Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 04, 2020 • 47 Comments
Jesus, The Source, The Teachings of Jesus
Christianity is not based in the teachings of Jesus, and in fact much of modern Christianity is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. It will therefore be impossible for us to tinker around the edge of Christianity, soften it here and firm it up there, perhaps remove some later accretions, and thereby transform it into the spiritual movement Jesus came to earth to begin. If we really intend to follow Jesus, our only option is to rescue the Lord and His Word from the false religion that has prevented His teachings from uplifting the world, and let that religion just fade away.
The way Christianity treats the Son of God like nothing more than a prop is appalling. When the Catholic church has had continuous custody of the Gospels for two thousand years, when the first Biblical translation into English dates back to the sixteenth century, and when to date the Bible has been translated into 698 different languages, how is it possible that literally no prominent modern Christian denomination gives the Lord’s teachings as they are set forth in the canonical Gospels anything more than lip-service?
We have talked here repeatedly about the differences between the Gospels and Christianity. We have demonstrated Christianity’s troubling history, shown how individual Christian teachings are bogus, and also spent time carefully reading the Gospels in modern English as we strive to ever better understand the genuine meaning and message of Jesus. But it occurs to me now that in giving you a constant fire hose of information, I really am not serving you well. I realized during the Christmas season that what you need in order for you to see how hopeless it is for us to try to fix modern-day Christianity is the clarity of pinning down the anti-Jesus teaching that is Christianity’s core message.
Jesus tells us in the Gospels that in coming to us two thousand years ago He had at least five goals in mind:
And Jesus had a sixth purpose, too, which seems more subtle to readers of the Gospels because as they are translated into modern English this core purpose is never bluntly stated. But this purpose is central to all the others! Unless we include it, we make our actually following the teachings of Jesus much more difficult:
* Jesus Came to Give Us a New Definition of Right and Wrong
To put it plainly, Jesus came to abolish the very notion of “sin.” The dictionary definition of sin is “an act of transgression against divine law,” which makes the word culturally malleable, doesn’t it? What is against divine law in one culture might be divinely mandated in another. But in fact, Jesus intended to do away with all divinely mandated rules. He outmoded the concept of sin altogether! And I think now that the fact that Christianity is based in the notion that we are all sinful is the central reason why the religion is so irredeemably flawed.
Christianity is based in the Old Testament; in the teachings of Paul; in the needs of the early Roman church-builders; and in the random tweaks of lesser church leaders. And in nearly all of the more than forty thousand versions of Christianity now extant, 
the notion that Jesus came to die for our sins is central! I spent fifty years of my life first as an ardent Protestant, then after my marriage as an ardent Catholic. Christianity was even my college major, so I do indeed know the religion. And this beautiful Christmas carol that once upon a time I loved is Christianity at its core:
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus my Saviour did come for to die
For poor ornry people like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
“I Wonder as I Wander” was written in the 1930s, based on fragments of an Appalachian folk song. These words express the guilt and shame that all of us are meant to feel because we are so sinful that a sinless Jesus had to suffer the horrible death we all deserve.
But Jesus emphatically did not “come for to die”! If that had been His purpose, He would never have needed to speak a word, and in fact His spending those three-plus years teaching would have delayed and detracted from His holy purpose. We have no right to impose our own interpretations on the Lord’s work, nor to take him at anything less than His Word! And He plainly tells us that He came to us as the kind of disrupter who will pluck grain on the Sabbath (MT 12:1-5), will dine with undesirables (MT 9:9-15), will refuse to punish sinners (JN 8:3-11), and will physically attack people for going about their lawful business (JN 2:13-16). In fact, He came to transform everything! He had to do it cleverly, since in His day speaking against the prevailing religion was a capital crime; and when you realize that, you read the Gospels with a fresh sense of admiration. Sometimes you and I have to read between His careful lines a bit, but when we do that His meaning is plain. Often, He waited until He could answer somebody’s apt question so the Temple guards who were always listening wouldn’t hear Him introducing something radical just on His own initiative. Then when He got the right question, He hit it out of the park!
One day someone asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment, and He didn’t 
name any of the Ten Commandments. Those Ten Commandments are religious laws. They are proscriptions against sins, so if His purpose is to do away with the concept of sin He will have to do away with all those commandments. Now, let’s watch Him do it! When He was asked what was the greatest Commandment, instead of naming any of the Ten, Jesus gave his listeners God’s new Law of Love. He said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (MT 22:37-39). Since love is not even mentioned in the Ten Commandments, this answer was far more radical than it seems to us now! He was giving us two new commandments and placing them above the Ten Commandments that God had given to Moses long before. He could have stopped right there, and the fact that He didn’t stop there should be a topic for sermons and homilies in every church on earth. His next words were, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:40). “The Law and the Prophets” was what the Jews 
of His day called our Old Testament. The whole concept of sin is grounded in religious laws, and in summing up the Old Testament this way, Jesus was discarding every Jewish law and replacing them all with God’s Law of Love. He was abolishing sin, by definition! And He confirmed that His abandonment of sin-based religious laws was deliberate when He also said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (MT 5:17). He was indeed fulfilling all prophesy, and thereby beginning our whole new relationship with God. He was introducing God’s reign on earth as only perfect eternal love!
