» angels (i.e. persons-of-soul) The Spiral Path

05 Jun 2012

TBM41: Preparedness in the Spiritual Kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dream kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, life and death, relationship with God, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged building your intuition, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

01 Apr 2012

TBM33: The Need for Dignity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Scary stuff.

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

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

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

Near the end, our conversation went something like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

God bless you, Michael.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), empathy, ethical mysticism, forgiveness, mental illness, miracles, My Spiral Path, religion and mental Illness, The Blonde Mystic, the right to be right, trust and tagged ethical mysticism, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | 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 brain-soul connection | Leave a Comment

24 Mar 2012

TBM31: Miracles: Big Love in Small Places

A while back I talked about intuition and how it works during a crisis.* Today I’d like to try to describe what it feels like when you use intuition as a normal part of your everyday life.

I suspect that if you gathered a group of, say, 100 people and asked each one to speak in private about an experience of Divine presence during an emergency, you’d get about 20 who’ve had a deeply personal experience of a comforting presence, and another 25 who know they got out of a scrape but aren’t sure how, and slightly more than half who attribute their escape to their own personal brilliance.

Still, there are a lot of people out there who’ve gone through something very scary and have felt, without even asking, the presence of a wise and loving angel, if only for a few life-changing moments.

We’ve been conditioned in our culture to accept that maybe — just maybe — God and God’s angels will “be there” for us during an acute emergency. So we pay attention to news stories about people who’ve defied incredible odds and somehow managed to survive. These are the events we call “miracles.” If you’re a person with an open heart, you can feel the reality of the miracle even if you can’t understand it with your logical mind. You can feel the reality of the miracle even if the Church dismisses it because no saints were invoked. You can feel the miracle even if the atheists insist you’re a gullible, superstitious fool.

It’s not easy in this culture to believe in miracles or in God’s loving intervention when you’re being attacked from all sides (including attacks from conservative Christianity). So it’s understandable that a person of faith might be pretty nervous about widening the net of miracles to include everyday activities rather than just emergency situations.

This is why I think this post may be more difficult for many readers to process than anything I’ve written so far — because this post is about everyday miracles, the miracles nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to acknowledge because the implications are so darned real.

Human beings have a knack for shifting their own thoughts and feelings to every place except the place where they’re standing right now. Psychotherapists have accurate labels for these destructive psychological habits. Among these habits are projection, denial, reaction formation, fantasy, displacement, suppression, intellectualization, and rationalization. These strategies are used by individuals to help them avoid being honest with themselves about their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and inner wisdom. In one way or another, each of these strategies is a form of lying — a form of lying to oneself.

On the surface, it seems a person who’s using projection or denial is lying to other people — and, of course, such a person is lying to other people. But before she can lie with malicious intent to other people, she has to be lying to herself with malicious intent. She has to be trying with all her might to ignore the inner wisdom of her own soul (which has no malicious intent).

Meanwhile, a person who’s trying to balance the complex needs of the 4D soul and the 3D body, who uses all parts of his or her brain instead of only some parts, who has a well-developed sense of intuition and timing, has no need to lie to him/herself. Why would he/she? The whole point of being a Whole Brain Thinker is that you can consistently weave the needs of heart, mind, body, and talent into a tapestry of courage, devotion, trust, and gratitude. Therefore there’s no need to engage in energy-wasting psychological defences such as projection, denial, etc. There’s no need to waste precious biological brain resources on building and maintaining a collection of lies. The brain therefore has more time and energy to spend on more important matters — matters such as improving your health by learning to pay attention to cues from your guardian angels.

I’ve had many years of practice in working with these cues. These cues don’t come into the brain and central nervous system the way you might imagine. The authors of many, many TV shows and films and books and religious myths have attempted to describe how these cues are experienced by “the chosen ones.” I’ve seen few authors who get it right, and those who do are usually writing about some other aspect of the human condition and stumble accidentally on the experience of intuition as it actually exists in us poor ol’ non-chosen slobs.

One of the few dramatic series to get it right is the recent 5-year story arc of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one). One of the few written pieces to get it right is the 1989 novella The Last of the Winnebagos by science fiction author Connie Willis. These stories pursue the very ordinariness of intuition, and the great transformative power of it, wrapped together within the borderlands of love that exist where two or more people open their hearts to each other.

It’s the ordinariness of intuition and the ordinariness of Divine intervention that most people just don’t want to hear about. They don’t want to hear about the “quantum Post-It notes” your guardian angels can attach to a bag of oranges at the grocery store so you pick up the bag that’s best suited to your own health needs. They don’t want to hear about angels helping you find a pair of shoes that fit. Or a shampoo that’s on sale. Or a newspaper that has an article you really need to read that day. But, in fact, this is the way intuition is supposed to work.

When I say, “quantum Post-It notes,” I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that literally. I mean that when I pass my hand slowly over the pile of bagged oranges at the grocery store, I can feel the one my angels want me to pick up. I feel it as a faint “aha” feeling. More like a creative impulse than anything else — a sense of knowing something is right. That’s it.

It’s NOT (as you might suppose) an experience of hearing voices or “seeing things” or feeling detached or “floaty” or “blissed-out” or “connected to all Creation” (as so many authors have speculated). I mean, I’m at the grocery store, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like I’m ascending on clouds of ecstasy or anything. I’m just buying groceries!

At a neurophysiological level, I suspect the brief “aha” feeling would show up (if it could be studied in me or others) as spikes of gamma brainwave synchronization. But neurophysiology aside, these intuitive cues from my angels are also accompanied by feelings of calmness, compassion, and trust (so oxytocin is probably also involved in the “aha” experience).

Weird, eh?

Weird it may be, but I can’t imagine my life without these daily intuitive experiences. Those who are close to me are used to me and my weird way of doing things. They just kind of roll their eyes when I say my angels pointed out a gorgeous $495 Anne Klein size 6 summer weight wool blazer marked down to $5 that fits me perfectly. (Don’t worry — I kept the sale tags in case anybody wants me to prove it.) I feel fantastic when I wear this blazer, as my angels knew I would.

I wear a size 6, and sometimes a size 4, not because I starve myself (I’ve never dieted — never once in my life) but because I listen carefully to what my guardian angels suggest for me and my own body’s needs. My food regimen probably wouldn’t be the same as yours, because each person’s body is unique. But my food regimen works for me. So I put cream in my coffee. And I eat cheese and butter every day. And I bake (and eat) chocolate chip cookies. And I drink lots of fruit juice that contains Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and calcium. And I never count calories. The only thing I pay attention to is the quantum Post-It notes that appear on specific food items at each meal.

My approach to healthy eating isn’t something you’d want to rush out and try without first being sure your own intuitive circuitry is working properly. It’s a lot smarter to practice your intuitive skills on something with fewer possible health consequences — something like shampoo brands (because not every shampoo is right for every person).

Believe it or not, your guardian angel would be thrilled to help you find the right shampoo for you. No, I’m not kidding. Guardian angels don’t EVER want you to practise using your intuitive circuitry on “the big stuff.” It’s too risky for you and your loved ones. It’s too easy to “mix up your signals” and assume you’re getting an intuitive cue when you’re not. (God gets blamed all the time when religious folk try to overextend their intuitive circuitry and end up causing great harm because they don’t understand their own limits).

So start small. And be grateful for these ordinary, everyday miracles. These are the stuff of everyday relationship with God and God’s angels, unless you happen to be an astronaut on the International Space Station or a regular feature on the slopes of Mount Everest. Maybe you think it would be boring for your angels to help you find shampoos and oranges, but trust me — they never find it boring to help you be as healthy and as happy as it’s possible for you to be on Planet Earth.

Divine love is so big it fits in the smallest of places. That’s why it’s Divine love!

* Please see Guys, Intuition, and the Gut from April 2, 2011.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism, Divine Love, miracles, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism | Leave a Comment

14 Mar 2012

TBM28: When You Are Forgiven, You Are Forgiven

Over a year ago, in a post called “More Thoughts on the Soul,” I wrote that it’s better to be confused for a while on the Spiral Path than be caught in a nightmare of perfectionism and Divine Law.

So today I’d like to tell you a bit about the early part of my journey, a period when I felt confused most of the time.

The year 2000 was a challenging time for me. This was the year when I learned to develop my natural channelling skills. This was also the year when I left my husband after 20 years of marriage. Sandwiched between these two major events, I got quite ill. In June 2000, I had an acute episode of gastrointestinal inflammation. At the time, I assumed it was an exacerbation of the chronic ulcerative colitis I’d been suffering from for 20 years. But there were some extra symptoms, too, including intense nausea and vomitting that weren’t part of my normal pattern of G.I. upset. I treated my symptoms at home (apart from one brief visit to the emerg for rehydration), which meant, in the context of my spiritual studies at the time, that I spent a lot of time praying and calling upon Reiki energies and asking my guardian angel, Zak, to help me “clear” the negative energies that I assumed were the cause of my acute illness.

