The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “Soul”

22 Sep 2012

RS35: The Calculus of Consciousness

Underlying Principles - TimeCsmall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wherever the Spiral Path may take us.

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

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

Blessings to you all!

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

 

©2012-2025 Jennifer Thomas

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Posted in brain-soul connection, faith, life and death, Realspiritik, sense of time & timing, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
17 May 2012

TBM38: Heroes, Derring-do, and Mothers

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

Her Shoes (c) JAT

Her Shoes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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Posted in Divine Love, Mother and Father God, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
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. PageLines- 081008151104-large.jpg

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

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

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

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

Spring Sky (c) JAT 2014

Spring Sky (c) JAT 2014

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

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

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

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

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

God always remembers.

God knows how wonderful you really are.

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Posted in Divine Love, Favourite Posts, Mother and Father God, mystic, relationship with God, Soul, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
31 Mar 2012

TBM32: Three Spectrographs of Consciousness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, the status addict is the one who holds the responsibility. Why? Because your consciousness (which includes your brain while you’re here on Planet Earth) is the only part of Creation that belongs entirely to you. It’s your own little Kingdom (as Jesus once called it). It’s your corner in God’s Spiritual Kitchen. It’s yours to cherish, yours to care for. It’s also yours to heal — with help from others, of course.

You may not want to hear this, especially if you’ve got to the point in your life where you’ve lost all control over your own thoughts, feelings, actions, and creativity (as happens to too many people, in my view). But healing follows insight. And insight follows facts. So you need to know the facts so you can figure out what to do with them.

Healing a brain that’s fallen into the destructive patterns of status addiction is no easy task. So unlike most of my theological peers, I promise no easy fixes for you if you decide to go out and look for God. Easy fixes are a favourite food for status addiction. So you can imagine what I think of faith healers’ promises! On the other hand, I can promise permanent emotional healing if you’re willing to slowly and patiently regain control of the parts of your brain that are causing you so much suffering. This may require medical intervention, but such intervention is okay with God and your guardian angels. There’s no shame in needing help. Everyone needs help! Learning to receive help with gratefulness and humbleness is a big part of the journey.

When you compare the spectrographs of the Status Addict and the Whole Brain Thinker, you may be tempted to say it’s impossible for the brain of a Status Addict to ever be transformed to the pattern of the Whole Brain Thinker. You may be tempted (as so many religious teachers have been) to claim the Status Addict was born this way, and nobody can change it, and you may as well resign yourself to it. You may be tempted to say that only a saint who’s specially chosen by God could ever manage to do all that hard stuff like . . . like . . . caring about other people every day.

Fortunately, this miraculous transformation is not restricted to saints. And it’s not restricted to those who seek help from ordained clerics. It’s open to anyone, because all of us are children of God, and all of us are equally worthy of God’s help as we struggle with the difficult challenges we endure as human beings.

Trust in the fact that inside your confused and miswired human brain is your true self — you as a soul — who already lives and breathes everything you see on the chart for the Guardian Angel. You, as a person-of-soul, DO all these cool things like empathy and forgiveness and service and humbleness and self discipline and courage. You DO! You may not remember today, and you may not remember tomorrow, but that’s okay — just hang onto this uplifting divine truth about you as a child of God.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. The brain science speaks far more loudly here than any religious text that’s ever been written. Science is one of God’s many languages. Don’t be afraid of it. The love and the science go together in one astounding package of wonder and mystery and awe and creativity (not to be confused with creationism, which is bizarre beyond bizarre).

What’s this? Talking about God the Mother and God the Father as if they’re brainiac scientists who know what they’re doing when they bring quantum waves and particles together in new creations that actually work?

Yeah . . . such a kookie idea.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, Favourite Posts, Kingdom teachings, quantum theory, Soul, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
10 Mar 2012

TBM25: Awe and Wonder – Gifts of the Soul

There’s a long tradition in all major world religions of teaching people that life on Planet Earth is some sort of cosmic punishment. According to these theories — theories from such esteemed thinkers as Plato and the Buddha and Paul and assorted Gnostic teachers — the very fact that you’re living here on Planet Earth proves that you haven’t advanced very far in your spiritual development as a soul. These thinkers start with the assumption that life as a 3D human being totally sucks from beginning to end. So anything you can do to “escape” from the suffering proves that you’re smarter and faster and better than your “ignorant” and “unworthy” peers, who are too stupid to understand the need for escape.

(C) Image*After

(C) Image*After

Hey, don’t get mad at me. This is what these teachers actually taught!

See, now, I think all these teachers were completely wrong. I think these teachers never understood for a moment what it means to love. I think they saw the world from their own narrow, shrunken, unloving perspective. They failed to see the potential of all creatures on Planet Earth, the potential of all creatures to live lives of great courage and devotion and learning and teamwork. They failed to see the potential for love, which means they lived their own personal lives in a state of depression and blame and victimhood, and then they died without ever understanding why they were here and what they could have done with their human lives, but, you know, that’s their problem. You’re not responsible for their failure to see the “big picture.” You’re not responsible for their limited imagination or their limited faith in God or their limited courage. These teachers had more education and more opportunities than most people on Planet Earth have ever had, and they blew it. They chose not to learn about love. But you don’t have to follow in their footsteps. You can follow a different path — the Spiral Path of learning, love, and wonder.

Incarnating as a human being on Planet Earth, far from proving your inadequacy as a child of God, proves the very opposite. The fact that you’re here says you’re made of incredibly tough stuff — the kind of stuff that makes it possible for you to learn to juggle not only your soul’s needs but also your biological human needs. At the same time. With limited tools and limited resources. And a limited time frame. And a lot of days where you seem to spend more time UNlearning the errors of your past than anything else. And a lot of confusion and frustration. And more questions than you can answer during your life as a human being. And more ways to know your own love and courage than you ever thought possible.

It’s a friggin’ hard juggling act. But also an awe-inspiring juggling act. The people who get it figured out inspire awe and wonder in others. Not worship or blind obedience in others. (I repeat –the goal is not to try to induce worship or blind obedience in others.) It’s just a simple childlike awe and wonder towards others. The same childlike awe and wonder that we, as angels and children of God, feel towards our beloved divine parents, God the Mother and God the Father.

In other words, divine love has a large component of awe and wonder in it. You could also use the words “gratitude” and “humbleness” to describe the feelings of awe and wonder we express towards other souls in Creation, including the two souls who are God.

I often feel awe and wonder in the presence of other people when they’re choosing to bring a sense of balance into the world through their daily actions. These are the people who understand boundaries and appropriate limits, who understand when to say “yes” and when to say “no.” These are the people who know what they’re good at, and work hard to create something meaningful with the talents they have. They’re not threatened by other people’s talents. They know how to play when it’s time to play. They know how to cry when it’s time to cry. Most important, they think their highest spiritual calling is to treat other people with dignity, respect, compassion, politeness, and divine love at every opportunity each day.

Oh, and they’re not afraid to learn new things.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’m not ever inspired to a feeling of awe and wonder in the presence of status addicts. I take no inspiration from the choices of a person who is consciously seeking to climb the ladder of fame, power, or wealth. I feel no awe when I hear the contestants on American Idol trying to out-sing each other. I feel no wonder whatsoever when Donald Trump’s contestants come up with brilliant new business schemes. To be honest, the Olympics leave me cold. The cost of winning a gold medal is simply too high.

I’m all for the pursuit of excellence as long as it’s not confused (as it so often is) with the pursuit of status. I think it can be cogently argued that anyone who makes it into the Olympics has long since passed the threshold of excellence and crossed into the territory of full-blown status addiction. How else to explain the agony of defeat when the margin of loss is measured in mere hundredths of a second? There is nothing in this obsessive pursuit of perfection that I admire.

I do admire individuals who love a sport and actively participate so they can be in respectful, non-competitive relationship with others. I admire the people who use sports as an effective teaching modality. I admire the people who go outside to walk and bike and hike and camp and canoe (etc.) so they can be closer to their families and to God. I don’t have a problem with any of this. In fact, I think these activities are incredibly healthy and beneficial for both the soul and the biological body.

But don’t ask me to care which athlete has the fastest time or the best score. The soul doesn’t care about raw scores compared to other people’s scores. The soul only cares that each person raise his/her own bar as high as possible and keep working consistently to achieve the difficult goal of finding holistic balance between the soul’s 4D needs and the body’s 3D needs.

Please don’t assume from the previous sentence that I make a dualistic distinction between the soul’s 4D needs and the body’s 3D needs. These aren’t simple little boxes (despite what the Materialist philosophers would have you believe.) The three dimensional universe and the four dimensional universe are intertwined within each other — enfolded within the implicate order, as physicist David Bohm described it (or tried to describe it, since it’s so hard to conceptualize our complex reality by using our 3D pea-brains (no offense intended)).

Dimensions don’t have clear-cut dividing lines between them with perimeter signs that say, “Warning, you are now entering 4D Space! All shoes purchased with your credit card must be surrendered at the border!”

The thing is, when you die, you can’t take with you the actual pair of ruby slippers you loved during your human lifetime, but you can take with you the memory and the feeling and the love of your favourite ruby slippers, and strangely, in the mysterious way of this vast Creation we live in, you’ll one day find again a tiny bit of Creation that feels exactly the same way to you. And you’ll love your “4D shoes” just as much then as you love your 3D shoes today.

Such is the wonder of divine love. Spirals within spirals. Love within love. Ever entwined. Ever enfolded. And ever filled with wonder and awe.

Thank you, blessed Mother and Father, for the gift of your amazing love! We love you!

 

Addendum February 7, 2018: Recent research into positive emotions is showing how the emotional experience of awe may help lower the body’s levels of interleukin 6, a cytokine molecule which is a marker for inflammation in the body. Cytokines are important proteins in the immune system, but research has shown an association between high, sustained levels of cytokines and a number of diseases such as type-2 diabetes, major depression, and possibly Alzheimer’s disease. Of the positive emotions included in the study — amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, joy, love, and pride — it was awe that showed the most statistically significant association with lower levels of interleukin 6.

 

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", boundary issues, brain-soul connection, Buddhism, Divine Love, Gnosticism, gratitude, humbleness, life and death, Mother and Father God, quantum theory, Soul, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
21 Feb 2012

TBM24: Juggling the Needs of Heart, Mind, Body, and Talent

bouquet On the Spiral Path, you’re always trying to find the “sweet spot” where the needs of your heart match the needs of your mind, the needs of your body, and the needs of your talents. The sweet spot is the place where you feel whole, balanced, calm, and complete.

Too often I’ve read books that tell you how to find the needs of your heart while ignoring the needs of your mind. Or books that tell you how to find the needs of your body while ignoring the needs of your heart. Or books that tell you how to find the needs of your mind while ignoring pretty much everything else. (There are a lot of books about the needs of the mind.)

On the Spiral Path, you need a plan that takes you forward bit by bit in all spheres of your being, not just one or two select spheres. You need a holistic plan, a balanced plan that has a little bit of everything in it.

In the Spiritual Kitchen, you’d soon fall into a rut if you had to make the same ol’ cream of potato soup every day. Not that cream of potato soup is a bad thing in itself. But every day? Three times a day? Wouldn’t that get pretty repetitive, pretty obsessive-compulsive after a while?

The recipe for healthy eating, as Canada’s Food Guide tells us, is to eat something from each food group at each meal, and, furthermore, to switch up the foods that are chosen from each food group. This way we get a wide variety of necessary vitamins, trace elements, amino acids, fats, anti-oxidants, and calorie sources.

This same sensible, balanced approach applies to life on the Spiral Path. There are four main “energy groups” you have to think about each day: (1) your soul’s heart (2) your soul’s mind (3) your soul’s body and (4) your soul’s need to use your own talents and strengths in service to others. All these are equally important to your overall health.

It would be easy to say, “Oh, so our emotional health is linked to our hearts, and our physical health is linked to our soul bodies.”

This would be the easy thing to say, but not the correct thing to say. It’s much more complicated than that because you, as a 4D-angel-temporarily-incarnated-as-a-3D-human-being, are much more complicated than that.

When, for example, you look after the needs of your soul’s heart, this improves your health at all levels: your physical health, your emotional health, your intellectual health, and your spiritual health. Why? Because you’re a holistic organism. You’re a complex biosystem with many interconnected parts. The one thing you are NOT is a bunch of different coloured Lego blocks or widgets or mechanical pieces that can be removed and treated in isolation from all the other parts. You are much, much more than the sum of your individual parts.

One body of spiritual thought I object to in every way possible is the idea that your eternal “energy self” is made up of a bunch of different layers or “astral bodies,” with some layers being “heavier” and therefore less “advanced” and less “enlightened,” while other layers are of a “higher” and “more desirable” vibration that’s closer to the Divine.

This is pure crap. It’s a form of anagogic mysticism, and, if you’ve been reading my other blogs, you know I have no use for either anagogic mysticism (the path of vertical spiritual ascent) or apophatic mysticism (“we are all One” — literally).

Your soul has a lot of different “systems” and “organs,” just as your biological human body has a lot of different systems and organs, and all of them are equally important to your ability to function as a complete and entire angel. Your soul heart and soul mind couldn’t exist if you didn’t have a soul body to hold everything in place. So your soul body is just as important to your overall consciousness as your heart, mind, and talents are. It needs just as much attention and care as your biological human body does.

Keep it simple, keep it sane, as my guardian angel has been telling me for years.

When you make the decision, as an angel-in-angel-form, to undertake the difficult task of incarnating here on Planet Earth, you have to somehow be able to squish your core consciousness — your unique blend of heart, mind, body, and talents — into a small and temporary biological package. This small package is your DNA, which carries in its helix an entire blueprint for constructing your biological body. Your DNA is unique to you because you, as a soul and child of God, are unique in all of Creation. Even identical twins, who are currently thought to have identical genes, are a unique expression of consciousness. (Poorly understood epigenetic factors play a much greater role in development than previously recognized. This is one reason why identical twins, while remarkably similar to each other, even when raised apart, are still very different people. Plus they have different souls!)

You are who you are who you are. You are who you are because you can’t be any other way. Nor do you want to be any other way — not as a soul, at least. As a soul, you’re very happy to be who you are. As a human being . . . well, as a human being you’re also supposed to be happy with who you are. Except that few people are.

Most people I know, and most people I’ve read about, have no idea whatsoever how to be happy with who they are. That’s because they can’t read their own soul blueprint. They don’t know how to interpret the inner whispers of their own heart, mind, body, and talents. Heck, most people don’t even know they have a soul blend of heart, mind, body, and talents. They think they’re just . . . existing.

The soul is not a “single substance,” despite what famous philosophers and theologians of the past have said. Nor is it unchangeable. The soul does change with time, because no one who is learning and loving and giving and creating can stay the same. Even as souls, as children of God, we’re changed by our experiences and our relationships. And this is always a good thing.

One of the great mysteries of consciousness, however, is the fact that although all of us change over the course of time as souls, none of us change in exactly the same way. We’re unique in the way we absorb new experiences and process them. We’re unique in the way we remember them. We’re unique in the way we share them. We’re all different, and at the same time, equally beautiful.

We’re all equally beautiful, but this is not to say we’re all identical or all “One.” We’re as different from each other in the way we grow and flourish as the many different kinds of flowers on Planet Earth. When we’re all put side by side, we make a breathtaking garden of passionate blooms, some short, some tall, some showy, some shy. All different. But all equally wondrous.

In no way does the family of God resemble endless neat rows of identical, unchanging wheat plants ready to be harvested by the master.

Our willingness as souls to be changed by our relationships with other souls is not limited to angels. God the Mother and God the Father are also learning, changing, growing as they live in daily relationship with us, their children. They’re expanding the size of their Spiritual Kitchen to make room for their ever-growing family of angels — core beings, core consciousnesses who reside for most of their existence within the complex folds of space and time that we, as 3D human beings, simply cannot see with our human eyes.

This is not to say, however, that they’re invisible to the heart.

 

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, Kingdom teachings, Mother and Father God, Soul, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
20 Feb 2012

TBM23: Beauty in the Home As a Spiritual Practice

Yesterday, in response to Lesson #1 in the Workbook for Students in A Course in Miracles, I got talking about chairs.

Today I’d like to talk more about “chairs,” and, in a broader sense, the importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul.

The importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul has been seriously underestimated by religious authorities as a source of both spiritual practice and spiritual healing.

In other words, the place where you eat and sleep and pray and live matters.

It matters a lot.

I’ve mentioned in my profile that my mother is a well-known Canadian watercolourist. But she wasn’t a watercolourist when I was growing up. When I was growing up, she was a professional interior designer, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art’s Architecture and Interior Design program. Everything in our house and everything in our small summer cottage was expected to work from a design point of view. Even the colour of the Kleenex box had to be right.

So I was raised to appreciate art and art history and fine furniture and also the museums that showcase said topics. Of course, the really expensive stuff could only be admired from afar, as my family was far from wealthy. But window-shopping at fine furniture galleries cost nothing. And if there was a piece my mother really wanted, she was prepared to save her money until she could afford to buy it. Or she would buy a piece of “junk” at an antique store and make my father refinish it, which he did often and well. (Both my parents carried the weight of Depression Era attitudes towards money and buying things.)

Still, for all my mother’s keen interest in art and design, she wasn’t really a spiritual person in a conscious sort of way, and it never occurred to her that her passion for creating balanced, harmonious environments could be considered a spiritual practice.

It was my own guardian angel who introduced me to this concept in 2002. At the time I was struggling mightily with questions about spirituality and money, asceticism and humility. I really believed I was supposed to be letting go of all my attachments to beauty, sentimentality, comfort, and safety in my own environment. Needless to say, as the daughter of an artist, and as an artist, art historian, and art conservator in my own right, I felt I was being asked to give up the very essence of my soul (which, in fact, I was being asked to do by various New Age idiot teachers).

In 2002, my ever-so-wise guardian angel conspired with other guardian angels to keep me in touch with my soul’s need for beauty and art by doing an end-run around my semi-ascetic beliefs. He told me that I would be opening a spiritual healing centre in partnership with my “spiritual mentor” Grace (of whom I’ve spoken before.) In the context of this spiritual healing centre, said he, beautiful and harmonious decor would not only be allowed by God but would be required by God as a necessary way to help put other spiritual seekers at ease.

This is how he talked me into buying the ornate piece of furniture pictured here:

Early 20th century oak cabinet (c) JAT

Early 20th century oak cabinet (c) JAT

Now, if ever there were a piece of furniture that would not qualify as ascetic, it’s this piece. It’s made of solid oak (so it weighs a friggin’ ton), and it’s covered in beautiful carving. The foliate carvings are done in a different wood (possibly walnut, which has a much finer grain than oak and is therefore easier to carve). There are also some burled panels (which I find utterly fascinating in pattern and texture). A previous owner of the piece had removed the original dark stain and covered most of the exterior surfaces in a white-wash finish that I just love. Even better, the cabinet has lots of good storage space, making it both practical and, to my eye, strikingly beautiful.

When I first saw this piece in the dark basement of a junk shop in 2002, I’ll admit that in the first few moments my heart literally leapt with joy and excitement. Why? Because this particular piece is a perfect match for me as a soul. (Among my favourite artists are Botticelli, Gustav Klimt, and Vermeer, which explains why I’m attracted to a piece of early 20th century Art Nouveau influenced furniture.)

About five seconds after my heart first leapt with joy, my mind took over. “You need this cabinet like a hole in the head,” said my logical mind. “It’s too big,” said my mind. “It’s too fancy,” said my mind. “What will other people say?” “It’s not modest. It’s . . . it’s too . . . ” My mind stopped to grope for the right word. “Too gorgeous?” supplied my heart before I could stop it from piping up.

“Okay,” said my logical mind. “The ticket price says $600. If we can talk the owner into selling it for $500, with free delivery, we can perhaps consider it. Possibly. Maybe. But only because we need it for the foyer of the spiritual centre we’re buying. Only because it makes sense from a business point of view.”

Yeah, right. From a business point of view.

Anyway, as you can see, the cabinet came home with me, and I love it every bit as much today as I did in the first moment I saw it. It’s an important part of the spiritual space I live in — a spiritual space that helps me live a balanced, holistic life where beauty and practicality and gratitude all blend seamlessly together in a way that’s right for me.

Since 2002, I’ve rarely had this strong a reaction to a piece of furniture, but when I do, I pay attention to the sense of connection that pops into my heart. Most often, this sense of connection is all I’m going to take home with me, because I live in a small apartment and I’m on a tight budget, so there’s no room and no money for more furniture. But the sense of connection tells me more about who I am as a soul. It tells me more about my unique “likes” and “dislikes” as a child of God. It tells me more about how I can live as a human being in full relationship with God and, well, with furniture designers and wood carvers!

Furniture designers and wood carvers are no less worthy of God’s love and devotion than all the saints who’ve ever been named. I thank these artists for the lasting gift they’ve given me. Their talents are much appreciated.

Amen.

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13 Feb 2012

TBM21: Humbleness: Excellence Without Status

Last time, I said that “humility” and “humbleness” aren’t the same thing. So here’s my definition of humbleness:

Humbleness is your ongoing choice to feel grateful for the soul talents your neighbour has.

Cosmos (c) JAT 2014

Cosmos (c) JAT 2014

Hmmmm . . . so . . . to unpack this a bit more, humbleness is an expression of gratitude . . . but it’s not gratitude for your own talents . . . and it’s an expression of relationship with your neighbour (because you actually have to pay attention to what your neighbour’s talents are if you’re going to feel gratitude for his/her talents) . . . and it’s kinda the opposite of envy (because it’s pretty much impossible to be truly grateful if you’re gnashing your teeth in envy) . . . and it’s kinda the opposite of worship (because as soon as you put somebody on a pedestal of worship you’re providing fuel for status addiction) and it’s kinda the same as empathy (because you can put yourself in your neighbour’s shoes and imagine how happy he/she is to have a talent to share with others) . . . and it’s kinda the same as seeing yourself as a complete and worthy person even if you don’t have the same talents as your neighbour.

So, in the end, it IS a form of gratitude for your own talents, but it’s a radically egalitarian feeling that refuses to apply adjectives like “better” or “smarter” or “more worthy of God’s love” to anyone.

It’s a form of gratitude that’s built on honesty and truth-telling. And on strong interpersonal boundaries.

Humbleness means you know exactly who you are. You know where your own boundaries start and end. You know what your talents are. You know what your talents aren’t. You use everything you are to the best of your own ability. You don’t try to “be” your neighbour because you know you aren’t your neighbour. And this is okay with you. Ideally, it’s also okay with your neighbour.

What’s really interesting about the experience of humbleness is the lack of fear you feel about going about your daily life and doing a damned good job at what you do. You lose the fear that your neighbours will envy you and try to take you down a notch or two because they believe you’re trying to “show them up.” (They may, indeed, decide to take action against you, but if this happens you understand it’s not your fault if they take offense — it’s their own fault — and you then forgive them).

Christian teachings on humility create a constant climate of judgment and tit-for-tat comparison among neighbours. The Christian bar of humility is set low — very low — and anyone who tries to exceed this “oneness of mediocrity” will be harshly accused of pride, hubris, and a lack of surrender to God’s will.

What they really mean when they say “you don’t know your place” is that you’re being a pain in the ass, and you’re showing through your own hard work and courageous conduct that the bar is set too low.

Humility breeds obedient, unquestioning doormats who believe religious propaganda about their own unworthiness. Humbleness, on the other hand, leaves no room for excuses or blaming other people for your own mistakes or sitting around on your butt while other people are doing the hard work of healing individuals, families, and communities.

Humbleness assumes you ARE worthy. Humbleness assumes that your own Soul Purpose is just as important as your neighbour’s.

Humbleness assumes that you ARE a soul — a child of God with a unique soul blueprint and a unique way of contributing to the lives of your brothers and sisters in divine love.

If you’re like most people on Planet Earth, the greatest obstacle for you on the Spiral Path will be the many myths and the many lies generated by status addiction. Status addiction and humbleness are mutually contradictory paradigms. And right now, status addiction has a much greater grip on your life than you probably realize. Please don’t judge yourself for this. We’re all in this together. We all created this problem together, so no one can fix it alone. We have to work together in teams and groups and communities to heal this massively painful issue. We need lots of teachers and mentors and healers to carry this work forward.

It’s my great hope that individuals will begin to form small groups to heal this issue using the established Twelve Step method.

Hey, look at that! The Twelve Step program is already using the humbleness paradigm!

Thank goodness for that.

 

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Posted in boundary issues, gratitude, humbleness, humility, Kingdom teachings, Peace Sequence, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
05 Feb 2012

TBM19: Soul Purpose – Your Corner of God’s Spiritual Kitchen

Rick Warren, evangelical preacher and founder of a religious empire built on the bestselling Purpose-Driven books, has stumbled onto an important truth. People want to know why they’re here on Planet Earth. They want to know what their life purpose is.

Warren’s book called The Purpose-Driven Life has apparently sold over 30 million copies.* That’s a lot of people looking for purpose.

I bought the book in 2004, shortly before I flew to Orange County, California, to participate in a Normal Brain Study. While I was there, I decided “what the heck, I’m so close, why not drive over to see Rick Warren’s church?” So I found myself, one weekday morning in December 2004, walking into his humongous building to check out the feel of the place.

My visit to Saddleback Church helped me better understand why I don’t agree with most of Warren’s teachings,** and why I particularly dislike what he says in The Purpose-Driven Life.

The blurb on the back of copy I own says this about the book: “This book will help you understand why you are alive and God’s amazing plan for you — both here and now, and for eternity. Rick Warren will guide you through a personal 40-day spiritual journey that will transform your answer to life’s most important question: What on earth am I here for? Knowing God’s purpose for creating you will reduce your stress, focus your energy, simplify your decisions, give meaning to your life, and, most, important, prepare you for eternity.”

According to Warren, you’ll find all these benefits if you understand you’re here to fulfill five main purposes. You need to know that (#1) you were planned for God’s pleasure; (#2) you were formed for God’s family; (#3) you were created to become like Christ; (#4) you were shaped for serving God; and (#5) you were made for a mission.

Well, you know, I couldn’t disagree more. This is not a recipe for finding your soul purpose. This is a recipe for finding humility, a recipe for eradicating all knowledge of your core self. This is Paul’s religious recipe, not Jesus’ recipe. (You can read more about the differences between these two sets of teachings in the Jesus Redux series of posts.)

This watercolour was painted by my mother in 1983. You’d never know from looking at this piece that she had cerebral palsy. It was mild compared to what some people face, but it made her hands shake and prevented her from participating in team sports. These things never stopped her, though. She knew from an early age that her gift was art, and she didn’t let anyone get in the way of her plans to go to art college in the 1950s (at a time when nice girls from good families didn’t do such things). As soon as she sat down at her drafting board to work on a watercolour, she had incredible control of her hands. It was through her watercolours that she was able to share a deep, calming, gentle love of beauty with others. She was lucky to find one of her life purposes.

Warren, like so many religious teachers, is adamant that you can’t get to know God by focussing on yourself or your own self-actualization: “[Y]ou cannot arrive at your life’s purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. You must begin with God, your Creator. You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God for God — and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead end (page 18).”

See, Warren’s whole argument rests on his assumption that human beings are made by God for God’s pleasure and God’s own purpose. You don’t get a say in this. Once you stop fighting this “truth,” says Warren, you’ll find contentment.

I read this and what I hear is a man telling you to accept your lot in a life as a slave. A slave who is owned by a powerful master. A slave who exists only to serve the needs of his master (i.e. the need for worship and glory). A slave who has no rights of his/her own. A slave who should be grateful to a master who provides air to breathe and food to eat and nothing more. Amen.

Of course, the Bible says this very thing about our relationship with God in many different ways, so it’s not surprising that an evangelical Christian (who believes the Bible is God’s infallible “word”) would conclude that people are empty-vessels-waiting-to-be-filled-up-by-God. After all, this is what the Bible says — both the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament.

According to this traditional Christian view, there’s only one Spiritual Kitchen in the universe, and it belongs exclusively to God. No other kitchens exist. And no other chefs exist, either. There’s only one chef, and he needs a lot of kitchen slaves to bring him the ingredients he needs so he can make his big, fancy souffles.

God is apparently too stupid to make his own eggs and apparently too selfish and vain to share the kitchen with anyone else.

Iain standing on a chair so he can reach the kitchen sink (c) JAT 1988

Iain standing on a chair so he can reach the kitchen sink. Photo credit JAT 1989.

When my younger son was a toddler, he became enthralled with water — especially running water. He would stand on a chair at the kitchen sink while I was preparing meals and he’d play with the water from the cold water tap. He’d hold a plastic cup under the stream of water, wait for it to fill, pour out the water, and start over again. This would go on for half an hour or more. (He had a long attention span). He seemed to find it both fascinating and soothing.

It was fascinating and soothing for me, too, to see him standing there, so intent on his task, so trusting, so happy.

He was very different from his older brother (a fellow who was born to move). Early on, Iain showed a deep interest in Newtonian physics. He would discover a principle of mechanics, then test it repeatedly. “Fan on, fan off,” he would say aloud as he turned the wall fan on, then off, again and again, using the switch on the lower part of the wall. It’s amazing he didn’t burn out the fan’s motor. On the other hand, two expensive tape decks had to be taken in for repair after he pulled off the tape compartment doors in his quest to understand how the machines worked.

He could run the VCR by the time he was two.

I have little doubt that, had he lived, he would have grown up to be an engineer — maybe electrical, like his grandfather (my dad), who trained as a chemical engineer but worked for an electrical engineering firm for many years. It was there right from the beginning, our son’s true soul talent. Nobody “gave” it to him. He was born that way. He was hardwired from birth to focus on the things in the world that he recognized, that were familiar to him in the essence of his consciousness because of who he is as a child of God.

By the time Iain was born, our house was overflowing with all manner of toy vehicles — “cars and trucks and things that go” (which was also the title of a Richard Scarry book adored by our older son). But wheels weren’t on our younger son’s “soul recognition list.” He had his own list of things to learn about and share with others, things he’d “brought with him,” so to speak, because they’re part of his true soul blueprint.

People speak of the mind’s eye, but I believe we have a heart’s eye, too. In my heart’s eye, I see my little boy standing with me in the kitchen, propped up on a chair because that was the only way he could reach the tap, talking to me, listening to me, sharing his deep love of learning with me, and bringing so much love and joy into my life because he wasn’t afraid to be himself.

Our loving divine parents — God the Mother and God the Father — have a kitchen like this, only it’s really, really big because our divine family is really, really big, and there has to be a spot for everyone. Over in one corner are the kids who love to play with the kitchen pot set, and over there are the kids who have an Easy Bake Oven, and over there are the kids who love to make sticky, gooey messes while they learn, and over there are the older kids — the teens, as it were — who are helping keep an eye on their younger brothers and sisters as they stand beside the stove with Mom and Pop and learn how to safely cook with gas.

This is what our relationship with God feels like to me. This is what our relationship with ourselves feels like to me. So few adults can remember who they were as young children. So few can say with any certainty what they recognized in their early years as their own little corner of the spiritual kitchen. But you have a corner. You have a spot that belongs just to you. It’s the place in God’s creation where you feel both happiest and safest, and, at the same time, most able to give of yourself to others.

When you’re in the right place — not the place your parents tell you, not the place your status-addicted peers tell you, but the place your own soul tells you — you can begin to make a lasting difference in the world.

When you fill your cup with your soul’s own truth — your courage, your gratitude, your devotion, your trust, your forgiveness — you’ll discover you can see these truths and feel these truths and KNOW these truths in others. Including God.

As they say, water seeks its own level.

 

* Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
** Naturally I have no quarrel in principle with Warren’s efforts to address worldwide issues of poverty, illness, education, and environmental care. However, I disagree with his suggested methods.

 

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Posted in Bible, humility, relationship with God, slavery, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
29 Jan 2012

TBM18: Some Thoughts on Soul Purpose

Soul purpose is one of the least discussed issues of mainstream religion and one of the most poorly understood issues for New Age teachers.

The concept of soul purpose is so deeply intertwined with Divine Love that it can’t be separated from other core spiritual values such as forgiveness, healing, courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be possible for you to know courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion without your own unique “envelope” of soul purpose to hold all these blessings together inside your own consciousness.

That’s a bit of twist on your understanding of soul purpose, isn’t it?

I’ve read many different theories about soul purpose, theories that attempt to explain why you’re here on Planet Earth and what you can do about this painful reality. The core teachings of Buddhism (the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path) are devoted exclusively to the question of soul purpose, even though these teachings don’t include the word “soul.”

Traditional Christian teachings, which are founded on Paul’s theories of sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation, are similarly devoted exclusively to the question of soul purpose, though they never actually say so.

The honest truth is, you don’t need a religion founded on a promise of “Escape” from your own corrupted soul unless you believe in the first place that you ARE a corrupted soul.

I grew up in a household that operated according to Northern European Protestant teachings on the sinful nature of humankind and the absolute duty of every individual to crush sinful thoughts through hard work, suppression of emotions, obedience, lawfulness, and the pursuit of excellence.

So my sister and I, we always felt guilty. We weren’t quite sure why we felt so guilty, but we did, and we tried very hard to behave correctly so we wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.

In the Protestant culture I was raised in, it was assumed that individuals, including children, are not capable of generating a sense of duty and service to others — that is, a sense of soul purpose — from within. They’re not capable of finding and living a sense of soul purpose on their own. Duty must therefore be imposed from the outside by the laws and traditions of the culture, we’re told.

This assumption comes, in part, from the orthodox teachings of the Protestant Church, as expounded by men such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and John and Charles Wesley, to name a few. These men believed that human beings don’t have anything to brag about. Ever. They believed that all people are born sinful at the core, and that we as human beings can best serve God by never thinking for a moment that there’s anything good inside us that we can claim as our own. We must, according to these thinkers, take full responsibility for all the “bad” we think and do, but we are never, ever, allowed to take full responsibility for the “good” we think and do. To believe in our inner goodness would be pure hubris — a terrible violation of the laws of humility.

If you’ve been reading my other blogs, you know what I think of the Church’s traditional teachings on humility.

So it would be fair to say that the search to find your own soul purpose is the search to let go of religious humility.

It’s impossible to simultaneously live your own soul purpose AND accept religious teachings on humility (that is, intentional eradication of the self). You have to choose between wanting to learn to like and trust yourself (soul purpose) OR wanting to become “an empty vessel in service to God” (humility). The former choice will take you forward on the Spiral Path. The latter choice will derail you. But the choice is still up to you because you have free will.

