Author: Roberta Grimes

Spiritual Physics

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

I have written about spiritual physics before, but not as a primary topic. I try not to write about anything of which I am not confident, and spiritual physics is the mother lode and forest-dwelling beast of all topics! We know now what is at the root of reality, but there are still big gaps in our knowledge so I have been reluctant to tackle this head-on. But the base of all reality is spiritual, not material, and as is true of material physics, once you gain a simple understanding of what we might call spiritual physics, it then is possible to start to put together an understanding of what is true. Spirit – or consciousness – is what underlies and composes everything we think of as real, so until we have some sense of the physics that governs it, we can pretty much understand nothing about anything.

I still don’t want to tackle spiritual physics, but it seems to be an urgent topic as we try now to lift our consciousness vibrations sufficiently to make this our last necessary earth-lifetime. I am coming to realize that because our earth-minds are so limited and our perspective is so earth-based, unless we have some understanding of the way spiritual physics works, we are going to approach spiritual growth from the impossibly hard way around. Spiritual growth is not something we need to work at, but rather our spiritual vibratory rate is who we fundamentally are. Working actively to try to make ourselves more spiritual is the practical equivalent of approaching building a table by first planting a tree. In fact, real spiritual growth is easy, it’s rapid, and it takes little effort. We just have to stop doing what we can demonstrate now does not work, and simply begin to do today what is consistent with the laws of spiritual physics.

The truth is that you already are capable of functioning at the level of the Godhead.

Spiritual growth is simply the process of remembering who and what you are.

The greatest privilege this work has brought me is the fact that I hear from strangers every day. And of late, more and more spiritual seekers have been asking me variations of what is really humankind’s core everyday question: how can we ever grow spiritually when life keeps getting in the way?

I received a particularly heartbreaking email this week that I will quote here, revised and in brief:

“What hope or insights can you give to an older man who suffers from cancer, a brain tumor, and early dementia? I am tired, almost defeated, and dismayed with myself that I signed up for this much struggle! I am not afraid of much anymore, except the thought of coming back to this planet. After thirty years of meditation, books, prayer, and taking classes I feel that I have regressed spiritually. Prayers and meditation don’t seem to work anymore. I have tried to connect with my guides without success. I feel overwhelmed with the need to overcome negativity, as you say, especially when I am so angry with myself for having chosen all of this. I also feel overwhelmed by the massive pain and suffering on this planet. So, I feel really stymied.”

Do you hear anything of yourself in his plea? If you do, then this answer I am writing for him also is being written for you.

Here are four basic facts that everyone on earth needs to understand:

  • What we experience in a limited way as consciousness is the base creative force that continuously manifests this universe. Some say consciousness actually is God, and therefore all of reality is essentially a thought in the mind of God; but thinking this way keeps God as a creative being both different from and separate from us. At this point, that doesn’t seem to be what God really is or how God works.
  • Consciousness is an infinitely powerful and infinitely creative energy-like potentiality. It is not a form of energy as we understand energy, and in fact it really seems to be not like anything else with which we are familiar.
  • Our minds are all part of that base creative consciousness, not divisibly but as one whole. One of the confounding things about doing this work is the fact that apparently some things are both true and not-true from our narrow earth-perspective, and this is one of those things! Your mind remains “you,” while at the same time it blends with the base creative consciousness and with every other human mind the way waters blend when they are poured into a river.
  • Consciousness exists in a range of vibrations. Those not in bodies refer to vibrations, and in the afterlife levels those vibrations can be more intensely felt. On earth we experience the vibratory range internally, from the lowest (which is fear and anger) to the highest (which is perfect love).

Please read this list again until you know it by heart. Until you do,  none of the rest is likely to make much sense to you.

Spiritual growth is the process of raising your personal consciousness vibration away from fear and toward more perfect love. That’s it! Just a matter of consciousness physics. Spiritual growth is internal and organic: it isn’t something you can learn or buy. And because it is internal, you can’t fake it for long. What happens if you try to fake it is that sooner or later your nice exterior persona gets poked by the simple negativity of human life, and the fear-based tiger that you still are inside starts to roar. In my experience, people who try to fake it – and many more are doing that now – will hit what might appear to us to be a relatively trivial problem, and they will unexpectedly explode with rage. If you ever experience a rush of any negative emotion at all, that is your certain sign that you haven’t so far made the spiritual progress you had hoped to make!

So, how can you really make this happen? The key to success is your understanding that spiritual growth is internal! There are many activities that make us feel spiritual, and that our society defines as spiritual. But in practice, since they cannot elevate our internal vibrations, they cannot do more than to calm us, to elevate our mood, and perhaps to give us more information. All are useful to our temporal selves, but when we are trying to elevate our personal consciousness vibrations so we can make of this our last earth-lifetime while we also help to raise the consciousness vibrations of this planet, none of the following practices can be of much help:

  • Religions. Every modern religion is fear-based. So religions cannot raise your consciousness vibration, and accumulating what we might call religious merit can be of no spiritual help. In fact, religions operate in direct opposition to fostering our spiritual growth.
  • Meditation. Many people swear by meditation! It calms us, and it can be of help when we are working toward communicating more actively with our spirit guides. But meditation has little or no effect on our personal consciousness vibrations.
  • Singing and chanting. Some religions use songs and chanting to synchronize us spiritually and to elevate our mood, and that works very well! But when the singing stops, we return to our base internal consciousness setting.
  • Listening to or reading spiritual wisdom. I discovered Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet when I was in college, and for many years I considered it to be the height of spiritual wisdom. It may be that, but reading any kind of spiritual wisdom and trying to follow whatever it teaches cannot materially raise your internal spiritual vibration.

Then what does work to actually elevate your personal consciousness setting? There may be other options, but the only process I ever have found that actually, materially, and permanently can raise your personal vibration is this:

  • Extinguish your ego. Your ego is not you at all, but rather it is a fear-based gremlin that will fight your attempts to grow spiritually because your spiritual growth will be its extinction. I wrote about the ego six months ago, and I urge you to use that information.
  • Clean up your living room. You cannot raise your consciousness vibration if you keep filling your mind with negative garbage!
  • Develop an attitude of gratitude. When your mind is in a constant state of gratitude for everything, how ever small, you heavily predispose it toward love and away from all forms of negativity.
  • Learn and practice prevenient forgiveness. This is the key Gospel teaching, and if it were all that Jesus ever taught it would be enough to transform the world. Re-training your mind so it never again reacts with anger, no matter what happens, turns out to be the literal key to raising your spiritual vibration!
  • Eagerly foster your every natural impulse toward loving other people.  Your love for all your family and friends will be on a much sounder basis now. You will be more patient with them, kinder, and no longer at all judgmental. What I found was that over a few months’ time after I began my forgiveness practice, my husband, my children, my grandchildren and friends all became very much nicer people! I know this seems stupid, but I saw this rather dramatic change just in retrospect. And when you strictly practice prevenient forgiveness, within months you might find – quite unexpectedly – that even random strangers are a whole lot nicer. Just a few months into my forgiveness practice I was feeling touched with empathy and love for even random strangers passing on the street.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it? When you are freed from negativity and all false beliefs, your personal spiritual vibration that has all along been artificially suppressed will begin to rise naturally, much as a bubble freed in water will naturally rise toward the light. Be patient with yourself! See any burst of anger or fear to be just a temporary setback, and simply double down on the five steps outlined above. You are eternally as perfect as the Godhead! Spiritual growth is only the process of reclaiming what you already are.

 

Conscious Being photo credit: www.librolasemilla.com <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/156582083@N07/32914195637″>285Hz 》COSMIC TIBETAN FLUTE MUSIC 》Helps in Healing Tissues, Wounds, Cuts Faster</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Love photo credit: Riccardo Palazzani – Italy <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/45503185@N06/45845084762″>My love</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Leveling Up

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

Ours is the first generation to understand why human beings even come to earth at all. Jesus told us two thousand years ago that we are here to grow spiritually to the point where we can achieve while on earth the consciousness vibration of the sixth level of the greater reality. He called it “bringing the kingdom of God on earth,” but His teachings soon were buried deep in Christian dogmas and largely ignored. It is only very recently that information gleaned from nearly two hundred years of abundant and consistent communications from people that we used to think were dead has been compared with what Jesus tells us in the Gospels. So it is only now that researchers have come to realize that Jesus is precisely right!

We enter these lifetimes very much as we might come to a spiritual gym. There is so little negativity in what we still call the afterlife that until we are very well developed spiritually it really is only here that we can stress ourselves with negativity and learn to surmount it with love, and thereby we can grow spiritually. Together with our spirit guides, and with the people who will be important in this lifetime and their guides, we plan earth-lives full of negativity against which we are eager to match ourselves, lives crammed with the very kinds of events that seem to prove there can be no God who loves us. We might plan a bout with cancer and the death of a child plus a major mental handicap; or perhaps we might just plan repeated financial setbacks and a faithless spouse. We gleefully plan the sorts of awful lives that can help us grow by spiritual leaps and bounds! Of course, until early in this new century so few people understood why we come here that too often very challenging lives would defeat people rather than helping them grow. But fortunately, of late a great many more of us have a sense of why we come to earth; and now, only very recently, some of the over-achievers among us have begun to want to find a way that they can make this incarnation their final earth-lifetime.

