The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “intent”

01 May 2012

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.

 

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Posted in boundary issues, brain-soul connection, Gnosticism, intent, interoception, meta-choice, mysticism, soul blueprint, The Blonde Mystic, the right to be right and tagged | Leave a Comment
22 Apr 2012

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.

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, intent, meta-choice, psychopathy (niceness), soul blueprint, The Blonde Mystic, the right to be right, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
13 Mar 2012

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.

 

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain-soul connection, ethical mysticism, free will, humility, intent, meta-choice, prayer, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged , | Leave a Comment
15 Jun 2011

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.

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Posted in Bible, Church of today, forgiveness, intent, Jesus Redux, Peace Sequence, prayer, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged , | Leave a Comment
12 Jun 2011

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.”

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Posted in "4 S's", angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), Church of today, forgiveness, honesty, intent, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' teachings, Messiah, Mother and Father God, Mother God, occult themes, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God and tagged | Leave a Comment
08 Jun 2011

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.

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Posted in Christ archetype, Christ Zone, Church of today, consciousness, Divine Love, faith, intent, Jesus Redux, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, Mother and Father God, mystery, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, relationship with God, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
05 Jun 2011

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.

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Posted in "4 S's", boundary issues, empathy, End Times, Gospel of Mark, insight, intent, Jesus Redux, meta-choice, monism, My Spiral Path, narcissism, parables, sense of time & timing, Truth and tagged | Leave a Comment
27 Apr 2011

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.”

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, healing, healing miracles, intent, meta-choice, prayer, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
21 Apr 2011

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.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, gratitude, healing, intent, meta-choice, My Spiral Path, mystic, Soul, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
02 Apr 2011

TBM 10: Guys, Intuition, and "the Gut"

One of the things I want to emphasize most is that intuition is not a female prerogative. All human beings are born with the faculty of intuition, and all human beings need their intuition in order to live a balanced, holistic, healthy, happy life. In other words, men have intuition, too!

If you don’t like the word intuition, you can call it something else. You can call it your “gut.” You can call it your strength. You can say there’s “something you’ve just gotta do.” Nobody’s saying you have to light smelly candles or write mushy poems in order to be a guy with intuition.

But being a guy with intuition comes in pretty handy in an emergency.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

Remember those two pilots — Captain Chesley Sullenberger III and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles — who safely brought down US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River with no loss of life to anyone? Yeah, well, if you’re looking for a clear example of male intuition, look no further than these two heroic pilots.

In a moment of crisis, when it really mattered, these two men were able to work in synchrony with God and respond immediately and effectively to the intuitive guidance being offered to them.

It’s really important to note that during this emergency these two men had no time and no attention to spare for anything but the crisis at hand. They had to give 100% of themselves to myriad tasks. They had to use all their senses to quickly and logically analyze the problem, check their instrumentation, advise the control tower, advise the flight crew, come up with a plan, and execute the plan — all within a few short minutes. There was no time for formal prayer. No time for religious ritual. No time for anything but flying. So they did what they do so well — they flew. They threw their hearts and minds and bodies and courage into flying the plane, and because they did, a miracle took place on the Hudson.

Intuition is a sophisticated brain process that involves numerous circuits in the brain. It’s not pure logic. It’s not pure emotion. It’s not pure reflex. It’s not pure genetic instinct. It’s a combination of all these aspects of the human condition. It’s the ability of your biological brain (in conjunction with your soul) to fully assess all the different angles of a problem and respond to the problem without panicking. Intuition is felt most intensely and most memorably during a crisis because that’s when you need it most. Afterwards, people often describe sensations of being “in the zone,” or of having heightened senses, or of having a strong sense in their gut that they should act now and ask questions later. This is what intuition feels like: you just know what you’re supposed to do.

Here’s the clincher: intuition — your ability to work with God during a crisis to achieve a positive outcome for the people you love — requires that your brain be prewired in a reasonably functional way. It has to be wired in a reasonably functional way before the crisis takes place.