We know now that all that exists is consciousness, and that it exists in a range of vibrations from fear at the lowest to love at the highest. So we can understand now why it was so important to Jesus that He do away with fear-based religious laws when He brought us God’s new Law of Love, since if the notion of sin remains as a burden on humanity then our learning to love and thereby raising the consciousness vibration of this planet becomes a great deal harder. He had to abolish the notion that any act can be sinful on its face. From the day that Jesus first spoke those words, we must not consider any act to be arbitrarily divinely proscribed! From then on, the only question is whether you are doing whatever you are doing for some selfish personal reason, or whether you do it purely and entirely out of love.
It is important to add that God didn’t change! What Jesus was doing was just removing from the religion of the world’s first true monotheists all the fear-based human corruptions that had allowed for easier control of the people. Love hadn’t been much emphasized before, although we find it throughout the Law and the Prophets; and 
when Jesus removes the human-caused fear, then that love shines even where it is not called love. God didn’t change by a single jot. It was people’s understanding of God that Jesus came to change.
For example, Micah of Moresheth was an early Hebrew prophet, a contemporary of the great Isaiah. He spoke in particular against religiosity and the notion that God wants our sacrifices, and a full eight centuries before the birth of Jesus Micah previewed the Lord’s whole Gospel message. He said, “With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8)
What God asked of us three thousand years ago is just what God still asks today! For a long time I felt an urgency about separating Jesus from Christianity, fretting that as the religion declines we might mistakenly throw out the Baby with the bathwater. But with every day that you and I study and proclaim the Lord’s Gospel teachings, we further lessen that risk. Jesus still calls us to follow Him, and every day more and more of us are 
choosing to leave Christianity behind so we can follow the Lord. And as we do that, He tells us we are making Him glad! He says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (JN 8:31-32)
Learning to live without a concept of sin is a much bigger challenge than it might seem. If we truly mean to follow Jesus, then we must enter a whole new world! Let’s begin to explore that world next week….
Thank you Roberta.
Jesus’ foremost commandment – to love – is so simple and pure, so instinctive, and at times so challenging for us humans to follow.
Brian Weiss in his book Messages from the Masters reflects on love as the highest and most pure energy, which possesses both wisdom and awareness, is absolute, and never ends. He posits that when healers emit healing energy, whether directed to a person or bacteria etc, that these healing energies are related to the energy of love; that healing energy is a component of spiritual energy.
This rings true to me; I believe Jesus demonstrated that healing is love, is consciousness, is God.
Oh yes, dear Alex, so true! Last week someone mentioned the experiments that had been done with directing love to water, or hatred, and the astonishing differences in patterns that had resulted. Rice that was loved as it was being boiled stayed white and edible for a long time, while rice that had been hated soon turned black. I hear many more anecdotal stories from people who are just waking up to these facts about how much difference doing things with love can make! I think we are going to learn in the end that the most important thing about whatever we do is the degree of love-energy with which we do it. And that is why doing away with the whole fear-based concept of sin is so central! When most people are free of fear and operating from ever greater love, quite literally everything will change.
Dear Roberta,
Thank you for such a to-the-point explanation of why Christianity isn’t Christ-like, and what it in fact will mean for all of us to truly follow His teachings. You have not only liberated Jesus, you have liberated all of us. If Jesus is our teacher, then that makes us not only disciples but also His students. We are meant to learn directly from the Master Himself. With Jesus’ words and purpose so clearly instructing us, and with He Himself cheering us on, we cannot help but see the Kingdom of God. Happy 2020! <3
Dear Mike, you have really made me smile! Jesus did indeed come to do away with the whole burden of human-made “divine” laws in order to free us from fear and help us claim the divine love which is our birthright, so indeed He did come to liberate us all! I hadn’t thought about it that way. Even more than all the rest of what He says in the Gospels, this revelation is indeed profoundly liberating!
🙂
Although Paul may not have completely understood the “law of Christ” he did have some good insights, as these words demonstrate:
Gal. 5:14 For the entire Law has been obeyed when you have kept the single precept, which says, “YOU ARE TO LOVE YOUR FELLOW MAN EQUALLY WITH YOURSELF.
Gal 5:18 If the Spirit is leading you, you are not subject to Law.
Gal 6:2 Always carry one another’s burdens, and so obey the whole of Christ’s Law.
Rom 6:14 Sin shall not be lord over you, since you are subjects not of Law, but of grace.