A few weeks ago I shared with commenters here the fact that someone had asked me by email a fairly simple question. He had said, “So, if I want to make the most spiritual progress, does this mean I have to neglect all other goals in life and focus exclusively on spiritual growth? … Do you think this would be enough for me to achieve the upper sixth level?”

To be frank, we simply don’t know enough to speak knowledgeably about the upper sixth level. The only being of whom I am aware who has achieved that lofty perch and speaks to us from there is Mikey Morgan, whose book is Flying High in Spirit. If you haven’t read it, put it on your list! My primary guide, Thomas, tells me that the being who incarnated as Mikey Morgan had already attained the lower sixth level some four hundred earth-years after he had ceased to incarnate in the 1600s; but like many at his level, he was fretting about us. So he took a brief additional lifetime on earth that ended just over a decade ago in order to better make sense of us, and so he would be able to teach us from there in terms that we would understand. And apparently his undertaking that journey for us was such a spiritually powerful act that Thomas now assures us that upon his return Mikey Morgan in fact achieved the upper sixth level. Today he answers questions through his earth-mother, Carol, on afterlifeforums.com. I don’t believe that anyone has directly asked him how he managed to attain the sixth level, but here are two recent relevant answers:

How does time fit with spiritual growth?

Carol always types out Mikey’s answers. To address this question she wrote, “Believe me, I don’t get this either! I have asked Mikey to explain this in the easiest way he can think of, so here goes: First of all, we are in the human state that only understands things under the laws of time. Our brains cannot grasp being without it. Mikey tells me to think of a balloon that represents an individual that is eternal. We always are and always will be. We simply exist! Now think of all our life journeys and experiences. Our reactions (which are based on vibration) are added to this balloon. As we add to this balloon, it rises with vibrations that are high (more loving), or sinks with vibrations that are low (non-loving). But, the balloon is a constant and eternal being. Time itself, or no time, has nothing to do with what is added to it. Only our actions have bearing on what is added to the balloon. Mikey tells me time here gives ‘structure’, but in the afterlife dimensions, it is vibration that gives ‘structure’. The balloon rises with love, and sinks without! But it is eternal, and always is. Doesn’t age. Is always present. Hope this helps some!”

Does meditation help us grow spiritually?

In response, Carol wrote for Mikey, “Meditation in and of itself does not give spiritual progression. It is our actions, choices, and how we love and treat others that ultimately makes the difference, according to Mikey. Positive ways progress us spiritually. Increase our vibration. (Remember, everything is energy.) Meditation is good for us to gain guidance and to reconnect with our inner self. It is whatever works for any one individual. Being open and connecting to our guidance is definitely helpful for us. No one type of meditation is better than another if the individual gains the benefit of guidance that has love as the basis, according to Mikey.”

Thomas tells me that sixth-level spiritual development approaches the level of the Godhead. Accordingly, achieving it is going to require some added learning and perfecting after we have ceased incarnating, so we cannot make it there directly from here. Thomas has reluctantly answered my questions about where his own development is now by telling me that he didn’t cease incarnating until he had achieved what we call the upper fifth level. Since we cannot get to level six in one leap, he has refined our question to one that he feels that he can realistically answer. That question is this: “How can we grow enough spiritually in this incarnation to make this our last necessary lifetime, after which we can achieve further spiritual growth exclusively in the afterlife levels?”

Thomas is amazingly versed in modern culture for someone who died a century ago! He refers to this process as “leveling up,” which is a term I had to check with Mr. Google. Apparently “leveling up” is a videogaming term that refers to achieving the next level of difficulty, so indeed it makes perfect sense in this case. Thomas tells me that his last earth-incarnation ended only a half-century before he undertook guiding me through this lifetime, so he well understands both the wish to put returning to earth behind you, and the urgency to move ever higher that prompted him to undertake one additional earth-lifetime following his having been Thomas Jefferson. He felt that the power he had used in his Jefferson lifetime had so unbalanced him spiritually that he needed an extra very humble lifetime to bring him back into sufficient balance to make his subsequent growth in the afterlife levels easier.

Our post last week is the first part of Thomas’s answer to his proposed question about how you can make this your last necessary lifetime. He says that until you have learned to reject all the negativity that is rampant in our society, it is going to be impossible for you to rise above the need to reincarnate. Then once the living room of your mind has been cleansed of all negativity, you can use the Gospel teachings of Jesus – and especially His teachings on forgiveness – to proof your mind against all sources of negativity forevermore! And then, as Mikey tells us above, once you are living in love alone, your mind will be able to rise like a spiritual balloon. Our book, The Fun of Growing Forever, is Thomas’s effort to help modern people to better understand and apply the Lord’s Gospel teachings.

So, how does it feel to be sufficiently developed spiritually that you may be able to make this earth-incarnation your last? Thomas tells me now that I have been his test subject for the past two decades. Twenty years ago he guided me to stop TV, movies, newspapers, and all other negative inputs; then eight years ago he taught me the necessity of living in prevenient forgiveness. From that point on, I actually have been able to feel my vibration rising! Of course, I am an experiment of one, but the primary thing that I noticed first was that nothing seemed to bother me anymore. And my family and friends were a whole lot nicer, without their having had to change at all! If anyone was negative to me, I felt so singed that all I could do was withdraw. Spiritual growth is remarkably self-reinforcing, since the first thing it does is to make you allergic to the very negativity you came to earth to resist.

Here is a story I heard long ago that was meant to illustrate an advanced stage of spiritual development. For most of my life I didn’t get this at all! A holy hermit in India counseled people at the mouth of his mountain cave, and one day a group of outraged villagers brought him a newborn whose young mother had claimed this hermit had raped her. The villagers insisted he must rear the child. He said just, “Oh?” with a smile, and he took the baby into his arms. As the boy grew, the hermit came to love him as if he really were his own son, and as he counseled the villagers at the mouth of his cave his precious little charge would be there beside him. Then when the child was six, a group came up from the village to confront him again. They apologized and told him the mother was about to be married, she had confessed that the hermit was not the boy’s father, and now she was reclaiming her child. To this, the hermit who loved the boy said only, “Oh?” with that same enigmatic smile, and he blessed the child and sent him off, never to see him again. All I can say is that for decades I could not fathom this story! I mean, yes, I understood the man’s acceptance of a baby that no one else wanted. I even got that he wasn’t going to blame the mother for her lie. But how could her taking away this child that he loved so much not matter to him? It was only as I was growing spiritually that I came to fathom the extraordinary peace that becomes who you really are at your core when you are sufficiently spiritually advanced. Nothing negative can touch you now! Love is all that is, and all that ever will be. I see now that he never lost that child at all.

So, go for it! Once you are on a stable path toward avoiding negativity forevermore, use the Gospel teachings of Jesus to raise your spiritual vibration toward ever more perfect love. This fall Thomas plans to publish The Fun of Loving Jesus – Embracing the Christianity That Jesus Taught so we can help you as you continue this process. He assures me that twenty years ago I was no better developed spiritually than anyone reading these words would be now, but thanks to his having experimented with my life he now says this will be my last necessary earth-lifetime. He tells me he expects that I will come back for one additional lifetime in order to teach, and of course I tell him not to bet on that! But if I can make this my last earth-lifetime, then very easily so can you.

 

Filling balloons photo credit: Evangelio Gonzalez MD <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/11090497@N06/31168000858″>Air balloon, Villa Rica, Ga.</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Hot-air balloons photo credit: Onasill ~ Bill Badzo <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7156765@N05/47923604631″>Adirondack Mountains – Whiteface Mountain – Lake Placid – New York- – Hot Air Balloons</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Humpty balloon photo credit: Diann Bayes <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/144032585@N06/44537591414″>Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2018</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Pig photo credit: Diann Bayes <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/144032585@N06/30321041657″>Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2018</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Your Living Room

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

The most important thing you can do for your own happiness and for the health of the world is to begin right now to clean out and tidy up your mind. This didn’t seem to be important back when we thought each mind was a temporary artifact generated by each separate brain, with perhaps a part that carried on to sing forever at the feet of God. It was fine back then to fill your own mind with garbage. Nobody ever would know! You could compartmentalize your mind perhaps, have a place where you prepared uplifting sentences for public conversations, and also deep crannies where you could keep the detritus of videogames and horror movies and where you could cherish your various hatreds. You could keep your insecurities hidden there, too. Each of us went about our days projecting success in all that we did, while from our failure crannies came the certainty that any minute now something was going to happen that would show us to be frauds and fools. Back then, your mind was your mind alone! And so long as you carefully managed all your public interactions, it was nobody’s business what you were thinking.

