Posted by Roberta Grimes • October 06, 2018 • 30 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The American Revolution, The Teachings of Jesus
Political divisions in America are worse now than they ever before have been, which makes it hard for us to see that we are witnessing the dawning fulfillment of the greatest dream ever dreamed in all of human history. After ten millennia during which humankind groveled beneath the swords of despots and the awful reign of capricious gods, we are about to state with a single voice that we refuse to bow to any earthly power. From now on all the power is our own! This ultimate liberation of all the world will have to begin in the United States, since it is only here that we possess the tools that can make it possible.
But it will not end here! Abraham Lincoln called this nation “The last best hope of earth,” and in that he was prescient. Now it begins! And since our old habit of fearing is strong, we will need to begin with the certain assurance that what comes after the rapine of political parties will be government by and for the people; and what will replace a capricious God will be personal intimacy with Spirit.
You may never have thought about the fact that politics and religion are the same breed of cat. Each claims to be able to help us relate to a great Authority – to government or to God – but demonstrably, both do that very poorly. And neither has any power of its own! Furthermore:
much better future. This is not true in other countries, which is why humanity’s next stage must begin here.Americans alone possess the tools that can transform this nation and transform the world! And it seems to me that we no longer have the right not to use these tools, since unless we can make of this nation a model of freedom and personal empowerment, the rest of the world has little hope. The United States as a shining exemplar always has been our greatest vision!
We can do this! In matters both temporal and spiritual, we can dispense with all the old human masters and learn as united individuals how to much better govern and enlighten ourselves. Let’s look at each area separately.
Politics
George Washington best expressed the general sentiment of America’s Founders. He said, “Government is not reason, it’s not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it’s a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” The Founders concluded that the only ones who could be entrusted with so much power would be the people who were being governed, and the Constitution they drafted is a masterwork! For 229 years it has survived all attempts by power-hungry politicians to subvert it. Yes, our Founders would be appalled by our present bloated and overbearing federal government, but there remains inside the mess that political battling has created that original design for a much better nation that is governed by and for the people. Far from being in any way outmoded, the original design of this nation’s Constitution would work better now than it could have worked when it was first drafted! Consider:
the states cannot do. This whole modern bloat of federal agencies and regulations imposing one-size-fits-all rule on all the people in every state is anathema to what our Founders intended.James Madison, the lead architect of the Constitution, said, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.” If we were inventing our federal and state governments today, wouldn’t this design make a lot more sense?
We cannot in a day peel back two centuries of beyond-constitutional federal bloat, but we can begin our peaceful people’s revolution by doing three things now:
Simply making these three changes can begin our powerful transformation. What will emerge if we are resolute will be a more informed and independent electorate with the power to insist that politicians stop their counterproductive political games, and to further insist that those to whom we have delegated governmental power must serve us well or they will be replaced. It will take us back closer to the Founders’ vision of government by and for the people. And as we better define what works in empowering all Americans now, we can begin to establish a model that can be used to help to empower and improve the lives of everyone on earth.
Religion
Christianity does not remotely resemble what Jesus tells us he meant to
begin. I have written about this fact, and about my worry that unless we begin now to separate the false religion from the genuine Man we risk losing what Jesus came to give us. Jesus is an extraordinary and entirely non-religious Teacher who brought to us what is in fact the next stage of human spiritual development! If this is not yet clear to you, give it time. As Jesus wisely said, “you will know them by their fruits” (MT 7:20), and Christianity is rotting all around us as the bad fruit that it always was. And wonderfully, as Christianity rots away we are finding within it the glorious seed of a very much better tomorrow that has been there waiting for us to find it and plant it!
Like the American Constitution, the Gospel teachings of Jesus have been honored mostly in the breach. And like the American Constitution, those Gospel teachings are going to be what will empower us to make of this nation the shining city that our Founders hoped would begin a better world! We are going to have to shed politics in order to form a government of the people, and in the same way a spiritually empowered nation is going to be possible for us only when we have shed the Christian wrapper that still hides and subverts the teachings of Jesus.