Romans 13: 8-10 Owe nothing to any one except mutual love; for he who loves his fellow man has satisfied the demands of Law. For the precepts, “THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,” “THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER,” “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL,” “THOU SHALT NOT COVET,” and all other precepts, are summed up in this one command, “THOU SHALT LOVE THY FELLOW MAN AS MUCH AS THOU LOVEST THYSELF.” Love avoids doing any wrong to one’s fellow man, and is therefore complete obedience to Law.
1 Cor. 13: 4-13 Love is patient and kind. Love knows neither envy nor jealousy. Love is not forward and self-assertive, nor boastful and conceited.
She does not behave unbecomingly, nor seek to aggrandize herself, nor blaze out in passionate anger, nor brood over wrongs.
She finds no pleasure in injustice done to others, but joyfully sides with the truth.
She knows how to be silent. She is full of trust, full of hope, full of patient endurance.
Love never fails. But if there are prophecies, they will be done away with; if there are languages, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be brought to an end.
For our knowledge is imperfect, and so is our prophesying; but when the perfect state of things is come, all that is imperfect will be brought to an end.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, felt like a child, reasoned like a child: when I became a man, I put from me childish ways.
For the present we see things as if in a mirror, and are puzzled; but then we shall see them face to face. For the present the knowledge I gain is imperfect; but then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And so there remain Faith, Hope, Love–these three; and of these the greatest is Love.
Oh yes indeed, dear Loren, some of what Paul says in his letters is clearly divinely inspired! And as I say in one of the posts linked above, 1Cor 13 was actually channeled to Paul: it is in fact the inspired word of God. No doubt other passages in Paul’s letters were channeled as well. The fact that his sincere work meant in service was later subsumed into a human-made religion that then strayed far from the Lord’s teachings and now considers them to be mere suggestions does not reduce the value of his work! Indeed, the fact that he helped to put a protective wrapper based in Judaism around the pure teachings of the Lord is a primary reason why we still have those teachings today. We should be so grateful to him!
Paul was a very good first-century man. He allowed himself to be used by Spirit to help to preserve those sacred teachings, but he would be the first one to tell you that his understandings are not what matters. It is God’s eternal truth as Jesus brought it to us that matters. And now at last we can remove Paul’s wrapper of a Judaism-derived religion and accept with joy the Lord’s radical gift!
I’m betting that Paul, looking at your work from above, is in full agreement with the new revelations you are discovering and sharing with the world. He probably laughs a bit over his own earlier misconceptions!
You’ve made me smile, my dear. No doubt, Paul’s efforts in response to the Lord’s call were celebrated when he first arrived home; I think he carried out a crucial part of the greater plan. And he may indeed now be one of those who are working through some on earth to raise the planet’s consciousness vibration. But, as you say, he may very well be amused by his own earlier misconceptions. All of us who are deep in this work have amusing surprises in store when we first arrive home!
I found myself feeling sorry for Jesus after reading this because between being on constant guard from the guards who were always listening, trying to convey messages to a most uneducated and sometimes paranoid public, and walking from place to place to spread his word, it had to be very stressful for him. His message, of course, all boiled down to love, but he couldn’t say that because he would have been in deep trouble. I totally understand that, and I understand how he was used as a “front” for the fear-based religions that came after his death, but what I don’t understand is that the old testament God is clearly not the same one as the new testament God, so was the old testament God a real being that people worshipped thinking it was actually God, or was the old testament God a made up being? There are accounts of people actually seeing this being, but we don’t know what they were actually looking at. I also find it odd that Jesus (as far as I know) never mentioned the old testament God, and I would think that if he wanted to dispel fear, that would be the first thing he would do. Or was it because if he did mention that the Old Testament God didn’t really exist, he would have been in deep trouble with the Council of Nicea and other such groups? I always thought that the old testament God had the traits of a power hungry egomaniac, so he could have existed, but certainly not in a spiritual sense. He sounds like a human being who was a tyrannical dictator.
Dear Lola, having learned all the handicaps under which Jesus operated, and all the various ways He had to hedge and fudge things in order to stay alive even for so long as He did, I have felt bad for Him ever since college! I mean, parables. Building teachings around OT tales that He then had to modify to make them more accurate. Giving big truths in little bits over days of time. Avoiding ever coming out directly and saying things like, “God is only love! You folks don’t have to be afraid!” He did say some pretty radical things; He said that God doesn’t judge us, for example, and those words have been in the Gospels from the beginning without Christian leaders ever taking notice of them.
Your question about the OT God is an interesting one. Of course, God has always been perfect love, and everything about the God of either the OT or the NT that is in any way judgmental or scary is a human-made accretion. When you read what Micah and some of the other ancient prophets said, you can hear Jesus speaking! Indeed, even through two translation and after 2000 years, and even with the impossible legal restrictions under which He had to operate, you can hear Him saying that underneath all the human distortions that happened before His time – and from which He was working to free the Jews – there still remained the ancient Creator God of infinite, all-powerful, eternal love.
