet miracles happen all the time.

J: Miracles take place because God and God’s angels choose for them to take place. This is where non-locality comes in. This is where classical physics goes out the window. It’s all very messy. It’s too messy for people who’ve chosen to be Non-Whole Brain Thinkers. There’s too much emotion involved. Too much trust. And too great a sense of personal responsibility.

A: A Non-Whole Brain thinker would rather try to “escape” into unio mystica than deal with difficult emotions such as love and trust.

J: And the sacred religious texts Mr. Harpur is so keen to preserve make it very easy for people to try to escape.

A: In his recent article, Harpur says, “Sacred books on the other hand deal with the spiritual and psychological verities behind and beneath the human search for meaning and purpose. They speak a different language, one of myth, parable, poetry and symbolism because life’s deepest core can only be explored that way [emphasis added].”

I disagree vehemently. Myth, poetry, and symbolism are the languages of religion and traditional mysticism, and even more frequently they’re the languages of successful psychopaths and political ideologues and purveyors of the HDM Myths. How can God’s ongoing communications with us be clearly identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon if symbols and myths are given more credence than identifiable scientific facts? Seems to me that Harpur’s promoting a foundation of moral quicksand.

J: He is.

A: I don’t think that’s very ethical.

J: It’s not. But anogogic and apophatic mysticism have never been about ethics. They’ve always been about “escape” — escape from the hard work of healing and transforming the self. The hard work of learning to trust God.

A: Trust. You mean trust without the theatrics and wailing and chest-beating and false humility and self-pity and chosenness of orthodox Western Christianity.

J: I think you’ve just described Paul’s themes of salvation and escape quite nicely.

RS1: Realspiritik: Realism in Spirituality

Japanese Gardens 57

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

Welcome to the Realspiritik site, where Jesus and I will be continuing our discussion of the nitty gritty realities of life in a spiritual universe.

This is the fifth in a collection of linked essays I’ve been writing, with Jesus’ ongoing encouragement and help, since 2006. The most recent four collections are the blogs I’ve written (or am still writing) under the name of Fireweed. The first, written mostly in 2006 and 2007, is a hard-copy book that hasn’t been released yet. Maybe one day . . .

Jesus first coined the term Realspiritik back in 2007, when I was scrounging around for a title for the final section of the first book. So this neologism started out as the title of a book section, and then became the title of an essay in Concinnate Christianity (“Realspiritik”). Now it’s evolved into the title of this blog. It means, boiled down to its essence, “realism in spirituality.” Not capital-R political Realism of the kind espoused by Thomas Hobbes, or Christian Realism of the kind promoted by Reinhold Niebuhr, but small-R realism.

The kind of everyday practical spiritual reality that Jesus himself once tried to teach.

It’s a very simple model for understanding how we, as human beings and children of God, can live healthy, holistic, loving human lives. It’s a simple model because it insists that science and faith be full partners in our daily lives. Not science and religion: science and faith.

Most days religion and faith have little in common, so I’m not advocating that you try to salvage all your cherished religious doctrines while you juggle the science. I’m advocating that you try choosing faith instead of religion. Faith in God instead of obedience to church leaders.

Faith in God, as Jesus and I will try to show, means opening your heart to the many languages of God — including the language of science. Of course, opening your heart means also means opening your eyes — and, indeed, all your senses — to the mystery and wonder of God’s Creation. So it’s anything but blind faith.

Hey, as an approach to living, it can’t be that much worse than what you’ve already got.

If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address, please contact me at realspiritik@gmail.com . As well, posted comments are always welcome.

“Beloved God, please help me find the ways in which my mind can learn from my heart, and my heart can learn from my mind so my body can find some peace!” (from Jesus, August 2011)

Amen to that.

JR63: Jesus Redux: The Forward

Jesus as the author sees him

Jesus as the author sees him

The first will be last, and the last will be first.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist a biblical pun there. If you’re visiting this blog for the first time, this page — the final page in a lengthy conversation between Jesus and me — will be the first thing you’ll see. So it only makes sense for us to write this “afterword” as if it were a “forward.”

If you’ve been following this blog as we’ve been writing it (we have readers in Canada, the U.S., Singapore, Germany, and few other places), you’ve probably figured out that we’ve been writing a book bit by bit. And now we’ve come to the end of this particular body of thought.

There’s a great deal more that can be said about the topics we’ve introduced here, topics such as the nature of the soul, the nature of the soul-body connection, the need for healing, the need to recognize and treat major mental illness (especially as it relates to religious prophecy), and the need for the church to be honest about its doctrines if it wants to find its way back to a full relationship with God the Mother and God the Father in the third millennium. But there’s only so much the human brain can absorb at one time. There’s enough here to make anyone’s head hurt (at least in the beginning).

Our chief goal has always been to spark discussion and encourage people to think for themselves. So if you feel from time to time that we could have given more background information or more references or more detailed explanations, you’ve probably stumbled into one of many spots in the book where we’ve intentionally given you the benefit of the doubt. We assume you’re a rational, capable, tenacious person capable of doing some independent research. There has to be room in a book like this for you to find your own courage and trust. There has to room for you to build your own relationship with God.

This book can be used in a straightforward academic manner (which is why we’re now going back and adding labels so it’s easier for you to find the topics that interest you). But it can also be used in an intuitive manner. I highly recommend this approach if you’re interested in slowly developing the intuitive circuitry of your own brain.

In walking the Spiral Path, there’s always the easy way and the hard way. Several years ago, when I was beginning my own journey, I did everything the hard way. I believed (because I allowed myself to be browbeaten by various gurus) that you can only learn to tap into your natural intuition or “spiritual quotient,” as I’ve called it elsewhere, by using ancient divining tools such as tarot cards or lectio divina. If you’ve ever tried to read a tarot spread, you know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the interpretation. And you’re never quite sure . . .

On the other hand, you can take a book like this, and ask God to guide you to the page you most need to understand (a centering exercise first would help with this), and then let your hand click on the mouse while you’re sort of looking at the archive of posts, but not looking too, too closely at the archive of posts. If you look too closely at the list, you’ll get in the way of your own intuitive process and start second-guessing yourself. So just let the mouse hover somewhere over the archive list, then look away and click before you have too much time to think about it.

It’s no big deal, really. You’re just letting yourself be open to the idea that God knows what you understand least, and what will help you most today. It’s quite possible you’ll end up clicking on the same link several days in a row. If this happens, just accept God’s wisdom. I learned long ago never to argue with God when the book opens up again and again to the same section.

Most of all, don’t expect the journey to be linear. It’s not gonna be. Love isn’t linear. Love lurches along with its own extraordinary surprises and puzzling patterns, but it always gets you there in the end. God’s love is the bedrock of everything you are. That’s why, as Jesus and I love to say to our divine parents . . .

Mother and Father God, you both totally rock! We dedicate this book to you!

Love Jesus and Jen

JR62: Seventh & Final Step: Remove the Thorn in Jesus’ Flesh (That Would Be Paul)

A: We’ve talked a lot on this site and on the Concinnate Christianity blog about the differences between your teachings and Paul’s teachings. Many readers will say there’s not much evidence in the Bible for the differences you and I claim. What would you say to Progressive Christians who want to “have their Jesus and keep their Paul, too,” who want to make you, Jesus, more credible, without actually giving up any of their cherished Pauline doctrines?

J: They make me look like a dweeb, to be honest. An ineffectual, wimpy, turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy.

A: Which you were not.

J: They say they want to save me from the fundamentalist Christian right and the secular humanist left, yet they’re forcing me to sit down at the Tea Party table with Paul, which is the last place I want to be. I’m a middle of the road social democrat, and I believe with all my heart and soul that a society can’t function in a balanced way unless rights and responsibilities are given equal weight in all spheres of life. Paul was a man who taught about rights, rights, rights and not nearly enough about responsibilities. He and I had very different values.

A: Paul talks about punishments.

J: Yes. Paul talks about divine punishment and divine testing. He talks about his freedom — his right — to speak with divine authority. He talks about the need for self-discipline. He talks about divine rewards. But, you know, when you look carefully at what he’s written, he doesn’t speak to the soul of his listeners. He doesn’t challenge them to see each of their neighbours as a separate person worthy of respect. Instead he does the opposite: he encourages them to see themselves as non-distinct members of a vast “body of Christ.” Paul, instead of insisting that people build solid interpersonal boundaries — the foundation of safety and respect and mutuality between individuals — tells people to dissolve those boundaries. It sounds good on paper, but “Oneness” does not work in reality. If you encourage the dissolution of interpersonal boundaries, you’ll see to your horror that the psychopaths in your midst will jump in and seize that “Oneness” for themselves. They won’t hesitate to use it to their advantage.

A: Because they have no conscience.

J: Humans (as well as angels on the Other Side) are all part of One Family. But this isn’t the same as saying humans are all “One.” As anyone who comes from a big family knows, respect for boundaries is the grease that keeps you from killing each other.

A: It can be tricky to manoeuvre all the boundary issues in a big family.

J: Yes. You need all the brain power you can muster to stay on top of the different needs of different family members.

A: Spoken like a man who came from a big family.

J: When you’re the youngest son in a family with three older brothers and two sisters (one older, one younger), you catch on fast to the idea of watching and learning and listening to the family dynamics so you don’t get your butt kicked all the time.

A: It’s real life, that’s for sure.

J: That’s the thing. It’s real life. It’s not about going off into the desert to live as a religious hermit. It’s not about living inside walled compounds or hilltop fortresses. It’s about living with your neighbours and learning to get along with them through communication and compromise and empathy. It’s not fancy, but it works.

A: The Gospel of Mark makes this message very clear.

J: Christians have long assumed that the author of Luke truly believed in my teachings and was trying his best to convey them in a fresh way to a new generation of believers. Luke, of course, had no interest in my teachings, and was instead trying to promote Paul’s package of religio-political doctrines. This is seen most obviously in the so-called Great Omission — the complete absence in Luke of Mark’s most important theological statement. Luke cut and pasted many parts of Mark’s gospel, and thereby changed their meaning. But he didn’t even try to include the dangerous theology found in Mark 6:47 to Mark 8:27a. He ignored it and hoped it would go away.

A: Why? Why did he want it to go away?

J: Mark’s gospel, as we’ve been discussing, was a direct rebuttal of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Paul wrote first (years before Mark), and in the middle of his letter he included 3 linked chapters on freedom and conscience, authority and obedience, sin and salvation, as these themes revolve around food — idol meat and, more importantly, the blood and bread of Christ (1 Cor 8:1-11:1). We can call this set-piece the “Idol Meat Discourse.” In this set-piece, Paul makes a number of claims about God that Mark, following my example, found particularly galling. Mark countered those claims by writing his own 3-chapter set-piece (Mark 6:30-8:26). I’m going to call Mark’s set-piece “the Parable of the Idol Bread.” This was Mark’s head-on attack on Paul’s Eucharist.

A: Mark didn’t support the sacrament of the Last Supper?

J: Mark knew that Paul’s speech about sharing in the blood and body of Christ (1 Cor 10:14-22) was a thinly veiled Essene ritual, the occult Messianic Banquet that had grown out of earlier, more honest offerings of thanks to God. I rejected the notion of the Messianic Banquet, with its invocation of hierarchy and status addiction. Mark rejected it, too.

A: Right before Mark launches into his Parable of the Idol Bread, he includes an allegorical tale about a banquet held by Herod and the subsequent beheading of John the Baptist (which we know didn’t actually happen).

J: Yes. Mark uses a lot of sophisticated allegory in his gospel. (Plus I think the less loving aspect of him wanted to see John’s head end up on a platter, which is where he thought it belonged.) Mark leads up to his set-piece — which, of course, is an anti-Messianic-banquet — by tipping off the reader to an upcoming inversion of religious expectations. He’s telling them not to expect Paul’s easy promises and glib words about “Oneness.” He’s telling them to prepare themselves for an alternate version of Jesus’ teachings about relationship with God.

A: What was that alternate version?

View of the Galilee from Mount Tabor ((c) Free Israel Photos)

View of the Galilee from Mount Tabor. Photo credit Free Israel Photos.

J: It was a radical vision of equality before God, of inclusiveness and non-Chosenness. It was a vision of faith without status addiction. Of faith and courage in numbers. Of freedom from the slavery of the Law. The love of a mother for her children (including our Divine Mother’s love for her children!). A relationship with God founded on trust rather than fear. The healing miracles that take place in the presence of love rather than piety. The ability of people to change and let go of their hard-heartedness (ears and eyes being opened). The Garden of Eden that is all around, wherever you look, if you’re willing to see and hear the truth for yourself. The failure of both the Pharisees and the Herodians to feed the starving spiritual hearts of the people. The personal responsibility that individuals bear for the evil things they choose to do. The importance of not idolizing the words of one man. (There’s no lengthy “Sermon on the Mount” in Mark as in Matthew; in fact, there’s no sermon at all, let alone a set of laws carved on stone tablets!).

A: That’s a lot to pack into three short chapters.

J: This is why I refer to Mark’s set-piece as a parable. As with any properly written parable, the message isn’t immediately obvious. You have to use all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength in order to suss out the meaning.

A: I noticed when I was doing my research papers for a New Testament exegesis course that the setting of Mark’s Parable of the Idol Bread is crucial. Not one but two major teaching events with miraculous endings take place out in the middle of nowhere near the Sea of Galilee. There’s no proximity to important sacred sites such as Jerusalem or Jericho or the Dead Sea or the River Jordan. There’s no Greco-Roman temple or Jerusalem Temple. There’s no holy mountain. There’s no sacred stone. There’s no palace or patron’s villa. But there’s a lot of green grass, with enough room for everybody to recline in groups (as in a Roman banquet) and share the event together.

In the middle section, in Chapter 7, Mark shows you leaving Galilee to carry out more healing miracles, but these healings take place in Gentile areas — everywhere but the sacred site of David’s city. You can tell Mark doesn’t think too much of Jerusalem’s elite.

J: Mark had a scathing sense of humour, much like Jon Stewart’s. When he wrote his gospel, he was thinking of it as a parable and a play at the same time. He wanted the actions of the actors to speak to the intent of the teachings.

A: Actions speak more loudly than words.

J: Yes. He wanted people to picture the actions, the geographical movements, that changed constantly in his story but never went close to Jerusalem in the first act of his two-act play. His Jewish audience would have understood the significance of this.

A: Tell me about the Idol Bread.

J: The meaning of the bread in Mark’s parable makes more sense if you look at the Greek. In Mark’s parable, and again later at the scene of the so-called Last Supper in Mark 14, the bread in question is leavened bread — artos in the Greek — not unleavened bread, which is an entirely different word in Greek (azymos). Mark shows me constantly messing with the bread and breaking all the Jewish laws around shewbread and Shavuot bread and Passover bread. At the teaching events beside the Sea of Galilee, the bread is given to the people rather than being received from the people in ritual sacrifice. It’s torn into big hunks. It’s handed out to everyone regardless of gender or rank or clan or purity. It’s handed out with a blessing on a day that isn’t even a holy day. Nobody washes their hands first. Everyone receives a full portion of humble food. Everyone eats together.

A: If the fish in this parable are a metaphor for courage and strength (see Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength) then what does the bread represent?

J: Artos — which is very similar to the Greek pronoun autos, which means “self” and, with certain prepositions, “at the same time; together” — is a metaphor for the equality of all people before God. Everybody needs their daily bread regardless of status or bloodline or rank. It’s about as status-free a symbol as you can get.

A: Something tells me that got lost in the Pauline translation.

JR61: Sixth Step in Healing the Church: Be Honest About the Bible

A: I’ve been reflecting for the past few days on the suffering inflicted by Anders Breivik on everybody everywhere who’s capable of loving their God and loving their neighbours as themselves.

Several news reports have referred to a 1,500 page manifesto that Breivik posted on the Internet shortly before the Norway attacks. Apparently Breivik copied a number of sections almost word from word from the writings of several well-known far-right ideologues. (Which just goes to show, once again, that psychopaths are very good at “cutting and pasting” other people’s ideas, but not capable of coming up with original insights of their own.) Breivik’s manifesto has been compared to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the U.S. Unabomber. But when I look at excerpts from Breivik’s diary and manifesto, and compare his actions to his beliefs, I don’t see a modern day European political movement. I see a very old ideological movement, one that fills up many pages in the Bible. I see the Book of Jeremiah. I see the Book of Revelation. I see the Book of Numbers.

J: These are all biblical books that give permission to psychopaths to carry out “Just Wars.”

A: I’ve noticed in news reports about Breivik that he readily admits he carried out the Oslo bombing and the camp shootings, but he says he didn’t break the law in doing so because he’s at war with the Norway government.

J: Inside our man Breivik’s head, it all makes perfect sense. Of course, the reason it makes sense to him is that he’s only using certain parts of his biological brain. He’s not using the parts of his brain that deal with empathy or relationship or common sense or compassionate humour or trust or creativity. If he were using those parts, he wouldn’t be capable of planning such a cold, ruthless, legalistic act of violence against others.

A: On the other hand, interviews with some of the camp survivors suggest these young people embody all the best of human potential — empathy and relationship and trust and so on. There was a really good article in Saturday’s Toronto Star: “Norway Tragedy: Inside the nightmare on Utoya” by Michelle Shephard (Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011). One 20 year old woman, Karoline Bank, is quoted as saying, “Yes, he took many people away from us, and every life lost is a tragedy. But we have gotten so much stronger over this. There’s not much more to say.”

J: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A: People of faith will wonder why God allowed this to happen.

J: People of faith have to stop listening to people of religious humility. People of faith — by that I mean people who want to be in relationship with God now, TODAY, not at some vague time of future judgment — have to start being more honest, more realistic, about the motivations that drove the authors of many revered religious texts. They have to stop wearing rose-coloured lenses when they read the Bible. They have to stop making excuses for the psychopaths who wrote so many parts of the Old and New Testaments. They have to stop making excuses for the parts of the Bible that were clearly written by those suffering from major mental illness.

A: Like the Book of Revelation.

Christian theologians have long been desperate to endorse the violent imagery of the Book of Revelation as a central justification for orthodox Christian teachings about the End Times. But from the point of view of God’s angels, the prophetic visions recorded in Revelation feel like a psychopathic attack on God and also on the soul who lived as Jesus, an attack no different in intent than Anders Breivik’s systematic rampage against campers trapped on a small island. Like Breivik, who disguised himself as a police officer so he could ensnare more victims, the prophet who penned Revelation pretended to be a faithful follower of Jesus as he took direct aim at Jesus’ teachings about a loving and forgiving God. Shown here are the head and wings of a large 9th century BCE Assyrian human-headed bull found in the North-West palace at Nimrud (on display at the British Museum). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: This is an issue of trust. People have to decide for themselves whether they’re going to trust what John says about humanity’s relationship with God, or whether they’re going to trust their own hearts, their own heads, and their own experiences about humanity’s relationship with God. Would a loving and forgiving God put a gun in Anders Breivik’s hands and tell him to go out and shoot people to “ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom [will] prevail”?*

A: God didn’t stop him, though.

J: Really? You’re sure about that? Because from where I’m standing, God did a great deal to stop him.

A: Sixty-nine people at the camp are dead, plus several more at the site of the Oslo bombing. They’re dead and they’re not coming back.

J: No, they’re not coming back. And their families and friends will grieve because they — the human survivors — have loving hearts. Their grief is unavoidable and is a measure of their wholeness. Yet one day their family and friends will cross to the Other Side, as all creatures of Planet Earth must do, and they’ll be reunited with their loved ones. So from God’s point of view, the relationships haven’t ceased. The relationships still exist, despite the death of the physical body, because love never dies. The form of the relationships has changed, but not the substance. The substance is real. The love can’t be taken away from any of these souls. Love continues beyond anything the physical body knows. Love is greater than anything the physical body knows. Love is the great mystery. It’s what guides God the Mother and God the Father in their decisions about when people are coming Home. But make no mistake — everyone eventually dies. God has never promised otherwise. This is the natural order of the universe.

A: You wouldn’t know it to listen to an apocalyptic prophet who promises bodily resurrection of the dead.

J: It’s a funny thing about psychopaths. A psychopath has a distinctive pattern to his logic and choices and behaviours, and one of the most distinctive features of psychopathy is the peculiar attitude towards death. They’re unable to trust anyone, of course — since trust is closely related to empathy and love and forgiveness — and this means they’re completely unable to trust in the idea that physical death is a natural, loving part of the soul’s relationship with God. Death without future punishment isn’t logical to a psychopath, just as life with present forgiveness isn’t logical to him. He’s incapable of feeling love, so he’s unable to conceive of a loving death. He’s also incapable of believing that God is smarter than he is, so he’ll spend a great deal of time and energy looking for “escape clauses” in the contract laws about death in the Abrahamic religions. If the clauses he wants aren’t there, he’ll claim to be a divinely-inspired prophet and add them himself. Egyptian attitudes towards death in the pre-Hellenistic period epitomize the psychopath’s fear of death.

A: You’re saying a psychopath’s attitude towards death isn’t unique to a specific religion or culture, but is instead universal because it’s biological. You’re saying that “escape clauses” come out the same way in different cultures because all human beings share the same basic DNA.

J (nodding): A psychopath is, by definition, a person who is cut off from the input of his own brain’s Soul Circuitry. This “cutting off” may have resulted, in rare circumstances, from a head injury or infection or poisoning or oxygen deprivation. But the vast majority of psychopaths are “self made.” High functioning psychopaths such as Anders Breivik are individuals who’ve turned themselves into psychopaths one bad choice at a time. This is why psychopathy doesn’t usually emerge in full-fledged form until adolescence. It takes a long time for a person to consciously undo the healthy connections God builds into the human brain.

A: It’s still amazing to me that human beings have that kind of control over the wiring of their own brains. But history bears out the truth of what you’re saying.

J: You’ll probably be shocked to learn, then, that within the annals of religious history there have been select groups who’ve intentionally incorporated the blueprint for “how to build a psychopath” into their religious doctrines.

A: You mean . . . these groups wanted to create psychopaths? On purpose?

J: It can be very useful, from a utilitarian point of view, to have a man like Anders Breivik on your side if you’re trying to acquire wealth, power, status, and “immortality.”

A: This immortality thing . . . this need to leave behind a human legacy of power and status for future generations to admire and imitate — is this a normal state of mind for a person who feels whole and healed and humble? Because it seems awfully narcissistic to me.

J: It’s normal and natural for a soul-in-human-form to want to create and build and improve the quality of life for his or her community. Persons-of-soul — angels — have a strong sense of purpose and mission and service. So you expect to see a community of Whole Brain Thinkers busily at work devising new ways to dig wells for clean water or improving ways to eliminate toxins from the environment or building new schools and medical clinics in underserved areas. Human beings are at their best when they come together in teams to bring healing to others in the face of suffering.

A: Healing instead of revenge.

J: A large number of people around the world have responded to the Norway tragedy by offering their hope, faith, and love instead of judgment, piety, and revenge. Some have found, for the first time in their lives, the courage of their own faith. The courage of their own trust in God. The courage of their own trust in each other.

A: That’s a powerful insight, to know you have the courage to choose hope, faith, and love.

Forever 1

Jesus said: One person cannot ride two horses at once, nor stretch two bows; nor can a servant serve two masters, as he will respect one and despise the other. No one drinks vintage wine and immediately wants to drink fresh wine; fresh wine is not put into old wineskins because they might burst. Vintage wine is not put into new wineskins because it might be spoiled” (Gospel of Thomas 47a-d). You can choose the path of redemption or you can choose the path of revenge. Pick one because you can’t have both. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: To find that courage is to know redemption. I send my love to all who are open to the wondrous idea that humans — not just God — are filled to overflowing in their own souls with divine courage and trust and gratitude and devotion.

This courage is yours. It’s not God’s. It’s not your neighbour’s. It’s not your parents’. It’s not your priest’s. It’s yours. It’s part of who you are as a soul.

Claim it and live it. Be the person God knows you really are. Don’t be a bully and coward like Anders Breivik, who hasn’t the courage to love. (Though I forgive him.) Be open to a loving relationship with God, no matter what your religious background. Your neighbour is loved by God as much as you are. All your neighbours.

No other truth is acceptable.

* On July 24, 2011, The Globe and Mail published a Reuter’s article, “Excerpts from Norway attacker’s diary.” An entry from June 11, 2011 said, “I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail.”

JR60: The Utoeya Tragedy in Norway

Sadness (C) JAT

Sadness. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Well, big guy, when you’re right you’re right. On Tuesday (July 19, 2011) you talked honestly but in general terms about the mindset of psychopaths. You talked about a psychopath who props himself up with ideology and believes he’s a nice person.

Three days later, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Norwegian police arrested a 32 year old Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik on charges of setting off a car bomb in Oslo and later mowing down at least 84 young people at a summer camp northwest of Oslo — on the island of Utoeya. The report I read in Saturday’s Globe and Mail (“Death toll reaches 91 in Norway attacks” by Walter Gibbs and Anna Ringstrom (Reuters)) gives some background information about Breivik. Early accounts referred to the gunman’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Since then, his Facebook page has been blocked.) His Facebook page apparently listed interests in bodybuilding, conservative politics, and freemasonry. He described himself as “a Christian, leaning toward right-wing Christianity.” He may also have been a a gun club member.

The real kicker is this: The Reuters account says, “Norwegian media said he had set up a Twitter account a few days ago and posted a single message on July 17 saying: ‘One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.'”

This is a horrible real-life example of exactly what you’ve been talking about for months now on this site. It’s almost exactly word for word what you’ve been saying. An ideologue — a psychopath who’s got his teeth sunk deep into a Big Idea — is capable of the most vicious crimes.

J: People from all quadrants, especially the conservative Christian quadrant, will be rushing in to offer their breathless analysis of “what went wrong.” They’ll speculate and cluck their tongues on the question of why a man who had so much, a man who appeared to be so capable and logical and well-organized, went so badly off the rails. Many people will shrug and say, “It’s just life. Humanity’s a pile of shit anyway, so who should be surprised?” Pious religious folk, including devout orthodox Christians, will invoke the Devil, as they usually do when they don’t want to look at themselves and their own contribution to man-made evils such as the Utoeya tragedy. They’ll say, “Satan possessed him and took his soul,” and similar bullshit. Not many people will be looking at this man and his ongoing choices and saying, “This man turned himself into a psychopath. On purpose. Because he liked the high of hurting other people.” But that’s the only appropriate response.

This is the response the angels around me are having to this crisis. God’s angels know what this man did this to himself. We forgive him, as we always forgive our brothers-and-sisters-in-temporary-human-form. But we can see this man’s brain, and this man’s brain is a seriously fucked-up mess. It also happens to be a fucked-up mess in a highly predictable and observable fashion. There’s a pattern to his behaviour. A definite, clear, observable pattern. Brain scans would show this pattern. Nobody has to take my word for it. Prove it to yourselves through more research. Please!

A: Don’t blame the Devil. Blame the brain.

J: Yes. You have to place the responsibility where it lies: squarely on the brain of this man Breivik. He made the choices and he made the plan. It’s his responsibility. Years ago he stopped listening to his own soul. But he’s still in charge of the rest of his brain and the rest of his choices, and he’s still responsible — legally and morally responsible — for his choice to use his logic and planning skills to carry out an intentional crime against humanity. He’s not a nice person, and he needs to be held to account during his human lifetime for the suffering he’s chosen to create.

A: Is it actually possible for a person who’s just mowed down 84 teenagers with a gun to still believe he’s a nice person? How could he possibly think that? It’s beyond belief! (Note: As of July 30, 2011, the number of dead at Utoeya is reported at 69, with the number of injured at almost 100.)

J: It’s beyond belief to you because you’re not a psychopath. You have a conscience and connections to your heart and soul. Brievik has no such connections. He decided years ago to cut them off inside his own brain.

A: But . . . how is that possible? How can a human being actually sever connections inside their own brains? Aren’t there fail-safes for that? Aren’t there Darwinian imperatives to prevent that from happening?

J: The human brain is an extremely complex series of organs. Way more complex than any other system in the biological body.

A: This month’s issue of Scientific American says essentially the same thing on the Forum page. (“A Dearth of New Meds: Drugs to treat neuropsychiatric disorders have become too risky for big pharma” by Kenneth I. Kaitin and Christopher P. Milne, Scientific American, August 2011, p. 16.)

J: I can’t emphasize enough the stupidity of treating the human brain as if it’s a single organ like the heart, and the insanity of pretending that human beings don’t have information from their souls hardwired into their DNA. And when I say “souls” I mean only good souls. I have no time or patience for patently abusive religious doctrines such as original sin. I will not tolerate any Christian saying to me, “Oh, yes, of course we believe in the scientific reality of original sin being hardwired into our human DNA! Why, anybody can see he was born evil!” This is NOT what I mean.

Our man Breivik wasn’t born evil. He wasn’t born in a state of original sin. His biology has been gradually changed and altered over many years because of conscious choices he’s been making. It’s taken years for him to become a psychopath. Years. But the signs have been there. The signs of his status addiction and his obsessive compulsive dysfunction are clear from his Facebook page and other reports. He was fixated on bodybuilding, conservative politics, guns, freemasonry, right-wing Christianity, and the Big Idea of “us versus them” (i.e. Dualism). This is a package deal, folks. An observable package, an observable pattern of choices followed by an observable pattern of behaviour. Why would Breivik’s soul, his true self, like any of these things? Why would his true loving self enjoy obsessive bodybuilding that damages the physical body over time? Why would his true loving self choose conservative politics that take away the sense of balance in a community between the rights of an individual and the rights of the group? Why would his true loving self think it’s fun to shoot other people for the heck of it? Why would his true loving self accept the myths of Hierarchy and Dualism?

Why would he choose any of these things if he were in a state of balance and wholeness? He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t do it. It would feel wrong to him. But he can’t feel that wrongness because he opted years ago to start listening only to the stupid parts of his own brain — the parts of the brain that are supposed to help people look after aspects of their human lives that are purely 3D, purely temporary. Necessary but temporary because life on Planet Earth is temporary.

A: In the past you’ve called these parts of the brain the Darwinian circuit.

J: Yes. There are parts of the brain devoted to human physiological needs and human safety needs. These can be thought of in a general way as the Darwinian circuitry. There are also parts of the brain that specialize in the soul’s need for love and belonging, along with the soul’s need for self esteem. These latter two parts can be thought of as the Soul circuitry. All these parts have to be working together in order for a person to feel balanced and whole and sane and safe. Self-actualized, as Abraham Maslow called it. All these parts are needed for the experience of faith — genuine soul-based faith. It should go without saying that our man Breivik has the Big Idea but absolutely no faith. He calls himself a Christian, but he has no faith. All he has is the Big Idea.

A: You talked on Tuesday about score cards. You said a psychopath has a score card inside him instead of a heart.

J: The great dilemma for the psychopath — the person who’s dissociated from his own empathy and his own ability to love and trust — is how to get through the day. How to fill up all the looooooong, boooooooring hours between waking and sleeping.

A: Seriously?

J: Oh, yeah. Tell a psychopath he has to sit under a tree and be still and quiet for 8 hours and he’ll want to pull his hair out.

A: Really? I could sit under a tree for 8 hours and have a wonderful time.

J: Yes, but you don’t feel empty inside. You don’t feel purposeless and hopeless and restless and bored all the time.

A: Sometimes I feel restless.

J: How often?

A: I don’t know. Maybe a couple of times each week.

J: A psychopath feels like this all the time. He lives constantly for the next brief high, the next brief hit of status or cocaine or sex. It’s all he’s got to get him through the day. There’s only such much cocaine he can do each day, only so many times he can get an erection each day. So the mainstay for him is status points. He’ll do anything to get status points for his internal scorecard. He’ll keep his cell phone on 24 hours each day so he can get a “hit” from the fact that he’s needed by somebody at 4:00 in the morning. He’ll check his Facebook status 20 or 30 times each day. He’ll play computer or video games that rack up big points. He’ll gamble. He’ll gossip. He’ll focus fanatically on professional sports. Or, if he goes in a religious direction instead of a secular direction to find his daily supply of status points, he’ll become a man of the Book. A pious, obedient follower of the Law. An obsessive compulsive religious devotee.

A: But not a nice person. Not a person of empathy and patience and humbleness.

J: He has to choose between being an addict and being a nice person. He can’t be both at the same time.

A: Yet he’s certain he can be. He’s certain he’s a nice person who’s not an addict.

J: What’s the greatest obstacle to healing for those who suffer from addiction?

A: Denial.

J: Our Norwegian man, Mr. Breivik, is in a serious state of denial about his addiction to status. He’ll have no chance of recovery as a human being until somebody is honest with him about the nature of his addiction. Unfortunately for him, the doctrines of orthodox Christianity will only excuse his behaviour rather than force him to confront it. Pauline Christianity is, in essence, an anti-Twelve-Step Program.

This isn’t exactly the sort of helpful Church teaching God’s angels have in mind.

TBM14: Parable of the Earring – A Journey on the Spiral Path

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. It’s a mini-overview of my own spiritual journey, and I call it “the Parable of the Earring,” but it’s really not a parable. It’s more like a fable.

It’s based on something that happened to me in February 2006. At the time, I was packing up my apartment and preparing to move in with my elderly parents. (As an aside, this didn’t work out too well for any of us, and a few months later I was again packing up, but that’s another story.)

My son (aged 22 at the time) and I had agreed to meet for breakfast at Cora’s Restaurant — one of our favourites. I had decided to wear the pair of earrings he’d given me for Christmas in 2004. And it was still cool outside, so I was wearing a camisole underneath my sweater and a designer jacket on top. This is the way I dress in winter, spring, and fall, because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a human popsicle. Always have been.

Somehow, between the time we arrived at Cora’s and the time I got home, I lost one of my earrings.

The very earring (c) JAT 2015

The very earring (c) JAT 2015

Now, if you know me, you’ll also know I’m very sentimental about gifts from my son, and the fact that I’d lost one of the earrings he’d picked out for me upset me greatly. They were handcrafted from two Gerbera Daisy petals that had been coated in some sort of clear resin, and they dangled delicately. (My son knows me well.)

I also happen to be particularly fond of earrings in general, and some very strange things have happened to me over the years involving earrings, so all in all I was determined to try to track down both the lost earring and any meaning that may have been attached to the loss. (I’m about to get to that part.)

See, although I have degrees in Chemistry and Art Conservation, and although I continue to follow advances in science, I’m willing to be open-minded about the nature of reality. Not open-minded as in “brain like a sieve.” Open-minded as in humble about my own ability to understand quantum theory and open to the idea that human scientists can (and do) make plenty of mistakes.

When the laws of Newtonian physics clash head-on with the laws of particle physics and quantum mechanics, I go with the quantum stuff. This means I’m not bothered or troubled or upset when weird shit happens — when things happen that seem to defy the laws of Newton and classical physics. I don’t see these events as “paranormal.” I see them as entirely normal in a universe that’s built on scientific laws too advanced and too interconnected with divine love for us to detect them with Newtonian equipment like the Large Hadron Collider.

