Posted by Roberta Grimes • February 27, 2021 • 40 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The Source
I really wanna know You. I really wanna see You.
I’d like to see You, Lord. I wanna see You, Lord!
It takes so long, my Lord. My sweet Lord!
Oh my sweet Lord! My sweet Lord!
– George Harrison (1943-2001), from “My Sweet Lord” (1970)
Seeking and relating to gods is a process as innate to human life as thinking and speaking. That is an amazing fact! We can trace organized religions back to at least 8,000 BCE, to the advent of farming and the first settlements; and the earliest archeological evidence for religious beliefs dates to at least 200,000 BCE. The notion of gods is fully as old as humanity itself. This fact suggests that our having lived before birth in a very much better place may always have been a kind of folk-memory. Perhaps we always have known on some level that there was Something Greater that called to us and nagged us with Its wish to be found. And we have had no way to imagine the Source of that call except as a mimic of ourselves, so every god created by humankind has been an extra-powerful human-like being. Naturally, all those human-made gods were imagined to also have outsized human flaws! Including even the Christian God. The God that you and I met in our childhood churches was envisioned as a strict but loving Father who insisted that we must learn to better love and forgive. He demanded love and forgiveness of us, even though the Christian God was Himself so lacking in love and forgiveness that He refused to forgive us for our human failings unless He first got to watch His Own Son being tortured and murdered. People have created some awful gods!
We have talked here about the fact that Christianity has been declining rapidly in the United States and worldwide. Currently 43% of adults in the U.S. identify as Protestants, which is down from 51% in 2009; and 20% of American adults are Catholics, down from 23% in 2009. The forced lockdowns of 2020 seem to be accelerating this trend, so it is estimated now that fully one-fifth of the Christian churches in the United States that temporarily closed their doors last spring will close them for good within the year. This dramatic implosion o
f the world’s most popular religion seems to have a number of causes. But I think the primary reason why Christianity is desperately struggling now is the fact that it requires us to believe what to most modern adults is flat-out unbelievable.
People have learned a lot in two thousand years. When Jesus was born, human beings knew almost nothing about anything! And we had few intellectual skills with which we might begin to figure things out, so for religions to give us their dogmas around which we could build a bit of hopeful faith was better than accepting that everything was and would forever remain a puzzle. But after the advent of the scientific method, the Enlightenment and the first human landing on the moon, humankind’s default setting has been reversed. Today many people’s general assumption is that we already understand most things, and many in the West are sure that before long we are going to figure out everything else. From our present, much more self-assured perspective on reality, many moderns are finding it harder to believe in anything that they cannot see. And what Christianity requires of us is even more of a stretch than mere belief! After all, each of us holds many “beliefs” that are supported by good evidence, from the notion that the sun will rise in the east to the theories that gold is worth more than lead and season will follow season in a predictable way. None of what we believe is an eternal certainty. In fact, everything that we believe with confidence is likely to one day no longer be true; but for purposes of planning our daily lives, our beliefs based in longstanding evidence have proven to be pretty reliable. Unlike our ancient ancestors, we have good reason to be confident now that we live in a stable and comprehensibly facts-based world.
It is precisely our experience that facts-based beliefs are reliable that is the enemy of religions. Each religion is based in its own dogmas, which are arbitrary ideas not rooted in evidence s
o they don’t rise to the level of actual beliefs. And yet they are essential, since without a broad acceptance of its dogmas each religion would topple like a paper house. And for us to firmly hold religious beliefs that are unsupported by evidence requires that we believe without needing evidence. Christians have a favorite word for that! Quite simply, “faith” means something like “confident belief not rooted in evidence.” The word is derived from the Latin “fides,” which means something like “trust that a concept or idea is true, even though we have no definitive evidence.” To the Christian ear, “belief” sounds cold and mechanical, while “faith” is the warm and spiritual way to describe our relationship to the religion and to God. This notion that believing without evidence is a virtue likely stems from what Jesus is quoted as having said to Thomas when His disciple put a hand into the spear wound in the side of the Lord’s risen body and then said, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (JN 20:29). So Christians have been sure from the founding of the religion that the highest virtue is for us to have faith in God, in Jesus, and in all the Christian dogmas, even without evidence that any of it is real.