In retrospect, this was a dumb thing to do. But, you know, I was so sure I was right.

Eventually my body managed to heal itself — no thinks to my arrogant spiritual assumptions. There were, of course, no attacks taking place upon me from negative energies (e.g. past life karma) or negative entities (e.g. fallen angels). On the other hand, it seems there were plenty of attacks initiated by me upon me by my very own self.

In other words, I was doing it to myself. I was stressing myself out and didn’t even realize it. I was freaking out my own soul with all my untrusting, unloving, cruel talk about negative energies and negative entities, and my own soul was speaking up — speaking up through the biological medium of stress hormones. It was my own stress hormones that were making me sick in the early summer of 2000.

Many of us these days have accepted the reality that stress hormones are something of a mixed blessing. During times of great external stress, we’d be toast if we didn’t have stress hormones to kick us almost instantly into overdrive. But during times of great internal stress, we can pump out so many stress hormones for such a long period of time that we start to damage our own biology from the inside out. This is why stress has been linked to so many autoimmune disorders (including the one I used to suffer from, ulcerative colitis).

You can read more about the long term effects of chronic stress on learning, memory, immune function, rate of healing, and brain repair (neuroplasticity) by googling the topic. It’s not my intent to go into the medical research here. It is my intent, however, to highlight for you the biological reality — the actual biological effect on your brain — when you insist on accepting as “truth” certain theories that your own soul abhors.

Your own soul doesn’t like it at all when certain parts of your brain and central nervous system (what Jesus has described as your “Darwinian Circuitry”) try to gather “proof” for theories about God and the soul that feed the ongoing cravings of status addiction.

There’s coding in your DNA that’s designed to trigger the release of stress hormones within your own body when the Darwinian Circuitry of your brain tries to “take over” and muscle out the messages of your inner Soul Circuitry.* Naturally, this is an excellent design strategy, because it means you always have access to the natural wisdom of your own soul. Live according to your soul’s needs and you stay relatively healthy; reject your soul’s needs and be prepared to wage war with your own body’s DNA.

In short, you’re always getting feedback about your footing on the Spiral Path from your own biological body. If your immune system is constantly fighting infections and internal inflammatory processes, it means you’re out of balance. It may also mean there are too many stress hormones circulating in your body.

So finding different strategies to help your body reduce its levels of stress hormones will be highly beneficial for your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Many well-established stress-reducing practices make excellent spiritual practices, too — practices such as getting together with friends to play old-fashioned board games or shinny hockey, watching uplifting films that make you laugh and cry, sitting outside in the fresh air and sun with a good book, having an afternoon nap, and giving and receiving hugs each day.

You can try meditation if you like, as long as you keep this practice in balance and don’t exceed the “total of 2 hours per day” rule. I should tell you, though, that I myself don’t meditate. At the stage in my journey when many spiritual masters would have urged me to meditate in earnest, I tried something entirely unexpected at the insistence of my guardian angel, Zak. I tried the practice of forgiveness.

Learning to give and receive forgiveness was the very first spiritual practice I embarked on that Zak actually endorsed, encouraged, and insisted on with unrelenting and exasperating diligence. He just wouldn’t let up on this one. And because I was a channeller by this time, and could hear every word he said on the topic, I had to listen to him go on and on about the importance of forgiveness to, well, to everything I hoped to achieve on my spiritual journey.

Very early on in this series of lessons, Zak had me write out and stick to the fridge this note:

When you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

This simple truth left me in agony for months. But each time I went to the fridge, I had to look at it. And be reminded of it. And struggle with it emotionally and intellectually.

It was a very sneaky tactic on Zak’s part. But it was also extremely effective. I couldn’t get away from the issue. I couldn’t sweep it under the carpet and pretend I hadn’t heard Zak. Several times each day I had to think about forgiveness and what forgiveness might actually mean.

Learning to forgive was not an overnight epiphany, let me tell you. I really had to work at it. I had to question old assumptions. I had to be honest with myself about my own past mistakes. I had to find my own courage. Most of all, I had to be willing to receive forgiveness from Zak and from God and from other human beings, which was the hardest part.

It’s not easy to believe you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness, especially once you start to be deeply honest with yourself about harm you’ve created for yourself and others. In fact, it’s so painful to stare your own mistakes in the eye that you absolutely MUST learn forgiveness FIRST so you have the inner means to cope with your own past, your own history, your own mistakes.

You also need somebody to help you with this part of the journey. You need a mentor, somebody you can talk to in trust and faith, because during this part of the journey a lot of painful questions will rise to the surface. It’s best not to try this alone. A professional counsellor might be appropriate. Or a small group of trusted friends who operate according to the principles of the Twelve Step program. I wish with all my heart that I could recommend your local minister or priest, but I simply can’t, because I have yet to meet an ordained cleric who understands what forgiveness is.

God’s forgiveness is one thing you never have to ask for. God the Mother and God the Father forgive you for the mistakes you make even before you’ve finished making them. There are no words to describe the immensity of this gift. But their forgiveness is a source of great inspiration and a never-ending source of awe and wonder for us all.

Once I understood with every shred of my being that God really did forgive me and wasn’t going to take it back — once I could trust that for God forgiveness is a permanent act instead of a conditional choice dependent on my “perfection” and “obedience” — I found the courage to move forward on the Spiral Path in the absolute certainty that I would continue to make mistakes as I struggled to learn what Divine Love means.

As I also said early on in these posts, God doesn’t expect you to be perfect. God only expects you to try hard each day to be the kind and loving person you really are as a soul.

Knowing God is in the trying.

Finally! After several years of study, I earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice -- one made easier and more productive because I can forgive myself.

Finally! After several years of study, I finally earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice — one made easier and more productive because I forgive myself for not being perfect.

* For more on the Darwinian Circuitry and Soul Circuitry of your brain, see The Christ Zone Model: Introduction.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, forgiveness, healing, meditation, My Spiral Path, mystic, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, the right to be right, trust and tagged brain-soul connection, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

13 Mar 2012

TBM27: Prayers Your Angels Will Refuse to Answer

Last time I said I’d talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. Many readers are not going to like this post.

Before you can understand the ways in which your angels can help you, you need to spend some time thinking about the ways in which your angels cannot help you.

This statement in itself will shock some people, because we’ve all been told again and again that God can do anything for us if we ask in the right way. Hence, the many books and workshops and rituals around prayer. We’ve been conditioned to believe that prayer is a powerful form of mystical energy, as it were, a powerful form of mystical energy that can change the world if properly invoked.

Indeed, so central is prayer to the experience of conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christianity that if you were to remove all the prayers from the worship services (e.g. the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), there’d be precious little left.

Which is exactly my point.

In a world where human beings are called upon to juggle the 4D needs of the soul and the 3D needs of the body in a balanced, holistic, seamless way, there’s something wrong with a religious experience that lets you off easy if you say a bunch of prayers. In most cases, you don’t even have to write the prayers yourself. You just have to copy what the prayer leader is saying!

Thutmose III offering two containers of incense to the god Amun. Reproduction from the 18th Dynasty (15th century BCE) original at Deir el-Bahri, Egypt, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The idea that you can open the door to God’s blessings by saying the right prayer or offering the right gift is very, very old. As Jesus tried to point out, the fact that a religious idea is old is no guarantee that it’s right.

I’ve taken university theology courses that teach prospective ministry students how to design worship services and write prayers, and believe me, there’s no great mystery involved. Ya just gotta follow the traditional prayer formulas and string together a lot of popular cliches about faith and peace and love, and, presto!, ya got yerself a pretty new prayer to recite on Sunday. Piece of cake.

The real question is, will God or your guardian angels pay any attention to you as you dutifully recite these prayers?

Well, this depends on two things. The first factor is your own personal intent or “meta-choice.”* The second factor is the relationship you already have with God. These two factors are intertwined with each other.

Maybe I should start by explaining that although I’m a practising mystic, I stopped praying to God years ago. In place of traditional prayer, I’ve learned to communicate with God.

But aren’t prayer and communication with God the same thing, you’re saying?

They’re only the same thing if (1) part of your personal meta-choice is to learn each day from your own mistakes and if (2) you have faith that God and God’s angels are going to intervene in your life whether or not you ask for help.

Prayer, as it’s traditionally understood, starts with the assumption that God hears and acts upon the words you say in prayer, but that until you actually “open your heart” by speaking the prayers, God is standing helplessly but hopefully on the other side of the divine door as he waits for you to ask.

In my rather large collection of books that contain what I feel are “toxic teachings,” I have a gem called Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To by Anthony DeStefano (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 2007). On the cover there’s a stamp that says, “Endorsed by the National Day of Prayer,” so right off the bat you can tell I’m going to have a problem with the content.

DeStefano outlines what he sees as the top ten questions people ask in their lives. He then offers a prayer you can use to answer each of these questions in turn.

