There was a time in my life
I thought I had to do it all myself
And I didn’t know the grace of God was sufficient
And I didn’t know the love of God was at hand
But now I can say
If you are discouraged
Struggling just to make it through another day
You got to let it go, let it all go
And this is what you have to say
CHORUS:
I release and I let go
I let the Spirit run my life
And my heart is open wide
Yes it’s only up to God
No more struggle, no more strife
With my faith I see the light
I am free in the Spirit
Yes it’s only up to God
– Michael Gott, “I Release and I Let Go” (1990)
It seems apparent now that Jesus is preparing to take a more active earthly role. You might say that He is about to “Return.” But Thomas will never ask Jesus any of my questions about what He might be planning to do, because he tells me that mine are not the sorts of questions that Jesus is ever going to answer for people who are in earthly bodies. So other than noticing the revivals on college campuses, the “He Gets Us” ad campaign and the surprisingly successful movies and TV series, I have no idea what Jesus might be doing or about to do. Thomas does say, though, that Jesus never would do anything that could affect the earth by much, even in a positive way.
People have been looking for Jesus’s Second Coming for centuries. But Thomas believes that Jesus has been sufficiently distant from the earth for so long that the term “Second Coming” is meaningless to Him. It comes from the the Biblical Book of Revelation, which of course was written after His death. But apparently what Jesus is focused on doing is just what He began to do two thousand earth-years ago. He wants to begin again to teach those now living on earth how to perfect themselves spiritually, so every dear person on the face of the earth can achieve the Godhead level as soon as possible. Now that the religion will soon be out of the way and no longer coming between us and Jesus, Thomas tells me that Jesus wants to get back to doing the love-based teaching that is dear to His heart.
We are used to associating religions with spirituality, but in fact the two are polar opposites. There is no religion that can give us much, or even give us any spiritual help at all, but instead religions are human-made artifacts from an early stage of humankind’s development. Even the concept of religions is a fear-based hangover. When primitive people had no way to comprehend the reality in which they found themselves, which was cold and dark and full of terrors, people self-protectively invented gods that might be able to protect them. Those gods became more and more real to them as the ages passed, ever bigger and more elaborate. And as their human-created gods grew in people’s minds, those gods demanded from the people they were supposed to be protecting ever-fancier rituals and ever-greater sacrifices. But at least they allowed people to feel that they were gaining some illusory sense of control. And the shamans of those early religions were the earliest human manipulators and rulers: if you were someone who could speak for the gods, then you held a lot of power. And every modern religion can be traced back to those first stone-age religions in an unbroken line. They all worked the same way. They all were based in worshiping gods who created the world, and created us, and who made demands of us in return. So then eventually we got Moloch, who demanded the sacrifice of infants into his fiery belly; and then the YHWH of the Hebrews; and then the Christian God. Fear of what was unknowable, and sacrifices that were demanded in exchange for protection, have been at the core of every god to this day.
There can be no creation without a Creator. Something cannot have come from nothing. And although officially materialist science still insists that our reality must have begun in a Big Bang of something arising from nothing, a few scientists with more sense than the rest did discover in the twentieth century that in fact there is indeed a creative force. Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, found that Consciousness underlies everything. And it is legitimate for us to capitalize that word now, since our friend Max learned that Consciousness is indeed the base creative force. Max Planck thereby discovered the genuine God. In 1931 he said, “I regard Consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from Consciousness. We cannot get behind Consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates Consciousness.”
And now, thanks to Dr. Planck’s great insight, we have come to know so very much more! You live inside one great illusion, and you have no memory of ever having lived outside of it. No less a leading scientific light than Albert Einstein told us that this universe is indeed one heck of an illusion, but an illusion is indeed what it is. And it is important that you begin to see this illusion frankly, so then at last you will be able to begin to focus some of your attention on the much greater wonders that lie beyond it. My precious friend, you are so much more than you can possibly imagine!
Consciousness is everything that exists. It is the sculptor, and it is the stone. It is both the dancer and the dance. And since the Consciousness that is all that exists is a form of energy, Consciousness vibrates. It is governed by what we experience as emotion – go figure! – and at its lowest and slowest vibratory rate, Consciousness is highly negative, and it is governed by all the ishy emotions, like fear and rage; while at its highest vibratory rate, Consciousness is gorgeous and positive and it is governed by what we experience as perfect love. This is our objective reality that we are talking about here! It is the same objective reality that scientists busily study with their whiteboards full of mathematical equations.
