Posted by Roberta Grimes • June 08, 2024 • 24 Comments
The Source, Understanding Reality
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
Oh my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!
All ye who hear, Now to His temple draw near;
Sing now in glad adoration!
Praise to the Lord, who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Who, as on wings of an eagle, uplifteth, sustaineth.
Hast thou not seen How thy desires all have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?
Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully, wondrously, made thee!
Health hath vouchsafed and, when heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.
What need or grief Ever hath failed of relief?
Wings of His mercy did shade thee!
– Joachim Neander (1650-1680), from “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” (1668)
As we write these weekly posts together, the topic will arrive in my mind from Thomas by the previous Monday afternoon. The frame-verse will play from him soon thereafter, and by the end of Wednesday we will have written at least the first manuscript page. We got that far this week on schedule, but then I got a flood of legal work. No worries. I always keep Fridays to finish this blog post, and we had the elements clearly in mind by Thursday. With Thomas’s help, I could have finished that original post just fine on Friday. But then on Friday morning, he wanted to start all over again with a whole new idea. So that is what we are doing now. I fought him on it, but you might as well try to stop a bulldozer as to stop my dear Thomas.
And Thomas feels so energized now! He wants to tell you the story from Genesis that we have been telling to our students this week in the two courses that he and I are currently teaching. Thomas considers it to be important for all of you to hear this story, and he wants us to tell it to you this minute. He assures me that, sure, we can get it all written in a single day! So, let’s just see. We should right now be finishing things up, but instead we are beginning all over again.
As you know if you have been with us here for even a little while, the only thing that in fact exists is what we experience as human Consciousness. All that we see and experience around us that seems to be real is in fact illusion, including our own material bodies and all that happens to us here on earth. I capitalize the word Consciousness, of course, because like all forms of energy, Consciousness vibrates, and at its highest and most rapid vibration, Consciousness is only love, which is, in its very purest essence and highest vibration, the Creator God. It is our understanding that nothing whatsoever above the Ultimate Creator God exists.
At its lowest and slowest vibration, of course, Consciousness is all the ishiest emotions, like fear, anger, and hatred. At various levels of vibration along the range between purest love at the very top and fear and hatred at the bottom, exist all of our human minds. So we are all part of that one great Consciousness! Because, of course, nothing else exists. And our purpose in coming to earth is simply to raise our own Consciousness vibrations farther away from fear and rage and closer to ever more perfect love. But of course, that whole concept of spiritual growth is a topic beyond the scope of today’s conversation.
We have previously discussed here the fact that the first human beings, and more than ninety percent of modern animals all came into existence at the very same time, only two hundred thousand earth-years ago. And as recently as that, every human being then alive lived in Botswana, in Africa. Genuine Garden of Eden, anyone? Even somewhat closer to today, there were at least two near-extinction events for humankind, one of which was caused by a severely adverse climate event around 150,000 earth-years ago, during what was called the Marine Isotope Stage 6 Period. Life for those first real people was so hard! Not only did all the polar ice caps and glaciers around the world expand during the Marine Isotope Stage 6 Period, but all the deserts did as well, since the atmosphere had so much moisture sucked out of it by the ice. And the area of the world most affected by this extreme ice age and extreme dry period combined was southern Africa, where the entire world population of fully human beings then still lived. It has been estimated that at the anatomically modern human population’s lowest point, there were fewer than a thousand people left alive on this entire planet. And every human being who is alive now on earth is descended from Mitochondrial Eve, who lived at that time. She is our common many-greats grandmother.
These people who lived two hundred thousand years ago, and even right down to a few thousand years ago, were all entirely human people! All their minds, like ours, were part of that one Consciousness which is all that exists. So they all were part of the Mind of the Ultimate High Creator God. And as is true of all other real people, they would have felt a yearning for union with the Creator God. Each of us feels that same yearning today, but perhaps without understanding quite what it is that we are feeling, just as they likely would not have understood it. And those who did have perhaps any glimmer of understanding could not have made any genuine connection with God, what with the confusing clamor of all their many human-made gods that then was filling their minds.