So for the No. 1 Question — “I Wish I Could Believe” — DeStefano says you should use this prayer — “God, please show me that you exist” — again and again until “God starts to reveal himself to you (page 22).”

Says the author (pages 23-24):

“And it all starts with one simple prayer: God, please show me that you exist.

There is a beautiful nineteenth-century painting that illustrates this point well. It’s called The Light of the World. In it, Christ is shown holding a lantern, standing outside a little cottage on a dark, stormy night. He is knocking on the door of the home, waiting to be let in, but the occupant, unseen behind the door, does nothing. The figure of Christ, bathed in a golden green light, is supremely serene and looks as if he is prepared to stay outside the cottage door knocking forever. It is a striking image because of what it says about the light of truth in a dark world. But the really interesting thing about the painting is that there is a curious detail missing. If you look closely at the door of the home, you will see that there is not a knob or a latch anywhere to be found. Why? It can’t be that the artist forgot to put it in. Rather, he was making a sublime theological point: the door to the human heart can be opened only from the inside. God will never force his way in.”

Oh, let me swoon for the wonder of having a divine father who’ll stand outside knocking on a dark and stormy night because he cares whether or not I’m going to make it into heaven (page 4)! He cares what will happen to me on Judgment Day and doesn’t want me to have to go to Hell! Because he loves me sooooo much that he created all sorts of stupid things he can’t do anything about — things like Judgment Day and Atonement and angels that fall (like Satan) and Original Sin and Hell! I’m just so lucky that he cares enough to stand outside the door knocking, knocking, ever so patiently knocking!

Yeah, this sounds like Divine Love to me . . .

DeStefano thinks that after you open your heart to God, God will step through the door and into your heart. Once this happens, of course, you’ll become an instrument of God — which is Prayer No. 2 in this book. When you say repeatedly that you want God to make you an instrument (i.e. an empty vessel of service and “mercy”), what you’re actually asking for is religious humility. (Just so we’re clear on the intent of the “God, make me an instrument” prayer).

And then, because you’re now an empty vessel through whom God works, you have to use four of your “Top Ten” Prayers just to fill you up with various graces from God: “God, forgive me (No. 5). God, give me peace (No. 6). God, give me courage (no. 7). God, give me wisdom (No. 8).”

If you start your journey on the Spiral Path with the same assumptions that DeStefano advocates, you’re going to have some serious trouble understanding the messages of your own guardian angels. Why? Because angels don’t believe any of this shit. They’re operating from an entirely different set of truths, and they ain’t gonna budge on their truths, no matter how much you think they should.

Your angels know that God never enters your own core being, your own soul (i.e. “entering your heart,” as DeStefano describes it), because to do so would be a terrible violation of your own personal boundaries as a core consciousness and child of God. God is God, and you are you, and ne’er the twain shall meet. God will tap you on the shoulder. God will frequently hold your hand. God will sit beside you and talk to you for hours. God will sometimes pick you up and carry you for a while. But don’t EVER ask God to “come inside and fill you up,” because from God’s point of view this request feels like a creepy and incestuous form of contact. (Sorry to be so blunt, but you need to know what it feels like from God’s perspective, not from your status-addicted preacher’s perspective.) This is one of the few permanent rules you should keep in mind as you move forward on the Spiral Path: always treat God the Mother and God the Father in the respectful manner you’d treat your human parents. They’re your parents, not your lovers.

Your angels also know that it isn’t up to God or God’s angels to give you peace or courage or wisdom. You already have those strengths inside your core self, your own soul. Your job is not to ask to be given those things, but to ask how to remember those things which are already part of you.

(If this sounds like the plot of The Wizard of Oz, it’s because The Wizard of Oz has some timeless things to say about the spiritual journey.)

Third, your angels don’t wait for you to ask before they intervene in your life. They step in whenever and wherever they please. Why? Because they care about you, and they know it’s difficult and confusing to live as a 4D-soul-in-temporary-human-form.

If angels see a problem brewing, they don’t stand there knocking endlessly on the other side of the door (like Sheldon knocking on Penny’s door in The Big Bang Theory). I mean, what would be the good of that? Do you really want a guardian angel who stands there wringing his hands helplessly until you use the “right prayer,” the one with the “right mystical energy” that suddenly opens the door so God can walk in?

In my experience, angels don’t beat around the bush. They come right out and say what they’re thinking — even if (as is usually the case) you don’t want to hear it.

God and God’s angels are always talking. They’re a very chatty bunch, in fact. And they like to talk to each other — you know, pass along information about what you’re actually thinking and feeling instead of what you say you’re thinking and feeling.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and a few of the people all of the time. But you can never, ever fool a guardian angel.

They always know your true intent. And they always have an opinion on your true intent. Which is a good thing, because this way they can guide you to the people and ideas and books (etc.) that can help you learn more about healing, forgiveness, and redemption.

As I said in an earlier post, angels aren’t wusses.

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

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain-soul connection, ethical mysticism, free will, humility, intent, meta-choice, prayer, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged Divine Heart, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

10 Mar 2012

TBM26: A Practical Tip For Getting Along With Your Angels

Here’s a super-practical tip for people walking the Spiral Path: don’t ask your guardian angels to help you get more status.

Probably the single biggest mistake made by spiritual seekers anywhere (and I mean anywhere) is to assume that God and God’s angels are remotely interested in anything resembling status.

I know that countless religious tomes have told you otherwise. I know you’ve been told that God needs your worship and sacraments (i.e. status points for God). I know you’ve been told that God needs your prayers (i.e. status points for you). I know you’ve been told that angels (if they exist at all) are bound within a strict Celestial Hierarchy — escalating angelic tiers of seniority and importance and proximity to God. (Thanks for nothing, Pseudo-Dionysius). I know this is what you’ve been told again and again. But if you look at the evidence for success among pious devotees of these beliefs, you’ll find precious little in the way of consistent, positive, demonstrable outcomes such as improved health, improved standards of living, or improved family and community safety.

Which is how God measures these things.

God the Mother and God the Father know that your task here is to see what it feels like to juggle the needs of the 4D soul with the needs of the 3D body, with lots of chances to practise forgiveness thrown in (’cause it’s never too late to remember how). So God is very interested in helping you and your family achieve a state of relative good health (both physical health and mental health) until it’s your time to Go Home (colloquially known as dying).

Naturally, a God who’s interested in helping you stay healthy is going to be very worried about the painful effects of addiction in your life, since addiction is one of the major causes of suffering among human beings. Addiction issues create physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, family suffering, and community suffering. Addiction also creates financial suffering and educational suffering and job-related suffering. It gets in the way of everything that’s positive and selfless and healing.

So . . . it should take you all of about five seconds to realize that God and God’s angels are not going to be supportive of choices based on status addiction.

Even if the myth surrounding the status addiction is a religious myth.

The general assumption seems to be that God is tolerant of all religious beliefs and all religious myths because, when push comes to shove, these religious traditions have one thing in common: they confer status points on God.

Only an emotionally immature person would conclude that God actually wants status points.

Unfortunately, all too many emotionally immature individuals have gradually fallen into the trap of status addiction, where, mired in the swamps of narcissism and bullying, and looking at others through the characteristic tunnel-vision thereof, it seems perfectly logical to conclude that the correct way to approach God is to offer status points. After all, the giving and taking of status points is a normal way of existing (though not a normal way of living) for many human beings on Planet Earth.

As humans, we don’t like to hear that angels have free will, but they do. Your own guardian angels use their free will to decide when, how, and if they’ll respond to your requests for aid – even if it means you have to go through some rough patches to get where you need to go.

So don’t do it. There aren’t a lot of strict rules to follow on the Spiral Path, and even this one isn’t really a rule, since you can ignore me and do whatever you like because you have free will. But before you make that choice, you need to know there are consequences for the choice to seek status on the spiritual journey. Here is the consequence: your guardian angels will stop helping you. They’ll still love you. They’ll still forgive you. But they won’t enable you as you rejoice in the high of an addiction disorder — any addiction disorder, including status addiction.

Just as family members of a person with addiction issues know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional behaviours, angels know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional and harmful behaviours. It’s courageous and loving and forgiving of them to refuse to enable the choices of status addiction. And why would we want it any other way?

Angels will help you find healing once you make the choice to be honest about your addiction. They’ll guide you to people and books and learning experiences and medical treatments that will help you heal. But they’ll let you fall flat on your face over and over until you accept the truth that your status addiction isn’t pretty and isn’t divine and isn’t acceptable to anyone, including your core self.

During my theology classes, I was required to read the teachings of Christian theologians from the time of Paul the Apostle to the modern day. I read many different explanations for why human beings suffer, but never once, except in the teachings of Jesus himself, did I come across the one explanation that fits all the facts: God refuses to be an enabler of status addiction.

The communities in the world today that have the highest standards of health, the highest standards of living for the middle and lower classes, the lowest levels of crime and corruption, and the highest standards of ethical, legal, and interpersonal conduct are the communities with the least cultural emphasis on status acquisition.