I’m sure that Jesus would have loved to come out and say, “That scary and vindictive God doesn’t exist!” How that would have eased people’s fears, and it might have prevented the worst aspects of Christianity from ever getting started. But I have been made to understand that my feeling of righteousness about setting things right is in complete error! About a year ago, I was writing a response to someone’s email, saying (and, worse, thinking) that history had gone all wrong and it was our job at last to set it right; and immediately, forcefully, Thomas said sternly something like, “Do not ever for a moment think that any of the history of Christianity was meant to unfold differently!” And he almost never speaks that bluntly, using words. Wow. I actually blushed. And ever since then, I have assumed that the past was supposed to happen as it did, and our work now is unfolding as it should, even thought we can’t see the larger picture!
If Thomas said that Christianity was meant to unfold exactly as it did, then my level of fear just shot up to the moon. This means that the horrible crucifixion of Jesus, the bloody wars, violent acts and last, but not least, the horrors of the Inquisition (the Inquisition still freaks me out) were meant to be. This does not fit the description of a loving caring God. I always thought that those horrors were brought on by the negativity that prevailed in those days. and that it was a direct result of fear, hatred and negative thinking, which allowed that type of low vibration to exist and grow in intensity.
Dear Lola, he didn’t say that Christianity was meant to unfold just as it did. What he said was that it was not my place to presume that things had gone wrong in Christian history – effectively, that I should stop thinking that I knew better. A lot of his guidance of this rather difficult charge of his has been his need to repeatedly pull me back and humble me! I have thought about that exchange a lot since then – his intensity shocked me, and I have only very seldom heard him speak in words – and I’m sure that I have discussed this with him at length during our almost-nightly meetings.
What seems to be the case is that:
1) There was a range of ways in which things could have unfolded after Jesus died, and it is generally the case that elevated beings refrain from interfering in history as it is happening. Two things that we know they have done of late are to (a) begin and carry out projects meant to elevate the consciousness level of this planet, and (b) get Donald Trump elected President (which is a whole ‘nother story). So they allowed Christian history to unfold as it did. Human free will is essential, and they profoundly respect it!
2) Over the past two thousand years, efforts were made to send people to earth who would turn Christian history back toward the original meaning and purpose of Jesus, and in fact that is what is happening now. What, in the long span of history, is two thousand years?
3) We come here to find negativity to push against so we can grow spiritually, and Christianity has certainly produced a lot of negativity! I think they let it run for awhile, always encouraging some who were here to work to reduce the negativity; and then eventually, early in the previous century, they decided they were going to need to thin the veil so they could alleviate the worst excesses of negativity.
Dear Lola, the Godhead is indeed perfectly loving and infinitely powerful, but emphatically the Godhead does not interfere and override the results of human choices on earth. Upper-level entities may do it on occasion, but they do it very seldom. That humanity has been influenced by the negativity that humanity itself has created to do some pretty inhuman things in this place that is certainly not our real lives – that is not even real at all! – is nothing that ever should trouble your mind!
Dear Lola, Roberta can and most likely will reply with a better understanding than I can here, but allow me to try to not so much respond to your comment but amplify: That the last 2000 years unfolded as it should does not mean it was God’s will. It WAS the effect of negativity, and it WAS the effect of human free will (a big caveat to our having free will is that God doesn’t interfere; we have to), but it AT THE SAME TIME, set up a tipping point for Jesus’ message to be needed and therefore heard more clearly as the Way out of our own self-imposed slavery to small thinking and lack of faith — not in God, but in our own abilities to transcend. Jesus Himself said, “All these things and more, you will do” when referring to His own liberated thoughts and actions. So, the experience we perceive as incarnation has been a difficult learning path for all of humanity, but we now have the freedom to choose with more understanding than we have ever had in our history. We are ready!
PS-OK, now that I’ve posted, I see that Roberta did in fact beat me to it, so nevermind! 😉
That’s ok Mike. I enjoyed reading your comments. I see your point (and Roberta’s). It’s just that Christianity could have been a beautiful experience but instead turned out to be one of the worst nightmares I have ever read about.
Dear Mike, I think you did a wonderful job with this answer! No, emphatically, we can never assume that anything that happens on earth is either God’s will or something that God lacked the power to prevent. We already know that God is perfect love, so we cannot say that any negative thing ever was God’s will! All negativity on earth is human-created, and it is essential to the purpose of earth as a spiritual gym (my take) or a spiritual school (Craig Hogan’s take) that we have absolute free will. So… we get wars and disasters. We get Christianity off the rails. None of this ever has been anything that God could not have changed in an instant! The point from an eternal perspective seems to be that none of this is real, and no one is harmed in the making of this un-reality.
I agree with you that we likely have enough knowledge and sufficient skills to at last change humankind’s disastrous course. And I think we are about to do it!!