When I entered graduate studies in theology in 2007, my original goal was to seek ordination in the United Church of Canada. This was before I discovered that the United Church requires its ministry candidates to choose humility.

I just can’t understand why the Church believes a minister can only be of true service to God if he or she submits to a process of eradicating the core self that is the good soul.

I can understand the Church’s desire to insist on high standards of ethical conduct in its ministers. I can understand the Church’s desire to identify and arrange treatment for addiction problems and major mental health issues. I can understand the Church’s desire for ministers to be reliable and trustworthy and empathetic and genuinely interested in serving the needs of others.

But, you know, the only way to accomplish these worthy goals is to ensure that ministerial candidates know more about themselves, not less.

And this goes for other religions, too, not just Christianity.

The inner soul of every human being is desperate to be kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, and not addicted to status. Every. Single. Human. Being.

Young children (under the age of 2), except for those raised from the get-go in an abusive environment, are naturally and instinctively kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, and not addicted to status.

I had to wait until I became a mother myself to see this lesson right in front of my face.

My two young sons were really nice people. Sure, they were small and physically helpless. But they were so observant. And so quick to learn. And so kind to me. And so nice.

And soon I would discover, when my younger son was diagnosed at age 2 1/2 with leukemia, that my sons were not only nice, they were trusting and courageous at a level that astounded me. That stunned me. That told me they knew something important that I didn’t — or that I’d long since forgotten.

My sons weren’t “special” or “chosen.” They were just being themselves. They were being their core selves — good souls, kind souls, loving children of God.

Unless you’ve seen for yourself the unrelenting forgiveness offered by a child who’s been trapped in a hospital isolation room for months and given searingly painful medical treatments again and again, who has suffered a massive stroke but relearns to walk anyway without complaint, who is prevented by medical protocols from playing with other children or living a normal life despite his great love for other people, you may not believe me. Until you’ve seen for yourself the courage of a 5 year old boy who gives his bone marrow to his little brother without ever complaining or doubting, you may not believe me.

But I’m telling you the truth my children told me. I’m telling you that you were born this way. I’m telling you that inside your own battered head lives a kind, helpful, brave, polite, grateful, humble, status-free angel who doesn’t need any law books or contract clauses or religious codes to know the difference between right and wrong. I’m telling you that your core self is real and can never be taken away from you. I’m telling you it’s okay for you to believe that, as a soul, you’re a person God not only loves, but that God actually likes and trusts. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.)

You’re richer than you think.

1988 - Boys in Blue

From the earliest months of their lives, my two sons were completely different from each other in temperament and talent. Yet both were kind, trusting, curious, and true to their soul selves. They were my greatest teachers. Photo (c) JAT 1988.

 

 

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24 Jan 2012

TBM17: Learning to Understand Your Own Angels

This piece called “Dream Cloud” is carved from a single piece of boulder opal in an ironstone matrix. It measures 8 x 6 x 4 centimetres, weighs 1167.5 carats, and is believed to have been carved in about 1915 CE. My intuition tells me that the artist who created this piece had some divine inspiration along the way. “Dream Cloud” is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017

Learning to communicate with your guardian angels is a tricky, tricky business.

If you go into the New Age section of your local bookstore, you’ll find quite a few books about how to talk to angels. Most of these books are written by people who are in the early stages of their spiritual journey. They don’t yet have the knowledge or experience or scientific training to teach others how to understand the messages of angels. Therefore, a lot of information in these books is flawed.

However, some New Age books are well-meaning and contain the odd useful nugget. This is more than I can say for books about angels that are written by evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, who want to pummel you with the idea that your soul is filled with sin and your angels are part of a vast celestial hierarchy whose only purpose is to worship God. It’s pretty negative stuff when you stop and think about it.

There’s a history behind these traditional teachings I won’t go into today, but suffice it to say that conventional Christian theories about angels won’t get you very far on the Spiral Path. In fact, Christian theories will slow you down. You’re better off to start with a simple model based on observable facts.

Fact #1: Learning to communicate effectively with anyone — including your angels — takes time and practice and patience. It’s not something you learn overnight. It’s not something you learn at a weekend workshop. It’s something you have to work on bit by bit, day by day. In other words, you need to know from the very beginning of your journey that you won’t be able to understand your angels’ messages right away. You’re going to have to practise.

This doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact. What you’re trying to develop is a complex skill — a way of thinking and feeling and acting that’s holistic and grounded and peace-filled. Because it’s a complex skill, it takes time for you to develop it. But this is a good thing, right? All complex human endeavours take time and effort. People don’t learn how to become jumbo jet pilots by going to a weekend workshop. Cirque du Soleil artists don’t learn how to scale walls by going to a weekend workshop. And adult men and women don’t learn how to communicate effectively with their angels in a few short hours, either.

If you meet a spiritual teacher who claims to have had an experience of instant conversion to a state of full communion with God or God’s angels overnight, you should be very, very wary. The story in the Bible’s Book of Acts about Saul’s sudden conversion on the road to Damascus is exactly the sort of religious claim that should raise an alarm bell in the back of your head. The story of Saul (who becomes Paul) gives people the idea that God chooses certain special people and then swoops into their heads to instantly rewire their brains so they can serve as special receptacles for divine revelation.

Yeah, okay, so God is just going to dump a few terabytes of new data into your head from one minute to the next, and you’re not even going to get a migraine?

This is just goofy. Not to mention abusive. The story of Saul on the road to Damascus describes an abusive God who seizes hold of one man and forces him to instantly convert to a new vision of God. Saul doesn’t get a say in this conversion, according to the Bible. Instead, he’s forced by God to accept his “destiny.” His “fate.” His chosen status as a messenger of God.

And where in this story does Saul apply his own free will and make the choice to seek redemption?

Nowhere.

This leads us to Fact #2.

Fact #2: Learning to use your own free will is a real bitch. I’m not going to lie to you. A big part of your journey to understand your angels’ messages will involve the journey to understand your own free will.

See, this is another reason I’m suggesting you avoid traditional Christian teachings about angels and souls. According to these traditional teachings, you don’t really have free will. Well, you sorta do, in so far as you can choose to commit sinful acts. And, of course, you’re allowed to apply your free will to choose salvation through Christ. But, other than that, the Church says you’re basically an unworthy piece of shit who can’t choose redemption and can’t really forgive others and can’t be a good person unless God has chosen this destiny for you. But good luck trying!

Fortunately, a great many individuals have figured out the Church is wrong.

Among the people who understand the true potential of your free will are your very own guardian angels. All angels, whether in 4D form or in incarnated human form, live and breathe the concept of free will in its deepest grandeur. So you may as well know from the beginning of your journey that if you try to tell your angels that you can’t change because you don’t have free will, they’ll put on their angel earmuffs and loudly proclaim, “Sorry, we can’t hear you. La la la la la.”

Why are angels allowed to ignore your pity parties? Because angels have free will. And they don’t have to agree with everything you’re saying.

Which leads to the last point I want to highlight today.

Fact #3: All guardian angels are equally competent and equally well qualified to guide their respective charges. There’s no such thing as “defective” or “inferior” guardian angels. The angels who are watching over you are the angels who are best suited to you and your unique needs. Period.

I’ve read a number of New Age books in which authors claim you can break a contract with your guardian angels if you believe they’re not “pure” enough or “advanced” enough for you. According to these authors, you can insist on being teamed with a “better” angel or spirit guide, someone who’s higher on the ladder of spiritual ascent . . . like, say, an archangel instead of a plain ol’ guardian angel. Like maybe even Archangel Michael himself!

Hah!

You may have noticed that in my last post (Angels Aren’t Wusses) I described angels as being more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the winged, ethereal, transcendent beings of traditional Western art. This is because angels ARE more like the crew of the Enterprise. They come in many different sizes and shapes (think Klingon, Betazoid, Vulcan). They come with many different combinations of talents and strengths (think strong Klingon, empathic Betazoid, intellectual Vulcan). They come with absences of strengths, too (think gentle Klingon, non-telepathic Betazoid, weepy Vulcan — say what?). So angels always work AS A TEAM, with each angel offering his or her strengths, and each one deferring to others in areas where he or she lacks a strength or talent. (Not coincidentally, the same observation applies to human communities at their best — people with different “sizes and strengths” coming together to work as a team.)

No one incarnates on Planet Earth before a full and appropriate angelic team has been assembled for the particular individual who has chosen to incarnate.

Gosh, did I just say “has chosen to incarnate”? As in “wasn’t forced by cosmic forces beyond my control to be here living this lousy human life?”

Yup.

As I said above, all angels have free will. This free will extends to the choice to either incarnate for a while or to not incarnate for the time being.

Angels choose to incarnate for a variety of reasons, but all these reasons are positive and hopeful and courageous and loving. At the moment you may not remember or understand your own reasons for choosing to incarnate as a human being. But you did choose to be here. And your guardian angels support your choice and are doing far more than you realize to help you achieve your soul’s own purpose.

Next time we’ll talk about soul purpose, ’cause, as the Scotiabank’s TV ads say, “You’re richer than you think!”

 

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02 Jan 2012

TBM16: Angels Aren’t Wusses (Spirituality for Guys)

Son with Snowbirds

My son up close and personal with a Snowbirds CT-114 Tutor

Want to make a guy squirm? Tell him out loud he has a guardian angel.

Lots of women I know will talk about guardian angels. But it’s pretty rare to find a man who’s willing to stop and ask for directions from a guardian angel. Most guys would rather drive in circles for their entire lives than admit they need to stop and ask for help to read the map of the Spiral Path.

I say that as the mother of a 28 year old man. My son is a wonderful fellow, and he’s as thoughtful and responsible a man as any mother could wish for. But at the end of the day he’s a guy. A real guy. His eyes kind of glaze over at the thought of anything cool that moves and has lots of power (like cars, bikes, and planes). He’s an athlete (a sabre fencer, actually). He tries really hard to remember birthdays and anniversaries but sometimes he needs a friendly reminder. He leaves his socks in little piles all over the floor, and his socks almost never match. He loves action movies. He watches chick flicks with his girlfriend because he wants to share things with her that she enjoys. (Thank you, son). He loves to be spoiled with a big home-cooked meal (though he’s happy to do the dishes afterwards). He thinks South Park is funny.

Son with Kawasaki

My son with his Kawasaki

He has no problem expressing his individuality or his masculinity. Nor does he have a problem expressing his own thoughts and feelings in respectful ways. He loves to talk politics, history, philosophy, science, and spirituality. He’s not afraid to tell the truth when the truth needs to be told. He believes that being a man means doing the right thing rather than the easy thing.

But, ya know, despite all that, and despite the countless conversations I’ve had with him over the years about my own experiences as a mystic/channeller, he’s still kind of squeamish when I say the word “angel” out loud.

He chokes on the word. He really does. I don’t know why, but guys-of-heart just can’t seem to get past this word.

I think this may be part of the reason there’s so little material available for men who are seeking the Spiral Path.

Most of the books about angels are written by women for women. To make matters worse, these books are almost always illustrated with “chick flick” drawings and paintings. You know, lots of soft, flowing, pastel gowns. Butterflies. Gardens full of pink flowers. Unicorns. Fawns and kittens and puppies.

Okay. So maybe . . . maybe I’ve just stumbled onto part of the problem. Maybe part of the problem is the way angels have been depicted over the years.

I mean, really, if you’re a guy who likes to rip apart engines and put them back together, are you going to want to relate to your own guardian angel as a fat little Rococo baby with a naked butt? Or as a flowery, wispy, butterfly creature who breaks into tears at the first swear word you utter?

I’m thinkin’ not . . .

So here’s something I’m going to share with you based on my own long experience talking to various guardian angels over the years.

Guardian angels are tough as nails. If I had my way, paintings of angels would show them as they really are — more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the ethereal star children you’ve been seeing in recent books and films. These angel dudes, they’re committed and courageous and courteous and team-oriented, but if you choose to aim your weapons of hatred and prejudice and anger at them, they’ll put up their shields and deflect your attacks. They won’t put up with any bullshit from you.

Yes, it’s true that angels are very loving. Yes, it’s true that angels are completely forgiving. But it’s a mistake to equate love and forgiveness with meekness and mildness. No angel I’ve ever met can be described as meek and mild.

Least of all God the Mother and God the Father.

Over the centuries mystics and religious leaders have made a complete hash of their teachings on angels. There’s so much bad information out there in New Age and mystical texts that I can’t think of a single reputable book to recommend to you for further reading on the topic of angels.

So here’s what I’m going to suggest to you. In this day of internet connections and Skype and wireless phones and texting and instant imaging, we’ve all got used to the idea that it’s possible for us to have ongoing relationships with people who aren’t physically present in the same room with us, but who can be “seen” and “heard” via wireless connections.

Think of your biological brain as a highly advanced Blackberry or other wireless communication device. And think of your guardian angel as the guy who’s texting you on your Blackberry from a remote station, a remote station you can’t see with your physical eyes because it’s somewhere around a bend on the Spiral Path.

Just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he isn’t there.

And just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he can’t hear you or answer your questions every day of your life.

He hears you plenty good. And he’s texting you and Skyping you all the time. While he sits on his angelic Harley and listens to the angelic hard rock station he loves and brushes down his angelic jeans and black leather while he waits for his cue to ride in.

Okay, so maybe this last paragraph is a description of Jesus (’cause I know him so well by now and I know he’s a hard rock kind of guy) but you get the picture.

Angels aren’t wusses.

 

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, Mother and Father God, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
27 Nov 2011

RS15: The Human Sense of Time & Timing

(C) JAT

Rivers of Time (c) JAT 2013

J: Today I want to talk about the human sense of time and timing.

A: Okay. I’ve had my first coffee, so my typing fingers are warmed up and ready to go.

J: When you were growing up, what were you taught about the human senses?

A: Oh. That’s easy. We were taught there are five senses — sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. I think this is still the conventional wisdom.

J: Right. And if I were to ask a group of people today what the “sixth sense” is, what would people say?

A: Intuition. Second sight. Psychic messages. Something along those lines.

J: Right. People in this culture are taught to think of the “sixth sense” as intuition — as something vague and on the fringe.

A: There’s also the famous movie called Sixth Sense. That’s a bit more than “being on the fringe.” That’s right into the Twilight Zone.

J: The problem — the problem I want to state clearly for the record — is that all human beings are born with an additional physical sense that hasn’t been recognized for what it is. This additional physiological trait is a scientific trait, not a paranormal trait. It’s 100% verifiable and 100% crucial to the healthy functioning of the human brain. It’s so important to the healthy functioning of the human brain that when it isn’t properly supported during the first few years of a child’s life, it causes lifelong problems in most facets of daily living.

A: You’re talking about the sense of time & timing.

J: Yes. This poorly understood aspect of the biological brain is so important that you could almost call it “the missing key” — the aspect of human consciousness that, if properly developed and used throughout life, generates an inner experience of wholeness and completion, an experience that so many people are lacking in their lives today.

A: Can you define the sense of time & timing?

J: It’s the ability of the human brain to correctly place “the self” on a timeline. It’s the ability to distinguish between past, present, and future. It’s the ability — quite literally — to tell time on an analog clock.

A: Ooooh. A lot of younger people today can’t tell time on an analog clock.

J: True. And it’s symptomatic of a much wider issue — the growing choice in Western culture (and other cultures) to stop teaching children about their own sense of time & timing. The parietal lobes of these children are not developing properly in early childhood. The parietal lobes of the brain are not developing the strong interconnections they need with all other parts of the brain. The cost here will be very high. Very high for these children, very high for their communities.

A: You don’t pull your punches, do you? Most people have never even heard of the sense of time or the parietal lobes of the brain, and here you are telling them the high cost of not developing these aspects of themselves. Are you talking about a spiritual cost? Changes in the parieto-temporal regions of the brain have been linked to certain mystical or spiritual experiences. Is this what you’re talking about?

J (shaking his head): It’s not that simple. The sense of time & timing takes six to seven years — years — to develop in a healthy child whose core needs (the core needs of the Christ Zone model) are all being met.

A: Starting when?

J: From the time of birth. The template for the sense of time & timing exists at birth, but it takes six to seven years of consistent exposure to the flow of time for the human brain to finally “get it.” When the brain finally “gets it,” analog clocks suddenly make sense. They make sense because they demonstrate in a mechanical way the forward movement of time. Digital clocks don’t “model” the forward flow of time. Digital clocks show a bunch of numbers in a particular order, but they don’t show time.

A: I can remember clear as day my son’s gradual struggle as a young boy to master the sense of time. He could read a digital clock at the age of four (“You can come and get Mommy when your clock says 7-0-0”) but it didn’t mean anything to him. He was simply memorizing the numbers.

J: You’d be surprised how many adults try to get through life by memorizing the numbers. It’s a scary feeling when you don’t understand the concept of time, but other people think you do.

A: I remember my son’s favourite TV cartoon when he was four. It was Ghostbusters. It was a half-hour show, and he just loved it. He even dressed up as a Ghostbuster for Hallowe’en one year. When he asked how long something would take, his dad and I would frame it in terms of Ghostbusters. “The church service will be two Ghostbusters long.” He seemed to be able to cope with time when we used his favourite show as a yardstick. Finally, when he was about six, he started to be able to use an analog clock without help. At the time, I had no idea how significant this was.

J: His ability to relate in a rudimentary way to time through the yardstick of his favourite TV show is absolutely crucial to what I’m trying to convey about the human sense of time. Healthy human beings don’t read time the way you read a digital clock. Healthy human beings read time as a history of relationships. It’s all about the history — the learning, the memory, the growth, the change. Time is more than just a bunch of numbers. Time is . . . well, it’s almost organic. It moves forward (never backward) but it flows like a river, not like a geometric line of numbers in sequence. Numbers are two dimensional (literally). Time is fourth dimensional. It can’t be thought of in strictly linear terms, because nothing in the fourth dimension of physics is strictly linear.

A: That’s pretty complex.

J: Time is very complex. It’s intertwined with all aspects of consciousness, whether that consciousness exists in angel-form or in angel-as-human form. All of us — God the Mother, God the Father, angels who are God’s children, angels who are temporarily incarnated as human beings — all of us have strands of time woven into our very being. None of us can escape time. And none of us would want to. It’s our ability to remember events in time, to remember moments of love and joy and sorrow, that makes it possible for us to exist. The soul exists precisely because time moves forward, ever forward, like a cosmic river. The river grows, changes its course, develops new tributaries, slows in some places, rages in others, picks up sediment, drops it, creates fertile fields where new crops can grow, breaks its banks, shrinks to a trickle, but always, always flows with sound and beauty and marvels of construction. So it is with time — time as angels know it, time as God knows it.

A: So you really have to be on your toes with time. You never know where it’s going to carry you next.

J: Yes. A person who has mastered the human sense of time is, by definition, a person who is flexible and adaptable. Someone who can cope with change. Someone who isn’t frightened by the thought of learning something new.

A: I know quite a few people who are terrified of change, can’t cope with new ideas or skills, and want their lives to “stay the same.” They get really angry when they’re put in a situation where they might have to admit they don’t know something. They don’t want to say, “Sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”

J: When the parietal lobes haven’t been fully developed, the human brain does what it’s programmed to do — it shifts to its secondary circuits to pick up the slack. This is what redundancy and neuroplasticity in the brain are supposed to do. If one major circuit goes off-line, or is underactive, you temporarily shift the load to a different circuit till you can fix the main problem. Anyone who works with complex electrical engineering systems will know what I mean.

The difficulty here is that the brain shifts the load to secondary circuits (for example, to the anterior cingulate cortex), but the main problem in the parietal lobes never gets fixed. The load stays on the secondary circuits — circuits that aren’t designed to take this kind of load on a long term basis. Eventually, these secondary circuits start to break down, just as you’d expect. The cost of this begins to appear in a person’s thought, mood, and behaviour. In other words, serious mental health issues and serious neurological issues begin to arise. It’s inevitable.

A: Meanwhile, your parietal lobes are still underactive, which means you can’t learn from your own mistakes, and life is endlessly frustrating.

J: It makes you feel as if there’s a big hole inside you, a big void, that goes round and round without beginning or end. It’s feels like a hamster wheel, and you’re trapped on it. It feels awful, but after a while you start to believe it’s normal. Even worse, you start to believe that everyone else must feel the same way inside — empty and trapped and hopeless. But it’s not true. This isn’t the normal state of inner experience human beings are designed for. God is a little smarter than that.

A: Not that the Church has ever said so . . . .

 

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, building your intuition, Christ Zone, insight, interoception, Realspiritik, sense of time & timing, Soul, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
05 Nov 2011

RS10: The Soul’s Blended Logic

A: Hey, I like that new maxim you wrote a few days ago when I was grousing and complaining about the landlord I was stuck with until recently: “The measure of a man is how he decides to behave when the Law is placed in his hands. The righteous man uses the Law as a club to beat others down. The humble man sees that if he places the Law upon the pedestal of his own courage he will have a lever to raise others up.” Yeah, that about sums up my experience with my ex-landlord, Shane. When Ontario rental laws were “on his side,” he was all for quoting the law to his tenants and telling them the law prevented him from doing anything to resolve tensions or disputes. Of course, when the law was on our side — the tenants’ side — that was different. When the law was on our side, we were just troublesome, difficult tenants, in his view, not important enough to respond to in a timely and ethical fashion when there were issues. Not a nice man.

J: You think so. But inside his own head he thinks he’s the most wonderful guy in the world. A real “people person.”

A: If he were the most wonderful guy in the world he wouldn’t have treated me the way he treated me when I gave him notice I was moving out. He wouldn’t have treated the other tenants the way he’s been treating them. He would have responded promptly to the serious maintenance issues that have arisen in the building over the past few months. He would have kept the building in good shape, as the previous landlords did. He wouldn’t have tried to pass the buck to other people. He’s a real pro at passing the buck.

J: What I’m about to say probably won’t cheer you up much.

A (sighing): Go ahead. I’m ready. I think.

J: The way your ex-landlord operates is considered normal, acceptable behaviour by many “successful” business people. And it’s nothing new. This kind of behaviour is as old as humanity itself. In each generation there’ve always been some people who think it’s okay to climb their way to the top by kicking other people down. Any history book will reveal this reality.

A: And a lot of films, too.

J: In my day it was no different. I didn’t have to go very far to see it and feel it, either. Within my own family there were plenty of unfortunate examples of this kind of behaviour. I was raised to think in positive ways about slavery, about treating other human beings as property. This was normal. Commonplace. Acceptable. If you came from a family of honour, you just didn’t think of slaves as people, as individual beings with their own thoughts, needs, relationships, and dreams. They were there to serve you. The Law said so. Religious, political, and economic law all agreed on this (though in my time these forms of law were hopelessly intertwined with each other). The Law said it was proper to own slaves. So we owned slaves. As did almost every aristocratic household in the first century Mediterranean world. It was wrong, of course, for us to endorse slavery. It was profoundly abusive and morally unjustifiable, but hey, the Law said it was okay. And the Law couldn’t be wrong, now, could it?

A: From time to time I come across Christian writings that enthuse about the “enlightened” Laws of Jubilee in Leviticus. Yes, right in the Bible it says that every 50 years a man who lost either his property or his freedom to debt-holders will get it back in the Jubilee year. “Each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family” (Leviticus 25:10).

Yeah, right. Like that was ever going to happen. People willingly giving back land and slaves to the original owners after many decades? Don’t think so. And just who were the original owners? If you think about it logically, and add one Jubilee onto another, all property would have to revert to the one who owned it all “originally” — like, maybe thousands of years ago. So whoever could establish the strongest and oldest legal claim to the land would own everything, presumably, if you follow the logic of Jubilee. Which sounds pretty on paper but has no basis in human reality.

J: As you long as you appear to be doing something Lawful to protect slaves and indentured servants, you can still pretend you’re a nice person who cares about others. A real “people person” who’d give your shirt off your back for a complete stranger.

A: You know, there are all kinds of theories these days about the Historical Jesus — who you were, what you were teaching, what kind of relationship you had with the Pharisees and Sadducees and Romans. They try so hard to squeeze biblical verses into understandable boxes so they can define the boundaries of the particular box you were in. They seem to think that if they can define the right box they can finally define you. But it’s not like that. You weren’t living in a definable box, where certain Laws told you what to do and when to do it. You were that guy with the pedestal who wants to use the Law as a lever instead of a club.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: When people are raised up instead of beaten down they always surprise you. You can’t predict what amazing things they’ll do. You just have to step back and let them do their thing. Human beings at their best are totally unpredictable, yet they’re not in any way illogical. Human beings at their best live according to the blended logic of heart, mind, body, and talent, and this logic is amazing. It’s the blended logic of the soul. Creative. Spontaneous but also cautious. Organized but not obsessive. Funny as hell. Capable of tears. Capable of quiet reflection. Capable of great action — but not constantly so. Deeply grateful for a relationship of love and faith and trust in God. Able to tell right from wrong.

A: Which does not describe some of the people I know.

J: Exactly so. A great many adolescents and adults have stopped using the parts of their own brains that are dedicated to advanced emotions such as creativity, spontaneity, grief, contemplation, trust, and the biggie everybody wants to know about . . . divine love. The less functional a person’s brain, the more obsessive he or she becomes about the Law. The traditions of Law — including “family honour,” which is Law in its worst incarnation — are crucial to those people who’ve stopped listening to input from the Soul Circuits of their own brains.

A: Why? Why do people become righteous about the Law when they lose access to their own empathy?

J: A full answer to that question would fill more than one book, but the simple answer is that they’re frightened to death of the void they feel inside themselves. There’s a huge cost involved when you choose to ignore big chunks of your own brain. If you were to tie your dominant hand behind your back and refuse to use it for years, there’d be a huge cost to that, too. First your hand would weaken, then it would wither, and eventually you’d get ulcers and infections, possibly leading to incremental amputation, even system-wide sepsis and a swift death. Would this be a good thing? Would a sane person do this? Probably not. Yet every day human beings choose to do this kind of thing to their own brains. They choose, under societal pressure, to stop listening to input from the smartest parts of their own brains. Then they’re surprised when they feel like crap! They profess to be totally mystified by the sense of emptiness they feel inside. Well, ya know, that’s gonna happen when you force your own brain to shrink — to literally shrink in size within the confines of your own skull.

A: You don’t sound very sympathetic.

J: I have forgiveness for their choices, but I also have a lot of exasperation. I mean, come on, folks. What you put in your brain matters!

A: A favourite theme of yours.

J: Many people get caught in a vicious cycle. They choose to stop listening to the input of their own inner wisdom. Then they start to feel restless and empty and confused.

A: And angry.

J: And angry. After a while, they may get tired of feeling this way, so they look for answers that make logical sense to them. At this point, many will stumble across various forms of religious Law. The Law gives them answers that seem to make sense if they’re suffering from big holes (literally) inside their brains, holes that make them feel lost and listless and helpless. The Law gives them an external framework to cling to. However, the more they choose to lean on the Law, the less they use the parts of their brain they most need to “hear” — their intuition, their common sense, their empathy and faith. This leads to an even greater sense of futility and disconnection from God. So they redouble their efforts to “properly understand” God’s Law through more prayer and more self-denial and more study of scripture. Which means they’re again ignoring their own inner intuition, common sense, empathy, and faith. Which leads to further imbalance in the brain’s functioning. Which can lead directly to the anguish felt during “the dark night of the soul” — a never-to-be-sought-after state of severe neurophysiological breakdown. Famed theologian Augustine of Hippo arrived at his conclusions about God and the soul through this very process.

A: No wonder Augustine’s teachings on Original Sin make no sense.

 

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, Jesus' family of origin, Law (Nomos), Original Sin, psychopathy (niceness), Realspiritik, slavery, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
18 Sep 2011

RS8: Timeless Courage and Kindness

A: Last Thursday (Sept. 15, 2011) my 87 year old dad had surgery at a publicly funded hospital in the Greater Toronto Area. It was a planned surgery — a knee replacement — but it was still a big deal for us. You worry when an 87 year old is having major surgery! Anyway, my mom and I got to sit for several hours in the surgical waiting room and watch all the people going about their day at this major teaching hospital.

As you’d expect there were people of all ages and all ethnicities. Different faces, different voices. But all focused on a common issue — the care and healing of sick people. I think my favourite moment came when a group of new student nurses went past with a supervisor. Ten or twelve young women, all different ethnicities, but all sporting long, shiny hair tied back in a ponytail. Black hair, blond hair, brown hair. United by fashion, I guess you could say.

Anyway, it was a positive environment. A real environment. Very grounded in our lives as human beings, human beings who need each other’s help. Coming so soon after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it seemed like the right sort of answer to the question of why we suffer as human beings here on Planet Earth. We can’t stop change. But we can bring healing to those who are in pain in the aftermath of change.

J: Most days there’s more healing in the pinkie finger of a publicly funded hospital than in the entire body of orthodox Western Christianity.

A: The staff we met at the hospital were upbeat and positive about my dad’s procedure. They were starting with the assumption that if they did a good job on the surgery and he did a good job on the physio and follow up care, his quality of life would probably improve. I liked the fact that self-pity wasn’t encouraged or condoned. They expected my dad to be a full participant in the process of healing.

J: It’s an interesting scientific fact that people’s attitude toward their health and recovery plays a major role in the trajectory of their healing. In particular, anger and self-pity interfere with the healing process because these choices prompt the body to sustain high levels of stress hormones. Stress hormones such as cortisol can damage crucial areas of the brain. In other words, if you choose to hang onto your anger and self-pity, you can damage your own brain.

A: Canadian physician Gabor Mate has written a very readable book on the connection between stress and health — especially how too much stress is linked to illness. (Gabor Mate, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (Toronto: Vintage Canada-Random House, 2003)).

J: Though fans of Richard Dawkin’s “selfish gene” won’t like what I’m about to say here, there is intentionality on God’s part in the design of DNA on Planet Earth.* All human beings share the same basic DNA, so all human beings are affected by the problem of brain damage caused by stress hormones and other neurophysiological imbalances. As researchers are grudgingly beginning to recognize, the human brain — and thus the wider human community — works a lot better when people make the choice to love and heal and forgive and learn from past mistakes. The human brain also works better when men and women, boys and girls, pool their respective talents as part of a team of different-but-equal individuals. No person is an island.

No matter what pond you happen to be living in, we all look to the same God for love, forgiveness, healing, and guidance. Photo credit JAT 2017

A: Especially not religious leaders.

J: God doesn’t single out certain individuals to be “chosen” priests or ministers or religious leaders. Those who claim to be chosen by God must answer to their communities for the choices they make. They must answer for their claims that God would want to blow up certain buildings or that God would want to take revenge on certain people. Why would God, who love all their children equally, be in the business of choosing one group over another? The inner heart knows God doesn’t play favourites. It cannot be any other way.

A: In the summer I stumbled across a wonderful article in the Toronto Star about a village in Pakistan where, for decades, hatred and violence between Muslims and Hindus had become the norm. (Rick Westhead, “A life-saving gift: How a Pakistani village plagued by sectarian attacks was transformed by one Hindu man’s blood donation to a dying Muslim woman,” Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011, p. A3). As reporter Rick Westhead describes, a difficult life in a desert environment was filled with fear because certain people had decided it was okay to beat and rape and even kill their neighbours on the other side of the religious divide. This all changed “in a moment” when a young Muslim mother desperately needed a blood transfusion and the only willing donor was a Hindu man. As word spread of the man’s offer, a group of Muslim men, incensed that medical staff refused to provide separate facilities for Muslims and Hindus, led a charge on the medical clinic to try to kill the blood donor. The doctor intervened. He told the attackers the Muslim woman would die without the transfusion. The leader of the Muslim attackers suddenly had an epiphany. He saw how generous the Hindu donor was. He suddenly felt remorse for his own hatred, and the next day he apologized to the donor: “‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Latif says. ‘I remember thinking that here we were refusing to even shake hands with the Hindus and he was willing to give us his blood. It was a marvelous thing he did. It was the turning point of my life.'”

Today the village is a place transformed by kindness and empathy and mutual assistance — all because of the bravery and compassion of one Hindu man and one Muslim man who were willing to let go of a longstanding “tradition” of hatred. Plus the doctor who stepped in the middle and said what needed to be said.

This reminds me a lot of you when you were healing the poor and the excluded in the towns of Galilee.

J: This is the great truth about God’s children. No matter who you are or what your religion or what the colour of your skin, you’re a child of God. You’re capable of astonishing feats of compassion and courage. It’s who you really are. When you look at your neighbour, whether Muslim or Christian or Jewish or another religion, you need to look at them through God’s eyes. You need to see them as your brothers and sisters, as your family-of-the-soul. Because this is the way God looks at all people — as individuals who are equal but different.

A: I’d like to remind readers of the My Fellow American interfaith initiative that can be visited at http://myfellowamerican.us. When I was watching the 2-minute video yesterday, with its clips of ordinary Americans who happen to be Muslim, I kept thinking of the waiting room at the hospital. I kept thinking of all the people who were there because they share the same human capacity to care. We’re all the same when we’re trying to heal and trying to help others.

J: Two thousand years ago I wrote the parable of the Good Samaritan to talk about this timeless issue. I was once the man who was beaten up by the side of the road (quite literally), and through the kindness of strangers I discovered to my shock that people can actually choose to be the loving and forgiving children God knows us to be. I would never have found my faith and my trust in God without the help of these kind, humble strangers. The people who helped me weren’t famous. They had no status. They had no wealth of the earthly kind. But they had that most mysterious of treasures — the heavenly heart.

A: It’s extraordinary how one act of great kindness and courage can change the world, isn’t it?

* This statement isn’t meant to lend support to Creationists or the Book of Genesis. Far from it. Scientific evidence about the age of the universe and the age of Planet Earth must take precedence over “revealed” teachings from sacred texts.

For more thoughts on the My Fellow American project, please see http://jesusredux.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-fellow-american-interfaith.html

 

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Posted in Divine Love, healing, Jesus' original writings, Jesus' teachings, Mother and Father God, parables, Realspiritik, Soul, theodicy and tagged , | Leave a Comment
01 Aug 2011

JR61: Sixth Step in Healing the Church: Be Honest About the Bible

A: I’ve been reflecting for the past few days on the suffering inflicted by Anders Breivik on everybody everywhere who’s capable of loving their God and loving their neighbours as themselves.