This notion that “having faith” is a virtue lasted throughout Christian history until about the middle of the twentieth century. By the Sixties, that ancient cultural understanding that just about everything was inexplicable and required of us a lot of faith was being replaced by a modern confidence that since we even had learned how to split the atom, we were likely before long to work out everything else! So by the start of the twenty-first century, having faith without evidence was no longer seen as the virtue that it once had been, and many more sophisticated Christians were starting to look askance at a lot of the peculiar dogmas they still were being asked to take entirely on faith.
So then some of the most ardent Christian apologists sought to prove that Christian dogmas could indeed be supported by evidence. They found and trumpeted evidence that Jesus actually had lived on earth, and even that the Shroud of Turin could be used as evidence that He had been crucified and resurrected. But of course, far from supporting the fear-based and frankly unbelievable central Christian dogma, all the evidence that Jesus was an historical figure who had died and then reanimated His body gave no support at all to the religion’s assertion that God had long ago required the torture and murder of His Own Son.
There are a number of reasons why Christian church membership is in such sharp decline, but the fact that having faith without evidence is such thin gruel for modern people is a big one. When you and I were learning in our childhood churches that Jesus had died as a sacrifice to His Father because God would never forgive us otherwise, perhaps we looked suspiciously at our own dads at the time, but we accepted that central Christian teaching. We also were accepting television, telephones, automobiles, and electric lights without knowing how any of them worked, either! But as we grew and finished our educations, we were figuring out a great many things. And then another generation came, and another very soon followed it, with each of them feeling ever more confident that truths require real evidence, and therefore they were ever more suspicious of Christianity’s insistence that we trust its dogmas. In the twenty-first century, any religion that demands that its adherents “just have faith” and offers no evidence to support its ideas is simply no longer viable.
Christianity’s dogmas always have been built on nothing but faith-based ideas. There was no need for supporting evidence when Christianity first began, and nor was there a need for evidence during most of the religion’s history. But emphatically, we need evidence now! And importantly, we do have evidence that, far from being bothered by our now seeking meatier evidence-based truths, the Godhead welcomes our curiosity and will gladly reward it!
The world’s greatest pioneers in the field of afterlife research are Victor and Wendy Zammit of Sidney, Australia. One of the Zammits’ own special teachers is an elevated collective in spirit that speaks through an entity called Silver Birch and gives us encouragement. Silver Birch says, “We never say to you ‘… do not use your reason: faith only.’ We say ‘Use that which the Great Power has given you. Test us. Examine us. If aught that we say is debasing, cruel or immoral, then reject us ….’ If we seek always to teach you to live nobler lives, lives of greater self-sacrifice and of idealism, then surely that demonstrates that the hallmark of the Great Power is stamped upon our teaching.” – (Silver Birch Anthology – p.43 The Divine Plan)
Even more importantly, Jesus says the same thing! He encourages us to “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).
For most of Christian history, no amount of seeking with the primitive intellectual tools that then were available to us could have helped us learn much of anything! So these words of the Lord’s seem to have been spoken and preserved just for this beautiful day, when we can 
begin to seek and find in Christianity only the parts of it that are worthy of a rational and evidence–based belief. Now, in the twenty-first century, when so many things can be researched and will yield to our reason-based understanding, Christians who no longer feel able to believe the fear-based dogmas of a human-made religion can now take Jesus at His word. We can seek, and we will find inside the ugly shell of Christianity’s fears the real and abundant evidence we crave for the glorious truths that Jesus taught.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying,
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
– The Prophet Isaiah (ca 700 BC) (Isaiah 6:8)
So glad to hear Silver Birch quoted here and, yes, what he said closely mimics the teachings of Jesus and that is that anything said based in fear should be rejected. I think we are here to seek the truth and I very much agree that just having faith and forgetting to look for evidence is not what these higher spirits (or collectives) expect from us. This was a very positive message/
Dear Lola, there have been several spiritually advanced collectives that spoke to us from the upper part of the afterlife in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Imperator is another one that comes quickly to mind – and all of them have given us essentially the same message that came from Jesus. All of them have especially blessed our searching, asking, trying to understand what is going on, so it is flat astonishing to me that no Christian denomination encourages us to venture even one inch beyond its own entirely human-made dogmas! Don’t these people read Bibles? Don’t they care what the Lord says? For example:
“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).
