The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “afterlife”

08 Apr 2012

TBM34: Trekking With God on Planet Earth

 

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

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

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

Johnson’s Canyon, Alberta. Photo credit JAT 2015.

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

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

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

Like cherry blossoms, and the transient beauty they represent, our human lives are filled with moments of change, loss, and renewal that remain with us as Souls. Photo credit JAT 2021.

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

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

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

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

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

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

God always remembers.

God knows how wonderful you really are.

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Posted in afterlife, consciousness, Divine Love, Favourite Posts, hope, life and death, Mother and Father God, mystic, relationship with God, Soul, soul purpose, The Blonde Mystic, trust and tagged | Leave a Comment
05 Dec 2010

CC48: The Crucifixion and Resurrection

Today is Second Advent, so this seems like a good time to talk about miracles.

You’d think that, with all my talk about science and brain chemistry, I’d be the sort of person who would reject the reality of miracles. Because practical people who believe in science are sort of obligated to reject the reality of miracles. Aren’t they?

Sunset, October 2014 - I captured this dazzling ray effect close to my home when my angels unexpectedly told me to pick up my camera, get in the car, and go! (c) JAT 2014

Sunset, October 2014 – I captured this dazzling ray effect close to my home when my angels unexpectedly told me to pick up my camera, get in my car, and go! Photo credit JAT 2014.

Most United Church of Canada members seem to think so. They’re squeamish about the idea that the soul exists as a scientific reality. Same thing with miracles. Officially, they won’t talk about miracles. Off the record, some United Church members will confide they believe in unexplainable, God-given events. But when they talk about miracles, they speak awkwardly and self-consciously — the same way people react when they’re invited to sit at a formal dinner table where there are three different forks on the left and three different knives on the right, plus a whole bunch of spoons, and they don’t know which utensils they’re supposed to use first. So they spend most of their time trying to watch the other guests to see which fork they should use when. They’re so busy paying attention to their feelings of embarrassment and discomfort that they can’t enjoy themselves. The whole situation is stressful rather than enjoyable.

I’d like to be able to say that United Church members have gone on the defensive about miracles because of repeated attacks from atheistic scientists such as Richard Dawkins. But it’s not that simple. United Church members are on the defensive because they’ve been repeatedly bullied by “progressive” Christian theologians (e.g. Rudolf Bultmann) who have loudly proclaimed that the miracles performed by Jesus in the Gospels couldn’t possibly have happened.

In the view of Bultmann and others, no sensible Christian should believe in these miracles because to believe in miracles is to reject science. These theologians recommend that Christians read the miracle stories . . . symbolically. Symbolically — my favourite word (grrrr).

These same theologians call into question the reality of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. They insist we should understand the Resurrection metaphorically rather than literally. In their view, the Resurrection couldn’t possibly have happened for real. Naturally, this makes it easier to believe that Jesus himself wasn’t real, either, but instead was an invented religious symbol.

I think they’ve got it all backwards. They’ve started with the assumption that miracles aren’t scientifically possible (an assumption that’s not scientifically valid), and on the basis of this assumption they’ve concluded that the miracle stories (especially those in the Gospel of Mark) must have been invented by gullible, superstitious, scientifically uneducated 1st century authors who didn’t know any better. Or maybe by authors who were just following a popular ancient trend of inserting invented miracle stories into their biographical narratives. (The fact that today’s Christian televangelists are still inventing new miracle stories to dupe the public should remind us not to make blanket statements about the motives of all ancient writers.)

Queen’s University history professor Dr. Jaclyn Duffin, who is both a practising hematologist and a professor in the history of medicine (a modern day physician scholar, as it were), has recently published a book about the history of canonization and attested healing miracles in the Roman Catholic Church. She sums up medical miracles in this way: “The doctor is surprised.”

The doctor is surprised. The doctor is surprised that, on the basis of current scientific understandings of the disease process, the patient somehow manages to fully recover despite all scientific predictions of imminent death.

I would suggest that when the doctor is surprised, it can mean one of two things: (1) the doctor was wrong from the beginning about the diagnosis or (2) the doctor isn’t as smart as she thinks she is about the disease process, quantum biology, healing, and God.

Usually it’s the latter.

The Resurrection as described in the Gospel of Mark is very sparse on details. (I agree with biblical scholars who suggest the book originally ended at Mark 16:8, not at Mark 16:20). All we really know for sure is that Jesus was crucified, was declared dead, was taken down from the cross, hastily placed in a tomb, and somehow managed to disappear from said tomb. Mark’s account leaves a lot of scientific wiggle room for a doctor to be surprised.