Several news reports have referred to a 1,500 page manifesto that Breivik posted on the Internet shortly before the Norway attacks. Apparently Breivik copied a number of sections almost word from word from the writings of several well-known far-right ideologues. (Which just goes to show, once again, that psychopaths are very good at “cutting and pasting” other people’s ideas, but not capable of coming up with original insights of their own.) Breivik’s manifesto has been compared to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the U.S. Unabomber. But when I look at excerpts from Breivik’s diary and manifesto, and compare his actions to his beliefs, I don’t see a modern day European political movement. I see a very old ideological movement, one that fills up many pages in the Bible. I see the Book of Jeremiah. I see the Book of Revelation. I see the Book of Numbers.

J: These are all biblical books that give permission to psychopaths to carry out “Just Wars.”

A: I’ve noticed in news reports about Breivik that he readily admits he carried out the Oslo bombing and the camp shootings, but he says he didn’t break the law in doing so because he’s at war with the Norway government.

J: Inside our man Breivik’s head, it all makes perfect sense. Of course, the reason it makes sense to him is that he’s only using certain parts of his biological brain. He’s not using the parts of his brain that deal with empathy or relationship or common sense or compassionate humour or trust or creativity. If he were using those parts, he wouldn’t be capable of planning such a cold, ruthless, legalistic act of violence against others.

A: On the other hand, interviews with some of the camp survivors suggest these young people embody all the best of human potential — empathy and relationship and trust and so on. There was a really good article in Saturday’s Toronto Star: “Norway Tragedy: Inside the nightmare on Utoya” by Michelle Shephard (Toronto Star, Saturday, July 30, 2011). One 20 year old woman, Karoline Bank, is quoted as saying, “Yes, he took many people away from us, and every life lost is a tragedy. But we have gotten so much stronger over this. There’s not much more to say.”

J: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A: People of faith will wonder why God allowed this to happen.

J: People of faith have to stop listening to people of religious humility. People of faith — by that I mean people who want to be in relationship with God now, TODAY, not at some vague time of future judgment — have to start being more honest, more realistic, about the motivations that drove the authors of many revered religious texts. They have to stop wearing rose-coloured lenses when they read the Bible. They have to stop making excuses for the psychopaths who wrote so many parts of the Old and New Testaments. They have to stop making excuses for the parts of the Bible that were clearly written by those suffering from major mental illness.

A: Like the Book of Revelation.

Christian theologians have long been desperate to endorse the violent imagery of the Book of Revelation as a central justification for orthodox Christian teachings about the End Times. But from the point of view of God’s angels, the prophetic visions recorded in Revelation feel like a psychopathic attack on God and also on the soul who lived as Jesus, an attack no different in intent than Anders Breivik’s systematic rampage against campers trapped on a small island. Like Breivik, who disguised himself as a police officer so he could ensnare more victims, the prophet who penned Revelation pretended to be a faithful follower of Jesus as he took direct aim at Jesus’ teachings about a loving and forgiving God. Shown here are the head and wings of a large 9th century BCE Assyrian human-headed bull found in the North-West palace at Nimrud (on display at the British Museum). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: This is an issue of trust. People have to decide for themselves whether they’re going to trust what John says about humanity’s relationship with God, or whether they’re going to trust their own hearts, their own heads, and their own experiences about humanity’s relationship with God. Would a loving and forgiving God put a gun in Anders Breivik’s hands and tell him to go out and shoot people to “ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom [will] prevail”?*

A: God didn’t stop him, though.

J: Really? You’re sure about that? Because from where I’m standing, God did a great deal to stop him.

A: Sixty-nine people at the camp are dead, plus several more at the site of the Oslo bombing. They’re dead and they’re not coming back.

J: No, they’re not coming back. And their families and friends will grieve because they — the human survivors — have loving hearts. Their grief is unavoidable and is a measure of their wholeness. Yet one day their family and friends will cross to the Other Side, as all creatures of Planet Earth must do, and they’ll be reunited with their loved ones. So from God’s point of view, the relationships haven’t ceased. The relationships still exist, despite the death of the physical body, because love never dies. The form of the relationships has changed, but not the substance. The substance is real. The love can’t be taken away from any of these souls. Love continues beyond anything the physical body knows. Love is greater than anything the physical body knows. Love is the great mystery. It’s what guides God the Mother and God the Father in their decisions about when people are coming Home. But make no mistake — everyone eventually dies. God has never promised otherwise. This is the natural order of the universe.

A: You wouldn’t know it to listen to an apocalyptic prophet who promises bodily resurrection of the dead.

J: It’s a funny thing about psychopaths. A psychopath has a distinctive pattern to his logic and choices and behaviours, and one of the most distinctive features of psychopathy is the peculiar attitude towards death. They’re unable to trust anyone, of course — since trust is closely related to empathy and love and forgiveness — and this means they’re completely unable to trust in the idea that physical death is a natural, loving part of the soul’s relationship with God. Death without future punishment isn’t logical to a psychopath, just as life with present forgiveness isn’t logical to him. He’s incapable of feeling love, so he’s unable to conceive of a loving death. He’s also incapable of believing that God is smarter than he is, so he’ll spend a great deal of time and energy looking for “escape clauses” in the contract laws about death in the Abrahamic religions. If the clauses he wants aren’t there, he’ll claim to be a divinely-inspired prophet and add them himself. Egyptian attitudes towards death in the pre-Hellenistic period epitomize the psychopath’s fear of death.

A: You’re saying a psychopath’s attitude towards death isn’t unique to a specific religion or culture, but is instead universal because it’s biological. You’re saying that “escape clauses” come out the same way in different cultures because all human beings share the same basic DNA.

J (nodding): A psychopath is, by definition, a person who is cut off from the input of his own brain’s Soul Circuitry. This “cutting off” may have resulted, in rare circumstances, from a head injury or infection or poisoning or oxygen deprivation. But the vast majority of psychopaths are “self made.” High functioning psychopaths such as Anders Breivik are individuals who’ve turned themselves into psychopaths one bad choice at a time. This is why psychopathy doesn’t usually emerge in full-fledged form until adolescence. It takes a long time for a person to consciously undo the healthy connections God builds into the human brain.

A: It’s still amazing to me that human beings have that kind of control over the wiring of their own brains. But history bears out the truth of what you’re saying.

J: You’ll probably be shocked to learn, then, that within the annals of religious history there have been select groups who’ve intentionally incorporated the blueprint for “how to build a psychopath” into their religious doctrines.

A: You mean . . . these groups wanted to create psychopaths? On purpose?

J: It can be very useful, from a utilitarian point of view, to have a man like Anders Breivik on your side if you’re trying to acquire wealth, power, status, and “immortality.”

A: This immortality thing . . . this need to leave behind a human legacy of power and status for future generations to admire and imitate — is this a normal state of mind for a person who feels whole and healed and humble? Because it seems awfully narcissistic to me.

J: It’s normal and natural for a soul-in-human-form to want to create and build and improve the quality of life for his or her community. Persons-of-soul — angels — have a strong sense of purpose and mission and service. So you expect to see a community of Whole Brain Thinkers busily at work devising new ways to dig wells for clean water or improving ways to eliminate toxins from the environment or building new schools and medical clinics in underserved areas. Human beings are at their best when they come together in teams to bring healing to others in the face of suffering.

A: Healing instead of revenge.

J: A large number of people around the world have responded to the Norway tragedy by offering their hope, faith, and love instead of judgment, piety, and revenge. Some have found, for the first time in their lives, the courage of their own faith. The courage of their own trust in God. The courage of their own trust in each other.

A: That’s a powerful insight, to know you have the courage to choose hope, faith, and love.

Forever 1

Jesus said: One person cannot ride two horses at once, nor stretch two bows; nor can a servant serve two masters, as he will respect one and despise the other. No one drinks vintage wine and immediately wants to drink fresh wine; fresh wine is not put into old wineskins because they might burst. Vintage wine is not put into new wineskins because it might be spoiled” (Gospel of Thomas 47a-d). You can choose the path of redemption or you can choose the path of revenge. Pick one because you can’t have both. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: To find that courage is to know redemption. I send my love to all who are open to the wondrous idea that humans — not just God — are filled to overflowing in their own souls with divine courage and trust and gratitude and devotion.

This courage is yours. It’s not God’s. It’s not your neighbour’s. It’s not your parents’. It’s not your priest’s. It’s yours. It’s part of who you are as a soul.

Claim it and live it. Be the person God knows you really are. Don’t be a bully and coward like Anders Breivik, who hasn’t the courage to love. (Though I forgive him.) Be open to a loving relationship with God, no matter what your religious background. Your neighbour is loved by God as much as you are. All your neighbours.

No other truth is acceptable.

* On July 24, 2011, The Globe and Mail published a Reuter’s article, “Excerpts from Norway attacker’s diary.” An entry from June 11, 2011 said, “I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail.”

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Bible, Book of Revelation, brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain-soul connection, Church of today, Divine Love, forgiveness, free will, Jesus Redux, life and death, psychopathy, redemption, Soul, the right to be right, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
15 Jul 2011

JR58: The "My Fellow American" Interfaith Initiative

A: I was contacted this week by a person who’s working with the Unity Productions Foundation on an interfaith initiative called My Fellow American. The goal of the initiative is to encourage Americans to think of their fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim as fellow Americans. There’s a 2 minute film produced by Unity, and there are also uploaded videos and stories from various supporters of the idea that all Americans are equally American, regardless of religion. What do you think of this project?

J (grinning): I think you should post the address.

A: Oh yeah. Good thinking. The address is http://myfellowamerican.us/

I discovered when I went to watch the film how truly outdated my computer really is. Computer updates are not my thing. Good thing the computer at work has more juice in it.

The person who contacted me also wondered if I could maybe Tweet about the project if I checked it out and liked it. I don’t know how to tell her this, but I don’t even own a cell phone. So the Tweeting is pretty much out.

J: Everybody has their own way of communicating with others.

A: Anyway, I certainly can’t argue with the basic principle of treating all your neighbours with dignity and respect and compassion and kindness regardless of religion. This is what makes a society internally strong.

J: The one thing people have to remember is that all human beings are children of God. A Muslim woman is just as a much a child of God as the saints of Christian history. To deny a woman dignity and respect simply because she’s Muslim is to withhold divine love from your neighbour. It’s as simple as that.

A: I think some people are afraid that if they love and accept the woman with an open heart they’ll be required to love and accept all the religious teachings that are part of her tradition. At least that’s how they view it.

Regardless of religious affiliation, we're all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

Regardless of religious affiliation, we’re all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: Religious teachings are very much a human thing. Divine love, on the other hand, is a soul thing. Divine love always trumps religious teachings. Every religion on the face of Planet Earth today has problems — problems with abusive doctrines, problems with gender issues, problems with “law,” and problems with balance. Every religion. Islam is no different from Christianity in this regard. Sure, Islam has some problems. But so does orthodox Western Christianity. This is no excuse for failing to love your neighbour and failing to believe in his or her best self. Everybody’s struggling. People of all religions have to hold each other up. People have to work together. It’s the only way to find healing.

A: The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Some people haven’t got over the shock. They’re still looking for someone to blame.

J: If they’re looking for someone to blame, then they should be looking at the unassailable laws of neurophysiology, not at religion. Only a seriously, seriously dysfunctional individual thinks it’s okay to blow up buildings “in the name of God.” This applies across the board to all religions and all cultures. Christianity has had its fair share of psychopaths in martyrs’ clothing, too. Psychopathy is a social, medical, and educational issue. Psychopathy is about as far from genuine relationship with God as it’s possible to get.

The vast majority of Muslims and Christians and those of other faiths are doing their best to get closer to God — not farther away from God and faith — even though they make mistakes along the way. People of all faiths are constantly learning, changing, growing. Traditions change. Religious teachings change. The one core truth that doesn’t change is the reality of the good soul, and the potential of all human beings to help each other understand this reality. If you allow yourself to be open to this truth, amazing things can happen in your community. Whatever community you happen to live in.

A: There are some psychopaths in positions of religious authority.

J: Yes. But there are also psychopaths in positions of political and economic and educational authority. Psychopathy is an entirely separate issue from the question of faith. Inherent to the definition of psychopathy is a total lack of conscience and empathy — in other words, a disconnection from all that enables true faith, true relationship with God. A psychopath seeks status, not faith, when he or she chooses to blow up buildings. It’s entirely a question of status addiction. Can we say this status addiction is true of “all Muslims”? Well, OF COURSE NOT. This would be the same as saying that every person who lives in Boston must be a status-addicted psychopath simply because he or she happens to live in Boston. It isn’t right or fair to make such a claim.

A: Claims such as this have been fairly common over the course of history, though.

J: True. These claims fall under the umbrella of the HDM Myths that you posted about on Concinnate Christianity. (http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-takes-village-non-hdm-village-that.html ). Group myths of Hierarchy, Dualism, and Monism. Again, these are human myths, human choices, that have nothing to do with the faith of the soul. Challenge the myths and heal the soul, remembering always that the soul is not the aspect of the self that’s perpetuating these myths. It’s certain parts of the biological brain that have gone off the rails, so to speak, and now enjoy the addictive high of schadenfreude. For a person suffering from status addiction, there’s just nothing better than a good hit of mental revenge and religious hatred to get you through the day. It’s cheaper than buying whiskey and cigarettes.

A: That’s a pretty tough statement.

J: Addiction is a pretty tough reality. Addiction destroys lives. Better to be honest about its effects.

A: Because, as you often say, healing follows insight.

J: My hat’s off to the My Fellow American participants because they’re doing their best to help others in their community be their best selves. And they’re working together as a team to teach and share and communicate in relationship with each other. As an angel, I can’t ask for more than that.

Addendum, October 16, 2023: It’s been 12 years since I wrote this post with the soul who lived as Jesus.

The world has changed greatly during this time. One of the unfortunate changes has been an ideological shift towards monism within many educational institutions and humanitarian organizations in Western nations. This shift has taken society further away from the idea that people hold individual responsibility for their own choices. In place of the long-held Judeo-Christian value system built on free will, personal responsibility, and accountability to your own inner wisdom (what we call “conscience”), there has been a push to impose a value system based on “group banners” behind which individuals can hide.

No one can be his or her best self if “group banners” (especially religious “group banners”) are used as an excuse for hanging onto harmful traditions, hateful actions, or justification for revenge.

Mother Father God and your angels don’t care what your religious teachers say. What matters to God is how you choose to use your free will as a human being during your time on Planet Earth. If you decide it’s a great idea to hate other people on the basis of their religion, that’s not okay with God. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism is therefore not okay with your own soul or your angels.

Anti-Semitism isn’t the only example of extreme hatred in today’s world, but right now it’s a cauldron of suffering, especially for those who are doing the hating.

It’s your job as a human being — as a soul in human form — to learn how to look past the “group banners” that breed hatred and divisiveness. Seek the best in others and stand your ground as a child of God. Treat each person you meet as an individual who is responsible for his or her own choices towards others and towards God. This probably means you’ll have to reject some of the destructive religious doctrines that are causing problems in the world today. But if that’s what you have to do so you can hear your own conscience, that’s what you have to do.

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Posted in conscience & morality, faith, free will, hatred, HDM Myths, Islam, Jesus Redux, monism, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, Soul, status addiction and tagged , | Leave a Comment
13 Jul 2011

JR57: Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

A: When I came home from work on Monday, Oprah was rerunning an episode about two twin daughters who had been being sexually assaulted and raped by their father and two brothers until a neighbour called authorities. Towards the end of the episode, Oprah offered the definition of forgiveness that she’s found most helpful. It was something to this effect: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.” How do you respond to that?

J: Well, I find this definition demeaning and discouraging. Forgiveness is not about “giving up hope.” Forgiveness is about finding hope.

A: Maybe the person who coined this definition was using the word “hope” in a different way than you and I use it.

J: Hope is one of those slippery, hard-to-define spiritual terms. About as easy to explain as forgiveness. And about as complicated. Basically, though, angels use the word hope as a synonym for “trust in God.” It’s a powerfully positive, uplifting emotion. It’s an emotion that expresses an element of uncertainty. Perhaps I could rephrase that. Hope — trust in God — is an experience of emotional continuity in the face of apparent discontinuity in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. In other words, you still believe in God’s goodness even when you can’t see an obvious link between actions and the results of those actions.

A: A leap of faith, in other words.

“Jesus said: From Adam to John the Baptizer, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John the Baptizer, so that his eyes should be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John” (Gospel of Thomas 46 a-b). Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Yes, but not a blind leap of faith. Trust, surprising as it may seem, requires an element of brutal honesty. Brutal honesty about oneself. Trust requires you to know your own limits, your own abilities right down to a “t.” This knowledge allows you to recognize situations where you’ve reached the limits of your own abilities and experience. At this point, you switch over to your knowledge about other people’s abilities and experience. You switch over the decision-making process to somebody who has more knowledge about the topic at hand than you have. You hand over the reins, as it were. Angels do this without an instant of shame or jealousy or regret. They simply accept their limits and gratefully hand over the reins to other angels. This is what humbleness feels like. Not false humility, as the Church teaches it, but divine humbleness.

A: You’re making my head hurt with all these different terms — forgiveness, hope, trust, humbleness.

J: These are all complex divine emotions. Not the same as each other, but interwoven with each other. Holistically. Hopefully, people will like the idea that God the Mother and God the Father are capable of experiencing and expressing the most complex emotions of all.

A: This switching-over thing you’re talking about . . . is this related to the research you’ve been helping me collect about the “gears” in the biological human brain that are supposed to help people switch smoothly from one idea or emotion to another?

J: You mean parts of the human brain such as the anterior cingulate gyrus?

A: Yes. And related “switching centres.”

J: Definitely. Angels don’t have an anterior cingulate gyrus, but souls-in-human-form do. Angels who incarnate as human beings need a biological “toolkit,” and a number of tools in that toolkit relate to the human brain and central nervous system. When those tools aren’t used the way they should be — when, for example, a “hammer” is used when a “screwdriver” is called for, or when the blunt end of the adjustable wrench is used instead of the adjustable claws at the other end, you can’t expect the result to be pretty. The human brain is designed with an entire set of “ball bearings” and “lubricants” to prevent the various gears of the brain from grinding against each other and causing excessive wear. Unfortunately, in many young human beings, the ball bearings and lubricants are the first thing to go. After that, you see the onset of DSM-IV psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, problems with impulse control, problems with anger control, possibly even psychopathy.

A: All because their switching mechanisms aren’t working properly?

J: The human brain is an incredibly complex set of tools and machinery. It uses many different types of switching mechanisms to help it balance incoming data and outgoing choices — outgoing thoughts, feelings, and actions. The operative word here, of course, is balance. The brain has to be able to identify, remember, understand, and fix many different sorts of problems. It has to switch constantly between different spheres of reality, between logical thought and positive emotions and practical actions, between the needs of the self and the needs of the other, between active learning and quiet processing, between past, present, and future. Believe me, human beings need every scrap of brain tissue they can muster for this job of Whole Brain Thinking.

A: So when the switching mechanisms aren’t working properly, people get “stuck.” They get stuck in one or two spheres. For example, a person who gets stuck in the past.

J: Yes. Or a person who gets stuck in logical thought. These are the people who lack empathy, who lack compassion for others. They make all their choices based on logic alone. The Church has had an overflowing cup of bishops who were incapable of feeling empathy.

A: I’ve also known some people — mostly women — who seem stuck in their emotional circuitry and can’t make a decision that’s tough. They don’t forgive other people so much as put blinders on. They try to sweep great harms under the carpet so they don’t have to deal with the fallout of taking a firm stance.

J: Forgiveness is very much about taking a firm stance. The first step in forgiving somebody — whether it’s yourself or someone else — is honesty. There must be an honest assessment of harm. This means you have to take a stance on the question of right and wrong. For the soul — for all souls in Creation, including God the Mother and God the Father — some choices are clearly right and other choices are clearly wrong. The soul knows the difference. The soul feels confident and clear when right choices are made. The soul feels abused when wrong choices are made. This is what many people call . . . conscience.

A: There’s been a trend among some New Age gurus and some Progressive Christians to claim there are no moral absolutes. Hence there is no need for forgiveness. According to these thinkers, all choices are equally acceptable to God because each person is really just a spark of God trying to express itself. Neale Donald Walsch has built a lucrative empire on this idea.

J: Only a person who doesn’t want to face his own life choices would find this theory acceptable.

A: It does leave a lot of wiggle room for people who want to excuse their own behaviour . . .

J: Forgiveness is a clear and conscious decision to call forth and believe in the best that a person can be and the best a person can do. Forgiveness is a refusal to accept excuses. At the same time, it’s a gift of love that has no strings attached. Divine love goes beyond anything a Materialist philosophy of Cause and Effect can imagine. Divine love is an up-front gift, a conscious decision to offer the recipient (whether the self or an another person) a vote of confidence in his or her best self. It’s a leap of faith. It’s a boost-up. A helping hand. A sense of purpose for a person to hang onto. It does not require you to prove yourself before you get the gift of love. If you had to prove yourself first, one proof at a time, as many theologians have taught, you’d be looking at the vertical path of spiritual ascent — anagogic mysticism. Anagogic mysticism is a form of Materialist belief. God the Mother and God the Father are not required to obey Materialist philosophy. They love us because they choose to love us, not because they “owe” us anything for our “obedience” and “piety.” They believe in us, their children, so much that we simply cannot and will not let them down. They inspire us to be our best selves. But they don’t force us to be our best selves — we, as angels, choose to be our best selves. It’s as natural as breathing for all angels.

A: Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth.

J: Yes. Including the angels who have incarnated on Planet Earth. There are no exceptions among God’s children. All angels are filled with trust and devotion and gratitude and courage BECAUSE God the Mother and God the Father believe in our best selves. They have faith in us.

A: So in the case of a father who has raped his own daughters, how would God look at that?

J: God the Mother and God the Father would recognize instantly the selfish, uncourageous intent of the father. They would identify the problem — the father’s dysfunctional brain circuitry — and they would remember this as they worked to help him and those around him recognize the great harm he’s been choosing to create. They would not condone or accept this behaviour as acceptable. They would identify the behaviour as “wrong.” Nonetheless, they would blanket him in divine love. They would whisper to his soul, “We believe in you. We know this isn’t the best you can be. We know you can make loving choices. We won’t abandon you. We’ll stick right with you and show you why your choices have been wrong. You won’t understand at first, and you’re going to be angry and confused and resentful for a while, but that’s okay, because we know that more than anything in the world you want to be able to give love. We believe in you.”

A: And then God sends you through the human court system that’ll cart you off to jail for “X” number of years.

J: Somehow you have to get it through your thick human skull that you made an abusive choice that was very, very wrong. You have to accept that you made a mistake, you have to accept that you can learn from your own mistakes, and you have to accept that you can be a better person who makes right choices. If you receive the right kind of help.

A: Locking up a person and throwing away the key isn’t the right kind of help.

J: Nor is revenge the right kind of help. Usually it takes a whole team to provide the right kind of help to a man who has raped his own daughters. A whole team of well trained professionals. Of course, if the professionals themselves don’t believe in the soul or the power of forgiveness or the mystery of God’s divine love, they’re ill-equipped to provide the kind of mentorship the abuser needs if he’s to have any chance of living up to his best self.

A: In which case the abuser isn’t likely to be healed.

J: Healing follows insight for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime. Forgiveness, as we’ve said, is a catalyst that speeds and facilitates the healing process. Healing is the path towards Wholeness. Not the path towards Oneness but the path towards Wholeness. Wholeness is the place — the Kingdom, the experience of self — where you know yourself and all your limits and all your strengths and all your quirks and you can be humbly proud of yourself anyway because you’re being the best person you can be.

A: Young children are like this. They have the ability to throw themselves into new relationships and new experiences to the best of their ability without any concern for status or “face.”

J: Yup. That’s what I meant when I said that to enter the Kingdom you must become again like a little child. Humble and guileless, yet full of infectious enthusiasm and intelligence. Many three-year-olds are smarter than the adults around them because they haven’t yet forgotten how to learn.

A: And they still know how to forgive. Young children are born with an amazing ability to forgive.

J: I rest my case.

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Posted in anagogic mysticism, brain-soul connection, Cause & Effect, conscience & morality, Divine Love, forgiveness, healing, honesty, humbleness, insight, Jesus Redux, Materialism, mental illness, mentorship, Soul, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged | Leave a Comment
08 Jul 2011

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

A: Tell me more about forgiveness. The other day you said, “Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt” (The Meaning of “the Son of Man”). You and I have talked a lot about forgiveness, but you’ve never linked it to the Peace Sequence before. Can you explain in more detail what you meant?

J: I’m going to introduce a comparison between forgiveness and catalysts (as catalysts are understood by a chemist). At a quantum level, forgiveness acts as an important “biochemical” catalyst for learning.

A: Okay, you’re gonna have to back up the divine truck on this one.

J: In everyday speech, people use the word “catalyst” to mean a person, thing, or event that prompts sudden change. In Western culture it’s often an unexpected tragedy that serves as a catalyst for change. For instance, if a child is killed because a newly designed toy isn’t safe, the people around the child are shocked into action. Chances are good that an inquiry will be held, and healthy and safety regulations will be amended to remove this particular threat. The catalyst for change was a tragic event that jarred people out of their complacency and forced them to be more honest about a quantifiable, measurable threat to children’s safety.

The factual reality of the toy’s dangerous design existed before the tragic death. The threat itself wasn’t new. What was new was the realization of the threat, the objective recognition of the threat, the memory of the threat. In other words, human beings had to learn about the threat. They had to identify the problem, remember the problem, understand the problem, then fix the problem. These are the stages of learning. As it happens, these are also the stages of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. They’re all hopelessly intertwined with each other.

A: Identify, remember, understand, and fix. That’s a pretty logical sequence. What happens if a person tries to skip one of those steps? I’m thinking in particular of the “remember” stage. I’ve met quite a few people who seem to have really bad memories. Important information goes right in one ear and out the other. And these are fairly young people I’m talking about, not elderly people with dementia!

J: Those who can’t remember their own history are doomed to repeat it.

A: I remember a fellow we were corresponding with a few years ago about the spiritual journey. He was quite incensed because you and I had suggested that an understanding of science was important to spiritual growth and transformation. He wrote somewhat angrily, “Do I have to have a degree in physics?” And your reply was, “No, you have to have a degree in history.” He probably thought you were being facetious.

“Jesus said, ‘ I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart’” (Gospel of Thomas 17). The mysterious gift Jesus is talking about here is Divine Forgiveness, a gift freely given by God to all people at all times without any restrictions or covenants placed upon the gift. Shown here is an example of an inuksuk, which reminds me of what forgiveness is actually like (simple, memorable, beautiful, accessible by all, able to be built by all). Inuksuit have long served to aid full remembrance in Canada’s Far North. They’re now found widely throughout Canada. This one sits among flowers and metal artwork at an Ontario public school. Photo credit JAT 2015.

J: I wasn’t. I was speaking the honest truth. Memory — history — is crucial to the core self. Memory is a huge part of learning. By that I don’t mean simple rote memory, such as your multiplication tables. I mean soul memory, which is a combination of several different forms of memory. It’s emotional memory plus factual memory plus habit memory plus talent memory.

A: That’s a lot to keep track of at one time. Sounds like too much work.

J: Soul memory evolves quite naturally when a child is raised in a mature, responsible, loving home. It becomes a natural way of remembering things. You don’t consciously think about the different aspects of your memory. You just . . . live. You live with empathy and laughter and confidence. It’s your soul memory that helps you do that.

A: So you’re linking empathy with memory.

J: Yes. It’s your memory skills that allow you to remember the names of your neighbour’s children so you can ask how the family is doing.

A: Ooooooh. I suddenly can think of a gajillion different ways that memory can help with empathy and relationships. Things like remembering your friend’s favourite music or your mother’s favourite flower. Or the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Or remembering to pick up a carton of milk on the way home, as promised. Or remembering to say “I love you.” And on and on and on.

J: What’s interesting about people with severe narcissism and psychopathy is the way they use memory. They use memory and history in bizarre, abusive ways. They often have excellent memories when it comes to the mistakes that other people have made (though they rarely admit to their own). They remember all the “crimes” that have been committed against them, and they keep detailed lists of rightful punishments that still need to be meted out.

A: They hold grudges.

J: With a capital “G.” They live for the “high” of revenge. Inside their own heads, they’ll return to the scene of another person’s “crime” and relive the unfairness and unjustness of it all. Then they’ll imagine the scene of their revenge. They’ll gloat about it. They’ll gloat about the glory of their future — and rightful — vengeance. There’s no concern at all about collateral damage — about the people and places that will be damaged when vengeance is pursued. The only thing that’s important to a psychopath is the chance to “even the scales.”

A: Sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.

J: Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not about buying back one’s status or paying a debt or “balancing the scales of time” so the past can be forgotten. Forgiveness absolutely requires a memory of the harm that’s being forgiven.

A: You said above that forgiveness is a catalyst. How does this idea relate to what we’ve been discussing about memory and learning and empathy?

J: In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that’s an essential ingredient in a chemical reaction without itself being changed and without itself being part of the final product or products.

A: Inorganic chemists use elements such as palladium and rhodium as catalysts so they can synthesize complex molecules out of simpler ones.

J: In chemistry, a catalyst works the way a crane works on a large building site. The crane is essential for transporting loads of basic materials to their proper location on the much larger building that’s being constructed. But once the building is completed, the crane is removed from the site. It’s no longer needed. It can be “recycled” — used on another building site because it isn’t part of the final product. Its role is essential but temporary. This is what forgiveness is like.

A: Still not following you. Especially because you’ve said in the past that forgiveness is a permanent choice — a permanent choice to wrap harmful choices within a layer of love.

J: Forgiveness, like the construction crane, is a permanent “substance,” if you will. But like a crane, it moves around. It isn’t glued to one site or one event or one person. It goes in, does its transformative thing, then lets go. Forgiveness allows you to identify, remember, understand, and fix the past without actually having to live in the past. It frees you from the tyranny of rumination on the past. It doesn’t ask you to forget. It asks you to transform. It asks you to take the pain and turn it into something new. Forgiveness isn’t the final product of the transformative process, despite what some theologians have claimed. Forgiveness is the tool — the catalyst — that’s needed so you can take painful experiences and painful choices and turn them into something brand new.

A: The way orthodox Western Christian theologians often describe forgiveness makes it sound like the end goal, the final result of being saved by God.

J: God the Mother and God the Father are always moving the crane of forgiveness. They’re always actively and consciously choosing to forgive their human children for the suffering people create. Forgiveness is a present act — always a present act, not a future one. Just as the Kingdom of the Heavens is supposed to be a present condition, not a future one.

A: I’ve read so many books where teachers of spirituality insist that we “live in the moment.” Is this what you’re getting at? Letting go of the past and the future and focussing only on the present moment?

J: No. Most definitely not. The phrase “living in the moment” all too often means “living in a state of dissociation.” Living in a state of psychological dissociation from one’s emotions, memories, and personal responsibilities. Obviously this doesn’t help individuals or families or communities create peace. To create peace, you have to be willing to learn from the past. You have to be willing to identify the problems of the past, and then marshal all your courage and will power and love to get to the point where you can remember the pain without being overwhelmed and numbed by the pain. In other words, you have to learn from your mistakes.

A: Learning from your own mistakes is very hard. Self forgiveness is very hard.

J: In the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, the man Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again each day. This aptly describes what it feels like to live without forgiveness. Each day feels like an eternity of repetitive struggle, an endless cycle of guilt and pain you can’t seem to escape from. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the crane you bring in to build a series of small level shelves or steps on the side of the hill so you can gradually get the stone to the top of the hill and keep it there, where it will no longer torture you. With the boulder of the past safely stowed at the top of the hill, you can get on with the business of planting a nice garden at the base of the hill and inviting all your friends over to share in the beauty. The stone at the top is there to remind you of the mistakes you once made so you ‘re less likely to make them again. The stone isn’t gone. But it’s in a safer place.

A: So in the Kingdom of the Heavens, the past isn’t gone, but it’s in a safer place. This allows you to bring more of your daily energy to the task of living as fully as possible today.

J: You’d be amazed how much energy many people use each day by dwelling in the past, ruminating on past injuries, focussing on revenge, and not paying attention (literally) to the tasks and relationships of today. When I say “energy,” I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that people quite literally expend precious biological resources every day when they choose to focus on the past. They use up proteins and fats and carbs in their bodies. They force their brain cells to hang on to cell-to-cell connections that aren’t productive. They refuse to let their brains empty the “recycle bin,” and as a result, dangerous levels of old proteins and other biological materials can build up inside the brain. Causing medical syndromes such as various forms of dementia.

A: So forgiveness isn’t just a metaphysical aspiration: it’s also a biological reality.

J: As you’d expect it to be in the good Creation of a loving God.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, dissociation, Divine Love, empathy, forgiveness, Jesus Redux, narcissism, Peace Sequence, psychopathy, sense of time & timing, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged | Leave a Comment
18 Jun 2011

JR51: Fifth Step: Keep Christmas, Toss Easter

Christmas tree (c) JAT 2012

Christmas tree. Photo credit JAT 2012.

A: So far we’ve talked about rescuing the soul, restoring the mystery of divine love, inviting our Mother to the table, and insisting on balance as four ways to help heal the church. What else do you have in that angelic bag of surprises you carry around?

J: The liturgical calendar of the Church must be changed.

A: You mean the calendar of religious events and themes and holy days that tells people what they’re supposed to be celebrating when.

J: Calendars are very important to the healthy functioning of the brain. So the Church still needs a calendar to help focus events for the year. I’m not recommending that the Church do away entirely with the idea of having a yearly cycle of events. Far from it. I’m suggesting that the Church revise the calendar and bring it into alignment with the needs of the soul.

A: What would that mean in practical terms?

J: It would mean you’d get to keep Christmas but you’d have to put Easter in the garbage bin.

A: Get rid of Easter? I can see the steam coming off the heads of conservative Christians already.