The First and Great Commandment has an interesting implication.
To set the stage: Is Jesus going to give us a commandment which is impossible for us to keep? No, of course not. So it must be POSSIBLE for us to keep the First and Great Commandment.
Next question: It is possible to love someone that you fear? You can probably recall some adult family member who you feared as a child, but you still loved them, so let me rephrase the question: Is it possible love someone you fear WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, and WITH ALL YOUR MIND? Of course not – where there is fear, there will be reservations.
Therefore, the only way that we can possibly keep the First and Great Commandment is, if do we do not fear God!
And IF Jesus did not give us a commandment which is impossible to keep, then the logical conclusion is that we have NO REASON TO FEAR GOD!!
Yes, Proverbs says, “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, but it is ONLY the beginning. Further down the road we encounter perfect love, and as John teaches, perfect love casts out ALL FEAR. Including all fear of our Father.
So one implied teaching of the First and Great Commendment is, we have NO REASON to fear God, because otherwise that commandment would be impossible to keep.
All very logical, dear Duke! And I agree with your take. We know in this and other ways that God is perfect love, and we know therefore that God cannot be an object of fear. From the perspective of the Godhead, fear is counterproductive! No, it is only fallible people who find creating fear in others to be a useful tactic for exercising control; and in fact, as we begin to fight fear itself, you will see a great many people who are now wielding power over others fighting the lessening of our ambient fear pretty hard!
Thank you Roberta!
I dropped a word in my post above, so I want to correct that. The second line of the third paragraph should have included the word “family”:
“You can probably recall some adult family member… “
Good point, Duke. Fear and love are like oil and water. They just don’t go well together.
Dear Lola, not only do fear and love not mix, but in fact they are energetic polar opposites! Where one is strongly dominant, it is hard for the other to gain even the smallest foothold. And as you work to raise your personal consciousness vibration, that is a very good thing indeed!
Dearest Roberta,
Religions are terrible things in a way, they tend to cloud the essence so much as to obscure it from being recognized.
When asking our scripture teacher in early high school why Moses was so hard, and his laws so prescriptive, we received an interesting answer. The teacher, thankfully, said “I don’t know, but it looks like he was trying to build a self disciplined, good, strong people out of a skittish, confused mob of Hebrews who were former Egyptian slaves. Moses gave them discipline, morality and a God oriented culture”.
Maybe Moses needs to be viewed as dealing with his own time and place to see why he even needed a set of commandments….
I’ve learned that time on earth allows for process. Everything has a process. Grief. Maturity. Growth. Relationships. Even love. I guess Roberta that the Mosaic Law, the Judaism of Jesus’ time and thence Christianity are all part of the process of human transformation. And just like the protective outer petals of the lotus flower, old things fall off as part of the growth process. The Sacred Lotus for instance, discards the rougher flower husks once the lotus arises from the muddy pond that birthed it, and opens its full and colorful petals to the sunlight.
Therefore, what is not Eternal Love falls away as we grow. Indeed sin consciousness, religious dogma and even Christianity must fall away to reveal the true Jesus; the Divinity within each of us.
You’ve clearly shown us how Jesus is about transformation and not about religion building, sin, fear, non forgiveness or guilt. Perhaps we can take a little step back and look at history from our eternal soul viewpoint. We can consider change over time from a quiet, fixed point in the now. Then it is easier to see a process of changing human consciousness taking place. Isn’t it amazing ?
Happy New Year my dear. Though for my own reasons I don’t feel as good about 2020 (as you and others in our blog family do) I’m comforted that the Divine will bring humanity great transformation of Spirit. And I’ve long felt that we can learn so very much by living with and watching nature. The thing with plants is that the growth rate accelerates over time. Maybe things for human beings are speeding up too.❣️🙏🏼🌱
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Efrem: I just wanted to tell you how much I loved what you wrote. I had no idea that plant growth accelerates over time. and I certainly am not familiar with the lotus plant, but how interesting that it discards the rough flower husks once it is more exposed to the light (the sun). You are correct, I feel, in saying that nature can teach us so much if we would only take the time to observe it more. I truly feel that plants have a consciousness of their own. Otherwise, they couldn’t respond to thoughts of love and hate directed at them, but the research has proven that they do. This, to me, is another example of how powerful thoughts can be.
Hi Lola, Thank you for being so kind my dear. I loved what you said too; oil and water don’t mix. So love and fear ultimately, shouldn’t reside in the same heart. Great way to express this in a single image. 👍 I’d like to use this analogy, Lola, from now on.
The Sacred Lotus (Nelumba nucifore) is an amazing plant. The Adelaide botanical gardens has a propagation program, and a beautiful display pool of this unique water plant that is symbolic of the rise of Spirit awareness, favored in India and beyond. The meaning therein is that the Divine ‘grows us’ from out of the muddy obscurity of the pond of this world, into the Light of God, revealing our true beauty. I’ve always thought it a poetic and visually beautiful image.