“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)
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (LK 6:46).
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter” (MT 7:21).
It’s astonishing to me as well. Either they haven’t really read the bible or they ignore its real meaning. “The truth will set you free” is a good example. I think he meant they would be free from the dogmas and scary rules that were so prevalent back then due to false religious beliefs, but they never picked up on that. Of course, even if they did, they would be in trouble, as it was important for whatever power was in control at the time to keep the population in fear. Being “set free” would have the opposite effect. Jesus very clearly encouraged and wanted us to have questions and seek the truth. Once again, however, this was largely ignored.
Dear Lola, I agree with you that it is flat astonishing that no Christian denomination seems to put any emphasis on actually listening to what Jesus said or trying to better understand what He meant. When I was reading the Bible repeatedly, and the Gospels twice as often, I couldn’t help taking the words seriously, but I was still a strict Christian. Reading the Gospels with awareness that words have meanings began to feel to me like a subversive act! I flat could not believe that nobody else was seeing what was so clearly there!
I am astonished not only that the religion never has made any effort at all to listen to Jesus’s words or try to better understand what He may have meant by them, but also that His most revolutionary words of all have been stretched to fit Christian dogmas that date to a couple of centuries after the Lord’s death. And all of this seems okay to Christians because the whole Bible is magically “the Inspired Word of God,” only because the centuries-later councils said they were being inspired by God. Christians should have been the ones most ardent for God’s truth as Jesus proclaimed it, but instead to this day they treat Him so frivolously!
Of course the later councils were saying they were inspired by God. In that way, they could write whatever they wanted and people would be too naive and scared not to believe it.. That tactic wouldn’t work today
Ours is the first generation to be able to prove that heaven is real… based on millions of people who have been there, on the communications from spirits, and on meditation and mystical experiences! The message does not get out because people today are too busy, too enamored of the physical, and too locked into cultural beliefs to pay attention. Science, religion, and culture all conspire to keep the vast majority of humankind unaware of why we are here or what God would have us do with this amazing journey through physicality.
Dear Dr. Webb, you are right, of course! At this point, the evidence for the eternity of human life and for the wonderful afterlife that awaits us all is ubiquitous, consistent, and irrefutable. True!
But we always must remind ourselves that Near-Death Experiencers never have been to the afterlife – that is always a one-way trip – so what their testimony tells us is just that the mind can easily exist apart from the material body and in a human-like astral body that can have some amazing adventures! All quite wonderful evidence, all the same.
And you are sadly right when you say that science and religions are all so heavily invested in their own sets of dogmas that they are trying to keep these comforting truths from becoming more general knowledge. I do think, though, that all their stonewalling is becoming more and more ineffectual. And the Baby Boomers are becoming more eager for the wonderful truth, with the oldest now in their mid-seventies! I think it won’t be long now before we start some year with most people still clueless, but we end that same year with most people excited to be learning the truth! It has to happen. And soon.
Glimmers of hope for scientists.
