Posted by Roberta Grimes • October 01, 2016 • 22 Comments
Afterlife Research, Book News, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus
Believing in God in a world that worships mainstream science has become so hard that the latest Pew Research Center survey has found a remarkable surge in people who no longer believe in God. Pew has in recent years found more and more folks who were disenchanted with religions; and now, apparently, Pew is discovering an astonishing surge in outright atheism! For so many people to have become atheists is appalling. For the first time in human history we are able to demonstrate that God is real, but now Pew informs us that our culture is racing headlong in the wrong direction.
I am seeing some troubling stresses among my own correspondents as well. Only this week, someone emailed to me a longer version of the following thoughts:
“(W)hen I probe myself deeply whether I believe the whole “afterlife thing”
to be true or not … I find that it isn’t even a question about believing. I know it. So…why don’t I live a life of certainty? Why don’t I live like the most beloved child of God, as you describe in your podcasts that I am? Where is this feeling of security that I so long for?”
I am coming to see that my friend’s lack of a sense of security is the core human issue. It’s the reason we are ever more dissatisfied with religious practice, and it lies at the center of modern cultures as a black existential despair. No religion offers us anything more than a hope that after death we might be safe, and even that small hope requires that we believe what for most of us is unbelievable. So at last we are giving up on religions, and even giving up on God, and we are finding ourselves to be even worse off. Now hatred, depression, addictions, and all manner of public and private pain are becoming more prevalent over all the earth! I submit to you that all these problems stem from a powerful ancient yearning for a feeling of security in our lives.
Having faith is not a virtue. There is nothing noble about believing things that contradict what we know to be true! Jesus in the Gospels uses a word that has been translated as “faith,” but He isn’t suggesting belief in religious dogmas. When we read His actual words, we see that what He is talking about is having certainty about the power of our minds! And He makes His points to Iron Age primitives by referencing the tiniest object they know. He says:
“Truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” (MT 17:20-21)
To have even this much certainty about the powers of our minds will enable us to do what Jesus came to earth to teach us how to do, which is to bring the kingdom of heaven on earth:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed
in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches” (MT 13:31-32).
So my answer to the alarming increase in atheism in modern life is to agree that the Christian God is bogus, while also sharing abundant evidence that the God of the Gospels is real. I have been teaching the afterlife evidence for a decade, so by now I have seen abundant proof that the emptiness religions leave in our hearts can be satisfactorily filled with truth!
Still, as my correspondent friend suggests, even knowing that God is real and loves us turns out to be insufficient to remove from our lives the negative energy that comes from living in the modern world. I am realizing now that to achieve the sense of security that is your eternal birthright also requires that you take the steps that Jesus beautifully lays out in the Gospels to elevate your personal vibration away from fear and toward more perfect love.
This makes sense, of course. Your ongoing sense of insecurity even after you are sure about the truth comes from the fact that knowledge alone cannot elevate you out of the sludge of fear that is thick now over all the earth. But the Gospel teachings can do that beautifully, and with amazing speed! Thanks to my primary guide, now we even have Gospel Cliff Notes in The Fun of Growing Forever. The book is available on Amazon, or if finances are tight just send me a contact through this website and I will send you a PDF.
The only way for any of us to achieve a sense of security on earth is to raise our spiritual vibrations away from fear and toward more perfect love. And if as few as ten percent of us will just take this essential step, Jesus promises us that the kingdom of heaven will overspread the earth the way a mustard tree comes to dominate the garden. The only genuine security comes from our elevating our personal vibrations to the point where we will never again even have a fear-based thought. So achieving security requires more than knowledge. It also requires that we transform ourselves as a first step toward transforming the world.
Once again, thank you for this. I have been very suspicious of the Pew Resesrch poll mainly because I think polls have inherent bias in their questions and the people who answer add to the bias. Many who have divergent opinions or acknowledge “none of the above” as an answer don’t participate or are treated as outliers. This is true of most polls. But nonetheless, people seem, at least in the west, to be afraid in an ill-at-ease way the may have no precedent. At the same time, in my limited experience, people seem to be coming to the realization that institutions are not going to “save” the world — not religious (although I still believe that very locally many faith-based communities do a lot of social work that is good), and not governmental and not commercial organizations. People are starting to realize that it has always be US who make the difference. People are so the only ones who are still free to choose how we treat others. The anxiety is real, but I think the realization that’s dawning slowly on so many in this western culture that we are free to say “no, we don’t believe in your power over us” is also real.