(Every time I think of how many hospital beds could have been funded with the money that went into the LHC, I just want to cringe.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that I believe — and many other reasonable people also believe — in an interconnected reality where some things happen to us for a reason. Not all things, but some things. Sometimes weird things happen, and they’re meant to draw our attention to a question or a problem or an answer or an issue. You can call these weird things messages. Or signs. Or sychronicities. Or angel hugs. Or the language of God. You can call them whatever you want as long as you’re open to the idea that you’re NOT alone in a vast, uncaring universe governed solely by the cold and heartless laws of classical physics. There’s a God and there’s a whole family of loving angels (persons-of-soul) around us, and they’re always talking to us whether we like it or not.

And trust me — there’s no way in heaven or earth you can make them shut up.

This isn’t the hard part. As I mentioned above, a lot of regular, reasonable, practical people instinctively know that certain events hold a deeper meaning, a deeper significance for them and their families, than the obvious Newtonian one.

The hard part is interpreting the meaning correctly.

Herein lay my difficulty in the early years of my spiritual journey. In the first few years, I naively allowed myself to be convinced that certain well-known New Age interpretations of divine intervention were correct. I created a whole lot of pain and embarrassment for myself and my family as a result.

So allow me to present the Parable of the Earring. In this parable, I offer a series of “yearly vignettes,” each of which describes how I would have reacted to the loss of my beloved earring in each of the early years of my journey. You can see the changes in my belief system from year to year, starting 15 years ago. You can also see how long it took me to accept some of the common sense teachings of my own guardian angel, Zak.

Okay. Let’s start with 1996.
Context: No spiritual interests to speak of. Marriage is on the brink of collapse (husband is having a serious affair with his secretary). Son is 12 years old.

“Crap. I lost my good earring. It’s his fault. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with all our problems, I would have noticed my earring fell out. They should make those earrings with better hoops so they don’t fall out so easily.”

1997
Context: Marriage is shaky but still intact. I now work in mental health administration. Starting to be curious about books in the New Age section.

“Oh! I lost my good earring! I should try to let it go and not be upset. But I feel so guilty about losing it. My son’s feelings will be so hurt. Maybe I can try to find a replacement so he won’t notice.

1998 (The Big 4-0)
Context: Still married, still working, but actively pursuing alternative healing methods to try to deal with health issues. Starting to attend New Age workshops and conferences. First meeting with Reiki healer Grace.

“My good earring is gone! Does this have a meaning? I’ll consult one of the new books I bought and follow the instructions for getting help from an angelic guide. Are you there, angels? Tell me where my lost earring is. Why aren’t you answering, angels?”

1999 (A really, really bad year)
Context: Spending more and more time with the “spiritual” group that has formed around Grace. Now preoccupied with cleansing negative energies, past-life karma, and soul contracts through Reiki and energy healing techniques. Frustrated in attempts to learn to channel.

“Someone has taken my earring! I protected myself with a dome of white light this morning, and the earring has sacred energy, so it must have been taken by a negative entity! I must not be trying hard enough to cleanse myself and my home of negative energies! What am I doing wrong?”

2000
Context: In the autumn I tell my husband I’m leaving. I move into my own apartment. Still have strong ties to Grace. Old mistakes with friends come back to haunt me (metaphorically speaking). I discover I can channel and am good at it. Learn guardian angel’s name is Zak.

“Zak, my good earring is gone. I know you must be trying to tell me something. What are you telling me? What did I do wrong now?”

2001
Context: Intensive work on spiritual learning with Zak. No job. Living off separation settlement. Trying to repair relationship with son. Struggling to understand what forgiveness is and what judgment is.

“[Sigh]. The earring my son gave me is gone. It’s a message, isn’t it? A message about being attached to things, isn’t it? I’ve been too sentimentally attached to the earrings, and you’re telling me I’m not trying hard enough to let go of worldly things, right? Of course that’s right. I’m not worthy of your forgiveness.”

2002
Context: An entire year of trying to live as a semi-ascetic. I stop wearing makeup and nice clothes. I stop eating food that has “unnecessary ingredients” (like taste). I give away a lot of my savings to charities. Grace and I decide to become business partners in a rural “spiritual healing centre.”

“I suppose I should give away this set of earrings. I don’t need them anymore. But I can’t seem to find the courage to give them away. Please forgive me for not trying hard enough to obey your teachings.”

2003
Context: An entire year trapped in a house with a woman who has serious unresolved medical and psychiatric issues. Slowly beginning to realize she has no interest in changing. Springtime epiphany about asceticism (a major turning point).

“Omigod, you mean it’s okay with you, Zak, if I need to feel good about my appearance? You mean other people (like Grace) will treat me like a doormat if I treat myself like a doormat? Why didn’t you tell me this before? Where are those earrings my son gave me? It feels so good to wear them!

2004
Context: The spiritual healing centre idea collapses, and Grace and I sell the property. I move to a different town in June. Zak ramps up the scientific angle on spiritual practice. I start to research neurophysiology. The Amen Clinic in California agrees to include me in their Normal Brain Study despite my up-front claim of being able to channel.

“Shit, I guess I lost my earring. Maybe it’s a good idea not to wear that style of earring when I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater. Oh well, live and learn. As you say, not everything’s a message. Zak, have you seen my car keys?”

2005
Context: Zak explains the Christ Zone model and suddenly the behaviour of spiritual gurus makes perfect scientific sense. I break off all ties with Grace. I start to write a book with Zak’s help.

“What do you mean my angel team could actually move the damn earring if they wanted to!? I thought we were past all that. What do you mean I need to read up on non-locality? How am I going to explain this to regular people? Can’t we just stick with the neurophysiology?”

2006
Context: Agreement early in the year to move in with my parents. Great emotional stress. I move anyway because Zak asks me to trust him. I end up in hospital with a stress-induced G.I. illness. After I recover, I move back to my home. I discover during this time of intense emotion that together Zak and I can speak directly with God the Mother and God the Father. (Didn’t know this was possible.) Immeasurable gratitude.

“Huh. How ’bout that? I’ve lost another earring. Wonder where I’ll find this one? Zak, you and the rest of the team cheer me up so much with your crazy antics. Moving things here, moving things there — just when I need a smile the most. Hey, look at that! There’s my lost flower earring. It’s stuck right to the skin of my stomach. Can’t explain how it got there — how it got past the turtleneck collar of my sweater and past my camisole and past my bra to land on my stomach without my ever feeling it. But I sure am glad to have it back. Thanks, everyone!”

And fast-forwarding to today . . .

The only “mini-dialogue” I didn’t make up here is the very last one. After I realized I’d lost my cherished earring in 2006, I searched my car, I searched the ground outside my apartment, I even went back to the restaurant and asked if anyone had found it. No luck.

Later that day I changed out of my clothes, and that’s when I found my flower earring. Stuck to the skin of my stomach.

As I said above, weird things happen in a universe filled with divine love.

And I still have those earrings!

 

TBM13: What It Feels Like To Live on the Spiral Path

(C) JAT

(c) JAT 2013

I think one of the great obstacles for people on the Spiral Path is the widespread lack of understanding of what it actually feels like to be a person who’s living “in the zone.”

Our culture is saturated in images of “superstars” and “superheroes” from films, books, illustrated serials (comic books), music videos, and reality TV shows. These images try to convince you that a few select human beings are somehow “bigger than life,” more talented than you, more successful than you, more tapped into the universal glory of perfection than you. These are the people at the top of the pyramid of humanity, according to the claims of writers and producers. They’re the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And you, poor slob that you are, can’t hope to experience one tenth of the deep satisfaction that comes from living one’s destiny as a superstar.

Do you believe in destiny?

I once did. By that I mean I once fell for the common New Age line that certain people are chosen for special tasks that will set them apart from other people and place them on a spiritual path that regular people could never comprehend.

Gnosticism relies on this idea. Gnosticism has the same kind of “superhero” vibe as a modern-day action-adventure film. Sure, you won’t see any guns or car chases in a Gnostic myth, but you’ll see the same themes of good versus evil, strong versus weak, chosen versus non-chosen, worthy versus unworthy. Gnosticism has been around for thousands of years because myths about superhuman people have been around for thousands of years. Early Christian Gnostics took the man named Jesus and turned him into a superhero character who’s surprisingly similar to the Green Lantern character in this summer’s big action flick. (In the film, one lone human being on Planet Earth — the Green Lantern — is chosen to learn how to use his will and his fearlessness to shape powerful universal energies through thought alone. Plato would be proud.)*

Early on in my journey of healing and redemption, I thought that if I followed the New Age teachings carefully, I would somehow earn new abilities and gifts that would elevate me beyond my ordinary, ho-hum, middle class Canadian life. Even Paul’s teachings in the New Testament backed me up on this one! (You can check out First Corinthians Chapter 14 if you’re remotely interested in seeing what Paul promises his gullible followers.)

If you’re really paying attention to what your guardian angels are saying to you about your spiritual journey, you’ll end up feeling a lot less like the Green Lantern and a lot more like Shrek.

It’s funny. You spend years devoted to intensive study and healing, new ideas, changes, transformation, and ever-deepening connection to God, and you know what? You still fart.

You still have to take a hot shower because you’ll stink if you don’t. You still have to put your pants on one leg at a time. You’re still entirely human. The difference is that you start to like being human. More and more you start to get the hang of it.

You start to figure, “Hey, maybe I should try to learn to use what I’ve got instead of asking for ‘paranormal gifts.'” You start to trust the idea that maybe God wasn’t so stupid after all when they designed your DNA.

So let me tell you some of the things that have gradually changed for me over years because I’ve stuck so stubbornly to my spiritual path.

First, and most importantly, I’ve become a much nicer person. When I was younger, I was impatient. Intellectually arrogant. Unable to admit my own mistakes. Critical of other people’s mistakes and all too quick to voice my criticism in a sharp tone. I didn’t have addiction issues with substances, but I had an unfortunate emotional habit of being a doormat and an enabler. I had little faith in God. I could be insufferably smug at times.

I also had health issues, as most people these days can relate to. Mostly chronic stuff related to stress. In my 20’s and early 30’s I had frequent stress headaches (though no migraines, fortunately). One year I had terrible eczema on my hands, eczema that kept me awake at nights with constant itching. For a few years I suffered all summer and early fall from ragweed allergies (acute itchiness in my eyes plus nasal congestion). I got pneumonia once “out of the blue” without having been sick with a cold or flu beforehand. My sleep and my mood were pretty good, but I had low energy all the time — probably related to stress plus my vulnerable G.I. system. My G.I. system has always been my “weak link.” My “canary in the coal mine.” If I’m stressed out about something, my G.I. system has always been the first part of my body to let me know I’m not a happy camper.

I’m now 53 years old, and I look and feel better than I did at age 43. (And no, I’m not about to launch into an infomercial for Cindy Crawford skin tonics.) Sure, I have grey hair (which I cover with L’Oreal Excellence B3) and I have lots of laugh lines on my face (which I don’t mind at all). My butt has sagged, and my eyes (which used to have better than 20/20 vision) now need a pair of reading glasses from time to time. But almost all of my senses — my hearing, my distance and colour vision, my sense of taste, my sense of smell, and most of all my sense of timing — are all sharper and clearer than they were when I was 43. (I’m not sure, but I think my sense of touch is the same as it’s always been.)

This sharpening and clearing of the senses isn’t an occasional thing. It’s a normal part of my ongoing daily reality. I’ve read reports over the years about individuals who’ve had a sudden sharpening of the senses as part of a brief mystical experience. For these people, the sharpening was breathtaking and wonderful, and it’s something they’ve longed (often fruitlessly) to experience again. Well, if you want to know what it feels like to be dazzled by the diamond clarity of sunlight pouring through new maple leaves each time you look up at a spring sky, I can only say that these changes take place in your biology spontaneously and permanently when you make major changes to your own internal “landscape.” You can’t force these changes to take place. They just seem to happen naturally when you make the decision to be the best person you’re capable of being.

Another exciting change that’s taken place over the past few years is the improved functioning of my immune system. I’m not saying I never get sick, and I’m not saying my body is invulnerable to the effects of excessive stress. What I’m saying is that when I try my hardest to respect my body and live a balanced life, my immune system rewards me by keeping me in good shape health-wise. I rarely get sick these days, and when I do it’s not for long. I do believe, though, that even the most spiritual person will get sick and die at some point. That’s just part of life.

Right now I don’t spend any money — not a single penny — on over-the-counter or prescription medications. It took me a long time to get to this stage, and I do NOT recommend you rush out and try it. I’m just pointing out the honest scientific reality that your own biological body can do some pretty amazing things to keep you healthy if you make the right emotional, intellectual, and spiritual choices.

The biggest bonus of deciding it’s okay to be “Shrek” instead of the “Green Lantern” is the sense of inner peace, calm, freedom, and trust that becomes your normal inner reality. Your eyes start to fill up with laughter. You sleep calmly and deeply. You’re totally free of addictions. You have so much more energy for the tasks of daily living, loving, and learning. You find yourself singing sometimes just . . . well, just because.

This is what it feels like to find healing, redemption, and forgiveness.

I wouldn’t trade any of these treasures for all the status in the world. It’s such a joy to be able to get a refreshing sleep at night. It’s such a relief not to be controlled by weird biological addictions. It’s such a humble pleasure to be able to stay calm and patient when others around you are screaming and yelling and behaving badly. It’s such a source of quiet pride to be able to stand up to abusers with dignity and respect and not be taken advantage of.

I’m just so incredibly grateful that my guardian angels stuck with me while I struggled to learn how to be the best self I’m capable of being. I’ll never get over the wonder of their courage, devotion, and patience. They’re truly awesome.

I encourage you to believe in yourself the way I believe in you. The way your own angels believe in you. The way God believes in you.

You’re so much more loving than you realize.

* P.S. My son took me to see the Green Lantern, and even though I don’t recommend the character as a role model for those on the Spiral Path, what’s not to like about a summer action movie starring Ryan Reynolds? I thought it was lots of fun, and I enjoyed it. Those on the Spiral Path can’t take themselves too seriously, or they’ll miss out on some of the best parts of being human. Like fun movies and popcorn!

JR59: News of the World: "New Lamps For Old"

A: I see a lot of similarity between the current phone hacking scandal in the U.K. and the behaviour of the apostle Paul and his cronies in the first century CE. In both situations, a very powerful man does whatever he wants regardless of how unethical, corrupt, manipulative, and cruel it is. The only difference between then and now is that Rupert Murdoch’s employees have received a public shaming. Without the huge public outcry that accompanied the recent re-revelation about phone hacking at the News of the World, the authorities wouldn’t have reopened the investigation or arrested more people. The authorities — or rather I should say certain individuals in senior positions of authority in the police and government — knew about the accusations of unethical conduct and did nothing much about them until regular people started yelling and putting their foot down.

Greek lamps4

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at their image and, on going away, immediately forget what they look like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). Replicas of Ancient Greek vessels. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: The parallels are uncanny. If people today are having trouble imagining what it felt like for my followers soon after my death, they can read about the phone hacking scandal and put themselves in the shoes of the families of the murder victims who were psychologically assaulted by the News of the World reporters, editors, and decision makers.

A: I think most people would be shocked to learn how unethical Paul really was. How cold and calculating he really was.

J: He was a business man. Very practical, very logical. He was like the editor at the News of the World who approved the phone hacking strategies. Anything was okay as long as it got the job done. “The end justifies the means” and all that crap. Success at any price. Just the way his bosses in Alexandria wanted it.

A: Yet you’ve said in previous discussions that Paul truly believed in what he was doing.

J: Sure. A successful psychopath is an ideologue. It’s what separates the successful psychopaths — “snakes in suits,” as researcher Robert Hare calls them — from the garden variety criminals who get caught and thrown in jail for reckless, impulsive crimes. An ideologue — and Paul was a religio-political ideologue — uses “The Big Idea” as a crutch to hold up his dysfunctional brain. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an external framework of ideas that the psychopath clings to because he’s lost his own internal compass. He can’t hear the voice of his own soul telling him what’s right and wrong. But he’s still very logical, very goal-oriented, and he’s addicted to status. So if he can “attach” himself to an external Big Idea, and apply his logic and ambition to it, he can acquire status and not end up in prison.

A: Why won’t he end up in prison? Aren’t psychopaths inherently impulsive? Prone to risk-taking behaviours and uninterested in consequences? Doesn’t this make him more likely to do something criminal?

J: Yes. It’s part of the package for psychopaths. But if you put a psychopath in a structured organization where there are very strict rules, very clear punishments, and rigid ladders of governance, he’ll be so busy trying to claw his way up “the ladder of success” he won’t bother going out to rob banks or gas stations. The buzz he gets from plotting his long-term strategy for “success” is much better than the temporary high of terrorizing a gas station attendant.

This is not to say the snakes-in-suits are “nicer” psychopaths. They’re not nice people at all. But no one can question their ability to promote “The Big Idea” (whatever their Big Idea happens to be) with charismatic passion. Regular people are easily sucked in by this passion.

A: So Paul was a snake-in-a-suit. I kinda like the way this ties in with the conversations we’ve had about the Book of Genesis.

J: Paul was promoting the Big Idea of salvation. Escape from a life without status. Escape from a death without status. He and his followers built a humongous empire on the “4 S’s” — sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. But Paul’s Big Idea was just that — an idea. A belief system. A theory without proof. A theory that’s never had proof. Its very lack of provableness is what makes it so attractive to psychopaths. Why? Because there’s nothing in the Big Idea that can act as a mirror for the psychopath’s true intent. There’s nothing to make him look at himself honestly. There’s nothing to challenge him to be his best self. The Big Idea gives him 1,001 excuses to brush his abusive behaviour under the carpet. Unfortunately, until the psychopath sees himself as he really is, he has no incentive to change.

A: I think we’ve just spiralled back to your analogy between a psychopath and the Greek monster Medusa. Medusa’s hideous face turned everyone into stone until Perseus held up a mirror-like shield and forced her to look at herself.

J: Part of the problem here is that regular people don’t understand what makes a psychopath tick. Regular people look at a “successful psychopath” — the guy who has the drive and ambition to work 16 hour days — and they think he must really know who he is and what he wants. They think they should try to be like him. They think they themselves are failures if they want to go home to their families after working an 8 hour day. But the honest truth is the successful psychopath has no idea who he really is. All he has inside himself is a score card. A score card instead of a heart. His soul is all heart, of course, but he long ago stopped listening to this core part of himself. This is why he has no conscience and no empathy. His soul isn’t defective, but his biological brain is seriously out of balance. He’s so used to living this way that it’s normal for him. Even worse, he likes living this way. He likes hurting other people. He likes making regular people feel small and useless. And he’s not going to change until he recognizes the honest truth that he’s not a nice person.

A: It took me years to understand this lesson. I misunderstood what compassion was. I thought compassion meant you should never intentionally make another person feel bad about themselves. That’s before I learned (the hard way) that a lot of people out there want to hurt other people and consciously choose to hurt other people and get a high out of psychologically abusing other people and won’t decide to stop this behaviour until they’re forced to look in the mirror. I also learned the hard way that the more dysfunctional a person is, the more insulted and offended she’ll be when you tell her she isn’t being a nice person.

J: You’re thinking of someone in particular when you say that.

A: Yes. I’m thinking of Grace, the modern day “spiritual leader” (a.k.a. apocalyptic prophet) I hung out with for several years before I came to my senses.

J: These are the people who are quickest to say, “You have no right to say such things about me.”

A: Hey, don’t forget the other favourite response of the psychopath who insists she’s a nice person: “Oh, my dear, tut tut, how can you say such things about me? Why, everyone knows what a good person I am and how hard I work on behalf of the community. I’m so concerned for you, you poor thing. You really need to get some help.”

J: A psychopath has extremely strong defences against hearing the truth about his or her own behaviour. It’s scary how strong these defences are. The doctrines of orthodox Western Christianity have served as excellent body armour for its successful psychopaths. Pauline Christians are not called upon to look honestly at themselves and make changes to live up to their true potential. Instead they’re encouraged to stoop to the level of a psychopath’s dysfunctional mind so the psychopath doesn’t have to feel bad about himself.

A: You said pretty much the same thing in James 1:22-25.

J: I’m a consistent fellow. But it’s not hard to be consistent when you’re trying to speak the truth. Truth has an annoying habit of being consistent and provable and open to new and unfolding sources of knowledge. Even if it takes a couple of thousand years for the truth to be recognized, for the facts to be identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon.

A: I’m glad there’s finally a solid and widespread foundation of research in place so the truth about Paul’s “News of the World” can finally come out.

JR58: The "My Fellow American" Interfaith Initiative

A: I was contacted this week by a person who’s working with the Unity Productions Foundation on an interfaith initiative called My Fellow American. The goal of the initiative is to encourage Americans to think of their fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim as fellow Americans. There’s a 2 minute film produced by Unity, and there are also uploaded videos and stories from various supporters of the idea that all Americans are equally American, regardless of religion. What do you think of this project?

J (grinning): I think you should post the address.

A: Oh yeah. Good thinking. The address is http://myfellowamerican.us/

I discovered when I went to watch the film how truly outdated my computer really is. Computer updates are not my thing. Good thing the computer at work has more juice in it.

The person who contacted me also wondered if I could maybe Tweet about the project if I checked it out and liked it. I don’t know how to tell her this, but I don’t even own a cell phone. So the Tweeting is pretty much out.

J: Everybody has their own way of communicating with others.

A: Anyway, I certainly can’t argue with the basic principle of treating all your neighbours with dignity and respect and compassion and kindness regardless of religion. This is what makes a society internally strong.

J: The one thing people have to remember is that all human beings are children of God. A Muslim woman is just as a much a child of God as the saints of Christian history. To deny a woman dignity and respect simply because she’s Muslim is to withhold divine love from your neighbour. It’s as simple as that.

A: I think some people are afraid that if they love and accept the woman with an open heart they’ll be required to love and accept all the religious teachings that are part of her tradition. At least that’s how they view it.

Regardless of religious affiliation, we're all children of God.  Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

Regardless of religious affiliation, we’re all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: Religious teachings are very much a human thing. Divine love, on the other hand, is a soul thing. Divine love always trumps religious teachings. Every religion on the face of Planet Earth today has problems — problems with abusive doctrines, problems with gender issues, problems with “law,” and problems with balance. Every religion. Islam is no different from Christianity in this regard. Sure, Islam has some problems. But so does orthodox Western Christianity. This is no excuse for failing to love your neighbour and failing to believe in his or her best self. Everybody’s struggling. People of all religions have to hold each other up. People have to work together. It’s the only way to find healing.

A: The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Some people haven’t got over the shock. They’re still looking for someone to blame.

J: If they’re looking for someone to blame, then they should be looking at the unassailable laws of neurophysiology, not at religion. Only a seriously, seriously dysfunctional individual thinks it’s okay to blow up buildings “in the name of God.” This applies across the board to all religions and all cultures. Christianity has had its fair share of psychopaths in martyrs’ clothing, too. Psychopathy is a social, medical, and educational issue. Psychopathy is about as far from genuine relationship with God as it’s possible to get.

The vast majority of Muslims and Christians and those of other faiths are doing their best to get closer to God — not farther away from God and faith — even though they make mistakes along the way. People of all faiths are constantly learning, changing, growing. Traditions change. Religious teachings change. The one core truth that doesn’t change is the reality of the good soul, and the potential of all human beings to help each other understand this reality. If you allow yourself to be open to this truth, amazing things can happen in your community. Whatever community you happen to live in.

A: There are some psychopaths in positions of religious authority.

J: Yes. But there are also psychopaths in positions of political and economic and educational authority. Psychopathy is an entirely separate issue from the question of faith. Inherent to the definition of psychopathy is a total lack of conscience and empathy — in other words, a disconnection from all that enables true faith, true relationship with God. A psychopath seeks status, not faith, when he or she chooses to blow up buildings. It’s entirely a question of status addiction. Can we say this status addiction is true of “all Muslims”? Well, OF COURSE NOT. This would be the same as saying that every person who lives in Boston must be a status-addicted psychopath simply because he or she happens to live in Boston. It isn’t right or fair to make such a claim.

A: Claims such as this have been fairly common over the course of history, though.

J: True. These claims fall under the umbrella of the HDM Myths that you posted about on Concinnate Christianity. (http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-takes-village-non-hdm-village-that.html ). Group myths of Hierarchy, Dualism, and Monism. Again, these are human myths, human choices, that have nothing to do with the faith of the soul. Challenge the myths and heal the soul, remembering always that the soul is not the aspect of the self that’s perpetuating these myths. It’s certain parts of the biological brain that have gone off the rails, so to speak, and now enjoy the addictive high of schadenfreude. For a person suffering from status addiction, there’s just nothing better than a good hit of mental revenge and religious hatred to get you through the day. It’s cheaper than buying whiskey and cigarettes.

A: That’s a pretty tough statement.

J: Addiction is a pretty tough reality. Addiction destroys lives. Better to be honest about its effects.

A: Because, as you often say, healing follows insight.

J: My hat’s off to the My Fellow American participants because they’re doing their best to help others in their community be their best selves. And they’re working together as a team to teach and share and communicate in relationship with each other. As an angel, I can’t ask for more than that.


Addendum, October 16, 2023: It’s been 12 years since I wrote this post with the soul who lived as Jesus.

The world has changed greatly during this time. One of the unfortunate changes has been an ideological shift towards monism within many educational institutions and humanitarian organizations in Western nations. This shift has taken society further away from the idea that people hold individual responsibility for their own choices. In place of the long-held Judeo-Christian value system built on free will, personal responsibility, and accountability to your own inner wisdom (what we call “conscience”), there has been a push to impose a value system based on “group banners” behind which individuals can hide.

No one can be his or her best self if “group banners” (especially religious “group banners”) are used as an excuse for hanging onto harmful traditions, hateful actions, or justification for revenge.

Mother Father God and your angels don’t care what your religious teachers say. What matters to God is how you choose to use your free will as a human being during your time on Planet Earth. If you decide it’s a great idea to hate other people on the basis of their religion, that’s not okay with God. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism is therefore not okay with your own soul or your angels.

Anti-Semitism isn’t the only example of extreme hatred in today’s world, but right now it’s a cauldron of suffering, especially for those who are doing the hating.

It’s your job as a human being — as a soul in human form — to learn how to look past the “group banners” that breed hatred and divisiveness. Seek the best in others and stand your ground as a child of God. Treat each person you meet as an individual who is responsible for his or her own choices towards others and towards God. This probably means you’ll have to reject some of the destructive religious doctrines that are causing problems in the world today. But if that’s what you have to do so you can hear your own conscience, that’s what you have to do.

JR57: Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

A: When I came home from work on Monday, Oprah was rerunning an episode about two twin daughters who had been being sexually assaulted and raped by their father and two brothers until a neighbour called authorities. Towards the end of the episode, Oprah offered the definition of forgiveness that she’s found most helpful. It was something to this effect: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.” How do you respond to that?

J: Well, I find this definition demeaning and discouraging. Forgiveness is not about “giving up hope.” Forgiveness is about finding hope.

A: Maybe the person who coined this definition was using the word “hope” in a different way than you and I use it.

J: Hope is one of those slippery, hard-to-define spiritual terms. About as easy to explain as forgiveness. And about as complicated. Basically, though, angels use the word hope as a synonym for “trust in God.” It’s a powerfully positive, uplifting emotion. It’s an emotion that expresses an element of uncertainty. Perhaps I could rephrase that. Hope — trust in God — is an experience of emotional continuity in the face of apparent discontinuity in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. In other words, you still believe in God’s goodness even when you can’t see an obvious link between actions and the results of those actions.

A: A leap of faith, in other words.

“Jesus said: From Adam to John the Baptizer, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John the Baptizer, so that his eyes should be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John” (Gospel of Thomas 46 a-b). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Yes, but not a blind leap of faith. Trust, surprising as it may seem, requires an element of brutal honesty. Brutal honesty about oneself. Trust requires you to know your own limits, your own abilities right down to a “t.” This knowledge allows you to recognize situations where you’ve reached the limits of your own abilities and experience. At this point, you switch over to your knowledge about other people’s abilities and experience. You switch over the decision-making process to somebody who has more knowledge about the topic at hand than you have. You hand over the reins, as it were. Angels do this without an instant of shame or jealousy or regret. They simply accept their limits and gratefully hand over the reins to other angels. This is what humbleness feels like. Not false humility, as the Church teaches it, but divine humbleness.

A: You’re making my head hurt with all these different terms — forgiveness, hope, trust, humbleness.

J: These are all complex divine emotions. Not the same as each other, but interwoven with each other. Holistically. Hopefully, people will like the idea that God the Mother and God the Father are capable of experiencing and expressing the most complex emotions of all.

A: This switching-over thing you’re talking about . . . is this related to the research you’ve been helping me collect about the “gears” in the biological human brain that are supposed to help people switch smoothly from one idea or emotion to another?

J: You mean parts of the human brain such as the anterior cingulate gyrus?

A: Yes. And related “switching centres.”

J: Definitely. Angels don’t have an anterior cingulate gyrus, but souls-in-human-form do. Angels who incarnate as human beings need a biological “toolkit,” and a number of tools in that toolkit relate to the human brain and central nervous system. When those tools aren’t used the way they should be — when, for example, a “hammer” is used when a “screwdriver” is called for, or when the blunt end of the adjustable wrench is used instead of the adjustable claws at the other end, you can’t expect the result to be pretty. The human brain is designed with an entire set of “ball bearings” and “lubricants” to prevent the various gears of the brain from grinding against each other and causing excessive wear. Unfortunately, in many young human beings, the ball bearings and lubricants are the first thing to go. After that, you see the onset of DSM-IV psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, problems with impulse control, problems with anger control, possibly even psychopathy.

A: All because their switching mechanisms aren’t working properly?

J: The human brain is an incredibly complex set of tools and machinery. It uses many different types of switching mechanisms to help it balance incoming data and outgoing choices — outgoing thoughts, feelings, and actions. The operative word here, of course, is balance. The brain has to be able to identify, remember, understand, and fix many different sorts of problems. It has to switch constantly between different spheres of reality, between logical thought and positive emotions and practical actions, between the needs of the self and the needs of the other, between active learning and quiet processing, between past, present, and future. Believe me, human beings need every scrap of brain tissue they can muster for this job of Whole Brain Thinking.

A: So when the switching mechanisms aren’t working properly, people get “stuck.” They get stuck in one or two spheres. For example, a person who gets stuck in the past.

J: Yes. Or a person who gets stuck in logical thought. These are the people who lack empathy, who lack compassion for others. They make all their choices based on logic alone. The Church has had an overflowing cup of bishops who were incapable of feeling empathy.

A: I’ve also known some people — mostly women — who seem stuck in their emotional circuitry and can’t make a decision that’s tough. They don’t forgive other people so much as put blinders on. They try to sweep great harms under the carpet so they don’t have to deal with the fallout of taking a firm stance.

J: Forgiveness is very much about taking a firm stance. The first step in forgiving somebody — whether it’s yourself or someone else — is honesty. There must be an honest assessment of harm. This means you have to take a stance on the question of right and wrong. For the soul — for all souls in Creation, including God the Mother and God the Father — some choices are clearly right and other choices are clearly wrong. The soul knows the difference. The soul feels confident and clear when right choices are made. The soul feels abused when wrong choices are made. This is what many people call . . . conscience.

A: There’s been a trend among some New Age gurus and some Progressive Christians to claim there are no moral absolutes. Hence there is no need for forgiveness. According to these thinkers, all choices are equally acceptable to God because each person is really just a spark of God trying to express itself. Neale Donald Walsch has built a lucrative empire on this idea.

J: Only a person who doesn’t want to face his own life choices would find this theory acceptable.

A: It does leave a lot of wiggle room for people who want to excuse their own behaviour . . .

J: Forgiveness is a clear and conscious decision to call forth and believe in the best that a person can be and the best a person can do. Forgiveness is a refusal to accept excuses. At the same time, it’s a gift of love that has no strings attached. Divine love goes beyond anything a Materialist philosophy of Cause and Effect can imagine. Divine love is an up-front gift, a conscious decision to offer the recipient (whether the self or an another person) a vote of confidence in his or her best self. It’s a leap of faith. It’s a boost-up. A helping hand. A sense of purpose for a person to hang onto. It does not require you to prove yourself before you get the gift of love. If you had to prove yourself first, one proof at a time, as many theologians have taught, you’d be looking at the vertical path of spiritual ascent — anagogic mysticism. Anagogic mysticism is a form of Materialist belief. God the Mother and God the Father are not required to obey Materialist philosophy. They love us because they choose to love us, not because they “owe” us anything for our “obedience” and “piety.” They believe in us, their children, so much that we simply cannot and will not let them down. They inspire us to be our best selves. But they don’t force us to be our best selves — we, as angels, choose to be our best selves. It’s as natural as breathing for all angels.

A: Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth.

J: Yes. Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth. There are no exceptions among God’s children. All angels are filled with trust and devotion and gratitude and courage BECAUSE God the Mother and God the Father believe in our best selves. They have faith in us.

A: So in the case of a father who has raped his own daughters, how would God look at that?

J: God the Mother and God the Father would recognize instantly the selfish, uncourageous intent of the father. They would identify the problem — the father’s dysfunctional brain circuitry — and they would remember this as they worked to help him and those around him recognize the great harm he’s been choosing to create. They would not condone or accept this behaviour as acceptable. They would identify the behaviour as “wrong.” Nonetheless, they would blanket him in divine love. They would whisper to his soul, “We believe in you. We know this isn’t the best you can be. We know you can make loving choices. We won’t abandon you. We’ll stick right with you and show you why your choices have been wrong. You won’t understand at first, and you’re going to be angry and confused and resentful for a while, but that’s okay, because we know that more than anything in the world you want to be able to give love. We believe in you.”

A: And then God sends you through the human court system that’ll cart you off to jail for “X” number of years.

J: Somehow you have to get it through your thick human skull that you made an abusive choice that was very, very wrong. You have to accept that you made a mistake, you have to accept that you can learn from your own mistakes, and you have to accept that you can be a better person who makes right choices. If you receive the right kind of help.

A: Locking up a person and throwing away the key isn’t the right kind of help.

J: Nor is revenge the right kind of help. Usually it takes a whole team to provide the right kind of help to a man who has raped his own daughters. A whole team of well trained professionals. Of course, if the professionals themselves don’t believe in the soul or the power of forgiveness or the mystery of God’s divine love, they’re ill-equipped to provide the kind of mentorship the abuser needs if he’s to have any chance of living up to his best self.

A: In which case the abuser isn’t likely to be healed.

J: Healing follows insight for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime. Forgiveness, as we’ve said, is a catalyst that speeds and facilitates the healing process. Healing is the path towards Wholeness. Not the path towards Oneness but the path towards Wholeness. Wholeness is the place — the Kingdom, the experience of self — where you know yourself and all your limits and all your strengths and all your quirks and you can be humbly proud of yourself anyway because you’re being the best person you can be.

A: Young children are like this. They have the ability to throw themselves into new relationships and new experiences to the best of their ability without any concern for status or “face.”