The pilots on Flight 1549 had prewired their brains in a number of crucial ways. They had prewired their logic circuitry by willingly undertaking the study of physics and math and meteorology and navigation and aeronautics. They had prewired their physical reflexes by willingly undertaking rigorous flight training. They had prewired their problem-solving skills by willingly practising their emergency drills. They had prewired their empathy circuits by choosing to care about the people who were literally under their wing. Both these men had worked very hard over the years to get their biological brains “in line with” their souls’ intense love of flying. They were doing what they loved to do, but they didn’t learn to fly through sudden revelation or mystical vision. They had to work their asses off.

Fortunately for the passengers and flight crew of Flight 1549, Sullenberger and Skiles were gifted pilots at the soul level who had chosen to integrate their biology with their unique soul talents through hard work. This meant that they were fully equipped in the intuition department when it came time for them to work in full synchrony with God. The circuits were already there. The circuits were already in place and ready to be “pinged” by God. God saw the problem and God acted to help them act.

Note, however, that God wasn’t the only one acting here. God was acting in concert with two of God’s children. You could say it was a team effort.

Of course, it’s only a team effort if you, as a human being, have the same goal, the same intent as God. It’s only a team effort if you want to help other people for the sake of helping other people, not for the sake of acquiring status for yourself or your clan. The intuitive circuitry of your brain will only help you in a crisis if you’ve chosen ahead of time to make balanced choices that reflect your soul’s true nature.

God isn’t going to suddenly swoop in during an emergency and rewire a psychopath’s whole brain so he/she can hear God’s guidance. Many people — including frightened psychopaths (and it takes a lot to scare a psychopath) — have requested such immediate divine intervention during a major emergency, and many have hoped to get it. But most of those who think they got such an intervention — who believe they got a one-time divine intervention so strange and wondrous and different from anything they’ve known before that they become obsessed with it and start chasing after it for the rest of their human lives — probably got something that’s quite scary from a biological viewpoint. They probably gave themselves (albeit unintentionally) a trauma-induced psychotic break.

Many are the mystics who have a psychotic depression in disguise.

In short, intuition is a normal, natural part of everyday human life for both men and women. It’s a product of the everyday choices we make as human beings. At the same time it’s a puzzling and mysterious experience that helps us feel closer to each other and to God. It’s one of the great joys of the human experience.

Intuition makes you want to smile and beam from the inside out with the joy of knowing you’re actually, truly, honestly, and undeniably loved by God.

Intuition helps you find the courage to find redemption. Intuition helps you be your best self — a person you can actually like and trust.

Now wouldn’t that be a miracle?

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Posted in brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, building your intuition, Favourite Posts, intent, meta-choice, soul blueprint, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
22 Feb 2011

JR14: Crimes of Religious Passion

A: I have a confession to make. I was looking back at some earlier posts, and I realize that both you and I were guilty of using the terms “light” and “dark” in a less precise way than we might have. So first I want to apologize if we confused anybody.

J: Language is fluid. Communication is fluid. Words like “light” and “dark” have a lot of different meanings, depending on the context. This is why I say the intent is more important than the words. The goal here is not to speak or write like a corporate lawyer, but to talk about feelings and ideas related to the spiritual journey. Writing “live” on a blog has some of the same problems as being interviewed live on TV. People will look for ways to trip you up. But that’s their choice. That’s their intent. If their intent is to be legalistic for their own benefit, that’s up to them. Small errors in speech are going to happen, and each individual has to decide how to react to those errors. It’s a choice like any other choice.

A: It’s a choice to look at the intent behind the words or actions.

“Jesus said: What you will hear in your ear, in the inner ear proclaim from your rooftops. For no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, nor does one put it in a hidden place. Rather, one puts it on a stand so that all who come and go will see its light” (Gospel of Thomas 33 a-b). In this saying, the act of lighting a lamp shows both your intent and the consequences of that intent. No matter how hard you try, and no matter how many excuses you invent, you can’t hide your actual intent from either your inner self (your inner ear) or from God. Your actual intent shines as brightly as a lamp to those who have the emotional maturity to see it. So it’s best to be honest about your intent and start trying to fix your mistakes in a responsible way (instead of blaming other people or blaming God or Satan for what you yourself chose to do). The photo above is a graphic reminder for me about the steps involved in taking personality responsibility. In the “oops, I made a mistake” department, I forgot to check the old back shed before the start of winter and failed to notice the hole chewed by a family of rodents so they could bring in a pantry-full of seed-filled cones. Cleaning up after the mistake I made wasn’t fun, but one of the important spiritual practices is learning how to be honest with yourself about your own mistakes and then figuring out how best to clean up after yourself. God is always happy to help you with this spiritual task. Photo credit JAT 2016.