Too often it’s assumed the recipe for success in these communities is the abolition of faith, a rejection of belief in God — that is, atheistic societies built on humanistic values without religious superstitions to hold people back.

Faith in God never holds a person back. But religious institutions which are deeply committed to the preservation of status addiction can and do hold people back. This is a biological reality.

Keep the idea of God. Ditch the idea of status acquisition and status addiction in all its nasty and insidious forms.

As a spiritual practice, it’s simple. It’s sane. And it works.

Because your guardian angels are thrilled to help you when you aren’t being such an ass.

Next time I’ll talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. I think you’ll be very surprised to learn what matters to them.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), faith, free will, HDM Myths, healing miracles, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | 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.

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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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), humbleness, humility, orthodox teachings about the soul, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, The Blonde Mystic and tagged Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

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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Posted in anagogic mysticism, angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, free will, life and death, Paul, Soul, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged building your intuition, ethical mysticism | Leave a Comment

02 Jan 2012

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

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.

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 building your intuition | Leave a Comment

21 Jul 2011

TBM14: Parable of the Earring – A Journey on the Spiral Path

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. It’s a mini-overview of my own spiritual journey, and I call it “the Parable of the Earring,” but it’s really not a parable. It’s more like a fable.

It’s based on something that happened to me in February 2006. At the time, I was packing up my apartment and preparing to move in with my elderly parents. (As an aside, this didn’t work out too well for any of us, and a few months later I was again packing up, but that’s another story.)

My son (aged 22 at the time) and I had agreed to meet for breakfast at Cora’s Restaurant — one of our favourites. I had decided to wear the pair of earrings he’d given me for Christmas in 2004. And it was still cool outside, so I was wearing a camisole underneath my sweater and a designer jacket on top. This is the way I dress in winter, spring, and fall, because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a human popsicle. Always have been.

Somehow, between the time we arrived at Cora’s and the time I got home, I lost one of my earrings.

The very earring (c) JAT 2015

Now, if you know me, you’ll also know I’m very sentimental about gifts from my son, and the fact that I’d lost one of the earrings he’d picked out for me upset me greatly. They were handcrafted from two Gerbera Daisy petals that had been coated in some sort of clear resin, and they dangled delicately. (My son knows me well.)

I also happen to be particularly fond of earrings in general, and some very strange things have happened to me over the years involving earrings, so all in all I was determined to try to track down both the lost earring and any meaning that may have been attached to the loss. (I’m about to get to that part.)

See, although I have degrees in Chemistry and Art Conservation, and although I continue to follow advances in science, I’m willing to be open-minded about the nature of reality. Not open-minded as in “brain like a sieve.” Open-minded as in humble about my own ability to understand quantum theory and open to the idea that human scientists can (and do) make plenty of mistakes.

When the laws of Newtonian physics clash head-on with the laws of particle physics and quantum mechanics, I go with the quantum stuff. This means I’m not bothered or troubled or upset when weird shit happens — when things happen that seem to defy the laws of Newton and classical physics. I don’t see these events as “paranormal.” I see them as entirely normal in a universe that’s built on scientific laws too advanced and too interconnected with divine love for us to detect them with Newtonian equipment like the Large Hadron Collider.

(Every time I think of how many hospital beds could have been funded with the money that went into the LHC, I just want to cringe.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that I believe — and many other reasonable people also believe — in an interconnected reality where some things happen to us for a reason. Not all things, but some things. Sometimes weird things happen, and they’re meant to draw our attention to a question or a problem or an answer or an issue. You can call these weird things messages. Or signs. Or sychronicities. Or angel hugs. Or the language of God. You can call them whatever you want as long as you’re open to the idea that you’re NOT alone in a vast, uncaring universe governed solely by the cold and heartless laws of classical physics. There’s a God and there’s a whole family of loving angels (persons-of-soul) around us, and they’re always talking to us whether we like it or not.

And trust me — there’s no way in heaven or earth you can make them shut up.

This isn’t the hard part. As I mentioned above, a lot of regular, reasonable, practical people instinctively know that certain events hold a deeper meaning, a deeper significance for them and their families, than the obvious Newtonian one.

The hard part is interpreting the meaning correctly.

Herein lay my difficulty in the early years of my spiritual journey. In the first few years, I naively allowed myself to be convinced that certain well-known New Age interpretations of divine intervention were correct. I created a whole lot of pain and embarrassment for myself and my family as a result.

So allow me to present the Parable of the Earring. In this parable, I offer a series of “yearly vignettes,” each of which describes how I would have reacted to the loss of my beloved earring in each of the early years of my journey. You can see the changes in my belief system from year to year, starting 15 years ago. You can also see how long it took me to accept some of the common sense teachings of my own guardian angel, Zak.

Okay. Let’s start with 1996.
Context: No spiritual interests to speak of. Marriage is on the brink of collapse (husband is having a serious affair with his secretary). Son is 12 years old.

“Crap. I lost my good earring. It’s his fault. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with all our problems, I would have noticed my earring fell out. They should make those earrings with better hoops so they don’t fall out so easily.”

1997
Context: Marriage is shaky but still intact. I now work in mental health administration. Starting to be curious about books in the New Age section.

“Oh! I lost my good earring! I should try to let it go and not be upset. But I feel so guilty about losing it. My son’s feelings will be so hurt. Maybe I can try to find a replacement so he won’t notice.

1998 (The Big 4-0)
Context: Still married, still working, but actively pursuing alternative healing methods to try to deal with health issues. Starting to attend New Age workshops and conferences. First meeting with Reiki healer Grace.

“My good earring is gone! Does this have a meaning? I’ll consult one of the new books I bought and follow the instructions for getting help from an angelic guide. Are you there, angels? Tell me where my lost earring is. Why aren’t you answering, angels?”

1999 (A really, really bad year)
Context: Spending more and more time with the “spiritual” group that has formed around Grace. Now preoccupied with cleansing negative energies, past-life karma, and soul contracts through Reiki and energy healing techniques. Frustrated in attempts to learn to channel.

“Someone has taken my earring! I protected myself with a dome of white light this morning, and the earring has sacred energy, so it must have been taken by a negative entity! I must not be trying hard enough to cleanse myself and my home of negative energies! What am I doing wrong?”

2000
Context: In the autumn I tell my husband I’m leaving. I move into my own apartment. Still have strong ties to Grace. Old mistakes with friends come back to haunt me (metaphorically speaking). I discover I can channel and am good at it. Learn guardian angel’s name is Zak.

“Zak, my good earring is gone. I know you must be trying to tell me something. What are you telling me? What did I do wrong now?”

2001
Context: Intensive work on spiritual learning with Zak. No job. Living off separation settlement. Trying to repair relationship with son. Struggling to understand what forgiveness is and what judgment is.

“[Sigh]. The earring my son gave me is gone. It’s a message, isn’t it? A message about being attached to things, isn’t it? I’ve been too sentimentally attached to the earrings, and you’re telling me I’m not trying hard enough to let go of worldly things, right? Of course that’s right. I’m not worthy of your forgiveness.”

2002
Context: An entire year of trying to live as a semi-ascetic. I stop wearing makeup and nice clothes. I stop eating food that has “unnecessary ingredients” (like taste). I give away a lot of my savings to charities. Grace and I decide to become business partners in a rural “spiritual healing centre.”

“I suppose I should give away this set of earrings. I don’t need them anymore. But I can’t seem to find the courage to give them away. Please forgive me for not trying hard enough to obey your teachings.”

2003
Context: An entire year trapped in a house with a woman who has serious unresolved medical and psychiatric issues. Slowly beginning to realize she has no interest in changing. Springtime epiphany about asceticism (a major turning point).

“Omigod, you mean it’s okay with you, Zak, if I need to feel good about my appearance? You mean other people (like Grace) will treat me like a doormat if I treat myself like a doormat? Why didn’t you tell me this before? Where are those earrings my son gave me? It feels so good to wear them!

2004
Context: The spiritual healing centre idea collapses, and Grace and I sell the property. I move to a different town in June. Zak ramps up the scientific angle on spiritual practice. I start to research neurophysiology. The Amen Clinic in California agrees to include me in their Normal Brain Study despite my up-front claim of being able to channel.

“Shit, I guess I lost my earring. Maybe it’s a good idea not to wear that style of earring when I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater. Oh well, live and learn. As you say, not everything’s a message. Zak, have you seen my car keys?”

2005
Context: Zak explains the Christ Zone model and suddenly the behaviour of spiritual gurus makes perfect scientific sense. I break off all ties with Grace. I start to write a book with Zak’s help.

“What do you mean my angel team could actually move the damn earring if they wanted to!? I thought we were past all that. What do you mean I need to read up on non-locality? How am I going to explain this to regular people? Can’t we just stick with the neurophysiology?”