J: It would be kinder, in the eyes of many Christians, for me to suggest that Holy Week be “reformed” rather than axed altogether. But Holy Week is a celebration of Pauline Christianity at its worst. The overriding theme of Holy Week is salvation — escape — not healing or redemption. Every year it sends the wrong message to Christians. It sends the message that the focus of their relationship with God should be the Saviour — his death and resurrection and coming again. This was never the message I taught during my ministry as Jesus. Nor is the meaning of my time on the cross being properly taught and represented by the Church. There’s no way that Holy Week can be fixed. It would be the same as asking people to celebrate “the joy” of an S.S. death camp like Auschwitz. (I say this as facetiously as possible.) There is no joy to be found in the traditional teachings of Holy Week.

A: I’ve noticed a tendency among more liberal ministers to treat the “events” of Holy Week in a more symbolic way — to de-emphasize the crucifixion and instead emphasize the themes of renewal and rebirth and regrowth in the spring.

J: It’s very helpful and hopeful to talk about the themes of renewal and rebirth. I have no problem with that per se. I have a problem with a continuing effort among theologians to attach those themes to me. I am one man, one angel, one child of God. I’m not the Fisher King. I’m not Horus. I’m not the dead and rising Sol Invictus. I’m not the resurrected Christ. I’m just a stubborn s.o.b. who won’t shut up. I wasn’t even crucified in the springtime. I was crucified in the fall. The early church’s efforts to place the time of my crucifixion in the spring were largely centred on John’s writings. John had his own reasons for wanting to place the time of my crucifixion at Passover. But John wasn’t a man who cared about historicity or facts. He wrote what he wanted to write about me. It helped him sleep better at night.

A: A minute ago you mentioned joy as if it’s somehow significant or important to the healing of the church.

J: Joy is crucial to the experience of faith.

A: How do you define “joy”?

J: I use the word “joy” to express the gratitude and devotion and trust that all angels feel in their relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. I don’t use it as a synonym for worship or praise. I don’t use it as a synonym for the excitement of being part of a large crowd (which is more like hysteria). For me, joy is a word that conveys the happiness and deep contentment we feel as angels. It’s the feeling you get when you feel really, really grateful and really, really SAFE at the same time. It makes you smile from the inside out.

A: Christians have long believed that the purpose of angels is to offer praise and worship to God. Do angels worship God?

J: Noooooooo. You never see angels down on their knees with their heads bowed in humility. What you see is angels living their purpose of love in everything they do. As angels, we show our never-ending love and appreciation of our parents by choosing thoughts and words and actions that bring more love into Creation. We live in imitation of our parents’ courage. We’re not carbon copies of our divine mother and father — that is, we all have our own unique temperaments and personalities and talents and interests — but we’re all alike in that we all choose love. There are many different minds and many different bodies in Creation, but it can be said in all truthfulness that there’s only One Heart. It’s the feeling of joy that comes from our choice to share One Heart that makes us feel like a big family. We all belong to one family.

A: Where you feel safe, despite your differences in talent and temperament.

J: Yes. This is the underlying intent of divine love. It’s the choice to see another soul as, in fact, another soul — as someone who’s not you, who’s not a mere extension of you. It’s the choice to respect differences between individual souls, while at the same time choosing to help other souls be their best selves.

A: Can you explain what you mean by that last statement?

J: Here’s the thing. No one soul can “do” all things or “be” all things. Every soul has unique strengths. But every soul also has unique absences of strength. Angels are always giving and receiving help within the family. An angel with a particular strength will offer that strength to help brothers and sisters who need assistance with something they’re not very good at themselves. The same angel who offers a strength to another will in turn be very grateful to receive help from another soul in an area where he or she needs some help. There’s no sense of shame or guilt or inadequacy among angels when they have an absence of strength. They accept who they are. They don’t judge themselves or feel sorry for themselves or describe themselves as flawed or imperfect or unworthy. They gratefully and humbly ask for — and receive — help when there’s something they don’t understand or something they want to do but don’t have the skills for. It’s all about education, mentorship, and personal responsibility, even among God’s angels. As above, so below.

A: At the start of this conversation you said that Christians could keep the celebration of Christmas. Why? Why keep Christmas and not Easter?

J: December 25th is a day marked by all angels in Creation. It is the day when Divine Love was born.

A: I thought you said we have to get rid of all the invented myths about your ministry. Isn’t this one of them?

J: I wasn’t born on December 25th. I was born in the month of November. When I refer to the day when Divine Love was born, I’m talking about God the Mother and God the Father. I’m talking about the day when their Divine Love for each other first emerged in Creation. It was the day when everything — absolutely everything — changed. It was the day — the actual day in the far, far distant past (before the time of the “Big Bang”) — when they made the choice to live for each other. It’s the day when the Christ was born — NOT, I’d like to reiterate, the day when I, Jesus, was born, but the day when Mother-and-Father-Together-As-Christ were born. When their new reality was born. When their new relationship was born. None of us would be here today if they hadn’t made that choice.

A: So you’re saying that God the Mother and God the Father have an actual calendar of the kind we would recognize here on Planet Earth, and that the day of December 25th is marked on this calendar? This seems like too much of a coincidence.

J: God isn’t using a human calendar. Humans are using a divine calendar. God the Mother and God the Father are pretty good at math, you could say. It wasn’t difficult for them to set up indications of their calendar system all over the known baryonic universe. Planet Earth runs on the same calendar system that angels use. More or less. There are cycles that can’t be argued with, cycles that are fixed by astronomical and mathematical realities. Solar and lunar and galactic cycles dictate the calendar, not the other way around. Humans didn’t “invent” this calendar. They simply noted its existence.

A: Ah. The Preexistent Calendar. I’d love to see what the theologians will do with this theory!

J: The cycles are real and meaningful to all souls. The Church liturgical calendar needs to honour and respect these cycles. Obviously there can’t be too many “fixed liturgical days” because there has to be room for change in patterns depending on latitude and longitude. The time of regeneration, rebirth, and regrowth changes depending on where you live. The Church has to make allowances for these scientific realities.

A: Any other suggestions?

J: Yes. The Church should get rid of Holy Week entirely, including all the bells and whistles such as Lent. In its place, they should institute at a different time of year a brand new 3-day Festival of Redemption. Like Christmas, it would be a “fixed” celebration, celebrated by all Christians at the same time each year.

A: This is an entirely new idea. What would the purpose be?

J: The Festival of Redemption would be a time for Christians to stop their busy everyday lives and get together for workshops, seminars, and conferences on the theme of helping each other heal. Workshops could be held locally in the homes of individuals. Or they could be held in larger venues, such as university campuses. Not everyone would want to experience this festival in the same way — and this is as it should be because souls have different needs and different learning styles. In fact, there should NOT be one particular fixed geographical location or “pilgrimage” site for this Festival. Having “special sites” would undermine the purpose of the Festival. The idea that only some sites are “sacred” or “specially blessed by God” is a human idea. Every square inch of Creation is sacred and blessed by God as far as the angels are concerned.

A: Something tells me the Biblical idea of specific sites sanctified by God is another idea that’s going to be going into the garbage can along with the Easter eggs.

J: Hey. Don’t throw out the chocolate bunnies. They’re one of the only parts of Easter worth keeping. That and the big family dinners.

A: Amen to that.

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Posted in "4 S's", angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), Christ archetype, Church of today, Divine Love, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, John the Baptist, Peace Sequence, relationship with God, Soul, worship 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
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
02 Jun 2011

JR46: First Step in Healing the Church: Restore the Soul

A: Jesus, what would you say to those who are asking how we can heal the church of the third millennium?

J: That’s an easy one. First you have to rescue the soul. Not save it. Rescue it. Restore it to the place of sanity it deserves. Give it some credit. Give it some trust. Be kind to it. Rescue it the way you’d rescue a dog who’s been shut out of the house without food or water. Bring it in from the cold.

A: Or in from the fiery pits of hell.

J: There’s a trend at the moment among Progressive Christians who want to try to rescue me. They want to rescue me from the clutches of the evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist Christians. While I appreciate the effort, the Progressive movement won’t solve anything by trying to rescue me. I’m not the problem. And I’m not the solution.

A: In the Christology course I took, we studied a book by Wayne Meeks called Christ Is the Question (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). At the beginning of the book, Meeks identifies this issue. He says, “As a brand of shampoo promises the answer to frizzy hair, a detergent brand the answer to unbright laundry, a new model car the answer to loneliness and (by innuendo) sexual longing, so Jesus is the answer to — what? Whatever you wish. Indeed [mainly in the context of American Protestantism] Jesus has become whatever you wish, an all-purpose brand, the answer to all needs, desires, fantasies, and speculations” (page 2).

J: It’s true. But it’s not really a new development in Christianity. It’s exactly the outcome the apostle Paul desired. From the beginning, Paul’s intention was to convert me — a real flesh and blood person — into the new face of the well-known Saviour brand. Sort of like redoing the label on a familiar brand of soap. You want your target audience to believe your “new and improved” brand of soap can clean away absolutely anything. You know you’re lying, but you hope your audience won’t catch on — at least not until you have their money in your pocket.

A: Old lies beget new lies.

J: There’s nothing to stop people from taking Paul’s imaginary Saviour figure and adding their own imagination to the story. Who’s to say they’re wrong? It happens all the time in story-telling traditions. Somebody comes up with a captivating (but purely fictional) hero or heroine. The character and the plot catch on. Other people start dreaming up their own chapters in the hero’s saga. Some of these catch on, too, and enter the myth. King Arthur is a good example of this. People are still writing their own versions of this story. Five hundred years from now the fanzine additions to favourite comic book heroes will blur together and create one giant new myth about Superman. Traditions evolve. Stories evolve. But story-telling traditions aren’t selling fact. They’re selling story. Fantasy. Speculation.

A: You’re saying that there’s too much story in Christianity and not enough fact.

“Jesus said: If your leaders say to you ‘Look! The Kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the Kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather the Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you. When you understand yourselves you will be understood. And you will realize that you are Children of the living Father. If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty” (Gospel of Thomas 3a and 3b).

 J: Yes. There’s too much story. On the other hand, there’s not nearly enough mystery. When I say mystery, I mean there’s not enough room for individuals to have a transformative experience of redemption. Redemption and divine love and divine forgiveness are emotional experiences that lie well outside the boundaries of pure logic. Words like “wonder” and “gratitude” and “humbleness” spring to mind. But redemption doesn’t just change your thinking. It changes everything — everything in your whole being. It changes the way your physical body works. It changes the way you see colours. It changes the way you see patterns. It changes the way you learn. It changes the way you remember. The way you smell things. The way you feel rain on your skin. The way you eat your food. The way you sleep. The way you dream at night. The way you dream while you’re awake. It changes absolutely everything about your relationship with yourself and with all Creation. Where once you crawled and chewed endlessly as a caterpillar, now you fly with beauty and grace as a winged butterfly and sip from the nectar of flowers. It may sound cliched, but it’s true. The experience of transformation is that profound. You were “you” when you were a caterpillar, and you’re still “you” as a butterfly. But the way in which you relate to the world has been completely altered. Your whole life is completely changed. The change is so sweet. So kind. So mysterious. It takes your breath away.

A (nodding): Even while you’re still living here as a somewhat confused and baffled human being. You don’t have to die to feel the mystery. You have to live.

J: The process of redemption — the experience of mystery — begins for a human being with the soul. The soul is not fictional. The soul is real. The soul — the true core self of each consciousness within Creation — is your laughter. Your empathy. Your conscience. Your curiosity. Your sense of wonder. In other words, all the least explainable, most mysterious parts of being human.

The soul is not one substance, but many substances — many substances of a quantum nature. Its complexity and sophistication at a quantum level lie outside the bounds of current scientific investigation. But this has no bearing one way or the other on the soul’s scientific reality. Scientific researchers have failed to detect many things in nature: the soul is just one of many things on a long list of “undiscovered countries.”

A: How would a renewed understanding of the soul help heal the church today?

J: At the moment the Progressive movement has concluded — based on erroneous starting assumptions — that the past errors of the church include a belief in the eternal soul, a belief in miracles, and (for some) a belief that a guy named Jesus ever existed. They assume that if these “errors” are swept out of the church, and replaced with teachings based on pure logic and pure praxis, or, on the other end of the scale, replaced with teachings based on pure symbolism and hidden truth, then the church could be restored to a state of health and balance. This is not so.

A: They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

J: Yes. They’ve failed to realize that the problem with the church is that church leaders long ago put a lien on people’s souls, as you and I discussed last time.

A: I was pretty indignant, wasn’t I?

J: For good reason. The problem for Christianity is not a belief in the existence of the soul. The problem for Christianity (or rather, one of the problems) is the body of lies being taught about the soul. Over the centuries, Christian orthodoxy has done everything in its power to preserve the lien on the soul so it can preserve its power. The lien has to go. Church leaders are going to have to stand up and be honest about the fact that their teachings on the soul have damaged people’s confidence and trust in God. They need to start from square one on the question of the soul — no resorting to “tradition,” no rooting around in the writings of early Church Fathers for justification. This will be a terrifying prospect for most theologians. But it must be done. The answers to their questions are already there — not in the pages of the Bible, and not in the pages of Plato and Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas and Wesley, but in the pages of God’s scientific reality. Theological inquiry must stop clinging to tradition. You’re in the third millennium now. Start acting like it.

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Posted in "4 S's", Church of today, consciousness, ethical mysticism, faith, Jesus Redux, life and death, Messiah, mystery, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, redemption, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
31 May 2011

JR45: Lien or No Lien on Your Soul?

My red car (c) JAT 2015

“His disciples said to him: When will the resurrection of the dead take place and when will the new world come? He said to them: What you look for has come, but you do not know it” (Gospel of Thomas 51). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus talks often about “life” and “beginnings,” yet his sayings involving “death” are not what we typically find in eschatological or apocalyptic teachings. Rather, the sayings about “life” and “death” in Thomas seem closely related to parts of the first century CE text known as The Didache, in which “the way of life” and “the way of death” are used as metaphors for how to live a moral life in full relationship with God. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus spends quite a bit of time and energy trying to persuade the disciples to let go of the eschatological doctrines held by the Pharisees and the Essenes at that time.  Photo of my red car. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Last week, I bought a 2007 Pontiac to replace my 1998 Nissan, which was close to death. The Carproof report found a lien against the Pontiac — a financing lien held by Chrysler. At first I wasn’t worried. I figured the paperwork for the clearance of the lien hadn’t yet made it into the computer system at the proper government ministry. But being a thorough person, I decided to phone the ministry yesterday morning to make sure the lien had been cleared. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the lien was still attached to my car! I quickly got the problem straightened out with the dealer I bought the car from. But in the meantime I had a chance to reflect on my feelings about the lien. In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, a person who unwittingly buys a car or house that has a lien against it can lose the property they bought. It can be legally seized by the lien holder if the debt hasn’t been paid by the original debtor. The car you think you own outright can be towed away in the blink of an eye by the original lender. It’s a scary thought.

Anyway, I was thinking about my feelings around the lien on my car. I was noticing how upset I was at the thought that somebody could — theoretically — swoop down on my little Pontiac and take it away with no say on my part. I was thinking how I’d paid for the car in full, how I could lose all the money I’d invested (unless I were inclined to sue, which would cost me even more money). I was thinking how unfair it would be for such a thing to happen. I’d bought the car in good faith. Why should I be punished for somebody else’s mistake? Or somebody else’s willful fraud?

So I’m standing in the bathroom and I’m drying my hair so I can get ready for work and it suddenly dawns on me that the feelings I’m expressing to myself about the lien on the car are the same feelings I have about orthodox Western Christianity’s teachings on the soul. The Church teaches us there’s a lien on our souls!

J (grinning): Yes. Not a nice feeling, is it?

A: No! It totally sucks. I never noticed till yesterday how deeply, deeply unfair the church’s claims are. I knew their claims about the soul were based on the writings of Paul, Tertullian, Augustine, and so on. I knew their claims were self-serving. I knew their claims were just plain wrong in light of God’s loving and forgiving nature. But I never felt the unfairness of it before at such a deep level — at a gut level, a visceral level. It’s just wrong to tell people their soul can be taken away from them by lien-holders. It’s so . . . so . . . unfair. And cruel. It’s cruel to tell people they have to invest themselves wholly in their faith while at any time the great big tow truck in the sky could show up to haul them or their loved ones away to the fiery pits of hell. Not to pay their own debts, but to pay somebody else’s debts! Namely Adam and Eve’s debts!

J: Ah, the wages of sin.

A: Very funny. This God-and-Devil-as-lien-holders thing means that devout Christians are always looking over their shoulder, waiting for the cosmic tow truck they can’t do anything about. It makes people feel helpless. It makes them feel like slaves-in-waiting. Their soul isn’t their own. Their time isn’t their own. Their life and their choices and their free will aren’t really their own. They’re always on tenterhooks because they think they don’t fully own their own soul. This is abusive.

J: That’s why it works. From the perspective of certain members of the church hierarchy — stretching all the way back to the time of Paul and his backers — it’s an excellent strategy for gaining control of the populace. People who feel helpless and hopeless tend to cause less trouble. They ask fewer questions. They tend to do what they’re told because they’re frightened. Frightened people turn to strong leaders — in this case, church leaders. The Church is using a psychological control strategy that other groups in other cultures have used to similar effect. Paul’s teachings have been particularly successful in this regard.

The teachings of myself and other like-minded spiritual teachers are useless for this kind of psychological strategy. Totally useless. You can’t frighten people into submission if you’re actually giving them real hope. Real hope doesn’t come from words. Real hope comes from actions — from people’s ongoing choices to help their neighbours. Real hope comes from healing and relationship and dignity and change. If the early church had wanted to teach real hope, it wouldn’t have chosen the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the Chalcedon Creed as its operative statements of faith.

A: Ah. You mean they might have mentioned the themes of divine love, forgiveness, healing, redemption (as opposed to salvation), and egalitarianism?

J: If the bishops in the first few centuries of Christianity had spent one tenth the time on compassion that they spent on their endless arguments over the “substance” of the Trinity, medieval Europe would have been a much nicer place to live in.

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Posted in "4 S's", free will, hope, humility, Jesus Redux, life and death, occult themes, Original Sin, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, resurrection, Soul, Trinitarianism and tagged | Leave a Comment
29 May 2011

JR44: Mark’s Themes of Understanding and Strength

This is a research paper I wrote in 2009 for a course on New Testament exegesis. It explains in detail some of the major themes found in the Gospel of Mark. I used Wordperfect’s Greek language symbols to type key words that were relevant to the argument. A few of these Greek letters didn’t survive the “cut and paste process,” so I’ll have to substitute English typeface where necessary (mostly for the vowels “eta,” “iota,” “upsilon,” and “omega”). Sorry about that.

P.S. The paper pasted here is as I wrote it, including the endnotes, where I confess I don’t yet understand how the word “artos” (leavened bread, loaf) is being used by Mark. Since then (with Jesus’ help), I’ve figured it out.

Croatia 34 01

“Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?'” (Mark 8:14-21). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

RADICAL MESSIAH AND THE SHEMA: MARK’S THEMES OF
UNDERSTANDING AND STRENGTH

Graham Stanton, in his discussion about the Gospel of Mark, refers to “Mark’s genius as a story-teller” (41), and says, “perhaps Mark should be seen not so much as a block of toffee (form criticism) or as a string of pearls (redaction criticism), but as a piece of rope with interwoven strands” (41). Later in the chapter, he asks these questions: “Why was this gospel written? Many scholars have proposed quite specific historical or theological settings. But they are usually able to make reasonable sense of only one or two of the many interrelated strands which the evangelist develops” (57-58). One strand which I feel has been overlooked is Mark’s overt addition to the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9) in Chapter12:29 of the Gospel. So obvious would this change have been to a Jewish Christian audience in the early to mid-60’s CE that the question of Mark’s purpose must be raised. What was he signalling to his audience with this change? Why did he dare add to a well-known prayer that, according to the Jewish Study Bible, was being formally recited late in the Second Temple period (379)? It is the thesis of this paper that Mark did not accidentally alter the Shema through lack of knowledge, and that he did not accidentally link the Shema to the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbour as oneself (12:31). There was a purpose to his addition of the phrase “and with all your mind (διανοίας)” to the existing formulation of “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (καρδίας) and with all your soul (ψυχnς) and with all your might (iσχύος).” This supposition is supported by Mark’s repetition of the Shema in 12:32-33, altered yet again, this time without genitive cases, and with a changed emphasis to understanding (συνέσεως). Here the sympathetic – and sensible (νουνεχwς) – scribe is allowed by Mark to voice the two most important commandments: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” The penny then drops for readers as Jesus says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (present tense verb, 12:34). Mark has just presented a major clue to unravelling some of the strands of his gospel.

The altered Shema is part of a teaching chreia (12:28-34) that can be seen, it is argued here, as an early creedal statement, the climax and summary of Jesus’ teachings about what it means to be “not far from the kingdom of God” (12:34). It is difficult to understand Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God, says Mark in different ways throughout the Gospel. Even Jesus’ closest friends, the disciples, do not understand (4:10-13). The whole thing can be boiled down to two commandments (12:28-31), which sound easy at first, but are much more difficult to practice than the old system of “burnt offerings and sacrifices,” a system which requires Jews to show unswerving loyalty. (Loyalty, not private emotion, is the meaning of the verb aheb, “love,” as it applies to the Shema, according to the Jewish Study Bible (380) and Sakenfeld (376)). A big part of Jesus’ version of faith, according to Mark, is the requirement that disciples use their minds. Fideism is not acceptable. God’s faithful must question the specific ways in which religious teachings are being misused (e.g. 2:23-28; 3:1-6; 7:1-23; 12:38-40; 12:41-44), just as in the past Jews once questioned harmful religious and societal conventions (e.g. Exod. 20:2-6; 21:1 – 22:16; 22:20-12). (Mark thus shows Jesus to be following the “wilderness spirit” of the Sinai Covenant in the Torah (cf. Mark 1:3,4,12), as opposed to the Temple and hierarchy-based Zion Covenant presented in the Psalms and the Deuteronomistic History.[1]) God’s faithful must be willing to not only open their hearts and souls to God’s kingdom, but also their minds (διάνοια) – their innate capacity to think and understand in moral ways (Harder 125). Moral thinking and moral decision-making is a higher form of loving God than being obedient and loyal to the laws of the Zion Covenant.

This kind of “thinking faith,” directed towards loving God (e.g. 1:35-39; 15:25-32), loving others (eg. 9:33-37; 10:41-45), and loving themselves (e.g. 12:31)[2], will put them in opposition to others – family (e.g. 3:21; 3:31-35; 10:28-31), friends (e.g. 6:1-3; 14:66-72), Pharisees (e.g. 3:6, 12:13-17), scribes and chief priests (e.g. 2:6-9, 3:16-17; 11:18), and Gentiles (e.g. 5:14-17; 15:16-20) – who choose to follow honour-oriented traditions. Understanding is not an instantaneous gift from God, however (clearly evidenced in 8:14-21)[3]. Nor is understanding a gift conferred only on the disciples closest to Jesus (e.g. 5:33-34; 9:33-37; 10:17-22; 12:34; 14:6-9). Understanding is a long, difficult process which disciples must willingly participate in (e.g. 4:13; 4:33-34; 10:23-27; 13:9-13). It requires strength, a theme which Mark repeatedly intertwines with the requirement for understanding, as shall be shown. God’s faithful must commit their strength (iσχύς) to a process spread out over time and geography (hence Jesus’ travels back and forth across Galilee and adjacent territories) and also over boundaries of class and honour (hence Jesus’ willingness to heal and teach people from disadvantaged groups). It is a process open to all people, regardless of race, religion, gender, state of mental and/or physical health, wealth, or status. But it is a difficult process.

Mark – for all that he is trying to describe a “thinking faith” – seems very wary of directly invoking Hellenistic or Judeo-Hellenistic notions of philosophy, rational thought, or “wisdom” (σοφία). Σοφία is used 51 times in the New Testament, but only once in Mark (on the lips of the surprised synagogue attendees in 6:2). The adjective σοφός appears 22 times in the New Testament, but not once in Mark. Whatever claim Mark is making, it is not a claim for σοφία (wisdom, insight, intelligence, knowledge, divine knowledge). He prefers the cognates of the more “practical” verbs συνίημι (understand, comprehend, perceive, have insight into) and διαλογίζομαι (discuss, argue, consider, reason, wonder about, question). It is notable that, although he uses the adverb νουνεχwς once, and the verb νοέω a few times, he does not use the Greek word νοuς, a noun meaning perception, understanding, thoughts, or reason. Νοuς is attested since Linear B; it was used by Plato to mean “the highest of the three parts of the soul” (Harder 122), and still later used in the post-canonical, apocryphal era of Jewish literature in a sense associated with the will or deliberation (Harder 125). It is difficult to tell whether Mark avoids using νοuς because in Hebrew there is no direct equivalent for it, and the Septuagint rarely uses it (Harder 124) (compare to Paul, who uses it in Romans and 1 Corinthians); or whether Mark avoids using it because he has a general tendency to not include abstract “wisdom words” such as “peace,” “hope,” and “righteousness” words in his writing[4].

It is interesting to ponder Mark’s non-use of the “wisdom words” frequently attested in books of the Old Testament, as well as in the other Gospels, Acts, and the accepted letters of Paul. Certainly it can be argued that these words are malleable enough to serve any purpose (“Peace in our time!”). Perhaps, by not making abundant use of “wisdom words,” Mark hopes to make his readers think, to apply their minds in new ways to the difficult question of what it means to be close to the kingdom of God. (Mark himself lends this impression in 13:14, where he suddenly interjects with “let the reader understand (νοείτω).”) “Out with the poetry, in with the praxis,” seems to be his approach. He therefore intentionally avoids “telling us” at length what Jesus said, and insists on “showing us” what Jesus did – what Jesus’ actions and choices were, where he went, who he talked to, who he aided, and what he did despite his friends’ lack of courage, faith, and love. Mark’s Radical Messiah is a man of relatively few words who teaches by example, and is not interested in raising his own status. (Even the scribe in 12:28-34 is accorded great dignity by Jesus – and also by Mark.) Therefore, for Mark, the examples are what matter most. (By contrast, Matthew’s Jesus seems very fond of the sound of his own voice, and John’s Jesus has a case of the “I ams.”)

It is clear from a review of word usage articles that, by the first century CE, there was a blurring between Jewish and Hellenistic concepts of heart, mind, and soul, and this may explain why Mark felt he needed to add to the traditional phrasing of the Shema. In the Septuagint translation of the Shema, for instance, leb is rendered as καρδία; yet Holloday’s Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon shows 11 different meanings for leb: the physical heart organ; the seat of vitality; the seat of one’s feelings and impulses; mind, character, disposition, inclination, loyalty, concern; determination, courage, high morale; intention, purpose; mind, attention, consideration, understanding; the self; conscience; metaphorically the “interior” or “middle”; and finally the organizing power of living beings (nefesh – the word which is translated as ψυχή in the Septuagint’s version of the Shema ) (171-172). Harder points out that Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew leb or lebab as νοuς only six times, as διάνοια 38 times, and as καρδία in most other instances (124). Sorg reports that the Septuagint occasionally translates leb as ψυχή (181). Meanwhile, ψυχή itself (used 101 times in the New Testament) encompasses a broad range of meanings: the whole person or creature; a person’s actual, physical life; the seat of the emotions; the inner life or personality of a person; the part of the person that lives on after death (Harder 682-686; Carrigan). Καρδία can be used literally to mean the physical heart, or it can be used metaphorically. In the New Testament, it is used in 148 passages with a variety of meanings: the seat of intellectual and spiritual life; the inner person or personality/ego; the seat of doubt and hardness; the mind or reason; will, desire, intention (Sorg 182-183). To state, as Cameron does, that “since Hebrew psychology lacked precise terminology, there is some overlapping in the use of nepesh, leb/lebab, and ruah” is something of an understatement. Perhaps Mark, aware of the confusion amongst Jews and Jewish Christians about the meanings of leb and καρδία, nefesh and ψυχή, decides to make certain that no one can dispute the necessity of “mind” and “understanding” (as distinct from Hellenistic wisdom!) by his explicitly including both διανοίας and συνέσεως in the crucial teaching chreia of 12:28-34.

Mark wants to talk about the Radical Messiah’s “thinking faith,” but at the same time he demonstrates a prudent fear of both Jewish and Roman authorities. He does not wish to be arrested for apostasy or political treason (he is writing during a time of heightened political-religious conflict, both within Judaism itself, and between Judaism and the Roman Empire). Therefore, while he shies away from “wisdom words,” he makes ample use of allegory. It is difficult, for instance, to see Mark’s repeated use of boat crossings on the “Sea” of Galilee as anything but a metaphor. It is a lake, after all, and not a very big one, at that – a fact that early Jewish Christian readers in the region would have known. Pheme Perkins points out that the Q Source has no sayings about fishing or grapes, and no stories about storms on the Sea of Galilee (94-95). Mark, however, introduces the Sea of Galilee, fishermen, and boats in his first chapter (1:16, 1:16-20, and 1:19-20 respectively). He is hinting at something. What does a boat do? we then must ask. A boat helps us cross the waters. What have bodies of water traditionally represented in Jewish thought? The forces of chaos that are overcome by the sovereign powers of God (Gen. 1:2 – 2:3). And how does one overcome the forces of chaos? In part, by using one’s strength – at which point it is very hard to overlook the similarity in sound between the word for “fish” (iχθύς) and the word for “strength” (iσχύς). (We know that Paul uses plays on words, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that Mark does the same.) Once this is observed, the two miraculous feedings of the crowd with bread and fish (6:34-44 and 8:1-9) become emblematic of the “strength” with which Jesus feeds the people [5,6] – the same strength that is spoken of in a positive light twice in 12:28-34, in a negative light in 14:37, in a perplexing light in 3:27 and 5:4, and in a contextual way in 15:46, where Joseph of Arimathea has the strength to roll a “very large rock” across the tomb by himself.

In the important verses of 8:14-21, Mark draws an overt link between the allegorical feedings – with their relationship to the theme of strength – and the issue of understanding. Here, while Jesus and the disciples are sitting yet again in their boat (8:14 – the final reference to boats in the Gospel of Mark), Jesus castigates the disciples harshly, in several different ways, because they do not yet understand (νοεiτε) or realize (συνίετε). This pericope is filled with Greek verbs related to the thinking faculties of people (thinking faculties which include input from the senses): the disciples “forgot” the bread (8:14); Jesus cautions them to “see” the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod (8:15); the disciples “reasoned” among themselves (8:16); Jesus “knows” their attempt at reasoning and asks them why they are still “reasoning” that way instead of “understanding” and “realizing” (8:17); have their “hearts” been hardened? Jesus asks (8:17); do they have “eyes” that don’t see, and “ears” that don’t hear? (8:18); do they not “remember”? (8:18); do they not yet understand? (8:21). Verses 14-21 of Chapter 8 can be seen to conclude and epitomize the first half of Mark’s Gospel, as some scholars have suggested (Perkins 131); however, reading the Gospel in this way does, as Perkins points out, present “as much of a challenge to the audience as the ending of the Gospel does” (131) because of its critical depiction of the disciples. The disciples, both male and female, lack understanding and strength. They have not applied “all their mind” and “all their strength” to loving God or their teacher, Jesus, and therefore – unlike the scribe of 12:28-34 and perhaps unlike Joseph of Arimathea – they have not been able to draw near to the kingdom of God. It is not enough to be loyal, according to Mark. It is not enough to be close to the Rabbi. The disciples will not be able to understand what the kingdom of God is like until they give themselves heart, soul, mind, and strength to the praxis of loving God and loving other people, the sort of praxis which Jesus models on every page of this complex gospel.

ENDNOTES

1. The two covenant thesis in the Jewish Bible is convincingly argued by W.M.

2. Not all scholars agree that 12:29 commands people to love themselves (Klassen 389).

3. Mark does not tell us how Jesus acquired his understanding. We know only that God has adopted Jesus as his son (1:11 and 9:7), and is well pleased with him.

4. In marked contrast to other New Testament authors such as Matthew, Luke in Luke/Acts, and Paul, Mark uses the words “peace” (only 3 times), “hope” (zero times), “love” (X 4), “joy” (X 1), “freedom” (X 0), “glory” (X 3), “just/righteous” (X 3) or “holy” (X 7). (Nelson’s Concordance)

5. I have not yet figured out how “artos” is being used in these passages.

6. In this context, the numerological references in the two miraculous feedings (e.g. 5,000 people, 12 baskets of leftovers, 7 loaves) can be read as being indicators to treat these passages allegorically (unlike the healing miracles, which Mark treats in a factual way).

WORKS CONSULTED

Berlin, Adele and Marc Zvi Brettler, Eds. The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.

Cameron, W.J. “Soul.” New Bible Dictionary. 2nd Ed. Ed. J.D. Douglas. Leicester and Wheaton IL: Inter-varsity and Tyndale House, 1982. 1135.

Carrigan, Henry L. “Soul.” Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. David Noel Freedman. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1245.

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

Ellison, John W., Ed. Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version Bible. New York: Nelson & Sons, 1957.

Harder, Georg. “νοuς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 122-130.

Harder, Georg. “ψυχή.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 676-689.

Goetzmann, Jurgen. “σύνεσις.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 130-134.

Holloday, William L., Ed. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

Klassen, William. “Love in the New Testament and Early Jewish Literature.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 381-396.

Morrison, Clinton. An Analytical Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.

Perkins, Pheme. Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Door Sakenfeld. “Love in the Old Testament.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 4. Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 375-381.

Schattenmann, Hans-Georg. “Iσχύς.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Rev. Ed. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 712-716.

Sorg, Theo. “καρδία.” The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. 2. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. 180-184.

Stanton, Graham N. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.

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Posted in Bible, courage, Divine Love, faith, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, insight, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul, miracles, parables, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
16 May 2011

JR40: Recap: Some Reflections From the Author

Today I’m going to post a few of my own thoughts as a sort of recap. I think it’s important for people to stop once in a while and take a deep breath and reflect on all the activity of the previous few weeks — whatever the activity might be.

The path of knowing and loving God is filled with unexpected pathways, bridges of hope, and places of deep and abiding peace. Photo credit JAT.

If you’re new to this site, and you haven’t started reading at the beginning, you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m trying to do here. Am I pretending to write a dialogue with Jesus in the way Plato once pretended to write dialogues with dead people? Or in the way Neale Donald Walsch (he of “Conversations with God” fame) has been pretending to write dialogues with God?

No, actually. I’m exactly who I claim to be. I’m a mother and I’m a science-loving quasi-Christian cataphatic mystic who talks every day to one particular angel who happens to have acquired a lot of fame.