 J: Yes. People make mistakes. It’s part of the human condition. Everybody makes mistakes. But not all mistakes are made with intent. Many mistakes are nothing more than accidents — pure accidents, with no intent to harm. Sometimes the results of purely accidental mistakes can be tragic. More often than not, though, the greatest harm is caused by people who have harmful intent towards others. Among adolescents and adults, the majority of mistakes carry with them a harmful intent. A young child who drops a glass of milk because his motor skills aren’t fully developed has no harmful intent. An adult who gets behind the wheel of a car after drinking may not be planning to crash into another car — so from this point of view a crash is an “accident” — but his intent is clearly harmful from the moment he gets behind the wheel. He intends — he chooses — to drive regardless of the consequences to himself or anyone else. That’s what I mean by a mistake with harmful intent.

A: He made a choice and hoped he wouldn’t get caught.

J: The body of law known as common law understands this principle. You treat a crime done “on purpose” differently than you treat an accidental harm. You look at the intent of the people involved, and ask yourself if anybody had motive. Did anybody stand to gain?

A: Can acquisition of status can be considered a motive, an incentive, a measurable and desirable gain in the eyes of some individuals?

J: Acquisition of status lies behind many a crime.

A: Including religious crimes against humanity — the ones committed by status-seeking religious leaders?

J: Especially the crimes of religious passion. Especially those.

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Posted in conscience & morality, honesty, intent, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), Peace Sequence, personal responsibility, psychopathy, status addiction and tagged | Leave a Comment
21 Feb 2011

JR13: Jesus Speaking on Prayer

A: This morning I was tidying up some papers and I came across an insert from the worship bulletin of a small local church. This particular church is a “one of a kind” group that’s blending ideas from Unitarianism, the United Church of Canada, Gnosticism, and maybe some Eastern ideas filtered through a New Age lens. I notice that I circled the group prayer and wrote in the margin, “How Not to Pray.” I wondered if you could go through the prayer with me and explain — from your angelic perspective — why this kind of prayer isn’t helpful.

J: Sure. Can you type the prayer here for reference?

A: Typing fingers coming right up. Okay. It says on this insert that the prayer is called the “Prayer of Transfiguration,” adapted from the Prayer of Abandonment by Charles de Foucauld. Here’s the text:

I abandon myself to the Light; Let it transform my life. Whatever it does, I am open; I am present to all, I accept all. Let the Divine will be done in me. And in all creation — I wish no more than this. Into the hands of Life I commend my spirit; I offer it with all the love of my heart. For I am Light, And so need to give my self, To surrender my self into Life’s hands without reserve, And with boundless confidence and gratitude, For we are all called — to Live in the Light!

A: I think a lot of people would find this prayer quite lovely, quite meaningful. However, I happen to know from personal experience that you don’t encourage people to pray this kind of prayer. Can you explain your thoughts, your reasoning?

J: Prayer is a messy topic. People of faith have a tendency to claim that all prayer is good, all prayer is helpful. But it’s not. From the point of view of angels — the angels who are tasked with looking after the human beings who live on Planet Earth — all prayer is not created equal. There are what I might call genuine prayers — the ones spoken with the soul’s own loving intent. There are also pseudo-prayers — words strung together with unkind intent and directed at God. Pseudo-prayers predominate, unfortunately.

A: Let’s talk more about the pseudo-prayers. Can you be more specific about the “unkind intent” you’re referring to?

J: When people try to speak with God, communicate with God through prayer, the words they speak are of little interest to God or to God’s angels. There are meaningful prayers that consist of only one word or one sound. The actual words are not that important.

A: Mantras. When you speak of prayers that contain only one sound, you’re talking about mantras.

J: Mantras work for some people. Not for everyone. But for some people. Mantras should not be recommended for everyone on a spiritual path.

A: Why not?