I am not much of a mystic, but I’m feeling a coming of age of an understanding that real divine love doesn’t feel like love between two people — because when we realize God’s love, we find it’s not about us; it’s about God, and there are no longer two people, only God.
Then the fear is truly irrelevant.
This is all so beautifully said!
I don’t especially trust Pew either, but I do find watching its trends to be useful: more and more people are un-churched, which to me has seemed a happily positive trend. But the increased espousal of atheism is troubling. Western society is becoming ever more disorderly, ever more based in fear. Those who can astrally travel and can look at the earth from other dimensions tell us that from there this bright-blue marble looks as if it’s covered in dark-gray gunk! And we are breathing that. We are living in it. It’s no wonder that we are in such a mess! And no wonder sincere people like my friend are finding our reality so troubling and stressful. As we begin to raise our planet’s consciousness, really everything will change by the better!
I used yo feel a personal affront when someone said they were an atheist. Then eventually it started to seem to me that many are using this word in a particular way. The concept of the Jude’s Christian God is so unsatisfactory and small that people get embarrassed when they hear the word. With some obvious exceptions, when I listen to “atheists” describe their feelings, they start to sound very theistic in the way they put faith in an “intelligence” and an “order.” It’s the fire and brimstone preachers they don’t believe in, not the divine. Of course many are quite nihilistic, but many are just insisting on a new way to talk about what they really feel around them. It’s also interesting that many atheists believe in fate.
PS, now that I reread what I just wrote, besides being full of typos, it’s reductive and I don’t think my atheistic family and friends would say I nailed it. I need more coffee!
It seems to me that our churches are preaching and failing by a lack of teaching. Jesus came to teach and his message was clearly stated for us to accept personal responsibility for our spiritual lives. To raise our selves to embrace the highest version of who we are. We are created in gods image and God is love as are we. To extend our purpose beyond self interest and embrace all living entities with love as we love ourselves as creative partners in life. Thankfully we have all of eternity to learn and to grow.
Well said, Stan! Indeed, we might even go further and say that not only did Jesus come as our teacher, but He seems also to have intended to abolish religions as unnecessary interferences between us and God. Jesus discusses clergymen derisively and rails against those who place religious traditions above God’s command that we love, and he tells us that we should be praying in secret. Does any of that sound like someone who was trying to establish His own religion?
The idea of letting go of religions is a difficult concept for mankind for so many reasons it may take an entire book to cover them all but suffice it to say I agree with you whole heartedly. Our predilection as humans is to cast blame and find fault. This is born out of our lack of self love and our inability to see ourselves as part of God. Jesus say it all with his teaching about the “Speck in our brothers eye and the log in our own”. Clear the log jam and begin to see. Now there is a lesson to take to heart:)
I agree – for many, letting go of religions in order to relate to God more directly is tough! I think I’ve addressed this problem before, but perhaps it’s time to write about it again. The combined jailer and crutch that religion can be is perhaps the most direct barrier to better communication with God that exists.
Despite the typos, Mike, I think you’ve made an excellent point. I don’t often talk with atheists, but from what little I know of their positions I think they vary considerably and there are very few who are at the entirely godless end of the spectrum. What all of them have in common is an aversion to the Christian concept of a judgmental Jehovah-god who can’t stand us unless we accept that Jesus died for our sins; and since I share their aversion for that kind of God, it is pretty hard to fault them. Some “atheists” believe in a higher power, some even believe in life after death, and if it was primarily people like these who told Pew that they were atheists then the Pew results don’t look so bad after all. Excellent point!
I think Mike is exactly right. It’s the limited concept of God that atheists are against, not the idea of a higher intelligence. If it was presented to people the way Jesus and other enlightened beings meant it to be, without all the religious dogma, the world would not be in the situation it is currently in.
Yes! Well said!
The notion of religious trinities was in vogue in the fourth century, so the councils – Nicaea in particular – misinterpreted what Jesus said in the Gospels and gave us three gods instead of one. But Jesus really did tell us flat-out that God is Spirit, and he told us so much else that the early church fathers could not have grasped but that turn out now by evidence to be exactly right.
Yet this notion of a triune God hangs on. The idea that religions and their dogmas have anything to do with either the genuine Jesus or the genuine God is stuck fast in our cultural mind. One of my greatest joys now is meeting more and more people – and reading emails, and reading these blog comments – and realizing that while Christianity – and therefore much of western civilization – is still basically stuck in the year 325, there are so many amazing people who have already figured it all out and are pursuing the truth on their own!
Jesus rejected the vengeful god of his fathers and their animal sacrifices too..