It’s a powerful symbol, the cross that Jesus hung upon. (It’s okay for symbols such as crosses or a stars to be symbols; it’s just not okay for historical facts to be treated as symbols instead of as facts.) The story of the cross has something important to say to us, even today, because it’s still a story where the doctors are surprised and we, the regular people of faith, are filled with awe.

For me, the miracle in this story is not that a man died and was raised from the dead. (I don’t think that’s scientifically possible.) For me, the miracle is that the man didn’t die in the first place.

How did Jesus son of Joseph escape death on the cross? That is the miracle in question.

It’s a much bigger question than Paul’s Christ myth asks. Paul’s Christ myth asks you to believe with blind faith that a human man fully died but was fully returned to life after three days because he was divine — the chosen son of God. He furthers asks you to believe with blind faith that if you fully accept Paul’s teachings about Judgment Day, then you, too, will be resurrected on that day. Sin is the enemy and death is its consequence. The great question for Paul is, “How can I escape death?”

The Jesus reality (as told by Mark) asks a different question. The Jesus reality asks you to ask new questions about God. The Jesus reality tells a powerful story about the relationship between God and God’s children, and asks you to not rely on blind faith, but to use your own common sense, your own senses, and your heart.

The Jesus reality is a powerful story about the kinds of things that are possible in God’s Creation when human beings walk side by side and hand in hand with Mother Father God.

It’s a story about courage. And trust. And humbleness. It’s a story about God’s free will and our own. It’s a story about miraculous (though still scientific) healing. And it’s a story about grief.

One of the things we can be certain of when we read Mark is that Jesus is not trying to escape death. Jesus has no fear of dying. He tells his disciples he’s going to die, but then he gets on with his life of service as a teacher and healer. He ignores all the Jewish purity laws around disease and death. He puts himself in harm’s way by going to Jerusalem. His Last Supper is not a last supper but a first supper, where he rejects the Passover ritual of eating unleavened bread by choosing instead to drink water and to eat risen bread. He breaks all the laws designed to protect the pious from death. His message is not about escaping death. His message is about embracing courage and trust and gratitude and devotion in our relationships with each other and with God.

The Jesus reality is Mark’s way of saying that death is part of human life, and no one — not even a gifted physician scholar filled with learning and love — can fight this reality. Jesus had to die because he was a creature of Earth, and all creatures of Earth will one day die. It’s meant to be this way. It’s part of the fabric of Creation. It’s painful and emotionally overwhelming for us to lose someone we love, but it’s the way it has to be. Our lives here are only temporary. When it’s time for one of us to go Home to our eternal reality, God the Mother and God the Father (both of whom are brilliant scientists and brilliant healers), come and gently lift us out of our mortal body and tenderly carry us Home. There we’re reunited with our loved ones, and our hearts break open to pour out all the tears and sorrows of our lonely human lives so we can be healed and restored in God’s loving arms.

Yet, despite all this, we’re left with a mystery. Despite the reality of Jesus’ total trust in God, despite the reality of Jesus’ courage in the face of death, we’re left with the puzzling fact that God the Mother and God the Father in their wisdom decided that a man named Jesus of Nazareth would not die on the cross that day, but would, in fact, escape that terrible death, and live to tell the tale — for a short while, anyway, before he, too, surrendered his human life, as all of us one day must.

What is it that God was saying?

Thanks be to God the Mother and God the Father this Advent Sunday.

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Posted in "Escape", afterlife, atheism, Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, healing, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, life and death, miracles, Mother and Father God, resurrection and tagged | Leave a Comment
17 Nov 2010

JR1: Grab a Coffee, Sit Down, and Join Us

Jesus as the author sees him

Jesus as the author sees him

A*: Jesus, since I’ve promised this blog will be a real-time discussion with you, what do you think of the idea of getting started right away?

J*: It’s 7:00 o’clock in the morning. You’ve only had one cup of coffee. You sure you want to begin this discussion right now?

A: I’m a morning person. I’m good. Besides, if I know you, we’re going to be continuing this discussion for a long time.

J: I’m a bit rusty. We haven’t done this whole “I talk, you type” thing in a while.

A: I’m more worried about the typos. I always miss some typos when I’m first typing.

J: Well, think on the bright side. You have fingers to type with. Me, not so much.

A: Okay. Let’s talk about that. That’s a good place to start. Can you put into words for readers exactly where you are right now? Where are you actually located?

J: Hmmm. That’s a hard one to explain. You sure aren’t starting with the easy questions!

A: Let’s try a biblical metaphor, then. Are you seated at the right hand of God?