But now everything has changed! What our study of the afterlife and the greater reality has taught us about the nature of our minds means that none of our old assumptions is true. Among other things, we have learned that:

  • The only thing that actually exists is what we experience in a limited way as consciousness. For convenience, let’s call that great consciousness Mind. Now we know that there is only one Mind, and the one Mind continuously manifests everything that we think is real.
  • Eternal Mind is powerful! Insofar as we are able to determine, its power is literally infinite.
  • The mind that you experience while you are in a body is perhaps twenty percent of your actual mind. The rest of your vast, eternal mind is left behind when you come to earth. One of the first things that happen when you return to the afterlife – which we really should be calling our real life – is that you merge back into the rest of your mind, so suddenly you have a lot more memories. And you feel absolutely brilliant!
  • All of our own minds are inextricably part of that one eternal Mind. The implications of this fact are manifold and even troubling, but they are inescapable now. Your mind is not in any sense private.
  • Since our minds are all part of a single Mind, they interact and work together beneath our awareness. Leading modern researchers like Lynne McTaggart have demonstrated over and over again that the intentions of a number of minds together can have amazingly powerful effects. And every horror this world faces now is simply the result of the interactions of billions of minds whose proprietors have allowed them to fill up with and then project fear, violence, and hatred.
  • Whatever is in your mind is readily accessible to beings who are not now in bodies. The extent to which this is true is something I have never wanted to know, but the fact of it should not surprise us. The Godhead can access your mind, as can your spirit guides, as can some others who are not now in bodies. What seems to be the case is that a being not in a body who has a good reason to access your mind is able to do it easily, but I don’t think you need to worry that dead Aunt Mildred is rummaging around to learn what you really thought of her and what your kinkiest fantasies might be.
  • Your mind is eternal. Far from shriveling into a soul when your body dies, your mind will go on to inhabit your post-death body essentially intact! And wouldn’t it have to be that way? How could you be “you” in the afterlife if only some aspects of your mind moved on? But because this is true, you will be living in your present mind essentially forever. And knowing this starts you thinking hard about where you would prefer to spend your eternity. In a paradise? Or in what is almost a sewer?

It was when I fully grasped those last three points that I realized it was finally time to clean up my act. If I will be living in this mind forever, then I ought to make it a happier place! If my mind is generating good or evil in the world, then I want to clean it up for the sake of my grandchildren. And if important people not now in bodies can readily know what I am thinking, then my mind really isn’t only my mind, is it? Actually, it’s more like my living room. It’s where I spend most of my time, where I entertain my spirit guides, where I meet with God (if I meet with God), and where my dead mother and friends might visit. It was about twenty years ago that I re-thought everything about my mind, including even the way that I think.

For me to share this process with you would have felt uncomfortable twenty years ago, for all the reasons given in that first paragraph. But one of the fruits of cleaning up your mental living room is that you are always ready now to welcome every guest! Now I have no mental secrets, so please come on in, take a comfy chair, and have a cup of tea. I am going to suggest that you do just what I did, and I am happy to assure you that it has been easy. Here are all the right steps to take:

  • Begin to live with the top of your head wide open. I was still religious when I began this project, so I called it “living with an open prayer line.” I realize now that what I really was doing was inviting my own guides into my mind and asking them to help me clean up this mess. That image that the top of your head is just a big open circle so anyone can come right in seemed powerful to me. It was a symbolic yielding. I kept re-imagining it many times each day, until eventually everything was so tidy that I no longer needed it.
  • Stop all media. No more TV, movies, or radio. If social media had existed at the time, or if I had played videogames, I would have stopped all of that as well. Since TV had been integral to my life, it amazes me now to realize that I never have missed it at all! If I want to see a movie that I have been assured is not negative, I still will do that. I have seen Avatar, Green Book, Last Vegas, and maybe a dozen other movies in the past two decades. But now I have whole blissful hours to read and write, and to create! Every one of my books from The Fun of Dying forward was written after I got rid of media. I have given myself the luxury of time and a beautiful work-space that I control, and I cannot begin to express to you the positive difference this has made in my life!
  • Strictly Police your Internet use. If you still read newspapers, then police those, too. Your goal is to absorb zero negativity, and the Internet is a negativity sewer! Apparently now and then there has been news here and there over the past two decades? I assume my friends and family have adequately briefed me on all the big stuff. And if future things happen that are not big enough for the people in your life to bother sharing then with you, then why ever would you want to let any of those things pollute your mind?
  • Police your relationships. Many of us have people in our lives who are downers and drags for us. You cannot entirely avoid family members, but you ought to gradually and sweetly find ways to minimize your contacts with every negative person who is now in your life.
  • Police your thoughts. We used to think we could let our thoughts run wild! But now, doing that is the equivalent of letting a herd of demented puppies run around your living room. Never again! From now on, whenever you have a thought that is negative, whether it is defeatist (I’ll never get that raise), angry (that big jerk!), disparaging (my brother is a loser), hate-filled (those ____ are evil), or simply a downer (I hate rainy days), then immediately counter it with something positive. “I’ll find a much better job!” “That poor man is having an awful day.” “My brother needs cheering up.” “I want to better understand those ____.” There is not much you can do about rainy days, so what I do is consider rain to be my permission to goof off. It’s raining! YAYY! I can watch a movie, hang around with my husband, take a quick store trip, or chat with friends. If you are on a work-clock, you might just have a special “rain snack.” The point is to counter every negative thought right away with something positive.
  • Invite your primary guide to have complete access to your mind. For this lifetime, it is his or her living room, too. I used to fret about the private things that people in bodies have to do, but my guide assures me that his tribe has no interest in watching us in the bathroom or in the bedroom. But many people have a rich fantasy life, Thomas? What about that? Apparently our guides try to avoid our fantasies, but they cannot avoid them altogether. What I have found is that random fantasizing has declined for me as my vibration has risen, except that I can use it as a sleeping pill. When I am having trouble falling asleep, I can think, “I’m about to have that fantasy you hate!” And generally I am out like a light.
  • Give up on religions. This is optional, but I urge you to try it. Religions are fear-based, which means that all religions will drag you down spiritually. For Christians, the fact that you can have a much better relationship with the genuine Jesus once you are no longer God-fearing seems to provide a powerful incentive for you to take the Lord’s hand now and let Him lead you into a deeper understanding of the genuine God Who is perfect love.
  • Be patient, and be positive. Remember, you are always in control! If there is something – perhaps videogames – that you worry about missing, just tell yourself you are giving them up for a week. And then for another week. It’s like giving up drinking: you are in control, and you are choosing to do this so you can improve your life. If you fall off the wagon, shrug and get back on. What I found was that filling my evenings with doing fun things that had been piling up because watching TV had gotten in the way made my transition from TV both easy and happy. Where my husband was concerned, I just said, “You watch that show, darling. I’ve got some reading (or writing, or phone calls) to catch up on.” Don’t announce to anyone your intention to possibly give up on a lot of things. Move your family and friends into your new stage of life naturally, without pressures or expectations.

It is impossible to expose your mind to negativity without becoming more negative yourself. When you cleanse your living room of all negativity and then rigorously protect it, you will find that your personal vibration will begin to rise naturally. You will feel more peaceful, more positive, and so much happier! You even may begin to find the time and the desire to pursue your own glorious quest to do something truly wonderful. There is no richer earthly joy than living for a cause that is greater than yourself! If I had not taken these steps two decades ago, I never could have written even one Fun book. Nor could I have done six years of podcasts, or written almost two hundred blog posts. If I had not cleaned up my living room, then you and I would have lived and died without our ever having shared this beautiful connection.

 

Old Room photo credit: romanboed <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/92082510@N04/16532481487″>Living Room</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Puppies photo credit: susie2778 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/31018850@N04/46842662761″>Puppies at Lake Kerkini</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Elegant Room photo credit: romanboed <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/92082510@N04/26070481096″>The Library at the Alchymist Hotel Prague Castle</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

What the Spirit Says to the Churches

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

There are more than forty thousand versions of Christianity worldwide.  Many are the size of a single building, but a few are gigantic: the Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members, and the United Methodist Church alone has more than twelve million members worldwide. Most of the differences among denominations are minor, but they are enough to convince many devout Christians that hell yawns before many other devout Christians. And this awful fracturing continues apace! A decade ago there were about ten thousand versions of Christianity. Who can guess how many more there will be in another ten years’ time?

This endless splitting-apart of Christians over doctrinal disagreements has a long history. Among the earliest followers of the Lord’s Way, differences of opinion about even core details were peacefully allowed, so long as the Lord’s teachings were followed. But then came the Council of Nicaea in 325, and six more councils over half a millennium, all of which codified the Lord’s Way into just one set of acceptable beliefs. This newly unified Christian religion then abolished all of what it considered to be heretical ideas, and often in horrific ways.

The most recent major rift in what Christians still call the Body of Christ occurred early in 2019. The United Methodist Church is the largest mainline protestant denomination in the United States, and it has fallen into bitter disunion over the issue of homosexuality. At a meeting meant to heal the rift, those who wanted to allow the ordination of homosexual clergy and the legalization of homosexual marriage were voted down, so now a split seems inevitable. It was delegates from developing countries who killed the idea of accepting homosexuals. Jerry Kulah, the head of the UMC Africa Initiative, was delighted to say, “I’m happy to go back to old ladies and old men in villages who received the Bible from missionaries and let them know that the Bible hasn’t changed.”