2006
Context: Agreement early in the year to move in with my parents. Great emotional stress. I move anyway because Zak asks me to trust him. I end up in hospital with a stress-induced G.I. illness. After I recover, I move back to my home. I discover during this time of intense emotion that together Zak and I can speak directly with God the Mother and God the Father. (Didn’t know this was possible.) Immeasurable gratitude.

“Huh. How ’bout that? I’ve lost another earring. Wonder where I’ll find this one? Zak, you and the rest of the team cheer me up so much with your crazy antics. Moving things here, moving things there — just when I need a smile the most. Hey, look at that! There’s my lost flower earring. It’s stuck right to the skin of my stomach. Can’t explain how it got there — how it got past the turtleneck collar of my sweater and past my camisole and past my bra to land on my stomach without my ever feeling it. But I sure am glad to have it back. Thanks, everyone!”

And fast-forwarding to today . . .

The only “mini-dialogue” I didn’t make up here is the very last one. After I realized I’d lost my cherished earring in 2006, I searched my car, I searched the ground outside my apartment, I even went back to the restaurant and asked if anyone had found it. No luck.

Later that day I changed out of my clothes, and that’s when I found my flower earring. Stuck to the skin of my stomach.

As I said above, weird things happen in a universe filled with divine love.

And I still have those earrings!

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, Christ Zone, Divine Love, healing, miracles, My Spiral Path, mystic, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged building your intuition, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

20 Jul 2011

TBM13: What It Feels Like To Live on the Spiral Path

I think one of the great obstacles for people on the Spiral Path is the widespread lack of understanding of what it actually feels like to be a person who’s living “in the zone.”

Our culture is saturated in images of “superstars” and “superheroes” from films, books, illustrated serials (comic books), music videos, and reality TV shows. These images try to convince you that a few select human beings are somehow “bigger than life,” more talented than you, more successful than you, more tapped into the universal glory of perfection than you. These are the people at the top of the pyramid of humanity, according to the claims of writers and producers. They’re the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And you, poor slob that you are, can’t hope to experience one tenth of the deep satisfaction that comes from living one’s destiny as a superstar.

Do you believe in destiny?

I once did. By that I mean I once fell for the common New Age line that certain people are chosen for special tasks that will set them apart from other people and place them on a spiritual path that regular people could never comprehend.

Gnosticism relies on this idea. Gnosticism has the same kind of “superhero” vibe as a modern-day action-adventure film. Sure, you won’t see any guns or car chases in a Gnostic myth, but you’ll see the same themes of good versus evil, strong versus weak, chosen versus non-chosen, worthy versus unworthy. Gnosticism has been around for thousands of years because myths about superhuman people have been around for thousands of years. Early Christian Gnostics took the man named Jesus and turned him into a superhero character who’s surprisingly similar to the Green Lantern character in this summer’s big action flick. (In the film, one lone human being on Planet Earth — the Green Lantern — is chosen to learn how to use his will and his fearlessness to shape powerful universal energies through thought alone. Plato would be proud.)*

Early on in my journey of healing and redemption, I thought that if I followed the New Age teachings carefully, I would somehow earn new abilities and gifts that would elevate me beyond my ordinary, ho-hum, middle class Canadian life. Even Paul’s teachings in the New Testament backed me up on this one! (You can check out First Corinthians Chapter 14 if you’re remotely interested in seeing what Paul promises his gullible followers.)

If you’re really paying attention to what your guardian angels are saying to you about your spiritual journey, you’ll end up feeling a lot less like the Green Lantern and a lot more like Shrek.

It’s funny. You spend years devoted to intensive study and healing, new ideas, changes, transformation, and ever-deepening connection to God, and you know what? You still fart.

You still have to take a hot shower because you’ll stink if you don’t. You still have to put your pants on one leg at a time. You’re still entirely human. The difference is that you start to like being human. More and more you start to get the hang of it.

You start to figure, “Hey, maybe I should try to learn to use what I’ve got instead of asking for ‘paranormal gifts.'” You start to trust the idea that maybe God wasn’t so stupid after all when they designed your DNA.

So let me tell you some of the things that have gradually changed for me over years because I’ve stuck so stubbornly to my spiritual path.

First, and most importantly, I’ve become a much nicer person. When I was younger, I was impatient. Intellectually arrogant. Unable to admit my own mistakes. Critical of other people’s mistakes and all too quick to voice my criticism in a sharp tone. I didn’t have addiction issues with substances, but I had an unfortunate emotional habit of being a doormat and an enabler. I had little faith in God. I could be insufferably smug at times.

I also had health issues, as most people these days can relate to. Mostly chronic stuff related to stress. In my 20’s and early 30’s I had frequent stress headaches (though no migraines, fortunately). One year I had terrible eczema on my hands, eczema that kept me awake at nights with constant itching. For a few years I suffered all summer and early fall from ragweed allergies (acute itchiness in my eyes plus nasal congestion). I got pneumonia once “out of the blue” without having been sick with a cold or flu beforehand. My sleep and my mood were pretty good, but I had low energy all the time — probably related to stress plus my vulnerable G.I. system. My G.I. system has always been my “weak link.” My “canary in the coal mine.” If I’m stressed out about something, my G.I. system has always been the first part of my body to let me know I’m not a happy camper.

I’m now 53 years old, and I look and feel better than I did at age 43. (And no, I’m not about to launch into an infomercial for Cindy Crawford skin tonics.) Sure, I have grey hair (which I cover with L’Oreal Excellence B3) and I have lots of laugh lines on my face (which I don’t mind at all). My butt has sagged, and my eyes (which used to have better than 20/20 vision) now need a pair of reading glasses from time to time. But almost all of my senses — my hearing, my distance and colour vision, my sense of taste, my sense of smell, and most of all my sense of timing — are all sharper and clearer than they were when I was 43. (I’m not sure, but I think my sense of touch is the same as it’s always been.)

This sharpening and clearing of the senses isn’t an occasional thing. It’s a normal part of my ongoing daily reality. I’ve read reports over the years about individuals who’ve had a sudden sharpening of the senses as part of a brief mystical experience. For these people, the sharpening was breathtaking and wonderful, and it’s something they’ve longed (often fruitlessly) to experience again. Well, if you want to know what it feels like to be dazzled by the diamond clarity of sunlight pouring through new maple leaves each time you look up at a spring sky, I can only say that these changes take place in your biology spontaneously and permanently when you make major changes to your own internal “landscape.” You can’t force these changes to take place. They just seem to happen naturally when you make the decision to be the best person you’re capable of being.

Another exciting change that’s taken place over the past few years is the improved functioning of my immune system. I’m not saying I never get sick, and I’m not saying my body is invulnerable to the effects of excessive stress. What I’m saying is that when I try my hardest to respect my body and live a balanced life, my immune system rewards me by keeping me in good shape health-wise. I rarely get sick these days, and when I do it’s not for long. I do believe, though, that even the most spiritual person will get sick and die at some point. That’s just part of life.

Right now I don’t spend any money — not a single penny — on over-the-counter or prescription medications. It took me a long time to get to this stage, and I do NOT recommend you rush out and try it. I’m just pointing out the honest scientific reality that your own biological body can do some pretty amazing things to keep you healthy if you make the right emotional, intellectual, and spiritual choices.

The biggest bonus of deciding it’s okay to be “Shrek” instead of the “Green Lantern” is the sense of inner peace, calm, freedom, and trust that becomes your normal inner reality. Your eyes start to fill up with laughter. You sleep calmly and deeply. You’re totally free of addictions. You have so much more energy for the tasks of daily living, loving, and learning. You find yourself singing sometimes just . . . well, just because.

This is what it feels like to find healing, redemption, and forgiveness.

I wouldn’t trade any of these treasures for all the status in the world. It’s such a joy to be able to get a refreshing sleep at night. It’s such a relief not to be controlled by weird biological addictions. It’s such a humble pleasure to be able to stay calm and patient when others around you are screaming and yelling and behaving badly. It’s such a source of quiet pride to be able to stand up to abusers with dignity and respect and not be taken advantage of.

I’m just so incredibly grateful that my guardian angels stuck with me while I struggled to learn how to be the best self I’m capable of being. I’ll never get over the wonder of their courage, devotion, and patience. They’re truly awesome.

I encourage you to believe in yourself the way I believe in you. The way your own angels believe in you. The way God believes in you.

You’re so much more loving than you realize.

* P.S. My son took me to see the Green Lantern, and even though I don’t recommend the character as a role model for those on the Spiral Path, what’s not to like about a summer action movie starring Ryan Reynolds? I thought it was lots of fun, and I enjoyed it. Those on the Spiral Path can’t take themselves too seriously, or they’ll miss out on some of the best parts of being human. Like fun movies and popcorn!

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, Christ Zone, Gnosticism, healing, My Spiral Path, mystic, relationship with God, The Blonde Mystic and tagged ethical mysticism, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

18 Jun 2011

JR51: Fifth Step: Keep Christmas, Toss Easter

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 Christ Archetype, Divine Heart, historical Jesus | Leave a Comment

12 Jun 2011

JR49: Third Step: Invite Our Mother to the Table

A: Last time we spoke, the idea of the “scandal of particularity” sort of popped onto the page. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, and I’d like to return to that idea if it’s okay with you.