Dearest Roberta,
In poking around on the Internet I have seen hopeful signs for scientists that conventional materialist science is not all there is. One example is the Electric Universe (EU) that is an alternative to conventional astronomy. Another, Reciprocal System Theory (RST) and especially its update by KVK Nehru and Bruce Peret, (RS2). The originator, Dewey Larson, wrote several books, one of which is “The Neglected Facts of Science”. A couple of quotes from that book follow:
“In conventional science, space and time constitute a framework, or setting, within which the entire universe is contained. On the basis of this viewpoint, everything that exists, in a real sense, exists in space and in time. Scientists believe that the whole of this real universe is now within their field of observation, and they see no indication of anything non-physical. It follows that anyone who accepts the findings of conventional science at their face value cannot accept the claims of religion or any other non-material system of thought. This is the origin of the long-standing antagonism between science and religion, a conflict which most scientists find it necessary to evade by keeping their religious beliefs separate from their scientific beliefs.
“In the Reciprocal System, on the other hand, space and time are contents of the universe, rather than a container in which the universe exists. On this basis, the “universe” of space and time, the physical universe, to which conventional science is restricted, is only one portion of existence as a whole, the real “universe” (a word which means the total of all that exists). This leaves the door wide open for the existence of entities and phenomena outside (that is, independent of) the physical universe, as contended by the various religions and many systems of philosophy.”
Yours,
Cookie
Dear Cookie, what a wonderful quotation! Thank you for sharing it. I agree with you that scientists have been finding “the scientific dogma of materialism” more and more frustrating of late, especially since it is clear to them by now that not even matter is solid, and in fact it appears that even the tiniest sub-atomic particle is just a vortex of energy. Nothing is solid at all!
But still, in the quotation you cite the author seems to be holding his speculations to just the science-vs.-religion dichotomy, rather than dismissing both approaches as valueless when it comes to really figuring anything out. Both science and religions are self-limited by their own dogmas to studying just an aspect of reality. And what on earth is the point of that? We have made of each a pointless game by definition!
Exactly. But that is what is so hard for me to understand, as they admit that we can see only a small part of the universe. They are each studying only a small part of the universe. What we can’t see is more important than what we CAN see.
You are absolutely right, Dr. Webb
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! I think it is interesting to note that as soon humans began to “settle,” our image of who and what the “gods” must be became less a reflection of nature and more of a reflection of our egos. Fast forward to contemporary times, and our technology has so insulated us from our own natures that we can barely even conceive of God anymore except as the big Technocrat in the sky, if we conceive of God at all.
It is important for us to come back to terms with the fact that humans and nature are not separate phenomenon. Indeed the experience we perceive as our own incarnation is the experience of what we call “nature” — we can’t get back to nature because along with everything else in creation, we ARE nature. God’s nature.
There vast evidence that is available for this gets harder to ignore, especially when we include the nagging feeling Roberta alludes to of our having lived in a way previously that is much better than this. The work the Zammits do is in and of itself admirable, but they go further, as they also cite the work being done and the evidence being demonstrated all over the world. In fact, it was through their newsletter that I originally found this blog in the first place.
Victor Zammit is a lawyer, and so he understands the difference between evidence, which builds a case, and proof, which is actually a conclusion someone must come to after reviewing the evidence. At this point, the case should be rested. We ignore all this evidence against our own interest.
PS-I am not making a case against technology. It gives us new metaphors for how everything is connected and non local—especially holographic technology and the “internet of things,” among other technology.
Mike, I love your reference to ‘the big Technocrat in the sky.’ This image seems to sum up a certain modern attitude perfectly. 🤖
Contrast this idea to the ancient Hindu reference to the Divine as ‘The Changer of the Seasons.’ The unseen Power that opens the buds, all together at the right time…🌺
These modern folks have sure changed! 😉
Dear Mike, I understand why you don’t want to make a case against technology, which is the thing that makes our discussion across miles even possible!
But I think technology is failing us in the same way that science and religion have failed us: by being a a set of separate inquiries that make it harder for anyone to deal with all of reality at once. A Googled definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment.” This scientific knowledge is apparently used to break down technology into six pockets, just as science itself it broken down.