“The Bible hasn’t changed.” Once again, the Old Testament was used to beat down the Lord’s central message that God’s Law is love. To this day, devotion to the Old Testament is allowed to further split the Body of Christ, even though Jesus Himself freed us to throw the Old Testament out the window! When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus 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.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:37-40).

So Jesus told us two thousand years ago that He was giving us God’s new revelation that every rule and law in the entire Old Testament must be seen as subservient to God’s Law of Love! Yet Christians still allow this endless splintering, even though as Jesus prepared His followers for His crucifixion He prayed that we would remain forever united in perfect love. He said to God, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one” (JN 17:22). To His disciples He said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (JN 13:34-35). One wonders whether these essential words of Jesus ever have been read by any leader of the now forever disunited United Methodist Church!

The primary reason for this ongoing splintering of Christianity is the fact that some denominations persist in claiming that the whole Christian Bible as it was first assembled almost two thousand years ago is still and must forever remain God’s Inspired Inerrant Word. As a result, Christians will insist to you that their religion must forever condemn homosexuality because the Old Testament says, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death” (Lev 20:13). But the Old Testament is full of such outmoded nonsense! And in fact, even the most Bible-obsessed Christians feel free now to ignore many of the worst Old Testament laws. For example, if a girl is taken to wife and found to be not a virgin, “then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death” (Deut 22: 21). And if a son is rebellious, “then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death” (Deut 21:19-21). When you ask Bible-believing Christians why they aren’t stoning their rebellious sons and their daughters found to be not virgin, they will tell you those laws no longer apply. So why then is the law against homosexuality still so strictly enforced? The only difference that I can see is that stoning people to death has for quite a while been a violation of civil laws, while until very recently the shunning of homosexuals was an accepted social norm. And if that is what makes the distinction, Christians, then Jesus is saying to you now, “You hypocrites! Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’” (MT 15:7-9).

I don’t know how much clearer Jesus could have made His core revelation from God that religious laws are no longer inviolate. Repeatedly He broke the Sabbath laws, insisting that love is more important. “Have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (MT 12:5-8). And Jesus despised religious traditions! “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men… You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition” (MK 7:8-9).

At the root of this ongoing Christian fracturing is Bible-believing Christians’ refusal to confront one core question.

DOES GOD HAVE THE RIGHT TO GIVE US NEW REVELATION?

For those who insist that God gave us His final word two thousand years ago, it is past time to face this issue frankly. Is there, or is there not a still-living and all-powerful God? And just how clearly must God speak before Christians will listen and obey? Jesus tells us plainly in the Gospels that He came to replace the Old Testament laws with God’s new Law of Love. But then of course the old religious culture still remained strong in people’s minds, so after the Lord’s crucifixion God reinforced His new Law of Love by channeling through the Apostle Paul this extraordinary message that puts God’s Word as plainly as it ever could have been said!

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (1Cor 13).

If you doubt this passage was divinely channeled, just look at what comes before it and after it! All churchy blather, then a quick transition: “All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they? But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way” (1Cor 12:29-31). Then after the miracle of 1Cor 13, Paul goes right back to talking about the same tongues-and-prophesy gibberish that God’s channeled message has just decried: “Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation” (1Cor 14:1-4).

God’s direct Word was shoehorned into human ignorance here, without question!

A God Who cannot give us new revelations as we grow beyond speaking, thinking, and reasoning as spiritual children is not a God worthy of our worship. And the genuine God Who is all that exists revealed to us two thousand years ago through the ministry of Jesus Christ the fundamental truth that love is all! When we needed to have that truth reinforced, God channeled it again through the Apostle Paul.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:29, 3:6, 3:13, 3:22). If Christians will not unite in obedience to God’s revealed Law of Love, then Christianity will continue to die this dismal death of forty thousand cuts. Then soon, at last, those who follow Jesus will come together and begin to share God’s Law of Love with all the world!

 

Church photo credit: cattan2011 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/40738628023″>Cherry blossoms, Saint Michael on Greenhill, Lichfield, England</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Working With Your Primary Spirit Guide (Part II)

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

You have an intimate friend who loves you and is devoting your lifetime to helping you thrive. Your spirit guide operates in your mind, coaches and encourages you, and patiently helps you to learn and grow spiritually. Your primary guide is your biggest fan! And perhaps best of all, your guide is your intimate connection with the Godhead. I wondered as a child how God could answer the prayers of all the world’s children at once, and you likely have wondered about that, too, so it’s good to have this question answered. Since all our minds are aspects of the Godhead, the fact that your spirit guide acts for God in your life is the same as God’s acting directly.

This whole plan looks like perfection to me, so I am surprised to find that there are some to whom the fact that each of us has a primary spirit guide doesn’t feel like good news. My own guide tells me that as this planet’s consciousness vibration continues to rise and more people begin to hear from their primary guides in their waking lives, there is going to be confusion and fear on the part of some for whom this is a new concept. They might worry that God is policing them. They might feel entirely creeped-out. A few might see their spirit guides as invaders to be actively fought. Thomas is sensitive to our need not to overburden people, so he wants to begin this education gently. Here is what he wants to make sure that you know:

  • You cannot be in a physical body for long without a spirit guide. Your primary guide’s role is to assist you in making and then in fulfilling your plan for this lifetime; and while most of this work happens in face-to-face meetings while your body sleeps, it also happens throughout the day in little mental nudges and ideas, perhaps in flashes of inspiration, in feelings of anxiety or regret, in a song in your mind, and in surges of emotion. You long have thought these messages were coming entirely from your own mind, but that has never been the case. Your spirit guide is your mentor and protector, your intimate contact with the living God, and the most devoted friend you have.
  • Your primary guide deeply understands and completely loves you, no matter what. As you look around and read the news, you can see people giving their guides a hard time, ignoring their prompts to stick to their plans and even doing some terrible things. We have free will while we are in bodies, so we can choose to ignore our guides; but still, they will faithfully continue to try to understand and love and  help us. There are cases in the literature where someone has chosen to become so irredeemably evil that a spirit guide felt overwhelmed and chose to be replaced by a being more senior; but such cases are rare. Your spirit guide’s own development will be aided by your spiritual growth, so there is no one in heaven or on earth who is more eager to see you thrive!
  • Your spirit guide will work with you in whatever way makes you most comfortable. If you prefer to work with your guide beneath your daytime radar, nearly always that will be just fine, the exception being when you are balking at doing something your guide thinks is important. It was because I was refusing to follow a key aspect of my plan to help others that my primary guide first broke into my life to insist that I write Liberating Jesus. But if after having been directly reminded that I had promised to help with that book, I still had chosen to refuse the role, my free will would have been respected. Thomas tells me now that someone else would have been found to complete my task. And he still would have loved me, regardless!

Having a spirit guide is not optional. I long have believed that being in a body without a guide is incompatible with life, but Thomas tells me now that there have been a few people who have adamantly refused guidance. Apparently, though, if we manage to drive away every guide who tries to help us, we will begin a rapid decline. The consequence of your rejecting all guidance would be your deterioration and early death.

So even if the notion of having a spirit guide makes you uncomfortable, I hope you can learn to enjoy this relationship that exists to help you make the most of this lifetime.

And if you are game to try for a more interactive daytime relationship with your guide, here are some tips on how you might begin it.

Ask questions at night and look for answers in the morning. This is the easiest way to request the help of your primary guide, and it works so well that for most of my life it was the only way I ever reached out to Thomas. Whenever you want to involve your guide, simply state a question clearly as the last thing you do before falling asleep. Then pay attention to your first thoughts in the morning. In fact, pay attention to those first thoughts even if you haven’t asked a question, since on occasion your guide will want you to remember something from your nightly meetings. Be patient when it comes to questions asked, since it can take as much as a month or more for this method to begin to work well; but once you and your guide have synced the process, you never again in your life will make a major decision without first “sleeping on it.” Your guide will continue to nudge you in the daytime, and if you don’t want to think of your spirit guide as a separate being, you can just keep on assuming that those little nudges and flashes of intuition are coming from your own mind. So long as you continue to follow your plan, your guide will be happy to work beneath your radar.