J: Fine by me.

A: You said — and I quote — “There IS a ‘scandal of particularity,’ but it applies to God the Mother and God the Father, not to me.” Can you elaborate on this?

J: Orthodox Western Christianity — the religious structure built on the teachings of Paul and Paul’s orthodox successors — has worked very hard in the last few centuries to “reposition” me, Jesus son of Joseph, in the marketplace of world opinion. Many critics of Christianity have pointed out how damaging and abusive it is to claim that God “became” one particular man in one particular place at one particular point in time. No end of systemic abuse has been voluntarily created by Church representatives because of this claim. Claims about me have been used to justify maltreatment of women, violence against Jews, and attacks on the “inferiority” of all other religious traditions.

Christians who think that I, Jesus, am happy about their claims should check out the current song by Christina Perri called “Jar of Hearts.”* “Jar of Hearts” is a song about a person who has finally figured out how abusive her former partner is. “Who do you think you are?” she asks with no holds barred, “running’ ’round leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts, and tearing love apart.” This song reflects quite accurately how I feel about “Mother Church.” I want no part of the traditional teachings about Jesus the Saviour. If they want to keep their Saviour, they’ll have to find a new candidate, because this particular angel has resigned. Quit. Left the building. I’m tired of being their whipping boy.

A: Not quite the answer I was expecting.

J: People think that angels have no feelings. Well, I have plenty of feelings about the way the Church has abused me and those I love. I forgive individual church leaders — those who have perpetrated great harm in the name of God and Jesus — but I feel the pain intensely. Forgiveness isn’t the same thing as sweeping great harms under the carpet. Forgiveness is first and foremost a state of honesty — honesty about the intent and the injury inflicted by the intent. The intent of the Church’s teachings about me (Jesus) and about sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God is selfish and narcissistic. These teachings promote physiological addiction disorders. They harm lives. They harm relationships. They harm the understanding of humanity’s role in Creation. I do not respect these teachings, and I do not support the right of the Church to teach abusive spirituality to desperate people. Abuse is abuse. Western society as a whole no longer supports or condones spousal abuse or child abuse or corporate abuse. Yet Western society continues to condone spiritual abuse. This must stop.

A: Many Christians have noticed the problem of abuse in the Church and have decided to walk away from the Church. They don’t see how it can be fixed.

J: People want and need to be in relationship with God. They need faith in their lives. Unfortunately, the Church has taken terrible advantage of this need.

A: I haven’t seen much willingness among Christians I know to ask tough questions about Church doctrine. They’re trying to change the window dressings while the basement foundation is full of rot. No wonder people are leaving the mainstream churches in droves! At least in Canada they are. Can’t comment on the experience in other countries.

J: In Canada there’s such a widespread ethos of inclusiveness, access to public health services and public schooling, government accountability, gender equality, and prevention of child abuse that individual Canadians aren’t seeing their day-to-day ethos reflected in the core teachings of the orthodox Church.

A: Because it’s not there. The words are there, but not the underlying ethos.

J: No. The ethos isn’t there. The Church can talk till it’s blue in the face about the importance of service work and mission, but regular people can still sense there’s “something wrong with the picture.” They can sense there’s rot in the foundations. And they don’t want to be a part of that. Some of them decide to leave the church. Others stay and do their best to try to fix it from within. But there’s mass confusion. And people are starving — literally starving — for a faith experience that makes sense to them at the deepest possible level of the heart.

“A woman in the crowd said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you. He said to her: Blessed are they who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed is the womb that has not conceived and the breasts that have not given milk'” (Gospel of Thomas 79 a-b). The Gospel of Thomas follows a minority voice in Judaism that speaks of women in a positive light and shows them as being equal to men in God’s community (rather than inferior knock-offs). This particular saying in Thomas goes even further and talks about God the Mother as one who shouldn’t be understood in terms of ordinary human motherhood. As Co-Creator of everything in the universe, our blessed Divine Mother is beyond our simple conceptions of what it means to be a mother. When compared to Hellenistic cult images of the Divine Mother (for example, the multi-breasted Artemis figure from Ephesus), it’s easy to see why Jesus faced an uphill battle in changing people’s perception of God. Photo credit Image*After.

A: For 2,000 years now we’ve been saddled with a religion that absolutely insists in no uncertain terms how ludicrous it is to even consider the remote possibility that possibly — just possibly — God might not be a “he” but might instead be a “he and a she.” It’s okay, of course, for us to bust our brains on the question of the Trinity and all the other “mysteries” that go with traditional Christianity. But it’s not okay for us to suppose that God is two people united forever in divine marriage with each other.**

J: Such a portrayal of God brings with it all sorts of implications the Church doesn’t want to deal with. For one thing, they’d have to explain why and how they “kidnapped” our Divine Mother, why they eradicated her from the message. They’d have to explain — at least in the Roman Catholic Church — why they allowed a cult to flourish around the fictional character of Mary, Mother of God.

A: You did have a mother. And her name was Miriam.

J: Yes. But she was no more the Mother of God than I was God incarnate. She was a normal human mother. That’s it.

A: Two flesh and blood people — you and your human mother — who’ve been turned into myths, lies, and symbols.

J: Meanwhile, there’s a very real and very particular Mother in Creation. God the Mother. This is the scandal of particularity I was referring to — the scandal of God the Mother and God the Father being two particular, definable, real, knowable people. Real people who have existed and continue to exist in real time and real space and real history. Real people who refuse to be moulded by the grandiose lies made by assorted religious mystics over the centuries. Real people who belong to each other — not to their children — in marital love. Real people who are our PARENTS. Real people who get hurt when their dysfunctional human children try to cross the boundaries of safety and trust between parents and children by engaging in occult practices — especially occult sexual practices.

A: Mystics have often described their “union with God” as a mystical marriage, with God as the bridegroom and the mystic or the church as the bride.

J: Yeah. And for the record, that’s another doctrine that’s gotta go. It’s highly dyfunctional and abusive for children to want to have sex with their own parents. This should go without saying. But for too long the Church has condoned mystical practices that lead in this direction.

A: Who can forget Bernini’s sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila with her mouth agape and her toes curled in orgasmic ecstasy?

J: Here’s a thought. Maybe we should butt out of the personal relationship between God the Mother and God the Father — their private life — and get on with the important job of being their children. For starters, human beings of faith could be nice to our Mother for a change. You know, talk to her. Include her. Invite her to the table of faith. Look to her for guidance and inspiration. Say thank you to her. Look her in the eye and say, “Thank you for loving me.”

A: It’s amazing how effective the Church’s strategy has been. They’ve managed to put blinders on people’s eyes so they literally can’t see God the Mother. She’s the Invisible Woman in Western theology. She’s standing right in front of us, waving her arms and jumping up and down, and people of faith still don’t see her.

J: If that isn’t gender abuse, I don’t know what is.

* “Jar of Hearts” was written by Drew C. Lawrence, Christina J. Perri, and Barrett N. Yeretsian.

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

23 May 2011

JR42: Harold Camping’s Failed Apocalyptic Prophecy . . . Like, There’s a Surprise

A: Well, it’s May 23, and the world didn’t end two days ago as prophesied by Harold Camping and his multi-million dollar non-profit apocalyptic Christian media ministry. The 200 million people who were supposed to be taken up into heaven in the Rapture are still here. Slightly impoverished after giving their money to Camping, but still here. All is well with the universe.

J: People are easily parted from their assets once they’ve lost their common sense.

A: I read the Globe and Mail on-line. Usually when I check an article there are a few dozen readers’ comments — 40 or 50 posts at most. Yesterday, by 2:50 p.m., there were 1,052 comments attached to an article by Garance Burke (Associated Press) called “Believers confused as Judgment Day doesn’t come.” I didn’t read the comments. But I thought it was interesting that a failed prophecy from a retired civil engineer in a different country would attract so much attention.

J: People have very strong opinions about religion and religious leaders.

A: Can’t argue with you there. So let’s talk about angels instead — souls who are not currently incarnated as human beings on Planet Earth. How do you and other angels feel about apocalyptic prophesies?

J (chuckling): Isn’t this a holiday in Canada? Wouldn’t you rather be outside barbequing or something?

A: It started raining again a few minutes ago. There’s been a lot of rain and cool weather this spring. All the more reason to sit down and do some typing.

J: Well, it’ll come as no surprise to you that angels are fully aware of the kinds of things that are being said about us by religious leaders in various parts of the world. You could say we have our own clipping service.