The six areas of tecnnology are: Construction • Transportation • Energy/Power • Communication • Manufacturing • Bio-Related. Useful, but against missing the big picture! Now let’s imagine a different way of looking at reality that acknowledges Max Planck’s insight that consciousness is the base creative force, and looks to better understand that force and apply the insights gained to all six areas of technology, and more, in order to better control and use for humankind’s good an integrated approach to all six areas at once!
Dear Mike, I agree with you about the Zammits’ work. They do so much to gather evidence from all over the world and give it a wider airing that in some ways, over decades, they have been the only glue we had to pull together all of us who have worked outside those little scientific boxes and integrate all our different areas of study.
The scientific model says that it’s okay to treat chemistry, biology, psychology, religions, etc., all as many different pursuits, but in trying to understand the greater reality that is the Great Container, holding all that exists, every inquiry there is – including all the sciences and consciousness besides – must be fit together sensibly! I think that without the Zammits’ work, those who are trying to make sense of everything and how it all really fits together would have had a much harder task.
Everyone reading this: if you don’t already subscribe to the Zammits’ Friday Letter, please give that wonderful gift to yourself!
Dearest Roberta and everyone,
Haven’t we all had the experience of talking to a person about something even a little beyond their knowledge/experience, and they have ‘blocked’ what was said? One can feel the ‘shield’ go up. Then one is no longer heard, and no matter what one says thereafter, nothing more is considered.
The ‘I’m not going there’ mentality may be the fear that the ego’s core ideas are threatened. It can manifest as discomfort that the speaker sees something beyond what the person listening sees. And when dogmas kick in these (religious, political or scientific) deep conditionings make us blind to what is standing right in front of us.
I see that only deep and honest seeking for truth, for God, for Spirit can break through the planet’s choking cloud; the cloying ignorance of these times. Only by needing to ‘know’ instead of just ‘believing’ blindly can we be free, feel one with Creation and help this planet to evolve.
You see Roberta, I needed to know more than the NDE experiencers could relay: Many NDE accounts would say something like, ‘I couldn’t go farther into that beautiful place, or I would not have been able to return to my life on earth.’ Some NDErs were given a stark choice to go farther into the heavenly place and die on earth – or return to their body and continue with life. Those who returned to life never found out what was beyond a certain point.
I guess I always wanted to know what was beyond the point NDErs could venture. I really needed to know! and that is what lead me to your research my dear. 😉🙏🏼🌅
Hi Efrem. It was first hearing of NDEs about forty five years ago that gave me hope of “knowing”. It has been said that only by direct experience can we know something. If we can’t get past the astral realm while tethered, l suppose belief is as close as we get.
Hi Ray. I first heard of NDEs decades ago, when my mother relayed these accounts from her readings when I was a teenager. This was fascinating stuff to say the least.
You are right that clear eyed belief is better than blind faith. However many people are fortunate to have ‘direct participatory experiences,’ as Scott F names them (below). My understanding is that these events, be they communication or visitation with deceased loved ones or revelations via meditation etc, seem to be happening more often. Many more people are experiencing an array of metaphysical phenomena these days. (Or at least it seems that way. More people are talking about these things.) Hence it may well be that one’s own experience affirms and underlines one’s belief. We can ‘know’ of soul transcendence of physical death and we can experience something of the Divine.
As to some kind of vision or dream or other experience of the afterlife – how can I preclude the possibility of that happening?
😉🙏🏼🕊
Dear Ray, you’re right in saying that not having firsthand knowledge can be a significant barrier to belief. What I have found, though, is that I can make it to certainty if I study a lot of evidence of some phenomenon, and if it is all consistent in what it says about that phenomenon. This was how I first convinced myself that life after death is real, although it took me years; and then after that, the more details I found that were backed by a lot of evidence, the easier it became for me to accept more and more of the lesser details. It does take a lot of research to get there, though!
Oh my dear Efrem, I am so very glad that you sought until you found us!
Yes, NDE accounts can be frustrating, but that is because most who read them try to draw some conclusions from them about actual death, when in fact NDEs have nothing to do with death! So unlike reading many accounts of completed deaths, reading a lot of NDE accounts only tells us what the spirit guides of the experiencers wanted them to know. Nothing more. No one who is alive to tell the tale ever has been to where the actual dead are!