Consider whether you want your primary guide to be more of a separate presence with whom you can actively interact. If you want that, you can have it; and your first task will be to learn to tell the two of you apart! I still consider myself to be as psychic as a post, so if I can do this, so can you. To begin it, tell your guide aloud that you are trying to better perceive his daytime communications. Don’t assume that your guide is reading your mind, since our guides try to give us personal privacy. Once your guide knows what you are attempting to do, then give yourself a number of weeks during which you will:

  • Check for his presence often. I soon realized that whenever I checked, he was just behind my left shoulder. Even if I was against a wall! “Thomas?” I would think, and there he would be, as distinct a feeling as if a living person were standing there.
  • Pause often and feel for your guide’s reaction to whatever you are saying or doing. This really helps you sort your thoughts from his. I tend to be impulsive and grandiose, but Thomas is a much more careful thinker; like all guides, too, he is in active possession of his eternal mind, so he is a whole lot smarter! He is coaxing me now to write on my own so he is respectful about making changes, but I am so aware of him and I rely so much on his wisdom now that I won’t post a blog entry or submit any other piece of writing until he is at peace with it.
  • Accept the fact that what you think of as your own intuition actually comes from your guide. Assume you have no intuition! When you have an uneasy feeling, when you feel attracted to or repelled by an idea, when you reflexively like or dislike someone, those feelings are probably nudges from your guide. And your guide is generally right. When you have made a firm habit of continuously checking and relying upon your guide’s opinions, everything in your life is going to be easier!
  • Learn to interact smoothly with all your guides. Many of us have additional guides, each of whom has a limited purpose. They generally work through our primary guide, so we seldom are much aware of them. In some cases, though, we might have a separate team of guides who work more independently under our primary guide’s control; and in my case, I have a fiction-writing team that is headed by a woman named Marvina. I have been play-writing fiction for forty years, for the fun of it and also because Marvina says it relaxes me. Perhaps you also have a team that helps you with some special interest or hobby, but in all things your primary guide is going to be foremost in your life.
  • Your guide’s help might make you feel at first that you just have an overactive imagination. In fact, what we think of as our imagination seems to be where our guides blend with us, to the point where therapists who are seeking information from our guides will simply ask us to imagine that our guide is talking. Then sure enough, he does exactly that.
  • Try to accept your guide’s personal preferences. After all, our guides are people, too! They will try to abide by our preferences, but their work with us will go more easily if we will eventually learn to defer and let them lead this dance. Thomas is serious by nature, so he didn’t much like having to answer my trivial questions through a medium; it also irritated him no end that I kept wanting to talk about Thomas Jefferson. He was a good sport at first, but before long he was refusing to speak with me through any medium. I sulked. But he was adamant, so at his insistence I followed the steps that he has outlined for us here, and I have to agree – he is smiling to see me admit this – that now our relationship does work better.

Give this new stage of your relationship with your primary guide sufficient time to grow. It took me months of careful testing before I was sure that I was hearing Thomas and understanding what he was saying, and it likely will take you awhile as well. At this point I trust him more than I trust myself, but as with friends in bodies our trust in our guides has to develop over time. Don’t push it! And try not to fall in love. Beings who are not in bodies tend to express a preferred gender even up to the vibratory level of the Godhead, and many spirit guidance pairs are cross-gender. To discover unexpectedly that there is a member of the opposite sex who is interesting and very bright and is devoted to loving and guiding you creates a situation that is almost tailor-made for you to fall in love. During our period of communicating through a medium, I was kind of crushing on Thomas, which irritated him since he still sees me as his male comrade through many lifetimes. You likely won’t have the added burden of knowing your guide has had a famous past lifetime, so for you this process should be easier.

This method of developing an active daytime relationship with your primary guide works well even if you are not a sensitive and your guide is like Thomas, who prefers to act within. Some guides, though, are much more open. As the consciousness vibration of this planet rises, I am hearing from people whose guides are speaking directly to them now, and upon receiving an invitation they are almost taking over their proteges’ lives. If this happens to you, then it’s fine to invite your guide to lead the dance. Be very respectful. And be grateful. For these beautiful beings to be devoting so much of themselves to helping you and me is the greatest possible gift!

 

Canopy of Trees photo credit: mag3737 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/50318388@N00/46349833485″>Canopy</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
War Face photo credit: smileham <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/58472333@N00/3358153294″>17/365 War Face</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Female Guide photo credit: VladimirTro <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/149732725@N08/34708845702″>Anna</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

The Greatest of These is Love

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

We are being told that “the veil between worlds” is thinning. And the evidence is everywhere! Where once all the things that we talk about here were considered to be woo-woo and fringy, now this whole field is trending mainstream. Surveys show that people are becoming steadily less religious but more spiritual. Easier and more frequent communication is happening now between the dead and the living; and astonishingly, just a year ago I began to hear from delighted widows whose dead husbands visit them in the night so they can again make love!

Additional evidence of the thinning of the veil between this physical reality and most of what exists is the amazing ease with which so many are working more openly with their spirit guides. We have been privileged to watch some of this unfold in the comments to these posts, and I hear from others by email who are deep in the wondrous feeling of finding themselves in waking contact with their spirit guides. This is brand, brand new! It is such a privilege to watch it begin, and even perhaps to help it unfold, although in this I am the most inadequate of experts.

Let’s briefly take a closer look at how this thinning of the veil is happening. We understand enough now about the physics of the greater reality to know that there is no actual “veil,” but instead the barrier between the dead and the living is an inherent property of consciousness itself. So this delightful thinning of the veil is telling us something very important about what is happening now to consciousness. To recap:

  • Human consciousness is a limited version of the base creative force that continuously manifests this universe.
  • Consciousness is all that exists. Everything that we think is real is merely an artifact of that base creative force.
  • Consciousness exists in a range of vibrations from the lowest, which we experience as fear, to the highest, which we experience as love.
  • Reality teems with beings whose own minds are part of that infinitely creative Mind, which is why A Course in Miracles tells us that there is only one of us here!

The fact that consciousness exists in a range of vibrations serves to stratify the beings whose minds all are part of that base creative Mind. Understanding this fact is crucial to our better envisioning the afterlife, and also to our better working with our spirit guides while we are in bodies. As the vibratory rate of consciousness increases, it becomes ever more powerful, so it is easy for beings to travel lower than their personal vibratory rate but it is unbearable for them to go higher. Accounts from those who are dead suggest that trying to move to a consciousness vibration that is higher and more perfectly loving than what they have naturally attained will buffet them with overwhelming energy.

It is the fact that being in material bodies lowers our natural vibratory rate that makes communicating with the dead so hard. They can lower their personal vibrations and be close to us whenever they like! But still they are vibrating higher than we are, so usually we can neither see them nor hear them. Fortunately, our minds astral-travel nightly out of our sleeping bodies, and then we are able to vibrate high enough to meet with our loved ones and guides face-to-face.

Your primary spirit guide has been with you since before you entered your body, and he will be with you throughout this lifetime. (Many spirit guides are female, but I will use the male pronoun here.) You meet with your primary guide most nights, and you hear and feel him in the daytime, although you are so used to his presence that you tend to hear and feel him as a part of yourself. For all of human history, few of us have realized that each of us is essentially two beings!

So, what is different now? What has changed?

Notwithstanding the fact that everything seems to be spiraling out of control, what we are living through is the earliest stage of the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. Jesus warned us that as the consciousness vibration of all humanity begins to rise, we will enter a period of tribulation. And what else might you call what is happening now?  So this, then, must be why “the veil between worlds” is thinning. Higher-level beings not in bodies have been working for more than a century to raise all humanity’s consciousness vibrations away from fear and toward more perfect love, and their efforts are succeeding! It makes sense that as the consciousness vibration of this material level rises, we will be able to experience the non-material levels of consciousness more easily. Our spirit guides have always had access to us. Now we can have better access to them!

(And here my beloved primary guide has chosen to give us a demonstration. Nearly everything I ever have written has been channeled, but for the better part of a year he has been using these posts to teach me how to write. He gives me the ideas and I do the writing, and I am proud to say that I wrote the above with very little help! But when I tried to finish this post on my own, I was soon in the weeds. When I get off-track that way he lets me flounder until Saturday morning, when he channels his corrections. But our older daughter is here for the Mother’s Day weekend, for heaven’s sake, so I told him on Thursday night that I needed to keep my Saturday free! Then I woke up on Friday with the start of 1 Corinthians 13 singing in my mind.)

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13).

(Thomas tells me that my disparagement of Paul’s letters is in part deserved, but this passage was channeled to Paul directly from God. These words have all along been meant to guide us in this historical moment, so they have been preserved essentially intact through all the years and all the translations. Thomas tells me it is our task now to teach these words to the followers of Jesus as a modern divine revelation. I spent my Friday morning sitting with this news. Then Thomas channeled the rest.)

The only thing that matters at all is for every being in all of reality to learn and practice ever more perfect love. The Christian religion is dying because it ignores the Master’s words about love and it also ignores these words of Paul. Instead, it continues to use the most unloving aspects of the Old Testament to aggressively guide its followers toward judging others, sowing fear instead of love, and shamefully excluding the very souls who need our  tenderest love and care. So the ongoing death of traditional Christianity is God’s divine judgment. As Paul prophesied:

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:11-12).

In all its 40,000-odd variations, Christianity clings to its fear-based childhood. And as it dies, from the ashes of that human-made religion will rise at last the genuine movement that Jesus came to begin.

The reason why so many people are now being invited by their primary guides to begin a closer working relationship is that legions of God’s elevated beings have begun to raise this planet’s conscious vibration. But their efforts are just the start! As Jesus tells us in the Gospels, it is going to be the work of His followers to continue to raise the consciousness vibrations of all of humankind, to the point where the the kingdom of God dawns on earth.