J: Yup. That’s what I meant when I said that to enter the Kingdom you must become again like a little child. Humble and guileless, yet full of infectious enthusiasm and intelligence. Many three-year-olds are smarter than the adults around them because they haven’t yet forgotten how to learn.

A: And they still know how to forgive. Young children are born with an amazing ability to forgive.

J: I rest my case.

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

A: Tell me more about forgiveness. The other day you said, “Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt” (The Meaning of “the Son of Man”). You and I have talked a lot about forgiveness, but you’ve never linked it to the Peace Sequence before. Can you explain in more detail what you meant?

J: I’m going to introduce a comparison between forgiveness and catalysts (as catalysts are understood by a chemist). At a quantum level, forgiveness acts as an important “biochemical” catalyst for learning.

A: Okay, you’re gonna have to back up the divine truck on this one.

J: In everyday speech, people use the word “catalyst” to mean a person, thing, or event that prompts sudden change. In Western culture it’s often an unexpected tragedy that serves as a catalyst for change. For instance, if a child is killed because a newly designed toy isn’t safe, the people around the child are shocked into action. Chances are good that an inquiry will be held, and healthy and safety regulations will be amended to remove this particular threat. The catalyst for change was a tragic event that jarred people out of their complacency and forced them to be more honest about a quantifiable, measurable threat to children’s safety.

The factual reality of the toy’s dangerous design existed before the tragic death. The threat itself wasn’t new. What was new was the realization of the threat, the objective recognition of the threat, the memory of the threat. In other words, human beings had to learn about the threat. They had to identify the problem, remember the problem, understand the problem, then fix the problem. These are the stages of learning. As it happens, these are also the stages of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. They’re all hopelessly intertwined with each other.

A: Identify, remember, understand, and fix. That’s a pretty logical sequence. What happens if a person tries to skip one of those steps? I’m thinking in particular of the “remember” stage. I’ve met quite a few people who seem to have really bad memories. Important information goes right in one ear and out the other. And these are fairly young people I’m talking about, not elderly people with dementia!

J: Those who can’t remember their own history are doomed to repeat it.

A: I remember a fellow we were corresponding with a few years ago about the spiritual journey. He was quite incensed because you and I had suggested that an understanding of science was important to spiritual growth and transformation. He wrote somewhat angrily, “Do I have to have a degree in physics?” And your reply was, “No, you have to have a degree in history.” He probably thought you were being facetious.

“Jesus said, ‘ I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart’” (Gospel of Thomas 17). The mysterious gift Jesus is talking about here is Divine Forgiveness, a gift freely given by God to all people at all times without any restrictions or covenants placed upon the gift. Shown here is an example of an inuksuk, which reminds me of what forgiveness is actually like (simple, memorable, beautiful, accessible by all, able to be built by all). Inuksuit have long served to aid full remembrance in Canada’s Far North. They’re now found widely throughout Canada. This one sits among flowers and metal artwork at an Ontario public school. Photo credit JAT 2015.

J: I wasn’t. I was speaking the honest truth. Memory — history — is crucial to the core self. Memory is a huge part of learning. By that I don’t mean simple rote memory, such as your multiplication tables. I mean soul memory, which is a combination of several different forms of memory. It’s emotional memory plus factual memory plus habit memory plus talent memory.

A: That’s a lot to keep track of at one time. Sounds like too much work.

J: Soul memory evolves quite naturally when a child is raised in a mature, responsible, loving home. It becomes a natural way of remembering things. You don’t consciously think about the different aspects of your memory. You just . . . live. You live with empathy and laughter and confidence. It’s your soul memory that helps you do that.

A: So you’re linking empathy with memory.

J: Yes. It’s your memory skills that allow you to remember the names of your neighbour’s children so you can ask how the family is doing.

A: Ooooooh. I suddenly can think of a gajillion different ways that memory can help with empathy and relationships. Things like remembering your friend’s favourite music or your mother’s favourite flower. Or the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Or remembering to pick up a carton of milk on the way home, as promised. Or remembering to say “I love you.” And on and on and on.

J: What’s interesting about people with severe narcissism and psychopathy is the way they use memory. They use memory and history in bizarre, abusive ways. They often have excellent memories when it comes to the mistakes that other people have made (though they rarely admit to their own). They remember all the “crimes” that have been committed against them, and they keep detailed lists of rightful punishments that still need to be meted out.

A: They hold grudges.

J: With a capital “G.” They live for the “high” of revenge. Inside their own heads, they’ll return to the scene of another person’s “crime” and relive the unfairness and unjustness of it all. Then they’ll imagine the scene of their revenge. They’ll gloat about it. They’ll gloat about the glory of their future — and rightful — vengeance. There’s no concern at all about collateral damage — about the people and places that will be damaged when vengeance is pursued. The only thing that’s important to a psychopath is the chance to “even the scales.”

A: Sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.

J: Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not about buying back one’s status or paying a debt or “balancing the scales of time” so the past can be forgotten. Forgiveness absolutely requires a memory of the harm that’s being forgiven.

A: You said above that forgiveness is a catalyst. How does this idea relate to what we’ve been discussing about memory and learning and empathy?

J: In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that’s an essential ingredient in a chemical reaction without itself being changed and without itself being part of the final product or products.

A: Inorganic chemists use elements such as palladium and rhodium as catalysts so they can synthesize complex molecules out of simpler ones.

J: In chemistry, a catalyst works the way a crane works on a large building site. The crane is essential for transporting loads of basic materials to their proper location on the much larger building that’s being constructed. But once the building is completed, the crane is removed from the site. It’s no longer needed. It can be “recycled” — used on another building site because it isn’t part of the final product. Its role is essential but temporary. This is what forgiveness is like.

A: Still not following you. Especially because you’ve said in the past that forgiveness is a permanent choice — a permanent choice to wrap harmful choices within a layer of love.

J: Forgiveness, like the construction crane, is a permanent “substance,” if you will. But like a crane, it moves around. It isn’t glued to one site or one event or one person. It goes in, does its transformative thing, then lets go. Forgiveness allows you to identify, remember, understand, and fix the past without actually having to live in the past. It frees you from the tyranny of rumination on the past. It doesn’t ask you to forget. It asks you to transform. It asks you to take the pain and turn it into something new. Forgiveness isn’t the final product of the transformative process, despite what some theologians have claimed. Forgiveness is the tool — the catalyst — that’s needed so you can take painful experiences and painful choices and turn them into something brand new.

A: The way orthodox Western Christian theologians often describe forgiveness makes it sound like the end goal, the final result of being saved by God.

J: God the Mother and God the Father are always moving the crane of forgiveness. They’re always actively and consciously choosing to forgive their human children for the suffering people create. Forgiveness is a present act — always a present act, not a future one. Just as the Kingdom of the Heavens is supposed to be a present condition, not a future one.

A: I’ve read so many books where teachers of spirituality insist that we “live in the moment.” Is this what you’re getting at? Letting go of the past and the future and focussing only on the present moment?

J: No. Most definitely not. The phrase “living in the moment” all too often means “living in a state of dissociation.” Living in a state of psychological dissociation from one’s emotions, memories, and personal responsibilities. Obviously this doesn’t help individuals or families or communities create peace. To create peace, you have to be willing to learn from the past. You have to be willing to identify the problems of the past, and then marshal all your courage and will power and love to get to the point where you can remember the pain without being overwhelmed and numbed by the pain. In other words, you have to learn from your mistakes.

A: Learning from your own mistakes is very hard. Self forgiveness is very hard.

J: In the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, the man Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again each day. This aptly describes what it feels like to live without forgiveness. Each day feels like an eternity of repetitive struggle, an endless cycle of guilt and pain you can’t seem to escape from. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the crane you bring in to build a series of small level shelves or steps on the side of the hill so you can gradually get the stone to the top of the hill and keep it there, where it will no longer torture you. With the boulder of the past safely stowed at the top of the hill, you can get on with the business of planting a nice garden at the base of the hill and inviting all your friends over to share in the beauty. The stone at the top is there to remind you of the mistakes you once made so you ‘re less likely to make them again. The stone isn’t gone. But it’s in a safer place.

A: So in the Kingdom of the Heavens, the past isn’t gone, but it’s in a safer place. This allows you to bring more of your daily energy to the task of living as fully as possible today.

J: You’d be amazed how much energy many people use each day by dwelling in the past, ruminating on past injuries, focussing on revenge, and not paying attention (literally) to the tasks and relationships of today. When I say “energy,” I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that people quite literally expend precious biological resources every day when they choose to focus on the past. They use up proteins and fats and carbs in their bodies. They force their brain cells to hang on to cell-to-cell connections that aren’t productive. They refuse to let their brains empty the “recycle bin,” and as a result, dangerous levels of old proteins and other biological materials can build up inside the brain. Causing medical syndromes such as various forms of dementia.

A: So forgiveness isn’t just a metaphysical aspiration: it’s also a biological reality.

J: As you’d expect it to be in the good Creation of a loving God.

JR55: Healing: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

A: Apart from the Kingdom sayings and the puzzling Son of Man sayings, you also left behind some curious sayings about protecting the master’s house and making it strong against thievery or attack — especially attack from within. Thomas 21b and Luke 12:37-48 and Mark 3:20-27 all use this theme. The passage in Luke is especially confusing. Luke 12:37-38 is a makarism: “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.”

Now, I know you had nothing nice to say about the custom of slave-owning. So the passage in Luke (12:37-48) must be a parable, an analogy for something else, even though the Oxford NRSV calls these verses a collection of “sayings on watchfulness and faithfulness” rather than a parable.

newburgh - wendy & david's 06 01

“Therefore I say: If a householder knows a thief is coming, he will keep watch and not let him break into his house (of his kingdom) and steal his goods. You must keep watch against the world, preparing yourselves with power so that thieves will not find any way to come upon you” (Gospel of Thomas 21b and 21c, translated by Stevan Davies). Photo credit JAT 2013.

J (grinning): Oh, yes. It’s a parable. One I wrote myself.

A: Ah. And I see that this parable references “the Son of Man” in verse 40: “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Many commentators have assumed this verse is a reference to an apocalyptic prophecy you made. They assume “the Son of Man” is an actual person — you — who will be coming back on a future day to bring about the prophesied day of judgment. Is this what you meant? Because Matthew 24:36-51 certainly makes it sound as if this is what you meant.

J: Matthew, as we’ve discussed earlier, was no friend of mine and no friend to my teachings. Matthew was like a gardener who sees another’s man field and hates the way the plants are arranged. So he sneaks in with a shovel at night and digs up the other man’s plants and takes them to a new field and replants them in an entirely new garden composition and adds some new plants of his own, then steps back and loudly proclaims he’s done great honour to the other man. Meanwhile, the other man’s garden is a potholed ruin.

A: Always with the parables. You just don’t quit!

J: It’s who I am.

A: Okay. So what were you getting at? Why were you so fond of the image of the master’s house that needs to be protected? Who was “the master”? Was it God?

J: Nope. The master in the parable of the responsible slave (Luke 12:37-48) is the soul of any human being who’s walking around on Planet Earth. Any human being at all.

A: Say what?

J: Although today’s commentators assume I was an idiot who spouted apocalyptic prophecy and hadn’t a drop of common sense in me, I actually had a “method to my madness.” The sayings I left behind all speak to a few internally consistent, common sense teachings about the soul. I said a small number of things a great many times. The things I said all relate to each other in a logical, coherent, heart-based way. If I spoke again and again about the psychological reality of the Kingdom (wholeness and maturity of the self), and the importance of respecting “boundaries of the self” and “boundaries of the other,” and the potential of human beings — all human beings — to seek healing and redemption through the power of forgiveness, then there’s only one person this “master” can be. The master is the self. The master is the core self, the soul that each person is. The true self. This parable is a metaphor about the human brain. It’s an attempt to explain in layman’s terms what’s going on inside a person’s head, and why there’s no such thing as demon possession. It’s an attempt to explain why the path of redemption seems so harsh at times.

A: “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” (Thomas 86)

J: Yes. Foxes know who they are and where their “home” is. Birds know who they are and how to build a home for themselves and their children. Human beings, of all God’s creatures on Planet Earth, are the least likely to know who they are and how to build a “home” for their highest potential. For a human being, this home is their brain — their biological brain and central nervous system. This home has to be painstakingly built over many years. Nothing so simple as building a bird’s nest, no sir! The “insides” of a person have to be carefully built to match the “outsides.” This is the holistic path to maturity for all human beings.

A: This goes back to what you were saying a few days ago about Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas). One thing I love about your teachings on wholeness — on Whole Brain Thinking — is the fairness of it. These teachings apply to all people in all places in all cultures. It’s radically egalitarian. Everyone gets the same basic toolkit for building a garden of peace. But each person’s garden will look different because each soul is different. I just love that part!

J: Yes, but before they can get to the point of being able to admire each other’s gardens — instead of envying and destroying each other’s gardens — they have to get through the healing stage. This is the stage where most people quit, where they run away from the difficulties and challenges of building an inner “home” — a field full of good soil — inside their own heads. This is the stage most people don’t even know IS a stage.

A: The Church has done precious little to help us understand this — even today, when we have so much knowledge about the human brain and its hard-wiring for empathy and change.

J: Two thousand years ago, I certainly had no knowledge of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology or neurotransmitters or the like. But I was a keen observer of human nature, and I was scientifically minded. More to the point, I was a mystic. I had unflinching faith in God’s goodness because of my mystical practice, and I knew there had to be something better than “demon possession” to account for frightening behaviour. So I looked to a scientific model. It wasn’t that hard, really. You work through empirical observation and rudimentary statistical analysis. That’s how all science advanced for thousands of years until recently. You take careful notes, you try to stay objective, you look for patterns, you try to prove you didn’t simply invent the patterns because you wanted to see them. Objectivity is crucial, of course. If you’re determined to find an imaginary Cause X, you’ll find it because you want to. However, this isn’t science. This is narcissism.

A: So your lack of narcissism — or I suppose I should say your eventual lack of narcissism — made you more open to honest fact-finding about the human condition.

J: I was open to the idea that there could be scars on the inside of a person’s body as well as on the outside.

A: In James 1:8, you use the unusual Greek word “dipsychos,” which is usually translated in English as “double-minded.” What were you getting at here?

J: If you read the parts of the Letter of James that I wrote — James 1:2-27; 2:1-8a; and 3:1-18 — you can see me struggling to put into words the problem of understanding the human brain and all its competing “intents.” I used several different metaphors there to try to explain what a lack of inner wholeness results in. Which is tragedy. Pain, suffering, and tragedy.

A: You also express the idea in James 1:8 that “the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” This is a pretty tough statement, don’t you think?

J: Many will think so. They’ll assume I’m talking about divine judgment and divine retribution. But I’m not. I’m talking about the scientific reality of the soul-body nexus. I’m talking about the built-in set of checks and balances that exists within the human self to promote mature, loving choices.

I’m going to come at your question from a different direction. If there really is a God, and there really are good souls, and there really are souls who choose to incarnate in a temporary 3D body where they have to struggle to balance the needs of their souls and the needs of their biological bodies . . . would it make sense to you in this context that God would refuse to provide built-in roadmaps and compasses and warning signals and obvious feedback so you could safely navigate all the confusion? Does that make sense to you?

A: No.

J: It didn’t make sense to me, either. So in the parable of the responsible slave, the “house” of the master is — to use you as an example (sorry, hope you don’t mind) — is your entire head, including your skull. The “master” is your soul, and in particular the non-plastic parts of your brain that are controlled by the thoughts and feelings and actions of your soul. The “slaves” are the semi-autonomous regions of your brain that are supposed to be in charge of your physiological needs, but which all too often end up running the show — and doing a very poor job of it, I might add. If you were to let the “slaves” manage your choices, abuses would occur. Abuses of your self and abuses of others. Naturally, your core self — your soul — wouldn’t like this very much, and your core self would have something to say about it. This isn’t punishment “from above.” This is you standing up for your own core integrity! This is you trying to get yourself back in balance!

A: By first recognizing that there’s a problem. With your own choices.

J: Healing begins with insight. Before you can heal, you have to admit there’s a problem. Unfortunately, people can get their heads caught up in some pretty unhealthy thinking patterns. They can become so dysfunctional that they confuse the “slaves” with the “master.” They can’t hear their own inner voice, even though the inner voice never stops talking.

There’s always the easy way and the hard way. You can listen to your own inner voice, and begin to heal, in which case the journey won’t be as difficult.

A: You’ll get a “light beating” (Luke 12:48).

J: The majority of human beings, then and now, however, end up by default on the hard way.

A: So their bodies get a “severe beating” (Luke 12:47) from their own souls.

J: Well, it looks that way from the outside in the beginning.

A: People will say you’re blaming the victims of illness.

J: It’s not that simple. People get ill for a variety of reasons. But ONE of the reasons people get sick is because they opt to make certain very poor choices. This is simply a statement of fact. It’s not a judgment to say that a person who chooses to eat 5,000 calories per day and is morbidly obese (with all the attendant health problems of extreme obesity) bears SOME of the responsibility for his or her state of health.

A: When you put it that way, it seems pretty fair and reasonable. There are lots of intentional human choices that can lead to serious illness and disability. We often don’t want to change the choices we make until we really, really understand the consequences that are involved.

J: Observable consequences are part of each person’s built-in roadmap for living a life of wholeness in accordance with the wishes and needs of the soul. If your biological body is way out of balance, you need to listen to what your soul is saying. It’s only common sense.

JR54: The Meaning of "the Son of Man"

A: We’ve been talking a lot about the Kingdom and gardens and finding peace through personal responsibility. How does the phrase “the Son of Man” fit into all this? If ever there was a phrase in the New Testament that people don’t understand, it’s the “Son of Man” phrase — ho hyios tou anthropou in Koine Greek, bar nasa in Aramaic, and ben adam in Hebrew. Somehow I suspect the translation of the Greek phrase into English doesn’t do justice to the original meaning.

J: It’s very easy to forget that the Hebrew word adam wasn’t used primarily as a name in Second Temple Judaism. Adam can also be translated as “ground/soil” or as “humankind.” Similarly, the Greek word anthropos meant “humankind,” not just “human beings of the male sex.” These nuances are lost in the traditional English translation “Son of Man.” A much better translation in English would be “essence of humanity” or “highest potential of humankind.” I used the phrase ho hyios tou anthropou to express a concept — a concept for which no vocabulary existed at the time.

“Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died” (Gospel of Thomas 85). This saying doesn’t make much sense unless you stop to consider what Genesis 2-3 says about the allegorical relationship between humankind (Adam) and God. In the Garden of Eden, there are two trees that embody the deepest and most mystical elements of God, Creation, and faith: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are supposed to be in balance, and while they are, Adam and Eve live a life of trusting relationship with God. At some point, however, Eve, followed quickly by Adam, decide they’re more interested in having knowledge than in having a trusting relationship with God. So they eat of the metaphorical fruit from the tree of knowledge and find themselves aligned with the many ancient philosopher kings who also chose knowledge over relationship with God. In Jesus’ teachings, choosing a life that places knowledge far above trust, love, and relationship with God is really no life at all. For Jesus, the mind is important, but not more important than the heart. So the metaphorical example of Adam and Eve — who lost the balance between mind and heart and as a result struggled for the rest of their lives with “death” instead of “life” — is not the example we should be following. Seek instead the path of peace that’s based on relationship with God. This ivory depicting The Fall of Man (by Balthasar Griessmann, c. 1670-1690) is part of the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

A: What concept were you trying to teach about? Enlightenment?

J: No. Forgiveness.

A: Sayings 85 and 86 in the Gospel of Thomas refer to “Adam” and to “the son of man.” Saying 85 says, “Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died.” Saying 86 goes on to say, “Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” Thomas 86 also appears almost word for word in Luke 9:58. How do these verses relate to the concept of forgiveness?

J (sighing): I’ve always been fond of word plays, puns, alliterations, rhymes, and poetry. “Foxes have holes and birds of heaven have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head” sounded catchier in Greek than it does in English.

A: But I guess the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that you weren’t talking about a particular man in this saying. You weren’t talking about yourself. You were trying to explain a concept that was unfamiliar to your students.

J (nodding): The people around me had been raised on a steady diet of values that had no place in humanity’s relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. No matter where you turned, you heard tales of might, tales of glory, tales of revenge. Everyone thought they had the “correct” God — or gods — on their side. Everyone thought they were truly pious, truly deserving of divine reward. Everyone had their own version of the “God will avenge me” myth. The avenging God had as many “faces” as a circus performer has costumes.

If you were a person with a black sense of humour — as I came to be — you could go to bed in the evening and count all the ways you’d offended this god and that god in umpteen hidden ways on that day alone. You could count all the ways you’d be punished. You could count all the ways your masters would take revenge against you for your “heinous crimes” against God. Of course, it was your earthly masters — not the unseen gods of heaven — who were the ones who had the rod in their hands to beat you. It was your earthly masters who would use any “divine” excuse possible to beat you into submission and humility.

But they’d often go easy on you if you offered a payment. Some sort of compensation — an eye for an eye. Some sort of bribe. Contract laws dictated what terms of compensation were acceptable. These contract laws weren’t civil laws in the way you’d understand a Western nation’s legal codes today. These contract laws had political and economic purposes, of course, but they were primarily religious laws and traditions. Nomos in Greek. Nomos provided a list of crimes and a list of acceptable “payments” to balance the scales if you committed a crime. Often these “payments” were sacrifices. Temple sacrifices. In most Greco-Roman religions of the time — not just Judaism — you could bring a sacrifice (a payment, really) to the local temple so you could literally “buy back” God’s favour. This is what “redemption” used to mean. It meant trading something you had — money or goods or livestock or agricultural produce — to get something you needed: divine favour. It had nothing to do with divine love or divine forgiveness as you and I have defined these concepts on this site.

A: And then there was slavery. The actual buying and selling of human beings based on contract laws. A slave could, under certain circumstances, “buy back” his rights. Or a slave could be manumitted — legally freed by his or her “owner.” But contract law gave people the excuse they needed to treat others cruelly. Contract law justified their cruelty.

J: They gave themselves permission to violate the soul’s own understanding of free will, justice, integrity, and respect. They were listening to their own selfishness and not to God’s voice. And I said so. Out loud. Frequently.

A: So your friends and students were conditioned to understand their relationship with God in terms of contract law. In terms of payments to a master or sovereign lord. In terms of monetary debts or “obligatory service contracts” (i.e. slavery).

J: Slavery was — and is — a terrible violation of the soul, of what it means to be a soul, a child of God. Slavery is an artificially created human condition in which a slave’s personal boundaries are invaded in every way imaginable. A slave is forced to give up all rights to physical and sexual safety. All rights to choose where and with whom to be in relationship. All rights to follow his or her own soul’s calling. Even a slave who has property — and there were many wealthy slaves in the Roman Empire — even such a slave is taught to believe he doesn’t actually own the skin he’s in. It’s not his. It belongs to somebody else. His own skin is “dead” to him. His mind and his heart may be free, but his skin — his body — is dead. He can’t view himself as whole — as a “whole bean” — because in his own mind and in the mind of his society he isn’t whole. He’s a sort of ghoulish inhabitant of a body that belongs to somebody else. If, in addition to being a slave, he’s also sexually violated — a fate that was brutally common for young boys and girls in the first century Empire — chances are extremely high that he’ll grow up to be seriously mentally ill. Why? Because children who are beaten and sexually abused and psychologically tortured bear the scars of that treatment in their biological brains, bodies, and psyches until they are healed. It’s a simple statement of fact.

A: You can see how this kind of treatment would lead to dissociative disorders. A person who’s disconnected from emotions. Disconnected from a strong sense of boundaries and personal space.

J: I was trying to get at the point that even lowly foxes and humble birds are given their own personal space, their own “home,” their own sanctuary by God. Foxes and birds will defend their own homes with all their might, as they have a right to do. They don’t have the right to steal another creature’s home, but they do have the right to protect the one they have. God gives no less a right to all human beings. No human contract law “written in stone” anywhere at any time can supersede the obvious truth that each human being owns his own skin and is the sovereign of his own domain, his own personal kingdom. When he knows this and feels this and lives this, he feels alive. He feels whole. He feels at peace.

A: This is the state of “living” that you refer to so often in the Gospel of Thomas.

J: Yes. It’s a psychological state of balance and health. There’s nothing occult about it. It’s the natural outcome of making choices that lead to emotional maturity. It’s the natural outcome of choosing to live according to the highest potential of humankind. It’s the truest essence of humanity.

A: People being their best selves. On purpose.

J: Yes. On purpose. It’s so very much about the purpose. About the purposefulness of “living.” Which is where forgiveness comes in.

A: How so?

J: Christians are usually taught to think of forgiveness as an act of grace on God’s part, as a somewhat sudden and fickle choice on God’s part, as something that human beings can participate in but can’t initiate. Paul tries very hard to give this impression to his readers. But forgiveness is the opposite of suddenness and fickleness and “divine transcendence.” Forgiveness is purposefulness. Purposefulness of a particular kind. Forgiveness is what you get when you choose to combine your free will and your courage and your love. There’s nothing accidental or preordained about it. It’s a choice. An ongoing choice that calls upon the greatest resources of the eternal soul — each and every soul. It’s the choice to love someone wholly in the absence of payment or retribution or just compensation. Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt.

A: This is soooooooo not what they taught me in theological school.

JR53: Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas

A: At the beginning of Stevan Davies’s translation of the Gospel of Thomas, there’s a Foreword written by Andrew Harvey. Harvey has this to say about the Gospel of Thomas: “If all the Gospel of Thomas did was relentlessly and sublimely champion the path to our transfiguration and point out its necessity, it would be one of the most important of all religious writings — but it does even more. In saying 22, the Gospel of Thomas gives us a brilliantly concise and precise ‘map’ of the various stages of transformation that have to be unfolded in the seeker for the ‘secret’ to be real in her being and active though [sic?] all her powers. Like saying 13, saying 22 has no precedent in the synoptic gospels and is, I believe, the single most important document of the spiritual life that Jesus has left us (pages xxi-xxii).”

Harvey then plunges into 5 pages of rapture on the ecstatic meaning of Saying 22. None of which I agree with, of course. And none of which you’re likely to agree with, either, if experience is any guide. But I thought maybe you and I could have a go at it.

J: By all means.

A: Okay. Here’s the translation of Saying 22 as Stevan Davies’s writes it:

“Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples: These infants taking milk are like those who enter the Kingdom. His disciples asked him: If we are infants will we enter the Kingdom? Jesus responded: When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper, and thus make the male and the female the same, so that the male isn’t male and the female isn’t female. When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom (page xxii and 25-27).”

Harvey’s interpretation of this saying speaks of an “alchemical fusion” and a “Sacred Androgyne” who “‘reigns’ over reality” with actual “powers that can alter natural law” because he or she has entered a transformative state of “mystical union,” where “the powers available to the human being willing to undertake the full rigor of the Jesus-transformation are limitless.”

I’m not making this up, though I wish I were.

Mustard Seeds by David Turner 2005. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

“The disciples said to Jesus: ‘Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.’ He replied: ‘It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all. However, when it falls into worked ground, it sends out a large stem, and it becomes a shelter for the birds of heaven'” (Gospel of Thomas 20). Mustard Seeds by David Turner 2005, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

J: And there I was, talking about a little ol’ mustard seed . . . . It’s a terrific example of the danger of using “wisdom sayings” as a teaching tool. People have a tendency to hear whatever they want to hear in a simple saying. Parables are much harder to distort. Eventually I caught on to the essential problem that’s created when you choose to speak indirectly to spare other people’s feelings. When you use poetry instead of blunt prose, it’s much easier for other people to twist your meaning intentionally. You can see the same understanding in the Gospel of Mark. Mark is blunt. He doesn’t waste time on cliches and “wisdom words.” He goes straight for the truth, and leaves no wiggle room for gnostic-type interpretations.

A: Harvey seems to have found a whole lot of wiggle room in Saying 22.

J: I must admit that Harvey’s “revelation” of the Sacred Androgyne makes me feel sick to my stomach.

A: Why?

J: Because it denies the very reality of male and female. It denies the reality that God the Father is male and God the Mother is female. It denies the reality that everything in Creation is built on the cherished differences between male and female. Being male isn’t better than being female. And being female isn’t better than being male. But they’re not the same. Neither are they yin-and-yang. They’re not two halves of the same coin. They’re not mirror images of each other. They’re not a fusion — they’re not a Oneness — like a bowl of pure water. God the Mother and God the Father are like a bowl of minestrone soup. You can see all the big chunks of differentness floating around in there, and that’s okay, because that’s what gives the mixture its taste, its wonder, its passion.

God the Mother and God the Father aren’t the same substance with opposite polarities. No way. They have individual temperaments and unique characteristics. In some ways, they’re quite alike. In other ways, they’re quite different from each other. Just as you’d expect in two fully functioning, mature beings. That’s why it’s a relationship. They work things out together so both of them are happy at the same time. It’s not that hard to imagine, really. They have a sacred marriage, a marriage in which they constantly strive to lift each other up, support each other, forge common goals together, build things together, and most importantly, raise a family together. They look out for each other. They laugh together. They’re intimately bound to each other in all ways. But they’re still a bowl of minestrone soup. With nary a Sacred Androgyne in sight.

A: Okay. So if you weren’t talking about “oneness” or “alchemical fusion” or the “Sacred Androgyne” in Saying 22, what were you talking about?

J: Well, I was talking about the mystery and wonder that can be found in a simple seed. I was talking — as I often was — about how to understand our relationship with God by simply looking at and listening to God’s ongoing voice in the world of nature.

A: Oh. Are we talking about tree-hugging?

J: You could put it that way.

A: David Suzuki would love you for saying that.

J: I was a nature mystic, to be sure. Endogenous mystics are nature mystics. They see the image of God — and more importantly the stories of God — in God’s own language, which is the world of Creation. The world outside the city gates has so much to say about balance and time and beginnings and endings! The world outside the city gates is a library. It’s literally a library that teaches souls about cycles and physics and interconnectedness and chemistry and complexity and order and chaos all wrapped up together in a tapestry of Divine Love.

A: What you’re saying seems like a pretty modern, liberal sort of understanding. Were you able to articulate it this way 2,000 years ago?

J: Not to be unkind to modern, liberal thinkers, but when was the last time a philosopher of science sat down with a mustard seed and reflected on the intrinsic meaning of it? When was the last time you heard what a humble fresh bean can teach you about the spiritual journey of all human beings?

A: I see your point. People in our society don’t usually take the time to sit down and “smell the roses.”

J: Geneticists and biologists and related researchers can print out all their research on the genome of a kidney bean, and can even modify this genetic code in a lab, but to a mystic the kidney bean holds more than pure science.

A: So we’ve switched from mustard seeds to kidney beans as a metaphor?

J: Kidney beans are bigger and easier to see without magnifying lenses, and a lot of people have begun their scientific inquiries by growing beans in a primary school classroom. So yes — let’s switch to beans.

A: I remember being fascinated by fresh beans and peas when I was young. If you split the bean with your thumbnail, and you didn’t damage it too much when you split it, you could see the tiny little stem and leaf inside at one end, just waiting to sprout. If you planted a whole, unsplit bean in a small glass-walled container, you could watch the whole process of growth — the bean splitting open on its own, roots starting to grow from one end, the stem and leaf popping up, the two halves of the bean gradually shrinking as their nutrients were converted into stem and root growth. Somehow the bean knew what to do. It just kept growing out of the simplest things — dirt, sunlight, water.

J: The bean is a lot like the human brain. If you plant it whole in fertile ground and provide the right nutrients, it grows into a thing of wholeness and balance and wonder and mystery. On the other hand, if you try to split it open, or extract the tiny stem hidden inside, or plant it on rocks instead of good soil, or fail to give it sunshine and water, it won’t thrive. It may not even root at all. You can’t force the bean to grow where it isn’t designed to grow. You can’t force it to grow once you’ve forcibly split it open. You can’t force it to grow on barren rock. The bean has to be whole when you plant it. The outside skin has to be intact. The different parts inside the skin have to be intact. The bean has different parts, but it needs all those different parts in order to be whole — in order to create something new. The bean isn’t a single substance. But it is holistic. It’s a self-contained mini-marvel that teaches through example about cycles and physics and interconnectedness and chemistry and complexity and order and chaos. It appears simple, but in fact it’s remarkably complex. Creation is like that — it appears simple, but in fact it’s remarkably complex.

A: Why, then, were you talking about “male and female” in Saying 22? Why did you seem to be talking about merging or fusion of male and female into an androgynous state? Or a Platonic state of mystical union?

J: It goes to the question of context. I was talking to people who, as a natural part of their intellectual framework, were always trying to put dualistic labels on everything in Creation. Everyday items were assigned labels of “good or evil,” “pure or impure,” “male or female,” “living or dead.” It had got to the point where a regular person might say, “I won’t use that cooking pan because it has female energy, and female energy isn’t pure.”

A: I’m not sure that kind of paranoid, dualistic, magical thinking has really died out, to be honest.

J: There are certainly peoples and cultures who still embrace this kind of magical thinking. You get all kinds of destructive either-or belief systems. You get people saying that right-handed people and right-handed objects are favoured by God, whereas left-handed people are cursed. It’s crazy talk. It’s not balanced. It’s not holistic. It’s not trusting of God’s goodness.

A: And you were left-handed.

J: Yep. My mother tried to beat it out of me, but I was a leftie till the day I died. When I was a child, I was taught to be ashamed of my left-handedness. Eventually I came to understand that I was who I was. The hand I used as an adult to hold my writing stylus was the same hand I’d been born with — my left hand. But on my journey of healing, redemption, and forgiveness, I came to view my hand quite differently than I had in my youth. Was it a “new hand”? No. Was it a new perception of my hand. Yes. Absolutely yes.

A: You stopped putting judgmental labels on your eyes and your hands and your feet and your understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God.

J: One of the first steps in knowing what it feels like to walk in the Kingdom of the Heavens is to consider yourself “a whole bean.”

A: Aren’t there kidney beans in minestrone soup? How did we get back to the minestrone soup metaphor?

J: A little mustard seed in the soup pan never hurts either.

JR52: Pelagius and Personal Responsibility

A: In our discussions lately, you’ve been emphasizing the role of personal responsibility in the journey of healing and faith, and I’ve been waiting for somebody to jump up and accuse you of being a Pelagian. How do you feel about the Pelagian philosophy of free will?

For the record, Pelagius was born sometime in the late 300’s CE, and died around 418 CE. He and his followers drew vicious attacks from Augustine of Hippo and Jerome, and Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy in 431 CE.

J: Without getting too much into the details of the debate between Augustine and Pelagius on the nature of free will, I’d have to say that both of them were wrong.

A: How so?