And I know that you have an abiding love for nature. You are right when you talk of the consciousness of plants. I’ve always felt that the awareness of trees in particular, is collective. A forest has a shared awareness that maybe we cannot perceive yet. ❣️🌲
Efrem – I see now why the lotus is so prominent in Eastern religions. It is just as mysterious as the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies. I also agree with you about the shared awareness of forests. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone hiking, but you can “feel” that awareness; it’s just very hard to explain.
Dear Efrem, I love that take on Moses! I had never looked at him that way. And indeed, there was a more primitive time in human development when having rules that you believed were divine was probably a very good thing!
And I love as well the rest of what you say. In truth, we cannot see the biggest picture, but I think we all are beginning to see now that things on earth are trending positively. I do see that transformation of Spirit happening! A very happy New Year to you, my cherished friend – things really are getting a whole lot better!
❣️🙏🏼🕊🎉
What a refreshing and liberating concept–no sin. Sincere thanks for having the courage to bring this most important message to the forefront, Roberta!
Thank you, dear Deanna! Merry New Year to you, my lovely friend!
Dear Roberta, you have really hit the nail on the head here! I feel fired up by it! Is this what they meant by feeling the Holy Spirit? Your focus on Jesus’ Law of Love in MT 22:37-39 is beautifully concise. It makes me think of the version in Mark, which includes the bit in 12:29, which has Jesus preface by quoting the Shema, or the most important OT line to the Jewish people (if I am correct) which is “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” It is as if he summed up the entire OT there, that which matters, and doesn’t it perfectly state what you’ve been teaching us about how we are all one, according to the new physics of consciousness? If we are one, then loving God is also loving our brothers and sisters in God, and loving others is loving ourselves, and back to loving God. The idea of sin disappears here, and it just becomes a simple lack of love, replacing the old outdated legalisms and “Thou shalt nots,” and segwaying straight into his new teaching about the primacy of love. Every subsequent teaching of his is just an elaboration of this new “Greatest Commandment.” (It seems to me this is where it becomes easier to spot the stuff that was added later to benefit the Roman Church, with the help of what those on the other side have told us.)
Dear Scott, I’m glad that you feel fired-up! I become impatient at times, and anxious for a bigger breakthrough, a new foundation in the Lord’s teachings, rather than what still feels like inching forward against great Christian opposition. So to read how you see things feels wonderfully powerful! Thank you, dear!!
So many things begin to resonate when you don’t try to make sense of pain and suffering in the history of mankind. Some people say they don’t believe a God would allow this or that, if he was truly a loving God. In my own life, I would have planned for something different for my own life, but I wouldn’t have had all the experiences that help me understand others more completely.
While I find it difficult to understand the intricacies of a pre-planned life versus the actual outcomes of free will, there must be some fundamental elements that go into planning for a life here on earth. Most likely, planned items would include upbringing, cultural elements, and some people that you come into contact. But since you arrive here with thousands of people with free will, there are no guarantees for the outcome.
I have heard it in traditional Christian teaching, that God gives us free will so that when we do seek God, it makes God very happy and he in turn blesses us, or in the case of Jesus, provides us eternal life. How freeing to know that we already have eternal life, that we are part of God already, and seeking God or spirituality makes us happy because it truly brings us closer to our true self. Loving God or loving ourselves or others is one and the same.
Roberta, you mentioned Donald Trump above, and while I used to cringe at the sound of his name, I have grown so much in the past year that I accept him and those who support him. I can say I don’t understand his ways, but I can love in a way as not to judge or dismiss. I know so little really, and as you mentioned, he was brought into power for a reason and perhaps chosen. That makes sense as he didn’t win the popular vote, and every poll indicated he would lose the election in 2016. Polls are scientific, so it is exciting if the spiritual world did intervene and change minds up to the day of voting. Something very ugly may be in the future, but even if this is so, maybe something even more remarkable will become of it. Perhaps he is the only one who could make this happen.
I do tend to bounce around with my thoughts, not nearly as concise and focused as others, but that’s just me. 😊
Enjoying all you bring to us every week.
Dear Timothy, you may feel that you are bouncing around, but what you say here is wonderfully thoughtful! Thank you! Yes, the interaction between our lift-plans and our free will as we live them is a fascinating topic, and quite complex; and it is made more complex by the fact that we are constantly working on our life-plans when we meet with our spirit guides while our bodies sleep. I think of it as laying out the obstacle course beforehand, then running it using our courage and wits, and sometimes taking detours that are easier or harder, making all those decisions on the fly. That’s not quite what happens, but it’s how it seems to me!