The dialogues I write are exactly what I claim the dialogues are — dialogues with Jesus. You can accept that or not as you wish. It makes no difference to me whether or not you believe me. I’m not trying to convert you. I’m not asking you for money. I’m not asking you to put me on a pedestal and admire me. Heck, if I wanted those things, I’d have posted my name long ago and built up a clever marketing campaign (as many other spiritual gurus have done). I’m trying to share some insights that have been important to me on my journey, insights that may prove helpful to you, too. That’s my goal. That’s my intent. If it feels right to you, great. If not, well, I’m not going to lose any sleep over your rejection. I know who I am and I won’t apologize for it.

I wrote my first 49 posts on Concinnate Christianity without bringing Jesus overtly onto the pages. But Jesus helped me write every one of those posts, just as he’s helping me with this one, even though he’s not speaking out loud today. Maybe you think it’s all baloney, that if I’m not inventing the dialogues or inventing my belief in Jesus’ presence, then there must be something seriously wrong with me. Maybe a split personality or something. If you’re determined to put me in this category, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I know from harsh experience that all the proof in the world won’t stop a person from believing what he or she is determined to believe. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do. However, you should know that I’m not the tiniest bit afraid of being assessed by an objective third-party psychiatrist in a normal clinical setting. I have great respect for the field of psychiatry. In fact, I probably have more in common with a psychiatrist of faith (by that I mean a psychiatrist who is also a person of faith) than with any other sort of specialist. (As you may have noticed, I have little regard for most theologians.)

I decided to make this blog different. I wanted people to have the chance to get to know Jesus better as a person, and the only way to do that is to give Jesus a chance to speak in his own voice. Hence the dialogue format. These dialogues aren’t pre-written. I write spontaneously on the date that actually appears at the top of each post. I usually write in the mornings because I happen to be a morning person. I also write in the mornings because I often start work around noon. Today I’m scheduled to start work at 10:00 a.m., though, so I have to type quickly because I need to get ready for work. As usual, I’ll probably leave behind a few typos. I’ll catch them sometime. Maybe later today, maybe not for a few weeks. I’m still finding typos on the Concinnate Christianity site.

Meanwhile, I’m struggling to find the best way to introduce my thoughts on the spiritual journey on the Blonde Mystic site. It’s no easy task to find the right pedagogical approach to a field of inquiry that has barely been touched by anyone because of its complexity. The journey of the soul can’t be reduced to simplistic models — which may be the only point I’ve managed to communicate effectively so far on the Blonde Mystic site.

I didn’t set out to be a channeller of the man who once lived as Jesus, and when I finally realized who it was that I was actually talking to I was some pissed. I was pissed because I understood even then (in 2001) the implications of trying to tell other people I can talk to Jesus. Yeah, right. Like, how bizarre is that? All I can tell you is that he really means it and I really mean it and hopefully you can feel the truth of his — our — words in our posts.

I also hope you can feel how important it is for me to stay within the bounds of respectable science. Have you noticed I never prophesy? I don’t prophesy because I think it’s wrong to invent claims about what will happen. How can I know what will happen? I can make guesses, like everybody else, about what might happen. That’s why I like science-fiction (as opposed to sci-fi, which I don’t much care for, except for Star Wars). But science fiction is story telling. It’s not prophecy (well, not intentionally, anyway). I don’t waste my time trying to predict things. I have enough on my plate just trying to figure out the present. Of course, in order to understand the present, I need to have a grasp on the past, too. This is why I do so much historical research.

The soul I know as Jesus is a real person, a real person with his own personality and his own talents and his own interests. He’s not a clay figure who can be moulded and shaped into anything you want him to be. It’s not right to treat anyone that way, including Jesus. He’s his own person, his own self.

I can tell you right now what you would “see” if he were here on Planet Earth right now in his own body (which he’s not). You’d see a tall, dark-haired man with a tan complexion and dark brown eyes. You’d see a man who smokes (yes, I know what I’m saying here about the smoking thing — and no, I don’t smoke, and never have, except for two or three packs when I was 18). You’d see a man who loves vehicles — sports cars, bikes, planes. You’d see a man who loves hard rock and plays guitar, piano, drums. But you’d also see a polymath — a particularly gifted all-round scholar who can effortlessly handle science, philosophy, history, writing, music, and math. You’d see a man fascinated by medical science. You’d see a man who wants to be in the heart of the action where people need a lot of help. I could easily see him as a surgeon in a war zone. He’s just that kind of guy — brilliant but also a bit wild and reckless.

Oh, and he swears a lot.

This is who Jesus is. This is who he has always been as a soul and angel. It’s who he will always be. He’s gritty and funny. He’s very shy, but he also has a “showy” streak in him, and once you get him going, you can’t get him away from the microphone. He has a huge hole in his heart from the time when his human daughter died in Nazareth. (This sort of grief never goes away, even for angels.) He has terrific fashion sense. He sings like Josh Groban. He’s left handed. He prefers tea over coffee.

These things are hardwired into his soul. I’ve spent so much time with him that I can “feel” these things about him. Sure, I’ve translated them into “humanese” (not really a word, but I hope you get the idea). But everyone’s soul personality gets translated into “humanese” when they choose to incarnate on Planet Earth, and it’s really not that hard to see a person’s true soul personality once you understand that God’s children are always God’s children — no matter where they happen to be living in the space-time continuum.

Gotta go. Time to go to work. Catch you later. Best wishes to you all.

Love Jen

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Posted in cataphatic mysticism, ethical mysticism, faith, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, My Spiral Path, mystic, prophets, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose | 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
13 Apr 2011

JR32: The Buddha Question

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

“His disciples asked him: Is circumcision useful or not? He said to them: If it were useful, children’s fathers would produce them already circumcised from their mothers. On the other hand, the true circumcision of spirit is entirely valuable” (Gospel of Thomas 53 a-b).  Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: There’s been a trend in the past few decades to try to equate your teachings with the teachings of the Buddha, to try to show that Jesus and Buddha were teaching the same universal truths. This trend seems particularly true of those who are interested in placing you among the apophatic mystics of Christian history — mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross. Thomas Merton, a well-known Roman Catholic Trappist contemplative, was very interested in establishing a dialogue with Buddhist monks. What are your thoughts on the universality of faith and spiritual practice?

J (sighing): You’ve asked a very, very difficult question. There’s no easy answer, but I’ll try to express some of my thoughts. A book such as Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Berkley-Riverhead, 1995) is so beautiful and so kind and so sincere that I want to say I agree with everything he says. But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t agree with the underlying premises, the underlying doctrines of Buddhist belief. On the other hand — and this is where it gets very messy, very complicated — I agree with a lot of the spiritual practices that Thich Nhat Hanh describes. I agree very much with the path of mindfulness and compassion. I agree with the desire to create communities of peace. I agree with the decision to take action to create positive change. These are aspects of faith that are, indeed, universal. I don’t think anyone would disagree. No matter what religious tradition a person belongs to, the truest expression of faith — the truest expression of humanity — has always been a life lived with mindfulness, compassion, peace, and transformative change. This is true for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other religions, as well. At any time and in any place there have been some Buddhists and some Jews and some Muslims and some Christians who’ve chosen, as individuals, to pursue the path of true faith. These are the people who’ve consciously tried to help heal communities, families, and individuals. They chose this path because they thought it was the right thing to do.

A: You’re placing the emphasis on individual choice rather than on formal religious beliefs or doctrines.

J: I’m drawing a very clear line here between religion and faith. Religion, as it’s practised in major world religions today, including various schools of Buddhism and various schools of Christiantiy, is one of the biggest obstacles to faith. Faith — by that I mean a relationship with God based on courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion — is supposed to be an everyday part of life. An everyday experience. An everyday sense of belonging. A sense of belonging to Creation, belonging to God’s family. It’s the opposite of abandonment or estrangement from God. Faith is quiet acceptance. It’s compassion. It’s empathy. It’s balance. It’s wholeness. It’s pure humbleness and contentment.

A: Religion doesn’t teach this.

J: No. Religion gets in the way of this. It doesn’t have to. In fact, the world would be a healthier place if people could meet each week on the Sabbath to express their faith and share their spiritual experiences together in a safe spiritual environment. This would be church at its best. Unfortunately, this isn’t what church has become in the Western world. Church has become a place to centralize the authority of narcissistic, fear-mongering men and women. Church has become a place to take people farther away from God, not closer.

A: If you were incarnated as a human being today, would you turn to Buddhism for answers to the questions that Pauline Christianity doesn’t answer very well?

J (sadly shaking his head): No. As I said earlier, Buddhism has some important things to say about spiritual practice — about living the teachings of compassion and mindfulness each day, rather than just speaking of them. There’s more insistence in Buddhism on outward actions matching inward intent. And this is important. It’s integrity, after all. Integrity is what you get when your inner choices match your outer actions. It’s the opposite of hypocrisy. Integrity is an important part of peaceful community. I respect this underlying impulse in Buddhist thought.

A: Yet, based on what you’ve already said, you believe this underlying impulse towards daily practice and integrity is not specifically Buddhist. It’s a universal part of true faith.

J: Yes. All human beings are born with this capacity. Unfortunately, like all aspects of human growth and learning, the capacity for mindful, compassionate practice can be lost. “Use it or lose it” — that’s how the human brain and central nervous system work. All human beings are born with the innate capacity to love and forgive, as well, but as experience shows, many individuals lose both. They lose both their ability to love and their ability to forgive. These are the bullies, the psychopaths, and the narcissists. The same people who’ve been in charge of formal religious instruction in most parts of the world.

A: I get that part. But why do you feel uncomfortable with the trend towards having your teachings conflated with Buddha’s teachings?

J: It’s the cosmology. It’s the core assumptions. I don’t agree with either. How could I? I mean, it would be ludicrous for an angel speaking from the Other Side in partnership with a human mystic to claim there is no God. Buddhism, after all, is a non-theistic religion. In Buddhism, there’s a belief in an ultimate reality, but this reality isn’t a person in the way that you and I talk about God the Mother and God the Father as actual identifiable people — unique, distinct, and both very, very big. Buddhism also rejects the idea of an immortal soul, a distinct consciousness that continues to exist after the death of the physical body. And this is before we get to Buddhist teachings about karma and the nature of suffering, impermanence, rebirth, and enlightenment.

A: What are your thoughts on karma?

J: It’s a form of Materialist philosophy — a profound reliance on the idea that universal laws of cause and effect exist, laws that must be followed and can’t be broken. I reject pure Materialism as a model for explaining and understanding the complex interactions of all life in Creation. It leaves no room for God’s free will. It leaves no room for the profound mysteries of forgiveness, redemption, and humbleness (as opposed to humility). It’s also incredibly depressing when you think about it.

A: The idea that the universe is holding you accountable for choices you can’t even remember from previous “lives” — or previous manifestations.

J: Yes. The idea of blaming the poor and the sick and the downtrodden for their own misfortunes when it’s usually a group’s own leaders who have made the sick sick and the downtrodden downtrodden.

A: How do you feel about the question of rebirth? A number of different religions teach a form of reincarnation. Is there any place for this concept in your understanding of God, soul, and faith?

J: Well, souls can and do incarnate into 3D bodies all the time. But not for the reasons that the Buddha taught. Souls don’t incarnate because they “have to.” Of course, as soon as I start talking about souls, it’s clear I’m talking “apples” and the Buddha is talking “oranges.” Souls do exist, and rebirth, when it happens, is not a form of karmic consequence to be escaped at all costs. Most souls who choose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth find that a single human lifetime is enough for their unique purposes of learning, growth, and change. However, a small percentage of human beings have already “been there, done that.” They come back a second time because they want to help guide others on a journey that’s often difficult.

A: Mahayana Buddhism teaches that certain enlightened beings choose to “postpone” their reward so they can help others achieve enlightenment. They call these beings “bodhisattvas.” I’ve met a few people in my lifetime who felt somehow more grounded, more connected to the simplicity of spiritual truth, and I’ve called these individuals bodhisattvas.

J: Not unreasonable.

A: I think I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here. I’m going to tell our readers something I’ve known about you for a long time — you were a bodhisattva. A second-time-arounder. A man who messed up big-time during your first lifetime as a human being, and volunteered to go back in as a spiritual teacher and healer. Not because you had to but because you wanted to. For you, second time round was the charm.

J: It’s not something you realize at the time. You can’t even remember anything from your first life as a human being. There’s just a deepening of the connection, I guess you could say. An ability to stay more grounded, more aware of the patterns. It’s not something you can put your finger on, exactly. The sensation is probably best captured by the old maxim, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” A person who has lived once before as a human being is harder to fool with propaganda, spin doctoring, and religious sleight of hand. That’s why they make good mentors.

A: Can you give another example of a well-known person who was a bodhisattva?

J: Glenn Gould, the Canadian musician, was a bodhisattva.

A: No wonder he played so beautifully.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, faith, free will, Jesus Redux, karma, Materialism, Mother and Father God, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged , | Leave a Comment
10 Apr 2011

JR31: Jesus, the Man Who Was a Mystic

Life as a Mystic (c) JAT 2015: always drawn to the path less travelled

Life as a Mystic: always drawn to the path less travelled. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Sayings 18a and 18b in the Gospel of Thomas have some interesting things to say about our relationship to time — to beginnings and endings. Stevan Davies’s translation says this: “The disciples asked Jesus: Tell us about our end. What will it be? Jesus replied: Have you found the Beginning so that you now seek the end? The place of the Beginning will be the place of the end [18a]. Blessed is anyone who will stand up in the Beginning and thereby know the end and never die [18b].” Your makarisms — your beatitudes — don’t sound much like the makarisms from the Jewish Wisdom thinkers who wrote books like Proverbs and Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. Why is that?

J (shrugging): I was a mystic, not a Wisdom teacher. I believed in logic, but I believed more in Divine Love. My understanding of happiness was founded in my personal mystical experience. When people asked me how I could be so happy despite all the personal suffering I’d experienced in my life, I told them. They didn’t believe me, but I kept telling them anyway.

A: People today don’t think of you as a mystic. They may think of you as a rabbi or as a wandering Cynic philosopher or as a political revolutionary or even as a shaman-like fellow wandering around Palestine in a severe dissociative state.* But none of the well-respected biblical scholars I’ve read have described you as a mystic. Why not?

J: There’s nothing so poorly understood in the history of religion as mysticism. Having said that, the form of mysticism I practised has been rare in the annals of religious mysticism. I was neither an apophatic mystic nor an anagogic mystic. I was an endogenous mystic.

A: You’re going to have to explain that.

J: Mystical experiences from different cultures can be categorized. And should be categorized. Unfortunately, they’re usually lumped together in one big pot. They’re assumed to be roughly equivalent to each other. But they’re not. For instance, mystics who claim to have had an experience of timeless, transcendent oneness or union with the Divine come away from the experience with the belief that “less is more.” These are the apophatic mystics, from the Greek word meaning “negative speaking” or “unspeaking.” Apophatic mystics believe you can only experience union with God through the constant practise of mystical contemplation. This practice allows you to first “unknow” or “unspeak” yourself, to escape your frail human senses so you can become a proper empty vessel. If you do it correctly, goes the theory, you find yourself in a transcendent state where you no longer think of yourself as “you.” In other words, the path to knowing God is eradication of the self.

A: The opposite of what you taught.

J: Yes. Another thing I taught was the futility of the anagogic path — the vertical or upward path of spiritual ascent that’s been taught so many times by so many different teachers over the centuries. Anagogic mystics may or may not also be apophatic mystics, just to make things more confusing. Basically an anagogic mystic is somebody who believes that the only way to know God is to achieve perfection by following a rigorous step-by-step set of instructions or laws in the correct order. This takes you one step at a time up the spiritual ladder. The ladder of perfection takes you closer to God and farther away from your sinful neighbours. It sets you above and apart from your neighbours. Benedict, the founder of the Christian monasteries and the monastic Rule that bear his name, was teaching his monks a form of anagogic mysticism.

A: Again, not what you taught. So explain what you mean by endogenous mysticism.

J: It’s a term I’ve coined to suggest an experience of intense mysticism that’s hardwired into a person’s DNA rather than being imposed from the outside on an unwilling religious acolyte. True mystics are born, not made. Just as true engineers or true musicians are born, not made. An endogenous mystic is somebody who was born with a particular set of talents and communication skills aimed in the directions of philosophy, language, music, mediation (that’s mediation, not meditation), and what I’m going to call for lack of a better term “the geek factor.” True mystics are more interested than most people in offbeat stories and unusual phenomena. They show a life-long interest in stories and experiences that are somewhat unconventional. Not too weird, but a bit weird. You wouldn’t find a mystic teaching an M.B.A. course. But you might find a mystic teaching a Creative Writing course. Most true mystics don’t even know they’re true mystics. Most often they end up as writers. Writers need more solitary time than most people, as mystics do. They need the solitary time so they can pull up from somewhere inside themselves the emotions and the insights they long to express. They’re not being unfriendly or rude or hostile. They just need the quiet time so they can hear themselves think. This is true for both writers and mystics.

A: Well, you can count me in on all scores there. I spent a lot of time indoors reading as a child. And drawing. And watching TV shows that had a science fiction or fantasy element. I loved the first Star Trek series when it first came out. Come to think of it, I still like it.

J: I was like that, too. I was fascinated by the Greek myths. As soon as I learned to read, I read the Iliad. Then the Odyssey. My strict Jewish mother wasn’t pleased. But what could she do? She was a widow with a big family to look after. As long as I stayed on the family property, where I couldn’t get in too much trouble, she put up with my unusual interest in books, books, and more books. I read everything I could get my hands on. I learned to write by studying the authors I most admired.

A: I’m thinkin’ that Plato probably wasn’t one of your favourite authors.

J: I liked plays, actually. I learned a lot by studying Greek poets and playwrights. I liked the comedies of the Greek playwright Menander. Much healthier than the doleful rantings of the Jewish prophets.

A: These aren’t the literary influences one would expect you to describe.

J: No. I had to learn to read and write from the sacred Jewish texts because my mother and my maternal grandfather insisted we be literate in our religious heritage. So I knew my Torah and my Proverbs. But I was a born mystic, and, like all mystics and mystics-in-writer’s-clothing, I was interested in — utterly fascinated by — the fine nuances of character and environment and insight. I wanted to know what made people tick. I wanted to hear how they spoke, how they phrased things, how they interacted with each other. I wanted to know why people fall in love, what they say, what they do. I wanted to absorb all the joys, all the nuances, of life and living.

A: As writers do.

J: Writers can’t help it. It’s what they do. They’re so attuned to the rhythms and patterns of language and dialogue and everyday speech and sensory input and colours and textures and movement and nature and choices and especially change. Mystics are like this, too. Deeply attuned to patterns of communication that other people don’t pay attention to at a conscious level. A mystic is somebody who’s hardwired to pay conscious attention to subtle, nuanced communications from the deepest levels of Creation. Sometimes these communications come from God. Sometimes they come from one’s own soul. Sometimes they come from somebody else’s soul. But basically it’s about conscious observation and understanding of specific kinds of communications. Mystics are tuned to certain bands on the divine radio, if you will. They can pick up stations that most other people aren’t interested in trying to pick up. These “mystical” stations aren’t better than other stations. They’re just . . . well, they’re just different. All the stations on the divine radio are good, because different styles of music are all inherently equal. They’re all inherently equal, but they don’t all sound the same. Because they’re not the same. They’re different but equal.

A: As souls are all different but equal.

J: Yes. A lot of people imagine it would be wonderful and exciting to give over their lives to mysticism. But being a mystic is only wonderful and exciting if you’re hardwired to be a mystic. If you’re like most people — born with intuition, but not born to be either a mystic or a writer — you would find it very isolating, frustrating, even depressing to live as a mystic — as many Christian nuns, monks, clerics, and mystics have discovered to their misfortune. The “Dark Night of the Soul” is not and should not be part of the journey to knowing God. At no time in my life as Jesus did I experience a Dark Night of the Soul. On the contrary, my experience as a mystic gave me only an ever deepening sense that I was in the right place doing the right thing with the right people for the right reasons. I trusted my “beginning.” As a result, I stopped worrying about my “ending.” I lived each day in a state of comfort, peace, trust, and love.

A: The journey was not about the end goal, but about finding your own beginning — knowing yourself as you really are, then going from there.

J: This is the only way to find the freedom that comes from knowing and loving your Divine Parents — to whom I would like to say, once again for the record, you both rock!

* In 1995, Stevan Davies, the same author who published the translation of the Gospel of Thomas I refer to, wrote a very puzzling book called Jesus the Healer (New York: Continuum, 1995) in which he claims that Jesus carried out healings during a trance state that can be called “holy spirit-possession.” He concludes, therefore, that Jesus was a “medium.” If you’ve read my comments on The Blonde Mystic blog about psychic powers and psychic mediums, you’ll be able to guess what I think of Davies’s spirit-possession thesis.

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Posted in anagogic mysticism, apophatic mysticism, Davies (Stevan), ethical mysticism, Gospel of Thomas, historical Jesus, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' original writings, makarism, Soul, soul purpose and tagged , | Leave a Comment
04 Apr 2011

JR30: Foxes Have Holes, Canadians Have Gloves

A: I’d like to go back to some concepts we were discussing a few weeks ago about the soul (Saying 67 in the Gospel of Thomas). At that time, you stated that souls aren’t malleable. Yet you’ve also said that the soul is hardwired into human DNA, and elsewhere we’ve talked about the reality of neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to grow new brain cells. These three concepts seem to contradict each other. Can you explain?

J: It’s not that hard, really. I’m going to use the analogy of a hand in a glove.

A: Okay.

J: The core aspect of a person that’s eternal — the soul — can be likened to “the hand” in our analogy. Once you reach adolescence, your hand reaches its adult size and stops growing. It’s yours for life. Everything about your hand is shaped by your DNA –the size, shape, flexibility, skin pigmentation, fingernail growth, and, of course, your unique set of fingerprints. (For those born without hands, the same principle would apply, though obviously the analogy would pertain to a different portion of the biological body). The characteristics of the hand are not malleable. You don’t have a small-sized hand one day and an extra-large hand the next day. You don’t have a pianist’s hands one day and a mechanic’s hands the next. Even the fine details, such as your fingerprints, don’t change. You have the hand your DNA says you’re supposed to have, and that’s it. You can’t change the overall form or function. The form and function of your hand are pretty much “carved in stone.”

A: Except if you can afford plastic surgery.

J: That’s a surgical intervention intended to override your DNA. For the purposes of our example, we’ll stick to a more basic example — a person who lives in Canada and needs to wear a glove in the winter because it’s cold.

A: Hey, count me in. I carry my gloves in my coat pocket from October till April. Just in case it suddenly gets cold.

February Snow (c) JAT 2015

“Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest” (Gospel of Thomas 86). February Snow, photo credit JAT 2015.

J: The soul is like the hand of the hardy adult Canadian in our analogy. Its overall form and function are fixed. And there’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s very helpful. Can you imagine how confusing life would be if your hand were very small on Monday and very large on Tuesday? How could you get anything done or decide what tools you need? How could you make long term plans? How could you decide on a career, a hobby, or a hands-on pursuit? You’d be in a constant state of anxiety because of the lack of certainty. It’s good to be flexible and creative, but you can only afford to be flexible and creative if some things in life are certain. Like the size of your hand.

A: And the shape of your soul.

J: Exactly. The shape of your soul is fixed. Knowing this can give you great courage, great strength. Knowing who you are as a soul gives you the courage to say “yes” to the things you ought to be doing and “no” to the things you ought not to be doing. It helps you avoid the years of pain and frustration you feel when you’re in the wrong job or the wrong location or the wrong relationship. The job you have may be a perfectly wonderful job from a logical point of view, but if it’s not the right job for you as a soul, you’ll get stressed out, and then you’ll get sick, angry, depressed. If you believe you are a soul, and if you believe your soul has a unique blueprint, you have a terrific foundation of certainty and constancy to build your life on.

A: And nobody can take it away from you.

J: They can’t take away your core self, your core blueprint, your soul. These belong solely to you. What they can take away, however, is the biological functioning of the parts of your brain linked to your human physiology. What they can take away is the glove that protects your soul during your human lifetime.

A: Explain how the glove works.

J: In our analogy of the hand in the glove, the glove represents the parts of your human biology that keep your temporary 3D human body functioning properly. But, like the glove that prevents warm-blooded fingers from freezing in minus 30 degree weather, the glove is essential to the health of the hand it protects. The glove isn’t the same substance, if you will, as the hand, but it protects the hand and is absolutely indispensable. After the glove has been worn for a while, it starts to mould itself to the unique shape of the hand it protects. Eventually you can recognize it in a pile of similar gloves because it has a unique combination of bend marks and stains and the like. It takes on the characteristics of its owner’s hand because it’s malleable.

A: You’re suggesting, then, that some of the circuitry in the brain and central nervous system is “fixed” — not malleable — because it’s linked to the soul’s blueprint. The rest of the circuits — the parts that deal with human survival needs — are not fixed and are instead intended to be malleable. Have I got that straight?

J (nodding): The human brain isn’t a simple blob of jello where all the parts inside your skull behave exactly alike. The human brain isn’t even a single organ — it’s several semi-autonomous organs working together. At least that’s the theory. What happens in the case of major dysfunction is that one or more of the “essential services” in the brain goes off-line. Without input from these “essential services,” other sectors of the brain don’t do their own job as efficiently as possible. They may go into overdrive and try to make up for the loss of the other services by doing more work than they’re designed for. Some parts of the brain end up underactive, and other parts end up overactive. These realities are now visible on brain scans.

A: What’s the final result of these imbalances?

J: In most cases the final result is a person who’s standing outside in bitterly cold weather and wearing a glove that’s covered in holes — big, ragged holes that let the icy wind in and make you want to retract all your fingers into a ball in the end of your coat sleeve. It doesn’t work very well.

A: So the thing to do is to fix the glove. Mend the holes and put new insulation in.

J: Mending the holes is what neuroplasticity is all about. The “essential services” that have gone off-line in the brains of many of today’s adults can be gradually healed and restored. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what their own inner self has been saying all along. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what God has been saying, too.

A: This is a very helpful, hopeful message. It’s much easier to begin the journey of healing when you have faith that your inner self is worth the trouble. It’s also easier when you have a basic understanding of what it is you’re trying to do.

J: I can’t emphasize enough the connection between insight and healing. The simple experience of achieving insight is not only emotionally and spiritually transformative, but it lays the groundwork for your biological brain (your “glove”) to rewire itself in positive, healing, holistic ways. Healing follows insight. Therefore, if you’re a tyrant who wants to cripple the people around you so you can acquire fame, money, power, and sex, your most effective strategy is to prevent people from acquiring their own unique healing insights. People can’t oppose you and overthrow you if they’re busy dealing with all the holes you’ve put in their heads.

A: Holes caused by HDM strategies (It Takes A Village – A Non-HDM Village, That Is).

J: Yes. Status-based strategies. Plus choices like slavery. Intentional withholding of food and resources to drive up prices, increase poverty, increase fear, and reduce political opposition. Subjugation of women. Refusal to educate children — either boys or girls or both. Burning of books. Controlling access to information. Lack of judicial transparency. Claims of religious infallibility. These are the strategies of tyrants.

A: What you’ve just described reminds me a lot of Hitler and his SS goons.

J: Actually, as I was talking, I was thinking of the religious tyrants of my day. The ones who were oppressing the regular people. Some things haven’t changed much in the last 2,000 years.

 

Addendum February 6, 2018: A February 3, 2018 Globe and Mail investigative piece called “Cracks in the Code” by Carolyn Abraham highlights how little we currently know about the relationship between our own DNA and our own biological realities. It’s not the simple cause-and-effect “Lego” model we’ve taken for granted. Instead, as a recent study from Canada’s Personal Genome Project shows, each individual has a surprising range of unique DNA quirks, puzzles, and mysteries. In my view, these DNA puzzles point to wider questions about consciousness, soul, and quantum biology.

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Posted in ethical mysticism, Favourite Posts, HDM Myths, healing, insight, Jesus Redux, psychopathy, Soul, soul blueprint, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
23 Mar 2011

JR26: Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom

A:* For the last couple of days, ever since you introduced the idea that Pauline Christianity has always been in some ways a Materialist religion, my head has been spinning, and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what you mean. I can feel that it’s right in the part of my self that’s intuitive, but the rest of my head hasn’t caught up to my intuition yet. So can we take it from the top?

J:* No problem.

A: How ’bout we start with some definitions? And by the way, I’d just like to comment once again on the fact that you’re a true philosophy geek, you know that? Your face lights up like a Christmas tree every time you get to talk about a juicy philosophical dilemma. I can sure see how you ended up being a radical theologian in your time.

J: I was a much more successful philosopher than I was a carpenter. Honest to God, although I had to work as a tradesman to pay for my room and board, I’m pretty sure some of my handiwork could have ended up on “Galilean DIY Disaster.”

A: Measure once, cut twice?

J: I’m not a natural when it comes to tools. I think like a designer, not like an engineer. I would flunk out of civil engineering, I’m sure of it. But redesigning the layout of a home so it supports a person’s soul needs — that I can do.

A: My father, the retired engineer and all-round handyman, would think you’re a wuss. But you’re so much like most of the other male physicians I know — great with healing, great with academic study, not so good with the toolkit. (For the record, my ex is a physician, and we socialized with other people who were in medicine. So I know — or rather, knew — a lot of the male physicians around here.) Anyway, back to the philosophizing.

J: Okay. Well, the philosophy of Materialism is based on the theory that matter — by that I mean baryonic matter — is the only thing that exists. It’s a WYSIWYG understanding of reality — what you see is what you get. What you see is atoms and molecules and measurable substances and Newtonian laws. Therefore, according to this theory, all things in Nature — including mind, thought, consciousness, even love — can be explained solely by looking at the small little parts that make up the whole. It’s the idea that macroscopic reality — the daily reality that human beings live and work and breathe in — is just a bigger version of the microscopic reality of atoms and molecules and gravitational forces, etc. Of course, as researchers in various scientific disciplines now know, there are huge gaps between the “macro” theories and the “micro” theories. At the subatomic or quantum level, the universe is a weird, weird place. At the other end of the scale — the cosmological or grand universal scale — the universe is also a weird, weird place. Only at the immediate level of reality, if I can call it that — the level where human beings happen to live a fairly safe and predictable Newtonian kind of life — only here is a Materialist philosophy even remotely justified.

A: How does Materialism understand God?

J: A person who embraces Materialist belief in the natural laws of “cause and effect” may or may not believe in the existence of God. Many, if not most, Materialists are atheists. Atheists, of course, believe that existence can be explained entirely on the basis of scientific research. No God is required. However, it’s entirely possible to be a religious Materialist, a Materialist who believes in God. Deism is a good example of this.

A: Deism is a belief system that says there’s a God, one God who created the universe, but that this God later stepped away from his Creation and doesn’t participate in an active way in our lives or our suffering. God is the Great Clockmaker who made a perfect timepiece and now lets it run without interference. However, there’s still an acceptance of the idea that God will reward virtue and punish vice in the afterlife. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were all Deists . . . Tell me again why Deism isn’t the same as Pauline Christianity and Platonism?

J: It is Pauline/Platonic Christianity. Deism is what you get when you strip away later church doctrines about ritual and sacraments and prayer to saints (intercession) and belief in Marianism and belief in holy relics and belief in holy Crusade and belief in papal infallibility. Deism is Pauline thought in its purest form — a belief in the inviolability and perfection of Divine Law. Divine Law that governs “cause and effect” in the material world.

A: But Paul goes on and on in Romans about the inherent peril of “the law,” how knowledge of the law led him into sin.

J: Paul isn’t attacking all Law. He’s attacking the laws he no longer agrees with. Paul spends all his time in his letters talking about the “new and improved” Law — the Law that he himself is teaching. The New Covenant. It’s easy to forget that Covenant is Law — nomos in the Greek. Nomos was a complex idea that included both human authority and divine authority. When Paul talks about the “new covenant,” he’s talking about a new version of Divine Law. A new version of the Law of Cause and Effect. “If you do this (believe in Christ), then according to the inviolable Law of Creation, you must receive this (salvation plus a reserved parking spot in Heaven).” It’s a reductionist philosophy. Just as Materialism is a reductionist philosophy. Everything is reduced to a simple “cause and effect” formula.

“They asked him: When is the Kingdom coming?He replied: It is not coming in an easily observable manner. People will not be saying,’Look, it’s over here’ or ‘Look, it’s over there.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is already spread out on the earth, and people aren’t aware of it” (Gospel of Thomas 113). Each autumn, this walnut tree yields its harvest to those among God’s creatures who need it most. They receive these gifts without any reliance on human prayers or covenants. There’s wonderful freedom in trusting God to do what God does best when you don’t take on the burden of believing you’re somehow responsible for maintaining the laws of Creation. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Just as Wisdom teachings in the Ancient Near East were a “cause and effect” formula: if you obey the instructions on the “virtue lists” and disavow the behaviours on the “vice lists,” God is required to reward you because the Law says so.

J: Paul, clever manipulator that he was, observed that there was a “niche market” of people who’d become disillusioned with the certainty of Wisdom teachings. Obviously there was something missing from the formula if slaves were still slaves and women were still being punished for being women. The Hellenistic cities of the Roman Empire were filled to bursting with resentful slaves and restless, intelligent women. Who better to target if you’re planning to launch a new religious movement? Slaves with money and women with money. You don’t need to slog through the trenches and carry out years and years of missionary work — you just need to get yourself some patrons with deep pockets. Paul doesn’t even deny his reliance on patrons.

A: One staggering fact that jumps out in the Gospel of Mark is the fact that you have no patron. Nor do you seem to want one. This would have shocked readers in 1st century CE Roman-held regions.

J: Part of my objective was to refuse to “play by the rules.”

A: In the end, so many of these religious debates and religious conflicts boil down to “the rules” — the law, the covenant, the nomos. But all these rules . . . they’re external. They come from outside the inner self. They pretend to be objective. They pretend to be based on observable realities from nature. Yet enforcement of them relies on brute force, on rote memory, and on loyalty to patrons or other important religious/political leaders . . . at least I think that’s right. Is that right?