J: Neither of them had a balanced view of what it means to be a human being. Augustine had no faith at all in the ability of human beings to consciously change their lives and their communities through human initiative. He thought people would be happier if they just accepted their miserable lot in life. Acceptance of Original Sin and concupiscence was the best they could hope for, in his view. His views on human nature have created no end of suffering for devout Christians over the centuries.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, Pelagius preached the opposite extreme. He taught the path of spiritual ascent — anagogic mysticism — which says that people can achieve a state of holiness and perfection if they just try hard enough. He placed the entire burden on the individual. This is no less damaging to people’s lives than Augustine’s idea. Neither man understood — nor wanted to understand — that the path of healing and relationship with God is a path of balance. There must be a balance between personal responsibilities and group responsibilities, a balance between personal responsibilities and divine responsibilities. In particular, there must be a willingness on the part of individuals AND on the part of groups to be honest about their own limits. This honesty is the foundation of great strength for souls-in-human-form. Unfortunately, both Augustine and Pelagius hacked away at this foundation with all their might. They both snatched away a source of deep courage and strength for Christians, and insisted on despair and self-blame in its place. It was a cruel thing to do.

A: So your understanding of personal responsibility isn’t the same as what Pelagius taught.

J: It’s important to note that in the Peace Sequence we’ve been discussing, I’ve placed personal responsibility as the third “gear” in the sequence, not the first gear. Pelagius and others have tried to place personal responsibility in the first position on the Peace Sequence, not the third position. They’ve tried to equate free will with personal responsibility, as if they’re synonymous, as if they’re exactly the same thing. But they’re not.

A: Can you elaborate on that?

J: Personal responsibility is perhaps the most complex, most advanced skill set that human beings can learn during their lifetime here on Planet Earth. It’s not a single skill or a single choice. It’s what we referred to earlier as a “meta-choice” — a pasting together of several smaller choices into something bigger. A meta-choice is so well integrated, so cohesive, so holistic that it often seems like a single choice. But actually it’s a blend of several other choices. It’s a blend of the choice to be courageous, the choice to be empathetic, the choice to be humble, the choice to be intuitive, the choice to be well organized, and the choice to be self disciplined. It’s all those things together.

A: You mean . . . maturity. Emotional, psychological, and physical maturity.

J: Yes. It’s maturity. It’s individuation. It’s compassion. It’s Whole Brain Thinking.

A: Using the whole toolkit of the human brain instead of isolated parts of it.

J: The human brain has long been treated as a single organ, though really it’s an interconnected series of semi-autonomous sectors, each with its own specialized ability to “choose” on behalf of the whole. When all the different choices work together towards a common goal, the human brain works smoothly. If “feels” like a single whole, a single choice. But really it’s a combination of choices. When a person has arrived at the stage in life when he or she “gets” the concept of personal responsibility, it means his/her biological brain is working in a balanced, holistic way. The fruits of this long process should — if all goes well — START to be visible in the actions of people 16 to 18 years of age. The process isn’t normally complete, however, until about age 21 or 22. If all goes well.

A: Last week, after Vancouver lost to Boston in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals, large crowds of young people — many of them now identified as coming from “good” families — rioted in downtown Vancouver. There was a lot of looting and vandalism. Something tells me these young people haven’t developed the Whole Brain Thinking approach to personal responsibility.

J: There were some people in the crowd who stepped forward and did the right thing to protect others who were being beaten. These Good Samaritans are the individuals who instinctively know “the right thing to do” in a crisis. Their sense of personal responsibility, of right and wrong, of courage and compassion doesn’t desert them in an emergency. In fact, it may only be during an unexpected emergency that they themselves realize for the first time that they “get it.” They act first and ask questions later — fortunately for those they can help.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or they might throw them upon the manure pile. Do not throw pearls [to] swine, or they might make [mud] of it” (Gospel of Thomas 93). Jesus taught several centuries before either Augustine or Pelagius, so of course we don’t expect to see any reference to these later theologians in the Gospel of Thomas. On the other hand, Jesus had unflattering things to say about both the Pharisees and the Herodians, whose teachings resembled those of Augustine and Pelagius respectively. It seems likely that in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus was using the metaphor of “dogs” to refer to the Pharisees and the metaphor of “swine” to refer to the Herodians. It seems Jesus wasn’t impressed with either group’s approach to God’s holy things. Recently, I visited a Toronto Conservatory where several generations of cardinals have learned to enter and exit through the automated roof openings so they can build nests for their young in a warm, safe place. These birds not only provide basic food and shelter for their offspring, but also, in this case, are teaching their young an unusual and complex skill set that calls upon them to maximize their latent potential without exceeding their limits. In other words, the parent cardinals are mentoring their offspring. Photo credit JAT 2017.

 A: You’re saying that maturity — personal responsibility — is the product of many years of education and mentorship of children. Is that right?

J: Yes. Education is the first “gear” in the process, but education alone isn’t enough to guide a child towards maturity and personal responsibility.

A: As the well-educated youths who rioted in Vancouver proved all too well.

J: Along with education there must also be appropriate, mature mentorship. It’s the older mentors who are supposed to guide children in their emotional growth with firm, consistent, boundary-respecting compassionate tough love. Parents, grandparents, teachers, sports coaches, medical professionals, and many others can all be mentors for children if they so choose.

A: What about ministers and priests? Can they be mentors?

J: Ideally, yes. However, realistically speaking, they rarely are.

A: Why not?

J: Because most of them have deeply embraced either Augustine’s idea about human nature or Pelagius’s idea. Neither approach helps a young person learn how to find the balance they so desperately need. In addition, those ministers who try to inject balance into their youth work are also the ones most likely to have rejected the idea of the soul and the spiritual life. It’s lose-lose for ordained clerics.

A: Unless they’re willing to accept new doctrines of faith.

J: For that to happen, they’d have to apply their own God-given free will. It’s a choice each cleric will have to make on the basis of his or her own conscience. That’s what divine courage is all about.

JR51: Fifth Step: Keep Christmas, Toss Easter

Christmas tree (c) JAT 2012

Christmas tree. Photo credit JAT 2012.

A: So far we’ve talked about rescuing the soul, restoring the mystery of divine love, inviting our Mother to the table, and insisting on balance as four ways to help heal the church. What else do you have in that angelic bag of surprises you carry around?

J: The liturgical calendar of the Church must be changed.

A: You mean the calendar of religious events and themes and holy days that tells people what they’re supposed to be celebrating when.

J: Calendars are very important to the healthy functioning of the brain. So the Church still needs a calendar to help focus events for the year. I’m not recommending that the Church do away entirely with the idea of having a yearly cycle of events. Far from it. I’m suggesting that the Church revise the calendar and bring it into alignment with the needs of the soul.

A: What would that mean in practical terms?

J: It would mean you’d get to keep Christmas but you’d have to put Easter in the garbage bin.

A: Get rid of Easter? I can see the steam coming off the heads of conservative Christians already.

J: It would be kinder, in the eyes of many Christians, for me to suggest that Holy Week be “reformed” rather than axed altogether. But Holy Week is a celebration of Pauline Christianity at its worst. The overriding theme of Holy Week is salvation — escape — not healing or redemption. Every year it sends the wrong message to Christians. It sends the message that the focus of their relationship with God should be the Saviour — his death and resurrection and coming again. This was never the message I taught during my ministry as Jesus. Nor is the meaning of my time on the cross being properly taught and represented by the Church. There’s no way that Holy Week can be fixed. It would be the same as asking people to celebrate “the joy” of an S.S. death camp like Auschwitz. (I say this as facetiously as possible.) There is no joy to be found in the traditional teachings of Holy Week.

A: I’ve noticed a tendency among more liberal ministers to treat the “events” of Holy Week in a more symbolic way — to de-emphasize the crucifixion and instead emphasize the themes of renewal and rebirth and regrowth in the spring.

J: It’s very helpful and hopeful to talk about the themes of renewal and rebirth. I have no problem with that per se. I have a problem with a continuing effort among theologians to attach those themes to me. I am one man, one angel, one child of God. I’m not the Fisher King. I’m not Horus. I’m not the dead and rising Sol Invictus. I’m not the resurrected Christ. I’m just a stubborn s.o.b. who won’t shut up. I wasn’t even crucified in the springtime. I was crucified in the fall. The early church’s efforts to place the time of my crucifixion in the spring were largely centred on John’s writings. John had his own reasons for wanting to place the time of my crucifixion at Passover. But John wasn’t a man who cared about historicity or facts. He wrote what he wanted to write about me. It helped him sleep better at night.

A: A minute ago you mentioned joy as if it’s somehow significant or important to the healing of the church.

J: Joy is crucial to the experience of faith.

A: How do you define “joy”?

J: I use the word “joy” to express the gratitude and devotion and trust that all angels feel in their relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. I don’t use it as a synonym for worship or praise. I don’t use it as a synonym for the excitement of being part of a large crowd (which is more like hysteria). For me, joy is a word that conveys the happiness and deep contentment we feel as angels. It’s the feeling you get when you feel really, really grateful and really, really SAFE at the same time. It makes you smile from the inside out.

A: Christians have long believed that the purpose of angels is to offer praise and worship to God. Do angels worship God?

J: Noooooooo. You never see angels down on their knees with their heads bowed in humility. What you see is angels living their purpose of love in everything they do. As angels, we show our never-ending love and appreciation of our parents by choosing thoughts and words and actions that bring more love into Creation. We live in imitation of our parents’ courage. We’re not carbon copies of our divine mother and father — that is, we all have our own unique temperaments and personalities and talents and interests — but we’re all alike in that we all choose love. There are many different minds and many different bodies in Creation, but it can be said in all truthfulness that there’s only One Heart. It’s the feeling of joy that comes from our choice to share One Heart that makes us feel like a big family. We all belong to one family.

A: Where you feel safe, despite your differences in talent and temperament.

J: Yes. This is the underlying intent of divine love. It’s the choice to see another soul as, in fact, another soul — as someone who’s not you, who’s not a mere extension of you. It’s the choice to respect differences between individual souls, while at the same time choosing to help other souls be their best selves.

A: Can you explain what you mean by that last statement?

J: Here’s the thing. No one soul can “do” all things or “be” all things. Every soul has unique strengths. But every soul also has unique absences of strength. Angels are always giving and receiving help within the family. An angel with a particular strength will offer that strength to help brothers and sisters who need assistance with something they’re not very good at themselves. The same angel who offers a strength to another will in turn be very grateful to receive help from another soul in an area where he or she needs some help. There’s no sense of shame or guilt or inadequacy among angels when they have an absence of strength. They accept who they are. They don’t judge themselves or feel sorry for themselves or describe themselves as flawed or imperfect or unworthy. They gratefully and humbly ask for — and receive — help when there’s something they don’t understand or something they want to do but don’t have the skills for. It’s all about education, mentorship, and personal responsibility, even among God’s angels. As above, so below.

A: At the start of this conversation you said that Christians could keep the celebration of Christmas. Why? Why keep Christmas and not Easter?

J: December 25th is a day marked by all angels in Creation. It is the day when Divine Love was born.

A: I thought you said we have to get rid of all the invented myths about your ministry. Isn’t this one of them?

J: I wasn’t born on December 25th. I was born in the month of November. When I refer to the day when Divine Love was born, I’m talking about God the Mother and God the Father. I’m talking about the day when their Divine Love for each other first emerged in Creation. It was the day when everything — absolutely everything — changed. It was the day — the actual day in the far, far distant past (before the time of the “Big Bang”) — when they made the choice to live for each other. It’s the day when the Christ was born — NOT, I’d like to reiterate, the day when I, Jesus, was born, but the day when Mother-and-Father-Together-As-Christ were born. When their new reality was born. When their new relationship was born. None of us would be here today if they hadn’t made that choice.

A: So you’re saying that God the Mother and God the Father have an actual calendar of the kind we would recognize here on Planet Earth, and that the day of December 25th is marked on this calendar? This seems like too much of a coincidence.

J: God isn’t using a human calendar. Humans are using a divine calendar. God the Mother and God the Father are pretty good at math, you could say. It wasn’t difficult for them to set up indications of their calendar system all over the known baryonic universe. Planet Earth runs on the same calendar system that angels use. More or less. There are cycles that can’t be argued with, cycles that are fixed by astronomical and mathematical realities. Solar and lunar and galactic cycles dictate the calendar, not the other way around. Humans didn’t “invent” this calendar. They simply noted its existence.

A: Ah. The Preexistent Calendar. I’d love to see what the theologians will do with this theory!

J: The cycles are real and meaningful to all souls. The Church liturgical calendar needs to honour and respect these cycles. Obviously there can’t be too many “fixed liturgical days” because there has to be room for change in patterns depending on latitude and longitude. The time of regeneration, rebirth, and regrowth changes depending on where you live. The Church has to make allowances for these scientific realities.

A: Any other suggestions?

J: Yes. The Church should get rid of Holy Week entirely, including all the bells and whistles such as Lent. In its place, they should institute at a different time of year a brand new 3-day Festival of Redemption. Like Christmas, it would be a “fixed” celebration, celebrated by all Christians at the same time each year.

A: This is an entirely new idea. What would the purpose be?

J: The Festival of Redemption would be a time for Christians to stop their busy everyday lives and get together for workshops, seminars, and conferences on the theme of helping each other heal. Workshops could be held locally in the homes of individuals. Or they could be held in larger venues, such as university campuses. Not everyone would want to experience this festival in the same way — and this is as it should be because souls have different needs and different learning styles. In fact, there should NOT be one particular fixed geographical location or “pilgrimage” site for this Festival. Having “special sites” would undermine the purpose of the Festival. The idea that only some sites are “sacred” or “specially blessed by God” is a human idea. Every square inch of Creation is sacred and blessed by God as far as the angels are concerned.

A: Something tells me the Biblical idea of specific sites sanctified by God is another idea that’s going to be going into the garbage can along with the Easter eggs.

J: Hey. Don’t throw out the chocolate bunnies. They’re one of the only parts of Easter worth keeping. That and the big family dinners.

A: Amen to that.

JR50: Fourth Step: Insist on Balance

A: In the past couple of weeks we’ve been talking about ways to help heal the church. What other suggestions do you have for Christians who want to live a life of faith without compromising their logic or their ethic of inclusiveness?

J: I’d definitely say the Church needs to teach holistic balance. They need to teach people on an ongoing basis how to balance the mind, body, heart, and soul.

A: This is a topic that could fill many, many books.

J: All the better. As I’ve said before, the path to peace begins with education, not with piety and not with covenant.* The Church needs to expand the source material it relies on to teach its new insights. The Bible by itself won’t cut it. Not even the parts of the Bible that teach the truth about God the Mother, God the Father, and me. You can only read from the Gospel of Mark so many times. You need some other source material to work with.

A: Can you give some examples?

Think of your life as a series of braids. You can see the individual strands of heart, mind, body, and soul, but you do your best to weave them together into braids that are much stronger together than individual strands alone.

“Jesus said: Blessed are those who have been persecuted within themselves. They have really come to know the Father” (Gospel of Thomas 69a). Think of your life as a series of braids. You can see the individual strands of heart, mind, body, and soul, but when you do your best to weave them together with self-honesty (“persecution within themselves”), you have a braid that’s many times stronger than the strands could be by themselves. Photo credit Image*After.

J: Actually, a lot of open-minded ministers are already including other source materials in their services. They’re using poetry, music, dance, art, drama, and spontaneous prayer to expand the scope of their services — to let the experience breathe. There still needs to be some structure to the service — it isn’t healthy, especially for younger children, if ministers do away entirely with a recognizable format — but these other “languages” are valid ways for people to connect with God’s voice. The important thing here is to be conscious of the content and — most importantly — the intent of the other source materials that are being chosen. The intent is what matters. There’s no point filling a service with new songs and new poems if the new material tells people the same thing they’ve been told for centuries — that they’re unworthy of God’s forgiveness and love and guidance. The new material must encourage people to think in positive ways about themselves and their relationship with God.

A: While not overdoing the whole self-esteem thing.

J: Yes. It’s not helpful for a service to slide in the direction of Prosperity Gospel teachings. Prosperity preachers are no more balanced than fire-and-brimstone preachers. Prosperity Gospel teaches various versions of the “God-As-the-Great-Gumball-Machine-in-the-Sky” doctrine — various versions of the “God has to give you whatever want if you ask in the right way” theory.** These teachings feed — and feed upon — people’s undiagnosed status addiction. It’s not a healthy way to be in relationship with God. A healthy relationship with God involves a balance between your own needs and other people’s needs, a balance between encouraging people to be their best selves and encouraging them to take responsibility for harmful choices they’ve made on purpose. The Church’s job is to help people recognize and maintain this balance.

A: So you don’t recommend that ministers get rid of the Prayer of Confession in their services?

J: The Prayer of Confession is a crucial part of helping people recognize the balance. Of course, the Prayer of Confession needs to be written with the utmost care. It needs to strike the proper balance between encouraging people to be honest about their intentional errors while at the same time leaving room for them to feel optimistic about their ability to learn from their mistakes and to feel God’s forgiveness.

A: I remember with excruciating clarity the penitential prayer (or “preface” prayer) from the 1962 Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The Communion Service prepared us for the sacrament of the Eucharist by having us all recite in unison, “We do not presume to come to this thy table, O Merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table [emphasis added]. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.” This prayer always made me feel like crap. The line about not being worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under the table stuck in my head, too, as I’m sure the authors of the prayer intended. In the Anglican Church’s newest prayer book for Canada — The Book of Alternative Services — this prayer has ostensibly been removed from the new Holy Communion service. But the intent is still there.

J: This is exactly the sort of prayer that’s harmful to people’s relationship with God rather than helpful.

A: I think many church leaders and church elders and even some Christian parents are afraid that if faithful Christians aren’t forced onto their knees in fear and obedience then mass chaos will erupt in our society, and civilization will fall apart.

J: Yes. Many church elders do believe this. They believe this because they’ve been told to believe this by authority figures in their lives — whether parents, ministers, theologians, saints, or scripture. They’re genuinely frightened. They believe they’re doing the right thing in promoting this kind of fear in people’s relationship with God.

A: What’s your suggestion for healing this problem in the Church?

J: Ministers and church elders must look to the second step of the Peace Sequence for guidance. The Peace Sequence I taught was education-then-mentorship-then-personal-responsibility-then-peace. Those called to the task of ministering to the spiritual aspect of humanity must first be educated. Then they must accept the mantle of mentorship. They must stop trying to “save souls” and instead start trying to “mentor brains.” A minister in the third millennium must be a bit of a jack-or-jill-of-all-trades — knowledgeable about the history of the church and the history of church doctrine, but also aware of trends in science, psychotherapy, the arts, and politics. An effective minister isn’t somebody who’s hiding his or her head in the sand like an ostrich. An effective minister isn’t somebody who preaches “escape from the sins and evils of the world.” Instead, an effective minister is someone who isn’t afraid to look at Creation in holistic ways, balanced ways, and wonder-filled ways. An effective minister is someone who teaches people how to live as a human being according to the needs and wishes of the soul.

A: The good soul.

J: Yes. The good soul that everyone is.

A: I suspect that most people in the world today wouldn’t even know how to begin to imagine what Church would look like if it operated in this way.

J: Well, for starters, the Church would be a place that’s integrated into the wider community. This idea isn’t really new. Many heart-based Christians have tried to take the church into the community and the community into the church. This is admirable. The great stumbling block to progress in this endeavour has always been the doctrines. It’s the doctrines themselves — and the intent behind those doctrines — that drive a wedge between the church and the community. You can’t go around preaching that you’re chosen by God to be saved and not have people notice how hypocritical your claims of love and forgiveness really are.

People these days have access to information — lots and lots of information. They find out pretty quickly when pastors and priests have been charged with crimes against their neighbours. It looks hypocritical. And, indeed, it is.

A: I spent two years in full-time studies with theology students, most of whom planned to go on for ordination. Even among United Church candidates, there’s a belief that ministers-in-training are there because they’ve been “called.” I have no problem in general with the idea of people feeling called to particular tasks in life. But this was different. These ministers-in-training seemed to believe that their call was somehow “more special” than other people’s calls. They didn’t see their job as just another job on a par with teaching or medical care or firefighting or environmental cleanup. They thought they were somehow “different.” I also noticed that a few of these ministers-in-training got a strange light in their eye when they talked about their special — and highly controlled — right to bless the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It was not a pretty sight. It was clear some of them wanted the status of being “specially chosen by God” to bless the Elements, and maybe even facilitate their Transubstantiation into something more elevated.

J: Well, as for that, there’s no transubstantiation — no transformation of the “inner reality” of the bread and wine. There’s mystery and wonder in every stick of bread that’s baked in the world, and the Church’s bread is no better. Unfortunately, there are too many priests and too many ministers who want the Church’s bread to be better so they themselves can claim to be a unique and indispensable part of bringing the bread of God to the people of God. This is not mentorship. This is exactly what it sounds like — narcissism.

A: So part of the journey of healing the church is to heal what it means to be a minister.

J: Yes. The minister himself or herself must first understand what it means to live a life of balance — a life in which the needs of mind, body, heart, and soul are recognized for what they are.

It should go without saying that a religious acolyte who intentionally chooses a life of imbalance — who intentionally chooses a life of asceticism and celibacy and seclusion and obsessive forms of daily worship — is not ever going to be “simpatico” with his own soul. And he’s never going to be equipped to guide others. He’s never going to have the personal tools necessary to become a spiritual mentor to others. He who preaches the importance of balance but doesn’t live according to the needs of balance is a hypocrite.

A: As I recall, this was one of your favourite themes 2,000 years ago.

J: Hypocrisy and narcissistic intent are incestuous bedmates in the history of orthodox Western Christianity. Where you find one, you always find the other.

* See The Peace Sequence.

** See also The Law of Attraction in the Gospel of Matthew.

JR49: Third Step: Invite Our Mother to the Table

A: Last time we spoke, the idea of the “scandal of particularity” sort of popped onto the page. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, and I’d like to return to that idea if it’s okay with you.

J: Fine by me.

A: You said — and I quote — “There IS a ‘scandal of particularity,’ but it applies to God the Mother and God the Father, not to me.” Can you elaborate on this?

J: Orthodox Western Christianity — the religious structure built on the teachings of Paul and Paul’s orthodox successors — has worked very hard in the last few centuries to “reposition” me, Jesus son of Joseph, in the marketplace of world opinion. Many critics of Christianity have pointed out how damaging and abusive it is to claim that God “became” one particular man in one particular place at one particular point in time. No end of systemic abuse has been voluntarily created by Church representatives because of this claim. Claims about me have been used to justify maltreatment of women, violence against Jews, and attacks on the “inferiority” of all other religious traditions.

Christians who think that I, Jesus, am happy about their claims should check out the current song by Christina Perri called “Jar of Hearts.”* “Jar of Hearts” is a song about a person who has finally figured out how abusive her former partner is. “Who do you think you are?” she asks with no holds barred, “running’ ’round leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts, and tearing love apart.” This song reflects quite accurately how I feel about “Mother Church.” I want no part of the traditional teachings about Jesus the Saviour. If they want to keep their Saviour, they’ll have to find a new candidate, because this particular angel has resigned. Quit. Left the building. I’m tired of being their whipping boy.

A: Not quite the answer I was expecting.

J: People think that angels have no feelings. Well, I have plenty of feelings about the way the Church has abused me and those I love. I forgive individual church leaders — those who have perpetrated great harm in the name of God and Jesus — but I feel the pain intensely. Forgiveness isn’t the same thing as sweeping great harms under the carpet. Forgiveness is first and foremost a state of honesty — honesty about the intent and the injury inflicted by the intent. The intent of the Church’s teachings about me (Jesus) and about sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God is selfish and narcissistic. These teachings promote physiological addiction disorders. They harm lives. They harm relationships. They harm the understanding of humanity’s role in Creation. I do not respect these teachings, and I do not support the right of the Church to teach abusive spirituality to desperate people. Abuse is abuse. Western society as a whole no longer supports or condones spousal abuse or child abuse or corporate abuse. Yet Western society continues to condone spiritual abuse. This must stop.

A: Many Christians have noticed the problem of abuse in the Church and have decided to walk away from the Church. They don’t see how it can be fixed.

J: People want and need to be in relationship with God. They need faith in their lives. Unfortunately, the Church has taken terrible advantage of this need.

A: I haven’t seen much willingness among Christians I know to ask tough questions about Church doctrine. They’re trying to change the window dressings while the basement foundation is full of rot. No wonder people are leaving the mainstream churches in droves! At least in Canada they are. Can’t comment on the experience in other countries.

J: In Canada there’s such a widespread ethos of inclusiveness, access to public health services and public schooling, government accountability, gender equality, and prevention of child abuse that individual Canadians aren’t seeing their day-to-day ethos reflected in the core teachings of the orthodox Church.

A: Because it’s not there. The words are there, but not the underlying ethos.

J: No. The ethos isn’t there. The Church can talk till it’s blue in the face about the importance of service work and mission, but regular people can still sense there’s “something wrong with the picture.” They can sense there’s rot in the foundations. And they don’t want to be a part of that. Some of them decide to leave the church. Others stay and do their best to try to fix it from within. But there’s mass confusion. And people are starving — literally starving — for a faith experience that makes sense to them at the deepest possible level of the heart.

(c) Image*After

“A woman in the crowd said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you. He said to her: Blessed are they who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed is the womb that has not conceived and the breasts that have not given milk'” (Gospel of Thomas 79 a-b). The Gospel of Thomas follows a minority voice in Judaism that speaks of women in a positive light and shows them as being equal to men in God’s community (rather than inferior knock-offs). This particular saying in Thomas goes even further and talks about God the Mother as one who shouldn’t be understood in terms of ordinary human motherhood. As Co-Creator of everything in the universe, our blessed Divine Mother is beyond our simple conceptions of what it means to be a mother. When compared to Hellenistic cult images of the Divine Mother (for example, the multi-breasted Artemis figure from Ephesus), it’s easy to see why Jesus faced an uphill battle in changing people’s perception of God. Photo credit Image*After.

A: For 2,000 years now we’ve been saddled with a religion that absolutely insists in no uncertain terms how ludicrous it is to even consider the remote possibility that possibly — just possibly — God might not be a “he” but might instead be a “he and a she.” It’s okay, of course, for us to bust our brains on the question of the Trinity and all the other “mysteries” that go with traditional Christianity. But it’s not okay for us to suppose that God is two people united forever in divine marriage with each other.**

J: Such a portrayal of God brings with it all sorts of implications the Church doesn’t want to deal with. For one thing, they’d have to explain why and how they “kidnapped” our Divine Mother, why they eradicated her from the message. They’d have to explain — at least in the Roman Catholic Church — why they allowed a cult to flourish around the fictional character of Mary, Mother of God.

A: You did have a mother. And her name was Miriam.

J: Yes. But she was no more the Mother of God than I was God incarnate. She was a normal human mother. That’s it.

A: Two flesh and blood people — you and your human mother — who’ve been turned into myths, lies, and symbols.

J: Meanwhile, there’s a very real and very particular Mother in Creation. God the Mother. This is the scandal of particularity I was referring to — the scandal of God the Mother and God the Father being two particular, definable, real, knowable people. Real people who have existed and continue to exist in real time and real space and real history. Real people who refuse to be moulded by the grandiose lies made by assorted religious mystics over the centuries. Real people who belong to each other — not to their children — in marital love. Real people who are our PARENTS. Real people who get hurt when their dysfunctional human children try to cross the boundaries of safety and trust between parents and children by engaging in occult practices — especially occult sexual practices.

A: Mystics have often described their “union with God” as a mystical marriage, with God as the bridegroom and the mystic or the church as the bride.

J: Yeah. And for the record, that’s another doctrine that’s gotta go. It’s highly dyfunctional and abusive for children to want to have sex with their own parents. This should go without saying. But for too long the Church has condoned mystical practices that lead in this direction.

A: Who can forget Bernini’s sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila with her mouth agape and her toes curled in orgasmic ecstasy?

J: Here’s a thought. Maybe we should butt out of the personal relationship between God the Mother and God the Father — their private life — and get on with the important job of being their children. For starters, human beings of faith could be nice to our Mother for a change. You know, talk to her. Include her. Invite her to the table of faith. Look to her for guidance and inspiration. Say thank you to her. Look her in the eye and say, “Thank you for loving me.”

A: It’s amazing how effective the Church’s strategy has been. They’ve managed to put blinders on people’s eyes so they literally can’t see God the Mother. She’s the Invisible Woman in Western theology. She’s standing right in front of us, waving her arms and jumping up and down, and people of faith still don’t see her.

J: If that isn’t gender abuse, I don’t know what is.

* “Jar of Hearts” was written by Drew C. Lawrence, Christina J. Perri, and Barrett N. Yeretsian.

** See also “A Divine Love Story” and “How My Experience as a Chemist has Influenced My Mysticism.”

JR48: Second Step in Healing the Church: Restore the Mystery of Divine Love

A: I was rearranging a couple of my bookshelves yesterday — actually, I was tidying up because my parents are coming over — and I felt drawn to set aside a book I picked up last fall in the remaindered book section at Chapters. It’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Christian Mysteries by Ron Benrey (New York: Alpha-Penguin, 2008). It’s not a bad little book. And it sure beats trying to wade through Jaroslav Pelikan’s massive 5 volume history of church doctrine.

Anyway, Benrey’s book is divided into 4 parts and a total of 24 chapters. Part 1 is called “The Christian Mindbenders.” The 6 mysteries included in Part I are “the mystery of the incarnation,” “the mystery of the trinity,” “the mystery of Jesus’ dual natures,” “the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection,” “the mystery of the atonement,” and “the mystery of the last things.” A few days ago, you said there’s not enough mystery in the church.* Yet Bender has filled a whole book with Christian mysteries of various sorts — most of which you’ve trashed in your discussions with me. So I’m wondering if we can return to the question of mystery in the church today. How do you envision the role of mystery in healing the church?

J: First, it’s important for church leaders to accept that people want and need mystery. If you strip away the mystery, all you really have is a secular service club devoted to charitable causes. That’s not faith. Faith and mystery go hand in hand.

Strange as it may sound, mystery is always associated with a sense of movement, beauty, grace, and transformation. Photo (c) Image*After

“Jesus said: Images are visible to people, but the love within them is hidden in the image of the Father’s love. He will be revealed but his image is hidden by his love” (Gospel of Thomas 83). Standard translations of this saying use the word “light” where I’ve used the word “love.” But for Jesus, Divine Love — rather than hidden knowledge — was the great light that shines upon us all. There was no word in Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic that adequately captured this concept of love, so he sometimes used the Greek word φως (phos) to try to capture the intensity and sense of life in God’s love. Strange as it may sound, mystery and love are always associated with a sense of movement, beauty, grace, and transformation. Photo credit Image*After.

A: Why?

J: Because faith — as opposed to piety or fear of God — is about relationship with God. And as soon as you start talking about relationships, you start entering the realm of mystery.

A: That feeling of awe about somebody else’s gifts and gaffes — their amazing courage, their brilliant insights, their hilarious mistakes.

J: Perhaps the greatest mystery of all is consciousness — what it means to be a person. This mystery extends to the origins of our divine Mother and Father. God the Mother and God the Father are distinct consciousnesses — two distinct people — with vastly different talents and abilities, yet they share their journey together in the deepest love and trust and gratitude. What they create together is so much bigger than what either could create alone. There’s an immense sense of wonder on the part of all angels at the richness and kindness and patience that’s infused in everything our Mother and Father create together. The creations themselves are cause for much appreciation and emulation. But it’s not the creations themselves (stars, moons, planets) that convey to us — their angelic children — the deepest sense of divine mystery. It’s the love itself. The deepest mystery — the startling mystery, the core mystery, the infinite puzzle — is the mystery of divine love. And this is a mystery based on relationship.

A: Some Christian theologians like to talk about the “scandal of particularity.” In Christian terms, it’s related to the doctrine of the incarnation — the idea that God entered one particular, limited existence. Namely you. It’s interesting that what you’re describing as the mystery of divine love sounds nothing like the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, yet it sounds an awful lot like the scandal of particularity — though not at first. You have to ponder the feeling for a while to notice the connection . . . which reminds me that I’ve noticed over the years that some of the doctrines Christians cling to so desperately contain an echo or a hint of something true. The doctrines have become all twisted around and knotted so we can’t see the original truth anymore. But at the same time we don’t want to let them go because we sense there’s something important there.

J: You’ve really nailed that. There IS a “scandal of particularity,” but it applies to God the Mother and God the Father, not to me.

A: I’ve been hanging around with you for too long.

J: The same thing applies to the idea of the Christ archetype. I was not — and am not –THE Christ. The original Christ archetype is held by God the Mother and God the Father TOGETHER. I seek to emulate their courage, their love, their devotion as an angel, as a child of God, and in so far as I choose to emulate their example, I am a “small-c” christ. But when angels think of Christ, we think of our divine parents. We think of God. It’s a term of affection. And gratitude. It’s a positive epithet. But Paul and his successors took this term of affection and turned it into a word that means power and control and hierarchy. They mutated and subverted the meaning of everything that God the Mother and God the Father stand for together as the Christ.

Sure, there really is a Christ. And sure, regular Christians don’t want to let go of the idea that there’s a Christ. But they’re pinning the tail on the wrong donkey. I’m not the Christ. I’m a child of Christ — as, indeed, are all souls in Creation.

A: When we started talking about the “scandal of particularity” a few minutes ago, I got my butt off my chair and retrieved another book — this one called Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes, edited by Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005). In it there’s an article called “God With Us in the Dust” by Karen Baker-Fletcher (pages 188-190). Baker-Fletcher says this:

“What, then, is the difference between Jesus and other humans? It is not that we are like Jesus in the suffering we humans endure. It is the other way around; Jesus is like us, relates to us, identifies with us, having experienced the violent consequences of human sin. Jesus is like us because Jesus has been sinned against. He therefore can identify with human suffering. Jesus is like us because Jesus also feasts and rejoices with us. But we are not Christs [emphasis added]. Jesus does not sin but is sinned against. Jesus is unlike us because he is the Christ, the anointed one, one with God. God alone in Christ can promise restoration, redemption, salvation. As human beings we may participate in this activity, but we do not initiate it (page 189).”

How do you respond to these thoughts?

J: Well, she’s managed rather neatly to allude to the Christian mysteries of the incarnation, the trinity, Jesus’ dual natures, Jesus’ resurrection, the atonement, and the last things all in one paragraph. She gets points for brevity. But she gets no points for understanding my ministry or my true relationship with God.

A: You’ve said in the past that all human beings have the potential to live as Christs-in-human-form.

J: Yes. It’s a question of living your human life in imitation of Christ — not as Paul taught the Christ, but as I and others have taught the Christ. Since I am not the Christ, there’s no point living your life in imitation of me. On the other hand, since God the Mother and God the Father ARE the Christ, it’s a pretty good bet that if you live your life in imitation of their love — their courage, their devotion, their gratitude, their trust — you’re going to be “in the zone.”

A: In the Christ Zone, as you’ve called it before.

J: Yes. I’ve called it the Christ Zone for a modern audience but 2,000 years ago I called it . . .

A: The Kingdom of the Heavens.

