I believe that our life path is a choice. It is one we made in committee before coming here. I also believe that there is a purpose to each of our lives and that the purpose was also a choice. To be clear, we chose our time of birth, our place of birth, the name we would be given, the family we would be a part of, the belief system we would be exposed to and influenced by, and it was all for a predetermined purpose that had attached a predetermined lesson, and a predetermined goal of achievement. So, I can be categorized as one who believes there are no accidents.
Therefore, I chose to be born into a family in rural Michigan in the late 1940's. I chose to have a mother that was fundamentalist Baptist and a Father that went along with her belief but rarely attended church services. I on the other hand was in church every time the doors were opened, and in my childhood, that was indeed many times per week. I had a deep belief in the fact that Jesus was real from a small child forward. I was taught all of the doctrines of evangelical fundamentalism from a small child as well. However, from my recollection forward, I had a pastor that believed that once a person was saved they were always saved. The main point I want to make here is that I believed that Jesus was real.
However, as I grew to teenage and early adulthood, I became skeptical of much of what I had been taught as a young person. As I became educated, I found that many of the things I had been taught in that religious upbringing did not square well with scientific fact. Further, it was difficult to believe that all of the people who did not believe as I was taught was going to end up in eternal torturous punishment simply for not believing correctly. I began to see the world I was emerging into was much larger than the one I had been raised in, I saw that there were really good and kind people who did not have a fundamentalist Baptist foundation. I was taught, that Roman Catholics especially, were destined for hell because they were not born again. This became more and more difficult to believe. Still my world was small relatively speaking. I was basically unaware that there were other religions other than Christians.
In relatively short time, I left all of my fundamentalist beliefs and completely rejected Christianity and actually threw the baby out with the bath water. As I branched out in college I began an awareness of a much broader world. People were beginning to think about and discuss the nature of the world in terms of quantum mechanics. I was introduced to Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics." I read the novel's of Carlos Castaneda like Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, and the Teaching of Don Juan. I began to meet many people who were metaphysically inclined. I met clairvoyants and people who did automatic writing. I began to see fairly concrete evidence of a spiritual reality that superseded the material world. I was led toward mysticism without really knowing what that was. All the while I rejected Jesus out of hand. I was spiritual but not religious before that was even a thing.
I became interested in Numerology and while living in Phoenix Arizona, I did numerology readings for people. I attended meditation groups that did visual walks. I became deeply involved with the mystical, spiritual, metaphysical world. I should add that throughout my life, from childhood, I was very intuitive. It was almost like I could read people and their moods. This is still the case today. I am very spiritually in tune and really am quite accurate in reading people
It was in the mid 1990's that I had another spiritual shift. As I explained earlier, I had rejected Christianity and in so doing I had rejected Jesus. While I had rejected Christianity and Jesus, I had not rejected the idea that there was a conscious creator that had created the material world with a purpose in mind. I saw this creative source as the collective consciousness and had a mystical revelation that it was a combination of energy and thought. Early in the 1970's I wrote the "Primal Dream." The link provided allows you to read it if you have an interest. But now, in the mid 1990's I was having a spiritual shift again. This time it was the result of stressful life circumstances. It seemed like nothing was going right, and that my world was unraveling. This brought me to the point of soul searching and I remember going out on my back porch in Hayward California and looking up to the sky and praying. I have described what took place in this post called "The Back Porch Prayer." In short, the answer to the prayer resulted in me renewing my relationship with Jesus.
When I first came back to Jesus, there was a ton of baggage from my fundamentalist childhood days. I studied and studied and persevered past all of the condemnation of old voices playing old familiar themes in my head. But, as I studied, I was given a new set of glasses, a new lens for the scripture. This evolved slowly over a twenty-plus year period. I became increasingly more sure that what we call orthodoxy, and especially evangelical orthodoxy is completely off the rails. I saw that Jesus himself and his immediate first century followers had provided the new lens. The most important aspect of this shift was that I began to have continual conversations with Jesus and I knew that he was always with me, and in fact, had never left me. These conversations were of a spiritual nature, and no I did not audibly hear his voice but I did hear it distinctly in my mind. Later on, much of the communication came with a form of automatic writing or should I say automatic typing? It was an ongoing journal that allows me to sit down and allow the spirit to give me free flowing messages. I never have a clue as to what will be shared until I sit down that the keyboard and begin.
These sessions are always accompanied by me listening to binaural beats in a meditative state of mind. He continually reminds me of his love for me and for everyone. He shares that he is not only speaking on his behalf, but on Papa's behalf as well. These messages are always positive, and there is always a supernatural sense of peace that accompanies them. One of his favorite lines for me is "do not fret" based on my recollection of Psalm 37. It is his way of assuring me that he is watching over me and intervening on my behalf. Not with individuals, but with organizations. He does not choose between individuals as he loves each member of humanity equally. Of course, he and Papa do allow natural consequences to happen for all, but for the faith filled, born in this circumstance, they intervene in ways that brings victory and success out of defeat and failure.
Interesting story you may say, but what is your point? This is a great question to pose at this time. The point is that in order to have a successful sojourn here on this earth. One must work out and work through the circumstances of his or her life path, and discover the greater lesson and purpose. I believe that it is tied to the beginning, and the purpose to which we chose to be born. Our life here on this planet is as much for our spiritual and mystical growth as it is for our physical and intellectual growth. The Jesus story has played an important part in that for me. I am convinced that Jesus is/was indeed real. he was/is the unique first born of humanity from before creation. He came to demonstrate that we are all eternal by being willing to die to then be raised from the dead, and thereby overcome death in victory. He did not mean to create a religion. That was not his purpose at all.