J: Yes. The one thing Paul doesn’t want is for people to know how to tap into their own inner wisdom, their own inner guidance. He doesn’t want them to know how to hear God’s quiet voice in the still, clear night. He doesn’t want his “community of fellowship” to find actual freedom. He only wants them to believe they have freedom (exousia) through the proper use of conscience (suneidesis). He wants them to be willing slaves. Slaves who won’t rock the boat of authority.

A: This is really sick, you know that?

J: Of course it is. There’s a reason these teachings have spontaneously led to generation after generation of abuses — abuses against the poor, the environment, against other Christians, not to mention countless non-Christians. Also abuses against God. These abuses are the “weeds” that have grown from the “seeds” that Paul intentionally planted.

A: Is this why Paul never mentions healing miracles in the letters he himself wrote?

J: Yes. Paul can’t afford to have his community of hagiasmos and koinonia (holiness and fellowship) distracted by the idea that God is deeply committed to ongoing healing, communication, and relationship with all people through the Kingdom within. The Kingdom within, of course, is the core self — the soul. The good soul. That’s how God connects with all God’s children — through the good soul that everybody is. God can and does communicate by other means, too, but the one connection that can never be taken away is the soul connection. You can cut out somebody’s eyes so they can’t see any more signs (and, unfortunately, this has been done). You can cut out somebody’s ears so they can’t hear any more external messages. You can cut out somebody’s tongue so they can no longer speak the prayers they long to sing aloud. All these abuses have been perpetrated “in the name of God” at one time or another. But nobody can cut out the connection to the soul. You’d have to carve out the entire brain and central nervous system of a person in order to fully quench the soul connection, the body-soul nexus. Obviously this would lead to death.

A: Hey! It’s another thing to add to the Jesus’ Seminar’s pot for the question of “Why Jesus Pissed People Off So Much That He Got Himself Crucified.”

J: Paul works very hard to ensure that his followers believe in a Kingdom that’s on the outside — “out there” in the Materialist world of cause and effect. “Out there” where they have no control over any of it themselves. Even more brilliant, Paul insists the Kingdom of God isn’t here yet. It belongs to some maybe-not-so-distant Day of Judgment. So not only is the Kingdom a materialistic reality outside the self, but it hasn’t even “arrived” yet. [1 Corinthians 15]. This prompts regular people to be thinking about the future instead of the present. This encourages them to shift their focus, their attention, and even their relationships to the future. To the future “effects” of today’s “causes.” People are so busy worrying about the future that they can’t hear God’s voice today.

A: Therefore they can’t hear the guidance they long for.

J: The guidance they want and need.

A: I like your version of the Kingdom teachings much better.

* If you’re new to this site, A=Author and J=Jesus

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Cause & Effect, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Materialism, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, quantum theory, slavery, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
16 Mar 2011
1 Comment

TBM8: Grief, John Edward, and the Lies "Psychic Mediums" Tell

 

(C) WordPerfect

(C) WordPerfect

 Okay. I admit it. I’m upset that Dr. Oz’s widely watched TV show featured a half-hour segment on psychic medium John Edward yesterday (March 15, 2011).

I’m upset because John Edward — with Dr. Oz’s tacit approval — told millions of vulnerable people that anyone — anyone at all — can talk with dead people with some basic training.

This is simply not true.

This morning on doctoroz.com I checked the excerpt from John Edward’s newly published book Infinite Quest, and I got even more upset. I got upset because his advice is likely to harm people, not help them.

On yesterday’s show, John Edward used the terms “intuition” and “psychic power” in ways that imply he believes they’re the same thing. He sat in a chair beside Dr. Oz and briefly described three steps people can use to “harness [their] psychic power,” as the shows producers describe it on the website.

I’m upset because I remember clearly how eagerly I embraced the same ideas being put forward by John Edward and many other “spiritual teachers,” and I remember just as clearly how disappointed, frustrated, and unworthy I felt when none of these ideas worked. I remember how much I blamed myself for my failure to connect quickly and simply with my angelic guides (the quick and easy connection that was promised by irresponsible authors). Sure, I was naive. Sure, I didn’t hold these authors to a high enough ethical standard. But I doubt I was alone in being naive. People are desperate for spiritual answers that make sense. So they take chances with these “new ideas” that aren’t new at all. They try the “new ideas.” The “new ideas” don’t work. And people end up blaming themselves.

This kind of spiritual abuse needs to stop.

In my highly trained opinion, John Edward is not a fraud in the way people might assume he is. He’s not a liar or simply a clever mentalist, as some critics have claimed. If he were simply a liar or a clever manipulator (as most self-proclaimed “psychics” are), his behaviour and his choices would be understandable — such as “he’s in it for the money” or “he’s in it for the attention.” In the case of John Edward, I think it’s more complicated than that. I think he actually has a natural, hardwired talent for channelling, and I think he’s misusing it. Grossly misusing it. I think this is more damaging to other people than intentional fraud would be. Why is it more damaging? It’s more damaging because more people are willing to trust him, to give him the benefit of the doubt. He gives off a vibe of legitimacy. Therefore people think he knows what he’s doing.

But he doesn’t.

If he knew what he was doing — if he could explain it in scientific terms, psychological terms, religious terms, and emotional terms — he would never go on TV and tell millions of desperate people that anyone can talk to the dead if they really want to and if they really try hard enough. This is grossly irresponsible. It’s also scientifically invalid and insupportable.

I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to be misled or misguided by this kind of New Age crap. I want you to understand clearly what’s possible and what’s not possible for human beings who are trying to follow the Spiral Path.

One thing I want to make very, very clear is that “human intuition” is not the same thing at all as “psychic power.” Human intuition is a normal, natural human attribute that all human beings are born with. All people are born with it. But many people lose access to this attribute as they reach adolescence and adulthood. Why do they lose it? They lose it because they haven’t “used” it. But this is no different than any other advanced human faculty. The entire brain operates on a “use it or lose it” model. So the fact that many adults have lost access to their intuition is no surprise from a scientific viewpoint. Intuition isn’t a “special” gift or a “gift of grace” or an “advanced” gift or an “enlightened” gift. Intuition is supposed to be a normal part of life for everybody. Except that it rarely is (for reasons I’ll have to come back to at a later time).

When people talk about “psychic power” they’re not talking about intuition. They’re talking about the “ability” to accurately see and hear and understand other people’s thoughts. They’re talking about “abilities” such as telepathy. They’re talking about reading “messages” that have been placed within the collective unconscious. They’re talking about the “ability” to access AT WILL bits and pieces of “hidden knowledge” that’s believed to be unavailable through sight or hearing or taste or touch or smell. They’re talking about tapping into the so-called unified energy field of the universe and extracting information from it in the same way you’d do a Google search on a topic of your choice.

Nobody on the planet has psychic power. Not even a channeller or a mystic. I’m a highly trained channeller, a highly trained mystic, and I’m telling you as honestly and as clearly as I can that God does not give anybody anywhere at any time the “ability” to “telepathically” pluck out somebody else’s thoughts from inside their heads.

To do so would be a violation of their personal boundaries, their personal integrity, their personal “space.”

It doesn’t matter whether the person you’re trying to “psychically read” is alive or dead. A person whose human body has died has a continuing existence as a person-of-soul, a person who’s molecularly challenged, a person who’s currently residing at a 4D address at Home (on the Other Side). The point is that it’s not appropriate for any human being to try to invade the thoughts and feelings of a soul on the Other Side. It’s like showing up at somebody else’s house in the middle of the night and banging on the door without any respect for the other person’s thoughts and feelings. It shows a profound lack of empathy. Don’t do it. John Edward says you can do it. But there’s a difference between something you “can” do and something you “should” do. You certainly can bang on the door if you want to. But, you know, it wouldn’t be the most loving choice you could make.

Maybe you think I’m being unduly harsh. After all, it’s normal for people to wonder how their loved ones are doing after they pass on. It’s normal to want to feel a continuing connection with a loved one who has died.

So let me give you a personal example. My own.

As you may recall if you’ve read my profile, I’m a bereaved mother. My younger son died of leukemia when he was 3 years old (1989). He was a precious, adorable person, and I never doubted that God had taken him Home to care for him. I still don’t doubt for a moment that my son is with God. And I’m a channeller. So I can talk with angels on the Other Side (not all angels, but some angels). And I can “see” and “hear” and “understand” with great clarity what angels choose to convey to me. So you’d probably expect that I’m talking to my deceased son all the time, right?

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It just wouldn’t be appropriate. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean I’ve received no communications about him. Quite the opposite, in fact. I received some very clear signs — blunt, obvious, visible “signs” — just before he was diagnosed, then again during the course of his treatment, and finally just after he died. These signs were external signs, things that were visible to my human senses. They weren’t channelled, they weren’t psychic, they weren’t intuitive. They were visible signs — such as the pure white peace dove (a bird not found in nature in my area) that landed on the grass outside our kitchen window one morning. The appearance of the dove “felt” like a message. I can’t define exactly why it “felt” like a message. It just did. Anyone who’s had a similar message around an important relationship will know what I mean.

My job as a channeller and mystic is not to go banging on God’s door demanding answers and information when it suits me. My job is to listen patiently and wait for a time that’s mutually conducive for both God and myself (or a time that’s mutually conducive for an angel and myself, if it’s an angel I’m waiting to talk to. When it suits him or her.)

When the time is right for God and I to get together to talk, I’m only able to hear what God wants me to hear. It’s like any other conversation — God talks, I listen and respond, then God responds. It’s guided by mutuality and respect and spontaneity. I don’t pick and choose what to “tap into.” If there’s a question God prefers not to answer at a particular time, then God chooses a different topic. This is fine by me, because I trust that God knows what they’re doing.

What I’m trying to get at here is that I’m not “psychically reading” or “telepathically reading” anybody’s private, internal thoughts and feelings. I can’t hear what you’re thinking right now (nor would I want to!) and I can’t hear what God the Mother and God the Father are thinking right now. I don’t hear thoughts. What I hear is communications that are directed specifically towards me. I hear angelic messages that angels have chosen to “upload” in a form I can hear inside my biological brain. (I do this by using a combination of my natural soul talent plus my vigorous practice of daily brain health.)

A good analogy is cell phones. If you’re a person without profound hearing loss, you can hear what a friend is choosing to say to you over the phone. You can hear the communication that’s directed towards you by your friend, but you can’t hear your friend’s unspoken thoughts. Your friend’s thoughts are private. And they should remain that way.

My talent as a channeller and mystic means I can receive specific communications that specific angels specifically intend me to receive. If you were to ask me today to do a “reading” on a loved one of yours who has passed, I would say no. I don’t have that person’s permission to initiate a “cell phone conversation.” If a particular person-of-soul wants to get in touch with me, they do so through my own guardian angels — sort of like a “forwarded message.” I can’t hear the communications of all angels. I can only hear the communications of specific angels, including, in my case, the soul who once lived as Jesus. But I can’t hear diddly-squat from other “famous” angels, and I don’t even try. I learned a long time ago that every legitimate channeller has limits. Very detailed, specific limits on who they can and can’t hear. These limits are unique to each channeller. Therefore my limits aren’t the same as John Edward’s limits. But we both have limits.

Any “psychic medium” who tells you they can hear anyone who’s passed on, including any famous person you’re interested in connecting with, is lying to you.

Either that or they’re lying to themselves. Which is what I think John Edward is doing — lying to himself.

Lies don’t help grieving people. Faith in a loving God helps grieving people, but lies just make the pain worse.

I think I’m in a pretty strong personal position to have a comment on the topic.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), boundary issues, building your intuition, life and death, mystic, mysticism, Soul, The Blonde Mystic and tagged
14 Mar 2011

JR22: Why You Need To Know Yourself (Mystical Commentary on Saying 67)

A: Can you please explain as simply as possible WHY it matters that each person has a unique soul blueprint and WHY it’s important for each person on a spiritual journey to uncover the specific details of his or her own unique blueprint?

J: Let’s use an imaginary person as an example to make this simpler. I’m going to call this imaginary person Jane Tamaguchi.

A: Okay.

J: Like all human beings, Jane is a soul. She doesn’t have a soul. She is a soul. She’s an angel — a child of God. Like all angels, she was born as a soul long before she decided to incarnate as a human being. Soul energy isn’t visible in the third dimension — the dimension that human beings live in during their temporary lives as incarnated souls — but soul energy can be felt in the third dimension.

A: Can you give some examples of “feelable” soul energy? (I think I just invented a new word.)

J: Yes. When you feel a deep sense of connection with another person, that’s soul energy. When you feel empathy for other creatures, that’s soul energy. When you feel committed, romantic, monogamous love, that’s soul energy. When you give or receive forgiveness, that’s soul energy. When you’re willing to trust in a loving and compassionate God, that’s soul energy.

Thomas 67: One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing. (Photo credit JAT 2015)

Thomas 67: “One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing.” (Translation by Stevan Davies, photo credit JAT 2015)

 A: Those are all emotions. Positive emotions. Uplifting emotions.

J: Yes. All souls are intensely emotional in positive, uplifting, creative, intuitive, loving ways.

A: So much for Christian angelology, that says angels have no emotions of their own and are simply instruments of God’s work and God’s will.

J: Yes. That’s another Christian doctrine that should go the way of the 8-track recording system.

A: But angels also have minds, as you’ve said previously. They have minds plus emotional hearts.

J: Yes. Christians have long believed — based largely on theories of the soul put forward by Plato, Aristotle, Tertullian, Augustine, and others — that the soul itself consists of a single indivisible substance. Arguments raged as to the exact nature of this substance. But the basic idea was that the soul was made of just one thing because — as the theory went — the soul couldn’t really be a soul if it could be “divided” into two or more substances. It should go without saying that this is a ridiculous supposition. There are no analogies anywhere in nature or in the quantum world for a complex lifeform made of a single element such as pure hydrogen or pure gold. All lifeforms, whether they exist in the third dimension or in higher dimensions, are extremely complex. A soul is a quantum being whose “biology” is far more complex than that of any 3D creature — which is pretty much what you’d expect for children of God who were born in the fourth dimension, and who will spend most of their eternal existence in parts of the “implicate order” that can’t be seen or measured by human beings in the third dimension.

A: So people just have to take it on trust? On blind faith?

J: I wouldn’t say that. Individuals who want to take the time to do intensive research into quantum physics and quantum biology will soon discover that the universe being studied by today’s scientists is extremely complex. This isn’t the cosmology of Plato or Thomas Aquinas. It’s breathtakingly complicated and interconnected. There’s plenty of room in there for a modern doctrine of the soul that doesn’t in any way violate the laws of quantum biology.

A: Okay. So tell me about Jane. Who is she as a soul?

J: Jane is a female angel, and for the purposes of this discussion she’s heterosexual.

A: I know what this means for human beings. But what does this mean for angels?

J: It means exactly what it sounds like. All angels are one of two sexes: male or female. Just as with human beings. There are no “in-between” sexes or alien sexes. All angels are either male (the same sex as God the Father) or female (the same sex as God the Mother). This is pretty much what you’d expect by looking at life on Planet Earth.

A: Some creatures on Earth are able to reproduce without a sexual partner. Komodo Dragons, for instance.

J: There are different modes of reproduction for creatures that live on Planet Earth. Reproduction is part of the 3D biological package. It isn’t part of the 4D soul package. We’ll come back to that at a later time.

A: But sexual orientation is part of the 4D soul package. Why is sexual orientation necessary for angels?

J: Because each angel has a soulmate. One true eternal love partner. A divine spouse. The one partner in all of Creation who’s a perfect match in every way, including intimate, private ways. Each angel in God’s Creation is paired with his or her perfect eternal partner. For many angelic couples, the perfect partner is of the same sex. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

A: So God the Father and God the Mother are not a same-sex couple themselves, but it’s okay with God if their children choose a same-sex partner to share eternity with.

J: Yes. God’s children are not carbon copies of their divine parents. God’s children come in every size and shape and colour imaginable. Yet every soul couple is blissfully happy, blissfully complete. This is what God the Mother and God the Father want for their children — bliss. Everybody’s different. Yet everybody’s happy. It’s the perfect divine family when you think about it.

A: So Jane has a specific sex — female — and a specific sexual orientation — heterosexual. What else does she have?

J: She has a soul body. Her soul body has a unique size and shape that’s perfect for her. Her soul body probably doesn’t look too much like her current human body, but that’s okay. She’s very happy with the soul body she has.

A: What else?

J: She has a soul mind. As a soul, she’s pure consciousness — by that I mean she has full awareness at all times of her own thoughts and her own feelings and her own choices and her own needs and wishes. Part of her unique mind lies in the way she thinks, the way she learns, the way she remembers, the way she expresses herself. These attributes lie within the soul mind. Jane doesn’t “know” everything. Nor does she want to. She has certain interests that are hard-wired at the very core of her consciousness, and these are the things she learns fastest and remembers best.

A: Can you give an example of what Jane might be interested in as a soul, as an angel?

J: Okay. Let’s say for argument’s sake that Jane is a gifted musician.

A: There are some angels who are more musically gifted than other angels?

J: All angels enjoy music to some extent. But not all angels want to spend most of the day in classes devoted to advanced musical performance and interpretation skills. As with all things in Creation, it’s a continuum. All angels appreciate music. But some angels want to devote most of their time to it. Which means they can’t be devoting their time to other interests, other skills. There’s only so much time in a day, even for an angel.

A: What other interests does our imaginary Jane possess as a soul?

J: Jane likes to be around a lot of other angels. She gets very lonely if she can’t hear other angels singing. She’s happiest when she’s with a big group of noisy, laughing angels.

A: Are there any angels who are more quiet in temperament, who wouldn’t feel comfortable in large groups?

J: Yes, lots. And that’s okay, too. These angels are quiet, but not in any way unfriendly or unloving. They just need more quiet than other angels do. Nothing wrong with that.

A: Let’s give Jane a third unique attribute. What would you suggest.

J: She doesn’t like the colour red.

A: Huh?

J: All angels appreciate the fact that everything in Creation is beautiful and deserving of respect. So Jane respects the colour red, and she’s happy for her friends who love all things red. But angels have their own taste, their own “likes” and “dislikes.” And Jane herself is under no divine obligation to like red. It happens that she doesn’t. God the Mother and God the Father respect the fact that Jane just doesn’t happen to like red. On the other hand, she can’t get enough black. She’s crazy for black.

A (grinning): I know a certain male angel who happens to love black! And a particular shade of charcoal grey.

J: Yeah, I do like those colours. Can’t deny it.

A: Okay. So we have our angel Jane, who’s passionate about music, loves to be around large groups of people, isn’t fond of the colour red, but likes black. Jane decided a while back to incarnate as a human being on Planet Earth (her choice), and right now she’s 35 years old, is working as a nurse, is taking night school courses so she can apply to law school, and lives with a female partner who has painted the bedroom red. Tell me about Jane’s current brain health.

J: All the things we talked about — Jane’s true soul interests — are hardwired into her human DNA. That’s the junk DNA that geneticists are puzzled by. Her soul’s blueprint is hardwired into her brain and central nervous system. Her brain stem, cerebellum, hypothalamus, thalamus, basal ganglia, and glial cells contain coding that’s unique to her, unique to her true soul personality. If Jane were to make conscious choices that “matched” or “lined up with” her core blueprint, her biological brain would function smoothly. It would function the way it’s supposed to. Her mood would remain stable. Her thinking would be logical and coherent. Her memory would be pretty good, especially around music and musical interpretation! She would have excellent social functioning. All in all, she’d be pretty happy, healthy, and well adjusted.

A: Okay. But right now Jane isn’t making conscious choices that “line up with” her own soul’s core identity. She’s working as a nurse, not as a musician. She’s around lots of people, which is good, but the people aren’t singing. She’s in a lesbian love relationship. And every night she has to go to sleep in a room that isn’t healing or calming for her as a soul. What’s happening inside her brain at this point?

J: There’s a software conflict. On the one hand, the so-called “primitive” parts of Jane’s brain are saying “I want to craft music, I want to find a loving male partner, I want to be around the colour black.” Meanwhile, Jane’s forcing the outer cortical layers of her brain to make different choices — choices that seem logical to her peers or to her family, perhaps, but which make no sense to her core self.

A: So how’s Jane doing?

J: Her brain is pretty messed up. There are competing signals from the different regions of her brain and central nervous system. The signals contradict each other. By now she’s feeling confused and upset with her life, and she doesn’t why. Things seem okay on the outside. But on the inside she’s not happy. She may be having trouble with headaches or poor sleep or depression or one of the many other signs of imbalance that can emerge via human biology.

A: A lot of these medical issues would begin to clear up if Jane were to seek professional counselling and appropriate medical care to help her uncover the choices she’s making that aren’t working for her.

J: Yes. Jane has been making choices based on other people’s priorities rather than her own core priorities — the priorities of her soul. Over the long term, her poor choices have begun to affect her health and her happiness.

A: Can she force herself to “be” a nurse and “be” a lawyer if her soul isn’t wired for healing or for case analysis?

J: No. This is what I meant when I said the soul isn’t malleable in the way that clay is malleable. Jane can only be who she is. If she tries to be somebody she’s not — if she tries to be a lesbian nurse-lawyer who wears red power suits — her biological brain will begin to sustain serious damage from the continuous push-and-pull of her internal “software conflict.” She’ll literally fry her own brain from the inside out.

A: Okay. That’s pretty clear. Be yourself — be the person God knows you to be — so your brain and body will function the way God intended.

J: Simple in fact. Simple in reality. But not always easy to implement.

A: At least it gives people a starting place on the journey. At least it helps them understand where they’re going and WHY. It helps so much to understand WHY.

J: Insight is one hell of an amazing miracle.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, Davies (Stevan), gender and sexuality, Gospel of Thomas, insight, interoception, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, orthodox teachings about the soul, Plato, quantum theory, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, Thomas 67 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
20 Feb 2011

JR12: A Divine Love Story

Beauty. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: You know, for the past two weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and after wading through the English translations [Wise, Abegg, and Cook]* of the Essene’s own teachings, I’m sick of them. Just sick of them.

J: Sick of the teachings? Or sick of the Essenes?

A: I’m sick of the teachings. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to go to dinner with anybody who believes in these teachings, either. The writings are so . . . so self-centred and narcissistic. So full of themselves. So full of hot air. They don’t say anything moderate or balanced about our relationship with God. They’re full of cliches and bluster and prophecy and big long strings of fancy-sounding words. But where is the love? There’s no love in them — no kind, respectful, trusting, compassionate, inclusive love. It’s just narcissistic bullshit. Did I say that already? I think I said that already.

J: Don’t forget paranoid. The teachings are also very paranoid.

A: Yeah. Enough with the evil Belial, for God’s sake! Enough with the final battle where the pure and virtuous Essenes will lead the armies of Light to victory! Get a life, people.

J: Or Pauline Christianity.

A: Say what?

J: If they don’t want to get a life, they could always get some serious, heavy-duty evangelical Christianity. Evangelical Christianity doesn’t say much that the Essenes didn’t say within their own brand of Community Rule.

A: Yeah, well, I’m not feeling the love from evangelical Christianity, either. Again, lots of narcissism, not so much trust in God. I can’t believe what these people are saying about God!

J: Which people? The Essenes or the Pauline Christians?

A: Both. I’m not seeing a lot of difference between them, as you’ve pointed out. This is not what you’ve taught me about God. I don’t see any resemblance at all. I don’t see any resemblance between your teachings and Paul’s teachings, or your teachings and John’s teachings. This is crazy! How did orthodox Christianity get so far from the truth?

J: I hate to sound like a broken record, but, again, it’s the mental health issue. My teachings have no appeal for narcissists. Or psychopaths.

A: Because there’s no “fuel” for status addiction. Narcissists and psychopaths suffer big-time from status addiction.

J (nodding): And as for people suffering from psychotic illnesses . . . they’re not in a position to take full control of their thoughts and feelings. They can’t. The illness interferes with their thinking and feeling processes. So they’re filled with fear and paranoid thoughts even before you add the religious paranoia. They can also suffer from narcissism on top of those biologically confused thoughts and feelings, as John did. But the main point is they’re not mentally or emotionally well, and their writings — if they write about spiritual or religious topics — always reflect their inner mental state. The writings of a person suffering from a psychotic illness sound psychotic. You have to step back from their writings and ask yourself . . . would an adult human being with a clean bill of health as far as the DSM-IV is concerned — and taking into consideration the psychopathy that the DSM-IV writers left out for bizarre reasons — would a non-paranoid, non-manic, non-depressed, non-psychotic, non-substance-addicted person write this? Is this writing the reflection of a person in a highly stressed mental state? Is this writing the reflection of a person who understands what compassionate love is? Is this writing the reflection of a person who understands what it means to trust in God’s goodness? Because let’s be honest — a person who writes all the time about the devil or Belial or whatever you want to call this imaginary evil entity is showing that he or she does not trust in God’s goodness. How can anybody say they trust wholly in God, then turn around and say God is too weak to prevent the existence of a devil? You can’t have it both ways.

A: Orthodox Western Christianity says you can. And another thing —

J (starting to chuckle):

A: Yes, I’m on a rant this morning. I’m sick of the way these writers — the Essenes and Paul especially — talk about women. I’m sick of the way they’ve just gone ahead and eradicated the Divine Feminine from everything. I’m sick of their pompous warrior-king Messiahs and I’m sick of their divinely appointed male priests and I’m sick of their testerone-soaked jockeying for the best places at the table. Me, me, me. Look at me — I’m special! That’s all these people can talk about. For religious people who claim to be serving God humbly and piously, they sure spend a lot of time bragging about their own status and putting other people down. Have you read what the Essenes say about people with physical infirmities and imperfections [IQSa]? It’s just plain cruel!

J: The difference between humbleness and humility. You and I have talked about that a lot.

A: It wasn’t very humble of early teachers such as Second Isaiah or the redactors of Genesis to go ahead and do a hatchet job on God the Mother — to just slice her out of the story of Creation. Even the Greeks, for all their crazy Homeric myths, had the sense to include strong female archetypes in their pantheon. Anybody with half a heart can see that Creation — the world of beauty and wonder and mystery all around us — is a Love Story. It’s a testament to the love shared by God the Mother and God the Father for each other, a record of their journey of love, growth, commitment, struggle, and faith. It’s a giant love story. That’s what you’ve taught me. That’s what I feel myself. It’s a painful story, but a truthful one. Everything around us talks about the importance of relationship, the importance of balance. How can religious people look at the world and see a Judeo-Christian Covenant? How can they think “it’s all about them”?

J: Narcissists always think it’s all about them. It’s how they view the world — through a very small lens of “I.” Me, myself, and I. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re religious. The issue isn’t one of spirituality or faith or God. It’s simply a matter of biological brain health. Sadly — broken record again — it’s about the human brain and how people use the brain God gives them.

A: I notice that God gave women brains, too. You’d think that would count for something in the grand religious scheme of things.

J: Not to mention the thorny reality that 75% of the human sex chromosomes are X chromosomes — female chromosomes, not male. I’m thinkin’ that’s probably an important “Post-It Note” in the biologist’s Book of Creation.

A: I’m so glad I was raised in a family where I was taught that men and women are equal in terms of their intellectual gifts and in terms of their right to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

J: I’ll second that. I wouldn’t be able to talk to you this way if your human brain hadn’t developed along the lines of dignity, respect, and equality. That’s what the relationship between God the Mother and God the Father is all about — dignity and respect as the basis of their mutual love and trust, despite their respective differences in temperament and talent and size. As above, so below. When human beings live according to the values and principles of their beloved Divine Parents, they can feel the love of God coming into their daily lives. When they reject those values, their biological brains become like big pots of quivering jello — lots of colour, lots of movement, but not much substance. It’s fun to eat, but 15 minutes later, you’re hungry again.

A: They feel empty inside when they reject the core values of the soul.

J: Which is all very confusing when it’s their time-honoured religious traditions that insist they reject their soul’s own values. They’re taught by their religious leaders to reject divine notions of equality amongst all life, to reject balance, to reject symbiotic relationships — to reject all mutuality. Then they complain because they can’t feel God’s love. They complain they’ve been abandoned by God. It’s a crock. It’s not God who’s abandoned them. It’s they who have abandoned God. They usually don’t realize that this is the cause of their feeling of inner emptiness. They think their religion is helping them fill the void. But unless they have an unusually mature, unusually intuitive religious leader, their church services are just making the inner bowl of jello bigger. There’s no substance because there’s a lack of will, a lack of courage, to teach the truth about God.

A: The truth that God is the God Who Is Two, not the God Who Is One. And not the God Who Is Three, if you’re a Trinitarian.

J: It’s a simple truth, seen everywhere in Creation. There’s no relationship when it’s only “me, myself, and I.” Relationship MUST begin with two. It can involve more than two — and, in fact, the angelic community of God’s children is so large, so much bigger than two, that I can’t give you a number that’s meaningful to the human brain.

A: Gajillions?

J (smiling): Yes. Gajillions of angels, both male and female. But no matter how many angels exist within God’s family, it’s still about relationship. It’s still about people — angels — knowing each other, respecting each other’s uniqueness, respecting each other’s differences, working together in a symbiotic way to make a “whole” that’s much larger than the component “parts.” The sense of Oneness that people long for in their relationship with God isn’t a sense of losing themselves in the infinite Mind of God. It’s the sense of Oneness that comes from combining your strengths with the strengths of your brothers and sisters towards a common goal. It’s not Oneness of identity. It’s Oneness of Purpose. It’s Oneness of Commitment. It’s family. It’s people with differences coming together to work as a Team to create something much bigger than each could create on his or her own. That’s what Divine Love feels like.

A: Habitat For Humanity. It feels like the charity called Habitat For Humanity. Where groups of committed people volunteer their time and their skills to help build safe, affordable housing for families.

J: Exactly. It feels just like that. Everybody has different talents. Some are good with plumbing. Some are good with woodworking. Some are good with designing. But all the talents are needed, and no one talent is more important than another. Everybody’s got a job to do, and everybody’s job is important.

A: Especially the guy who makes the coffee. Ya gotta have your coffee breaks while you’re busting your butt to get a job done.

J: Even angels take coffee breaks.

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

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Christ archetype, dissociation, dualism, Essenes, gender and sexuality, humility, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, narcissism, Paul's teachings, religion and mental Illness, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
13 Feb 2011

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

A: You told me several years ago that you wrote parts of the Letter of James yourself — specifically James 1:2-27, James 2:1-8, and James 3:1-18 — and that after your death your older brother James added the remaining verses to blunt the effect of your writings and make them more “pious.” Yesterday I was checking something in the Letter of James, and I couldn’t help smiling. What you wrote 2,000 years ago sounds an awful lot like what you said for the record last Wednesday. Do you mind if I put in a quote from James?

J: Knock yourself out.

A: Okay. Here’s the NRSV translation of James 2:1-8a, with a couple of changes in emphasis. Here goes:

“My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in God? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and becomes judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

J: You give them one little inviolable spiritual law to follow, and they argue with you until you’re blue in the face and dead in the ground. It’s 2,000 years since I said that, and a huge number of Christians still don’t get it — you can’t love your neighbour and keep your status addiction, too. You have to make a choice.

A: There are almost no Christians who believe you wrote these verses yourself. Few theologians pay attention to the Letter of James. It doesn’t have any real “Christology” in it. To them, it’s little more than a typical 1st century wisdom sermon. Martin Luther hated this letter because it seems to deny Paul’s doctrine of “justification by faith.” Luther called it “an epistle of straw,” and would have had it removed from the Protestant canon if he could have.

J: There you go. More proof for the theory that Paul and I had very different things to say about God.

A: Tell me what you meant when you described the poor as “heirs of the kingdom.”

J: That goes to the heart of my teachings.

A: I know.

J (grinning): No point beating around the bush, eh?

A: Exactly my thought.

J: Well, I guess you could say that I was trying to be a good teacher. By that I mean I was doing my best to explain complex ideas in a useful, useable way. Good teaching often involves finding the right image, the right metaphor for the group you’re teaching. The right metaphor can open up doors in a student’s mind, help her find the connection between what she already knows and what she’s learning. You can try to invent new terms, new words for a complex idea. Scholars often do this. Or you can try to work with existing vocabulary and use it in new ways. I opted for the latter.

A: So you chose the word “kingdom” because of the symbolism attached to it at the time.

J: Well, here’s where it gets confusing. The word “kingdom” by itself was not the exact image I chose — not that word by itself, anyway. But, like all people, I was sometimes guilty of shortening things for the sake of convenience. The actual phrase I chose was “basileia ton ouranon” — Koine Greek for “kingdom of the heavens.” Eventually, when I was speaking or writing for my own community, I called it “the kingdom” for short. But by then it was understood what I meant.

A: Which was . . . ?

J: I was trying to express the idea that each individual person should think of themselves as a whole and complete entity, lacking nothing as far as God was concerned. A tiny kingdom of “selfhood” unto themselves. An inviolable kingdom. A worthy kingdom. A very small kingdom, to be sure, but one they had full rights over as its “sovereign.” It’s about boundary issues, really. Today’s teachers and psychologists use the phrase “boundary issues.” I used the phrase “kingdom of the heavens.” But it’s the same idea exactly. It’s the idea that your body and your mind and your heart belong to nobody but you. Therefore, it’s wrong to transgress those boundaries. It’s wrong for you to invade somebody else’s body, mind, and heart, just as it’s wrong for them to invade yours. It’s about human dignity, human worth. It’s about seeing each individual as, well, as . . .

A: As an individual?

J: Yes. It’s about seeing each individual as an individual, instead of seeing them as property or as a means to an end.

A: Status addicts. Psychopaths. Narcissists. People suffering from these disorders can’t see other people as they really are — as other people. They tend to see them as objects to be used.

J: That ideal — if you can call it that — was ingrained in the culture of my time. People were so used to hearing about “the chosen” and “the judged” in society that they weren’t questioning the wrongness of it. They had little mental framework, little understanding of the idea that slavery was a violation of the soul. Most of the people I worked with in my ministry felt like the proverbial dog who’s been kicked. The dog is at the bottom of a long list of people kicking each other according to rank. The dog has the least rank, so he gets kicked the hardest. That’s the mentality I was facing in Galilee.

A: You were facing an uphill battle trying to persuade your students that they were worthy of God’s love and forgiveness — just as worthy as the priests in Jerusalem.

J: It’s not easy to overcome the conditioning of a lifetime. They weren’t inclined to believe me. These were people of faith. They didn’t want to anger God. They wanted to show God their obedience and faith. They were suspicious of me for a long time.