J: Same thing, different name. It’s not the name that matters, after all. It’s the intent. Paul’s intent — his choice of ground on which to sow the seeds of human potential — was barren and rocky because he didn’t actually want people to understand their potential to initiate the activities of healing, forgiveness, and redemption. He wanted them to feel helpless and hopeless about themselves so they would turn first and foremost to church leaders (such as himself) for authority and guidance.

A: And you?

J: I wanted people to feel helpful and hopeful about themselves so they would turn to God the Mother and God the Father for direct guidance.

A: How very Protestant of you.

* Please see First Step in Healing the Church: Rescue the Soul.

JR47: "Knowledge" Versus "Truth"

A: Tell me how you would explain the difference between “knowledge” and “truth.” There seem to be a lot of different theories floating around.

J: Here’s one of the problems with relying too heavily on words. One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “truth.” One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “wisdom.” One person’s “knowledge” is another person’s “fact.” Words can be very messy, very sloppy. It’s important for individuals to be clear about their use of abstract words like these.

A: Okay. How do you, as a soul-in-angel-form and speaker of the English language, use the word “knowledge”?

J: I use the word “knowledge” to mean an accumulation of facts. Lots of raw facts. These facts may or may not be connected to each other. But there are lots of them. Lots of different facts that can be accessed from memory or from sources such as books or computers to answer specific questions of fact.

A: Like the question and answer pairs on Jeopardy.

J: Exactly. These question and answer pairs rely on logic and reason. But there’s usually little emotional content. And there’s no need for “insight” or “understanding” or “truth.” The facts speak for themselves. Of course, as human Jeopardy contenders recently discovered, a honkin’ big computer can access raw facts — “knowledge” — faster than most human brains can.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear(respect) the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body” (Proverbs 3:5-8). If you really want to heal your relationship with God, try humbly accepting you probably have a lot of old beliefs that are messing up the way your brain works. Certain beliefs about God can “freeze up” your neural networks and prevent your brain from being able to process Divine guidance. Without easy access to your Divine guidance, you’re limited to the ideas inside your own brain. And let’s face it, some of those ideas are probably pretty stupid (like Young Earth Creationism). The Truth about you and God (a wonderful Truth!) is already deep within you, but first you have to melt the ice that’s keeping you from feeling your Soul pathways. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J (Cont): Having said that, I want to make it clear that I’m not dissing the importance of “knowledge.” It’s important to be able to remember and access facts. Facts give information about things that are already known, already certain — things that are “a done deal.” Facts help ground the learning process. In fact, learning can’t take place at all in the absence of facts. This is true even in fields such as philosophy and theology. The universe isn’t reinventing itself every few seconds like some big relativistic, existential “symbol” in the sky (as some religious philosophers would have you believe). There are fixed facts, fixed historical realities that guide all choices made by God and God’s angels. The universe has a history — a factual history — that can’t be changed. The universe’s past has a measurable effect on its present. The past matters. And the past is fact — not fiction. The past can’t be altered. Time is linear. Even for God.

A: This will come as a great disappointment to fans of time travel stories. And to theologians who insist that All Time has been known to God since the very beginning. God’s foreknowledge of all that will happen in the future is the basis of Christian “predestination” — the doctrine that says God already knows ahead of time who will be saved in the End Times.

J: Another example of old lies begetting new lies, as you put it. The first lie, of course, was the lie that souls desperately need to be saved from hell and judgment and damnation. But souls don’t need to be saved. Why would God create billions of defective souls that need to be saved by . . . televangelists? Salvation-of-the-soul is a goofy idea from start to finish.

A: But a very profitable one.

J: It’s an interesting fact of neurophysiology that certain forms of serious psychological dysfunction in human beings are accompanied by damage to the parietal lobes of the brain — parts of the brain which are crucial to a person’s ability to relate to time and space. When the volume of the parietal lobes is reduced, and when the density of glial cells is diminished in the parietal-temporal regions, an individual will experience problems understanding boundaries (i.e. his or her location in space) and problems with empathy (i.e his or her location in both time and space — also called boundary issues). These are the individuals who can’t learn from their own mistakes, who can’t empathize with other people’s feelings, who constantly invade other people’s “time and space.”

A: The narcissists.

J: Yes. A narcissist is someone who’s become inwardly focussed to the point of selfishness and self-absorption because he or she has no “brain health” in the areas of time and space — no ability to accurately identify the factual boundaries that surround each soul. She literally can’t see where she ends and another person begins. She can’t see that she’s a separate entity — a separate consciousness — from her neighbour. The boundaries between her and her neighbour exist and are real and are factual. But she can’t see them. It’s all blurry to her. The boundaries exist, but she behaves as if they don’t exist. She behaves as if she and her neighbour “are all one,” as if the neighbour is merely an extension of her own core consciousness. The neighbour, of course, is expected to “behave” — to obey her needs and wishes without question and to reinforce her image of herself as a wonderful person. There’s a perfect analogy for this mindset in the realm of science fiction: Star Trek’s hive queen of the Borg.

A: See, I knew there was good reason for me to be watching the Space Channel.

J: The great thing about the way the Borg Queen character is written is her calm, serene, elevated disposition. She believes her own propaganda about making life better for all the individuals she incorporates into her collective. She goes around telling everyone “we’re all one, we’re all equal.” But what she actually means is, “I’m the only one who really exists, and all you drones are merely inferior beings who were put here to serve me” . . . which brings us to the question of “truth.”

A: The way you’ve just described the Borg Queen reminds me — none too pleasantly — of the modern apocalyptic prophet I spent too much time with a few years ago: Grace. She was always speaking “the truth” that “we’re all one, we’re all equal.” She had the same calm, serene detachment as the Borg Queen. It gave her such an air of believability — even wisdom. She seemed to have let go of all her worries about the past. Very appealing to somebody like me who was dogged by feelings of guilt and shame.

She seemed so believable — until you challenged her. When you challenged Grace’s superiority, her infallibility, it was like a switch went off in her brain. She switched instantly from calm, affable charm to vicious, vengeful violence. The smallest thing could set her off. I still remember the murderous look in her eye one day when I told her that she herself had caused an electrical short in a lighting fixture by twisting the fan/light combo while it was still attached on one side to the ceiling. I could see that she wanted to throw me down the stairs because I’d pointed out her obvious error. The mistake was entirely hers. But she didn’t want to hear about it. She couldn’t handle responsibility for her own mistakes.

J: Good example — though painful. Grace was a person with significant impairment of her biological brain function, as you know. She was able to process “knowledge” — facts — well enough to function in society. She could remember that gas needed to be put in the car, that food had to be bought and prepared. But as for “truth” . . . “truth” was beyond her capacity to grasp because of damage to her biological brain from early, unhealed, profound childhood abuse. Physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. As a result of the abuse, and the biological damage caused by it, Grace couldn’t read “intent.” She couldn’t understand or be honest about her own inner intent. Her intent was to prove to other people that she was better than they were. That’s the honest truth. The truth is that everything Grace did — all her choices — were shaped by her narcissistic intent. Her words about “oneness” and “equality” meant nothing because her actual intent said something different.

A: So you’re drawing a strong link between “intent” and “truth.”

J: Very much so. Facts by themselves are not “truth,” though “truth” is not “truth” without a foundation of facts. Truth — as I’m defining it — is an observation or insight about the way in which seemingly random facts are linked together by underlying strands of intent. The intent is like the subfloor of the factual foundation. The facts lie on top of the intent. The truth builds on both the intent and the facts. For something to be “true” in a philosophical way, it must objectively assess both a collection of facts AND the underlying intent underneath those facts.

A: Are you saying that a person’s “intent” and his/her “starting assumptions” are the same thing?

J (shaking his head): No. A person’s inner intent is more like his inner “purpose” or “goal.” Your intent speaks to the principle of time — where you were in the past, where you are now, and where you want to go. It’s more like conscious motivation. It’s the motivation that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you going, even when things aren’t going well.

A: So it’s teleology?

J: Again, no. Teleology implies there’s a finite, definable end goal or a purpose shaped by the Law of Cause and Effect. “Intent” is not as simple as teleological purpose. “Intent” goes to the very heart of consciousness — what it means to exist as a living consciousness who is separate from (though connected to) other living consciousnesses. Intent can be thought of as a cohesive set of interconnected choices — a series of small choices that, when put together, create one big “meta-choice.” That “meta-choice” is your intent. At a quantum level, “meta-choices” shape the way in which certain energies can and will flow.

A: Can you give us an analogy for that?

J: Sure. I’ll use an analogy I’ve used before — the sower of seeds.

A: I think I see where this is headed . . .

J: In the parable of the sower [Thomas 9; Mark 4], the person — the soul — is the sower of seeds. The seeds represent the person’s potential, the person’s ability to learn, grow, change, and create. But the sower doesn’t create out of thin air. He must plant the seeds — the seeds of potential — in the right place if he wants them to grow. His decision on where to sow the seeds is his intent — his “meta-choice.” The meta-choice is what determines which seeds can and will grow. The seeds don’t grow equally well in all intents. Where seeds fall on a “ground” or “subfloor” of rock, they fail to root and they produce no harvest. Where seeds fall on patches of thorny weeds, they don’t grow and they’re eaten by grubs and caterpillars. There’s nothing wrong with the seeds themselves. The problem lies in the choice of where to plant them. The problem lies with the intent.

A: So a narcissist’s true intent is like the choice to sow seeds on rocky ground or in thorny patches.

J: Or in a bed of fire, as the church likes to recommend.

Seeds don’t grow easily on this rocky ground. “Jesus said: Look, there was a man who came out to sow seed. He filled his hand with seed and threw it about. Some fell onto the road, and birds ate it. Some fell onto rocks and could not root and produced no grain. Some fell into patches of thorny weeds that kept it from growing, and grubs ate it. Some seed fell upon good soil and grew and produced good grain. It was 60 units per measure and 120 units per measure (Gospel of Thomas 9).” Photo credit JAT 2023.

JR46: First Step in Healing the Church: Restore the Soul

A: Jesus, what would you say to those who are asking how we can heal the church of the third millennium?

J: That’s an easy one. First you have to rescue the soul. Not save it. Rescue it. Restore it to the place of sanity it deserves. Give it some credit. Give it some trust. Be kind to it. Rescue it the way you’d rescue a dog who’s been shut out of the house without food or water. Bring it in from the cold.

A: Or in from the fiery pits of hell.

J: There’s a trend at the moment among Progressive Christians who want to try to rescue me. They want to rescue me from the clutches of the evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist Christians. While I appreciate the effort, the Progressive movement won’t solve anything by trying to rescue me. I’m not the problem. And I’m not the solution.

A: In the Christology course I took, we studied a book by Wayne Meeks called Christ Is the Question (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). At the beginning of the book, Meeks identifies this issue. He says, “As a brand of shampoo promises the answer to frizzy hair, a detergent brand the answer to unbright laundry, a new model car the answer to loneliness and (by innuendo) sexual longing, so Jesus is the answer to — what? Whatever you wish. Indeed [mainly in the context of American Protestantism] Jesus has become whatever you wish, an all-purpose brand, the answer to all needs, desires, fantasies, and speculations” (page 2).

J: It’s true. But it’s not really a new development in Christianity. It’s exactly the outcome the apostle Paul desired. From the beginning, Paul’s intention was to convert me — a real flesh and blood person — into the new face of the well-known Saviour brand. Sort of like redoing the label on a familiar brand of soap. You want your target audience to believe your “new and improved” brand of soap can clean away absolutely anything. You know you’re lying, but you hope your audience won’t catch on — at least not until you have their money in your pocket.

A: Old lies beget new lies.

J: There’s nothing to stop people from taking Paul’s imaginary Saviour figure and adding their own imagination to the story. Who’s to say they’re wrong? It happens all the time in story-telling traditions. Somebody comes up with a captivating (but purely fictional) hero or heroine. The character and the plot catch on. Other people start dreaming up their own chapters in the hero’s saga. Some of these catch on, too, and enter the myth. King Arthur is a good example of this. People are still writing their own versions of this story. Five hundred years from now the fanzine additions to favourite comic book heroes will blur together and create one giant new myth about Superman. Traditions evolve. Stories evolve. But story-telling traditions aren’t selling fact. They’re selling story. Fantasy. Speculation.

A: You’re saying that there’s too much story in Christianity and not enough fact.

“Jesus said: If your leaders say to you ‘Look! The Kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the Kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather the Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you. When you understand yourselves you will be understood. And you will realize that you are Children of the living Father. If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty” (Gospel of Thomas 3a and 3b).

 J: Yes. There’s too much story. On the other hand, there’s not nearly enough mystery. When I say mystery, I mean there’s not enough room for individuals to have a transformative experience of redemption. Redemption and divine love and divine forgiveness are emotional experiences that lie well outside the boundaries of pure logic. Words like “wonder” and “gratitude” and “humbleness” spring to mind. But redemption doesn’t just change your thinking. It changes everything — everything in your whole being. It changes the way your physical body works. It changes the way you see colours. It changes the way you see patterns. It changes the way you learn. It changes the way you remember. The way you smell things. The way you feel rain on your skin. The way you eat your food. The way you sleep. The way you dream at night. The way you dream while you’re awake. It changes absolutely everything about your relationship with yourself and with all Creation. Where once you crawled and chewed endlessly as a caterpillar, now you fly with beauty and grace as a winged butterfly and sip from the nectar of flowers. It may sound cliched, but it’s true. The experience of transformation is that profound. You were “you” when you were a caterpillar, and you’re still “you” as a butterfly. But the way in which you relate to the world has been completely altered. Your whole life is completely changed. The change is so sweet. So kind. So mysterious. It takes your breath away.

A (nodding): Even while you’re still living here as a somewhat confused and baffled human being. You don’t have to die to feel the mystery. You have to live.

J: The process of redemption — the experience of mystery — begins for a human being with the soul. The soul is not fictional. The soul is real. The soul — the true core self of each consciousness within Creation — is your laughter. Your empathy. Your conscience. Your curiosity. Your sense of wonder. In other words, all the least explainable, most mysterious parts of being human.

The soul is not one substance, but many substances — many substances of a quantum nature. Its complexity and sophistication at a quantum level lie outside the bounds of current scientific investigation. But this has no bearing one way or the other on the soul’s scientific reality. Scientific researchers have failed to detect many things in nature: the soul is just one of many things on a long list of “undiscovered countries.”

A: How would a renewed understanding of the soul help heal the church today?

J: At the moment the Progressive movement has concluded — based on erroneous starting assumptions — that the past errors of the church include a belief in the eternal soul, a belief in miracles, and (for some) a belief that a guy named Jesus ever existed. They assume that if these “errors” are swept out of the church, and replaced with teachings based on pure logic and pure praxis, or, on the other end of the scale, replaced with teachings based on pure symbolism and hidden truth, then the church could be restored to a state of health and balance. This is not so.

A: They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

J: Yes. They’ve failed to realize that the problem with the church is that church leaders long ago put a lien on people’s souls, as you and I discussed last time.

A: I was pretty indignant, wasn’t I?

J: For good reason. The problem for Christianity is not a belief in the existence of the soul. The problem for Christianity (or rather, one of the problems) is the body of lies being taught about the soul. Over the centuries, Christian orthodoxy has done everything in its power to preserve the lien on the soul so it can preserve its power. The lien has to go. Church leaders are going to have to stand up and be honest about the fact that their teachings on the soul have damaged people’s confidence and trust in God. They need to start from square one on the question of the soul — no resorting to “tradition,” no rooting around in the writings of early Church Fathers for justification. This will be a terrifying prospect for most theologians. But it must be done. The answers to their questions are already there — not in the pages of the Bible, and not in the pages of Plato and Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas and Wesley, but in the pages of God’s scientific reality. Theological inquiry must stop clinging to tradition. You’re in the third millennium now. Start acting like it.

JR45: Lien or No Lien on Your Soul?

My red car (c) JAT 2015

“His disciples said to him: When will the resurrection of the dead take place and when will the new world come? He said to them: What you look for has come, but you do not know it” (Gospel of Thomas 51). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus talks often about “life” and “beginnings,” yet his sayings involving “death” are not what we typically find in eschatological or apocalyptic teachings. Rather, the sayings about “life” and “death” in Thomas seem closely related to parts of the first century CE text known as The Didache, in which “the way of life” and “the way of death” are used as metaphors for how to live a moral life in full relationship with God. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus spends quite a bit of time and energy trying to persuade the disciples to let go of the eschatological doctrines held by the Pharisees and the Essenes at that time.  Photo of my red car. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Last week, I bought a 2007 Pontiac to replace my 1998 Nissan, which was close to death. The Carproof report found a lien against the Pontiac — a financing lien held by Chrysler. At first I wasn’t worried. I figured the paperwork for the clearance of the lien hadn’t yet made it into the computer system at the proper government ministry. But being a thorough person, I decided to phone the ministry yesterday morning to make sure the lien had been cleared. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the lien was still attached to my car! I quickly got the problem straightened out with the dealer I bought the car from. But in the meantime I had a chance to reflect on my feelings about the lien. In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, a person who unwittingly buys a car or house that has a lien against it can lose the property they bought. It can be legally seized by the lien holder if the debt hasn’t been paid by the original debtor. The car you think you own outright can be towed away in the blink of an eye by the original lender. It’s a scary thought.

Anyway, I was thinking about my feelings around the lien on my car. I was noticing how upset I was at the thought that somebody could — theoretically — swoop down on my little Pontiac and take it away with no say on my part. I was thinking how I’d paid for the car in full, how I could lose all the money I’d invested (unless I were inclined to sue, which would cost me even more money). I was thinking how unfair it would be for such a thing to happen. I’d bought the car in good faith. Why should I be punished for somebody else’s mistake? Or somebody else’s willful fraud?

So I’m standing in the bathroom and I’m drying my hair so I can get ready for work and it suddenly dawns on me that the feelings I’m expressing to myself about the lien on the car are the same feelings I have about orthodox Western Christianity’s teachings on the soul. The Church teaches us there’s a lien on our souls!

J (grinning): Yes. Not a nice feeling, is it?

A: No! It totally sucks. I never noticed till yesterday how deeply, deeply unfair the church’s claims are. I knew their claims about the soul were based on the writings of Paul, Tertullian, Augustine, and so on. I knew their claims were self-serving. I knew their claims were just plain wrong in light of God’s loving and forgiving nature. But I never felt the unfairness of it before at such a deep level — at a gut level, a visceral level. It’s just wrong to tell people their soul can be taken away from them by lien-holders. It’s so . . . so . . . unfair. And cruel. It’s cruel to tell people they have to invest themselves wholly in their faith while at any time the great big tow truck in the sky could show up to haul them or their loved ones away to the fiery pits of hell. Not to pay their own debts, but to pay somebody else’s debts! Namely Adam and Eve’s debts!

J: Ah, the wages of sin.

A: Very funny. This God-and-Devil-as-lien-holders thing means that devout Christians are always looking over their shoulder, waiting for the cosmic tow truck they can’t do anything about. It makes people feel helpless. It makes them feel like slaves-in-waiting. Their soul isn’t their own. Their time isn’t their own. Their life and their choices and their free will aren’t really their own. They’re always on tenterhooks because they think they don’t fully own their own soul. This is abusive.

J: That’s why it works. From the perspective of certain members of the church hierarchy — stretching all the way back to the time of Paul and his backers — it’s an excellent strategy for gaining control of the populace. People who feel helpless and hopeless tend to cause less trouble. They ask fewer questions. They tend to do what they’re told because they’re frightened. Frightened people turn to strong leaders — in this case, church leaders. The Church is using a psychological control strategy that other groups in other cultures have used to similar effect. Paul’s teachings have been particularly successful in this regard.

The teachings of myself and other like-minded spiritual teachers are useless for this kind of psychological strategy. Totally useless. You can’t frighten people into submission if you’re actually giving them real hope. Real hope doesn’t come from words. Real hope comes from actions — from people’s ongoing choices to help their neighbours. Real hope comes from healing and relationship and dignity and change. If the early church had wanted to teach real hope, it wouldn’t have chosen the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the Chalcedon Creed as its operative statements of faith.

A: Ah. You mean they might have mentioned the themes of divine love, forgiveness, healing, redemption (as opposed to salvation), and egalitarianism?

J: If the bishops in the first few centuries of Christianity had spent one tenth the time on compassion that they spent on their endless arguments over the “substance” of the Trinity, medieval Europe would have been a much nicer place to live in.

JR44: Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength

This is a research paper I wrote in 2009 for a course on New Testament exegesis. It explains in detail some of the major themes found in the Gospel of Mark. I used Wordperfect’s Greek language symbols to type key words that were relevant to the argument. A few of these Greek letters didn’t survive the “cut and paste process,” so I’ll have to substitute English typeface where necessary (mostly for the vowels “eta,” “iota,” “upsilon,” and “omega”). Sorry about that.

P.S. The paper pasted here is as I wrote it, including the endnotes, where I confess I don’t yet understand how the word “artos” (leavened bread, loaf) is being used by Mark. Since then (with Jesus’ help), I’ve figured it out.

Croatia 34 01

“Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?'” (Mark 8:14-21). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

RADICAL MESSIAH AND THE SHEMA: MARK’S THEMES OF
UNDERSTANDING AND STRENGTH

Graham Stanton, in his discussion about the Gospel of Mark, refers to “Mark’s genius as a story-teller” (41), and says, “perhaps Mark should be seen not so much as a block of toffee (form criticism) or as a string of pearls (redaction criticism), but as a piece of rope with interwoven strands” (41). Later in the chapter, he asks these questions: “Why was this gospel written? Many scholars have proposed quite specific historical or theological settings. But they are usually able to make reasonable sense of only one or two of the many interrelated strands which the evangelist develops” (57-58). One strand which I feel has been overlooked is Mark’s overt addition to the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9) in Chapter12:29 of the Gospel. So obvious would this change have been to a Jewish Christian audience in the early to mid-60’s CE that the question of Mark’s purpose must be raised. What was he signalling to his audience with this change? Why did he dare add to a well-known prayer that, according to the Jewish Study Bible, was being formally recited late in the Second Temple period (379)? It is the thesis of this paper that Mark did not accidentally alter the Shema through lack of knowledge, and that he did not accidentally link the Shema to the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbour as oneself (12:31). There was a purpose to his addition of the phrase “and with all your mind (διανοίας)” to the existing formulation of “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (καρδίας) and with all your soul (ψυχnς) and with all your might (iσχύος).” This supposition is supported by Mark’s repetition of the Shema in 12:32-33, altered yet again, this time without genitive cases, and with a changed emphasis to understanding (συνέσεως). Here the sympathetic – and sensible (νουνεχwς) – scribe is allowed by Mark to voice the two most important commandments: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” The penny then drops for readers as Jesus says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (present tense verb, 12:34). Mark has just presented a major clue to unravelling some of the strands of his gospel.

The altered Shema is part of a teaching chreia (12:28-34) that can be seen, it is argued here, as an early creedal statement, the climax and summary of Jesus’ teachings about what it means to be “not far from the kingdom of God” (12:34). It is difficult to understand Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God, says Mark in different ways throughout the Gospel. Even Jesus’ closest friends, the disciples, do not understand (4:10-13). The whole thing can be boiled down to two commandments (12:28-31), which sound easy at first, but are much more difficult to practice than the old system of “burnt offerings and sacrifices,” a system which requires Jews to show unswerving loyalty. (Loyalty, not private emotion, is the meaning of the verb aheb, “love,” as it applies to the Shema, according to the Jewish Study Bible (380) and Sakenfeld (376)). A big part of Jesus’ version of faith, according to Mark, is the requirement that disciples use their minds. Fideism is not acceptable. God’s faithful must question the specific ways in which religious teachings are being misused (e.g. 2:23-28; 3:1-6; 7:1-23; 12:38-40; 12:41-44), just as in the past Jews once questioned harmful religious and societal conventions (e.g. Exod. 20:2-6; 21:1 – 22:16; 22:20-12). (Mark thus shows Jesus to be following the “wilderness spirit” of the Sinai Covenant in the Torah (cf. Mark 1:3,4,12), as opposed to the Temple and hierarchy-based Zion Covenant presented in the Psalms and the Deuteronomistic History.[1]) God’s faithful must be willing to not only open their hearts and souls to God’s kingdom, but also their minds (διάνοια) – their innate capacity to think and understand in moral ways (Harder 125). Moral thinking and moral decision-making is a higher form of loving God than being obedient and loyal to the laws of the Zion Covenant.

This kind of “thinking faith,” directed towards loving God (e.g. 1:35-39; 15:25-32), loving others (eg. 9:33-37; 10:41-45), and loving themselves (e.g. 12:31)[2], will put them in opposition to others – family (e.g. 3:21; 3:31-35; 10:28-31), friends (e.g. 6:1-3; 14:66-72), Pharisees (e.g. 3:6, 12:13-17), scribes and chief priests (e.g. 2:6-9, 3:16-17; 11:18), and Gentiles (e.g. 5:14-17; 15:16-20) – who choose to follow honour-oriented traditions. Understanding is not an instantaneous gift from God, however (clearly evidenced in 8:14-21)[3]. Nor is understanding a gift conferred only on the disciples closest to Jesus (e.g. 5:33-34; 9:33-37; 10:17-22; 12:34; 14:6-9). Understanding is a long, difficult process which disciples must willingly participate in (e.g. 4:13; 4:33-34; 10:23-27; 13:9-13). It requires strength, a theme which Mark repeatedly intertwines with the requirement for understanding, as shall be shown. God’s faithful must commit their strength (iσχύς) to a process spread out over time and geography (hence Jesus’ travels back and forth across Galilee and adjacent territories) and also over boundaries of class and honour (hence Jesus’ willingness to heal and teach people from disadvantaged groups). It is a process open to all people, regardless of race, religion, gender, state of mental and/or physical health, wealth, or status. But it is a difficult process.

Mark – for all that he is trying to describe a “thinking faith” – seems very wary of directly invoking Hellenistic or Judeo-Hellenistic notions of philosophy, rational thought, or “wisdom” (σοφία). Σοφία is used 51 times in the New Testament, but only once in Mark (on the lips of the surprised synagogue attendees in 6:2). The adjective σοφός appears 22 times in the New Testament, but not once in Mark. Whatever claim Mark is making, it is not a claim for σοφία (wisdom, insight, intelligence, knowledge, divine knowledge). He prefers the cognates of the more “practical” verbs συνίημι (understand, comprehend, perceive, have insight into) and διαλογίζομαι (discuss, argue, consider, reason, wonder about, question). It is notable that, although he uses the adverb νουνεχwς once, and the verb νοέω a few times, he does not use the Greek word νοuς, a noun meaning perception, understanding, thoughts, or reason. Νοuς is attested since Linear B; it was used by Plato to mean “the highest of the three parts of the soul” (Harder 122), and still later used in the post-canonical, apocryphal era of Jewish literature in a sense associated with the will or deliberation (Harder 125). It is difficult to tell whether Mark avoids using νοuς because in Hebrew there is no direct equivalent for it, and the Septuagint rarely uses it (Harder 124) (compare to Paul, who uses it in Romans and 1 Corinthians); or whether Mark avoids using it because he has a general tendency to not include abstract “wisdom words” such as “peace,” “hope,” and “righteousness” words in his writing[4].

It is interesting to ponder Mark’s non-use of the “wisdom words” frequently attested in books of the Old Testament, as well as in the other Gospels, Acts, and the accepted letters of Paul. Certainly it can be argued that these words are malleable enough to serve any purpose (“Peace in our time!”). Perhaps, by not making abundant use of “wisdom words,” Mark hopes to make his readers think, to apply their minds in new ways to the difficult question of what it means to be close to the kingdom of God. (Mark himself lends this impression in 13:14, where he suddenly interjects with “let the reader understand (νοείτω).”) “Out with the poetry, in with the praxis,” seems to be his approach. He therefore intentionally avoids “telling us” at length what Jesus said, and insists on “showing us” what Jesus did – what Jesus’ actions and choices were, where he went, who he talked to, who he aided, and what he did despite his friends’ lack of courage, faith, and love. Mark’s Radical Messiah is a man of relatively few words who teaches by example, and is not interested in raising his own status. (Even the scribe in 12:28-34 is accorded great dignity by Jesus – and also by Mark.) Therefore, for Mark, the examples are what matter most. (By contrast, Matthew’s Jesus seems very fond of the sound of his own voice, and John’s Jesus has a case of the “I ams.”)

It is clear from a review of word usage articles that, by the first century CE, there was a blurring between Jewish and Hellenistic concepts of heart, mind, and soul, and this may explain why Mark felt he needed to add to the traditional phrasing of the Shema. In the Septuagint translation of the Shema, for instance, leb is rendered as καρδία; yet Holloday’s Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon shows 11 different meanings for leb: the physical heart organ; the seat of vitality; the seat of one’s feelings and impulses; mind, character, disposition, inclination, loyalty, concern; determination, courage, high morale; intention, purpose; mind, attention, consideration, understanding; the self; conscience; metaphorically the “interior” or “middle”; and finally the organizing power of living beings (nefesh – the word which is translated as ψυχή in the Septuagint’s version of the Shema ) (171-172). Harder points out that Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew leb or lebab as νοuς only six times, as διάνοια 38 times, and as καρδία in most other instances (124). Sorg reports that the Septuagint occasionally translates leb as ψυχή (181). Meanwhile, ψυχή itself (used 101 times in the New Testament) encompasses a broad range of meanings: the whole person or creature; a person’s actual, physical life; the seat of the emotions; the inner life or personality of a person; the part of the person that lives on after death (Harder 682-686; Carrigan). Καρδία can be used literally to mean the physical heart, or it can be used metaphorically. In the New Testament, it is used in 148 passages with a variety of meanings: the seat of intellectual and spiritual life; the inner person or personality/ego; the seat of doubt and hardness; the mind or reason; will, desire, intention (Sorg 182-183). To state, as Cameron does, that “since Hebrew psychology lacked precise terminology, there is some overlapping in the use of nepesh, leb/lebab, and ruah” is something of an understatement. Perhaps Mark, aware of the confusion amongst Jews and Jewish Christians about the meanings of leb and καρδία, nefesh and ψυχή, decides to make certain that no one can dispute the necessity of “mind” and “understanding” (as distinct from Hellenistic wisdom!) by his explicitly including both διανοίας and συνέσεως in the crucial teaching chreia of 12:28-34.

Mark wants to talk about the Radical Messiah’s “thinking faith,” but at the same time he demonstrates a prudent fear of both Jewish and Roman authorities. He does not wish to be arrested for apostasy or political treason (he is writing during a time of heightened political-religious conflict, both within Judaism itself, and between Judaism and the Roman Empire). Therefore, while he shies away from “wisdom words,” he makes ample use of allegory. It is difficult, for instance, to see Mark’s repeated use of boat crossings on the “Sea” of Galilee as anything but a metaphor. It is a lake, after all, and not a very big one, at that – a fact that early Jewish Christian readers in the region would have known. Pheme Perkins points out that the Q Source has no sayings about fishing or grapes, and no stories about storms on the Sea of Galilee (94-95). Mark, however, introduces the Sea of Galilee, fishermen, and boats in his first chapter (1:16, 1:16-20, and 1:19-20 respectively). He is hinting at something. What does a boat do? we then must ask. A boat helps us cross the waters. What have bodies of water traditionally represented in Jewish thought? The forces of chaos that are overcome by the sovereign powers of God (Gen. 1:2 – 2:3). And how does one overcome the forces of chaos? In part, by using one’s strength – at which point it is very hard to overlook the similarity in sound between the word for “fish” (iχθύς) and the word for “strength” (iσχύς). (We know that Paul uses plays on words, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that Mark does the same.) Once this is observed, the two miraculous feedings of the crowd with bread and fish (6:34-44 and 8:1-9) become emblematic of the “strength” with which Jesus feeds the people [5,6] – the same strength that is spoken of in a positive light twice in 12:28-34, in a negative light in 14:37, in a perplexing light in 3:27 and 5:4, and in a contextual way in 15:46, where Joseph of Arimathea has the strength to roll a “very large rock” across the tomb by himself.

In the important verses of 8:14-21, Mark draws an overt link between the allegorical feedings – with their relationship to the theme of strength – and the issue of understanding. Here, while Jesus and the disciples are sitting yet again in their boat (8:14 – the final reference to boats in the Gospel of Mark), Jesus castigates the disciples harshly, in several different ways, because they do not yet understand (νοεiτε) or realize (συνίετε). This pericope is filled with Greek verbs related to the thinking faculties of people (thinking faculties which include input from the senses): the disciples “forgot” the bread (8:14); Jesus cautions them to “see” the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod (8:15); the disciples “reasoned” among themselves (8:16); Jesus “knows” their attempt at reasoning and asks them why they are still “reasoning” that way instead of “understanding” and “realizing” (8:17); have their “hearts” been hardened? Jesus asks (8:17); do they have “eyes” that don’t see, and “ears” that don’t hear? (8:18); do they not “remember”? (8:18); do they not yet understand? (8:21). Verses 14-21 of Chapter 8 can be seen to conclude and epitomize the first half of Mark’s Gospel, as some scholars have suggested (Perkins 131); however, reading the Gospel in this way does, as Perkins points out, present “as much of a challenge to the audience as the ending of the Gospel does” (131) because of its critical depiction of the disciples. The disciples, both male and female, lack understanding and strength. They have not applied “all their mind” and “all their strength” to loving God or their teacher, Jesus, and therefore – unlike the scribe of 12:28-34 and perhaps unlike Joseph of Arimathea – they have not been able to draw near to the kingdom of God. It is not enough to be loyal, according to Mark. It is not enough to be close to the Rabbi. The disciples will not be able to understand what the kingdom of God is like until they give themselves heart, soul, mind, and strength to the praxis of loving God and loving other people, the sort of praxis which Jesus models on every page of this complex gospel.

ENDNOTES

1. The two covenant thesis in the Jewish Bible is convincingly argued by W.M.

2. Not all scholars agree that 12:29 commands people to love themselves (Klassen 389).

3. Mark does not tell us how Jesus acquired his understanding. We know only that God has adopted Jesus as his son (1:11 and 9:7), and is well pleased with him.

4. In marked contrast to other New Testament authors such as Matthew, Luke in Luke/Acts, and Paul, Mark uses the words “peace” (only 3 times), “hope” (zero times), “love” (X 4), “joy” (X 1), “freedom” (X 0), “glory” (X 3), “just/righteous” (X 3) or “holy” (X 7). (Nelson’s Concordance)

5. I have not yet figured out how “artos” is being used in these passages.

6. In this context, the numerological references in the two miraculous feedings (e.g. 5,000 people, 12 baskets of leftovers, 7 loaves) can be read as being indicators to treat these passages allegorically (unlike the healing miracles, which Mark treats in a factual way).

WORKS CONSULTED

Berlin, Adele and Marc Zvi Brettler, Eds. The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.

Cameron, W.J. “Soul.” New Bible Dictionary. 2nd Ed. Ed. J.D. Douglas. Leicester and Wheaton IL: Inter-varsity and Tyndale House, 1982. 1135.

Carrigan, Henry L. “Soul.” Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. David Noel Freedman. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1245.