A number of mediums in the Fall of 2015 were saying that Donald Trump would be the next President, and he would serve two terms. His election was so important – and some said that not having Hillary in that role was also so important – that although it is very unusual for upper-level beings to interfere in human affairs to this extent, they were going to put their fingers on the scale this time. I was very surprised to hear it, and astonished to see it play out in real time! It is my understanding that there were a number of challenges to the safety of the United States in the offing, foremost among them an EMP attack, and DJT would be able to deal with these challenges but HRC would not. I’m very relieved, given the alarm we all felt then, that so far things have gone relatively well!
Hi Roberta, I was grateful to find your blog after reading all of your “Fun of…” books.
I have sort of a sideways comment regarding love v. fear that I would like your opinion on. I recently viewed an interesting video series –entitled “Electric Universe”– wherein it was proposed that a Jugian-type ancestral fear was passed down after a cosmic catestrophic event occured in ancient times.In brief, the theory states that prior to our present solar system, the earth was part of a red dwarf system which created a Garden of Eden environment. However, when it was “shorted out” it caused many disasters, including the great flood story so prevalent in many cultures. It was posed that that archetypal fear would probably be at the root of the war-like, competitive nature that we see in the world today. It seemed to make sense –fear has such a universal, negative grip on most people– that fear has shaped humankind at leadt since the Great Flood. I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.
Dear Gee, I don’t know how I ever overlooked your comment. Forgive me for that, and let me answer it now?
This theory that the earth’s history and human history include a great prehistoric disaster that could have created a complex fear in the whole human psyche is possible. I don’t think it’s necessary, though, since the fact that life was very hard and early humans had a lot to be terrified of is really more than sufficient to explain our whole fear-based history! Maybe there was a red dwarf in a prior solar system, and maybe our ancestors went through whatever horrors were entailed in the earth’s being flung into its present solar system… or maybe the world our earliest ancestors inherited always orbited the same sun, but the fact that our ancestors were so much preyed upon and so subject to so many dangers that few of them lived long enough to die as adults of natural causes was quite enough to instill in them a host of terrors?
There is genetic evidence, believe it or not, that every human being on earth is descended from a single woman who lived in Africa as recently as two hundred thousand years ago! When you pause and really think about that fact, you are astounded by it.
I guess that on balance my lifetime spent in researching all of this leads me to assume that there probably was no earlier red dwarf, and no complexity in our ancestors’ lives beyond the ones that we already know. When you put yourself into the shoes (or lack thereof) of the woman now called Mitochondrial Eve, and you imagine the horror of tending the only human children left on earth after whatever disaster it was that wiped out everyone else, you find pain and fear sufficient enough to have made fear and pain our entire heritage!
Dear Roberta, May I ask a question on an almost unrelated subject? What is your / Thomas’ view on the fearful events going on in the world at the moment … of which so many people seem almost unaware – or at least suceeding in blotting out of their minds? Only in this last week we have terrible fires in Australia with eucalyptus and koalas dieing in droves … as if the rainforest burning was not enough! The world really is on fire. Now the Iran/USA crisis … why would the USA assasinate the Iranian leader … why would Trump sanction something that could so easily inflame an already precipitous situation past the point of no return? … maybe even precipitate ‘Armaggedon’?
I am reading the comments above about the Jesus’ death and whether or not it “turned out as planned”, and Lola’s sadness when contemplating that point of view. I am also hearing words of Andrew Harvey saying that change can only come from suffering and that from “every Glorious Death there is a Glorious Rebirth” and that the true path shall always be both “Glorious and Terrible”. I also wonder if that applies to the crises we now face. Does there have to be great suffering to bring about the shift that will (hopefully) save the planet before humanity is wholly destroyed. Will a great suffering bring us to the brink whereby people will wake-up to the current narcissitic, psycopathic madness and finally demand change? Will that then be the beginning of Heaven on Earth? Is there hope to be found in the crises … if they get bad enough? And how bad is bad enough?
Thank you
Rayana
Oh my dear Rayana, I do feel for you! It can be rough to be so close to events that we cannot really see them in perspective, and that is especially true when we don’t have a positive grounding. In that case, just about any awful thing might happen!
From my perspective, none of what is happening now in the world is anything but hopeful. In part, my reaction might come from the fact that now my beloved Thomas doesn’t seem to be bothered; and in fact, he is calm and positive now, when three and four years ago he was a lot more concerned. When we were doing Liberating Jesus in 2015, he was literally saying that the odds of our being able to turn things around in time to prevent a Christian-caused Armageddon from destroying the world in two hundred years might be only about 50-50.
So I am calm and positive now, because he is much calmer and more positive. And so are world events! To talk about just three examples:
1) Apparently the Iranian general who was killed was targeted because he was planning to try to destroy the American embassy in Iraq. And it turns out, with a couple of days of hindsight, that the President allowed the Iranians to save face and he is now calling for broad Mideast peace talks! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this little proof of American power and American mercy might lead to genuine peace in the Middle East?