Because of course those first real people would have done what all real people do. At once, they were busy inventing gods in their own image. We have found some small, rotund female figurines carved from stone which surely had religious significance, and there were probably male figures, too, perhaps carved from bone or wood or both, that would have been too fragile to survive. There is evidence that people were burying their dead with rituals at least a hundred thousand years ago and in what is now Israel, which suggests that at least that far back, and in that location, people were beginning to believe in an afterlife. But for nearly all of human history, people everywhere worshiped multiple gods at once that were human-like, fierce and fickle, and represented by idols which each had a different specialty. Gods and goddesses of harvest, hunting, gathering, pregnancy, weather, and so on were the universal norm for nearly the whole two hundred thousand years of genuine humankind’s existence. And gradually, the worst of these gods grew bigger and fiercer. Worst of all was likely Moloch of the Canaanites. He was gigantic and made of stone, and he had a fire in his belly into which he required that all his worshipers’ first-born infants be tossed so he could burn them alive.
How could the genuine Creator God ever relate to people through all this whole dense human-made religious mess? Had the genuine God spoken to any of them back then, people just would have assumed that they were hearing from one of the many human-made gods that they long had worshiped. So God had to wait for humankind to further mature spiritually.
And then eventually, rather late in the day, along came the Hebrews. These were tribes of nomadic shepherds who had developed the notion of worshiping just a single invisible god. I have long thought that this was what God had been patiently waiting for, throughout all those two hundred thousand years of humankind’s existence. God could never relate to people who had not yet grasped the concept of a single Deity with a Mind, much like a single person with a mind. A Deity with whom they might relate by Mind. The Hebrews were the world’s first true monotheists. And they even have preserved a backstory which was passed down at first as an oral history, and is told now in the Biblical book of Genesis. Their story involves a patriarch of the Hebrews named Abraham who develops with God an amazing spoken relationship in Abraham’s mind.
Abraham and his wife, Sarah, are nearly a hundred years old as this tale opens in about 2070 BCE, and Sarah is barren. To very much simplify their story, Abraham and Sarah are in despair over having no heirs, but then God, speaking in Abraham’s mind, promises Abraham that “One shall come forth from your own body, and he shall be your heir.” Remember that Abraham and Sarah are nearly a hundred years old! And this voice of God speaking in Abraham’s mind is a very new thing in the world. God takes Abraham outside and says, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” 6 Then Abraham believed in the Lord; and God reckoned it to him as righteousness. (So then, my dear friends, God first introduced Godself to a human being!) 7 God said to Abraham, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” Abraham said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” 9 So God said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, and a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Abraham brought all these animals and birds, and he cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. 11 The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abraham drove them away.12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 God said to Abraham, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. 16 Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” (This is a foretelling of the Hebrews’ sojourn in Egypt.) 17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these sacrificial pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.” Sarah did then indeed conceive at almost 100 years old, and she bore Isaac for Abraham.
(This has been a summary from the Biblical book of Genesis, Chapters 15 through 21.)
Right after this summary, in Genesis Chapter 22, verses 1-14, when the long-awaited and much-treasured Isaac is still a young lad, the genuine God who speaks to Abraham in his mind wants to make certain of Abraham’s loyalty, so we get this:
“Now it came about that God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 2 God said, ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.’ 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. 5 Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.’ 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So, the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ And he said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ 8 Abraham said, ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ So, the two of them walked on together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 12 He said, ‘Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you adore God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.’ 13 Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. 14 Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, ‘In the mount of the Lord it will be provided’” (GEN 22:1-14).
My dear ones, humankind’s relationship with the Creator God began when God chose from among all the primitive people who were living in the world four thousand years ago to reach out to a righteous man from among the world’s first true monotheists. And Abraham listened to and trusted God, and he believed. Through Abraham, humankind discovered the genuine God, and Abraham became the Patriarch of not just Judaism, but also of Christianity and of Islam. He is the spiritual father now of close to four billion people worldwide.
So, yes, the Jews are God’s chosen people, in that God chose to reach out first to them. But they are few in number now. And antisemitism is an ancient hatred. I had thought that it was now long past, but we are learning this spring that is not the case!
My beloveds, as we love God and as we love one another, antisemitism must be fought as the evil that it is! Does God still prefer the Jews over others? No, of course not. And in fact, God has never preferred the Jews over other people. God spoke first to Abraham only because four thousand years ago, God chose the Hebrews as the first people with whom He thought that He could successfully communicate. And indeed Abraham developed an extraordinarily relationship with God, one that was based in love and in absolute trust. God chooses the Jewish people still, as God’s canary in the coal mine of human love and kindness. Until antisemitism is at last no more, there can be no hope for universal peace and love in this world for any of us.
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee,
Who from the heavens the streams of His mercy doth send thee.
Ponder anew What the Almighty can do,
Who with His love doth befriend thee.
Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him!
Let the Amen Sound from His people again;
Gladly for aye we adore Him.