A: What turned the tide?

J: In the end, it was about trust and compassion, I guess you could say. I stuck to my guns. I did what I said I would do. I wasn’t a hypocrite — that alone earned me a lot of trust. I treated people fairly and respectfully the way I thought God wanted me to. Stuff happened.

A: Stuff happened? Like what stuff? What happened?

J: Oh, you know. Healings. Changes. Stuff like that.

A: You mean like healing miracles? That kind of stuff?

J: Well, yes, if you want to get right down to it, I suppose you could describe it that way.

A: Healing miracles began to take place, and the people around you — the poor and disadvantaged of Galilee — began to notice.

J (nodding yes): [Nods without speaking]

A: Were you the source of the healing miracles? Did you yourself heal them?

J: No. Never. No human being has that kind of power, that kind of ability. Healing miracles, when they take place, come from God. Only from God and God’s healing angels. I was only a facilitator, if you will. A human being people could see and touch with their own senses. My job was to reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to trust. The actual healing was God’s work. And I said so. Loudly. As often as I could. I never claimed to be a chosen prophet, and I yelled at anybody who tried to call me the Messiah. I clearly understood that my role — my task as a human being who’d been given many advantages during my youth — was to help people feel okay about receiving God’s love and comfort and healing. If I was helpful in my role as a physician — suggesting teas and salves and other sorts of medical treatments — it was only because God was guiding me in my work. I listened carefully to what God’s healing angels were saying (that’s where it’s handy to be a practising mystic), and I did what they suggested to me. I wasn’t being “forced” to listen to my angels. I wanted to listen to my angels, and I wanted to trust their advice. That was my choice — my own free will. They’re damned smart, and they had some wonderful healing suggestions.

A: Can you give any examples of their advice?

J: Gosh. They had tons of medical insights. Things like, “Tell that woman she has to eat orange vegetables.” Of course, they knew — although I didn’t — that orange vegetables contain Vitamin A, important for normal vision. Two thousand years ago, that was a miracle. They warned me, as well, about the dangers of lead. Lead was used in those days in many practical ways because of its low melting point and malleability. “Stay away from food vessels or utensils made of lead or pewter,” they said. Good advice, that.

A: And pewtersmiths have stopped making pewter with lead.

“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1: 40 – 45). Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: The most important thing my angels taught me, however, was to ignore the standard Temple teachings about illness and healing. To be honest, my angels had nothing nice to say about traditional purity laws. They told me it was okay — by that I mean medically safe — to ignore the “do not touch” laws about skin diseases, bodily fluids, and dietary restrictions. My angels said to me, “Touch, touch!” So I touched. I looked in people’s eyes when they were sick. I held their hands. I told them their angels were with them. I told them God was with them. Any physician worth his or her salt will know what this means to a frightened patient. The relationship between physician and patient is integral to the healing process.

A: So you took the healing process away from the designated Jerusalem priests and put it into the hands of God. You made the healing process both more scientific and more compassionate. Which somehow led to more miracles.

J (nodding yes): Um hum.

A: I can just imagine how furious the priests would have been that people were getting better from eating carrots instead of from giving sacrifices at the Temple.

J: The fact that I was descended from priests on my mother’s side didn’t help the situation any.

A: They must have been very upset when they started to hear rumours about your healing ministry — a son of priests performing unsanctioned healings outside the Temple precincts.

J: That would be an understatement.

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Posted in boundary issues, ethical mysticism, faith, healing, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Letter of James, slavery, Soul, status addiction, trust 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
20 Jan 2011

TBM7: Picturing Your Own Soul

If you’ve decided to try the Spiral Path and see if it works for you, how should you picture your own soul?

The short answer is this: you should picture your own soul as yourself — as the human being you are.

Picturing My Own Soul

Picturing My Own Soul (c) JAT 2013

For example, if you’re an African-American man, you should picture your soul as an African-American man. If you’re a gay African-American man, you should picture your soul as a gay African-American man (because when souls are created by God, some souls are created homosexual and some souls are created heterosexual). If you’re a man who can’t go outside without your beloved hat, you should picture your soul wearing your favourite hat.

Okay. Now for the long answer.

Over the past few thousand years, many different theories about the soul have been presented in many different cultures and religions. If you read enough books, you eventually start to see some patterns that cut across cultural and religious lines. In other words, there’s a selection of soul theories that seem to pop up everywhere. These theories are not restricted to just one religion or one historical period.

Most devout religious believers, regardless of their faith tradition, don’t know this. They believe there’s only one theory of the soul — the theory they themselves have been taught. But factually speaking, there are many theories about the soul. When you line up these theories beside each other, you quickly see they’re mutually contradictory. They can’t all be true.

For instance, if you accept Plato’s theory that the soul is preexistent, immortal, and indivisible, then theoretically you can’t at the same time accept the Roman Catholic belief that the soul is not preexistent. (Sadly, this contradiction has never stopped most Christian theologians from believing in both theories at the same time. But that’s another story.)

Many people, in their frustration about the lack of church guidance on the matter of the soul, have turned for answers to Eastern traditions about the soul. Here we encounter theories about the chakra system — internal “wheels of light” — along with related theories about astral or auric bodies. The goal here is to cleanse the various energy fields and and raise one’s vibration so enlightenment can be achieved. There is always a sense here — as in Gnosticism — that the chakras and astral bodies are in some way separate from and spiritually superior to your physical biology. The doctrine of karma is central to these energy-field belief systems.

I wasted a lot of time — years, in fact — trying to “raise my vibration” and “release my negative karma” through the methods recommended by these spiritual teachers.

I was eventually saved from further emotional and financial hardship by my kick-ass spiritual mentor — and I mean that quite literally. The soul who once lived as Jesus kicked my ass around the block more times than I can count until I finally got it through my thick skull that I was making things way too complicated.

Keep it simple, keep it sane, was his particular brand of teaching on the matter of the soul. Why look at ancient texts and grandiose teachings, said he, when you have perfectly sound knowledge available to you in the form of neuroscience?

It took me a while to accept his no-nonsense, logical approach, but I couldn’t argue with the compassion and trust that grounded all his insights.

“Look,” said he (his command of English idioms being exceptional), “your body is not just some old lump of clay with a spark of light that belongs to God. That’s just stupid. It’s a lot more complicated, and a lot more miraculous, than that. Your inner spark, your inner wisdom, doesn’t belong to God. It isn’t a piece of God. It’s you. That inner wisdom is you — your true self. Your consciousness. Your selfdom.” (Selfdom? thought I.) “Give God some credit,” continued my molecularly challenged teacher. “This is a scientific question. The question isn’t, ‘Do I have a soul?’ The question is, ‘How the heck is it scientifically possible for God the Mother and God the Father to downshift my soul’s 4D energy blueprint into a 3D body?’ Human science can’t answer that question. Even angels have a hard time grasping the science. But it’s science, not some sort of weird cosmological voodoo. Your DNA holds your soul data — the stuff that’s unique to you. Plus it holds all the biological data you need for human survival. Your DNA is a powerhouse miracle. It allows you to live here temporarily as a biological being. It gives you all the basic tools you need for you to be you. It’s totally fucking amazing.”

(Yes, he really does talk like that.)

This is why I picture my soul as a blond woman of Celtic descent. I know that as a soul — as a child of God — I’m female, not male. I know that as a soul — as a child of God — my sexual orientation is heterosexual. I know that as a soul — as a child of God — I “recognize” myself when my hair is blond. Sure, it’s my Irish and French DNA that dictates my fair complexion, and my eye colour (grey-blue), and my height (5’6″), and my bone structure (slim). But it’s not random. God the Mother and God the Father made sure that when it was time for me to incarnate as a human being I would have the correct DNA package for me. The best match possible between human biology and my unique soul blueprint.

Although like so many people I once judged everything about my body (too skinny, bust too flat, eyes too small, skin too blotchy, blah, blah, blah), I now feel terrific in the body I’m in. I feel grateful for the human form I have. I feel grateful because my body allows me to be me. Not just me as a human, but me as an angel-in-temporary-human-form. It’s the best of both worlds, you might say.

Literally.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, Gnosticism, My Spiral Path, mystic, orthodox teachings about the soul, Soul, soul blueprint, The Blonde Mystic and tagged | Leave a Comment
18 Jan 2011

TBM6: Why This Is NOT Gnosticism (Gnostics Need Not Apply)

I was raised in a household where respect for the law was paramount. We were expected to obey a whole host of rules and guidelines for civil living. My paternal grandmother, who lived in close promixity to us, was exceedingly formal. I have no memories of sitting on her lap and reading a cozy children’s book, but I have many memories of her correcting my grammar and my table manners.

Grandma believed in education and she believed in hard work. She also believed firmly in the advancement of women’s rights. (Not bad for a woman born in 1899). She read the politics and business sections of the newspaper each day. She kept a tight rein on immediate family members.

All her life, my grandmother was a devout Anglican. The form and function of the Anglican church in Canada shaped many of her attitudes. One of these attitudes was her attitude towards God. She was raised to believe she was a lowly human being unworthy of close relationship with God. She would have been shocked — shaken to her core — to hear me speak of having a close and kind and loving relationship with God. To her, this would have been blasphemy. Hubris. An outrageous and presumptuous claim. To her way of thinking, the only possible — the only correct — way for a person to be in right relationship with God was to uphold the values of law: duty, honour, and obedience. She was a true Victorian matriarch in a post-Victorian age.

Grandma had a “top down” understanding of God, faith, and the soul (which is what the Anglican church had taught her), and she viewed duty, honour, and obedience as the only viable defences against the breakdown of civil society. She trusted reason, and greatly distrusted sentimentality, since the latter could only lead to weakness and impoverished will. Rigorous application of reason and respect for the law would in turn breed the required self discipline and personal responsibility so necessary to a person’s adult life.

Or so she thought.

She was right about the need for self discipline and personal responsibility. Unfortunately, she was completely and utterly wrong about the method for guiding the development of self discipline and personal responsibility in a growing child.

Spiritual teachers of great renown, regardless of their faith tradition, usually agree on one universal feature of the spiritual path: the need for self discipline. Many traditional spiritual practices that have evolved over the centuries have one main goal — the goal of teaching self discipline among disciples and adherents. Meditation and fasting are frequently cited as key methods for building and enhancing self discipline in religious seekers. If this works for you, then by all means stick with it. But you probably won’t find this site helpful to you.

This is because I recommend an altogether different way for people on the Spiral Path to gradually restore the sense of self discipline and personal responsibility they were born with.

I recommend a path of healing the damaged parts of the biological brain that are interfering with your ability to live a life filled with purpose, gratitude, and meaningful relationships.

I recommend this approach — in contrast to the traditional approaches of rigid spiritual practice — because it’s my contention that if you work to achieve balance and healing in your life, if you choose emotional integration and ongoing learning in your daily life, one of the by-products of this pursuit will be a growing inner core of trust in your own self discipline and your own commitment to personal responsibility. You’ll discover, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, that you’ve been walking along the Road without realizing you’ve been wearing the “the truth” the whole time. You just have to get to the point where you can recognize that truth for yourself.

What am I saying? I’m saying (contrary to the teachings of most spiritual teachers) that you won’t succeed in staying on the Spiral Path if you try to impose self discipline on yourself from the outside by engaging in strict, mechanistic, often obsessive religious rituals or practices. I’m saying you have to start from the inside. You have to start with your very own soul.

This part of what I’m teaching is non-negotiable. Everything I’ve learned from my angels and from the soul who once lived as Jesus is based on a doctrine of the soul that’s positive, that’s uplifting, that’s holistic, AND THAT’S
NOT GNOSTIC.

(I hope my inclusion of some very large letters will persuade you that I mean it when I say the doctrine of the soul I’m teaching is NOT Gnostic in any way, shape, or form.)

If you prefer a spiritual path where (1) you’re not asked to believe at all in the existence of the soul, or (2) where you can let yourself off the hook by believing in Gnostic teachings about the soul, then I invite you to look elsewhere. I have nothing to teach you if you choose to believe you’re a lost widget in a vast, uncaring universe, or (even worse) if you choose to believe you’re a “spark of the Divine” trapped in an evil body as part of a great cosmological battle between good and evil (i.e. Gnosticism).

How Gnostics see the world. Photo (c) JAT 2014

How a Gnostic sees the world. Photo (c) JAT 2014

There’s no point looking for God’s love in your life if you’re determined at every turn to reject your identity as a loving child of God. You may as well go out and join a secular charity devoted to good causes. It’s useful and worthwhile and important to society.

But it ain’t no spiritual path.

You’re either on the Spiral Path with all your heart and all your mind and all your courage and all your soul, or you’re not on it at all. You may be somewhere, but it’s not the Spiral Path.

Fish or cut bait, as my son’s Maritime relatives would say.

Either throw yourself into the idea that you have a soul and that it’s a good soul, or take up a new hobby that demands less courage.

It’s all I’m asking of you — that you believe in a loving God and that you believe you’re a loving child of God (aka “a soul”).

How a cataphatic nature mystic sees the world.

How a cataphatic nature mystic sees the world. Photo (c) JAT 2014

Yes, I know it’s a lot to ask of you. I’m not asking anything of you that wasn’t asked of me. We’re all in this together, and we need each other’s insights.

In other words, it’s pretty much a Twelve Step Programme for the human brain.

That’s why I think the Serenity Prayer is so terrific.

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Posted in building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism, Gnosticism, gratitude, healing, humbleness, Law (Nomos), My Spiral Path, Peace Sequence, personal responsibility, relationship with God, Soul, The Blonde Mystic, trust and tagged , | Leave a Comment
05 Jan 2011

TBM5: Keep It Simple, Keep It Sane

Over the years, I’ve observed that when I read a book about a particular religion or a New Age healing method, the first thing the authors want to explain to me is their cosmology. Each author seems to believe wholeheartedly that if I don’t understand the cosmology behind the religion, I won’t be able to benefit from the religion’s teachings. Hence I’m typically presented with a myth that reveals to poor unenlightened me the “truth” about the origins of the universe, the origins of God, and the origins of evil. I’m given names. Dates. Places. Lists of historical events. Lists of family descendants. Sometimes I’m given prophecies about future events. All this is revealed to me so I’ll better understand why I must follow all the steps required by the religion or the spiritual movement in my quest to connect more deeply with God.

These are all “top down” approaches to spirituality. The “top down” approach to religion, faith, and spirituality can also be described as the “fiction writer’s guide to the universe.” Any speculative fiction writer worth his or her salt can construct an elaborate Creation Myth. One of the best known speculative fiction writers of this ilk is J.R.R. Tolkien, whose lovingly crafted books about Middle Earth could easily be mistaken for religious revelation. The sheer scale of Tolkien’s cosmology is breathtaking, its impact, transformative. Yet it’s pure fiction.

So even though I’m a mystic, and even though I cut my writing teeth as a fiction writer (unpublished), I think it’s wrong for me to use a “top down” approach. It’s wrong for me to present you with a huge Creation Myth and expect you to believe it simply because I say so. That’s what religious leaders such as Christianity’s Apostle Paul once did. These religious leaders expect you to have blind faith.

Like many people today, I think blind faith is exactly what it sounds like — blind. Intentionally and wilfully blind. No different than putting on a blindfold and walking into a busy street in the arrogant belief that God will protect you from injury because of your faith. That’s not faith. That’s narcissistic pride.

I recommend a “bottom up” strategy of spiritual healing. This was the approach taken by the physician-scholar we know as Jesus of Nazareth. (Don’t worry, I’m not going biblical on you. There’s hardly anything in the Bible about Jesus’ actual teachings.)

Try to keep the table in your spiritual kitchen uncluttered. Take things one step at a time. Your brain has to change as you change, so don’t feed it too many new spiritual ideas at one time. Photo credit JAT 2020.

A “bottom up” strategy has many advantages. The first and most obvious advantage is that the “bottom up” strategy is equally available to all people regardless of gender, class, religion, socio-economic status, age, or physical health status. You don’t need special training or special credentials to access this strategy. Most of all, you don’t need pots full of money. (You’ll need some money, but that’s because everyone in the 21st century needs money to buy food, shelter, medicine, and other basic life necessities.) This is what I mean when I say you need to keep it simple.

A second advantage is that you don’t have to “check your brain at the door.” You don’t have to choose blind faith over reason. You don’t have to choose religion over science. On the contrary, you’ll need all the resources available to you inside your own brain and mind. You’ll be working your brain harder than you ever thought you could. This is what I mean when I say you need to keep it sane.

A third advantage is that you’re allowed to have a sense of humour and you’re allowed to make mistakes. (Maybe you take those two things for granted, but trust me when I say that fundamentalist religious leaders — teachers of the “top down” approach — have no tolerance for either humour or mistakes.)

A fourth advantage is that I don’t have to explain to you in gory detail each and every advantage of this strategy. You’ll figure it out for yourself as you go along. You’ll gradually figure it out at such a deep, unshakable, core level that the insights you achieve will be totally yours and nobody will be able to take them away from you. Ever.

Today’s thought is this: Spiritual leaders who insist on the “top down” approach are telling you that they believe in the “ladder of spiritual ascent.” They’re telling you they believe there’s a soul ladder where “bad” souls are at the bottom and “good” souls are at the top. They’re telling you this even if they don’t use the word “soul.” Listen carefully to the words these leaders use. Do they speak often in black-and-white symbols? Do they demand that you believe in black-and-white pairs of polar opposites such as good-versus-evil, male-versus-female, enlightened-versus-unenlightened, corrupt-body-versus-purified-mind? (You can probably think of many other examples.) Use your own experiences and your own common sense to challenge these claims.

Make a list of five pairs of polar opposites that you think might be impeding you personally on your own Spiral Path. Don’t make a list of 50 or 100 pairs, because that’s too much information for you to work with. You can start with a list that has more than 5 pairs on it, but take some time to reflect on your longer list, and whittle it down to 5 pairs (or as close to 5 pairs as you can get). This will be plenty for you to work on.

This is an example of keeping it simple. There’s no point sweating over a huge long list because your biological brain simply CANNOT deal with that much complexity and that much pain at one time. Don’t even try. Just pick 5 pairs (or thereabouts), and post them where you can see them every day. This will help your biological brain remember what your goals are.

Looking back on the beginning of my own spiritual journey, I would have picked these five pairs to work on:

  1. Good souls versus evil souls (because I believed then what many spiritual writers were saying).
  2. Worthy souls versus unworthy souls (because I’d fallen into the trap of believing I wasn’t worthy of God’s love and forgiveness, though I believed other people were worthy).
  3. Humbleness versus humility (though I doubt I could have formulated a distinct definition for these two at the time).
  4. Selflessness versus selfishness (at the time, I thought these two were polar opposites, and as a result, I allowed myself to become a co-dependent doormat in more than one relationship).
  5. Perfectionism versus forgiveness (this pair kept me occupied for several years).

See why you should only pick 5 pairs? Just being honest with yourself about 5 pairs is enough to make anyone throw up.

Even one pair is pretty intimidating in the beginning. But you have to start somewhere on the Spiral Path of learning who you are as a soul, and this is as good a place as any.

As we shall see, this examination of your own polar opposites has a biological purpose, a definable, quantifiable biological purpose that will help you heal your biological brain. That’s what “bottom up” teaching is all about — it’s about starting with the tools you currently have (i.e. your biology) and maximizing the DNA you were born with so you can be the best person you’re capable of being. It’s about starting with the foundation God has given you (that’s the “bottom”) and strengthening that foundation through your own spiritual initiatives and your own hard work. Building outward rather than upward. Building outward changes and connections in your family, community, and workplace rather than building castles in the sky. Building outward with roads and schools and hospitals until you can touch the hand of your neighbour.

Maybe you think this sounds too simple, too sane, not very mysterious, and even kind of boring. All I can say to that is . . . the Spiral Path is anything but predictable.

(Chortle, chortle).

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, dualism, faith, healing, My Spiral Path, mystic, Soul, soul blueprint, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged | Leave a Comment
03 Jan 2011

TBM4: More Thoughts on the Soul

I’d like to be able to recommend some well-written books to you about the constitution, as it were, of your soul. But I can’t. Because there aren’t any.

I know this because, for my Master’s degree in theological studies, I recently wrote a long research paper (or short thesis, if you prefer) on the history of doctrines of the soul in ancient Greek, Judaic, and early Christian thought. You wouldn’t believe how kooky some of the ideas were back then — and how kooky they continue to be in major world religions today. These ideas are so kooky that fiction writers — the people who write horror and dark fantasy novels and screenplays — don’t need to invent any new ideas. All they have to do is recycle ancient ideas about the soul that have been scaring the crap out of people for thousands of years.

So ya got yer stories about lost souls. And stolen souls. And soul vampires. And souls detaching from bodies to go on nightly dream journeys. And souls corrupted by original sin. And souls wandering around as ghosts. And souls sent to Hell or Sheol or Gehenna or Hades or whatever. And souls enslaved by the devil. And souls that are demons in disguise. And souls that can be controlled with magic spells, potions, or rituals. And souls that are trapped in assorted jars, bowls, vials, statues, TV sets, cars, and the latest fad, of course — Facebook pages.

These ideas about the soul all have one thing in common: they reek of paranoia and terror. So I’m thinkin’ they have nothing to do with God, and everything to do with major mental illness (eg. psychosis).

In other words, these untrusting ideas about the soul belong in only one place, and that’s the garbage can.

(c) Image*After

(c) Image*After

So today’s practical tip is this: when it comes to the constitution of your soul, keep it simple, keep it sane.

Start with the assumption that God is not stupid.

From there, go to the assumption that God only creates good souls that can’t be imprisoned and can’t be stolen.

Then remind yourself (as often as you can) that you are a good soul, too. (In other words, God didn’t turn all of Creation upside down and zero in on you — and only you — just so you can be the one and only soul in Heaven and Earth who’s truly defective. No pity parties allowed.)

After that, there’s only one logical place to go — total confusion! ‘Cause if God’s not stupid, and God only makes good souls, and you are a good soul, but your life is still a complete mess . . . then the problem is that you don’t have the necessary tools — the facts, the information, the knowledge, the insight you need — in order to make sense of who you are and why you’re here.

As I said yesterday, your problems as a human being aren’t caused by your soul. Your problems are caused by poor teaching — poor teaching that makes it almost impossible for you to live a balanced, holistic life with the information you currently have.

It’s not God who has created the confusion within you. It’s all the poor teaching you got when you were growing up. It’s all the black-and-white (dualistic) thinking that got rammed down your throat year after year. All the either-or ideas. All the pure rights and pure wrongs. The winners and the losers. The saved and the unsaved. The righteous and the unrighteous.

Creation isn’t made like that. And neither is your soul. It’s not healthy for your soul and it’s not healthy for your biological body to embrace black-and-white thinking. Black-and-white thinking leads to perfectionism. Perfectionism leads to extremism. Extremism leads to violence and terror.

Better to be confused for a while than to be caught in a nightmare of perfectionism and “Divine Law.”

Living a confused life is much simpler than living a perfect life.

On the Spiral Path, simpler is better.

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Posted in dualism, mental illness, Mother and Father God, orthodox teachings about the soul, Soul, soul blueprint, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy, trust 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
20 Nov 2010

CC43: The Hole-y Bucket of Humility

“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.”

“Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, then fix it, dear Henry . . . “

“With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza . . .”

Hole-y bucket of humility (c) JAT 2014

The hole-y bucket of religious humility. There’s a big hole right in the middle (or worse, the bottom) where the good stuff gushes out. You always feel half-empty in your relationship with God, instead of full to the brim with courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion. Photo credit JAT 2014.

You probably know this song from your childhood. We used to sing it at Brownies and at summer camp. It always made us laugh when we got to the punchline of the song: the bucket that started the song because it had a hole in it was the tool that was needed by Henry and Liza to fix said bucket. Without an un-holey bucket, they couldn’t fix the hole-y bucket. But they only had one bucket — the one with the hole in it. It was a circular argument.

The orthodox Western Church’s teachings on humility are exactly like this childhood song.

Before I talk about the Church’s teachings on humility, though, I want to talk about a different core virtue, one that’s never discussed in the church. This is the core virtue of humbleness. Humbleness is what Jesus taught. By contrast, humility is what Paul taught.

Humbleness is a feeling that sort of settles into the middle of your heart after you find redemption. Humbleness is the natural state of thinking, feeling, behaving, and understanding that you end up with when you accept the redemptive power of God’s forgiveness in your life. Humbleness is your natural soul state. It’s who you really are underneath all the bullshit layers of status addiction. It’s a deep sense of trust in yourself — not a sense of pride or hubris, but a sense of trust. It’s an unshakable sense of acceptance. It’s a sense that God made you to be a particular person, and that’s the only person you can be. So you stop fighting your inner self. And you become free to become your inner self.

That’s what humbleness is. It’s a state of absolute freedom from the tyranny of status addiction. Once you’re free from the constant voice of status addiction in your head — the constant judging of yourself, the constant comparing of yourself to others, the constant criticism of others, the perfectionism, the self-pity, the lack of common sense, the lack of peace, comfort, and safety in your life — once you’re free of all that you can begin to like yourself as a person. (Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change?)

A humble person is free to make choices based on a whole new set of criteria. A humble person isn’t worried about getting more status, so a humble person is free to practise the virtues of common sense. A humble person isn’t trying to be somebody he’s not, so a humble person doesn’t feel guilty about following his calling. A humble person thinks it’s wrong to accuse of God of being too stupid or too lazy to make souls that are all different from each other yet all equally beautiful and worthy. A humble person shows her love and respect for God by trying every day to be who she really is, instead of trying to be somebody she’s not. A humble person knows his limits.

This is not what the Church means when the Church talks about humility.

The traditional orthodox Western position is that no human being (except that Jesus dude) has ever been truly worthy of God’s love and trust. The Church starts with the assumption that you are a bucket (aka “a vessel”) with a big, fat hole in the bottom.

You are a bucket that needs to be fixed. All your courage and your faith have been draining out through the hole. Obviously, the hole needs to be patched. You must use your free will and your self-discipline to patch the hole so “the vessel that is you” can contain the love of Christ. But you must also practise humility. Humility demands that you not consider yourself a bucket at all, because then you’d be able to carry your own portion of courage and faith, which you’re not allowed to have, because that would be presumptuous. Only when you rejoice in the fact that you’re a bucket with a humongous hole in the bottom will you be able to feel Christ’s love flowing through you and out into the world through the hole. You must therefore be a hole-y bucket in order to fix the hole-y bucket that is you.

Catch 22, anyone?

Let’s imagine instead that the hole-y bucket is your biological brain/central nervous system. This bucket admittedly has a few holes in it by the time you’ve grown up. But these holes are fixable. More importantly, the holes are not you. They’re not the real you. They’re damaged biological parts that need to be healed (same as clogged arteries or a broken arm). So you find some qualified people who can help you heal them. Slowly, one by one, the holes begin to heal. You begin to discover somewhat to your surprise that you — you, yourself, and you — are capable of startling feats of compassion. The more healed your bucket, the more love and courage and faith your bucket is able to hold.

Go figure. Who would guess that a bucket without a big hole in it would actually hold more of the good stuff (like love and forgiveness) than a hole-y bucket? Gee whiz, Mother and Father, that’s, like, totally unfair of you to make our reality as humans so logical!

Mother and Father, you rock!

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Posted in brain-soul connection, Concinnate Christianity, healing, humbleness, humility, Paul vs Jesus, redemption, Soul, status addiction, trust 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
10 Nov 2010

CC40: How My Experience as a Chemist Has Influenced My Mysticism

Theology at its best is a language — a language that helps individuals understand their relationship with God while not contradicting or denying one of God’s other important languages: science.

It’s important for God’s children to have access to the language of uplifting theology. This is because not all of God’s children can easily understand or relate to the language of science. This is okay with God. In fact, it’s more than okay. God’s children (one of whom would be you) are not all the same. God’s children are all different from each other, although we share some traits in common, such as the ability to love and forgive.

Your soul wasn’t created by God the Mother and God the Father with a batch of dirt and a cookie cutter (Genesis 2:7 notwithstanding). In all of Creation (and it’s a pretty darned big Creation!), there’s no other soul quite like you. There’s no other soul who thinks exactly the way you think, no other soul who expresses love exactly the way you express love. You’re one of a kind.

This means you “get” some languages better than you get other languages.

Maybe you totally get music, which means you feel the rhythms and harmonies deep in your bones without anyone ever really teaching you how to do it. You just “get” it so deeply that your whole life is transformed by it, each and every day.

Maybe you totally get poetry. That’s a language, too. It’s not the same as prose. Somehow it triggers different feelings and different responses in you than prose. You read a few verses of exquisite poetry and BAM — powerful insights descend upon your soul and you’re forever changed.

Now don’t laugh, but I react to chemistry the way many people react to music and poetry. It’s not that I don’t like music or poetry, it’s just that, well, I really, really “get” the language of chemistry.

“Tremble, O Earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water” (Psalm 114: 7-8). Photo credit JAT 2017.

If you’ve studied a lot of chemistry, you know that chemists don’t think in quite the same way as physicists, or biologists, or computer scientists, or mathematicians. Physicists get excited about field theory. Biologists get excited about energy transfer in living organisms and ecosystems. Computer scientists can think in binary code (an amazing skill!). And mathematicians live and breathe for the wonder of tautologies (showing how two sides of an equation are actually equal).

But chemists spend most of their time dealing with bonding. Molecular bonding. They want to know what holds atoms together into molecules. They want to understand the relationships between the constituent parts of both atoms and molecules. They spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to coax one little ion or electron from one spot to a different spot so it can do a different job. A chemist’s stock in trade is the probability wave functions of electrons, those tiny little negatively charged particles that are so much smaller than an atomic “nucleus” and are so damned fussy about where they’re willing to be located at any one time. Yet where would our material world be without them?

Even though physicists now estimate that “ordinary matter” (that is, atoms and molecules) accounts for no more than 4-5% of all known energy in the known universe (they call this ordinary matter “baryonic matter”), baryonic matter has a lot to tell us about the nature of God. And this baryonic matter is what chemists really “get.”

A number of physicists these days are pulling out all the stops to try to find a unified theory of nature. (Hence the construction of the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider). But, you know, for my part, as a chemist and as a mystic, I’m wary of anyone in any field who starts to look for a simple unified theory about anything. This smacks of monism, the longstanding religious belief that when you get to the very heart of Creation, there exists only a singular, undifferentiated, divine “oneness.” Plato’s middle writings, such as Phaedrus (247c), speak of this colourless, shapeless, all-inclusive oneness, and many neo-Platonic Christian mystics have followed suit in the monism department.

Needless to say, I’m not a monistic or apophatic mystic.

Me, I think it’s okay for us to listen to what God is saying to us through the language of chemistry. Even though baryonic matter (including the ordinary atoms and molecules that make up Planet Earth’s waters, lands, and atmosphere, plus all life on Planet Earth) represents only 4-5% of the universe’s energy, it’s the only part of Creation we can directly access as human beings, and it’s the only part of Creation that God seems to think we need while we’re living here as angels-in-temporary-human-form, so I figure it’s worth paying attention to!

And as I said above, chemistry is all about bonding.

It’s all about the relationship and balance between the tiny negatively charged particles we call electrons and the much larger positively charged particles we call protons. It’s all about the relationship and balance between certain probability wave functions and certain forces such as gravity, etc.. (I’m simplifying here, and am purposely skipping the whole subatomic particle thing, as it would needlessly complicate the discussion at this point).

When you think about a molecule such as sodium chloride (table salt), you probably think about it as salt. Me, I think of God the Father’s negatively charged electrons dancing a beautiful electron orbital dance of harmony, balance, intentional cooperation, and divine love with God the Mother to help her unite her much larger sodium ions with her equally large chloride ions in a very specific and useful scientific way that helps them together, as God, create the necessary biological building blocks used by the many forms of individual life that have lived here at one time or another over the past 3.85 billions years or so.

There you have it — my one-sentence rebuke of Creationism.

In my opinion, Creationism is an example of the language of theology at its worst.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, Concinnate Christianity, Creationism, ethical mysticism, HDM Myths, monism, Mother and Father God, Mother God, My Spiral Path, oneness, Plato, Soul and tagged | Leave a Comment
15 Oct 2010

CC38: An Ancient Mystery Revealed

I’m old enough to remember the 1984 Wendy’s commercial that featured the three little old ladies and the stick-in-your-head catch phrase, “Where’s the beef?” Sure, the commercial was meant to sell Wendy’s bigger hamburger patties. But the catch phrase went deeper than that. It quickly became a cultural metaphor for something that was “all talk, no action.” Something without real substance.

Many spiritual teachers are interested in selling you books about how to “raise your consciousness” and “seek wisdom” and be “one with all Creation.” These books are full of platitudes and cliches, and they remind me a lot of the big fluffy bun that was being parodied in the Wendy’s commercial. The bun looks impressive on the outside, but when you bite into it, you discover there’s precious little substance inside. There’s just the same old mystery teachings that have been taught by cult leaders for . . . oh . . . for at least five thousand years now.

We are all One. Blah, blah, blah. Your soul is a spark of the Divine. Blah, blah, blah. Your physical body and your physical mind are drenched in evil and must be transcended. Blah, blah, blah. Specially chosen spiritual leaders have consented to descend into this corrupt world to lead the forces of light against the forces of evil. Blah, blah, blah. You can help in this great battle. Blah, blah, blah. The time is at hand when human beings will rise to a new, never before seen level of consciousness and enlightenment. Blah, blah, blah. In order to reach this new level, you must surrender yourself, let go of yourself, live in the moment, let go of attachments, let go of illusion. Blah, blah, blah. Only then can you know the bliss, peace, and joy of oneness with the Divine.

At the beginning of Eckhart Tolle’s bestselling 1997 book The Power of Now (Vancouver: Namaste Publishing, 1997), he describes an episode of spiritual awakening that took place after a “dark night of the soul” when he was 29. For five months, he “lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss” (page 2). He then “spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy. But even the most beautiful experiences come and go.”

Really? They come and go? Because that hasn’t been my experience. My experience has been that if you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing on the Spiral Path, and if you ground your spiritual journey in reality instead of in ancient mystical gobbledygook, you can get up every morning and go to bed at night and live every moment of your ordinary, ho-hum day in a state of profound trust and companionship with God.

This makes every ho-hum day anything but ho-hum.

If you see what I’m getting at here.