Most people have been conditioned to believe that apocalyptic prophecy is a rare and sacred gift granted by God. Few people realize that from the point of view of God’s angels, all claims from apocalyptic human prophets look like temples — temples to the glory of narcissistic humans. Nothing good comes from prophecies about the End Times, and your angels know it. They see the fear, contempt, and justification of hatred that pour into every aspect of your life if you buy into these unloving lies about God. This is one temple where your angels will always let you fall flat on your face. Shown in this photo are remnants of the temple pediment found during excavations of the Roman Baths at Bath, England (because all good Remnants must come to an end). Photo credit JAT 2023.

A: A man like Harold Camping is giving God bad press — telling people that God is so narcissistic and selfish that “he” enthusiastically plays Russian Roulette with his own children. Do angels care about this bad press? Does God?

J: Would you be happy if the people who claim to know you went around town saying you’re a controlling, manipulative, obsessive compulsive, right wing, politically conservative, Medicare-hating, gun-loving bigot who hates gays, people of colour, and women?

A: No. I’d know they were lying, and I’d forgive them. But I’d still be hurt.

J: Same with angels. Every day in every culture these lies about God are being preached. Angels not only feel hurt on behalf of God the Mother and God the Father, but they feel hurt on behalf of the souls who speak these lies while they’re struggling with human brain dysfunction.

You can be very sure that Harold Camping’s own guardian angels are now very relieved to have the whole thing over with and the lie of his prophecy revealed for what it is — not just among his own followers, but among all those who heard about it on the daily news.

A: Camping’s angels aren’t upset that he’s been embarrassed in front of millions of people?

J: Far from it. They know he’s hurt a lot of people with his narcissistic predictions. At the same time, they know that his harmful choices emerged from his dysfunctional human brain — not from his true self, not from his soul. They forgive him, but they also have to do the right thing by him and by others. They have to allow people to see the consequences of these kinds of abusive choices. If they protect Camping from the consequences of his own choices, and if they protect his followers from their own arrogance and stupidity, how will it be possible for human beings to learn not to make these kinds of choices? Tough Love is an angel’s expression of courage, trust, and faith in the ability of human beings to live their human lives in loving ways. Divine ways. Ways that don’t prey on other people’s vulnerabilities.

A: Ooooooohhh. I can just hear the response from readers. What you’re saying about Tough Love sounds perilously close to the idea of divine punishment — an idea that many liberal and progressive Christians reject as incompatible with the idea of a loving and forgiving God.

J: I can’t help it if some individuals want to reject the possibility of Tough Love from God and God’s angels. Usually the people who are most keen to reject this belief are the ones who are most interested in NOT having to learn from their own mistakes.

A: The narcissists.

J: Religious narcissists — and there are plenty of those — employ a number of psychological defences to try to shift responsibility for their own mistakes onto other people or onto other time frames. Religious doctrines such as Original Sin, Satan, Judgment Day, and the Rapture make it possible for the narcissists to stop blaming themselves for their own choices. They can shift the blame onto “conditions” that are outside their control. “Conditions” that make it easy for them to shrug their shoulders and say — with Godfather-like equanimity — “Hey, we can’t help being who we are. One day God will make us answer for our crimes, but not today. Today we have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card and we plan to use it. Because we can. So screw you.”

Really, I mean, come on. Do people think God can’t hear that? Of course God can hear that. God forgives them when they say it, which is exactly what you’d expect from a loving and forgiving God. But forgiving somebody means you have faith in their true potential, their truest and most loving nature. Forgiving somebody means you don’t walk away from them when they’re in distress. Forgiving somebody means you do your best to help them better understand the choices they’re making. This usually means you have to let them experience consequences for their choices. That’s how they begin to recognize the harm caused by their abusive choices. Every loving parent knows this.

A: Loving parents also know you have to “choose your battles.” You can’t harangue your child about every little mistake, or he stops listening. You have to save your authoritative tone for the times when it really matters.

J: Guardian angels are no different. Their job is to help guide their human “foster children,” if you will, in the direction of greater compassion, greater balance, greater common sense. They have complete discretion and free will in carrying out this task. Sometimes they decide to help soften the consequences of a really poor human choice. Sometimes they decide to let the consequences build into one mega-consequence that hurts like hell. This is the reality. God has free will and angels have free will. Therefore, God and God’s angels are free to create consequences or not as they see fit. They aren’t bound by religious contract laws. Neither are they bound by laws of cause and effect. God is a heck of a lot smarter than the Law of Cause and Effect would suggest.

A: I don’t think religious narcissists actually want God to be smarter.

“His disciples questioned him: Should we fast? In what way should we pray? Should we give to charity? From which foods should we abstain? Jesus responded: Do not lie. If there is something that you hate, do not do it, for everything is revealed beneath heaven. Nothing hidden will fail to be displayed. Nothing covered will remain undisclosed (Gospel of Thomas 6).” This life-size Roman bronze hand is covered in sacred symbols — well, sacred to occult believers, anyway. It dates from 200-400 CE and was found at Caglia, Umbria, in Central Italy. It’s on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: True. Then again, that’s what narcissism is all about. It’s about human beings whose brains are so dysfunctional — whether from head injury, toxic substances, stress hormones, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, lack of social and emotional supports, abusive upbringing, or lack of education — that they start trying to cope by inventing inner myths about their own wonderfulness and superiority and breathtaking talent. There’s no room within the myth for somebody else who’s smarter or faster or stronger. Even if that somebody else is God.

Of course, this is why religious narcissists rely so heavily on the theme of humility. A person of humility — as opposed to a person of humbleness — can see in a logical and practical way that it isn’t very smart to go around proclaiming to be as smart as God, if not smarter. That’s no way to recruit followers who’ll willingly give you money and tell you how wonderful you are. So you don the sackcloth of humility, and you tell everyone who’ll listen that you’re just an empty vessel waiting to be filled by Spirit, by God’s inspired Word. That’s how the world acquires its apocalyptic prophets.

A: So it’s layers upon layers. A myth of personal superiority that has to be cloaked in another myth — the myth of humility. Then, when this isn’t enough to get you the reverence you crave, you add other layers, other myths, each more convoluted than the last to explain why you deserve to be treated as “special.”

J: This is what happens when people aren’t honest with themselves about their own abilities, their own intentions, and their own unhealed anger. The lies build and build on top of each other. After a while the lies can take on an entire imaginary life of their own. Such is the case with orthodox Western Christianity. Its official doctrines are largely a body of lies. Only when individual Christians choose to help their neighbours in love rather than piety do they walk the path of genuine spirituality and faith. These are the times when their guardian angels smile.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), apocalyptic prophecy, Cause & Effect, forgiveness, free will, humility, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, narcissism, occult themes, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

27 Mar 2011

TBM9: The Difference Between Intuition & "Psychic Powers"

Photo (c) WordPerfect

Although the goal of the Spiral Path is for you to gradually feel confident about your soul identity and reclaim your own inner courage, devotion, gratitude, and ability to trust and forgive, you need more than just a goal in order to get you there. You need tools — the tools available to you in your spiritual kitchen.

One of the most potent tools available to human beings is their intuition. So today I’m going to talk about the differences between your own intuition — a natural human faculty that comes pre-wired in your human DNA — compared to the “psychic powers” and “secret laws of attraction” being recommended so widely these days.

In your spiritual kitchen, intuition is like the ability to read the cookbooks on the shelf. It’s no good having lots of cookbooks on the shelf if you can’t read the recipes. Maybe you can look at the pictures, but if you can’t read the words or understand the numbers, then you’re going to have a heck of a time making that scrumptious-looking triple layer chocolate cake on page 42. You’re also probably going to end up feeling very frustrated and ashamed of yourself. Frustration and self-blame make it harder for people to follow the Spiral Path, so you probably don’t want to encourage such feelings.

A lot of people would be tempted to compare intuition to the cookbooks themselves — to the wisdom recorded by other authors in the pages of the books. According to this ancient theory, there’s a special kind of divine key that can unlock the human mind. Once the special key has been found, a hidden door suddenly opens inside the mind. All at once the inner mind can “tap into” vast stores of hidden wisdom, hidden knowledge, all of which can be seen at a glance. It’s like a scene from a fantasy-adventure film — a huge treasury filled with books of knowledge. There are even names for this treasury. Some of the better-known names are Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious,” Edgar Cayce’s “Akashic Records,” and the Bible.

The general idea among teachers who call themselves “psychic” is the idea that anybody — anybody at all — can access these divine books of wisdom with (1) the proper training and (2) the proper attunement to divine energies. If you aren’t already familiar with these ideas, you won’t have any trouble finding them in the nearest bookstore. Even popular alternative therapeutic methods such as Reiki rely on the idea that you can easily “tap into divine wisdom” if you go for a few weekend workshops and learn how to properly access the never-ending tap of divine energy. Oprah is very keen on these ideas.

What makes me uncomfortable about these teachings on “psychic abilities” and “energy healing abilities” is the way they treat God. All these methods start with the assumption that God is more like a vast energy field than two loving divine parents with distinct personalities and distinct thoughts and feelings. Sure, say these spiritual teachers, there’s a Divine Oneness that all beings belong to, but there’s not any difference, really, between you and God, so it’s okay for you to feel free to help yourself at any time to that never-ending tap of divine energy. Go ahead!, they say. Feel free to use it! It’s yours to use in any way you wish as long as you’ve aligned yourself with the universal energies.