And the most effective way for this to happen will be for as many of us as possible to allow our spirit guides to work through us more directly. As individuals you and I can do little! But with the love and care of spirit guides who serve in our lives as God’s own minions, we can become the Lord’s army of love. Jesus is saying to us now, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves… do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you… So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.  What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs…  And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid” (MT 10:16-31). “Go and make disciples of all nations … And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”(MT 28:19-20).

Thomas felt that we needed to understand why our working more closely with our guides is becoming especially important now. Next week we will continue our discussion of how we can more easily make that happen.

 

Water lily photo credit: likeaduck <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/51869361@N05/4892885132″>Water Lilies</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Saint Paul photo credit: Renaud Camus <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7313591@N02/33449902666″>Le Jour ni l’Heure 1987 : Claude Vignon, 1593-1670, Saint Paul, église Saint-Séverin, Paris, dimanche 26 février 2017, 16:48:20</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Working With Your Primary Spirit Guide (Part I)

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

When I last wrote here about spirit guides, I was still in my first flush of joy that I could speak directly with my primary guide after six decades of blind and deaf cluelessness! A few months before, he had broken into my daytime life through a medium because I was refusing to write Liberating Jesus. Who was I to write a book about Jesus? By the time of my blog post our crisis had passed, the book was being readied for publication, and I was settling into a deeper awareness of the greatest love there is. Your primary guide is your closest friend and your intimate channel to the heart of God. Your guide is that small voice in your mind, the naggings of conscience, a key memory, your artistic muse, perhaps a brilliant idea: your life has been governed by a nearly constant internal conversation that has worked so well that you may not have noticed there always have been two of you in it.

We have talked here about the fact that an effort is underway, being orchestrated at the highest levels of reality, to elevate the consciousness of this planet and thereby bring the kingdom of God on earth. And we are now being given to understand that as a part of that effort we are invited to begin a more open waking relationship with our primary guides. You cannot be in a body without a spirit guide! And as is true of every kind of human interaction, there are about as many variations on the spirit guidance relationship as there are people who are now in bodies. Here are some of its core characteristics:

  • Everyone has one primary guide through life. Our primary guide helps us design what amounts to a lesson-plan for this lifetime, and then works from within while we are here to help us execute it well. Our primary guide generally is more spiritually advanced than we are, and often is affiliated with us by soul-group, eternal friendship, a common passion, or perhaps all three. To be a primary guide is a big commitment! And it can be an efficient way for people who are no longer incarnating to continue to grow spiritually. My own guide has told me emphatically that the better I do with this lifetime, the more spiritual growth and overall merit he will attain from having guided me through it (no pressure!).
  • Many of us also have one or more assistant guides who are with us “for a season or a reason.” These auxiliary guides are chosen and supervised by our primary spirit guide to help us with anything, from learning to play the piano through writing and money-management to weight-loss, learning trigonometry, and even making friends more easily. Anything we might decide to take on may well require a new guide or two who will work as our primary guide’s assistants.
  • Our primary guide works from within during the daytime and meets with us face-to-face at night. Our minds don’t need to sleep, so while our bodies sleep we will go out of the body and relax, meet with dead loved ones and guides, take classes, perhaps even travel astrally. It is during these out-of-body meetings that we and our guides work on tweaking our life-plan and thinking through its better execution; then later, during our waking hours, our primary guide will give us nudges toward doing whatever we had planned to do. Spirit guides generally work below our daytime radar, so it is easily possible for us to go through many decades – or even a lifetime! – without having a direct waking experience of them.
  • Our relationship with our primary guide is our conduit to the Godhead. Our better understanding of the way consciousness works, and our digesting of ever more evidence of what actually is going on, has helped us to better understand that higher-level disembodied entities virtually never work alone. Instead, they work in gigantic collectives of beings in ever more perfect tune, and in fact it even is likely that God is a Collective, too. And the spiritual power of Beings at the level of the Godhead is such that for God to whisper in our minds directly would likely overwhelm us. We are told that one of the functions Jesus performed while He was on earth was to allow God to “look through His eyes” and come to better know people in ways that otherwise would have been uncomfortable for them. So it makes sense to know that God works in our lives mostly through the primary guides who intimately know us and completely love us. Since we are all of one universal Mind, this makes for a distinction without a real difference.

Thomas believes that our best way to illustrate for you how the guidance process works is to share a few of our own details. This being who has been obsessively private both in his earth-lifetimes and in our guidance relationship is very eager to help you now!

  • Thomas first broke into my daytime life when I was eight years old. I shared this story in my first post here, and to this day what happened to me one night in April of 1955 remains as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. It did what Thomas had meant it to do: it shaped the whole rest of my life. I am hearing now from a surprising number of people who also had early contact with their own spirit guides, usually without understanding what that voice or that presence was. Some thought it was God, Jesus, a dead loved one, or an angel; but as they have shared their stories, you could see that they, too, were receiving a heads-up from the pilot of this lifetime’s ship. If you don’t recall this kind of event in your own life, it may still have happened but it operates now beneath your daytime radar.
  • Thomas guided me through my life-lessons as he guided me through preparing for this post-lessons stage that we are living now. I wince to know that this extraordinary being has for my entire life been lovingly guiding this self-involved and clueless little girl and young woman through grabbiness and prom dates, marriage and babies. When I was fourteen, Thomas spoke to the world through Leslie Flint in the persona of his famous prior lifetime (start at about eight minutes – you’ll love this). I understand now that he did it because guiding a ditz of a teenage girl was boring him out of his mind! While he guided me through my lesson-plan, he also was guiding me through my Bible studies and afterlife research in preparation for this next stage. I recall being in the process of choosing my college major, planning to major in Christian history and never considering anything else. But then came the moment when I was in my adviser’s office and about to declare, and I thought, Wait a minute! What am I doing? I should major in something that can help me get a job! It was a brief moment of clarity that Thomas squashed. I recall feeling a fresh rush of certainty that I had to major in Christian history and it didn’t matter why.
  • Thomas has patiently guided me through all my big decisions. We have made them together before I was born and during our nighttime meetings, but of course I have no waking access to the plan so he must prompt me to carry it out. And he has a flair for the dramatic! For example, soon after I turned twenty-two I went to a mixer with some friends, and when I walked into that dimly-lit room I spotted a man who amazingly was surrounded by a halo of light. I introduced myself to him. We have been married now for forty-six years.
  • Thomas waited until we had completed my life-lessons before he initiated this next stage. If you and your guide had planned to be a part of the elevation of this planet’s consciousness, you might have had or you soon will have a similar experience. In April of 2009 I was sitting in the Unity Church that I then attended, and it came to me seemingly out of the blue that I should give the rest of my life to God. In less time than it takes to write these words, I asked myself how I might give my life to God. Then I knew the words, and I murmured them aloud. “Thank You for giving me work to do. Thank You for showing me how to do it.” Did I think that had done the trick? I did! I have said those words every day of my life since Thomas first gave them to me, and within a month I was beginning to write what I thought were only study materials for an afterlife course I was about to give. After that course ended, I kept on writing. In the fall of 2010 we published The Fun of Dying.
  • Thomas has assembled a team of ten assistant guides. They include four who work on my research and teaching, three who attend to my personal life, and three who for more than forty years have helped me dabble in writing fiction. Thomas tells me writing fiction relaxes me, and with the help of these guides it is lots of fun! I begin to see, too, how this saga that we have been working on for decades may eventually have a part to play in our work.

Thomas and I very much enjoy this stage of our relationship. He wants you to know that. You and your own primary guide likely have a history that is similar to ours, in that he and I are eternal friends who have been male comrades through seventeen lifetimes. We had been eager to do this together, so it has frustrated him no end that I remember nothing now. Instead of working with his longtime comrade, he finds himself guiding an ignorant female! So he soon abandoned using a medium and returned to working within my mind, but this time I am aware of his presence. He gives me his ideas in order, and he watches the screen over my left shoulder as I write. He has eternally been an intense perfectionist – demanding of others, more demanding of himself – and whenever I use a word or phrase he doesn’t like, he is quick to give me revisions. As I go about my day I can easily distinguish his occasional thoughts from my own, and I am sensitive to his subtle moods. I can tell when he is displeased, when he is worrying, and when he is satisfied. All of this feels so comfortable! At last I again live and work with  my beloved comrade from long before Jefferson’s birth. Surprisingly, he insists to me that was not his most important lifetime, and amazingly he even tells me that I also have lived more important lifetimes. I guess it is all a matter of perspective?

Thomas adds that you may be troubled at first to realize how intensely your primary guide always has been involved in your life. He wants you to know that your guide’s role is to help you carry out your own decisions. You are always in control! Your guide respects your private moments, and no matter what you say or do your guide loves you and will not judge you. Apparently your guide now also wants to communicate with you more openly, so he promises that next week he will share suggestions to help you open yourself and make the most of this most important relationship of your life. Thomas tells me that what he and I are doing now is part of our original plan. But he wants you to know that even if helping to bring the kingdom of God on earth has not been a part of your life-plan, once you have a more active waking relationship with your primary guide you might decide together to assume a greater role in advancing this work. He reminds us that, as Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field (LK 10:2).