Coogan. Michael D., Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, College Edition. 3rd Ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Ellison, John W., Ed. Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version Bible. New York: Nelson & Sons, 1957.

Harder, Georg. “νοuς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 122-130.

Harder, Georg. “ψυχή.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 676-689.

Goetzmann, Jurgen. “σύνεσις.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 130-134.

Holloday, William L., Ed. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

Klassen, William. “Love in the New Testament and Early Jewish Literature.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 381-396.

Morrison, Clinton. An Analytical Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.

Perkins, Pheme. Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Door Sakenfeld. “Love in the Old Testament.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 375-381.

Schattenmann, Hans-Georg. “Iσχύς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 712-716.

Sorg, Theo. “καρδία.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 2. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 180-184.

Stanton, Graham N. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.

JR43: The Case for "Mark Versus Paul"

Study of the Gospel of Thomas, which has strong links to the Q Source and the Synoptic Gospels, makes it easier to see what Jesus was actually saying and how Jesus’ teachings differed radically from Paul’s teachings. Ceiling mosaic in the original Queen’s Park entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Photo credit JAT 2017.

 A: Today, I’m shifting back into academic mode on the question of what Jesus actually taught 2,000 years ago — as opposed to what the Church says he taught.

I’ve had an inquiry about my academic arguments on the “Mark versus Paul” question — that is, on my thesis that Mark wrote his gospel as a direct rebuttal of Paul’s First Corinthians. To present this argument in its entirety would fill at least one big fat Zondervan text (as if Zondervan’s editors would publish such a thesis!) so all I can do at this stage is present a brief list of comparisons between the two texts. I’m aware that in order to build a case for each “talking point” in a complete academic format — a format that would be acceptable to a peer-reviewed journal — would require many months of research for each point and a long research paper for each. The work would go faster, however, if others were willing to help. If you’re interested in helping with this project, please contact me.

I’m going to present some of the major contrasts I see between First Corinthians and the Gospel of Mark. I’ll assume for this purpose that the extant copies of these two books represent with a fair degree of accuracy the original texts as they were written by Paul and Mark respectively, with the exception of Mark 16:9-20 (the very ending of Mark), which is generally believed to be a later addition.

If you want to see which researchers I rely on, please refer to the post called “The Author’s Research Bibliography” (http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/03/authors-bibliography.html).

I use more than one form of biblical criticism — more than one analytical tool — in this comparison. I tend to start with traditional methods — socio-historical criticism, source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism — and then I cross-reference these arguments with recent scientific insights from quantum theory, neurophysiology, psychotherapy, archaeology, and recent historical findings. I also use my own personal mystical faculties, but I won’t apologize for this, since insights derived from mystical conversations are only a starting point, not an ending point. Other researchers get “aha” moments and call them intuition, or divine revelation, or just plain ol’ personal brilliance. Me, I’m being honest about where I get my starting point for this discussion. After that, it’s up to me to use logical human tools to make my case.

Fortunately for me, what Jesus and my angels pointed out to me leads to an extremely strong case.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no biblical scholars currently publishing on this topic. So this is original research you’re reading. You’ll probably wonder straight away how I — an obscure blogger from Canada who has no PhD and no publishing record of note — could see evidence of a book-to-book biblical feud that nobody else has seen. To this I must reply that the feud has been obvious “to those who have eyes and those who have ears” (Mark 8:18) since these two texts began to circulate simultaneously in the latter part of the 1st century CE. Christians have always been called to decide whether they choose Paul’s teachings or Jesus’ teachings (even if they haven’t been able to articulate the choice in scholarly terms). However, it’s only now that Christians are getting round to being honest about this fact.

If Mark had simply written about entirely different themes than Paul did, there would be no point in trying to show that Mark wrote his gospel as a rebuttal of Paul’s First Corinthians. But Mark didn’t write about different themes than Paul did. He wrote about exactly the same topics and inverted them. He also chose his words as carefully as Paul did. He never uses Paul’s favourite word: nomos (Greek for law, authority, unbreakable tradition). Nor does Mark use the words charis (grace) or elpis (hope). The words nomos, charis, and elpis are part of the vocabulary of apocalyptic thought. And Mark is trying to show, contrary to Paul’s claims about Jesus, that Jesus himself rejected apocalyptic thought.

Mark never uses the words nomos, charis, and elpis. But for a man who never uses these words, he talks about them a lot in his book. He talks about what it means for a person of faith to be in full relationship with God the Mother and God the Father.

Here is a point form list of some of the direct comparisons. I reserve the right to edit, modify, add to, and clarify this list whenever additional information comes to light in future. If information is suggested to me by other writers, I will so note the contribution(s).

Concerns of Form:

1. Viewpoint Character
In Paul: The viewpoint character is Paul himself.
In Mark: The viewpoint character is Jesus; the author (Mark) is not present; reference to “a certain young man” in Mark 14:51 may indicate an eyewitness to whom Mark later spoke about events surrounding Jesus’ arrest.

2. Narrator’s Voice
In Paul: The narrator speaks in first person (Paul himself).
In Mark: Third person narration.

3. Literary Genre
In Paul: Written as a letter; uses rhetoric, exhortation.
In Mark: Written as a biographical narrative interspersed with parables, sayings, and teaching actions (i.e. teaching chreia).

4: The Narrative Hook: “The Hero’s Journey”
In Paul: The hero Paul recounts highlights of his long and arduous journey to save the Gentiles; the focus is on important urban centres; the hero’s personal journey is a metaphor for the path of spiritual ascent (i.e. the vertical path that leads to salvation and eventual bodily resurrection).
In Mark: The hero Jesus takes many small trips around a small freshwater lake; the focus is on unimportant outlying communities; the hero’s journey is horizontal, not vertical; the path is not straight; bad things happen on high hills; good things happen near boats and water.

Theological and Social Concerns:

5. Relationship to the Jerusalem Temple:
In Paul: The physical Temple has been replaced by Jesus and “believers” (1 Cor 3:9-17; 6:19-20); the Temple is now purely mystical; it is more important than ever. (Note: the actual physical Herodian Temple was still standing in Jerusalem at the time Paul wrote his letter and Mark wrote his rebuttal).
In Mark: The physical Temple exists and is the centre of corruption in Palestine (Mark 11:12-24;12:35-44; 15:38).

6. Relationship to the city of Jerusalem:
In Paul: Jerusalem is still favoured as shown by the collection for the Jerusalem church (1 Cor 16:1-4).
In Mark: Jesus spends little time in Jerusalem; healing miracles all take place outside the city; Jesus’ friends live outside the city; Jerusalem is the place where genuine faith withers away (Mark 11).

7. Healing Miracles:
In Paul: No mention of healing miracles.
In Mark: Several healing miracles take place; the theme of healing is introduced early on and repeated until Jesus reaches Jerusalem.

8. People With Disabilities:
In Paul: No special mention of individuals with physical or mental illnesses or disabilities or special needs.
In Mark: Those deemed “impure” according to Jewish custom and law are healed, touched, spoken to in violation of purity laws.

9. The Kingdom of God:
In Paul: The Kingdom is a reality outside the self; it depends on power (1 Cor 4:20; 15:24-28; 15:50).
In Mark: There is no simple explanation of the Kingdom, but empathy is central to it (Mark 10:13-31; 12:28-34).

10. Relationship of Body to Soul:
In Paul: Influenced by Platonic dualism.; the flesh is corrupt (1 Cor 3:1-4; 7:8-9; 9:24-27; 15:42-49). Souls are in peril without belief in Christ.
In Mark: Holistic attitude toward the body; non-Platonic and non-Covenantal; flesh is not impure or corrupt; right relationship with God involves caring for the body. Souls live as angels in the afterlife (Mark 12:24-27)

11: Forgiveness:
In Paul: No mention of forgiveness.
In Mark: The theme of forgiveness is introduced early on (Mark 2:1-12); both God and humans can forgive (Mark 11:25).

12: The Definition of Human Virtue:
In Paul: “Foolishness” (morias) and unquestioning faith are the highest expressions of right belief (1 Cor 1:10 – 2:5); obedience, fellowship, holiness, “strong consciousness,” and the proper exercise of freedom are emphasized.
In Mark: Courage (ischys) and a questioning faith are the highest expressions of right belief (Mark 8:11-21); egalitarianism, service, forgiveness, and insight (suneseos) are emphasized.

JR42: Harold Camping’s Failed Apocalyptic Prophecy . . . Like, There’s a Surprise

A: Well, it’s May 23, and the world didn’t end two days ago as prophesied by Harold Camping and his multi-million dollar non-profit apocalyptic Christian media ministry. The 200 million people who were supposed to be taken up into heaven in the Rapture are still here. Slightly impoverished after giving their money to Camping, but still here. All is well with the universe.

J: People are easily parted from their assets once they’ve lost their common sense.

A: I read the Globe and Mail on-line. Usually when I check an article there are a few dozen readers’ comments — 40 or 50 posts at most. Yesterday, by 2:50 p.m., there were 1,052 comments attached to an article by Garance Burke (Associated Press) called “Believers confused as Judgment Day doesn’t come.” I didn’t read the comments. But I thought it was interesting that a failed prophecy from a retired civil engineer in a different country would attract so much attention.

J: People have very strong opinions about religion and religious leaders.

A: Can’t argue with you there. So let’s talk about angels instead — souls who are not currently incarnated as human beings on Planet Earth. How do you and other angels feel about apocalyptic prophesies?

J (chuckling): Isn’t this a holiday in Canada? Wouldn’t you rather be outside barbequing or something?

A: It started raining again a few minutes ago. There’s been a lot of rain and cool weather this spring. All the more reason to sit down and do some typing.

J: Well, it’ll come as no surprise to you that angels are fully aware of the kinds of things that are being said about us by religious leaders in various parts of the world. You could say we have our own clipping service.

Most people have been conditioned to believe that apocalyptic prophecy is a rare and sacred gift granted by God. Few people realize that from the point of view of God’s angels, all claims from apocalyptic human prophets look like temples — temples to the glory of narcissistic humans. Nothing good comes from prophecies about the End Times, and your angels know it. They see the fear, contempt, and justification of hatred that pour into every aspect of your life if you buy into these unloving lies about God. This is one temple where your angels will always let you fall flat on your face. Shown in this photo are remnants of the temple pediment found during excavations of the Roman Baths at Bath, England (because all good Remnants must come to an end). Photo credit JAT 2023.

A: A man like Harold Camping is giving God bad press — telling people that God is so narcissistic and selfish that “he” enthusiastically plays Russian Roulette with his own children. Do angels care about this bad press? Does God?

J: Would you be happy if the people who claim to know you went around town saying you’re a controlling, manipulative, obsessive compulsive, right wing, politically conservative, Medicare-hating, gun-loving bigot who hates gays, people of colour, and women?

A: No. I’d know they were lying, and I’d forgive them. But I’d still be hurt.

J: Same with angels. Every day in every culture these lies about God are being preached. Angels not only feel hurt on behalf of God the Mother and God the Father, but they feel hurt on behalf of the souls who speak these lies while they’re struggling with human brain dysfunction.

You can be very sure that Harold Camping’s own guardian angels are now very relieved to have the whole thing over with and the lie of his prophecy revealed for what it is — not just among his own followers, but among all those who heard about it on the daily news.

A: Camping’s angels aren’t upset that he’s been embarrassed in front of millions of people?

J: Far from it. They know he’s hurt a lot of people with his narcissistic predictions. At the same time, they know that his harmful choices emerged from his dysfunctional human brain — not from his true self, not from his soul. They forgive him, but they also have to do the right thing by him and by others. They have to allow people to see the consequences of these kinds of abusive choices. If they protect Camping from the consequences of his own choices, and if they protect his followers from their own arrogance and stupidity, how will it be possible for human beings to learn not to make these kinds of choices? Tough Love is an angel’s expression of courage, trust, and faith in the ability of human beings to live their human lives in loving ways. Divine ways. Ways that don’t prey on other people’s vulnerabilities.

A: Ooooooohhh. I can just hear the response from readers. What you’re saying about Tough Love sounds perilously close to the idea of divine punishment — an idea that many liberal and progressive Christians reject as incompatible with the idea of a loving and forgiving God.

J: I can’t help it if some individuals want to reject the possibility of Tough Love from God and God’s angels. Usually the people who are most keen to reject this belief are the ones who are most interested in NOT having to learn from their own mistakes.

A: The narcissists.

J: Religious narcissists — and there are plenty of those — employ a number of psychological defences to try to shift responsibility for their own mistakes onto other people or onto other time frames. Religious doctrines such as Original Sin, Satan, Judgment Day, and the Rapture make it possible for the narcissists to stop blaming themselves for their own choices. They can shift the blame onto “conditions” that are outside their control. “Conditions” that make it easy for them to shrug their shoulders and say — with Godfather-like equanimity — “Hey, we can’t help being who we are. One day God will make us answer for our crimes, but not today. Today we have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card and we plan to use it. Because we can. So screw you.”

Really, I mean, come on. Do people think God can’t hear that? Of course God can hear that. God forgives them when they say it, which is exactly what you’d expect from a loving and forgiving God. But forgiving somebody means you have faith in their true potential, their truest and most loving nature. Forgiving somebody means you don’t walk away from them when they’re in distress. Forgiving somebody means you do your best to help them better understand the choices they’re making. This usually means you have to let them experience consequences for their choices. That’s how they begin to recognize the harm caused by their abusive choices. Every loving parent knows this.

A: Loving parents also know you have to “choose your battles.” You can’t harangue your child about every little mistake, or he stops listening. You have to save your authoritative tone for the times when it really matters.

J: Guardian angels are no different. Their job is to help guide their human “foster children,” if you will, in the direction of greater compassion, greater balance, greater common sense. They have complete discretion and free will in carrying out this task. Sometimes they decide to help soften the consequences of a really poor human choice. Sometimes they decide to let the consequences build into one mega-consequence that hurts like hell. This is the reality. God has free will and angels have free will. Therefore, God and God’s angels are free to create consequences or not as they see fit. They aren’t bound by religious contract laws. Neither are they bound by laws of cause and effect. God is a heck of a lot smarter than the Law of Cause and Effect would suggest.

A: I don’t think religious narcissists actually want God to be smarter.

“His disciples questioned him: Should we fast? In what way should we pray? Should we give to charity? From which foods should we abstain? Jesus responded: Do not lie. If there is something that you hate, do not do it, for everything is revealed beneath heaven. Nothing hidden will fail to be displayed. Nothing covered will remain undisclosed (Gospel of Thomas 6).” This life-size Roman bronze hand is covered in sacred symbols — well, sacred to occult believers, anyway. It dates from 200-400 CE and was found at Caglia, Umbria, in Central Italy. It’s on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

 J: True. Then again, that’s what narcissism is all about. It’s about human beings whose brains are so dysfunctional — whether from head injury, toxic substances, stress hormones, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, lack of social and emotional supports, abusive upbringing, or lack of education — that they start trying to cope by inventing inner myths about their own wonderfulness and superiority and breathtaking talent. There’s no room within the myth for somebody else who’s smarter or faster or stronger. Even if that somebody else is God.

Of course, this is why religious narcissists rely so heavily on the theme of humility. A person of humility — as opposed to a person of humbleness — can see in a logical and practical way that it isn’t very smart to go around proclaiming to be as smart as God, if not smarter. That’s no way to recruit followers who’ll willingly give you money and tell you how wonderful you are. So you don the sackcloth of humility, and you tell everyone who’ll listen that you’re just an empty vessel waiting to be filled by Spirit, by God’s inspired Word. That’s how the world acquires its apocalyptic prophets.

A: So it’s layers upon layers. A myth of personal superiority that has to be cloaked in another myth — the myth of humility. Then, when this isn’t enough to get you the reverence you crave, you add other layers, other myths, each more convoluted than the last to explain why you deserve to be treated as “special.”

J: This is what happens when people aren’t honest with themselves about their own abilities, their own intentions, and their own unhealed anger. The lies build and build on top of each other. After a while the lies can take on an entire imaginary life of their own. Such is the case with orthodox Western Christianity. Its official doctrines are largely a body of lies. Only when individual Christians choose to help their neighbours in love rather than piety do they walk the path of genuine spirituality and faith. These are the times when their guardian angels smile.

JR41: City on the Hill: Saying 32 in Thomas

Model of the Acropolis of Athens, Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A: Okay. Back to some exegesis from the Gospel of Thomas. This morning my copy of Thomas* opened itself up to Saying 32: “Jesus said: A city built and fortified atop a tall hill cannot be taken, nor can it be hidden.”

Stevan Davies’s notes on this saying, as usual, miss the point. Davies says, “This saying urges strength in defense while at the same time encouraging openness. You should not try to protect yourself by hiding your light, but at the same time you should be aware that attacks are likely. Ultimately you will be safe, above real danger, even if you expose yourself and your light to the world (pages 35-36).”

Granted, there’s not much context to go on here. This saying could be interpreted in a number of different ways. But I’m curious about your thoughts here.

J: I’m wondering in what way Davies can argue that a person who shows their light is “above real danger.” This is a reckless thing to say in view of the way reformers are treated in many parts of the world. Reformers need to know that attacks are likely, as you and I have discussed before. Reformers don’t have a special magical cloak that’s guaranteed to protect them from all harm.

A: Obviously you didn’t have such a magical cloak.

J: No. And I didn’t promise my followers one, either. It’s a fallacy to suppose that a person of faith will be protected from all suffering and all harm. Shit happens. Shit happens to everyone. The question isn’t how to be “above real danger.” The question is how to recognize real danger and how to handle it when it arises. Davies’s interpretation of saying 32 is pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say.

A: Davies is implying in his notes that the fortified city on the hill is a metaphor for a person who has uncovered the secret of the Kingdom. He’s implying that knowledge of the Kingdom lifts a person above the fray. It kind of reminds me of the “shining city on the hill.”

J: Which tells you right off the bat it isn’t something I would have said.

A: You’re not big on the idea of Temples on Sacred Mounts.

J: No. I used metaphors from nature and peasant life to explain what the Kingdom feels like. By contrast, I used metaphors from the sphere of urban construction to explain what it feels like to be estranged from the Kingdom. Saying 32 is an attack on the people who choose to be like a fortified city on the hill. They choose to place themselves “above” other people. They choose to build walls around their hearts. Sure, everyone can see them up there, everyone can see their status. But they’re walled off from their feelings, from their compassion. They’re successful. They’re proud of their walls. They love to be noticed for their accomplishments. But they have no heart. And they have no relationship with God. They’ve made themselves invulnerable to pain. And this means they’ve made themselves invulnerable to love. They’re afraid of intense emotions, afraid of intense feelings like joy and grief and humbleness. They hide behind their walls and bemoan the cruel God who allows suffering. Meanwhile, they do nothing courageous themselves. They refuse to come out from behind their walls and engage in the task of coping in mature ways with the love and pain of living. They feel safe where they are, and they’d much rather blame God or other people for the emptiness they themselves feel inside.

Surprising as it may seem, inner emptiness seems like the better choice — the practical choice — for the majority of human beings. For those who’ve endured years of abuse and trauma, it’s often the only viable choice. They can’t make it through the day if they have to think about the pain they’ve endured. So they try to stop thinking about it.

A: Yet the pain always expresses itself somehow.

J: Yes. You can’t escape the pain. When you repress it, it finds a way to reveal itself anyway. Playwrights and psychotherapists make their living from expounding this truth. The pain must be confronted and transmuted — healed — into something deeper and more positive. Otherwise it will ruin your life and probably the lives of the people you’re closest to.

A: This is what Viktor Frankl taught. The idea that you have to find purpose and meaning and the means to go forward despite the most traumatic experiences imaginable.

J: A process that people need help with. If you don’t have a mentor to help you struggle through the emotional complexities of loss and suffering and eventual transformation, you’ll probably end up — like so many people — building gigantic walls around your heart. But there’s a cost for doing this. The cost is your ability to love.

A: You mean the person building the walls is no longer able to love.

J: Right. They can’t love themselves. They can’t love their neighbour. They can’t love their God. They can still function at a logical level, a practical level, but they wake up each morning and go to bed each night having no clear idea who they are or why they’re here or why they feel so empty and miserable. Life feels like a chore to them. A duty. A punishment they must endure. They feel very sorry for themselves.

A: I know a number of Christians who fit this bill.

J: The real tragedy is that once a person has finished building his or her fortified city on the hilltop, he or she “cannot be taken” — cannot let love in through the walls of logic and status. No amount of kindness or empathy or forgiveness or patience will breach the walls of intentional dissociation in another human being. You can’t “fix” such a person from the outside. If they don’t want to come out from behind their walls, you can’t make them do it, no matter how hard you try.

A: A lesson it took me years to understand.

J: The person who is like the city “built and fortified atop a tall hill” is NOT “ultimately . . . safe, above real danger.” Such a person IS the danger. She’s a danger to herself, her neighbours, and her community.

A: Why?

J: Because she thinks she’s in her right mind, in full control of all her thoughts and feelings and actions, but she’s not. She’s built a city of logic stone by stone, choice by choice, and she’s happy with it. She likes being dissociated from her soul’s own feelings. She chooses to live this way. But big chunks of her biological brain are miswired as a long term result of her intentional choices. She can’t make balanced choices anymore. She can’t because she’s worked very hard not to make balanced choices. She believes she has all the tools she needs in case of emergency or real danger. But she doesn’t have the brain tools she’ll actually need in an unpredicted crisis. So she’ll panic. She’ll freeze. She’ll think only of herself. Because that’s what she’s trained her brain to do.

A: You’re saying it doesn’t have to be this way.

J: I’m saying Darwin was dead wrong about survival of the fittest. The stupidest human beings on the planet are the ones who’ve made themselves into isolated cities on hilltops. And when I say “stupid” I don’t mean temporarily foolish or poorly educated. I mean less functional and less able to grasp complex issues and act on them with common sense, compassion, and integrity. Including many individuals with PhDs. These are the people you don’t want on your team when a genuine crisis hits. They’ll stab you in the back without blinking when the going gets tough.

A: Says the man whose own family and friends turned him over to the Romans when he made the going too tough . . .

J: Damn straight.

*For readers who haven’t been following our posts about the Gospel of Thomas, I’m using a book translated and annotated by Stevan Davies. (Stevan Davies, The Gospel of Thomas (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004.))

JR40: Recap: Some Reflections From the Author

Today I’m going to post a few of my own thoughts as a sort of recap. I think it’s important for people to stop once in a while and take a deep breath and reflect on all the activity of the previous few weeks — whatever the activity might be.

The path of knowing and loving God is filled with unexpected pathways, bridges of hope, and places of deep and abiding peace. Photo credit JAT.

If you’re new to this site, and you haven’t started reading at the beginning, you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m trying to do here. Am I pretending to write a dialogue with Jesus in the way Plato once pretended to write dialogues with dead people? Or in the way Neale Donald Walsch (he of “Conversations with God” fame) has been pretending to write dialogues with God?

No, actually. I’m exactly who I claim to be. I’m a mother and I’m a science-loving quasi-Christian cataphatic mystic who talks every day to one particular angel who happens to have acquired a lot of fame.

The dialogues I write are exactly what I claim the dialogues are — dialogues with Jesus. You can accept that or not as you wish. It makes no difference to me whether or not you believe me. I’m not trying to convert you. I’m not asking you for money. I’m not asking you to put me on a pedestal and admire me. Heck, if I wanted those things, I’d have posted my name long ago and built up a clever marketing campaign (as many other spiritual gurus have done). I’m trying to share some insights that have been important to me on my journey, insights that may prove helpful to you, too. That’s my goal. That’s my intent. If it feels right to you, great. If not, well, I’m not going to lose any sleep over your rejection. I know who I am and I won’t apologize for it.

I wrote my first 49 posts on Concinnate Christianity without bringing Jesus overtly onto the pages. But Jesus helped me write every one of those posts, just as he’s helping me with this one, even though he’s not speaking out loud today. Maybe you think it’s all baloney, that if I’m not inventing the dialogues or inventing my belief in Jesus’ presence, then there must be something seriously wrong with me. Maybe a split personality or something. If you’re determined to put me in this category, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I know from harsh experience that all the proof in the world won’t stop a person from believing what he or she is determined to believe. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do. However, you should know that I’m not the tiniest bit afraid of being assessed by an objective third-party psychiatrist in a normal clinical setting. I have great respect for the field of psychiatry. In fact, I probably have more in common with a psychiatrist of faith (by that I mean a psychiatrist who is also a person of faith) than with any other sort of specialist. (As you may have noticed, I have little regard for most theologians.)

I decided to make this blog different. I wanted people to have the chance to get to know Jesus better as a person, and the only way to do that is to give Jesus a chance to speak in his own voice. Hence the dialogue format. These dialogues aren’t pre-written. I write spontaneously on the date that actually appears at the top of each post. I usually write in the mornings because I happen to be a morning person. I also write in the mornings because I often start work around noon. Today I’m scheduled to start work at 10:00 a.m., though, so I have to type quickly because I need to get ready for work. As usual, I’ll probably leave behind a few typos. I’ll catch them sometime. Maybe later today, maybe not for a few weeks. I’m still finding typos on the Concinnate Christianity site.

Meanwhile, I’m struggling to find the best way to introduce my thoughts on the spiritual journey on the Blonde Mystic site. It’s no easy task to find the right pedagogical approach to a field of inquiry that has barely been touched by anyone because of its complexity. The journey of the soul can’t be reduced to simplistic models — which may be the only point I’ve managed to communicate effectively so far on the Blonde Mystic site.

I didn’t set out to be a channeller of the man who once lived as Jesus, and when I finally realized who it was that I was actually talking to I was some pissed. I was pissed because I understood even then (in 2001) the implications of trying to tell other people I can talk to Jesus. Yeah, right. Like, how bizarre is that? All I can tell you is that he really means it and I really mean it and hopefully you can feel the truth of his — our — words in our posts.

I also hope you can feel how important it is for me to stay within the bounds of respectable science. Have you noticed I never prophesy? I don’t prophesy because I think it’s wrong to invent claims about what will happen. How can I know what will happen? I can make guesses, like everybody else, about what might happen. That’s why I like science-fiction (as opposed to sci-fi, which I don’t much care for, except for Star Wars). But science fiction is story telling. It’s not prophecy (well, not intentionally, anyway). I don’t waste my time trying to predict things. I have enough on my plate just trying to figure out the present. Of course, in order to understand the present, I need to have a grasp on the past, too. This is why I do so much historical research.

The soul I know as Jesus is a real person, a real person with his own personality and his own talents and his own interests. He’s not a clay figure who can be moulded and shaped into anything you want him to be. It’s not right to treat anyone that way, including Jesus. He’s his own person, his own self.

I can tell you right now what you would “see” if he were here on Planet Earth right now in his own body (which he’s not). You’d see a tall, dark-haired man with a tan complexion and dark brown eyes. You’d see a man who smokes (yes, I know what I’m saying here about the smoking thing — and no, I don’t smoke, and never have, except for two or three packs when I was 18). You’d see a man who loves vehicles — sports cars, bikes, planes. You’d see a man who loves hard rock and plays guitar, piano, drums. But you’d also see a polymath — a particularly gifted all-round scholar who can effortlessly handle science, philosophy, history, writing, music, and math. You’d see a man fascinated by medical science. You’d see a man who wants to be in the heart of the action where people need a lot of help. I could easily see him as a surgeon in a war zone. He’s just that kind of guy — brilliant but also a bit wild and reckless.

Oh, and he swears a lot.

This is who Jesus is. This is who he has always been as a soul and angel. It’s who he will always be. He’s gritty and funny. He’s very shy, but he also has a “showy” streak in him, and once you get him going, you can’t get him away from the microphone. He has a huge hole in his heart from the time when his human daughter died in Nazareth. (This sort of grief never goes away, even for angels.) He has terrific fashion sense. He sings like Josh Groban. He’s left handed. He prefers tea over coffee.

These things are hardwired into his soul. I’ve spent so much time with him that I can “feel” these things about him. Sure, I’ve translated them into “humanese” (not really a word, but I hope you get the idea). But everyone’s soul personality gets translated into “humanese” when they choose to incarnate on Planet Earth, and it’s really not that hard to see a person’s true soul personality once you understand that God’s children are always God’s children — no matter where they happen to be living in the space-time continuum.

Gotta go. Time to go to work. Catch you later. Best wishes to you all.

Love Jen

JR39: John, Paul, and James: The Lunatic, the Liar, and the Lord

Religious statues in doorway of church in Quilinen France

“Jesus said: No prophet is accepted in his own village. No physician heals the people who know him well (Gospel of Thomas 31).” Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: By now people will have noticed that you and I aren’t apologists for conservative or evangelical Christianity. I was thinking again today about C.S. Lewis’s “Trilemma” argument that claims to prove the divinity of Jesus — the “lunatic, liar, or lord” argument (presented in his book Mere Christianity). For Lewis, and for countless other conservative Christians, you — Jesus — have to be lord. Why?

J: Orthodox Western Christianity can’t survive in its present form if there’s no Saviour. The Saviour myth — Jesus as Saviour, Jesus as Lord — provides the perfect camouflage for all the lunatics and all the liars who have shaped orthodox Christianity over the centuries. This applies to both the Roman Catholic church and to mainstream Protestant denominations. Nobody wants to rattle all the “lunatic, liar, and lord” skeletons in the closet.

A: How many skeletons are there?

J: Too many for me to list here. But I can tell you who the earliest ones were.

A: Okay.

J: The earliest “lunatic” was John — by that I mean John the Baptist, who reinvented himself as John the chosen apostle after my death. John was seriously mentally ill, and I make no apologies for being honest about this fact. The word “lunatic” is too harsh, of course, and I wouldn’t use this word in the context of mental health discussions today. There’s far too much stigma around mental health issues already. But pretending that mental health issues don’t exist and pretending that mental health issues don’t touch all families is naive and cowardly. Mental health issues have always been a reality in human society. They’ve always been a reality in religious organizations. Religious organizations are never been exempt from these realities. Pious theologians hurt regular people when they go through contortions to try to “redeem” apocalyptic texts such as Revelation. The book of Revelation was written by John when he was floridly psychotic. This book hurts people. It scares people. It should come with a warning tag on it, but it doesn’t.

The honest truth is that some mentally ill people end up trying to hurt others, especially if psychosis has set in. Not all mentally ill people by any means. But some mentally ill people. Mental health professionals are trained in risk assessment, and they know that only a small percentage of mentally ill individuals are at risk of harming others. This is a reasonable, responsible, and appropriate approach to mental health. The church should take this approach in reassessing the writings of its own theologians — starting with John. They should look at what John actually said instead of pretending that John was so mystically elevated compared to his peers that regular people couldn’t understand his symbolic, mystical messages. The reason they couldn’t understand him is because he was having hallucinations and delusions.

A: Ever the honest fellow, aren’t you?

J: Lies don’t help anyone.

A: Speaking of lies . . . .

J: Nobody who’s been reading this site or your Concinnate Christianity site will be surprised to learn that the earliest “liar” in the church was Paul himself. I won’t go into detail on the Paul question today. If people are interested, they can check out some of our earlier posts about his motives.*

A: Okay. So what’s with the “lord” thing? How does that tie in with the “lunatics and liars”?

J: Well, this brings me to my older brother, James. James and I had . . . well . . . a very complicated relationship. He didn’t believe I was the Saviour as such — not in the way Paul described me. In fact, James despised Paul, and did everything he could to confront Paul’s teachings. But contrary to what scholars such as Bart Ehrman and Barrie Wilson think, my brother James was not a follower of my teachings. He taught his own version of reformed Judaism that undercut my central teachings. He liked me only slightly more than he liked Paul. Unfortunately, he and Paul had a lot more in common than either one realized.

A: In what way?

J: Quite honestly, both were pompous narcissists.

A: That’s not a very nice thing to say about your brother.

J: Maybe not, but it’s true. James was the eldest child and the eldest son born to an elite family of Jewish aristocrats. His maternal grandfather had at one time been a member of the Sanhedrin — the ruling council in Jerusalem. He wasn’t raised to be compassionate and trusting towards God. He was raised to be pious and fearful of God. He was considerably older than I was. He was — like so many eldest children — conservative, highly responsible, obedient, cautious, and “certain” of his role in life. He believed in law, and in particular in the laws of Moses. He was a devout Sadducean Jew.

A: I thought the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection. How did James reconcile himself to the strange events that occurred around your crucifixion and “resurrection”?

J: He didn’t. He tried very hard to downplay the rumours that swirled around my “death” and temporary reappearance. He, along with Peter and John, worked very hard to spread counter-rumours. It was he who came up with the idea of saying my body had been stolen from the tomb by my disciples (Matthew 27:62-66). Of course, my body hadn’t been stolen because I wasn’t even dead. Yet. James had more reason than anyone alive to know that I was a real human being and not a god-in-human-form who’d been resurrected from the dead. James, along with Peter and John, and with the help of my older brother Judas, were the ones who had me arrested in the first place.

A: Why?

J: For the simplest of human reasons — pride. Pride and “family honour” and that most terrible of dysfunctional human behaviours — the narcissistic rage reaction. I pushed all my brother’s buttons, and he had a narcissistic rage reaction. If you’ve ever been standing in the way of such an event, you’ll understand what I mean when I say the rage becomes all-consuming and self-absorbed in a way that’s difficult to describe. It’s like the entire universe shrinks to one spot of pure, blind, selfish hatred, and nothing else matters but revenge. There’s no logic to it. Not from anyone else’s point of view, anyway. But from the narcissist’s point of view the logic is diamond-hard. He (or she) becomes fanatically convinced that he’s right and everybody else is wrong. If he’s a religious man, this is the time when he’ll start saying that God is on his side and God demands revenge. Such a person is capable of the most murderous acts imaginable.

A: Including acts against one’s own family.

J: Especially against one’s own family. The people at greatest risk from an extreme narcissist are the people closest to him (or maybe, as I’d like to emphasize, her). Family members and group associates are the ones most likely to observe the mistakes, hypocrisies, memory failures, and lies made by a narcissist — none of which a narcissist wants to hear about. Those who make the mistake of pointing out a narcissist’s errors in judgment (including errors by proxy) may well find it’s the last mistake they make. Extreme narcissists can and do kill when they feel their “honour” has been “unjustly” attacked. My brother James was such a person.

A: He convinced himself that he was doing the right thing in having you arrested.

J: Absolutely. I was attacking the cultural and religious belief systems that gave him great status. I was attacking his right to be called “lord.” All along I was at greatest risk not from the Romans and not from the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem (where I spent very little time), but from my own family and friends. They were the ones who had the most to lose if I continued teaching my new brand of Judaism.

A: Where there are no lords.

J: And where “lunatics” are healed and liars are called to account for their lies.

A: Sounds like a place of rainbows to me.

 

* Please see Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom

JR38: The Peace Sequence

The Peace Sequence: First Education, Second Mentorship, Third Personal Responsibility, and finally Peace.  Like shovelling after a heavy snowfall, it's hard work and you can only take it one shovelful at a time.  But in the end, the pathway is cleared, and you can move forward.  Photo (c) JAT 2015

The Peace Sequence: First Education, Second Mentorship, Third Personal Responsibility, and finally Peace. Like shovelling after a heavy snowfall, it’s hard work and you can only take it one shovelful at a time. But in the end, the pathway is cleared, and you can move forward. Photo credit JAT 2015.

