Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 17, 2022 • 32 Comments
Afterlife Research, Jesus
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty,
Early in the morning Our song shall rise to Thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons. Blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee.
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.
Only Thou art holy. There is none beside Thee.
Perfect in power, in love and purity.
– Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
Another week, another frame-verse battle. But at least this one makes reasonable sense. For our post this week, I had intended to build upon our mental experiment from last week by exploring how the peaceful society that the Jesus movement fosters in people might evolve into bringing the kingdom of God on earth. Thomas, however, had another blog thought, so whenever I tried to copy my chosen frame-verse, he made my computer malfunction. My spirit guide has become remarkably good at messing with electronics, for someone who last lived on earth in the nineteenth century. The frame-verse that he had chosen, I didn’t want because it talked about the Trinity. He told me then that it was past time for me to accept the fact that God is a Trinity. I retorted that I will go there as soon as he can show me how Jesus can be simultaneously available to eight billion people at once, while at the same time He is conversing with us and feeding His pet fish.
I snapped, “Explain that, if you can!”
Thomas said drily, “He does it the same way God can do it. You are forgetting that Jesus is God, little one, while you are stuck inside your little pea-brain head!”
“And you are forgetting that you are a male, and males fight dirty,” was what I retorted to him.
And that was the way our week began. But I considered my question to be both legitimate and important. And I knew that you would want to hear his answer as much as I want to hear it. How is it possible that just one God and one Jesus are able to know and intimately relate to each of the eight billion of us individually at the level of our deepest hearts?
This question first occurred to me last summer, when Thomas and I were spending a lot of time with Jesus. My Thomas was chasing his Brother among the deer, devotedly helping Him to keep in human balance, while I was discussing with Jesus plans for His website that I was having trouble back then even envisioning. And meanwhile, all over this earth there were people who were praying to Jesus. And, what? They were getting a busy-signal?
And what was all this sudden talk about a Trinity? I have long been telling Thomas that of course there is no such thing as a Trinity. God is Consciousness, and all that exists! Christianity has that doctrine wrong. If Thomas disagreed with me, he should have said so at the time. And if I have the Trinity idea wrong, then what else do I have wrong?
I hear from people now and again who want me to tell them how to establish a relationship with their spirit guide, like the relationship that I have with Thomas. What I really want to say to them is, “Damned if I know.” All I know is that at this point in my life, there is a male voice from behind my left shoulder that is full of authoritative and sometimes vaguely exasperated-sounding opinions. And there is on rare occasions a soft and sweet male voice from behind my head that I now recognize as Jesus. They never shout. I could ignore them. But I don’t.
(Developing the sort of relationship that Thomas and I have is a long and subtle process, and the results can be quite wonderful. We have written about that process here.)
I think the problem that my Thomas has is the same problem that you or I would be having, if our kid brother were a mega-star. Thomas is left forever with taking what are mere supporting roles. Like, for example, taking the role of being a spirit guide for some ditz because she writes books and does a website for his mega-star kid brother. Thomas probably doesn’t love doing this for me. The role of spirit guide is deeply parental, heavily love-based and with lots of day-to-day and even minute-by-minute attention-paying. And my Thomas has taken this role for Jesus and for me both at once, I now realize, since although Jesus doesn’t need a spirit guide, there now is literally no one else in existence who is freely willing to call Jesus “brat” and treat Him as if He is a mere human being in order to help Him maintain a human balance. So for my whole life, Thomas has been rushing back and forth between us. It is no wonder that he looks vaguely worried a lot of the time, and he often sounds exasperated. And I love him! So I have lately resolved to be less of a pain in the neck to him. Resolve, of course, is only a promise that you are doing your best to keep. And perhaps in return, on Tuesday during our middle-of-the-night work time, Thomas told me that God is a Trinity because God is actually manifold. Just as there is no time and no space, so God has no limit.
He paused. Then he said. “That makes no sense to you, right?”
“Right. But that’s okay. Now, please explain how Jesus can be answering fifty million prayers at once while we are chatting with Him and He is feeding His fish.”