J: Because everyone’s soul is different. Therefore everyone’s learning style is different. And everyone’s communication style is different. There is no single form of communication with God that can recommended for all people. Each person has to find his or her own best path.

A: I’m not a mantra person. I’m definitely a word person. I have to talk with God in words.

A utility shed made into a charming gift that lifts the soul and brings a smile to your day. A great way to pray is to simply say, “Thank you for lifting me up in this moment. I really needed that. Thank you for guiding me to this!” New Brunswick Botanical Gardens. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J: I’m also a word person. It works for me, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Here’s one area where people definitely shouldn’t try to do what Jesus does. They should try to find their own best form of communication with God. There are many nuanced forms of conversing with your Divine Parents. Some people need to go outside and sit quietly in the sun. Some need to be actively engaged in the outdoor world of nature — maybe through hiking, camping, sailing, canoeing. Gardening is another big one. Some people can’t hear God unless the music is on really, really loud. Some people can’t hear God unless the room is very, very quiet. There’s no one correct way. They’re all equally valid, equally beautiful ways as far as God is concerned. God always meets you where your soul longs to be. So if your soul is the kind of soul that hears God when it’s very, very quiet, that’s when God will be speaking with you. God respects who you are as a soul. Therefore, God won’t try to “force” you to listen at a time that’s not good for you. God is nothing if not respectful.

A: None of the spiritual practices you just mentioned sound like traditional religious prayer. Why not?

J: As I was mentioning, it’s not the words that God listens to. It’s the intent. God pays no attention to rote prayer, to be honest. It’s just a waste of everybody’s time. Rote prayer isn’t about communication or relationship. Rote prayer is just a habit — a habit like making your bed every day or putting the toilet paper roll on the same way every time. It’s something you do because it helps you cope with daily stress. Or maybe it’s something you do so you won’t be punished by an authority figure who expects you to pray. But it’s not relationship between you and God. You can’t expect to recite the Lord’s Prayer every day and have it mean anything or do anything. The Lord’s Prayer has no special power in Creation, despite what many orthodox Christians would like to believe.

A: Define what you mean by “unkind intent.” Can you give specific examples of that?

J: Sure. Prayer directed at getting somebody cursed by God. Prayer directed at getting special favours for yourself at the expense of those around you. Prayer directed at cursing yourself for your own unworthiness before God. Prayer directed at getting healing for somebody else. Prayer directed at getting somebody’s soul saved. Prayer directed at getting somebody’s loved ones released from purgatory or hell. Prayer directed at being chosen to be among God’s elect. Prayer directed to saints. Prayer directed to holy relics. Prayer directed at getting somebody blessed by God.

A: So . . . pretty much all the most popular orthodox Western Christian prayers.

J: Yup. God doesn’t curse people. God doesn’t favour you over your neighbour. God doesn’t accept your self-pity, because God knows your true potential. God heals with or without anybody’s prayers, but it’s up to God to decide the right time and the right place. God hasn’t lost any souls, so God doesn’t need to save any souls. There is no purgatory and there is no hell, so God doesn’t need help freeing anyone. God doesn’t have any chosen children and there is no group of elect souls. All souls are created equal, so there is no hierarchy of saints or angels to intervene on anybody’s behalf. Praying to holy relics is occult magic, and it hurts your brain, so don’t do it. All of God’s children are equally blessed.

A: You don’t give an inch to tradition, do you? Not one tiny inch.

J: No. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others didn’t go nearly far enough with their “protesting” reformation of Western Christianity. The work of reforming the church to reflect the core values of God the Mother and God the Father still remains to be done.

A: A make-work project for the church of the third millennium. Okay. I’d like to return to the original question about the “Prayer of Transfiguration” above. What about this prayer feels “out of synch” to you, if I can use that expression?

J: It feels out of synch with the values of the soul because of the underlying assumptions implicit in the prayer. To begin with, I take issue with the imagery of “light.”

A: Why? Haven’t spiritual seekers long equated good spiritual choices with “light”?

J: My point exactly. Nobody’s questioning the metaphor. People say, “Oh, the light, the light, we’re getting closer to the truth! Hurray! We’re making progress!” But if people are moving towards the light, what are they moving away from?

A: The darkness.