 

Young man photo credit: CharlesFred <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/40279823@N00/260427819″>Smart</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Piano photo credit: TravisPhd Chen <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/60949975@N06/46797408474″>TRA07002</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
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Let There Be Life

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

We have talked here about the fact that materialist mainstream scientists still continue to look for a source of consciousness inside the brain. Not content to wait for proof-of-concept, scientists even are racing now to develop a level of artificial intelligence that they believe can give rise to consciousness: they are building machines that can “repair themselves” and even can “eat, grow, and evolve.” These researchers are generally careful to say that their machines are not conscious now, but over it all there is an unspoken hope that if machines become sufficiently competent then actual consciousness might arise. They think about how we are going to know that some machine is “conscious”; and since their fundamental premise is so flawed because consciousness is not generated by the brain, they keep stumbling across issues and barriers that simply do not exist in life. They study anger in dreams with the astonishing belief that “(t)he research may ultimately help experts understand the neural foundation of the emotional content involved in nightmares,” even though of course emotion is a property of consciousness rather than an artifact of brain activity so what they are studying is merely the effects of emotions on the brain. Nor can they even begin to fathom such questions as what the mind experiences during the death process, or a genuine explanation for the beautiful phenomenon called Acquired Savant Syndrome.

Bernardo Kastrup is a young Dutch scientist who grasps the primary role of consciousness, and reading his work does give me hope that the willfully self-enforced Luddite cluelessness of modern mainstream science may not be forever; but meanwhile, you and I are left to do the work of studying consciousness that rightly belongs to career research scientists.  Creator

And there is another scientific pursuit that is fully as hopeless as trying to find a source of consciousness inside the brain. A great deal of time and money is being devoted now to searching for the origin of life in some version of a primordial soup. The term given to the whole broad area of trying to understand how life arose on earth is called Origin of Life research, and it has become a kind of demented sister to the ongoing search for a source of consciousness in the brain. While consciousness researchers do the rough equivalent of taking a radio apart to search for the source of Frank Sinatra’s voice, Origin of Life researchers are back-engineering living organisms to try to discover how inert chemicals once were combined in such a magical way that life was sparked into being. This insanity has been going on for decades, and it is so well funded that even largely unrelated scientific pursuits can be made more viable if their missions include an Origin of Life component. Repeated supposed breakthroughs have been announced, countless conferences have been held, and many learned articles have been published, all of which have amounted to nothing.

The problem is that research scientists have set themselves an impossible task. Not only must life be sparked into being, but it requires a cellular and chemical infrastructure to sustain it; and this means that life’s basic structures would almost certainly have to predate whatever first caused life to spark. Then for life to progress beyond single cells would require the development of DNA and so many other essential details that the odds against chance for randomly emergent life to then randomly create you and me turn out to be unfathomably long.

I am coming to believe that the fatal flaw that eventually will bring down materialist science may turn out to be the fact that the origin of life requires pre-emergence design.

Mainstream scientists are so wrong-headed and fundamentally clueless about all of this that they are easy targets for Christian scientists arguing for intelligent design; and while these Christian scientists have their own biases, their work can be helpful to those of us who simply want to know what is true. The current state of play in Origin of Life research was brilliantly set out by two scientists at the 2019 Dallas Science and Faith Conference held in January of this year. I am giving you two lectures from that conference; I hope you will watch at least the first one:

* James M. Tour is a synthetic organic chemist who is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He talked about The Mystery of the Origin of Life. 

* Jay W. Richards is an Assistant Research Professor at The Catholic University of America, and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. He spoke about The Privileged Planet.

Yet again you and I are caught in the war between mainstream science and mainstream Christianity, learning what we can from each of them but always aware of the dogmas and biases that make them both fundamentally wrong. So we learn what we can from these Christian scientists, and we add it to our larger set of understandings. Now, if you and I were asked to hazard a guess at how life began on earth, what might we say?

  • Consciousness is the base creative force, and it is all that independently exists. Everyone who reads these words is living the core underlying fact that consciousness is inherently and vitally alive! It begins to seem reasonable to suggest that what we experience as life may even be a fundamental property of consciousness-based matter itself.
  • Creation is not once-and-done, but rather it is continuous. So the physical and chemical structures necessary to sustain the first living cells could appear and be animated all in the same micro-instant of ongoing creation. As is true of evolution’s punctuated equilibrium and so many other things that have changed in earth’s history without leaving a record of precisely how that happened, God need not show us every step!
  • The building blocks necessary for increasing life’s complexity could similarly be installed in primitive living cells. DNA, organelles, the differentiation of cell types, and all the rest: God works it out and smoothly installs it, perhaps even simultaneously with that first spark of life. And if scientists discover any of this, it just will demonstrate to them the notion that life could have arisen randomly because that will seem to them to have been how it happened.

So the Origin of Life is easy for you and me to explain in a way that fits our developing understanding of how reality works. Consciousness is the base creative force, and creation happens freshly in each micro-instant. Indeed, the fact that this is probably the only way that life could have arisen gives us further evidence that our theory about how creation happens is right.

Mainstream scientists never will be able to explain the origin of life until they abandon their certainty that consciousness is merely an artifact of the brain. Making life arise from some chemical soup, and cell structure and DNA and all the rest then somehow naturally arise as well, will seem to them to be possible because it exists that way in the fossil record. But their making it happen in the laboratory will forever be as elusive to them as will be the creation of intelligent robots that are able to develop consciousness.

Reality is all of a piece! If you insist on having one part of it your way, you guarantee that you never will understand the rest.

Mainstream science maintains its insistence that matter is primary and consciousness is generated by the brain as a bulwark against its ever finding the Christian God. Even in the twenty-first century, the organized scientific community still sees itself as courageous crusaders against old Christian superstitions; and oddly, the fact that materialist science and mainstream Christianity both are based in erroneous assumptions seems never to occur to anyone. But things are turning now, almost imperceptibly. Even the most zealous scientist would tell you that inevitably all dogmas fall away and the light of objective truth must dawn!

 

Chemistry of Life photo credit: DalinYebo <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/93406034@N04/32673641837″>Shell to quit US lobby over climate policies</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Shells photo credit: marcoverch <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/149561324@N03/38708357851″>Sammlung von unterschiedlichen Muscheln vor weißem Hintergrund</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

He Lives!

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

We know for certain now that Jesus is real! He came from the highest aspect of the Godhead, and He entered a body two millennia ago with a set of goals that included teaching us how to lift ourselves spiritually so together we can transform the world.

All the forty thousand religious variants that profess to follow Jesus largely ignore what He said, and the core Christian teaching that Jesus died to redeem us from God’s judgment has no basis in fact. We have on occasion felt the need here to defend the Lord against fear-based religious notions, but on this day when we celebrate the fact that He literally, physically rose from the dead we join hands in love and simply listen to Him. His teachings are not the basis for a religion, but rather they are a way of life. And they can be put into practice equally well by people who are devoutly religious and people who have no religion at all. Every clergyman of every religion can use these teachings to aid his own flock’s spiritual growth! As Jesus said, “Therefore every clergyman who has become a disciple of the kingdom of God is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (MT 13:52).

The fact that we have available to us so much of what Jesus said is a miracle. His words were passed down orally for a couple of generations, and then they were translated into Greek and Latin before later being translated from those languages into English. The words of Jesus were in the custody of the Catholic Church from the fourth century on, and in the course of all those years the Church added anachronistic bits that we ought to pluck out. Still, the Lord’s genuine truth survives! We have recently quoted here the Lord’s teachings on love, forgiveness, and the advent of the kingdom of God on earth, so we won’t include them again today. Here, simply organized by topic, is a further sampling of the Gospel wisdom of Jesus.

ALWAYS BE A SEEKER

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (MT 7:7-8).

FOLLOW MY TEACHING

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (LK 6:46).

“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).

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (MT 11:28-30).

“The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (JN 14:10).

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall” (MT 7:24-27).

“You are the light of the world. … Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (MT 5:14-16).

BE HUMBLE

“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye” (LK 6:41-42).

“The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (MT 23:11-12).

“Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me; for the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great” (LK 9:48).

THERE IS NO DIVINE JUDGMENT

 “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23).

“If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (JN 12:47).

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned” (LK 6:37-38).

BEWARE OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS

“Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits… A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit...  So then, you will know them by their fruits” (MT 7:15-20).

“Beware of the clergymen who like to walk around in long robes, and like respectful greetings in the market places… who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers; these will receive greater condemnation” (MK 12:38-40).

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of God from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in” (MT 23:13).

“Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men… You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition” (MK 7:8-9).

“Why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?… You hypocrites! Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’” (MT 15:3-9).

DO NOT PACKAGE MY TEACHING WITH RELIGIOUS IDEAS

“But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.  Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (MT 9:16-17).