I like most people rejected all religions early in life and the only part of the bible that I believed was what was attributed to Jesus. His teachings have led me to the peace, freedom, and abundance that he promised. All that is really required is a deep honest desire to know god and he will be found within.
This is beautifully said, Philo! Thank you!
In a way, it isn’t hard for me to see what is happening with respect to belief as well as non-belief, since I try to keep in mind that the variety of religions and spiritual paths themselves have come into existence over time — since the levels of evolutionary stages that souls undergo have sometimes required them. I have found the (Michael Teachings) information about this topic of Soul Ages, that has been made available by quite a few people channeling the entity named Michael, to be tremendously helpful and revealing. Are you familiar with that system, by any chance? I haven’t read any of your books yet, and so I don’t know whether you cover this kind of material, but it has helped explain much about why and how people show up the way they do in life.
According to the MT, soul age plays out in the various needs of souls when they are embodied. For instance, the younger the soul, the more raw their sense of things is, and they require more law, moral regulation and structured discipline which is offered by religions, where even very harsh dictates and circumstances may apply. Older souls may tend towards individual spiritual paths and experience the fruits of more spiritual freedom, since they have been “around the block” enough times, while not necessarily needing to dismiss the many real benefits of religion altogether, and even participating in some of them…
Since a number of different people over the years have channeled this material from Michael, I wonder what your thoughts are about this aspect of soul life. I was thinking that, perhaps considering factors such as karmic dispositions, that souls might also have different afterlife experiences as well, as a natural part of their evolutionary growth process.
Hello Peter! I have heard of the Michael Teachings, but until very recently all my study of channeled work has been material received before 1950. And I haven’t even read all of that! My purpose in reading communications from people we used to think were dead has been to study the afterlife and the greater reality scientifically, if you will, and everything received after 1950 I have thought to be more easily believed to be faked. Not that I’m saying that any of it actually has been faked! But my standards until just a few years ago were ridiculously high.
Beyond the worry that people might just claim to be channeling an entity to gain fame or money, I have learned that many of the dead folks who are most likely to communicate with us are at perhaps the third or fourth level, and they don’t know much more than we might know from here. So their answers are unreliable. As a researcher, I have been reluctant to trust any channeled being unless I was convinced he was from the upper fifth level or above.
Where what you say that Michael teaches is concerned, it does seem to be broadly right, with some caveats. We do reincarnate repeatedly, in large part because until recently we haven’t known why we were here; and the reactions of low-mileage souls and of older souls (I call them minds, but that doesn’t matter) are often what he suggests. But since there is no objective time, apparently all our lives are being lived simultaneously, which is something that it’s hard to get our minds around! But it does suggest that we can’t assume anything linear about what is going on, and that includes the progress of our spiritual growth.
There is a process underway now, being engineered at the highest levels of reality, to raise the spiritual vibration of everyone on earth, and to do it rapidly. If you know what’s going on, you can actually see it happening!
Many thanks for your reply, Roberta. It’s certainly inspiring to know that things are improving at the highest levels, and I have been hearing that from many different quarters. Thank you for confirming it!
My life has taken me through many different paths, traditions, and newly transpiring ways, and I am still involved in a kind of sense-making process about the “big picture.” The adventure can be both exciting and confusing at times, especially if the intellect is granted too many powers of decision… but once I return to trusting my intuition, the spiritual compass we’ve all been given, I seem to be able to regain trust and knowing.
Naturally, I am interested in your reference to souls communicating from a “third or fourth” level, but I am not sure what it means, or what the source of this might be, since I haven’t read your books yet (although I plan to start on the Fun of Dying soon). Do you discuss these levels in any of your books? I would certainly be interested in learning more about it, since Michael also delineates levels of ascension for souls on their journey back to Source. “Michael” (which actually happens to be the name of a group entity) provides a picture similar to the oversoul that Seth (in Jane Roberts’ sessions) also speaks of. Apparently, we belong to group souls of around a thousand or so in a kind of family, and share many experiences over different lifetimes, before we ascend to another level together… Are the levels you mention similar?
Thanks again (and I will read your book before I ask anything else!).
Hello again Peter! Actually, all upper-level beings seem to work in groups, although they often communicate with one or more of us through one spokesman primarily. My beloved primary spirit guide is part of the Unity – the group around Jesus – and working closely with the other entities in it, but he is the only one of them that I ever hear from.
The notion of “levels” is an old one. most of the diagrams that I’ve seen were done by George Meek a few decades ago, and we realize now that this whole concept is a vast oversimplification; but it is a convenient one. There are in fact apparently infinite gradations of spiritual vibrations, from the lowest (often defined as abject fear) to the highest (perfect love). For convenience, though, we group these into seven afterlife levels:
1) The lowest is what Jesus called the Outer Darkness; it’s a place of extreme fear and negativity.