“Jesus said to them: If you fast you will bring sin to yourselves, and if you pray you will be condemned, and if you give to charity you will damage your spirits. When you go into a region and walk around in the rural areas, whenever people receive you, eat whatever they provide for you, and heal their sick. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth can defile you” (Gospel of Thomas 14 a-c). In other words, if you want to have a strong faith relationship with God, you have to give up the idea that God enjoys your displays of power, rote piety, religious ritual, and subjugation of others. Use your skills instead to help others find their own courage, faith, and humbleness. Photo shows a scarab commemorating Kushite victory over inhabitants of the Negev desert, carved from steatite, 25th Dynasty, c. 710 BCE. (On display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.)

 J: Exactly. It’s an immature, dualistic claim. Good versus evil. Light versus dark. It’s so ingrained in people’s minds that they don’t even question the metaphor any longer. But let me ask you — what’s so bad about the dark? Is the night sky to be feared? Is the darkness of the ocean bottom to be despised? Why is light good and darkness bad? Why does “white” mean pure in Western culture, and “black” mean corrupt or evil? God’s Creation isn’t about good versus evil and light versus dark. Creation isn’t dualistic. So why have people recite a prayer that reinforces sloppy dualistic thinking? The human brain — the biological 3D brain — is kind of stupid at times, and it needs good guidance. It needs to be constantly reminded not to fall into overly simplistic thinking, which leads to overly simplistic “solutions.” A solid prayer of the genuine kind is a prayer that challenges people to acknowledge and respect the complexity of God’s Creation. A solid prayer does not speak of abandonment and surrender without first acknowledging the difficulty of this spiritual task (and spiritual task it is!). A solid prayer reminds people that they have an important role to play in Creation, even if they don’t fully understand that role. A solid prayer speaks of balance — both the difficulty of finding it and the difficulty of maintaining it. A solid prayer never speaks of people as empty vessels to be filled by pure Divine will. To speak of empty vessels negates the integrity of the soul. A solid prayer helps people remain humble yet at the same time courageous. The prayer typed above is a prayer of humility, not a prayer of humbleness. And you know what I think of false humility!

A: Yessiree. Do I ever! Any final words of advice for readers who want to be able to communicate clearly with God?

J: Yes. Don’t ever put yourself down while you’re engaged in prayer. Don’t ever say you’re unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. Be honest about mistakes you’ve made, but ask God to help you learn from your mistakes. Be brave. Don’t whine. Remember you’re a child of God. And I mean that in every possible way. You’re a child of God, and nobody can take that away from you. That’s a pretty good starting point for finding the courage to make gradual changes in your life.

A: And yes, folks! You’re not listening to anything I haven’t had to listen to a thousand times myself. And yes! Angels really do talk this way. (Don’t you feel sorry for me?) And yes! Sometimes you just want to scream because your angels are so tough and so determined to help you make positive changes, and they’re so annoyingly dedicated to helping you be your best self! And guess what? YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM GO AWAY NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY. They stick to you like Velcro. SO IF YOU CAN’T LICK ‘EM, YOU MAY AS WELL JOIN ‘EM. That’s my humble opinion, anyway.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), Church of today, dualism, humbleness, humility, intent, Jesus Redux, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, prayer, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged | Leave a Comment
09 Feb 2011

JR8: Mystical Bloodlines, Mystical Castes

J: I’d like to start out today’s discussion by emphasizing a very important point. I want to emphasize that it’s wrong to make sweeping generalizations about any particular religion or religious tradition. Just as it’s wrong to “hate” somebody on their basis of their religion, it’s just as wrong to “love” somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious beliefs form a framework for people, a place to start on the journey of faith. But in the end, the only thing that matters as far as God is concerned is what choices you make as an individual. No religion has all the answers. No religion is even asking all the right questions. So when I come out swinging against a revered figure from the past such as John the Baptist, I’m not trying to attack huge groups of people. I have specific complaints about the choices made 2,000 years ago by John the Baptist while he was incarnated as a human being. I also have specific complaints about specific choices made by a number of individuals who were close to John at the time. However . . . and this is a big however . . . the choices made by John the Baptist 2,000 years ago have nothing to do with the choices open to individual people today. There is no “loss of honour” for readers today because of choices that were made by somebody else centuries ago. No real “loss of honour,” anyway. If individuals today believe I’m undermining their own personal sense of honour by exposing the reality — the harsh and painful truth — about ancient religious teachings, then they’ve got bigger problems than they realize.