The Lord could see that despite his protestation that “Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined” (MT 9:17), a religious cult was developing around him even before his death. So he wisely instructed us to “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (MT 7:6-8). And he said, “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). It is Jesus himself who tells us that just as our insisting upon unbiased facts will free us from beliefs-based political squabbling, so also will insisting upon unbiased facts free us at last from beliefs-based Christianity and enable each of us to build an individual relationship with Spirit!
As we begin to insist upon facts alone, we can expect to weather even more righteous indignation. Fearful Christians will brandish their get-out-of-hell-free cards at us, and people now living off government spoils will fight to remain at a shrinking trough. But we can win this battle! And once we win it, we will be able at last to begin the glorious process of freeing and uplifting all the world….
It all sounds rather too parochial for me, Roberta….
Do you know, dear Mac, as this series has been unfolding I have had many moments when I thought pretty much the same thing. How can it possibly be this simple? I mean, next weekend we will be talking about how repairing America is going to be the easiest way to begin to heal the world and uplift all of humanity. And this is coming through on the very weekend when the Kavanaugh confirmation thing is reaching its climax?
Each post has been written easily on the weekend before it was due to be published, and then I would spend at least an hour of every day in the following week re-reading and tweaking and trying to convince myself this couldn’t be what was intended. But I was given to know that indeed it was. So then I posted it.
What I have been shown is that my role in this work is to make what is far more complicated and immense than any human mind can grasp actually simple. Convenient. Able to fit easily into the regular life of any person of good will, and still be spiritually useful.
I am something like a kindergarten teacher. There are glorious prep schools and universities and Ph.D.s ahead for the people I am helping to begin their own eternal journeys, and unless I can lovingly help them all to learn how to stack blocks, say the alphabet, and count to ten extremely well, the rest of their learning is going to be harder. This is why my Fun books are so brief and so simply written. It’s why I have been given to teach such a basic form of spiritual growth that you don’t even have to learn to meditate – and yet it works! It is why I am now being given to write this series of posts that some people are asking me to turn into an ebook, and I think I am probably supposed to turn it into the core of a 2019 Fun book. I know something called The Fun of Figuring it Out is coming, and perhaps that is what this is. Who knows?
The fact that getting rid of the two most divisive and counterproductive aspects of modern American life is going to be essential if we are ever to improve this nation and the world is – I grant you – basic stuff! It isn’t the end of what we will need to do, but at this moment others are being given the more sophisticated steps and they will step forward with them in good time. For us to first do away with what most divides us will be essential in order for us to accomplish anything good! So of course our national and world transformation doesn’t end here. But it begins here. And we can do it together.
Fair comment, Roberta, but I do wonder if I ( or you) will see significant change before I kick off my clogs for the last time this-time-around.
It would be an amazingly exciting time for me if that were to happen and for you also as it would signal the beginning of everything you’ve been relaying to us for some time.
We’ll see though…. 🙂
Dear Mac, you and I are going to be watching most of this unfold from the bleacher seats, but that’s just fine! We will probably work as guides and helpers for people who are then in the fray, and in some ways that feels even more appealing to me than does continuing to do this work from here. I have become pretty tight with my primary guide, and I can see how much he downright loves fighting the good fight but being one step removed and with the much greater perspective that people have who are not now in bodies. In retrospect, I can see his planning and timing events, and I see how much happier he has become.
It is all so good! Each of us on earth has just one stitch to put into the great tapestry of human life, and you and I are working especially hard to make sure we each create one terrific stitch ;-).
Hi Roberta,
If you had asked me 10 years ago if people could be taught the importance of just thinking along these lines, I would have said through my own experience, a resounding no! But 10 years later I am my own surprise case study in having been too quick to say no. I think I probably have a lot to add to this post, but I want to give others a spot first. I will be back.
And ten years ago I would have agreed with you, dear Mike! Fixing literally everything about human life looked like such an impossible task that there didn’t even seem to be a way to define that task. My unexpectedly beginning three years ago to work on our apparently insoluble racial problems was a great source of enlightenment for me. What i learned is that when we think from fear, we can solve nothing! But when we think from love – and only from love – there is nothing that we cannot solve. The solutions to all our racial problems will be simple, straightforward, and worldwide transformational, and the foundation is being formed now. I am over-the-moon excited!