2) Despite all the amazingly visceral hatred being directed at the President, by any objective measure he has done a lot of positive things for Americans and for the world over the past three years. If you can’t see that, simply Google President Trump’s Positive Accomplishments. I’ve just done that. It’s quite impressive.
3) The Australian outback burns every summer, just as the California hills burn every summer. I can’t find evidence that what is happening this year is a whole lot different, except that the fires this year are closer to more heavily populated areas so they are a lot more in the news. The worst part is that many of them were set by people, if you can believe that! I have read that more than 200 people have been arrested for setting fires. Of all the negative things happening in the world, that glimpse of craven evil in some folks has to be one of the worst :-(.
No, we don’t need suffering in order to create a better world! What we need is an awakening, an uplifting of the consciousness of all humankind; and in producing that, human suffering can have a role, but not the main role. No, if each of us who is seeing now more clearly will resolve today to work to bring the kingdom of God on earth, and if we can teach others and spread the word, then all the negativity that still plagues this earth soon will be nothing more than a memory!
Dear Deanna Drinkar, I think you got it almost right when you wrote: “What a refreshing and liberating concept–no sin”. I certainly believe that being able to ignore the tut-tutting from most folks who would label sin as sin could be quite refreshing for a while, but I also believe that the ramifications, (Karma?), will eventually catch up with you if start indulging. This is why I think Jesus sounded the cautionary note to the woman caught in adultery after her accusers left, “Go and sin no more”. Having written this I have to ask if using the term “Karma” was correct. I suppose that assuming that it is may be safer than assuming there is no such thing.
David, I am not an expert by any means, but according to Tibetan Buddhism, “karma”is a term that gets used very incorrectly by Western people who mean well. The word, in its original, according to the Dalai Lama, simply means “action.” In the case of the way my understanding (again, as much a neophyte as anyone else) of the Universe operates, there is a cause/effect to everything we choose to do. Some of the effects of our causes may be good in the short term but have longer-term adverse effects that we aren’t necessarily aware of. The best course of action is to love everyone, all the time; forgive everything, every time; and live according to the principle that we are all One in the greater Consciousness (because we are). Then we don’t need to figure out words like karma, which are cultural artifacts anyway. I hope this is helpful. 🙂
Mike J-R, thank you for your explanation of karma. I thought it was the name of some cosmic payback scheme meant to keep us on the straight and narrow. On further thought, that would require us to fear karma, and that would be contrary to the love and joy we should all have, so I guess karma is ruled out almost by definition unless you simply take it as a reaction to our action as the Dalai Lama suggests.
Personally, I think “karma” is the name of a very obscure punk rock band 😉
Actually, “karma” is an eastern religious term, so as is true of all religious terms, I never use it. I have been surprised to see Mikey Morgan use it a couple of times when answering questions on AfterlifeForums.com, which puzzled me at first; but now I suspect that upper-level beings might be using it for something that Mikey tells us is true, and that I have seen evidence of elsewhere: when we have lived a life with someone else that entailed great negativity in our interactions, we feel the need to plan another lifetime together in which the negativity goes the other way, or in which we otherwise somehow bring that relationship back into balance, or swing it to neutral, or somehow end the need to continue to interact with emotional tension.
I don’t think it’s possible to see this happen in one lifetime, but it’s an explanation for some of our bad experiences with people: we may be evening out what would otherwise remain as negative energy in our eternal lives together. Does this make sense to you?
David, as I understand it, “action” with cause and effect ensures that our behavior makes a difference (that behavior also includes thoughts and emotions), and that difference will be positive or negative and, since so many elements are involved, some will no-doubt feel positive and some will feel negative differences. This is in fact the case always since, again, as I understand (barely) the concept, everything is dependent upon everything else for its identity. So who can call karma positive or negative?
Mike J-R, how about defining karma as an entailment caused by an initial action. If I were to call someone a stupid jerk, I could cause feelings of resentment in the person thus called. Or, if I praised that same person for responding lovingly and maturely in another situation, that might entail good feelings in that person. So the entailments are positive or negative according to the circumstances. Would I be allowed to say that in these situations entailments and karma were one and the same? I’d like to think so, as that would mean we have an alternate to an Eastern religious term. Cookie
Cookie, as I said, I am no expert, but I like that! Western colloquialism has appropriated the word “karma” in a way that implies we can inherently have “good” or “bad” karma, but in fact, the concept cannot exist without a relationship with something or someone else and the energy exchanged between or among them. We’re a long way from the original post, aren’t we? 🙂
Greetings Roberta,
I might add that your comment about following Jesus was spot on!
He never said to worship him but to follow, Christianity lost the
message right then and there for the most part as they went with the worship hook, line and sinker.
You have a wonderful site that makes one seek and think within.
Blessings to you.
Steve
Dear Steve, thank you for this great insight! And thank you for your kind compliment, which delights me since inspiring you to seek – as Jesus urges you to seek! – is precisely what I am spending the rest of my life trying to do. Please consider yourself hugged!