A: Yes, but a lot of people still believe very deeply in ancient ideas such as the mystical power of bloodline. For these individuals, there’s such a thing as honour in the blood. Honour carried from generation to generation through the bloodline. Power carried from generation to generation. Divine rights carried from generation to generation. It’s one of the underpinnings of their modern day lives. So they’ll take enormous offense at what you’re saying. Gargantuan offense.

J: I’m sorry to have to say this, but a conviction in the innate mystical power of bloodlines is a fantasy superstition that belongs only in novels and films. God does not favour any one clan or family group over another. It should be clear to everyone by now what happens in the wider world when particular clans, tribes, or nations give themselves the label of “Chosen by God.” Nothing good comes of it. Nothing.

A: Yet it’s a myth-dream that’s found in most cultures and most places in the world. Not to mention most major world religions. Why is this myth-dream so universal?

J: It goes again to the issue we’ve been discussing — major mental illness.

A: Ooooh. I can hear the gasps already.

J: Well, I won’t apologize for saying what needs to be said. Individuals will have to deal with it. It’s the reality. It’s time the blunt reality was brought into the open. Other forms of violence and abuse have been brought forward, brought into the open in recent decades. It’s painful and awkward at first, but it’s only when people openly discuss their suffering that change begins.

A: As you’ve said many times to me, healing follows insight. Healing follows self-honesty and public transparency.

J: Abusers will keep their secrets for as long as they can. They won’t volunteer to tell people their dark secrets. Even when they’re caught, they typically deny they did anything wrong. Other people have to step forward, point the light of truth at the abusers, collect evidence of their wrongdoing, and demonstrate their guilt through a public, transparent, non-corrupt legal system. It’s the only way to change a society’s perception of what’s moral and what’s immoral.

A: Can you give some examples?

J: Sure. Not so long ago, it was considered acceptable by many North Americans to treat women as inferior “possessions” of men. It was considered acceptable to turn a blind eye to incest and child sexual abuse and child pornography. It was considered acceptable to dump vast quantities of highly toxic pollutants into the water, air, and earth.

A: These things are still going on.

J: Yes. But these choices are no longer considered acceptable by the majority of North Americans. There’s been a cultural shift. The harmful actions of the abusers — the narcissists and psychopaths — are no longer being condoned by wider public opinion. There are legal and social implications for the abusers now. The legal and social implications didn’t use to exist. They only exist today because a lot of decent people got on board with the idea that these particular choices — the choice to abuse women, the choice to abuse children, the choice to abuse the environment — are wrong. Immoral. Not acceptable in a compassionate community.

A: It’s a work in progress.

J: Yes. It’s astounding and beautiful and amazing because it shows the truth. It shows that if you boldly and honestly expose the reality of abuse, a lot of people will recognize the wrongness of the abusers’ choices. They’ll feel it deep in their bones.

A: Deep in their souls.

J: The soul is consciousness with a conscience. The soul knows the difference between right and wrong, between moral choices and immoral choices. The soul is not stupid. Everybody has a soul, and everybody comes “prewired,” so to speak, with a “right and wrong” package in their DNA. It’s why mentally mature, emotionally mature people instinctively recoil from certain actions, certain choices. They just feel in their gut that it’s wrong.

A: Except for the people with psychopathy. The psychopaths have lost access to the “right and wrong” package. They know it exists, because they can see it operating in the world around them, but they don’t care. They don’t recoil from horror and abuse the way other people do. Brain scans confirm that certain parts of their brains are underactive, other parts are overactive.

J: As I said, it’s a major mental illness.

A: One that isn’t in the DSM-IV, the bible of psychiatry.

J: Psychopathy is a touchy, touchy topic. It should come as no surprise that a lot of “successful” people in politics, business, religion, and entertainment have little regard for the nuances of “right and wrong.”

A: That’s a polite way of saying that many successful people are psychopaths.