“Same answer.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
All of this is going to make sense to us once we are back in our expanded minds and after we die away from here! There are so many things that make ultimate sense, and yet they don’t make sense right now, but on a deeper level and when we are back possessing all our faculties, they are going to make sense. And I can see that Thomas is trying now to have more empathy for me. I am his first outing as a spirit guide, after all. He is just a beginner at this. And I suspect that his new effort at having empathy for me is being made at Jesus’s suggestion.
The next morning Thomas said to me, “What bothers you about the Trinity is that it is a closed divine loop. It leaves people out.”
“Precisely!” That was a mental blurt. I hadn’t realized until Thomas said it – also mentally – that my entire problem with the Trinity has been that it leaves us out altogether. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit makes God into a divine little clique. What good is that?
He said, “As you know, but as people back then didn’t know, the Father actually is the Holy Spirit. So, imagine that the third person of the Trinity is you. Does that make a difference to the way you see it?”
“It makes all the difference.” But then came my “Aha” moment. “You talked this over with Jesus, didn’t you?”
When Thomas said nothing, after a little time I said softly, “I love you, my dear one. It’s okay.” Then a little later I said, “Will you tell me how He solved my problem?”
“I asked Jesus what He thought. He said the Trinity was just a Roman idea. As you keep telling me. He told me to make people the third person. He knows you better than I do.”
Of course, that isn’t true. But Jesus does seem to understand people. That is what comes of loving people the way that Jesus loves people. And my favorite Christian blogger posted something interesting last week about the concept of human deification in the very early church. Perhaps even more to the point, the fact that each of us is inextricably part of the same Consciousness which includes the High God means that in a very real sense, every one of us is a part of the great circle-dance that is the genuine Trinity. And each of us is entitled to be there! Jesus’s insight is much more than the instinctive kindness that simply is Jesus. Rather, His insight is the necessary ending of the ugly Roman Christian power-play that long ago cut us off from God’s love and replaced God’s love with the fear of hell and damnation, on that long-ago day when Rome co-opted control of the love of God and of Jesus and replaced it all with the Roman Christian dogma of the Trinity.
Everyone’s favorite Catholic apologist, the wonderful Father Richard Rohr, has written extensively on the Trinity. I greatly admire Father Rohr for his graceful sow’s-ear-into-silk-purse skill with Roman ideas which are seventeen centuries old, and what he does with the Trinity almost makes it work. He says, “God for us, we call you Father. God alongside us, we call you Son. God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.” Of course, the reason why this still doesn’t work is that it makes the dogma important, and not the divine-plus-human truth. No amount of lovely playing with words can get us around that!
But, yes indeed, there is a Trinity after all. The genuine Trinity is a way for us to envision what is otherwise inexpressible. It enables us to see in dramatic form the remarkable flow of consciousness energy that happens as you and I work to raise our personal spiritual vibrations to the Godhead level and above, all eight billion of us in an endless flow, while Jesus emphasizes to us His status as fully human and fully divine. And He incredibly maintains His fully human status, even though He is vibrating even higher now than the Godhead level. Jesus is our connection within Consciousness to God and to the endless flow of that energy, because from within all levels of Consciousness He can reach out now to each of us! And thereby, within the Trinity that includes God and Jesus and all of humanity, we can at last complete the entire circle-dance of love.
Jesus made a point when He was on earth of calling Himself the Son of Man. This term appears in the Old Testament for a man who has come from God as a fully human being. Which was always what I thought that Jesus meant His followers to see Him to be: He had come to us as the fulfillment of that prophesy. He was using the Old Testament term to explain to His followers that He was precisely that Man from God, made flesh. But I have lately read an article that suggests that perhaps Jesus might have seen the term as meaning even something more. I am in touch with Jesus only through Thomas unless Thomas happens to take me to meet with Jesus, and Thomas sees some reason why I should be allowed to remember our meeting. When I asked Thomas to ask Jesus about the phrase “Son of Man,” the answer I got back from Jesus via Thomas was just that we should not discuss the term “Son of Man” on teachingsbyjesus.com. So, I leave all of this up to your judgment!