– Joachim Neander (1650-1680), from “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” (1668)
Hello Roberta,
I agree that the Jews are no more a favored people after they rejected the prophets and Jesus. Also, there is no place for anti-semitism or anti-anybody for those of us who are seeking spiritual enlightenment and advancement in this, our latest, incarnation.
I pray for me and my family that we would experience a reality where the Universe is friendly this day. By extension, this includes all of God’s children in the world.
I also pray to God that I might know how to live this day and seek the inspiration from Jesus and my spirit guides to be loving, forgiving, thankful, and kind.
God bless you and us all!
Sincerely, David D.
My dear David D, the Jews haven’t rejected the Old Testament Prophets, but rather they simply feel that Jesus is not their prophesied Messiah. It is a reasonable, if to our minds erroneous, opinion. No indeed, my beloved one, but rather they claim the Prophets as their own! And oh, my very dear one, I think that all of us here share your prayer! 🙂
Roberta,
I don’t claim to know anything.
However , I read the words of Jesus. Seems like they lost their blessings. Matthew 23:29-39
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
“Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’ ”
David D.
My dear beloved David, this doesn’t sound like Jesus at all, does it? It is from Ch 23, which is suspect – it was probably added by the First Nicaean Councilors. And at any rate, it is addressed only to the clergy, and not to the Jewish people as a whole.
If God created us as extensions and part of His/Her Own Consciousness, and Heart of True Love, why one earth would we have to discover God? Why even have polytheism? Did God create us then as super primitive creatures who need to grow through eons of time towards a loving consciousness in need of guidance through enlightened leaders, like Jeshua?
After all, the current state of mankind is rather primitive, very violent and not very God-like; something must have gone wrong along the way. No? Yes?
There are many versions of what is called “The Fall of Mankind” in Judeo-Christian circles.
It is such a departure from God that paints the necessity of us having to RE-discover God instead, to find our way home once more.
If we are truly created in the image and likeness of God, which we do not reflect in our history, something must have gone wrong.
Isn’t it true that if we understand the nature of this departure, this “Fall”, we have a better grip on how to return to the home we came from?
Many interpretations exist: from disobedience by eating a literal forbidden fruit, from the fruit being premature sex, from giving in to a talking tempting snake (the Devil, the angel Lucifer in the process of falling sexually with Eve), from fear of being separated from God resulting in an actual separation and descendance into primitive and ego-centered and even violent consciousness, etc. Many theories out there of why we are not fully and all of us altogether with God anymore.
I’m curious what your, Jeshua’s or Thomas’ take is on this. We can’t say “go home, or come home”, and not explain why or how come we are outside our real home.
Oh my dearly beloved and much treasured Adrian, you do always make me smile!! 🙂
Yes indeed, we are all part of the one great Consciousness of which God is the highest and purest aspect! And yes indeed, God did create us! All quite true! But there was no need for us to fall, of course. All that was needed was free will to choose against or for love, combined with amnesia of all that happened before our birth on this planet. The same combination of free will and amnesia, in fact, which in born in each newborn infant today….
We are told that God created us “a little lower than the angels.” And God created this material reality in which we can choose to go either further down or up toward God. But it always is our choice.
Dear Roberta, this answer is of course part of the why, but doesn’t yet answer the what happened and why. What caused us to choose the destructive direction? What made us choose that way?
Ah yes, my dear one, you ask an excellent question. We do know that there are evilish demons to tempt us, but they don’t really seem to be enough. And we know that the more evil an entity is, the weaker it would be. I have long fought the idea of a truly big-time negative entity in opposition to God – a Satan – but in fact, Jesus Himself talks about being tempted by Satan. Not powerful, of course, but real and crafty and clever and cruel. So I am prepared at this point to assume that Jesus is right, dear, and that the king of demons is loose in the world, tempting many and leading them astray.
This one story in the Old Testament regarding God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, made me wonder if many stories in Old Testament were made not true!?
My dear Nise, of course it is always possible that stories so ancient might be folklore. But I think that this story of God’s testing of Abraham may actually have happened, because my Thomas – my spirit guide – has had me share it with students in classes that I am now teaching. He is in a position to know the truth of it, and he wouldn’t have had me share it if he himself didn’t consider the story to be true.
I’m confused.I’ve only heard you speak once.I understood you to say that only the first 4 books of the new testaments were real and the words of Jesus.Everything else was made up by the Roman’s to instill fear.But,now we are reading Genesis. I’m new to you so perhaps I’m misunderstanding everything?