 A: Back in August 2005, before I’d set foot in graduate school, or even considered doing so, you wrote a piece about “the peace sequence.” At the time, you flagged what John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed had written at the beginning of their book In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004). Crossan and Reed wrote this:

“Paul’s essential challenge is how to embody communally that radical vision of a new creation in a way far beyond even our present best hopes for freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace. Paul was a Jewish visionary following in Jesus’ footsteps, and they both claimed that the Kingdom of God was already present and operative in this world. He opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace. A subtext of In Search of Paul is, therefore: To what extent can America be Christian? (page xi)”

I can still remember your reaction when I read this paragraph back in 2005. At the top of the page, I wrote down your response: “Jesus: peace through personal responsibility in the sequence of education, mentorship, personal responsibility, then peace.” It’s taken me years of research and ongoing discussion with you to more fully understand what you meant that day.

J: As I said then, I don’t disagree with Crossan and Reed’s formulation of Paul’s peace sequence. Paul did, in fact, teach his followers to reject the Roman ideal of peace through victory — the Pax Romana — and to choose peace through divine justice or justification. But this isn’t what I taught. So they’re wrong to state that Paul was following in my footsteps. Paul wasn’t following me or my teachings. If anything, he was going along with a straw broom trying to erase all evidence of my footsteps.

A: Last week on the Vision Channel, I watched an episode of The Naked Archaeologist where Simcha Jacobovcivi looked at the idea that Paul was actually an agent of the Romans. Biblical scholar Robert Eisenman has been saying this for years — and in fact Eisenman was interviewed by Simcha on last week’s episode. If Paul actually was an agent of the Romans, why would he have taught his followers to reject the Roman version of the peace sequence and accept his own Christ-based peace sequence? It doesn’t make any sense.

J: It doesn’t make sense if you view Paul as being an agent of the emperor in Rome. However, it makes a ton of sense of you view Paul as being an agent of other powerful Roman figures — members of the Roman elite who wanted to seize power for themselves. It would have been in their best interests to set up a religion to compete head-on with the Roman Emperor Cult.

A: Oh. Why haven’t I read that anywhere else?

J: Because it sounds like a low-down, dirty rotten, scandalous political ploy. A cold, calculating, ruthless attempt by one party to seize power from another party. With Paul as the chief spin doctor for the down-and-out party. Who wants to say that out loud?

A: Maybe the producers and writers of the Rome TV series? That series certainly pulled back the curtain on the behaviour of the Roman aristocracy — the things they did to try to get power.

J: The truth about Paul isn’t pretty. He was no saint. On the other hand, he believed in what he was doing. He believed he was doing the right thing. He felt totally justified in trying to convert the Diaspora Jews and the Gentile God-Fearers to “the cause.”

A: And what cause was that?

J: Deposing the evil, corrupt Julio-Claudian dynasty and restoring the One True Religion and the One True Emperor.

A: You’ve got to be kidding.

J: Nope. I’m not kidding. There was a huge group of disaffected Romans still living in Alexandria, Egypt, and they believed that their divine right to rule over all lands had been usurped from them by the upstart Julius Caesar and his family. They were convinced that Alexandria, not Rome, was meant to be the centre of the world, and that one of their own bloodline was destined to be Emperor. When Augustus manoeuvred to have Rome declared a Principate — until then it was officially a Republic — the Alexandrians went beserk. The situation was not improved by the institution of the Emperor Cult — meaning worship of the man who sat on the throne in Rome. The Alexandrians believed this was sacrilege. Furthermore, the Emperor Cult was undermining the Alexandrians’ ongoing efforts to gain popular support for a shift in power from the West to the East. They knew they needed a strong religious structure in place before they could gain that popular support.

A: So they needed a new religion — one tailored to their needs.

J: Some of the greatest religio-political thinkers that ever lived found their way to Alexandria.

A: Because the Great Library was there?

J: In part. But powerful mystery cults had their roots there, too. The importance of mystery cults in the history of ancient politics can’t be overstated. Official rulers couldn’t rule without the support of the local religious priests — a reality that still exists in many parts of the world today.

A: So Paul’s Christ-Saviour religion was invented as a way to secure a widespread religious power base for the Alexandrian group. By the way, did this group have a name?

J: Not one you’d recognize today. For the purposes of our discussion, we’ll call them Seekers of the Rock. There’s a reason for this name — a reason based on their occult beliefs.

A: Okay. Seekers of the Rock. Why did this group conscript Paul to do its work?

J: Paul was an angry man — a man looking for a way to undermine my teachings. You could say that Paul and the Seekers had many interests in common. Paul had no love of the Emperor Cult, and he had no love of me. The Seekers of the Rock offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. Over a number of years he developed a religious formula he thought would work in the new religious climate of the Empire. Then he went on the road to preach it and gauge the response. He had to fine-tune it as he went along. This is why you see changes in his theological claims over the course of his “ministry.”

A: Well, whatever he did, it turned out to be spectacularly successful.

J: He didn’t do it by himself. The Seekers were powerful and wealthy, and they did everything they could to back him up. They footed the bill for his “Amazing Race” around the Eastern Mediterranean, kept him in hiding when the Romans were getting too close, arranged to have his scrolls copied and distributed. It was very much a team effort.

A: Sounds a lot like the federal election we just had here in Canada.

J: It’s a good analogy. Except they weren’t trying to win an election — they were trying to establish a theocracy with their own man as divinely-appointed emperor.

A: Who was “their man”? Was it Paul himself?

J: No. Paul’s job was to lay the theological groundwork for the coming “return of the king.” The original plan was to build on Jewish apocalyptic and prophetic texts so people would be expecting the imminent return of the Saviour. The Saviour was given a new and distinctive name — Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed One. Once enough people were “on board” with the idea of the return of the Saviour, and once the necessary political and military and economic measures were in place, the idea was to “reveal” the newly returned divine Saviour. They planned to secretly train a prince from their own bloodline and present him publicly as Jesus-Christ-returned-in-the-flesh when the time was right.  They would claim he was the divine son of God and therefore the rightful claimant to the religious and political power of Rome.  This is why they needed a religious power base in Rome. The Seekers believed that pious Christians would roll out the welcome mat for the man they claimed was the Messiah. All they needed was enough time, patience, and money to bring their plan to fruition.

A: Obviously it didn’t work out the way they planned. What happened?

J: God made sure that an obscure scholar in Judea got his hands on Paul’s key doctrinal statement: the letter now called First Corinthians.

A: Your great-nephew. The man we know as Mark.

J: Mark saw right away what they were doing. And he answered it word for word with his own non-covenantal, non-pious testament to the power of education, mentorship, and personal responsibility in achieving peace and relationship with God.

A: I love a good conspiracy theory!

JR37: Mother’s Day

Landscape by Jamie MacDonald (c) 2015.When children are raised according to the four steps of the Peace Sequence – education, mentorship, personal responsibility, and finally peace – they’re able to tap into the unique soul talents wired into their DNA.

 A: Today is Mother’s Day — a very special day, and a nice time to talk about motherhood.

J: Happy Mother’s Day to you.

A: Thanks. I celebrated yesterday with my son and my sister and niece. My son brought me a pot of white mums and a very funny card. He rolled into the driveway on his new-to-him 2008 Kawasaki bike, took off his backpack, and extracted the carefully wrapped mums, which didn’t look too happy (between you and me) about having been transported by motorcycle on a cool spring day, but I grinned and took them inside and put them on the warm windowsill, where they’re starting to perk up.

J: You’re always very mushy when you talk about your son.

A (sighing): Yes. Most of the time. There’s the odd day here and there where I have to do the Mom-being-stern thing, but I couldn’t be prouder of him. He’s being “who he is” in a good way, and that’s all I can ask. I love being a mom.

J: Tell me more about that.

A: When he was born (in 1984), I was terrified. I didn’t know anything about babies. I was a bookworm, an egghead, and I’d never even changed a diaper before he was born. But I was determined to be a good mom, a stay-at-home mom by choice. I had the most wonderful book that gave me answers to all my practical questions. I can’t remember the title, but the author was Penelope Leach. Best book ever on parenting, in my view.

J: What about your own mom. Did you ask her for advice?

A: Sometimes. But she lived 3 hours away in a different city, and she was focussed on establishing her new career as an artist. My mother-in-law lived very close by, and she was keen to be helpful without being interfering, so she tried hard not to say anything critical to my face. She was a big believer in the Dr. Spock method of raising children, and she thought I should be putting my son in a big perambulator on the front porch every morning to get fresh air and sunshine. That’s what she’d done with her two boys. When I refused to buy an old fashioned pram, she found a used one that she kept at her house for times when she was babysitting. She seemed okay with that as a compromise.

J: You had an unusual idea about child rearing. Tell me about that.

A: In her book, Penelope Leach emphasized the idea of teaching your baby about boundary issues and personal space. She said you should put baby in his own crib when it was time for napping and sleeping, and you should always be consistent about this. No sleeping in mom and dad’s bed, she said. On the other hand, cribs were to be used only for sleeping, she said. Once nap time or sleep time was over, baby should be fully included in all family activities — not parked in the crib to keep him out of mom’s way while she was busy with household chores. This idea made a lot of sense to me at an intuitive level. It felt right to me. From the very beginning, I got into the habit of carting my son everywhere in my left arm while I did chores with my right hand. My left arm got very strong.

J: Why did you do that?

A: He seemed to have terrible separation anxiety. Each time I tried to put him in a baby seat, his little face turned beet red and he howled in outrage. In retrospect, I can see that I was making him feel unimportant and un-included. And you know what? He was right. He was telling me I wasn’t trying hard enough to be in full relationship with him. On the other hand, he didn’t give me a hard time about going into his crib for naps and bedtime because he quickly associated his crib with being warm and cozy and sleepy. Both my mother and mother-in-law told me I would spoil him if I didn’t put him in a baby seat while I was doing chores, but they were both wrong. Until he learned to walk (at about 11 months), he needed to be “up” where I could talk to him “person-to-person,” where he could see what was going on, where he could learn by watching and “participating.” He’s always been a fearless learner.

J: You and he are very close.

A: We’re close in a respectful way. We give each other space, but when we talk on the phone or get together for coffee or whatever, we listen to each other in an honest way. We try to listen to what’s important to each other. Our relationship has evolved into a mature adult friendship.

J: Many young adults would have no idea what you mean by that.

A: I have several acquaintances my age who don’t seem to like their adult children let alone love them. The relationships are deeply strained, and there’s a lot of mistrust. There’s also a recent trend in journalism for women to come out of the closet and admit they don’t like being mothers and never have. It may be true that for many women motherhood has felt more like a curse than a blessing, but it’s not universally true. Some women, such as myself, can’t believe how lucky they are to have had the privilege of guiding and mentoring a soul on the journey towards maturity.

J: Without being overly enmeshed.

A: Yes. I think many women fall into the trap of enmeshment — of being too involved and too protective and too fearful of mistakes (their own and their children’s). You have to give a child some room to make mistakes. Then you have to help them learn how to handle their own mistakes. It’s what mature parents do.

J: Just like our own divine parents — God the Mother and God the Father.

A: I have no sympathy at all for the idea that we shouldn’t use “parenting” metaphors about God in church anymore because we might offend some of the church members who’ve had abusive human parents. I totally get the reality that many human beings have never known what true parental love is because their own caregivers were such jerks. But the fact that some parents (or foster parents) are abusive doesn’t mean that all parents are abusive. You can’t stop talking about meaningful parenting just because somebody out there might have a panic attack. The person having the panic attack needs to receive appropriate medical care, of course. Meanwhile, the discussion about parenting has to continue so mistakes can be uncovered and changes can be made for the benefit of the wider community — and for individual children.

J: You mentioned the Mother’s Day card your son got you. What was funny about it?

A: It’s a card that’s really honest. On the front it reads, “Mom, I thought about you today while playing with my food . . . after spoiling my appetite with cookies . . . before leaving my stuff on the floor . . . to go blindly follow my friends in whatever they were doing.” Then you open up the card and it says, “God, I love being a grown-up.” And this is hilarious, because my son is 27 years old and he does still pig out on cookies before dinner (if they’re homemade) and he does leave his stuff all over the floor of his apartment (unless he has guests coming over), and he’s been this way his whole life. This is who he is, and he’s never going to change, and you know what? That’s okay, because he understands how to love and respect other people, and he knows how to take responsibility for his own choices, and that’s more important than finding some cookie crumbs on the floor.

J: So he’s not perfect? He makes mistakes?

A: Yeah, he’s not perfect and he makes mistakes and I really like him anyway. He’s doing the best he can. That’s why I’m so happy to be a mom today and always. [Thanks, hon! Your Mom, 😉 ) ].

JR36: Saying 56 in the Gospel of Thomas

A: When we wrote last time (“Father of Lights, Mother of Breath”), I ran out of time, and we didn’t get a chance to return to the question of Saying 56 in the Gospel of Thomas. I was hoping we could continue that discussion. (For the record, Stevan Davies translates Saying 56 as “Jesus said: Whoever has known the world has found a corpse; whoever has found that corpse, the world is not worthy of him.)

J: I can’t help noticing the irony of a person who’s “alive” having a discussion with a person who’s “dead” about the question of “alive versus dead.”

A (rolling eyes): Very funny. I prefer to call you “molecularly challenged.”

J: Hey — I left some bones behind when I died. Traces of them are sitting in a stone ossuary in a warehouse owned by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Kinda reminds me of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A: The IAA can have them. I somehow doubt you’re going to be needing them again.

J: Well, you know, there are still people on the planet today who believe in the concept of bodily resurrection on the Day of Judgment. According to that way of thinking, I might actually need to retrieve my bones so I’ll be complete on the final day of judgment.

A: Hey! You’re not supposed to have any bones. According to Luke, you ascended bodily into heaven — at least once, maybe twice! (Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:1-11). Prophets who are “beamed up” aren’t supposed to leave body parts behind. That’s the whole idea.

J: Nobody gets out of a human life “alive.” At some point, the biological body reaches its built-in limits, and the soul returns to God in soul form. There’s no ascension. Never has been, never will be. Luke is lying.

A: Maybe Luke just didn’t understand the science of death. Maybe he was doing his best to explain something he didn’t understand.

J (shaking his head): Luke was lying. On purpose. If Luke had been sincere and well-meaning — if misguided — he would have to stuck to one story about my ascension. But one man — the man we’re calling Luke — wrote two scrolls together to tell one continuous story. He wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as a two-part story. The Gospel finishes in Bethany, the hometown of Lazarus (who was the subject of a miraculous healing), and the last thing we hear is about is the disciples. Apparently, they obediently returned to Jerusalem to continually pray.

A: Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

A major problem for the spread of Pauline Christianity among Jews and Gentiles was the Eucharistic ritual instituted by Paul. A lot of people didn’t like the idea of ritualistically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a divine being. So one of Luke’s jobs, when he wrote the two-part Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, was to soften the impact of it for newcomers, while preserving Paul’s occult meaning for those who were “in the know.” What you see at the end of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of Acts is a slyly written (and entirely fictitious) account of twelve men who are “chosen” for the special privilege of receiving the Cloak of Glory from the Holy Spirit after they’ve properly prepared themselves for 40 days in the presence of the mystical body of Christ. They eat from the mystical body in order to purify themselves for the coming baptism of fire on Pentecost. Then, on the appointed day, the twelve (well, thirteen, if you count Paul’s later baptism of fire) suddenly receive the intense fire of Glory that Luke says was promised to the twelve by God through Jesus. After that, nobody is allowed to challenge the authority of the apostles. Please note that if you’re having trouble following this narrative in its established biblical form, there’s a good reason for that: the secret knowledge wasn’t meant to be easily understood by everyone. Interestingly, though, the themes of this secret knowledge have been found in other religious traditions, too. For instance, in this photo of the Tantric Buddhist deity Acala, “the Immovable One,” he is braced by the fiery tongues of phoenix flame — much like the fire delivered to the apostles at Pentecost. Who doesn’t like a really good bonfire when Divine Power is the prize? This wooden sculpture is on display at the British Museum. Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Meanwhile, when you open up the book of Acts, which picks up where Luke left off, you get a completely different story from the same author. In Acts, he claims that after my suffering I spent 40 days with my chosen apostles in Jerusalem, and then was lifted up by a cloud from the Mount of Olives (which is just to the east of Jerusalem’s city walls). The Mount of Olives is closer to Jerusalem than Bethany, the “authentic” site of my so-called Easter ascension in the Gospel. Luke also adds two mysterious men in white robes to the Acts version of the story. These two sound suspiciously like the two men in dazzling clothes who appear in Luke’s account of the tomb scene (Luke 24:4). Luke is playing fast and loose with the details — an easy mistake for fiction writers to make.

A: Well, as you and I have discussed, Luke was trying very hard to sew together the Gospel of Mark and the letters of Paul. Mark puts a lot of focus on the Mount of Olives — a place that was most definitely not Mount Zion, not the site of the sacred Temple. Luke probably needed a way to explain away Mark’s focus on the non-sacred, non-pure, non-holy Mount of Olives.

J: You wanna bet the Mount of Olives was non-pure! It was littered with tombs. Religious law dictated that no one could be buried within a residence or within the city walls, so it was the custom to bury people in the hills outside the city walls. To get from the city gates of Jerusalem to the top of the Mount of Olives, you had to pass by a number of tombs and mausoleums. If you got too close to death, though, you were considered ritually impure, and you had to go through a cleansing and purification process once you got back to the city — especially during a big religious festival. Mark’s Jewish audience would have understood this. They would have wondered, when they read Mark, why there was no concern about contamination. They would have wondered why the Mount of Olives became the site of important events when the purified Temple precincts were so close by. It would have defied their expectations about death and purity and piety.

A: This was easier to understand when the Temple was still standing.

J: Yes. It would have made a lot of sense in the context of Herod’s humongous Temple complex. It started to make less sense, though, after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.

A: A fact that Luke took advantage of.

J: Yes.

A: Mark doesn’t include the saying from the Gospel of Thomas about corpses (saying 56), but Mark’s portrayal of you shows a man whose least important concern is ritual purity — not what you’d expect at all from a pious Jew, in contrast to Matthew’s claim about you (Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”)

J: Matthew says this, but Mark says the opposite.

A: Not in so many words, but by showing your ongoing choices and actions.

J: Later Christian interpreters wanted to believe that God had given me special powers over demons and sin and death, and this is how they understood Mark’s account of my ministry. But this isn’t what I taught. I didn’t have the same assumptions about life and death that most of my peers had. It’s not that I had special powers over life and death — it’s simply that I wasn’t afraid of life or death. I wasn’t afraid to “live” and I wasn’t afraid to “die.” I wasn’t afraid to embrace difficult emotions. I wasn’t afraid to trust God. Maybe to some of the people around me it seemed that I had special powers, but I didn’t. All I had was maturity — the courage to accept the things I couldn’t change, the courage to accept the things I could change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

A: The Serenity Prayer.

J: Yes. It seemed to me that Creation is much more like a rainbow than like night-versus-day. It seemed to me that the world I lived in was not “evil” and “corrupt,” as many occult philosophers had said. (Including the Jewish sect of Essenes.) Yes, there were corpses, it’s true. People died. Other creatures died. Beautiful flowers died. But obviously death led to new life, and wasn’t to be feared. Death wasn’t the enemy. Fear of the self was the enemy. Fear of trusting God, fear of trusting emotions such as love and grief, were the obstacles between individuals and God.

To get over those fears, you have to face your initial fears about death — about “corpses.” You have to begin to see the world — Creation — in a new, more positive way, and accept — even love in a sad sort of way — the corpses. You have to stop spending so much time worrying about your death, because it’s gonna happen whether you like it or not, and no religious ritual can stop it. Accept that it’s going to happen, then focus on what you’re doing today. Focus on the Kingdom of today. Build the love, build the relationships, build the trust. Physical bodies come and go, but love really does live on.

“My friends, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). Photo credit JAT 2017.

A: Some people might take that as an endorsement of hedonistic behaviours or suicidal behaviours, since, in your words, death isn’t to be feared.

J: There’s a big difference between saying “death isn’t to be feared” and saying “death is to be avidly pursued.” If you avidly pursue death, it means you’ve chosen to avidly reject life — the living of life to its fullest potential. Trusting in God means that you trust you’re here on Earth for a reason, and you trust that when it’s your time God will take you Home. What you do with the time in between depends on how you choose to view Creation. Is God’s Creation a good creation, a place of rainbows where people can help each other heal? Or is God’s Creation an evil “night” that prevents you from ever knowing the pure light of “day”?

A: What about those who’ve chosen to view Creation as an evil place of suffering, and are now so full of pain and depression that they can’t take it anymore? What happens to those who commit suicide?

J: God the Mother and God the Father take them Home and heal them as they do all their children. There is no such thing as purgatory or hell for a person who commits suicide. On the other hand, our divine parents weep deeply when families, friends, and communities create the kind of pain and suffering that makes people want to kill themselves. There would be fewer tears for everyone if more human beings would take responsibility for the harmful choices they themselves make.

A: And learn from those mistakes.

J: Absolutely. It’s not good enough to simply confess the mistake. It’s important to confess the mistakes, but people also have to try to learn from their mistakes. They have to be willing to try to change. They have to let go of their stubbornness and their refusal to admit they’re capable of change.

A: Easier said than done.

JR35: Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the Word of Truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures” (James 1:17-18). Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Saying 56 of the Gospel of Thomas is somewhat puzzling. Stevan Davies translates it as “Jesus said: Whoever has known the world has found a corpse; whoever has found that corpse, the world is not worthy of him.” Davies suggests that this saying relates to the two Creation stories in Genesis. He says, “it seems that the animating principle of the world is the Kingdom within it that remains undiscovered by most people. They do not realize that for them the world is a corpse; when they discover that it is, they simultaneously discover the Kingdom that can animate it” (page 61). Davies’s interpretation doesn’t feel right to me. What were you trying to get at here?

J: Davies’s thesis that the Kingdom is an animating principle within a person and within the world outside each person is central to his interpetations of the Thomasine sayings. He’s entitled to his own theories, but I don’t have to agree with them.

A: So you don’t agree.

J: No. Davies’s interpretation — for all that he tries to cast it in the light of Wisdom teachings instead of Gnostic teachings — is still Gnostic. In other words, it’s an occult interpretation. Occult interpretations of the world rely heavily on dualistic thinking — everything is reduced to pairs of opposites such as “good versus evil” or “light versus darkness.”

A: “Alive versus dead.”

J: Yes. As soon as a person starts talking about “dead things” being animated — literally, being brought to life — by outside forces, then you’re moving in the direction of dualistic, occult thought. What scholars call Christian Gnosticisms are really just a form of immaturity. Emotional and intellectual immaturity. Nothing in Creation can be reduced to the kind of simplistic “either-or” religious formula that’s being offered in Davies’s interpretation. Life just isn’t like that.

A: So you don’t agree that “alive versus dead” is a legitimate pair, a legitimate starting point for discussion about the nature of life?

J: You have to understand the religious context in which I lived. People had some very strange ideas about birth, life, illness, and death — everyone did, regardless of their religion. Jews were no different. We had tons of restrictions and limitations and taboos around natural life processes. Especially around death. Taboos around some other things had loosened up when Jewish lands fell under the sway of Hellenistic thought and then Roman thought. But the taboos around death hadn’t diminished. People were very frightened of dead bodies. Only certain people were allowed to touch them. No one could be buried inside the city walls. The list went on and on.

A: That doesn’t sound much different from today.

J: One of religion’s most important jobs is to help people deal in mature and compassionate ways with death. Few religions manage to accomplish this task with any grace or decorum. One of the few modern religions that brings death into the community in a living, natural way is Rabbinic Judaism. Christianity could learn a thing or two from Judaism on this score. However, the approach to death seen in today’s synagogue was not the approach to death I grew up with. Rabbinic Judaism didn’t exist in the first half of the 1st century CE. Judaism was a mess. We had so many competing philosophies and so many competing rituals that regular people were hopelessly confused.

A: Dare I say that you added to that confusion?

J: You can say that. It’s true. But Judaism had some good things going for it. Even though I had studied the works of Hellenistic philosophers, looking for nuggets of spiritual wisdom, I came back in the end to the best that Judaism had to offer. In my view, the best ideas of Judaism topped everything the other religions were offering.

A: Can you give some examples?

J: The most obvious one is the image of God in the Hebrew texts. There was the strange idea in Judaism — uncommon, though not unprecedented in the history of religion — that there was really just one God, not a whole pantheon of gods. Of course, I didn’t agree with the Platonic idea that God was a single undifferentiated “He.” This idea had slowly made its way into Jewish thought, and by the 1st century CE it was widely accepted by many Jews. But not all Jews saw God as 100% male. A thinking person couldn’t make sense of the natural world if it was seen solely as a “male domain.” There had to be a feminine principle in there somewhere — a feminine principle that was equal to the male principle and in full partnership with the male principle. My personal experiences as a mystic clinched that theory beyond all doubt. Once I had seen and felt the reality of God the Mother and God the Father in my own heart, I had no doubt about who God really is. God is Father and Mother together — Abba and Ruah. Father of Lights, Mother of Breath. That’s what I called them.

A: You refer to the Father of Lights in the Letter of James (James 1:17-18). You also say there that the Father of Lights gave birth to us “by the word of truth.” What did you mean by this?

J: “The word of truth” — logo aletheias in the Greek, which is not the same as Sophia (Wisdom) — is a name I sometimes used for God the Mother. I was trying to make it clear that God the Father doesn’t give birth to us by himself. It isn’t a weird form of parthenogenesis (virgin birth). It’s the most natural form of creation imaginable.

A: Two partners coming together in light and in truth and fulfilling our creation because they want to.

J: This image of God was considered heretical to both pious Jews and pious Gentiles. There were countless images of the Divine in many different religions. The only image of the Divine that wasn’t being preached was the one I was preaching — the God Who Is Two. One God, many children. One God, many souls. One God, many Kingdoms. This image of God as God really is did have — and still has — the power to free so many people from the suffering caused by prejudice and hierarchy and male dominance! This image has the power to open up the gates of meaningful relationship with God. Everything you see in the world around you makes so much more sense when you allow yourself to make room for the “crazy, heretical notion” that God is Two — not One, and not Three. All the most meaningful experiences of life as a human — the experiences of love, of redemption, of healing, of trust — they all rely on relationship. On two people — at a minimum — coming together in mutual aid and comfort. As the song says, “one is the loneliest number”. On the other hand, two is the number of change, growth, creation, balance, and divine love. The world of science and nature constantly reinforces this one simple message: it’s all about Two, not One.

A: It seems very strange to me that when an individual adamantly holds to the idea that God is One, his or her thinking becomes less holistic and more dualistic — more based on black-and-white pairs of opposites. When pious religious followers commit themselves wholly to the idea that God is One, it’s like a cartoon thought bubble pops up and fills itself up with all sorts of nasty, judgmental words. Words so nasty they could singe the hair off your head. You wouldn’t think the idea of God-as-One could lead to so much hatred and prejudice and racial discrimination. But we have plenty of history to prove it. I’ve been watching the Kennedy mini-series on the History Channel, and of course they examine the racial rioting in the U.S. South in the early 1960’s. I simply can’t understand or relate to that kind of vicious hatred.

J: Well, we had plenty of that kind of vicious hatred in my time. Jews against other Jews. Rich against poor. Chosen people against damned people. Blah, blah, blah. No end to the bigotry. No end to the narcissism.

A: I see you’re equating bigotry with narcissism.

J: Sure. Bigotry can only grow in a garden that’s growing the weeds of narcissism and bullying. Narcissism is a psychologically dysfunctional state where an individual’s brain becomes addictively dependent on the myth that he or she is “special,” “better than others,” and entitled to better treatment than other people. Like any addict, the status addict has to receive regular fixes. To maintain a stance of bigotry towards another person on the basis of skin colour is simply proof of addiction — addiction to status. The choice to hate somebody on the basis of race or skin colour has the same biological effect on the brain as an addiction to cocaine. Bigotry is a form of “using.” It has no place in the life of a person of faith.

A: Bigotry is another form of dualistic thinking — “us versus them.”

J: It’s also a clear indication of immaturity in an individual. A mature individual is able to process ambiguity, change, complexity, and “shades of grey.” A mature individual is capable — even as a frail human being — of perceiving and appreciating the vast scope of Creation and the awe-inspiring, humbling interconnections that exist among all forms of life, both here and elsewhere in Creation. A mature individual doesn’t ask “what God can do for you,” but instead asks “what you can do for God.”

A: That statement would be considered blasphemous by the “piety and pity” crew that insists we’re all full of sin and unworthy before God.

J: Well, I rejected the “piety and pity” parade, as you can tell from everything I’ve been trying to say on this site.

A: I’ll just call you the “trust and twofulness” guy instead.

TBM12: Finding the Words of Your Own Promise

Daisies (c) JAT 2014

Daisies (c) JAT 2014

In my last post (Four Basic Practices to Get You Started), I introduced the idea that every day you need to repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself. Today I’d like to talk more about the promise part, since it’s the promise part that’s so central to the healing of your brain.

One thing that’s very important to understand so you can get yourself solidly planted on the Spiral Path is this: you’re only being asked to write and repeat one promise. The problem today is that almost everybody has too many ideas and too many lists and too many “shoulds” in their heads. This is a big part of the reason for the brain’s overall lack of coordination and balance — there are too many sets of instructions, and the biological brain can’t make sense of it all.

As I mentioned in the last post, you need to provide your brain (or rather I should say the semi-autonomous sectors of your brain) with some sheet music so your brain as a whole knows where it’s going. Your brain would really appreciate some consistency and simplicity! This is why it’s crucial to choose only one promise for now. After about a year (yes, a year) you can think about changing your promise. But if you’re like almost everyone else walking around on Planet Earth these days, you’ll need at least a year to get your brain committed to the new path you’re choosing. It’s a form of self-discipline to stick to only one promise. It’s also a form of integrity.

The promise you make to yourself for yourself will be the cornerstone of the new foundation you’re building for yourself, and you’ll be returning to it again and again in the way that people return again and again to a favourite prayer or mantra. In fact, your promise to yourself will be a positive, uplifting form of prayer — something for you to hang onto with all your might when the going gets tough.

Your personal promise doesn’t have to be long. In fact, shorter is better.

To give you an example, this is the promise I made to myself in the year 2000, the promise I made and stuck to no matter what: “I want to learn to love unconditionally the way you do.” The “you” I refer to in my promise is my guardian angel, whose intense and perfect love I was (and am) able to feel. I was awed and inspired by his love, by his ability to forgive, by his ability to guide me patiently and devotedly even when I was being a shithead. With his help it finally dawned on me that he actually believed I, too, was capable of remembering how to love and forgive! I had no idea exactly what it would feel like to be a loving and forgiving human being, so I decided the sensible thing to do was copy my guardian angel. I made a promise to myself (not to him, but to myself) that I would keep trying every day as hard as I could to learn how to love. I tenaciously held to this promise. There were days when this promise spoken morning and evening was the only thing I did that made any sense at all. But slowly, gradually, I started to notice some positive changes in my thinking patterns. (And, oh, thank God for that!)

What I didn’t know at the time, but what made a huge difference to my journey, was the focus of my promise. Somewhat accidentally, I made a promise to myself that my own soul could “get on board with.” Although the promise I made was very short in terms of the number of words it contained, it carried a lot of punch. It carried a lot of punch for the following reasons:

  • The promise was focussed on improving my relationships — no talk of status or acquisition of “health and wealth”.
  • The promise was positive and uplifting in tone — no talk of sin, salvation, or unworthiness before God.
  • The promise was honest — I was implicitly acknowledging the honest truth that I wasn’t being as loving and forgiving as I could be, but at the same time I was being honest about my ability to change.
  • The promise was clear and specific — no beating around the bush, no cliches, no vague spiritual talk of enlightenment or raising my vibration.
  • The promise showed that I myself was taking personal responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, and choices — no victim mentality, no passing the buck to God or God’s guardian angels.
  • The promise was focussed on something “doable” and “learnable,” something realistic and non-magical/non-mystical.
  • The promise was easy to remember — there’s no point in having a 5-page promise you can’t remember in a pinch.

At first glance it’s hard to believe so much stuff could be packed into such a short promise, but when you compare it to some other well known prayers (such as the Lord’s Prayer, which I don’t use at all), you can see the basic underlying differences. The promise I made to myself was built on a rock-solid foundation of trust in God’s love, whereas traditional Christian prayers have been built on a foundation of fear and self-entitlement. (Have you ever noticed that the Lord’s Prayer contains nary a “please” nor a “thank you”?)

The promise you make to yourself for yourself could be something along these lines:

“I want to learn to be the sort of person my children can be proud of.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand the meaning of the Serenity Prayer.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand what it means to be a person of courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand what changes I must make in my own life in order to hear the voice of God in my heart.”

Or . . .

“I believe in myself the way God believes in me.”

Or . . .

“I trust that I am a child of God and that I can make a real difference each day by trying as hard as I can to be kind towards others.”

Or . . .

“I want to learn to let go of my anger and perfectionism.”

These examples are only that — examples to get you started as you try to find the right words for your own promises. However, if one of these examples feels right for you, please embrace it and make it your own. Remember always, though, that your promise is your promise. It isn’t your neighbour’s promise or your child’s promise. Each person must find the words that work best for him or her. There is no single set of sacred words anywhere on the planet that has magical properties of transformation and healing for all people. What matters for you is that you find the words that make your heart light up with hope. These are the words of your heart and soul, your truest vision of yourself in relationship with yourself.

Each of these promises has the potential to gradually change your life and your relationships for the simple reason that each of these promises provides a clear, simple, uplifting, unified set of instructions for all the sectors of your brain to work on together.* It needs to be formulated in words, and it needs to be consciously repeated by yourself for yourself at least once each day (and preferably more often — ideally once when you get up for the day and once before you go to sleep — if possible). The reason it needs to be formulated in words is because a huge portion of your brain is devoted to language and communication. When you formulate your promise clearly and optimistically to yourself in words, it allows you to harness the language and communication centres of your brain to help coordinate the inner rewiring of your brain.

I want to emphasize that this brain-healing process takes a lot of time. Many spiritually-hopeful people have been gravely harmed by so-called faith healers who promise instant healing. I do not promise anyone instant healing, even though I personally believe that healing miracles sometimes take place. However, I do guarantee that your biological brain is not “carved in stone,” and that you have the ability to overcome great psychological and emotional adversity if you receive the right help and if you believe in your own truth as a child of God.

Just take it one day at a time. Stick with the Four Basic Practices for now. Remember that it takes about 42 days to grow a new neuron. If some arrogant religious-know-it-all tries to give you a hard time and tell you you’re “not going fast enough” or “not trying hard enough,” remember that you can only go as fast as your brain can build new brain cells. That’s the scientific reality, and you don’t have to apologize for it.