This amphora, found in Etruria and dated 540-535 BCE, depicts Herakles killing the Nemean lion – the first of the twelve labours of Herakles. The spiritual journey shouldn’t make you feel as if you’re reinventing Herakles’ terrible struggles. (Amphora on display at Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.)

 Eckhart Tolle and his mystical predecessors are always talking about escape — escape from the body, escape from suffering, escape from illusion, escape from evil forces, and (in the most extreme form) escape from death. They’re missing the point. The Spiral Path has never been about escape. The Spiral Path has always been about forgiveness, healing, and redemption.*

If you want to feel deep peace and joy every day (and this is possible, believe it or not), your ongoing goal is to HEAL yourself, not escape yourself.

In order to heal yourself (and perhaps others, too), you need to understand at a conscious level what’s going on inside your biological body as you struggle to make sense of your spiritual journey. In order to do this, you need more than ancient myths to guide you. You need science.

There are no exceptions to this general statement. Every mystic in every faith tradition in every country of the world needs science. There is no ethical mysticism without ethical scientific exploration.

There is no science in The Power of Now. There’s a great deal of mystical speculation, but there’s no science. Put plain and simple, I don’t trust any spiritual teacher who’s afraid to look science in the eye.

There is no need to postulate, as Tolle does, the existence of a “negative energy field” (called an emotional “pain-body”) whose job it is to control your thoughts and your mind like some sort of “invisible entity” (page 29). This sounds little different than demon-possession as it was formerly understood. It’s an irresponsible and scientifically insupportable claim. It confuses and frightens people.

Furthermore, it relies entirely on the author’s own authority as mystic and prophet. It starts with Tolle’s personal assumptions about the interface between mind, body, soul, and brain. From there, he builds a pyramid of guesswork. My question in response to his thesis is . . . where’s the beef? Where’s the science combined with the heart? Don’t talk to me about a corrupting “pain-body.” Talk to me — scholar to scholar — about neurotransmitters and glial cells and underactive sections of the brain and seizure disorders and over-activation of the pain-pleasure circuitry (to barely scratch the surface of the neurophysiology that’s involved). I don’t mind if you use some analogies and even some mythical archetypes to explain brain chemistry to a lay audience, but if you yourself don’t understand your spiritual journey in scientific terms, then you’re not saying anything different than Plato said to a vulnerable audience 2,400 years ago. It’s pure myth. And it’s pure crap.

I’m sorry, but it’s just not true that human beings can somehow separate the spiritual journey or the spiritual brain from the everyday science of everyday life. You cannot find God by sitting on park benches for two long years. (You’ll find something on those park benches, but it won’t be enlightenment.) You can only find God in a lasting way by making lasting choices in your life — choices that will slowly heal your biological brain and your biological body, and allow you to live each day as an angel-in-human-form. Your spiritual task is not to become less yourself. It’s to become more yourself — more and more like the soul you really are.

This depends, of course, on a belief in the soul. If you don’t believe you were born with a soul — a pure, amazing, unique soul that always is and always will be a pure, amazing, unique soul — then you and I have no common ground for discussion. Everything I’ve learned from God the Mother and God the Father, and everything I’ve learned from the angel who once lived as Jesus, begins with the core integrity of the soul. Everything I’ve learned about healing and redemption revolves around the full integration of your immortal soul with your very mortal human body.

Everything I’ve learned about healing and redemption revolves around the balance of body, mind, soul, and heart. Around the balance (NOT the pyramidal, step-wise hierarchy) of Maslow’s physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, and self esteem needs. Around the balance of physical joy, mental joy, spiritual joy, and emotional joy. Around the balance of work, play, extroverted relationships, and introverted downtime. Around using the whole brain, not just parts of the brain.

Whole Brain Thinking is the only way to find the Spiral Path, understand the Spiral Path, and persevere on the Spiral Path.

There. That’s the Ancient Mystery in a nutshell: you have to use your whole brain — your whole central nervous system — in a consistently balanced, healthy, emotionally mature way. When you do, you can more easily hear God’s voice, because God’s voice is as balanced and emotionally mature as can be.

And guess what? You don’t have to take my word for it! You can research all the ways to have a happy, healthy, fully functioning brain, and you’ll come up with essentially the same ideas I’ve presented here!

Science and spirituality together on the same page. Now we’re cooking with gas.

* On the last text page of The Power of Now, Tolle reveals that “the whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary (page 193).” Needless to say, Tolle and I couldn’t disagree more.

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Posted in "Escape", balance as spiritual practice, brain-soul connection, Concinnate Christianity, ethical mysticism, Gnosticism, healing, mysticism, oneness, Plato, prophets, Soul, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
03 Sep 2010

CC31: How God Listens To Your Soul and Not To Your Idiocy

I remember the day when I finally accepted the fact that God could hear all the nasty thoughts I was thinking. I wanted to throw up.

Up until then, I’d been trying hard to convince myself that “what happens in my head, stays in my head.” I was sure that my nasty, judgmental thoughts about other people were my own little secret. Sure, I felt guilty about those unkind thoughts. But as long as I didn’t express them out loud, nobody would know about them but me.

But then I decided I wanted to learn to be a mystic. It was a conscious decision. Nobody forced me to become a mystic. Nor did I have any big epiphanies or any life-altering visions or any sudden calls from God (i.e. conversion experiences). I simply thought it would be cool.

Photo credit JAT 2018.

I confess now, with the full benefit of 20/20 hindsight, that ten years ago, when I made this decision to learn to be a mystic, my motivation reeked of status addiction. This was not the best of motivations, as I’ve pointed out in earlier posts. I wanted to be “special,” and it seemed to me that “the mystical path” would be a good way for me to become “better” than others. I admit now that this was my motivation at the time, but ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been willing to admit this to myself. I desperately wanted to believe that I was becoming a mystic “for the benefit of others.” I wanted to believe that I was only a humble servant of God — a humble vessel of God’s will. Really, though, what I wanted at the time was the status that comes with being a mystic.

I wasn’t entirely devoted to my own selfishness, however. There was a part of me that genuinely yearned for a deep sense of connection with God. There was a part of me that was very . . . lonely. Very sad. There was a part of me that felt small and quiet and vulnerable, that wanted to reach out to God, but didn’t know how. This part, of course, was my soul. But I didn’t know that at the time. I was too busy filling up my head with New Age idiocy to recognize the voice of my own soul.

Good news, though. God was much smarter than I was, and God didn’t pay any attention to my ridiculously vain and selfish New Age/devout Christian prayers. God listened only to my soul. My soul was saying, “I want to remember how to love,” and that’s the only choice I made that God was willing to help me with. I must have offered up 20 selfish prayer requests for every time I asked God to help me learn how to love. God ignored the many selfish demands I made (thank heaven we have a God with common sense!), then God put my nose to grindstone on the one prayer I’d asked that was worth asking.

I had no idea that this one sincere prayer would be such hard work for me, my family, and God. I had no idea that I was literally asking God to help me rewire my entire biological brain.*

You would assume, naturally, that the process of rewiring a person’s entire biological brain would take a great deal of time. (It did). And a great deal of experienced help. (It did). And a great many changes in daily lifestyle. (It did). And a great many conscious changes in attitude. (It did). And many moments of painful insight. Plus setbacks. And moments of quiet healing. And tears along with great joy.

It did.

How I Felt At First - Photo credit JAT 2014

How I Felt At First. Although most of the time my brain felt rigid and full of selfish weeds, God saw the spring flowers waiting to bloom. My sincere wish to remember how to love was the trillium God saw and nurtured. Photo credit JAT 2014.

That’s what it felt like, and many spiritual seekers have described similar feelings. But inside my biological body, at a neurophysiological level, changes were taking place. My neurons and glial cells were changing, adapting, making new connections, breaking old connections. My immune system was changing along with my central nervous system (CNS). I was getting a gradual “internal CNS makeover.” This happened because my body was rewiring itself to accommodate my new regimen — my new regimen of remembering how to love.

If I’ve learned anything about the spiritual journey, it’s this: no human being anywhere on Planet Earth at any time in Earth’s history has ever been exempt from this biological reality. You are a package deal. You have a soul intertwined with your biological body, and you can’t find spiritual enlightenment if you’re abusing your physical body. It’s a scientific reality that nobody can escape (though most mystics want to pretend they’re exempt from these rules).

Eventually I realized that I was — am — a package deal, and that as part of this package deal, my thoughts and feelings are not hidden from God. My thoughts and feelings are an open book. I can try to fight this reality, or I can work with this reality. It’s my choice. If I try to fight it, I hurt myself, and I end up hurting the people I love. If I decide to work within this paradigm, and trust that God forgives me even when I make a mistake, then I’m using my free will in the fullest way possible. I’m using my free will to trust in God’s love and forgiveness. I’m using my free will to be in full connection and relationship with God. I’m using my free will to be open to their observations and suggestions for constructive change.

Of course, this paradigm pretty much implies that change is part of the healing process.

So . . . this also pretty much implies that religious leaders who reject change in favour of the status quo (status addiction) are not part of the healing process.

I’m very grateful to God the Mother and God the Father, plus the soul who once lived as Jesus son of Joseph, for being so patient and so firm and so consistent with me. They got me on track — the track I’d chosen of remembering how to love — and they never gave up on me. They stuck right with me, and they put up with a lot of abuse from me, until I got it through my thick head that my soul was — is — okay.

As for those nasty thoughts I used to have . . . I don’t have them anymore. Eventually I learned that those nasty thoughts were the “voice” (as it were) of status addiction. I was looking for a way to raise myself up inside my own head by putting other people down. (Yeah, it really is that simple!) When I confronted my own issues with status addiction, and stopped denying the harm I was creating for myself and others, I no longer needed the “high” of thinking nasty thoughts.

So I stopped.

It’s a great cure for that feeling of wanting to throw up because you’re carrying so much guilt, remorse, and embarrassment about your own nastiness.

* Only recently have neuroscientists come to understood how malleable and changeable the human brain is. This new field of research is known as “neuroplasticity.”

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, ethical mysticism, free will, healing, humility, My Spiral Path, mystic, mysticism, prayer, Soul, status addiction and tagged | Leave a Comment
26 Aug 2010

CC30: Forgiveness: The Free Lunch You’ve Been Looking For

Ask most Christian ministers what forgiveness is, and you won’t get much of an answer.

This infuriates me. Christian ministers have been given an incredible opportunity to help people of faith understand what forgiveness is and how to bring forgiveness into their daily lives. In fact, it’s one of the few things the church can offer that isn’t being offered elsewhere through service clubs, secular charities, and weekend workshops taught by various coaches and New Age gurus.

I have a book called Helping People Forgive by David W. Augsburger (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). According to the back cover, Dr. Augsburger is a Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Fuller Theological Seminary. I’m sure Dr. Augsburger is a sincere, well-meaning man. But he doesn’t know the first thing about the mystical reality of forgiveness.

Early in his book, Dr. Augsburger says, “A major paradigmatic shift occurred two thousand years ago in the philosophical breakthrough that allowed persons to disavow their past and alter their future through ‘forgiveness'” (page 9).

I disagree. Forgiveness is not about disavowing the past, nor about reversing a moral judgment (Augsburger, page 11). Nor is it (as one of my classmates said, though he ought to know better, considering his interest in restorative justice) a state of “just not thinking about the harm at all.”

Forgiveness is an act of great moral courage that requires the person who’s doing the forgiving to dredge up from within their own soul all the divine love they’re capable of.

Forgiveness is not for the faint of heart.

While it’s quite within the capacity of all human beings to forgive themselves and to forgive each other (as Jesus taught), it’s not something a person can learn overnight. For many people, it will take years to learn how to forgive. Part of the reason for this is that when you open up your heart wide enough that you can hear your own soul, you have to deal with a lot of intense emotions, including painful emotions. Many people don’t want to deal with such emotions.

If you’ve never learned to master intense, positive, mature emotions such as gratitude, trust, devotion, and courage, you’re going to find it difficult to master the emotion of forgiveness.

Not impossible, but difficult.

This shouldn’t stop you from trying. Each day, your beloved Mother and Father God forgive you for everything you do that’s motivated by status addiction, or greed, or rudeness, or cruelty (to name some of the less-than-loving motivations you might choose in a typical day). They forgive you whether or not you ask for forgiveness. They forgive you for everything — and I mean everything.

HOWEVER, the fact that they forgive you does NOT mean they consider such behaviours acceptable. They forgive you when you’re abusive towards others, but they also have an opinion about your decision to be abusive towards others.

Divine love and forgiveness are like this hoard of 1st century CE Roman coins found in an ancient pottery amphora in Egypt. The original owner buried the coins for safekeeping, but he and his heirs eventually lost track of it. Such treasure hoards, when found today, usually fall under national laws that require the finder to first offer the hoard to a public museum at a fair price. This allows the treasure to be shared equally by all those who visit the museum. In other words, like a museum treasure trove, forgiveness belongs to everyone. Photo credit JAT 2017

God the Mother and God the Father have free will, just as you have free will. They’re within their rights to have an opinion about your harmful actions. They’re also within their rights to promptly respond to you, to share their thoughts and feelings with you about the choices you’re making. This means, of course, that God is not transcendent and God is not unemotional with regard to your choices (although orthodox Western Christianity would have you believe that God would never cry about the choices you’re making.)

God forgives you whether you ask or not, and by the same token, God is always watching and listening whether you ask or not. God is always watching and listening to you, because this is how God knows when it’s time to intervene to help you (whether you ask for help or not).

God will intervene whether or not you recite the right prayer to God, whether or not you think you’re worthy of God’s love, or whether or not you think you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness.

You don’t get a say in these things, because it’s not up to you to decide what God should be thinking, feeling, or doing. That’s up to God.

You can’t make God stop loving you. You just can’t, no matter how hard you try.

You are one of God’s children. They love you. They forgive you. There is no force anywhere in Creation that can block their divine love. The flip side of the coin is this: there’s no ritual, no prayer, no temple, no church, no sacrament that can give you more divine love than you already have. God loves everyone — from the North Pole to the South Pole and all points in between — in the fullest, most wondrous way imaginable. God’s love cannot be purchased. Ever.

Anyone who tells you that you can only receive God’s love by accepting baptism in Christ is lying to you. Give God some credit for being able to love you completely without attaching a bunch of religious strings.

Trust in God’s love and forgiveness as Jesus trusted in God’s love and forgiveness. There’s only one free lunch in all Creation, and this happens to be it.

As a mystic, I’ve worked extensively on the question of forgiveness — what it is, how to do it, how to let it transform your life. I’ll continue to write on this topic in future.

Thanks for listening. And thanks be to God!

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, empathy, forgiveness, free will, honesty, humbleness, meditation, Mother and Father God, prayer, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
14 Jun 2010

CC20: Further Update on the Vatican’s "Sin Within"

Last Friday, on June 11, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI addressed 15,000 priests who were in St. Peter’s Square to mark the end of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest. In his homily, Benedict asked forgiveness from God and from affected people for the sins of the sexually abusive clerics in the Roman Catholic church. He also promised “to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again” (Nicole Winfield, “Pope Begs Forgiveness, Promises Action on Abuse,” The Globe and Mail, June 11, 2010).

While I’m quite certain that God the Mother and God the Father do, indeed, forgive Benedict for his own errors, and do, indeed, forgive the priests who’ve intentionally harmed the faithful in their care, I’m equally certain that hidden abuse will continue in the Roman Catholic church.

Many Christians want to make this a question of theodicy: how do we explain evil in the world while at the same time preserving our image of God as good and loving? If God allows abuse to continue in the church, does it mean that God is powerless and ineffectual? Impotent against the powers of the devil? Or does it mean that God is actually not a very nice person?

Many of the Christians I know would much rather blame the problem of evil on God and/or the devil than put the blame where it belongs: on the values and moral beliefs held by both individuals and by cultural groups.

The Roman Catholic church is a cultural group. It teaches particular cultural beliefs. (These comprise its theological doctrines). It has a consciously promoted schedule of active teaching. Its goal is to teach its people early on in life how they should conduct themselves in relationship to God, church hierarchy, and empire. Traditionally, it has punished members who question its teachings or its authority (the Inquisition). It has conferred upon itself the mantle of infallibility. It claims it is the one true church, the only legitimate path to salvation.

The Roman Catholic church has long held a vision of how society should be — how society should look, act, and “feel.” Its body of theological doctrines has been carefully cultivated so that only kind of garden can grow in its presence. The church has no one but itself to blame for this.

at the Vatican (c) J MacDonald 2011

at the Vatican (c) J MacDonald 2011

The conditions in a garden dictate what kinds of plants will thrive there. A garden that has full sun, lots of water, and lots of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.) will grow very different plants than a garden that has shady conditions or low nitrogen or a high pH. If you restrict certain nutrients, you restrict which plants will flower abundantly. If you water some plants and not others, you control which plants will flourish, and which plants will live a miserable life of bare subsistence before dying a premature death.

Throughout its history, the orthodox Western church has been heavily committed to the lessons learned from gardening. Hewing closely to the principle that the person who controls the conditions of a garden will control the ultimate harvest of said garden, the church has intentionally chosen a specific blend of nutrients for its religio-political garden. The nutrients in this case are its doctrines. The doctrines are what “feed” the hearts and minds of the faithful. If you precisely control the “mix” of doctrines available to your people, you precisely control the rate at which people’s hearts and minds can grow. If you balance this mix with the precision of a master botanist, you can ensure that the people in your congregations grow just enough to offer you the occasional flower without ever getting big enough to overshadow you.

It’s a new idea, this idea that the introduction of particular belief systems can alter the physical structure and biochemical functioning of a person’s central nervous system and brain. I suppose I should amend that to say it’s a new idea among neuroscientists — unfortunately, it’s not a new idea among history’s power mongers.

Long before the advent of brain scanning technologies, would-be tyrants had empirically observed that people’s behaviour could be altered through the careful repetition of certain ideas. These tyrants didn’t understand the changes at a biochemical or neurophysiological level, and they didn’t need to — all they needed to understand was the result, the harvest of their ideological campaigns. Early orthodox Church Fathers understood this principle well.

Early in the history of the church, orthodox Christian teachers made a conscious decision to take an axe to the teachings of Jesus as represented in the Gospel of Mark, and to overshadow Jesus’ sunny, open “vineyard” with the giant magic beanstalk of spiritual ascent (a beanstalk seen later in the children’s fairy tale of that name). They’ve been feeding this beanstalk of “elevation” for the “elect” with their repeated assertions that the devil exists, that Judgment Day is coming (soon, very soon! — or at least sometime, maybe, we’re pretty darned sure, because it says so in the apocalyptic books), that the soul is tainted by original sin, that Jesus is your only hope of salvation, that Holy Mother Church is the only portal through which you can gain access to the gold at the top of the beanstalk.

This set of teachings was well established by the mid-3rd century CE. It’s not new (and it certainly didn’t originate with Jesus himself!). The problem with the church’s teachings is that their doctrines damage your biological brain. When you fully embrace these teachings as “divine truth,” your brain stops working the way God intends. Your brain responds exactly like the plant that’s been crippled because the gardener has intentionally withheld the water, nutrients, and care you need. Your heart and mind don’t really grow. You spend all your life sitting in the shadow of the towering beanstalk and feeling like crap. You feel like crap because all the truth — all the spiritual nutrients — about the actual nature of your relationship with God have been artfully concealed from you. You wouldn’t recognize the plants that grow in a sunny, lush, well-watered garden if they came chasing after you.

Such as forgiveness. Would you be able to recognize forgiveness if it entered your life? Probably not. Most Christian’s can’t. That’s because the orthodox Church has never taught people about forgiveness (which is why I’m somewhat sceptical about the Pope’s current pleas for forgiveness).

Why hasn’t the Church taught people how to forgive when it’s obvious from reading the Gospel of Mark that Jesus insisted on the message of forgiveness? The Church doesn’t want to teach people how to forgive, because once people catch onto the feeling of forgiveness, they’ll be able to figure out for themselves that divine forgiveness is the antithesis of “salvation” and “grace.” They’ll realize the church has been lying to them for centuries about their souls. The garden of orthodoxy might start to look like a thorny patch of weeds and thistles instead of the prophesied paradise!

It’s no mystery why some church clerics have been sexually abusing vulnerable people in their care. You can’t expect a human being’s brain to produce a harvest of compassion, integrity, inclusiveness, and enlightenment when all you do every day is try to fill that person’s brain with a steady diet of dissociation, lack of forgiveness, hierarchical control, and suppression of learning.

If Pope Benedict really means it when he says he wants to do “everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again,” the only truly effective strategy will be for him to call a Council along the lines of Vatican II, and embark on the painful path of rescinding some of the church’s most cherished doctrinal beliefs.

Somehow I’m not holding my breath.

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Posted in "4 S's", Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, occult themes, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged | Leave a Comment
08 Jun 2010

CC18: "Oneness" — The Great Bait and Switch

There’s something particularly insidious about the idea that “We Are All One.”

Yeah, I know, I know . . . it sounds wonderfully spiritual and enlightened to say “we are all One.” It sounds, oh, so inclusive, so un-American, so gentle and loving and soothing and healing. It sounds like the very opposite of our society’s social isolation and lack of love. It sounds like something the soul would say, doesn’t it?

Droplets upon the waters (c) JAT 2015

These ripple patterns in a still lake were formed as single water droplets fell from the trees after a heavy rain. As souls, each of us affects the universe in the way these small water droplets bring wavelets to the lake. From a distance, it may look as if the waters of the lake are “all One.” But up close, each droplet affects the lake in unique ways. Christian mystics have too often looked at Creation from a distance and chosen to see it as “all One.” In fact, Creation is a marvel of diversity and uniqueness. It’s Divine Love that creates the background of calmness and beauty against which each soul — each droplet — can paint a small picture that says, “I’m here! I may be small, but I matter!” Together, countless small droplets flow and dance and weave together to create infinite wonders. Photo credit JAT 2015.

Millions of spiritual seekers think so. They’re out there trying to become “one” with God, “one” with Creation, “one” with each other. They’re trying with all their might to “let go.” They’ve been told by religious and spiritual teachers that they have to dissolve themselves and let go of their wants and needs in order to experience transcendence — a blissful sense of union with the oneness of all life, a sense that all boundaries have vanished, a sense that they’re finally free of all longing and suffering.

This, my friends, is not what mystical union feels like. This is what dissociation from your thoughts, feelings, and inner wisdom feels like. This is what the major mental illness called Atypical Dissociative Disorder feels like. Sometimes the dissociation is so extreme that the person can be said to exhibit psychopathy (also called sociopathy).

Many people will be furious with me for saying this. But it needs to be said. And it needs to be fully researched. There’s no excuse for the church — or anyone else, for that matter — to be teaching people to dissociate from their thoughts, feelings, and needs. This is reckless, dangerous, and abusive. It scars people’s central nervous systems, typically for life. It’s no different than driving a steel rod through their skulls, and turning them all into Phineas-Gage-lookalikes. (Phineas Gage was a 19th century worker who underwent a dramatic personality change after an industrial accident propelled a steel rod through his left cheek, into the orbitofrontal cortex of his brain, and out the top of his head.)

I am a practising mystic. I’m NOT a mystical wannabee who wants to be counted as a mystic but has never actually had a genuine mystical experience. Thomas Merton, famed 20th century Christian monk, contemplative, and writer on mysticism, died in his 50’s without ever having experienced a transformative mystical connection with God. Yet he wrote many books on the topic. I think he was a very sincere man, but I don’t think it was right for him to claim to be an expert on something he’d never figured out for himself.

Me, I don’t keep track of the many mystical experiences I’ve had in the past few years, because mystical experiences are now a normal part of my normal, everyday, Canadian life.

I live a normal Canadian life in most ways. I don’t live in a religious community, and I don’t live according to traditional Christian monastic rules. I have an apartment, a car, and a job. I take courses at the university. I get together with friends and family. I like to listen to pop music, and I love to watch TV (certain shows only, though).

Yet woven all around and within this daily life is a deep spiritual practice that yields a tremendous harvest of mystical connection with God. How have I managed to do this when dedicated, highly religious people like Thomas Merton have failed? I’ve managed to do this because I’ve discarded all spiritual teachings that insist “we are all One.”

We are not all One. To say that we should have empathy for other people is NOT the same as saying we are all One. Of course I believe we should have empathy for others. Of course I believe there’d be a whole lot less suffering in the world if more people had empathy for others. Of course I believe that to cultivate empathy is to walk the walk of a spiritual life.

But this isn’t what spiritual leaders mean when they say to you that “we’re all One.” They mean it literally — they mean there’s literally no real distinction, no real boundary, between you and your God. They mean that boundaries between you and other people are “illusion.” They try to use some of the recent findings from physics to “prove” that everything in the universe is really only a manifestation of one big blob of energy in the sky. (Yes, I’m being facetious).

When they say you’re One with God, they mean that if you try hard enough to shed all your humanness (like a snake shedding its old skin), you’ll be able to merge with that big blob of energy called Creator. In effect, you’ll become God, because you’ll be able to “remember” that your “inner spark” is God. Once you’ve achieved this wondrous state of perfection, you’ll no longer have to struggle with annoying human challenges such as forgiveness. You’ll be above illusory things such as forgiveness. What’s to forgive, after all, if the neighbour who harmed you is really just “you” in a different snake suit?

Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that when you fully embrace the idea that “we’re all One,” you don’t have to do any spiritual work anymore?

It’s a good life, being “One with the All.” You don’t have to struggle with messy feelings, because you’ve dissociated yourself from your healthy human emotions. You don’t have to feel guilt or shame about your choices, because all choices are illusory anyway. You can smile when other people are crying, because you’ve detached yourself from all that pain and grief stuff. You can go around pretending you understand what unconditional love is, because words are cheap when you’re disconnected from your own inner wisdom, disconnected from your own soul.

The true path of the soul — a path that has rarely been described in the history of Christian mysticism — is a path of finding yourself rather than losing yourself. It’s a path of finding out who you really are as the soul God made you to be. (Needless to say, everyone’s soul is amazingly awesome.) It’s a path of finding out what makes you a unique individual in a vast angelic family of other unique individuals (none of whom are better than you — they’re just different from you). It’s a path of learning how to deal with powerful, divine emotions such as love, gratitude, courage, devotion, and trust. It’s a path of honouring and respecting the differences between you and others (i.e. gender, race, age, talents, quirks, and “blind spots”), and at the same time rejoicing in what makes you the same (i.e. our innate ability to love, to learn, to change, to forgive). It’s a path of knowing who you are so you can know who other people are. It’s a path of respecting boundaries between you and other people. It’s a path of respecting boundaries between you and God.

Only then will you be able to enter into a mature and humble relationship with God the Mother and God the Father while you’re living your human life.

This is the path that Jesus has taught me.

I highly recommend it. 

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, boundary issues, Concinnate Christianity, dissociation, empathy, ethical mysticism, My Spiral Path, mystic, oneness, psychopathy, Soul and tagged , | Leave a Comment
31 May 2010

CC16: The Difference Between Mystics and Prophets

Washing the windows of the entrance pyramid at the Royal Ontario Museum is no easy task, and you shouldn’t try it unless you’re an expert and have the all the proper equipment. Teaching about the soul, the brain-soul nexus, and ethical mysticism is no different – it takes proper training. Going to a weekend energy-healing workshop doesn’t qualify you as an expert. Be patient, be humble, and take the time to overcome your own status addiction issues before you seek to become a mentor to others. Photo credit JAT 2017.

 This morning, I happened to hear a radio interview with Mike Holmes, Canada’s famed “make it right” building contractor, teacher, and advocate for families in distress. Mike Holmes had been asked to speak about the home inspection business, and he was lamenting two current realities. First, many home inspectors have little or no hands-on experience in the contracting industry (so they don’t know what they’re talking about), and second, many home inspectors simply don’t care. The practical and ethical standards aren’t high enough, in Mike Holmes’s view, and this means that home buyers who rely on shoddy home inspection reports will end up with “lemons” — houses with major structural problems.

Anyone who has ever lived in such a house knows how stressful, how exhausting, how infuriating it is to be told there’s nothing wrong with your house, even as you watch your basement fill up with water after every rainstorm.

This is exactly how I feel about the “mysticism business.” Practical and ethical standards are pretty much non-existent in this field. And I’m not talking here about the charlatans and the New Age preachers who knowingly take advantage of vulnerable people. I’m talking here about the church.

The orthodox Western church has given itself prime credentials as THE “home inspectors of the soul” without having any solid knowledge, experience, or compassion to back this up. They hung out their shingle centuries ago, and it’s been hanging there for so long that most Christians just assume the church must know what it’s doing when it comes to “home inspections of the soul.”

But it doesn’t. When it comes to matters of the soul, the church is no different than the slipshod home inspector who tells you that a nice new coat of paint on your outside walls will fix your leaking basement. Just because a home inspector gives this advice loudly and often to all his clients doesn’t make it right. You can paint the upper walls as often as you like, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to your crumbling foundations. The only way to fix the basement, of course, is to dig up all the soil around your house (even though it makes an ugly mess of your gardens for a while) and methodically repair the hidden cracks. It’s a lot of work. But in the end it’s worth it.

If you’re an earnest spiritual seeker who wants to know more about your soul, don’t bother asking the United Church of Canada for guidance. They have no official answers for you. They would prefer that you not embarrass them with your questions about the soul. The soul, you see, is perilously close to being a four-letter word in the United Church lexicon. It’s no longer uttered in polite company. Polite company — which includes professors of theology and United Church ministers and policy makers — wants you to speak about grace and Spirit and God’s justice breaking in proleptically.* But they don’t want you to speak about the soul. They want you to be part of a soulless church — at least, that’s what they’re implying.

Mike Holmes worked as a hands-on contractor for many years before he signed on to do his first TV show. (If I remember correctly, he grew up in a home where his father worked in the building industry. Mike Holmes’s children, now grown, have also been learning the ins and outs of home contracting and home renovation.) People who watch Mike Holmes’s TV shows trust him. They trust him because they can tell he’s not an actor — he’s a real contractor who knows what he’s doing. People learn a lot from watching his shows, because he’s also a good teacher and a dedicated advocate. He puts his money where his mouth is.

I’m not a home renovator (even though I wield a pretty mean paint brush!), but I do have a particular talent, and I’m trained in what I do. My particular talent is mysticism. My talent isn’t better than anyone else’s talent. It’s different, but it’s not better. Like Mike Holmes, I have a set of professional tools, and I know how to use them. I also insist that these tools be used according to the highest ethical standards.

In my view, few Christian mystics in the history of the church have used their talents ethically.

Furthermore, many of the men and women who’ve been traditionally revered as Christian mystics have not, in my opinion, been mystics at all. Rather, they’ve been apocalyptic prophets.

There’s a big difference between a mystic and an apocalyptic prophet. I know this because of my experience, training, and academic research. The church, however, often doesn’t make a distinction between mystics and apocalyptic prophets. The church tends to conflate them — which is kind of like saying there’s no difference between a real contractor and a TV actor who doesn’t know which end of a hammer is up.

This is why the church’s doctrinal garden is filled with the weeds of teachings based on mental illness (i.e. apocalyptic prophecy). This is why the church’s doctrinal garden is filled with ancient traditions from Plato, from apocalyptic literature, from Paul, and from later theologians such as Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo, all of which have choked out the original teachings of Jesus.

Prophecy compared to Mysticism

The church’s teachings on the soul are filled with weeds (as on the left). Many people seem afraid that, if they pull out the weeds, they’ll have no tangible mystery teachings left to sustain the spiritual roots of the church. In fact, when the weeds are pulled, what remains is the beautiful underlying structure of the soul’s courage and goodness. Gardens (and churches) are always healthier and stronger when the weeds are pulled. Photo credit JAT 2014.

Jesus was a mystic — a mentally healthy person capable of holistic thought, empathy, intuition, creative learning, logical thought, industrious actions, and advanced philosophical inquiry. Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet — a mentally dysfunctional person demonstrating a consistent pattern of dissociation, dualistic thinking, narcissistic entitlement, anti-social behaviour, and a need to gain attention from admirers by making “divinely inspired” prophetic claims about the future.

Mystics are content to TRUST God, and have no need to make predictions about the future. Mystics know that God will do what God needs to do when God needs to do it. Mystics make no claim to having the keys to the future. Only those who don’t trust God insist on guarantees about what will happen and when it will happen. Bullies and narcissists are drawn to prophecy. Jesus was not a bully or a DSM-IV narcissist.

Mystics believe in the eternal soul in a positive, uplifting, holistic way, and they don’t try to scare the crap out of other people by making dire predictions about what will happen to somebody else’s soul. They believe that all souls are good because “God don’t make no junk.” Bullies and narcissists enjoy making threats about the fate of your soul because it gives them a twisted kind of high. It’s an addiction — not a very pretty one, but an addiction nonetheless — just like any other DSM-IV addiction problem.

Mystics (the real ones, anyway) are emotionally mature. They understand boundary issues. They understand that other people ARE other people. (Seriously dysfunctional people don’t see you as “real” in your own right, with your own distinctive personality — they see you merely as an extension of their own self-entitled needs, which is why they try to force you to comply with their wishes at the expense of yours.) Prophets love to give other people big, long lists of laws — required thoughts, required behaviours, which you’re expected to follow. Prophets tell you that their laws are divine laws. But most often the laws are designed to provide some sort of psychological relief to the prophet himself or herself. Usually, the laws entrench the “divine authority” of the prophet, and place the prophet in an elevated position. This is just narcissistic bullying in a more sophisticated form.

Mystics don’t talk about fearing God. Mystics talk about having a positive, mature relationship with God. Mystics don’t fear death. Mystics don’t believe in cosmic evil. Mystics don’t believe that human beings are more important to God than God’s other creatures. Mystics don’t believe that human laws are infallible. Mystics know that God is always listening and always acting in the world whether we pray for help or not.

Mystics trust in the fantastic goodness of God.

Apocalyptic prophets believe in their own power and their own status. They don’t trust anybody, especially not God.

Jesus was a mystic. He trusted God the Mother and God the Father. It’s time for the church to let Jesus’ teachings about God re-enter the hearts and minds of our community of faith in the twenty-first century.

It’s time for us to learn to trust our beloved God.

* If you don’t know what “prolepsis” means, then I’d like to suggest you’re a lucky person. You’ll sleep much better at night if you’re not wasting your time trying to embrace the scientifically impossible feat of time-travel.

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