“Jesus said: There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his head, but that very night he died. Whoever has ears should hear” (Gospel of Thomas 63). Even psychopaths have a personal code of morality — a set of internal laws to live by — despite their lack of conscience. Competitiveness, dominance, perfectionism, obsessiveness, chosenness, and eradication of weakness are among the key markers of moral success for a psychopath. Needless to say, a psychopath has no use for traits such as love, tolerance, forgiveness, ambiguity, or individuation, despite what he or she may say out loud. Shown here is the entrance to the Chapel of John the Baptist, Westminster Abbey, England. Notice all the sharp, spiky, metal forks on the door — all the better to stab your heart as you try to open the door to relationship with God. Photo credit JAT 2023.

 J: Again, no surprise. But these people have tremendous power, tremendous resources. It’s risky to piss off a psychopath. They think nothing of getting revenge. In fact, revenge is a favourite pastime. Even worse, psychopaths lose their ability to feel empathy for others, but at the same time, they show an eerily heightened grip on logic and a creepy ability to spot other people’s vulnerabilities. It’s scary how manipulative they can be in a purely cold, hard, logical way.

A: Almost as if they’re compensating for the loss of empathy and emotion by putting extra biological resources into their logic circuitry.

J: That’s exactly what psychopathy is. They’re trying to find a way to cope with life. They’re trying to find a workable system. They have no capacity for love, forgiveness, or trust. They’re so empty inside that they’re always looking for ways to fill the void. It’s a literal void, not just a metaphorical void. They can’t access certain functions of their brains. They can’t access the emotional circuitry they were born with. So they actually do feel empty, as if something’s constantly missing. They’re so narcissistic, however, that they believe everybody else on the planet feels as empty as they do. They think other people are faking it when they talk about love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust. In the world of the psychopath, love — mature, respectful love — is pure fantasy. It can’t be real. A psychopath feels nothing but contempt for the ideals of love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust.

A: A contempt that’s notably present in the orthodox doctrines of the Western Christian church.

J: True. But Christianity isn’t the only faith tradition that’s riddled with contempt for these compassionate ideals. I was dealing with the same contempt 2,000 years ago in Palestine. Lots of people were. Women, children, slaves, foreigners — all these people had to deal with the fallout of a religious tradition that had steadily erased all the empathy from the earlier spiritual traditions —

A: Like the Covenant Code in Exodus.

J: Like the all too brief Covenant Code. Bit by bit they replaced the Covenant Code’s early focus on human dignity with mystical authority for a few select men and their families. What scholars today call Second Temple Judaism bears so little resemblance to the Rabbinic Judaism practised today that I hesitate to even call the ancient religion “Judaism.” It was a bizarre caste system, really. It placed incalculable power in the hands of the High Priests and the Levites, who happily abused the “lesser tribes” of Israel — the lower Jewish castes. Meanwhile, the priests derived all their power, authority, and wealth from the “sacred books” they themselves wrote. A bit of a conflict of interest, don’t you think?

A: Yeah. I notice that after a while they decreed there could be no more prophecy. No more troublesome prophets standing up on soapboxes and speaking the truth.

J: The priests were always willing to endorse new prophetic voices off the record as long as those new voices reinforced the idea among the general population that Jews were the chosen people and Jerusalem’s priests were “the best of the best.”

A: Hence they could tolerate the Essenes, who required obedience to the caste system, but they couldn’t tolerate you, because you rejected the caste system in its entirety. And said so publicly.

J: The idea that Jews had allowed themselves to become enslaved to the priests may have entered my teachings more than once.

A: Yeah, I’ll bet.

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Posted in conscience & morality, empathy, Essenes, faith, HDM Myths, healing, intent, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, John the Baptist, occult themes, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, slavery, Soul, status addiction and tagged | Leave a Comment
02 Jan 2011

TBM3: The Five Basic Goals of the Spiral Path

Would it help if I told you that God doesn’t expect you to be perfect?

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And you can’t progress on the Spiral Path unless you’re willing to make a few mistakes along the way. Mistakes are going to be part of your spiritual journey. Some of these mistakes are gonna make you laugh, and some of these mistakes are gonna make you cry your guts out. But you’re gonna make mistakes. And that’s okay with God. After all, you’re only human. Sort of.