Take that, you Spirit-intoxicated evangelicals, you!

*(For a more detailed discussion of what’s possible and what’s not possible inside your biological self, please see “Foxes Have Holes, Canadians Have Gloves.”

TBM11: Four Basic Practices To Get You Started on the Spiral Path

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

This is going to sound like an awful thing to say, but some of the least intuitive people you’ll ever meet are the gurus — individual men and women who do nothing all day but focus on spiritual practice.

This applies to gurus from all world religions, all cultures, and all places. Regardless of what you call these gurus — monks, priests, nuns, saints, shamans, masters — you should always bear in mind that people who spend more than two hours per day (day in, day out) on intensive spiritual practice are not living a balanced life. They can’t be, because they don’t have time to be.

Intensive spiritual practices may include fasting, meditation, prayer, journalling, energy healing work, reading sacred texts such as the Bible, chanting, dancing, or (yuck) tantric rituals. There’s a lot of interest at the moment in these topics, and you can find many books about them. You can also find workshops and seminars where like-minded people get together to hone their spiritual skills together. Apart from tantric rituals and voluntary fasting, both of which are harmful to your human brain, there’s nothing wrong with trying these spiritual practices in small doses. The workshops can be especially healing, not so much for the content, but for the chance to spend time with other spiritually-minded people.

You should be very wary of any spiritual guru who insists you have to spend more than two hours per day in total on practices that are specifically spiritual or religious and that have no other purpose. For instance, while you’re engaging in single-point meditation, that’s all you’re doing. You’re giving it your full attention. Obviously, then, if you’re meditating for three hours, you’re not at the same time cleaning your house or cooking your meals or caring for your children or reading the newspaper. You’re making a choice about how to spend your time. And time is the one aspect of Creation you can’t barter with. The clock keeps ticking, even while you’re lost in the Elysian Fields of spiritual bliss. Meanwhile, those dirty dishes keep piling up.

Anything in the human experience can become addictive. Anything at all. Pick a random topic, and with a little research you’ll stumble on the case of somebody who’s totally addicted to that topic, who’s obsessive and waaaaay out of balance around a topic that’s become “the centre of the universe” for him or her. These are the people who can’t hold a steady job, who can’t focus on higher education, and who can’t sustain long-term monogamous relationships. They drive the people around them crazy. Some of them end up on reality TV shows. And some of them end up as religious or spiritual gurus.

I’m a practising mystic, which means I have a daily mystical practice. I spend about an hour in the morning and about an hour in the evening on the intensive “mystical” aspect of my life. In between, I do normal, everyday things. I eat normal, regular food. I spend time on personal appearance and hygiene. I think about the people in my life. I go to work. I read, research, and write. I do my own shopping, my own cleaning, my own baking. I wash and repair my own clothes. I look after my car. I spend time with friends and family. Then I get my minimum of 8 hours of sleep to help me stay healthy. (I insist on a good night’s rest.)

You know how much time this takes?

Yeah, you know. Because you’re a normal person, too, and you’re wondering how the heck you’re supposed to fit time-intensive spiritual practices into your daily life.

Your guardian angels know all this. Their goal is to help you find some balance in your life. They know it’s hard for you to maintain balance when there are so many competing demands on you. They know you won’t be able to find and maintain the balance point unless your intuition is on-line. Therefore, they know it’s in your best interests for your biological brain to be as healthy as possible.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Oh, no! Now she’s going to give a big long list of rules I have to follow and foods I have to eat and supplements I have to take and exercises I have to do, and I just feel so overwhelmed I think I’m going to barf!”

Actually, though, I’m going to suggest a very simple daily practice for you that even a busy family person can incorporate into the daily routine.

There are only four basic things you need to do each day in order to get your feet fully onto the Spiral Path of spiritual growth, healing, and transformation. These four things are designed to help you heal your brain’s intuitive circuitry as fast as possible. Of course, it should go without saying that this 4-part practice is not meant to replace the treatments your medical doctor has prescribed for you. It’s meant to supplement any treatments you’re receiving. Over time — and I stress that considerable time is needed for all forms of healing, whether allopathic, alternative, or spiritual — you may notice an improvement in your physical health.

Here are the Four Basic Steps — the cornerstone, if you will, of the new foundation you’re building for your brain and soul.

  1. Each day, eat three balanced meals.
  2. Each day, repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself.
  3. Each day, reflect on three things you’re grateful for.
  4. Each day, learn one new thing (excluding sports scores and entertainment news).

Notice that you can accomplish much of this list simply by reading the newspaper while you’re eating a balanced breakfast that includes protein, fats, and carbs.

Of the four things on this list, the one you’re probably least familiar with is No. 2: “Repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself.” You’re probably wondering what promise I’m referring to. Well, this is the promise that’s going to help certain important regions of your brain figure out what their job is.

Believe it or not, your brain is not a single organ in the way your heart is a single organ. Your brain and central nervous system actually consist of several different semi-autonomous sectors, each with a specialized job. No one part of the brain is in charge of everything. Each part relies on other parts for feedback and instructions. Other writers have likened the operation of the brain to a symphony orchestra, and I think this analogy is a very good one. All the sections are there and ready to play, but in order to create music that’s filled with balance, harmony, order, and rhythm, they need two important elements: the sheet music (perhaps memorized) and the conductor. The sheet music gives each orchestral section its instructions. The conductor provides the emotional leadership.

In the orchestra that is your brain, the promise you make to yourself each day is the sheet music.

And you yourself are the conductor.

A lot of people understand that they’re the conductor of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. But not many people realize how crucial the sheet music is to the balanced, holistic functioning of their own brains. Take away the sheet music — the overall set of instructions that coordinates all the sections —- and you get exactly what you’d expect: an overall lack of coordination.

This may sound very simple and very obvious, but you’d be astonished how few medical doctors, neurological researchers, or theologians understand this principle. Neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to change itself — works most efficiently when you give your own brain some sheet music to follow.

Having sheet music can be a good thing or a bad thing, of course. Neuroplasticity can work in “negative” directions as well as in “positive” directions. If you feed your brain a steady diet of grim, depressing, pessimistic, violent sheet music, the various sections of your brain will conclude that that’s their job, and that’s what they’ll play. They’ll play exactly what you’ve told them to play because that’s what they’re designed to do. Fortunately, these same regions of your brain will start to play a different tune if you give them a whole new folder of sheet music to focus on.

That’s where the promise to yourself comes in.

Your biological brain can and will make changes to its wiring patterns, but only if it’s sure you really, really want the changes. This apparent sluggishness on the part of your brain is intentionally wired into your DNA. After all, you wouldn’t want your entire brain to rewire itself every day on the basis of a whim or a passing fad. That would be counterproductive.

There’s a reason it takes about 6 weeks for a new neuron to grow inside your brain. You can’t speed up this process, but you can make sure your brain gets the message every day that it’s not a waste of precious biological resources to be building a bunch of new neural networks.

And make no mistake — you have to make sure there’s a steady supply of biological ingredients on hand if you want your body to divert resources into the energy-intensive task of building new neurons and glial cells. That’s why you need to eat three balanced meals each day.

This is also why I think voluntary fasting for more than two or three days is harmful to the brain. Put simply, you’re starving the brain of nutrients it needs in order to continually restructure interconnections between brain regions (or sections of the orchestra) for optimal “performance” (including optimal performance of your complex intuition circuitry).

I also find it most interesting that 6 weeks is 42 days — eerily similar to the 40 days of fasting and seclusion that pops up so often in the traditional mystical teachings of different religious movements. Forty days of fasting, prayer, and seclusion is just enough time to harness the power of neuroplasticity in negative ways that diminish the overall functioning of the brain.

Coincidence?

I doubt it.

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

A: I’d like to return to an idea that was endorsed in Karen Armstrong’s book (The Spiral Staircase), the idea that “when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do (page 292). I find this idea self-serving and smug. I also find it very demeaning. In fact, I find most religious ideas about God to be self-serving, smug, and demeaning. Demeaning to human beings and demeaning to God. Since this is Holy Week, it seems like a good time to talk to you about your thoughts on the reality of God and what this reality can mean for our lives.

“Jesus said: If they ask you, ‘Where are you from?’ reply to them, ‘We have come from the place where light is produced from itself. It came and revealed itself in their image.’ If they ask you, ‘Are you it?’ reply to them, ‘We are his children. We are the first fruits of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign within you of your Father?’ reply to them, ‘It is movement. It is rest.’ (Gospel of Thomas 50 a-c).” Photo credit JAT 2021.

J: I see you’re still upset about the way people are talking about God.

A: I’m upset about the fact that theologians and mystics are not being honest with themselves and with others. I’m upset about their “closed-shop” attitude. I’m upset about their tiny, closed, pessimistic view of God and Creation. I’m upset about their narcissistic refusal to open wide the doors of theological inquiry. I’m upset about the pettiness. I’m upset about the way religion teaches — or actually doesn’t teach — people to be in relationship with God. I’m especially upset about the religious rituals that get in the way of the relationships.

J: The crucial problem here is worship.

A: Worship?

J: People of faith all over the world are trying to be in relationship with God. Their souls long to know God, to feel the Presence of God in their daily lives. They long for the comfort, the solace of that love. But among those millions of people, how many of them do you think have actually felt that Presence?

A: Not many. You can tell by the look in a person’s eye when you put the words “trust” and “God” in the same sentence. People of faith are disillusioned and very, very hurt.

J: There are three great obstacles to the experience of relationship with God in the daily life of regular human beings. The first obstacle we’ve talked about a fair bit — the role of status addiction in creating suffering and abuse in the lives of humans and other creatures on Planet Earth. Status addiction is deeply imbedded in all major world religions, even the non-theistic ones. Status addiction in a religious setting becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that ruins lives.* The toxic effects of status addiction have not yet been recognized. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the Vatican could continue to uphold its teachings on sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation in the absence of status addiction. Status addiction is one of the three main glues that hold together the Vatican house of cards.

A: Being named Pope is quite the status symbol. Right now the History Channel is showing “The Borgias,” the mini-series about the corrupt family that owned the Papacy at the turn of the 16th century.

J: The second of the three glues holding orthodoxy together is a tenacious belief in the Law of Cause and Effect — the Materialist philosophy you and I have been discussing. What’s astonishing about this belief system is its arrogance. It’s completely oriented towards the supremacy of human beings. The term “anthropocentric” hardly begins to capture it. The Law of Cause and Effect, whatever its particular religious manifestation, teaches people that the Law is more important, more effective, and more divine than God. They say the Law is merely a manifestation of God’s wishes, but what they really mean is that God is utterly bound by all the provisions of the contract law — sort of like Prometheus chained to the rock. This is the source of human religious authority, the foundation on which they claim all their status, power, money, fame, and sexual gratification. This is also the source of human psychological authority — the need to assuage one’s own suffering by claiming there really isn’t a personal God who intervenes in people’s lives. The need for narcissists to obtain psychological authority has never been adequately examined or addressed in the church. The last thing a status-addicted narcissist wants to hear about is a personal God who isn’t chained at a safe distance and who can generate consequences for the narcissist’s smug self-idolization. Today.

A: Okay. What’s the third glue of orthodoxy?

J: The third is worship. I’m defining worship as any spiritual practice that centres around the goal of escape.

A: I’ve never heard that definition of worship before. I tend to think of “liturgy” and “worship” as being more or less the same thing. You go to “worship” on Sundays, and the exact form of this worship is the liturgy — the specific prayers and hymns and sermon content for that particular day.

J: There’s the source of the confusion right there. There’s nothing wrong with liturgy. There’s nothing wrong at all with the idea of people getting together once a week to say some prayers and sing some hymns and hear an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring sermon and maybe even sit together in safe, companionable silence. It’s a healthy practice, one I totally endorse. The idea of setting aside one day per week — the Sabbath — for mutual uplifting and compassionate spiritual reflection is crucial to the health of all human beings. There are lots of different ways to express your love and trust in God on the Sabbath. You can go to church or synagogue. You can visit someone who’s sick in hospital. You and a friend can go outside with a garbage bag and clean up your local parks and streets. You can have a family games afternoon — playing old fashioned board games like Monopoly or Scrabble. The single uniting factor in all these expressions of spirituality is relationship. You’re building positive relationships. You’re connecting to other people and to Nature. In creating these connections, you’re also creating a stronger connection with God the Mother and God the Father. You’re saying “yes” to life, love, service, and laughter. The last thing you’re trying to do is escape.

A: You’re trying to fully engage with life.

J: Yes. I taught engagement, not escape. This is why you see me in the Gospel of Mark as a man who doesn’t retreat into the wilderness, who rarely prays, who never worships in the Jerusalem Temple, and has no use for righteousness in the Law.

A: Yet Mark shows you living a life filled with faith, forgiveness, healing, and redemption. A life filled with relationships. Messy, complicated, frustrating relationships. But that’s what it means to be human, eh?

J: Worship and liturgy are two completely different things. Worship and faith are two completely different things. Worship is the “work” of pious people. Worship is the set of actions they undertake to achieve their long-term goal of escape. Orthodox Western Christians call this escape “salvation.” Buddhists call this escape “nirvana.” Atheists call this escape “saving lives.” At the core of these belief systems lies the intersection of status addiction, Materialism, and worship — the complete abandonment of God by human beings. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean God is doing the abandoning. I mean that human beings are doing the abandoning. I mean that every time a pious Christian devotes an hour or more each day to intercessory prayer, he or she is abandoning God. The more time a person spends in worshipful prayer each day, the farther he or she is getting from God. God doesn’t need your prayers or anyone else’s prayers in order to act. God is not bound by bizarre religious claims about Cause and Effect. God the Mother and God the Father have free will. They’re not chained to the rock. This means that you, as a human being, aren’t that important prayer-wise in the grand cosmological scheme of things. Contrary to the claims of many religious leaders, the sky will not fall down if the “chosen” nuns, monks, and mystics stop praying the Divine Office each day. (The theory here is that God needs to hear the recitation of the Mass and the Divine Office every day to help empower God in his great battle against the Devil to save human souls). Prayers of worship tell the God you’re trying to connect with that you don’t trust God. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and then demanding to know why you’re lame.

A: Our prayers of worship may not be needed, but I know one thing for sure — our ability to love and forgive is sure needed.

J (nodding and smiling): God the Mother and God the Father don’t need or want our prayers of worship. AT ALL. On the other hand, they very much need our love. They want and need to be in relationship with us. We’re their children, and they’re just heartbroken, to be honest, when their own beloved children turn away from their divine family — their divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters. It’s very painful for God when human beings choose logic over love, mind over heart, and law over miracles and forgiveness. Some logic is needed, some mind is needed, and some law is needed. This should go without saying. But there has to be balance. And there has to be trust — trust in a loving, forgiving, amazingly brilliant but very humble God. This is what I was trying to teach.

A: It’s what I feel every day — a comforting sense of God’s loving presence, a comforting sense that I’m never alone. I get confused and upset about daily events like everyone else, but I know that at the end of each day God will be there to help me figure it out. I also know that when I screw up, God will help me recognize my mistakes, just as you’d expect mature, loving parents to do. They forgive me when I make a mistake, and they don’t hold any grudges. Their forgiveness helps me find the courage to learn from my mistakes, correct my mistakes, and move forward. Their forgiveness means I’m not caught in that horrible hamster wheel of shame, blame, regret, revenge, and self-loathing that I remember all too well from my earlier years. Their forgiveness has freed me to live.

J: Who needs escape on a future day when the miracle of forgiveness can free you today?

*For an introductory discussion of the role of status addiction in the orthodox Western Church see The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction and Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher.

JR33: The Black Swans of Mysticism

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

A: You know what? I’m feeling pretty peeved this morning, and I have a lot of things I’d like to say about some of the mystical ideas we’ve been talking about this week. I think I know how the Gospel writer Mark must have felt when he first read Paul’s First Corinthians. Some ticked!

J (smiling): I’m all ears.

A: Thank you! All this talk about apophatic mystics and anagogic mystics has brought up some issues that have been bugging the heck out of me for years. But yesterday was the last straw. Yesterday I was in the mood to do some spring cleaning, so I tackled a pile of papers that needed to be filed. There I found a church newsletter from November 2010 with a review of Karen Armstrong’s book The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (Toronto: Random House-Vintage, 2004). The reviewer dutifully tried to capture the content of Armstrong’s thesis about God, her discovery that “some of the most eminent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and mystics insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated. Some went so far as to say that it was better to say that God did not exist, because our notion of existence was too limited to apply to God.” Oh yeah? thought I indignantly. The reviewer went on: “Most would agree with the Greek Orthodox that any statement about God has to have two characteristics. One is ‘to remind us that God cannot be contained in a neat, coherent system of thought,’ and the other, ‘it should lead us to a moment of silent awe or wonder, because when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do.'”

OH, YEAH? Really? That’s the best you can do, huh? You’re gonna just wimp out because intense emotions can’t be explained by using pure logic? You’re gonna just let yourselves off the hook that easily and give up on one of the best, most wondrous parts of the spiritual journey of redemption and transformation? You’re gonna just listen to these dopey mystics? Get a life, people! And I mean that literally. Get a life, and then get back to me on the question of who God is.

And you apophatic mystics out there — until you decide to get a whole life, a balanced life, a compassionate life, a forgiving life, I’m going to assume your biological brain circuits are seriously seized up in several crucial areas (your anterior cingulate, your amygdala, your orbitofrontal cortex, your right insular cortex, your caudate nucleus, and your hypothalamus). And if you think I’m wrong, then prove it to me. Volunteer to get your bran scanned. I’ve already had my brain scanned once. I’m game to go again. Show me your brain is healthy and fully functional and not damaged from psychoactive drug use. Then we’ll talk.

J: As you’ve said — and I totally agree — there’s no ethical mysticism without ethical scientific investigation.

A: I’m so upset about mystical claims that can’t be substantiated or corroborated. I’m upset about the sloppiness of current scientific investigation into mysticism, too. I’ve looked at some of the criteria for different “Mysticism Scales” used by researchers. Researchers such as Hood want to know if potential mystics have had an experience of transcending themselves or losing themselves in an experience of oneness. But this is only one type of mysticism — it’s a measure of apophatic mysticism, an experience that’s quite likely to be a highly dysfunctional dissociative disorder, not a true mystical state at all. There. I’ve said it. I think some of the highly revered mystics of the past have been severely dysfunctional. Especially the apophatic mystics — the ones who claim to feel only a void and empty unity. There’s something seriously wrong with a person’s brain if all he or she can feel is an empty unity.

J: Yet this is the state of so-called transcendence that so many seekers have been taught to seek.

A: Well, it’s not what I feel. And it’s not what you felt. So I guess that makes you and me the Popperian “black swans” of falsifiability. And you’re technically dead, which makes your soul mind pretty hard to study. So that leaves me, and others like me, as possible test subjects for a study of non-dysfunctional mysticism. Such a study can’t come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.

J: Unfortunately, such a study would only help distinguish between those whose brains are reasonably functional and those whose brains aren’t. It would do nothing to identify the mystics of the past who were lying — the ones who intentionally invented a mystical journey for their own narcissistic purposes.

A: Ah. Pseudo-Dionysius comes instantly to mind. Pseudo-Dionysius, the great 6th century CE apophatic-anagogic inventor of Christian mystical hierarchy. The inventor of Christian angelology. The inventor of mystical theology. The bolsterer of Neo-Platonic Christian thought. The bolsterer of mystical church authority for the church of the Byzantine Empire. The man who cemented the worst ideals of Platonic mysticism into a church that wanted to utterly eradicate all aspects of your own core teachings on inclusiveness, forgiveness, non-chosenness, and heart-based relationship with the Divine. You mean that kind of liar?

J: I mean that kind of liar.

A: As I said earlier, I think I know how Mark felt when he read what Paul wrote about you. If I were a cartoon character right now, I’d have steam coming out of my ears.

JR32: The Buddha Question

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

“His disciples asked him: Is circumcision useful or not? He said to them: If it were useful, children’s fathers would produce them already circumcised from their mothers. On the other hand, the true circumcision of spirit is entirely valuable” (Gospel of Thomas 53 a-b).  Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: There’s been a trend in the past few decades to try to equate your teachings with the teachings of the Buddha, to try to show that Jesus and Buddha were teaching the same universal truths. This trend seems particularly true of those who are interested in placing you among the apophatic mystics of Christian history — mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross. Thomas Merton, a well-known Roman Catholic Trappist contemplative, was very interested in establishing a dialogue with Buddhist monks. What are your thoughts on the universality of faith and spiritual practice?

J (sighing): You’ve asked a very, very difficult question. There’s no easy answer, but I’ll try to express some of my thoughts. A book such as Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Berkley-Riverhead, 1995) is so beautiful and so kind and so sincere that I want to say I agree with everything he says. But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t agree with the underlying premises, the underlying doctrines of Buddhist belief. On the other hand — and this is where it gets very messy, very complicated — I agree with a lot of the spiritual practices that Thich Nhat Hanh describes. I agree very much with the path of mindfulness and compassion. I agree with the desire to create communities of peace. I agree with the decision to take action to create positive change. These are aspects of faith that are, indeed, universal. I don’t think anyone would disagree. No matter what religious tradition a person belongs to, the truest expression of faith — the truest expression of humanity — has always been a life lived with mindfulness, compassion, peace, and transformative change. This is true for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other religions, as well. At any time and in any place there have been some Buddhists and some Jews and some Muslims and some Christians who’ve chosen, as individuals, to pursue the path of true faith. These are the people who’ve consciously tried to help heal communities, families, and individuals. They chose this path because they thought it was the right thing to do.

A: You’re placing the emphasis on individual choice rather than on formal religious beliefs or doctrines.

J: I’m drawing a very clear line here between religion and faith. Religion, as it’s practised in major world religions today, including various schools of Buddhism and various schools of Christiantiy, is one of the biggest obstacles to faith. Faith — by that I mean a relationship with God based on courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion — is supposed to be an everyday part of life. An everyday experience. An everyday sense of belonging. A sense of belonging to Creation, belonging to God’s family. It’s the opposite of abandonment or estrangement from God. Faith is quiet acceptance. It’s compassion. It’s empathy. It’s balance. It’s wholeness. It’s pure humbleness and contentment.

A: Religion doesn’t teach this.

J: No. Religion gets in the way of this. It doesn’t have to. In fact, the world would be a healthier place if people could meet each week on the Sabbath to express their faith and share their spiritual experiences together in a safe spiritual environment. This would be church at its best. Unfortunately, this isn’t what church has become in the Western world. Church has become a place to centralize the authority of narcissistic, fear-mongering men and women. Church has become a place to take people farther away from God, not closer.

A: If you were incarnated as a human being today, would you turn to Buddhism for answers to the questions that Pauline Christianity doesn’t answer very well?

J (sadly shaking his head): No. As I said earlier, Buddhism has some important things to say about spiritual practice — about living the teachings of compassion and mindfulness each day, rather than just speaking of them. There’s more insistence in Buddhism on outward actions matching inward intent. And this is important. It’s integrity, after all. Integrity is what you get when your inner choices match your outer actions. It’s the opposite of hypocrisy. Integrity is an important part of peaceful community. I respect this underlying impulse in Buddhist thought.

A: Yet, based on what you’ve already said, you believe this underlying impulse towards daily practice and integrity is not specifically Buddhist. It’s a universal part of true faith.

J: Yes. All human beings are born with this capacity. Unfortunately, like all aspects of human growth and learning, the capacity for mindful, compassionate practice can be lost. “Use it or lose it” — that’s how the human brain and central nervous system work. All human beings are born with the innate capacity to love and forgive, as well, but as experience shows, many individuals lose both. They lose both their ability to love and their ability to forgive. These are the bullies, the psychopaths, and the narcissists. The same people who’ve been in charge of formal religious instruction in most parts of the world.

A: I get that part. But why do you feel uncomfortable with the trend towards having your teachings conflated with Buddha’s teachings?

J: It’s the cosmology. It’s the core assumptions. I don’t agree with either. How could I? I mean, it would be ludicrous for an angel speaking from the Other Side in partnership with a human mystic to claim there is no God. Buddhism, after all, is a non-theistic religion. In Buddhism, there’s a belief in an ultimate reality, but this reality isn’t a person in the way that you and I talk about God the Mother and God the Father as actual identifiable people — unique, distinct, and both very, very big. Buddhism also rejects the idea of an immortal soul, a distinct consciousness that continues to exist after the death of the physical body. And this is before we get to Buddhist teachings about karma and the nature of suffering, impermanence, rebirth, and enlightenment.

A: What are your thoughts on karma?

J: It’s a form of Materialist philosophy — a profound reliance on the idea that universal laws of cause and effect exist, laws that must be followed and can’t be broken. I reject pure Materialism as a model for explaining and understanding the complex interactions of all life in Creation. It leaves no room for God’s free will. It leaves no room for the profound mysteries of forgiveness, redemption, and humbleness (as opposed to humility). It’s also incredibly depressing when you think about it.

A: The idea that the universe is holding you accountable for choices you can’t even remember from previous “lives” — or previous manifestations.

J: Yes. The idea of blaming the poor and the sick and the downtrodden for their own misfortunes when it’s usually a group’s own leaders who have made the sick sick and the downtrodden downtrodden.

A: How do you feel about the question of rebirth? A number of different religions teach a form of reincarnation. Is there any place for this concept in your understanding of God, soul, and faith?

J: Well, souls can and do incarnate into 3D bodies all the time. But not for the reasons that the Buddha taught. Souls don’t incarnate because they “have to.” Of course, as soon as I start talking about souls, it’s clear I’m talking “apples” and the Buddha is talking “oranges.” Souls do exist, and rebirth, when it happens, is not a form of karmic consequence to be escaped at all costs. Most souls who choose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth find that a single human lifetime is enough for their unique purposes of learning, growth, and change. However, a small percentage of human beings have already “been there, done that.” They come back a second time because they want to help guide others on a journey that’s often difficult.

A: Mahayana Buddhism teaches that certain enlightened beings choose to “postpone” their reward so they can help others achieve enlightenment. They call these beings “bodhisattvas.” I’ve met a few people in my lifetime who felt somehow more grounded, more connected to the simplicity of spiritual truth, and I’ve called these individuals bodhisattvas.

J: Not unreasonable.

A: I think I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here. I’m going to tell our readers something I’ve known about you for a long time — you were a bodhisattva. A second-time-arounder. A man who messed up big-time during your first lifetime as a human being, and volunteered to go back in as a spiritual teacher and healer. Not because you had to but because you wanted to. For you, second time round was the charm.

J: It’s not something you realize at the time. You can’t even remember anything from your first life as a human being. There’s just a deepening of the connection, I guess you could say. An ability to stay more grounded, more aware of the patterns. It’s not something you can put your finger on, exactly. The sensation is probably best captured by the old maxim, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” A person who has lived once before as a human being is harder to fool with propaganda, spin doctoring, and religious sleight of hand. That’s why they make good mentors.

A: Can you give another example of a well-known person who was a bodhisattva?

J: Glenn Gould, the Canadian musician, was a bodhisattva.

A: No wonder he played so beautifully.

JR31: Jesus, the Man Who Was a Mystic

Life as a Mystic (c) JAT 2015: always drawn to the path less travelled

Life as a Mystic: always drawn to the path less travelled. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Sayings 18a and 18b in the Gospel of Thomas have some interesting things to say about our relationship to time — to beginnings and endings. Stevan Davies’s translation says this: “The disciples asked Jesus: Tell us about our end. What will it be? Jesus replied: Have you found the Beginning so that you now seek the end? The place of the Beginning will be the place of the end [18a]. Blessed is anyone who will stand up in the Beginning and thereby know the end and never die [18b].” Your makarisms — your beatitudes — don’t sound much like the makarisms from the Jewish Wisdom thinkers who wrote books like Proverbs and Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. Why is that?

J (shrugging): I was a mystic, not a Wisdom teacher. I believed in logic, but I believed more in Divine Love. My understanding of happiness was founded in my personal mystical experience. When people asked me how I could be so happy despite all the personal suffering I’d experienced in my life, I told them. They didn’t believe me, but I kept telling them anyway.

A: People today don’t think of you as a mystic. They may think of you as a rabbi or as a wandering Cynic philosopher or as a political revolutionary or even as a shaman-like fellow wandering around Palestine in a severe dissociative state.* But none of the well-respected biblical scholars I’ve read have described you as a mystic. Why not?

J: There’s nothing so poorly understood in the history of religion as mysticism. Having said that, the form of mysticism I practised has been rare in the annals of religious mysticism. I was neither an apophatic mystic nor an anagogic mystic. I was an endogenous mystic.

A: You’re going to have to explain that.

J: Mystical experiences from different cultures can be categorized. And should be categorized. Unfortunately, they’re usually lumped together in one big pot. They’re assumed to be roughly equivalent to each other. But they’re not. For instance, mystics who claim to have had an experience of timeless, transcendent oneness or union with the Divine come away from the experience with the belief that “less is more.” These are the apophatic mystics, from the Greek word meaning “negative speaking” or “unspeaking.” Apophatic mystics believe you can only experience union with God through the constant practise of mystical contemplation. This practice allows you to first “unknow” or “unspeak” yourself, to escape your frail human senses so you can become a proper empty vessel. If you do it correctly, goes the theory, you find yourself in a transcendent state where you no longer think of yourself as “you.” In other words, the path to knowing God is eradication of the self.

A: The opposite of what you taught.

J: Yes. Another thing I taught was the futility of the anagogic path — the vertical or upward path of spiritual ascent that’s been taught so many times by so many different teachers over the centuries. Anagogic mystics may or may not also be apophatic mystics, just to make things more confusing. Basically an anagogic mystic is somebody who believes that the only way to know God is to achieve perfection by following a rigorous step-by-step set of instructions or laws in the correct order. This takes you one step at a time up the spiritual ladder. The ladder of perfection takes you closer to God and farther away from your sinful neighbours. It sets you above and apart from your neighbours. Benedict, the founder of the Christian monasteries and the monastic Rule that bear his name, was teaching his monks a form of anagogic mysticism.

A: Again, not what you taught. So explain what you mean by endogenous mysticism.

J: It’s a term I’ve coined to suggest an experience of intense mysticism that’s hardwired into a person’s DNA rather than being imposed from the outside on an unwilling religious acolyte. True mystics are born, not made. Just as true engineers or true musicians are born, not made. An endogenous mystic is somebody who was born with a particular set of talents and communication skills aimed in the directions of philosophy, language, music, mediation (that’s mediation, not meditation), and what I’m going to call for lack of a better term “the geek factor.” True mystics are more interested than most people in offbeat stories and unusual phenomena. They show a life-long interest in stories and experiences that are somewhat unconventional. Not too weird, but a bit weird. You wouldn’t find a mystic teaching an M.B.A. course. But you might find a mystic teaching a Creative Writing course. Most true mystics don’t even know they’re true mystics. Most often they end up as writers. Writers need more solitary time than most people, as mystics do. They need the solitary time so they can pull up from somewhere inside themselves the emotions and the insights they long to express. They’re not being unfriendly or rude or hostile. They just need the quiet time so they can hear themselves think. This is true for both writers and mystics.

A: Well, you can count me in on all scores there. I spent a lot of time indoors reading as a child. And drawing. And watching TV shows that had a science fiction or fantasy element. I loved the first Star Trek series when it first came out. Come to think of it, I still like it.

J: I was like that, too. I was fascinated by the Greek myths. As soon as I learned to read, I read the Iliad. Then the Odyssey. My strict Jewish mother wasn’t pleased. But what could she do? She was a widow with a big family to look after. As long as I stayed on the family property, where I couldn’t get in too much trouble, she put up with my unusual interest in books, books, and more books. I read everything I could get my hands on. I learned to write by studying the authors I most admired.

A: I’m thinkin’ that Plato probably wasn’t one of your favourite authors.

J: I liked plays, actually. I learned a lot by studying Greek poets and playwrights. I liked the comedies of the Greek playwright Menander. Much healthier than the doleful rantings of the Jewish prophets.

A: These aren’t the literary influences one would expect you to describe.

J: No. I had to learn to read and write from the sacred Jewish texts because my mother and my maternal grandfather insisted we be literate in our religious heritage. So I knew my Torah and my Proverbs. But I was a born mystic, and, like all mystics and mystics-in-writer’s-clothing, I was interested in — utterly fascinated by — the fine nuances of character and environment and insight. I wanted to know what made people tick. I wanted to hear how they spoke, how they phrased things, how they interacted with each other. I wanted to know why people fall in love, what they say, what they do. I wanted to absorb all the joys, all the nuances, of life and living.

A: As writers do.

J: Writers can’t help it. It’s what they do. They’re so attuned to the rhythms and patterns of language and dialogue and everyday speech and sensory input and colours and textures and movement and nature and choices and especially change. Mystics are like this, too. Deeply attuned to patterns of communication that other people don’t pay attention to at a conscious level. A mystic is somebody who’s hardwired to pay conscious attention to subtle, nuanced communications from the deepest levels of Creation. Sometimes these communications come from God. Sometimes they come from one’s own soul. Sometimes they come from somebody else’s soul. But basically it’s about conscious observation and understanding of specific kinds of communications. Mystics are tuned to certain bands on the divine radio, if you will. They can pick up stations that most other people aren’t interested in trying to pick up. These “mystical” stations aren’t better than other stations. They’re just . . . well, they’re just different. All the stations on the divine radio are good, because different styles of music are all inherently equal. They’re all inherently equal, but they don’t all sound the same. Because they’re not the same. They’re different but equal.

A: As souls are all different but equal.

J: Yes. A lot of people imagine it would be wonderful and exciting to give over their lives to mysticism. But being a mystic is only wonderful and exciting if you’re hardwired to be a mystic. If you’re like most people — born with intuition, but not born to be either a mystic or a writer — you would find it very isolating, frustrating, even depressing to live as a mystic — as many Christian nuns, monks, clerics, and mystics have discovered to their misfortune. The “Dark Night of the Soul” is not and should not be part of the journey to knowing God. At no time in my life as Jesus did I experience a Dark Night of the Soul. On the contrary, my experience as a mystic gave me only an ever deepening sense that I was in the right place doing the right thing with the right people for the right reasons. I trusted my “beginning.” As a result, I stopped worrying about my “ending.” I lived each day in a state of comfort, peace, trust, and love.

A: The journey was not about the end goal, but about finding your own beginning — knowing yourself as you really are, then going from there.

J: This is the only way to find the freedom that comes from knowing and loving your Divine Parents — to whom I would like to say, once again for the record, you both rock!

* In 1995, Stevan Davies, the same author who published the translation of the Gospel of Thomas I refer to, wrote a very puzzling book called Jesus the Healer (New York: Continuum, 1995) in which he claims that Jesus carried out healings during a trance state that can be called “holy spirit-possession.” He concludes, therefore, that Jesus was a “medium.” If you’ve read my comments on The Blonde Mystic blog about psychic powers and psychic mediums, you’ll be able to guess what I think of Davies’s spirit-possession thesis.

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