“Therefore every clergyman who has become a disciple of the kingdom of God is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (MT 13:52).

DEVELOP A DIRECT PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret… when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (MT 6:2-6).

GOD WILL CARE FOR YOU

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them… And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these! But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’…  for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (MT 6:25-33).

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two” (MT 5:38-41).

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you … If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:27-36).

SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS THE ONLY WEALTH

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (MT 6:19-21).

“For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him” (LK 8:17-18).

MY COMMISSION TO YOU

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.  This is my command: Love each other” (JN 15:11-17).

On this Easter morning, you and I are gathered at the feet of the risen Lord. We hear Him freshly, and we listen to Him! His teachings by themselves are whole and complete. They come to us through Him from the Godhead, and we live in the wonder of that awareness. We resolve now to put His teachings first, above religious notions, the Law and the Prophets, the Letters of Paul, and every fear. Jesus is our universal Teacher and the emissary of the genuine God. No matter what religion we follow, and even if we have no religion at all, from now on we will follow Him.

Easter Eggs photo credit: M.P.N.texan <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/8113246@N02/39095607394″>99¢ Easter 2018</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Hugging photo credit: Sterling College <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7973252@N08/43074652381″>Commencement2018_0817</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Now He Rises

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

The most amazing discovery of my life is the fact that Jesus is a genuine Being Who came to us as God on earth. Having faith without evidence to back it up is useless! Who cares what you or I might believe? But we can prove now based on the testimony of people that we used to think were dead that Jesus the Christ actually walked the earth two millennia ago knowing things about God, reality, death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of human life that He could not have known if He had not been an emissary from the Godhead. Some years ago this truth hit me hard, with a joy so deep I cannot even express it! The Lord isn’t just a religious figure, but rather He is an elevated Being Who came to earth with an essential purpose. So then I was determined to know that purpose, and if possible to help the Lord fulfill it; and my first shock was the realization that the religion that bears the Lord’s name has very little to do with Him. Far from coming to earth just to die for our sins, Jesus spent three years sharing with us a set of teachings that we now can demonstrate came through Him directly from God, unprecedented in their elegance and simplicity, and entirely sufficient all by themselves to bring the kingdom of God on earth.

For most of the first millennium after the Lord’s death, His manner of passing was so little remarked that amid the plentiful uses of symbols like the anchor, the fish, the vine, and the dove, the use of the cross as a Christian symbol is nowhere to be found. But today that Christian cross is everywhere! The cross that depicts the Lord’s manner of death has become the symbol of Christianity because between the fourth and eighth centuries a series of Roman councils invented a new religion based in fear which replaced the gentle movement based in love that Jesus had so well begun. If I am wrong about this, I am going to a hell that the dead insist does not exist; but if what the evidence tells us is true, then it is time at last to move beyond that old false and fear-based Christianity.

I have given you a graphic photograph of the Lord dying, nailed to a cross, so you can better appreciate the ghastliness of all those sanitized Christian crosses! Suspended above the altar in my husband’s brand-new church is the archetypical Catholic cross that bears a life-sized, full-color Jesus. The few dribbles of blood are decorous, true, and the face of the Lord is beatific, but no one is allowed to enter that magnificent modern church without being made to feel sinful and unworthy because Jesus had to die a ghastly death in order for God to forgive us. In the New England Protestant church of my childhood the sanctuary cross was of bare wood, but it was nonetheless large and prominent. Never for a moment are Christians allowed to forget the manner of the Lord’s death, nor can we escape the Christian notion that it was entirely our fault! As the great mid-century stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce once said, “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

What follows are the actual words of a twenty-first-century Christian preacher. This dear man believes with all his heart that he is devoting his life to Jesus, but is there anything in what he says that seems to be related to the Lord’s Gospel words? He says, “Many people can’t see how a loving God would let people spend eternity in hell. The problem is that we are all born in sin because of the Garden of Eden! God tells us there is only one way to cleanse ourselves of sin, and that is the plan that our loving God gave us. He sent His only Son to die for the sins of all humanity. Jesus was born of a virgin so He was without sin, and then He lived His life without sin, so when He died on the cross he could pay with His blood for the sins of all mankind. That is why it is only faith in Jesus Christ that can wipe away our sins so we can spend eternity with a holy God. Those who never accept Christ will die still in sin, so they cannot be reconciled with God. This is God’s loving plan to save us.”

Please re-read those words. Is there anything about the Gospel teachings of Jesus on love, forgiveness, and bringing the kingdom of God on earth that seems to you to comport at all with what this earnest preacher says?

Even for those who don’t realize that it has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus, Christian theology is plain off-putting. And many prominent thinkers have pointed out the fact that it makes no sense! Eighteenth-century French philosopher the Marquis de Sade said, “To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.” And no less an intellectual light than Albert Einstein wisely noted that, “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.” It is no surprise that in the United States, which has the world’s largest Christian population, the most prominent religious persuasion has of late become “no religion at all.”

We owe a tremendous debt to those who preserved the Lord’s words for two thousand years! Thanks to the Apostle Paul, the Roman Emperors, and all the nameless worthies who played their part in advancing a religion not based in Jesus that still venerated the name of Jesus, you and I have the amazing chance to read an approximation of what Jesus said. We never will know what might have been forgotten in the couple of generations before the Gospels were written down, nor what those Roman councils might have removed; but, wonderfully, enough remains for us to reconstruct what the Lord came to do so we can advance His true work today. It was inevitable that a religion based in random fear-based human notions eventually would lose its appeal, but what is wonderful is the fact that despite a broad-based disenchantment with Christianity, in survey after survey Jesus Himself still shines!  His favorable rating in the United States remains as high as ninety percent.

Jesus did not come to die for our sins. He tells us in plain Gospel words that neither He nor God judges anyone, and those that we used to think were dead tell us that the death of Jesus on the cross has never made an afterlife difference for a single human being. Furthermore, that whole false theology of substitutionary atonement is insulting to God and humiliating to Jesus! When we read His Gospel words, we find Him clearly telling us why He came. Other objectives He might have had have been lost, but for now these five are a coherent plan:

* He Came to Abolish Religions. We tend to think of religions, spirituality, and God as a kind of package, but religious beliefs are archaic nonsense that distances us from the genuine God.

* He Came to Teach Us to Relate to God directly. We can demonstrate that God is real! So at last you and I can speak to God on our own, and God will lovingly listen.

* He Came to Teach Us to be Seekers. Far from wanting us to stick with old religious beliefs, Jesus urged us to remain forever open to new divine revelations!

* He Came to Teach us How to Grow Spiritually. The teachings of Jesus on forgiveness and love are the easiest and most effective method for achieving rapid spiritual growth ever found.

* He Came to Save the World. Humankind now risks prompt extinction on a desolated planet, but the teachings of Jesus have the power instead to bring the kingdom of God on earth.

Yes, the Easter miracle really did happen. We are told by upper-level beings that for Jesus to suffer a public death and then rise from the dead had not been part of His plan. But He had found it so difficult to convince His followers that despite the fact that our bodies decay our spiritual lives really are eternal that He decided to demonstrate for them and for us the fact that death is an illusion. It doesn’t matter, of course, when He decided to do it, but we are assured that is why He did it. The fact that Jesus’s ghastly death and His re-animation of His dead body were all done to demonstrate that life goes on altogether transforms the Easter Week events from humiliating proof of our unworthiness into a glorious demonstration of God’s perfect love.    

So at last Jesus rises! It is happening now! Amazingly, Jesus the Anointed One, the Christ, the Son of the Living God now rises from the false religion that has blessedly preserved His teachings, and He speaks to us freshly in 2019 as clearly as He spoke to us long ago. And just as the Lord’s first listeners were called to leave their fishing nets and follow Him, so you and I are being called now to put aside all our lesser struggles and begin to share the Lord’s Way with the world. Of course, since His Way is not a religion, it won’t matter whether we are Christians, Jews, atheists, or any religion at all: we can forget about religions and join hands worldwide as we share God’s perfect love. This is such a joyous time to be alive!

Rather than the fear- and guilt-based gloss that Holy Week has always carried, eased just a bit on Easter morning by the comfort of lilies and chocolate eggs, you and I have no reason any more to feel anything but gratitude that Jesus chose to die as He did to demonstrate that eternal life is our birthright, no matter what our religion might be. What Jesus is demonstrating for us all is that God loves us perfectly, no matter what! And living in the certainty of God’s perfect love, all of us can join hands at last and learn to love everyone else on earth.

I will be traveling during this coming week, so I have invited a beloved Guest to share with us His thoughts on Easter morning. I hope you will welcome Him with all your heart!

Jesus Dying on the Cross photo credit: babasteve <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/64749744@N00/33900721811″>GOOD FRIDAY</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Crucifix as Art photo credit: afagen <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035749109@N01/45880826781″>Crivelli’s Crucifixion</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Junked Crosses photo credit: patrina_io <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/52467002@N00/2866543588″>desktop per biateddi</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a

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