2) The second level is a bit better than the first. I think of it as a kind of recovery level.
3) Level 3 is apparently where most or all of us who transition successfully will enter the afterlife. It’s earth-like and beautiful! Levels 3-5 are commonly called the Summerland.
4) Level 4 is even more wonderful than Level 3 – it’s where those of somewhat higher vibration hang out.
5) Level 5, the highest Summerland level, can be reached only by beings who are very loving indeed! It is my understanding that until we reach the top of the fifth level we will continue to incarnate on earth or elsewhere in the physical universe.
6) Level 6 is a place of extremely high vibration. Very few of those who have achieved that level are any longer in contact with the earth, which is why Mikey Morgan’s wonderful book, Flying High in Spirit, is such a treasure.
7) Level 7 is the Source level, generally thought to be the center of the Godhead, and the place from which the wonderful white light that fills most of the afterlife areas emanates.
i hope this helps!
Thank you Roberta — it’s quite wonderful!
The concept of sacred trinities is not exclusive to either or Western or Middle-Eastern cultural traditions and their associated religious belief systems. For example, the number 3 is the number of Heaven, Creativity and Cosmos in ancient Chinese Taoism, which derived from shamanic culture, and governorship.
The Council of Nicaea formalized this into a rigid framework, redacting out core essentials from Jesus’s teachings so as to instigate longterm political control over the masses, and solidify the power of the Church.
When one offers people the “security” of faith spelled out in doctrine, one has them in harness for the longterm.
Security is a delusion, and stems from fear. Safety, on the other hand, is freedom from fear. Security, in our time, is monopolized by the State and its surveillance system and financial-academic-judicial gatekeepers. Safety, on the other hand, is pointed to by people such as yourself who offer up the deeper truths of love and connectedness to all people, and thereby present them with a way out of their suffering and confusion. Love has adventure and curiosity as part of its “embodiment”. Security shuts this body down, while safety enhances it.
The number 3 can be seen to inhabit the triad LOVE-GRATITUDE-FORGIVENESS. We might say that these three aspects are interdependent. Take out one, and the other two are diminished. However, we might equally say that Love, as Jesus describes it, absorbs the other two into it. This is beyond the power of the intellect to comprehend. The One is also three and the three is One.
As you say with such conviction, to love perfectly, to forgive completely, and to live every moment, even the most difficult ones, with gratitude, is to become awakened, which is to become like a child again.
The greater reality can then become visible to us as the plants and animals see it, without an agenda, or the need to control.
Thank you, Nicholas – this is so beautifully said! I can add nothing, except to say how extraordinary these times are coming to feel to me. It has taken less than a century for western culture to go from a fairly rigid control by Christianity’s dogmas to this glorious place where for the first time in human history all belief-systems have largely lost their hold on our minds, and this is not by accident! We are told by upper-level beings not in bodies that they are working to elevate human consciousness away from fear and at last toward the perfect love which is our Source, our destination, and our birthright. To be witnessing this happening on earth is amazing – what a wonderful time to be alive!
Rather than simply say thank you agin to you, here are a few lines of great poetry for your contemplation and enjoyment.
The first, from the poet Federico Garcia Llorca:
“We live beneath
a giant mirror.
Man is blue!
Hosanna!”
(It rings much better, of course, in the original Spanish.)
The second, a few parts I have excerpted from the poem “Second Space”, (from the late anthology of Czeslaw Milosz, written around the age of ninety years of age, and also entitled “Second Space”):
“How spacious the heavenly halls are!
Approach them on aerial stairs.
Above white clouds, there are hanging gardens of paradise.
(…)
Have we really lost faith in that other space?
(…)
Let us weep, lament the enormity of that loss.
Let us smear our faces with coal, loosen our hair.
Let us implore that it be returned to us,
That second space.”
And then, since you write frequently about Planck, I would just add the collaborative investigations into the “second space” of consciousness by Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, and also the resolution of their attempts at resolving dualism in the ideas of that other great spiritual physicist of the mid twentieth century, Niels Bohr.
By the way, I have ordered three of your books and am looking forward to their arrival soon!
Nicholas
“Man is blue!” He must have seen Avatar, which is my favorite movie. And I love your term “spiritual physicist” – I wish I’d thought of it!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here and for your wisdom, Nicholas. And thank you for these lines of verse. In my whole life, I think you are the first person ever to give me poetry!