Meanwhile, the Christian religion stumbles on like the unfortunate zombie that it has mostly become. I continue to hear the most awful stories! Just days ago, someone told me about a fire-and-brimstone preacher who had officiated at a woman’s recent funeral, wildly flailing his arms and with spittle flying as he condemned them all to hell, while the grieving family sat there, mortified. But there are some hopeful aspects to Christianity, too, and you can spot them here and there, like stubborn seeds of love in miraculous germination amid the smoldering ruins. The Unity Movement seemed more hopeful to me fifteen years ago than it does now, since it has become more concerned of late with the work of its early-twentieth-century founders than it is with the foundational work of Jesus. Still, Unity remains more youthful and creative than is the moribund Christianity that was its predecessor.
But I am coming to realize that the Christianity that Jesus taught does indeed need to begin anew. From the beginning. I do now see the Lord’s wisdom in that. His teachings when He first delivered them came through Him from God as a whole divine revelation, so no halfway measure of using them to try to modernize the Roman version of Christianity can ever do them justice. And for my part, the fun of feeling that I am sitting at Jesus’s feet day after day as we work on this website, and the joy of being reminded of how His mind works, is beyond what I can express. Oh, how I love Him!
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty.
Oh thy works shall praise Thy name In earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty.
God in three persons. Blessed Trinity.
Oh God in three persons. Blessed Trinity!
– Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
And for the many who have requested and been given a PDF of The Fun of Loving Jesus, Thank You! It turns out that Amazon now won’t let you post a review there unless you have bought the associated book from Amazon, but I have been happy to give the book to everyone who requested it. And if you should choose to make a Christmas gift of it to someone, that might be an opportunity to post your review. Or perhaps Barnes & Noble has more lenient rules. I have been so buried in this beautiful work that I never notice the vicissitudes of book-sales and marketing. My whole focus now is on giving our beloved Jesus His website. I am sure that all of this will sort itself out eventually!
Another great post Roberta, thank you.
As much as I would love to really understand how everything fits together, I have come to the realization that I don’t really need to understand it.
I understand some, but my hard head can’t quite put the pieces in place.
I’m just going to focus on the system Jesus is laying out for us and will try to follow that.
What I do know is my life here is getting better focusing on Jesus’ teachings. So that in itself is good enough for me.
I keep telling my spirit guide I would be doing a lot better if they would start talking to me. Apparently they don’t believe me. Or maybe they know I don’t want to hear what they have to say.
Oh well, what can a human do but move forward?
Oh Thomas! I am with you on the spirit guide connection! Lol! I was just standing outside, looking up at the pale glow of the moon in the cloudy dark skies and sighed, “ I wish I (and paused as some spirit teachers say to not “wish” or say “want” but make a positive affirmation) …” and in that pause as I tried to think of an affirmative way to say how I really want to discern and know my spirit guide’s voice, a gentle voice said, “you can say “wish” if you’d like”.
I think we are attuned, we just maybe are judging our connection in comparison to what others experience.
And like you, I also declared that I don’t understand it all, but I take it as truth and trust because Jesus would never mislead me. You will grow and learn probably differently than I or Jack, or Erica, or Cookie, or David or any of the many who “meet up” here every Sunday.
Isn’t it lovely though that we can share and help each other and inspire and support each other? That is lovely, and is a ray of Light from The Kingdom, right here in this group. Isn’t that cozy? 🥰
Thanks Fran!
Every time I hear a voice I ask if it is my spirit guide and they always say no.
Everyone has to have fun, even my overworked spirit guide.
I am finding helping each other have been some of my favorite experiences.
Don’t ask that question, dear Thomas! If you hear a voice, instead ask them their name!
Precious insights.
I was planning to draw another bye, but since you mentioned me, I’ll have a go at it (and also mention that I think Tom Eberhard is on track).
All that exists is God, if present in various manifestations of His being. God is as His core being, consciousness, but having said that I lack the full meaning of that term beyond the qualities of awareness. How God came to be–I’m clueless. Was God always in existence? Because God is all that exists, God always existed–but that’s not any explanation, only a mere tautalogy.
In addition to manifesting as all of the water, rock, bacteria, fungi, viruses, plants, and animals we see here (and are told also have counterparts in Heaven), God manifests as individual human (and other species) beings.