This is the prevailing thought in New Age circles. But every time I hear it, I hear the metacommunication behind the words. It goes like this: “Please feel free to mooch off your divine parents. Please feel free to take them for granted. Please feel free to ask for things you can’t do and don’t understand and don’t even want to understand. Please feel free to try to escape all the hard work that comes with the Spiral Path. Please feel free to squeeze the complexity of divine relationships into a Twitter message.”

And nobody takes a bigger hit in most New Age teachings than God’s loving angels do.

In the excerpt for John Edward’s new book Infinite Quest, he talks about the “team” that each person has “at his disposal.” While I agree with the idea that each person has an angelic “team,” I object with all my heart and soul to the idea that any angel anywhere is at anybody’s disposal.

Angels — persons-of-soul — aren’t at anyone’s beck and call. So part of the challenge for people setting out on the spiritual journey of the Spiral Path is for them to process inside their own hearts and minds the nature of their relationship with their own guardian angels.

Yes, Virginia, there is a guardian angel watching over you.

Some of the cookbooks on the shelves of your spiritual kitchen were written by your own team of guardian angels because the angels watching over you are a lot smarter than you are. (That’s one of the realities you’ll have to struggle with). They’re very experienced, very knowledgeable, and very compassionate. That’s why they’re in a position to teach you — to write down the valuable recipes in some of the cookbooks you’ll be using. Their job is to teach and guide — not to obey your desires, wishes, and whims. Your job is to try as hard as you can to learn to read their cookbooks.

In other words, your job is to develop your human faculty of intuition — your ability to understand the “reading, writing, and arithmetic” of your own guardian angels.

And when I say reading, writing, and arithmetic, I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that literally.

The cookbooks on the shelves of your spiritual kitchen have been carefully chosen by your guardian angel team to suit your unique needs and attributes. The books on your shelves aren’t the same books that appear on your neighbour’s shelves. Even more importantly, you don’t get to pick the books. You don’t get to go into the Akashic Records and pull out volumes on “The Great Pyramid” or other ancient mysteries. You get the books your own guardian angels think are best suited to you.

Your angels are trying with all their might to help you understand who you are as a unique soul — as a unique child of God — so naturally this is the focus of their efforts. They know you better than you know yourself. And they want you to know yourself the way they already know you! (That’s a good thing, by the way.)

On my blog Jesus Redux, Jesus gives a good example of a person who thinks she knows herself, but doesn’t. You can check it out at “Why You Need to Know Yourself: Mystical Commentary on Saying 67 of Thomas”.

The main difference between “human intuition” (a verifiable scientific reality) and “psychic powers” (not a verfiable scientific reality) is the dependence of intuition on the everyday choices you make. Intuition only functions properly if your human brain wiring functions properly. God has wired the human brain in such a way that when your brain wiring becomes seriously messed up because of the harmful choices you’ve been making, your intuition shuts down. It’s a logical, loving choice on God’s part to design your brain in this way. Why would a loving God allow you to have full access to the cookbooks in your spiritual kitchen during a time when you’re choosing to be intentionally destructive? You might get hold of the kitchen knives and use them to hurt somebody! So God gives people “time-outs” when they’re choosing to hurt themselves and/or hurt other people. During a divine “time-out,” not only can you not access the books in the Akashic Records (though this is the time you’re most likely to think you can), but you can’t even access the books in your own spiritual kitchen.

Fortunately, God also designed the human brain in such a way that if you put in the effort, and if you make new daily choices, and if you get the help of friends, family, and trained professionals, your human faculty of intuition can gradually come back on line. Your capacity for intuition can be healed.

This is the neuroscientific principle of neuroplasticity. The newly understood and verifiable reality of neuroplasticity states, in a nutshell, that old dogs can learn new tricks.*

On the Spiral Path, you’ll be taking full advantage of the principle of neuroplasticity. That’s not taking advantage of God, though. That’s honouring and being grateful for God’s wisdom in designing the human brain the way they did. That’s accepting God’s wisdom. That’s accepting your angels’ guidance and knowledge.

Why do God and God’s angels insist you do so much of the work yourself instead of handing it to you on a platter?

Because they believe in you.

* An excellent and highly readable book about neuroplasticity is Norman Doidge’s The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: Penguin, 2007).

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain-soul connection, building your intuition, ethical mysticism, interoception, mysticism, relationship with God, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged building your intuition, ethical mysticism | Leave a Comment

16 Mar 2011

1 Comment

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

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 ethical mysticism

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.

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 brain-soul connection, Gospel of Thomas | 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 spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

09 Jan 2011

JR2: Not a Technological Sort of Fellow, But Still Likes Gadgets

A: A few days ago, I got a big surprise. I punched the phrase “choosing between Paul and Jesus” into Google’s search engine, and the only site I came up with was my own blog Concinnate Christianity. Also, every post on my blog seemed to be “tagged” with this particular phrase. Somebody tagged my posts, but it wasn’t me, because I don’t know how to do that. Any comments?

J (laughing): Don’t look at me. That’s a different department. I’m not in the technology department. There’s a reason I lived as a human being 2,000 years ago! No computers to contend with!

A: Typing on a blog doesn’t count as technology?

J: Well, to be honest, I’m not typing on a blog. I’m talking, and you’re typing. You’re the one who has to contend with the technology. All I have to do is talk — which I love to do. So, technically speaking, I’m doing what I do best — which is philosophising. I leave the computer stuff to the computer department. So if there are mysterious search tags appearing on your blog, it’s their fault. I wouldn’t have the first idea where to begin.

A: You’re saying there’s a department of angels whose job it is to focus on technology?

J: Yup. There’s no field of human research that’s “outside the box” as far as God is concerned. You name any human researcher in any obscure field, and there are at least 12 angels in the immediate vicinity who know 12 times more about the topic than the human researcher.

A: Hey, twelve times twelve. I like your symbolism.

J: It wouldn’t be a proper mystical teaching if I didn’t randomly throw in some numerology to make people lose sleep at night wondering what I mean.

A: That’s a bit cynical!

J: Just realistic. It’s an honest statement of fact that the Bible is filled to the brim with numbers that are supposed to be mystically significant. Numbers like 12. And 40. And multiples of 7. So now it’s official. This blog is certifiably mystical. Jesus has spoken the sacred seal of twelve times twelve. All is now right with the world.

A: Whoa! You sound pretty upset!

J: I’m an angel, and angels are pretty upset these days. We’re tired of the bullshit.

A: Can you elaborate on that point?

J: It’ll take me a while. There’s a lot of bullshit in the world today.

A: People will probably be shocked that an angel would even say such a thing. Especially you. You’re Jesus. You’re supposed to be pure light and pure love. Won’t people be upset that you would speak so . . . so . . .

J: Bluntly?

A: I was thinking more along the lines of “impolite.”

J: I’m a blunt sort of fellow, and I call a spade a spade. There’s no polite way to describe what’s going on in the world today. I’d much rather be honest than polite.

A: There’s the Jesus I know.

J: I guess it’s who I am as a soul.

The Jesus I know reminds me a lot of this magnolia tree. Really. I’m not kidding. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A (chuckling): How true! Most people would be surprised as hell to know you as you really are. You’re sure not what they’re expecting. I say that from personal experience. You aren’t anything like the Sunday School portrait I was taught when I was growing up! Like, no way, Jose.

J: Hey, I’m just a guy.

A: That’s what I mean. You’re actually a guy — a real guy.

J: Last time I checked.

A: Yes, but many people on a spiritual path think that angels are all androgynous, that they have no gender, and even worse, that they have no individual uniqueness or individual identity. You’ve certainly proved that theory wrong over the years!

J: You know, I may not be a technology person per se, but I have to admit that all those gadgets with buttons on them have a certain appeal. Take TV remote controls, for example. I wouldn’t mind having one of those. And maybe a big screen TV. With crisp, high definition colour. I can see why so many men enjoy that stuff. I guess it’s a guy thing.

A: No matter what dimension a guy is in.

J: Certain attributes of the self are timeless and dimensionless. So yeah — guys love gadgets with buttons. And wheels. No matter where they live in Creation. Isn’t that great?

A: Even God the Father?

J: Even God the Father.

A: So God the Mother doesn’t get to hold the remote?

J: I think probably not.

A: Huh. Go figure. I don’t understand what that means, but it feels right. Like so many of the things you tell me.

J: One day at a time. One day at a time. That’s all anyone can do.

A: Ya got that one right.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), gender and sexuality, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, Paul vs Jesus, soul blueprint and tagged Divine Heart | 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.

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 Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

17 Nov 2010

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

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 historical Jesus, science & faith | Leave a Comment

The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “angels (i.e. persons-of-soul)”