Furthermore, he came to a people and a culture that believed in one God, but in a God that had the traits of a human. Their one God was capable of wrath and violence. Their one God chose some people over others to be the apple of his eye. Their one God demanded the complete annihilation of a people including women and children. Jesus came to a people that had a strong patriarchal order that could fairly be characterized as mysogonystic. Cultural context is everything. Cultural context is the way in which one can best understand the bigger picture and see the overall purpose. Therefore, the Jesus story is best understood by looking at a transition that took place within it. While Jesus came to first century Jews as their Messiah, the story does not end there.
It begins with several key mystical revelations about and from, John the Baptist, the last Old Covenant Jewish prophet. He in fact declared this with the statement that he was simply the voice of one crying in the wilderness; a reference to Isaiah chapter forty. In that statement, he self identified as the one who would announce comfort to the people of Israel. This is indeed a mystical revelation and it was not just given to John, but to his mother Elizabeth and his father Zechariah. Entwined in this is Jesus himself. There is mystical revelation given around him as well. First to Mary his mother, and Joseph his father. It is important to emphasize that it is within the context of second temple Judaism, and fulfillment of the Jewish Old Covenant. It is transitional. It is a partial revelation of the Jesus story, and to understand it all, one has to look at the mystical revelation received by others all the way through the end of the first century.
The most important part of this transition during Jesus ministry is what he revealed about the heart of God. He introduced God as Papa in the sky; a papa that loved his children. I realize that the concept is patriarchal and male centric, but we must remember the cultural context. It is in the framework of the culture, and it would not have been possible for those in the first century to understand it outside of that. In the same way that Jesus could not speak of airplanes or automobiles and be understood, it would likewise be impossible to speak in gender inclusive or genderless terms and be understood or received. But, that does not mean that the cultural understanding of the first century must be locked from that time henceforth. Nor, does the cultural bias of the time diminish the real message of Jesus. His message was that we were here on planet earth to love one another; to lay down our lives for others. He showed the first century Jews a very different God. He showed them a God that judged no one, but gave all judgment to the Son, and following that God, he said to Papa at his own murder, "forgive them they do not understand what they are doing."
However, that was not the end of the Jesus story. After his death and resurrection, he reached out to the Apostle Paul mystically. In understanding Paul's contribution to the Jesus story, it is imperative that one understands that Paul was a walking dichotomy. That was what he inherited from his cultural experience. He was Paul the trained Jewish Rabbi, and he was Paul the mystic that had been spiritually in tune with the Spirit of Jesus. It was never meant for the writings of Paul the rabbi to be frozen in time and practiced forward for all time. However, the revelation given to Paul the mystic is timeless. He revealed that God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself, and was not counting sin against humanity. He revealed that God chose this plan from before creation so that it would be God's favor that would be praised. It was Paul that revealed the importance of the resurrection. He showed that it was what overcame the fear of death and was the catalyst for peace with Papa. He revealed that is was Jesus faith and not our faith that justified humanity. Jesus was able to do it as a first born prototype of a new creation or a new humanity. These revelations are many more than I have expressed here but it makes the point. This needs to be spiritually discerned as uniquely different from the musings and judgments of Paul the trained rabbi. While they may have been just what was needed for the time, they were definitely not meant to be enshrined as a rule perpetually.
Another important mystic that helped complete the Jesus story was the apostle John, the beloved. He gave two of the most important mystical revelations. First, he connected the incarnation of Jesus with the Logos that was first revealed to Heraclitus and the Stoics after him. This same concept of the creative source being the Logos, or in other words the consciousness of God, was also revealed and elaborated to Philo, a Jew who was never really a follower of Jesus. This revelation fits nicely with what Lao Tzu had concluded in the "Tao." It also is symbiotic with much of the facts surrounding quantum mechanics and that understanding of material reality and creation. The second important mystical revelation that John received was the fact that God is agape love, that is love is the nature of God. With this revelation I would be remiss not to mention the Apostle Paul again. He received the revelation that defined love, and therefore defined God. One important characteristic of love is that it keeps no record of wrongs. This is an important thing to understand when reaching peace with God. Akin to this definition of love, he gave the revelation of the characteristics that would be the fruit of the Spirit. It too was love, joy, peace just to name a few. The full definitions can be found in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and in the fifth chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians.
It is totally unnecessary to incorporate all of the cultural norms of the first century when understanding these revealed truths of the Jesus story. It is likewise unnecessary to accept all of the conclusions of orthodoxy to have a meaningful relationship with Jesus. In fact, I am convinced that what we call orthodoxy, and especially evangelical orthodoxy, is in fact the strong delusion written about by Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. The truth is that the new humanity is a reality whether believed or not. The truth is that we are currently living in the New Heaven and Earth and most are totally unaware of it. One does not have to be Christian to participate in the new heaven and earth, but an understanding of the Jesus story would be helpful in the same way that Taoism is helpful in my journey as a Jesus follower. My whole point here is that I was not born a Taoist and therefore my life path is not in the Tao, yet an understanding of the Tao Te Ching is very beneficial in my development in the Jesus story.
We, the human race, have just begun a journey into a far more inclusive consciousness. While the exclusive consciousness is desperately trying to hang on, it is a matter of time until it is no more. Thus, the title of this post. I am leaving the dance with the one that I came with.