Jesus was a special elevated spirit that manifested as human. He came here as a spirit from the Heavenly realm, told us about God’s love and Heaven, and returned “there,” as will we all upon our mortal death.
In addition to our mortal being having as its substance what God made of it from Himself, its knowledge of it soul’s history from prior existence in Heaven has been blunted so as to afford a realism to this play on the Earth that would otherwise seem a hollow, temporary game to be played as Shakespeare once lamanted.
Christ, the Son of Man is also the Son of God, as are we all. The spirit of God is in all things God creates, even if not apparently so.
Everything is triune.
Hi Jack,
A company (Cortical Labs) grew brains cells, hooked it up to a pong video game via electrodes and it learned to play within 5 minutes.
I wonder if there is a consciousness/awareness that allows this brain to learn.
Oh my, Thomas. Color me skeptical!
Thomas,
Two separate issues. First concerns the issue about how, why, where consciousness exists, and second reinforcement learning (operant conditioning, or even insightful learning).
I’m of the perspective that all that exists is God, His consciousness in everything, regardless of appearances. This is a strong pantheistic perspective.
Second, with the right arrangement of response reinforcement, no reason against individual and multicell learning/adaptation. Individual cells own consciousness and an ability to adapt, within limits, to environmental rewards and punishments (respond defensively to aversive stimuli)
Roberta, yeah, skepticism is warranted. Apparently this company is trying to use brain cells as computing devices. Their whole business model is on the line after all.
Thanks Jack! I think I’m heading towards the consciousness is everything paradigm. Consciousness is such a vague term, from what I know, that it makes it difficult to conceptualize it. I imagine that if everything is alive there must be some awareness for it to survive.
Wouldn’t a response/reinforcement indicate awareness?
Consciousness wise, would the difference between us and a tree be a soul attached? Just throwing out thoughts as I try to wrap my head around it. haha
Appreciate everyone here trying to help each other.
Oh my dear beloved Jack, since in reality there is no time, if anything ever exists, then it always exists, which does away with the question of God’s origins. And Jesus is fully God and fully human, which is apparently a status quite difficult to maintain; or so it seems, from what little I have seen of His efforts to maintain it. And I don’t really know that all is triune! The triune God was originally a Roman invention, and meant by the Council of Nicaea to make the new Christian religion more fashionable at the time. It was a marketing gimmick, you might say. 🙂
Oh my dear Fran and all my friends here, it is VERY hard in the beginning to recognize the connection! I can recall how hard it was at first, and I think in part that is because we are expecting it to be more dramatic than it is. The very first thing you should do is to ask your guide to step outside your body. Until I did that, I couldn’t distinguish Thomas from my own thoughts. Your guide will move to behind your dominant shoulder, and that gives you a way to start telling his voice apart from your own thoughts. The second thing I realized was that he really is a different person, so a certain kind of thought coming from that direction wasn’t me. EUREKA! I’M IN CONTACT WITH MY GUIDE!! That’s how it first happened for me.
Oh my dear Thomas, this is so sweetly said! Yes, I think you will find that if you will follow Jesus when we finally get this all pulled together it really is going to work very well! The Gospels are too hard for most people to follow, with so much extraneous matter in there, but this should make it easier. I just am sorry that it is taking so long. I so much feel like the weakest link!
Roberta, you’re doing fantastic.
I honestly don’t know how you juggle everything.
All of us appreciate everything you have done for us. Please let us know if we can do anything to help.
And in addition, my dear Thomas, I don’t talk much about it here, but I also maintain a law and business counseling practice for a half-dozen closely-held businesses, most of which have been my beloved clients for decades. They are so much a part of my family now that I could never stop working with them, and fortunately they understand my passion for this work and they are patient with it!
“…It turns out that Amazon now won’t let you post a review there unless you have bought the associated book from Amazon…”
There is a good book review website called Goodreads. For those who can’t post on Amazon, I suggest going to Goodreads. There are a couple of others too (just do search for book review sites). Also, I think Amazon will let anyone who has bought any book from them do reviews. So even if someone gets yours directly from you, they may still have privileges at Amazon.
Thank you, my dear Mike! I honestly don’t know, and I don’t have time to pay attention. I am so glad that this work is so much fun, because it is so overwhelming!