Whatever the question might be, love is always the answer.
Hi Roberta,
I could not get to “findfacts.org” in any browser. Are you sure you have the correct spelling in your article? And the link went to another of your posts.
Thanks
– Jeb
I’m sorry, Jeb – the website does not as yet exist, but I first proposed it in that two-weeks-old blog post. Now I’m hoping to get it established and funded so all of us can start to use it!
Roberta, sorry if you’ve addressed this previously, but wondering where does Islam (and its 1.6 billion followers) fit in your vision?
Dear Mike S., if you are familiar with my work you will know or surmise that I never have mentioned that religion, and I never will.
Oh! May I ask why? You can respond by email if you’d rather. 🙂
You may indeed ask why! Or you might instead spend a moment reflecting on the past few decades of world history.
That’s why I asked, Roberta!
It seems like the 1.6 billion Muslims, including 3.5 million in the U.S. (“And by 2050, the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nation’s total population — nearly twice the share of today.” – Pew) will hardly be amenable to ‘peacefully’ accept the fact-based, rational approach to solving our extremely divisive political discourse that you are developing.
‘Rational’ does not describe them, but we have to deal with them. As of now that means, essentially, killing them (few Americans, thankfully, to this point).
I personally don’t have a lot of optimism that anything will bring them out of the 7th century, but maybe forces are at work along that line.
It is the great challenge the world faces, far worse than Nazism or communism was to us in the last century, simply because of the fanaticism that pervades that belief system.
Muslims do not recognize the separation of church and state. The church is the state and the state is the church. Their goal is world domination and I don’t see how words from any of us will change that core belief.
After reading mac’s comment about parochialism, I was tempted to respond about why it would seem so, but held off to see Roberta’s own response. And her response supported what occurred to me. All of our human communications emanate from two related but distinct sources. First, there is our human brain with its memory of life’s experiences, and its capability limited by its narrow understanding of existence. Second, there is our soul with its more direct experience of God. My view of Roberta’s writings is that they overwhelming reflect the influence of God. I am not declaring Roberta to be a prophet, but do believe her brilliant insights reflect a higher source.
Oh Jack, what a lovely and gracious thing to say!
It has been a humbling experience, to say the least, to come to realize that apparently everything I write is channeled. Liberating Jesus certainly was, and My Thomas, and my fiction also is channeled (they say they give me these wonderful stories because I enjoy them so much). Then as new Fun books came to me over the past three years – The Fun of Growing Forever, The Fun of Living Together, and the forthcoming The Fun of Loving Jesus – and I noticed the way they appeared in my mind from nowhere and flew through my fingers (even the titles are theirs and not mine!), I had to admit reluctantly that for certain none of this is coming from me. In the past eighteen months I have been on a much closer walk with Thomas, my primary guide, and he has been careful of my feelings, but at length he has given me to understand that even these blog posts are channeled. None of what I think of as “my” work actually comes from me! He has assembled teams to work with me, and they write every blessed word.
Now, I ask you: what would you do with that kind of information? All this time I have considered myself to be smart, talented, a heck of a writer; but as Thomas began to help me better understand that I am only a scribe, I began to feel that for me to take credit without mentioning the people actually doing the work would be wrong. Before I gave up and went public with the fact that I’ve been channeling, I did try to write on my own, and that clinched the deal for me. When it’s their work, my fingers cannot move fast enough and writing is such exhilarating fun! But when I try to write on my own, I spend hours slogging through the mud of thinking and writing and I end up producing nothing usable. In truth, on my own I seem to be unable to put two coherent sentences together.
So, yes, dear Jack, I have to admit that what I write does come from Spirit! But I am not a prophet. I am just a scribe who is privileged to sit at the feet of prophets. And the joy of being used by them this way is beyond my ability to express it!
I was thinking I might say something about patriotism being an easily manipulated value, and/or the current president being a catalyst for getting all of us, supporters of him and non-supporters, to take action (not to be confused with being activists). But I think we’re moving beyond the lower level discussion of previous posts about this critical moment in our planet’s life.