THIS IS OUR REALITY. This is the ultra-super-solid reality that scientists assume has got to be just chock-full of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Or at least, you know, gluons. Or something. Doesn’t that solid reality even exist? Well, not really. Not so much. What scientists used to believe were solid particles are actually just miniscule vortices of energy. If the nucleus of an atom were the White House, where it is and the size that it is, its closest orbiting electron could be as far away as Denver. They would both be just vortices of energy. And there would be nothing whatsoever between them. Please just sit quietly for a moment and let all of this truly sink in. All of it is energy-like Consciousness. And it is all governed by what you and I experience as emotion.
Jesus said, “Whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted to him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted to you” (MK 11:22-24). And now you can understand why Jesus was perfectly right.
Jesus also said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth” (JN 4:24). And understanding, as you do now, that the genuine God is the highest aspect of Consciousness, and further understanding, as you also do now, that the highest aspect of Consciousness is perfect love, again you can see how, even two thousand years ago, again Jesus was perfectly right.
So at this point, and until it abandons its century-old materialist dogma which never made any sense to begin with, science seems to be in as much of a counterproductive blind alley as are all the human-made religions. We have talked before about the fact that materialist science has turned itself into just another beliefs-based religion. Science will continue to provide us with all our various useful electronic toys for daily living, our personal computers and cars and phones that have been vastly improving our lives over the past century and a quarter. But until mainstream science abandons the fundamental scientific dogma of materialism that it put into place more than a century ago to protect its physicists from ever inadvertently finding God, there will be no more fundamental scientific discoveries about reality forthcoming. So for our purposes, we can simply ignore science, just as we are ignoring religions.
No matter how solid it might look, and no matter how coldly clockwork-driven our reality might seem to us to be, all of this reality is, as Albert Einstein told us that it was, simply one gigantic illusion. And you and I find ourselves on our own with Jesus in this entirely beliefs-free and Consciousness-based illusory reality within a greater reality where we are able to see and understand the truth for what it is. We know that science can be of no help to us here, and all the religions are dying after the end of what has been a very long run of something like two hundred thousand years. We have no more need for any of it now, since at last we have found, and we so completely trust and adore the genuine Consciousness-based God. And we have various spiritual teachers who are able to help us to directly raise our personal spiritual vibrations away from the low and fear-based vibratory Consciousness range and toward the higher, love-based range of Consciousness. For many people willing to put forth a bit of effort, it will not be difficult to go most or even all of the way to the Godhead level in a single lifetime.
There are of course the various Eastern spiritual traditions on offer. They involve meditation, chanting, breathwork, and even altered states of Consciousness, and for Westerners they take some time and effort to learn and to perform; but they generally can work very well indeed. However, for most people who were reared in Christianity, turning to Jesus in an effort to grow spiritually really does feel like coming home. And the teachings of Jesus as they are preserved in the Biblical Gospels are the simplest and most effective method for growing spiritually that ever has been devised. Gratitude, forgiveness, and love, in that order. It is just a literal piece of cake. Oh, Jesus puts a fancier spin on those teachings, He makes it feel like wisdom to follow them, and He offers some tricks to make them easier to learn; but basically, that is all they are. And when you put your mind to it, the teachings of Jesus can begin to transform you spiritually in just a few months’ time.
The greatest wonder about the teachings of Jesus to me is that Jesus knew all of this two thousand years ago. It is quite literally as if a modern man had been transported back in time! But of course, Jesus was born from out of the timeless Godhead. And Jesus is more than God’s emissary. He is the genuine God in human form, come to dwell among the people of that ancient day so He could seek to better understand them and then teach them on their level and on their own terms. God among us, born in that ancient day, and the greatest Teacher who has ever lived.
And now Jesus is coming back to us as our Teacher once again. Not on a white horse and brandishing a sword, but apparently first of all in the hearts of the very young. He will tell us nothing of His plans, but that only adds to the excitement and the joy of it. And so we wait together now in wonder for that ultimate Christmas morning….