Dear Roberta, in the last months I came across several youtube channels with the subject of NDEs and similar experiences. As I am from Germany I watched one in german language in which someone suggested that all the listeners should pray for a better world (and also for those people who are not so aware yet) each Saturday (after the new episode has been lauchend). Every listener should pray in his own way and they hope that this will raise the vibration of the listeners and the world as well. Yesterday they suggested to start next Saturday with these group prayers (everyone at his home) which is December, 24th and the birthday of Jesus; what a coincidence! They will remind the listeners at the end of each of the next upcoming episodes of the “prayer time” at every Saturday evening.
This channel is quite small as it seems and I wondered what you think about this and if that might be something you would like to do, too? I guess you have a way greater audience on your various websites and channels. I don`t know if you like this idea. But I think it could be kind of a “birthday gift” to Jesus. I myself have experienced the great power that prayers can have (if they come from the heart) as a child, several times!
Karin
Thank you for sharing this. I will mark it on my calendar ❤️
Much love to you!
My dear Karin, how perfectly lovely! Jesus does say that whenever two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in their midst.
Dear Roberta and Thomas,
Thank you for another lovely lesson/message! I responded to Thomas Belknap earlier, in regard to spirit guides and understanding the “info” that comes to us, via your messages.
I have no idea why, but I’ve been told, I have witnessed, I live connected to my Guidance, and for me, as I’ve been told, it’s just natural. YET, for some reason, I try to dismiss it, because it’s not like other’s experience. I have notebooks-A LOT-filled with communication and messages that I read now and say, “yeah…I didn’t do this on my own.” I think if we pause and just are willing to reflect, we will find our Guides have been, and are, always “there”. A small example would be saying something to someone who needs help, and what you’re saying is so uplifting and inspired, you yourself are “buzzing” and you think afterwards, “where did that come from?”
I do admit I could see the Trinity answer even as you were “sparring” with each other. It is probably due to spiritual books I’ve read, and insights I’ve been given over time, that I kind of frowned and thought, “but Roberta, we are each His Son.”
Through your help, the reality of the damage from RC is so blatantly clear now. I recall the days of reciting “THE ONLY SON OF GOD” in the creed and feeling so small and worthless.
And in my morning communication with Spirit Guides (I write, since I love to)-yes…hahahahaha! Writing to the Spirit Guides I so wistfully was “wishing” I could “hear” outside in the dark this morning!-I had a thought I shared with them: “Maybe I chose to be born into a family steeped in that religion, TO BREAK FROM IT. And in having that insight, they smiled and gave a thumbs up.
In order TO DISSOLVE this harmful institution, some chose to come into it, witness/recognize the damage and choose to break away, thus creating openings or passages that will expand and help it all dissolve. Does that make sense? (It does as I type, which is my clue my team is here with me). And within my morning chat session, I had shared another insight, and their response fits appropriately here: “And do you “know” that just recognizing this-just “recognizing/seeing” these “blocks”-IS what brings forth the “healing and transformation”? Imagine that! JUST BEING WILLING TO SEE AND RECOGNIZE IT-that opens the door! They also went on to say that it leads, like stepping stones, “up”, to give encouragement, and to remind us that we are also part and parcel of The Great Work (that’s what they called it).
As to “Son of Man”, just yesterday, my sister shared a homily about Jesus’ humanity and how we’ve tended to gloss over that fact, and how his family was like any other and probably today might be labeled “dysfunctional” in some respects. But he lived it for great reason-because he loves humanity, and KNOWS he can help us realize our own human/divine nature; it is our destiny.
Lastly, though it may make you blush, do not dismiss. I made the comment to Jesus and my Team how grateful I am to Roberta and Thomas and how these Sunday gatherings are like a shot of joy and how I wish every day would be like this. I share their response: You are “right”! These Sunday messages from Roberta and Thomas ARE a “shot/dose” of Light. How beautiful to recognize that, and how beautiful to share it!(Thomas smiles and says, “thank you”.) Keep an open and curious “mind” about it all-THIS is how the Kingdom of Heaven unfolds like a flower FROM WITHIN YOU.”