Possibly what’s needed is a new awareness of our nature, such that we can finally get away from the cynicism of thinking people can’t behave differently than they do because of [fill in your favorite blank]. As we move away from allegiance to organized religion and political government — and as we become aware that being “spiritual not religious” is a powerful responsibility, capability and motivator rather than an excuse to “think about God in our own way” — we will be able to take the action that’s needed.
The old motifs of God as our creator and “tester” of our worthiness, which is fear-based and, oddly, seems to bring comfort to people. This is a very small god indeed, and in fact not really much more than a super manufacturer. But people are baffled or even put off by the notion that an actual divine force would not be so puny as to “make” puppets to torment and then reward (maybe). Once we become aware than we manifest expanded consciousness and our infinite souls are as creative and aware as the source, yet something different, then I think we’ll be up to the task you describe here. I think it might be happening. I think it might be happening slowly, though, because it’s still true that a lot of the realizations about our true connection to God and the thing that makes us “different” from God — i.e., our missions in the temporal world — still is getting co-opted by materialism and physicalism in such a way that we get things like “The Secret” and “Laws of Attraction” and meditating in order to “get up and go after our goals,’ etc.
I know I quote the Dalai Lama ad nauseum but he, a Buddhist Monk not a Christian, points out that the idea of a creator God with whom we have a direct responsibility to and connection to that is based on perfect love is a powerful idea that can give us great power ourselves to overcome problems that are mainly of our own making. He says, too, that the United States MUST survive, because it is the only democracy on earth that was founded on the beliefs that this creator endowed humanity with inalienable rights. I’ve said too much already. Back to you!
PS- there are some typos in the above, but I think it’s still clear enough.
Dear Mike, this is really wonderful! What heartens me most of all is the fact that more and more people are coming to think as we do. It won’t be easy to help a large enough body of Americans to come the rest of the way toward freedom of mind and empowerment of spirit, but it won’t be nearly so hard as it would have been even five years ago!
Something that we tend to forget is the fact that the real mover in leading us all to enlightenment and a better world is Spirit. We are foot-soldiers in an army of light! The process, the timing, and the goal all are directed by Spirit, and I am being told now that all is unfolding as it should. As my beautiful spirit guide says, “Together we prevail.”
I would respond to these comments with those of my own but Roberta’s weblog is not the right place for a meaningful conversation on issues such as those touched on here.
Mac, I am just putting the ideas out there in case they provide food for thought. I could be wrong. I don’t have a very good track record of for prescience.
It’s debatable whether anyone has reliable prescience.
That and other issues are matters about which I have ‘stuff’ to say but as I remarked earlier, neither Roberta’s weblog nor anyone else’s for that matter, are the places to say it.
The various points raised above plus personal POV would be great to debate – but not here. 😉 A discussion forum would be the [I]right[/I] place.
Dear Mac, your thoughts are always welcome here!!
thank you, Roberta 🙂 but it’s still not the place for a forum-style discussion/debate in my view. A weblog is primarily for an author to make her points with an opportunity for her readers to comment on them.
I bow to your wisdom! So perhaps we might set up a thread on afterlifeforums.com where we can copy in my blog posts and invite comments? It’s up to you!
It would be nice – and I’d be happy to do it for you – but wouldn’t we be likely to run into the website rule of no political and religious discussions/debates?
Heh – good point ;-). We can try it, but this is all your call!!
Let me take a look through the whole of your piece again and I’ll see if I can ‘arrange’ anything…. 😉
Oh dear 🙁
I’ve taken a long look but I’d be on a hiding-to-nothing no matter how I arranged your piece for ALF’s discussion pages. 😉
That’s fine! And everyone else, perhaps we should put in a little plug here for afterlifeforums.com. It’s an eight-year-old online discussion forum that I started right after The Fun of Dying was first published, and our friend Mac now superbly manages it. If your primary interest is in understanding and coming to know the afterlife in depth, based not upon beliefs but upon objective evidence, then you might want to give it a try!
It’s a good thing I wasn’t holding my breath ’til the first one signed up as a member! 🙂