You hit the nail on the head, Efrem. So many people just give you a blank stare when you say things even a little beyond their perspective. Worse yet, they often change the subject entirely rather than continue any conversation that is outside of their beliefs. I agree that staying inside any kind of comfort zone and not looking to find further information is a major stumbling block for future growth. I notice that these people are generally more materialistic, as if this life on earth is all that is important.
You’ve nailed it too, dear Lola! Some people are so convinced that their own life on earth is all there is, that they accept that they are terminal beings; when the lights go out – they go out for good. I could never live that way. This material perspective causes people to think that there is no point searching for deeper answers. They even block any evidence to the contrary that they happen to stumble upon.
Do you know I had a rather brilliant science teacher in senior high school (US: college) who could expound any scientific theory or law that we students could ask about. (Sure, it was the late 1970s and scientific knowledge wasn’t what it is now.) I asked this teacher about certain, famous, police certified footage taken from a haunting in London, UK. The film showed kitchen chairs moving about, seemingly of their own volition. The science teacher told me that he could never accept that this phenomenon was caused by ghosts because it would shatter his whole understanding of the world and the universe. I had the sense that possibilities of consciousness beyond death quite scared him. 🙏🏼🌅
Efrem: Your teacher clearly was looking at the universe from just a materialistic point of view. I always thought this was really strange since well respected scientists tell us that what we can see is only a small fraction of the universe – they call the rest “dark matter” and admit that they don’t know what it actually consists of. As David said above, scientists insist on keeping religion and science separate, and wind up scratching their heads looking for answers. As Mike said, everything is nature. I agree and if this is true, nothing can, nor should it ever be, separated. Hopefully, this old way of looking at the universe will change. I always think of the famous scientist, Sir James Jeans’ remark, that the universe looks more like a great thought rather than a great machine.
Dear Lola, your observation that people don’t want to hear anything new is especially true of many Christians, who feel that they have made a deal with God – they will go to church a lot and put some money in the plate, and in return Jesus will put them at the head of heaven’s line. That’s why they won’t countenance anyone telling them it may be more complicated than that!
You; are absolutely right on. This is a very lazy and simple road for them. They do not have to think and this suits them just fine. The Catholic church made it a mortal sin to not attend mass on Sunday, so they rushed out to church services on Sunday in order to appease this rather cranky God.
Dear Lola, for Christians this insistence on not hearing anything that might shake their belief seems to be based in materialism of a kind. They think they have a lock now on heaven – I have called it a Get-Out-of-Hell Free Card – and they are often made angry if you even try to mess with that! It’s tragic, actually, when the truth would make them happier by far than that old religious shortcut that is based on the notion of a stern and unforgiving God.
Oh my God. What a coincidence. I call it a “get out of hell free card” too. I’ve done that for years. They do think they have a free trip to heaven, and if you disagree, they warn you about the terrible things that can happen if you continue to have the same “sinful” thoughts you are having. What makes me angry is that when I ask them what books they read or what research they have done, they almost always admit that they did none. Really?? They came to their conclusions from listening to preachers, priests etc. and refuse to have a mind of their own
Yes. True. It often seems important to them not to do any investigation at all, for fear they might learn something that shakes their faith in the certain protection that their GOOHF Card provides. It is such a fundamentally fear-based way to live! I pity them, really.
Hi Roberta and everyone. We are so lucky to be living in a time where we have access to so much evidence for the world beyond and to back up what Jesus was teaching 2000 years ago – evidence that can firmly set our feet on the spiritual path within. When we go into that inner chamber, when we “knock and it will be opened,” who or what is it that will open the door for us? Now we’re getting into the realm of the mystics, few and far between, who learned about the absolute from direct participatory experience, not just religious texts, priests, scientists, or whatever. I hope that kind of direct mystical experience will become a much more common thing. Imagine a world full of people with that sort of knowledge, not just faith. How would it change?