J (much chuckling): No! I’m not at God’s right hand. Not now. Not ever. God doesn’t really have a right hand. Not literally, not metaphorically. You have to remember that God’s essence isn’t made in humankind’s image. So there’s no old guy with a white beard sitting on a throne. There’s an old guy, all right — that’s our beloved father, God the Father. But there’s also an old gal — God the Mother. They’re our divine parents. Their essence is intertwined in and around all Creation. They were here long, long before any of the rest of us. You could say they’re the Alpha and Beta of everything.

A: Rather than the Alpha and Omega.

J: Right. They’re the first two letters of Creation’s alphabet, and everything else that exists has been made possible by their love and commitment. But they’re not the only beings in Creation. They’re literally our parents. So there are many souls, many angels, many children in God’s family. The Divine Family started with Two — our blessed Mother and Father — but the family has been growing and growing and growing. I don’t think there’s going to be an “Omega” in Creation — a final, definitive end to things. I think the alphabet is just going to keep growing.

A: So you’re saying you’re one of God’s children, a child of God, not God himself, as in “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”

J: That’s what I’m saying. I’m not God the Father, and I’m not God the Mother. I’m me — an angel who goes by the name of Jesus. I’m one of bajillions of sons in God’s loving family. I’m not the only son.

A: And there are also bajillions of daughters?

J (smiling): Yes, bajillions of daughers, too.

A: So where are all these bajillions of angelic sons and daughters? Where are they? Where are you? Why can’t we see you?

J: Well, to answer that question, I’ll have to turn to science. The question can’t be answered without the latest thinking in science. Not Newtonian science, of course. Quantum theory can help, but even quantum theory is in its infancy. Scientists have only begun to scratch the surface of the scientific realities that hold together all Creation. And within the vast universe we all live in, only a tiny fraction of all matter and all energy is visible to the human eye. So, without trying to be mean, I would have to say in all honesty that one of the least reliable measures for judging what’s real and what’s not real is the human eye.

A: That makes me think of Plato and his rejection of the human senses as a valid way to know God.

J: Plato rejected the human senses because he didn’t want his followers to see for themselves that God the Mother and God the Father are visible everywhere in the material, practical, earthly world that human beings are living in. I’m saying the opposite of what Plato said. I’m saying that the human senses are good, but limited. Once you understand and respect those limitations, you’re less troubled about the fact that some things just aren’t visible within the narrow detection range of the human eye. The EMF frequencies that power wireless phones aren’t less real because you can’t see them. Same with the microwaves that cook your frozen dinners. Real, though not visible to the human eye.

A: Okay. So angels are real, then, but we can’t see them with the human eye because angels have an energy signature that falls outside the range of the human eye?

J: Sort of. But it’s more that angels exist as matter in the fourth dimension, whereas the human eye only draws information from matter that exists in the third dimension. But even most physicists agree the universe has more than three dimensions. That’s not science fiction. That’s science fact.

A: In other words, there’s nothing within our current understanding of quantum theory that absolutely prohibits the idea of angels existing “where we can’t see them.”

J: That’s what I’m saying. It’s a darned big universe out there, and one of the biggest mistakes people can make is to insist that “what you see if what you get.” Creation isn’t founded on the WISIWYG principle — as anyone born without sight will tell you.

Nature provides us with many examples of a single creature going through stages of transformation that so radically change the outer form we wouldn’t believe, without the help of science, that they’re still the same creature on the inside. The process of incarnating as a human being involves a similar repackaging of a soul’s imaginal discs into a temporary physical form. We go from butterfly form (angel) to caterpillar form (human) then back to butterfly form (angel) when we die. If you want to learn more about the imaginal discs involved in a biological caterpillar’s transformation into a gorgeous butterfly, you can check out this 2012 Scientific American post by Ferris Jabr (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caterpillar-butterfly-metamorphosis-explainer/)

* A=Author (Jennifer Thomas) and J=Jesus

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Posted in afterlife, angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), Divine Love, faith, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, My Spiral Path, Plato, quantum theory, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
14 Sep 2010

CC34: Pseudo-Enlightenment

My friend Linda is dying of cancer, but this isn’t the part I’m worried about.

Linda was first diagnosed with colon cancer three years ago, and she’s had a challenging course. The cancer has metastasized more than once. Most recently, a tumour was found in her brain. She’s definitely going to die. The people who love her are going to miss her, but she’s going to die, and that’s the reality of the situation. Her friends and family will grieve in different ways, depending on whether or not they believe she has transitioned to a loving afterlife in Heaven with God. But prayers and faith will not stop Linda from dying.

No one, no matter how devout, gets out of this life alive.