It’s a lot more accurate to say that you’re an angel-in-temporary-human-form. A soul-temporarily-downshifted-into-3D-matter. A child of God. A temporary resident of Planet Earth. Consciousness temporarily experiencing baryonic expression for the purposes of learning. A soul who has temporarily embarked on a learning expedition on Earth with a very small suitcase of supplies (think Lost). A big soul in an itty bitty living space (think Robin Williams’s “Genie” in Aladdin). An angel who has to muddle through for awhile not realizing she has wings (think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz). A person with a very big heart.

That’s you.

Photo credit JAT 2019

Long before you were born as a human being, you existed as a soul, as an angel, as a child of God. (I use these terms synonymously). It’s the sum total of who you really are. It’s the totality of you as a child of God.

To say that you’re a soul is the same thing as saying that you’re a person. It’s incorrect to say that you have a soul. You don’t have a soul in the way that you have a removeable, detachable, non-essential right thumb or left eye. You are a soul. Everything in you — everything that you are and everything that you know and everything that you feel and everything that you need — is you. You are a person. You are a soul. You are a child of God.

And God don’t make no junk.

Your problems as a human being are not caused by your soul. Neither are your problems caused by your human biology. Your problems are caused by the catastrophic failure of Western culture to teach you how to fully balance and integrate your soul’s identity with your human biology. You haven’t been taught how to read your own personal “owner’s manual.” Heck, you haven’t been taught that you even have an owner’s manual. So you stumble through life in a state of confusion, fear, and yearning, always wanting to understand, but never knowing where to start.

So what is the first step in beginning your spiritual journey? What is the goal of the Spiral Path?

Is the goal for you to try to transcend your humanity and detach from your human thoughts, needs, and feelings so you can feel closer to God? No. The goal is for you to understand and accept your soul’s identity so you can integrate your soul’s needs with your human biology as much as possible. This leads to the feeling of trust.

Is the goal for you to try to attain perfection of action or perfection of result? No. It’s not possible for any human being to attain either perfection of action or perfection of result. The best you can hope for is perfection of intent — the ongoing desire to be the best person you’re capable of being, despite the fact that you’ll continue to make mistakes as a human being. This leads to the feeling of forgiveness.

Is the goal for you to seek gnosis (esoteric wisdom) or secret spiritual knowledge that will raise you to a new, higher level of human consciousness and human evolution? No. The goal is for you to accept that you already have the right DNA package for your own soul. Your goal is to gradually transform all your “lemons” into “lemonade.” This leads to the feeling of courage.

Is the goal for you to receive “gifts of grace” from God by dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s of God’s Law (as dictated by your religious leaders)? No. The goal is for you to use your free will to work side by side with God and God’s angels (despite your human limitations) to create a more compassionate society. This leads to the feeling of devotion.

Is the goal for you to be saved by God? No. The goal is for you to be grateful for the gift of love that God gives to you and to all Creation. Without this love, “the person who is you” would not be possible. Neither would anything good, true, or beautiful be possible. (Sorry — couldn’t resist a dig at Plato and Paul). Not surprisingly, this practice leads to the feeling of gratitude.

You’re trying on the Spiral Path to find your own soul’s feelings of trust, forgiveness, courage, devotion, and gratitude. That’s it. You’re not seeking transcendence. You’re not seeking perfection of ritual. You’re not seeking gnosis (esoteric wisdom). You’re not seeking to earn grace through piety and blind faith. You’re not seeking salvation. What you’re really seeking is your own core self, your own core identity as a soul. You’re seeking to reclaim everything you were born with as a helpless yet incredibly loving and forgiving human child.

Strange as it may seem, it’s in seeking your own true identity as a soul that you’ll begin to recognize God as God really is.

That’s when your heart will explode with wonder. And you’ll feel the way Dr. Seuss’s Grinch feels when he finally “gets it.”

Really. I’m not kidding. This is what it feels like when you ground yourself firmly on the Spiral Path. It feels . . . good. Really, really good. Like Christmas all year round.

It’s awesome.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain-soul connection, building your intuition, healing miracles, intent, meta-choice, Soul, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment

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