Dear Scott, it does feel like a literal miracle that the basic ability to know and prove what is true about the greater reality is being given to us so easily now, when only a few generations ago it was impossible for people to know the truth, no matter how hard they tried to find and understand it!
As for who gives us the truth, it seems to be our own guides primarily. Although of course when we are talking about disembodied beings, to say “your primary guide” or “an elevated being” or even “the Godhead Itself” seems to make a distinction in our minds that really doesn’t exist in reality. All the non-material beings work together so smoothly, and entirely for love of us!
I often wondered about that, Scott. Who or what will open the door for us when we truly seek answers. Most say it will be God, but I have a feeling that it is a bit more complicated than that.
I think you’re right Lola. We all have guides (and maybe angels, who knows.) Then there are advanced beings like Jesus, or perhaps whole collectives of such beings, as Roberta has posited. Some talk of something beyond just Jesus Christ the man, which might be called Christ Consciousness or what Father Richard Rohr calls the Universal Christ. If I remember correctly, A Course in Miracles calls it The Holy Spirit, or the Atonement. Jesus talked about being one with the Father, but what about the Mother, or the feminine side of the coin? That side seems to have been pretty much washed out of the Bible.The Jewish tradition that Jesus came out of thought of the indwelling presence of God, the Shekinah, as something more feminine in nature, at least metaphorically, if not in actuality, as did many other ancient traditions. Anyway, as you say, it is probably more complicated than an old man on a throne, and the more mystical traditions associated with many religions like Sufism, Kabbalah, or Christian Mysticism have a lot of beautiful things to say about people’s experiences, and there are many similarities between them and with what Jesus taught. Some call these streams part of the perennial tradition, going back millennia, usually at the core the golden rule, or Jesus’ law of love. People who have experienced this mystical love of God are not likely to be the ones starting wars, committing terrorism and atrocities, or destroying the planet.
Dear Scott, I think the absence of the feminine except as a passive vessel – e.g. Mother Mary – is a product of the paternalistic culture of the Hebrews and of the Romans after them. It doesn’t bother me or make me feel left out because of my gender, perhaps because I know that all of us have lived lives as both genders. There really isn’t the sort of rigid gender separation that our present entirely ignorant culture imagines!
Dear Lola, it does seem generally to be our own primary spirit guide in each instance who leads and directs us to find the answers that we seek. But our spirit guide doesn’t work in isolation! Our own guide is our direct connection to all the upper level of the greater reality, even including the Godhead.
Roberta and everyone, it is also my experience with my own beloved spirit guide that she is “not working alone.” I have been aware of this since her first contact with me (first I was aware of), and in fact lately I have been shown that she is part of an elevated collective that has continuous contact with the Godhead (could it be any other way?)!
I don’t think that anyone works alone there. My sense is that they are all part of an elevated collective, or they are at least in some type of communication with an elevated collective. It is reasonable to assume that if we acknowledge them and ask for guidance and assistance, they will be better able to work with us.
Dear Lola, I think you are spot-on here! The only individual upper-level being of which I am aware who is in regular contact with someone on earth is Mikey Morgan. And he is Carol Morgan’s older son of this lifetime!
I have begun to suspect that by the time we make it to the upper fifth level, we are more and more working in collectives. It’s a phenomenon that I don’t believe has been much studied, but the more advanced we become spiritually the more we seem to crave this sort of ever-closer union with Spirit.
Dear Mike, I have come to suspect that most or all beings, and even our guides, who have become spiritually elevated to the upper part of the fifth level or higher, actually are part of collectives as well as sometimes working alone. There simply isn’t the individual separation by the time that we reach that stage that we are so used to here!
It’s possible that Mikey does work with a collective but takes time out to answer questions through his mother as an individual. Collectives are a fairly recent idea, and Carole would feel more comfortable working with her son rather than a “collective.” There is not very much said about collectives, and I think there are not too many people who even know they exist.