Roberta, you are doing beautiful work, despite your occasional “misgivings” or sparring with Thomas. You are courageous, even in these times, which are so much more open to truth and light through non religious channels. You share your vulnerabilities as well as your joyful growth. I am grateful to you both for your commitment.
Hi Fran. The recitation you were given to do is even incorrect biblically. The Bible names another son of God in a genealogy. (Bible trivia, lol).
Oh my dear Fran, thank you. Thomas is our lead blogger here, and Jesus in turn is by far the lead in their pairing, so I am kind of the afterthought in what we do – they tolerate me because, as Thomas says, I have the hands. And I have been trying to push the work on Jesus’s website, which in turn has gotten it off in the wrong direction, apparently. That bickering with Thomas this past week was more of me trying to take the lead on something. But I am told now that Jesus likes the new direction in which His website is heading, finally! So I think we still will meet our late-Feb deadline, which is important since we have some paid-for publicity about to happen in March. It isn’t easy, being the only one in a triumvirate of very much bigger shots who happens to have hands available!
I really appreciated this presentation!
Thank you, dear Kenny, for being part of our very merry band!
Roberta, you really have me confused with this Trinity talk. I always thought it included God or the Godhead as the ultimate source and the power of God as the Holy Spirit, neither of which is visible to us. The third person is the power of the Holy Spirit operating within the human person who is now capable of super human actions. Delete any of the three and the entire concept collapses. Therefore, in addition to Jesus in his earthly life, any human has the potential to be that third person which might be considered the end goal of our spiritual development. This may be wishful thinking on my part but it does eliminate nearly all the mystery associated with this concept. Am I correct in saying the idea of a Trinity originated with the person Jesus and that it is not mentioned in the Old Testament?
My dear Thomas, the Trinity idea originated with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, three centuries after Jesus’s death. It really wasn’t meant to include regular people at all! It originated with the Romans, who probably got it from the Egyptians – it was fashionable at the time to have a triune god. You are right in saying that since God can’t be seen, we can think of it any way we like, but what has bugged me about it is that I have always found it distancing. Off-putting. All three persons of the Roman-created Trinity are divine, they have their own closed circle going, and there is no room in it for regular people.
Hi Roberta,
“A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
”
Father, Son. and Holy Ghost are in my system, but I
know now they doing their thing in an Ocean
of Consciousness.
And Jesus came down to be close to us.
His Dad oked it!
Really you can’t lie—because just one look,
and Jesus can see what level you are on.
Being
is a gift.
And we are vibrating. We are part of existence.
Teachings byJesus.com will soften any resistance
and shed years of delusions.
I am willing now.
Oh my dear Erica, the thing about Jesus is that He loves people so much! He just loves people! He is the biggest shot imaginable, and yet He is simply wired that way – He loves people. Just the other day, I was reading emails from people, and there was one that was especially awful from someone in Australia – I can’t recall her story, but it was pathetic. Sometimes Jesus or Thomas will read over my shoulder, and I didn’t realize Jesus was doing that until I heard Him say, “Tell her I am right here with her. Tell her I am hugging her. Ask her if she can feel me with her.” So I did that. She couldn’t, and then she could, and then she couldn’t, and He was so worried about her that He interrupted my family dinner and I had to run back to my computer to check on her. But that is just Jesus.
Thanks, Roberta for your clarification regarding the Trinity. Although limited in scope, it actually makes some sense considering the divine nature of Jesus in human form. However, the fact that God was not defined as triune in the Old Testament, and does not fit our understanding of the Godhead as a group of perfected beings indicates there is not much to it. It seems that Christian religions have a practice of portraying rather simple concepts or events as mysteries to entice followers.
When I was in college, I came to the conclusion that it was primarily a marketing device. Trinities were hot at the moment in regional religions, and the Romans were saying, “Hey, we’ve got a Trinity too!”
I had a recent epiphany. God’s commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” suggests that Jesus execution was not in God’s plan. However, Jesus’ request that God forgive us, from the cross, was our salvation. The animal sacrifices performed in the temple for atonement of sins meant the people of the day mistook what took place with Jesus. It wasn’t his blood that saved us, it was his forgiveness. In the same way, did Jesus’ belief that he and his Father were one, bring about the Trinity?