I’m not losing any sleep over the idea that Linda is going to die. It will happen when it happens, and nothing I think, say, or do will have any effect on the outcome. That’s up to Linda, her doctors, and her God.

On the other hand, I did lose sleep — quite a bit, actually — worrying about Linda’s mental state over the past few months. It’s not that I thought she was mentally incompetent in a medical sense. (Her doctors didn’t deemed her incompetent, even after the discovery of the brain tumour.) My concern was that Linda was starting to behave like a tyrant — an abusive, controlling, manipulative tyrant. A bully. A control freak. A nasty person. A cunning person. A person who’s not very nice to be around.

I’m not alone in this assessment. Linda’s behaviour became so verbally and emotionally abusive that in August she drove her own mother out of their shared home. Linda’s mother is in her mid-80’s, so this hasn’t been easy for the family. Linda’s mother moved out because she couldn’t tolerate the abuse from her daughter any longer. (Good for you, Kay!)

Linda has been relying on her network of friends to help her while she receives palliative care at home, but each time someone objects to her demands, she “fires” them. One by one she has cut off most of her oldest and dearest friends.

She has also fired several paid assistants. This is because they haven’t been doing a good enough job, according to Linda. Some have also been accused of stealing.

Despite her aggressive behaviour, she was not delusional until quite recently. (Delusional thinking appeared for certain only in the last couple of weeks). Until recently, she showed a truly frightening grip on her own mind, her own logic. Her memory was excellent in all areas where she wanted to exert control. Her ability to organize her environment was fine-tuned to the point of obsession. (She had a pre-existing diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, the symptoms of which were unfortunately exacerbated by her cancer treatments). She retained an ability to recognize and respond to social cues. She could be polite and friendly when it suited her.

All this was very upsetting. But I haven’t told you the worst part yet. The worst part is that Linda (a devout United Church of Canada Christian) has now come to believe she’s spiritually enlightened.

She believes that her battle with cancer has brought her to a point of heightened spirituality, a state of spiritual purity, a transcendent state of wisdom that her friends and family simply can’t understand.

She speaks often now of her “voice,” of her need to have her voice “heard.” Regular people can’t hear her voice. Only other spiritually enlightened people can hear her.

She thinks I’m one of the people who can hear her voice. But what I hear when I listen to her is the paranoid, grandiose thinking of a person who has suffered a psychotic break. Linda is psychotic. Under the stress of her illness and treatment, her biological brain has gone into “self protection mode” (sort of like the dreaded blue screen on a computer), and is refusing to accept external data and input. She’s now living entirely inside her own head. This means there’s no room in there for empathy. (Empathy requires you to reach out to other people, and temporarily place yourself “inside other people’s heads” so you can understand their needs.) Her brain is now a closed system. She’s stuck in an infinite thinking loop, which causes her to repeat a small number of ideas again and again, each time expressing them as if they’re new and exciting insights that have just occurred to her. To her, it feels as if she’s transcended time. She thinks she’s living in a state of enlightenment. But really her brain is “fried.”

No one who’s in a true state of enlightenment would ever treat people the way she’s treating people.

Linda’s doctors really dropped the ball on this one. They failed to arrange appropriate psychiatric care for her when it would have done some good. Now she has to live out her final days in a state of acute mental dysfunction. This sucks.

The honest truth is that some people will be relieved when Linda dies because she’ll no longer be able to abuse them.

If this isn’t a tragedy, I don’t know what is.

This is one portion of a large early 14th century CE (Yuan Dynasty) wall mural called “Homage to the Highest Power (west wall)” that originated from a monastery in Shanxi Province, China. It’s one of a pair of murals that expressed Daoist concepts of cosmic order. As part of the Royal Ontario Museum collection, the two murals underwent a significant conservation effort in the early 1980’s to remove earlier repairs that could have damaged the long-term integrity of the original clay, paint, and ink. I know this because I spent 8 weeks on the conservation project as part of a 1982 summer internship program. A properly trained conservator never tries to fill in the gaps by guessing what used to be there or trying to create perfection or wholeness where wholeness no longer exists. Hence, you’ll see many spots on these murals where bare clay is allowed to mar the perfection of the overall image. The bare clay spots mark areas where the conservators didn’t have enough documentation (e.g. early photographs) to support their beliefs about the original composition in those areas. It was more honest, in their view, to repaint only those sections where they were certain they were following the original intent and artistic conception of the unknown Daoist artists.

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Posted in afterlife, apophatic mysticism, boundary issues, brain's Darwinian Circuitry, Concinnate Christianity, dissociation, empathy, life and death, prayer, religion and mental Illness, spiritual ascent and tagged | Leave a Comment

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