Oh my dear wonderful Joyce, the last thing that I ever would want to do would be to confuse you! And if you are confused about this, then there is A LOT here that is going to confuse you as well, and we absolutely cannot have that!!
I am going to answer your immediate question, but then please stick with me? Over the next few weeks we are going to give you a quick course in the truth!
Now here is a first quick course in the Christian Bible. The Bible is composed of:
THE OLD TESTAMENT, which is ‘The Law and the Prophets ” of the Hebrews (now called the Jewish people), the community into which Jesus was born. It makes up most of the Bible, from Genesis through Malachi, and it includes a history of the Jewish people, Prophets, and Psalms. Then comes
THE NEW TESTAMENT, the first four books of which are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are the four Gospels, the only four books of the Bible where the words that Jesus spoke when He was on earth appear. After that come the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of Paul and others, and the Book of Revelation.
When the Romans were creating the Christian religion in the year 325 CE, they assembled the Christian Bible roughly as it still stands today.
(The key questions are whether and to what extent the Romans messed with the words of Jesus in the Gospels. And the answers there are Yes, but mercifully to just a limited extent, and we think that we can adjust for most or even all of their changes.)
I hope this has been helpful, my dear Joyce! And your question has prompted my collaborator here, who is my spirit guide, Thomas, to suggest that we should write a couple of background-information blog posts, primarily for you, and also for others who might also be new here and might be similarly confused. He especially thanks you for your question, and if you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask them!
Thank you, Roberta for taking the time to explain to me.As a child the bible and religion were used to instill fear in me.I carried that fear for decades.
Not sure where I learned this but it still makes the most sense to me. Lucifer and his followers wanted to destroy all humans viewing them as a blight on creation. The angels led by Michael said no way, we cannot destroy part of God’s creation. This was a big time disagreement because angels are powerful beings. Jesus volunteered to resolve the dispute by becoming human to prove the intrinsic value of man. He triumphed and won the bet, thereby earning the title of Savior. The bad angels were the Satan who worked overtime to derail His mission.
My dearly beloved Thomas, this is one alternative explanation, although I don’t think that it is the right one. But it would of course have worked as well!
Dearest Roberta,
Loved this post. It is a wonderful perspective on God reaching out to Abraham of the first true monotheists, in order to begin to connect with His human children everywhere.
As you know, Abraham and Sarah’s descendants became the Hebrews, then Israelites, then ultimately they were called Jews, being so named after their biggest tribe of Judah. Judah became Jew or Juif or Jude in the different countries of Europe where many settled after the Romans exiled them from Judea nearly two thousand years ago.
Of course, Jews have faced Jew hatred down the many centuries, resulting in its pathological pinnacle of expression in the Nazi Holocaust of WW2.
Like yourself, I had hoped the scourge of ‘antisemitism,’ this enduring Jew hatred, would recede in this new millennium. How misplaced were my hopes for more advanced, humanitarian societies.
How foolish I feel now, for believing in the starry-eyed dreams of my youth!
We are presently entering a new age of surging antisemitism around the world, enabled and enhanced by social media platforms and seemingly endless screen images of the horrors of war in the Levant. In Western nations, the number of incidents of Jew hatred has risen dramatically in the past few years alone. These are countries that have campaigned against racism of all kinds for decades. Democracies that have valued a multicultural humanism are now witnessing some of the most heinous attacks on Jewish individuals, families and small, local groups.
Jewish citizen of say, Europe or the Americas have zero influence over the policies of the Jewish state (Israel) and how it conducts its war against Hamas. They may believe in peace and independence for Israel and Palestine, brought about solely by negotiation. They may mourn the loss of life on both sides of the current conflict. They may be faithful contributors to their (diaspora) home countries, but are increasingly vulnerable to attack anywhere or at anytime, due to rising Jew hatred in their suburb, town or city.
Roberta, I am sad to say that far worse days may be ahead for individuals – actual human beings who are just like you or me – who happen to be Jewish.
As history has shown us hatred, once unleashed to riot upon the earth, does not stop at one group of unfortunates but turns to attack the next and the next until it’s violent conclusion.
Or as hard-won Jewish understanding down the ages explains: ‘What starts with the Jews does not end with the Jews.’
Oh my dear so much beloved Efrem, thank you for such a wonderful summary, so wisely and so beautifully said! The Jews are indeed God’s canary in the coal mine of racial hatred, because – as you say – what starts with the Jews never will end with the Jews.
And here is a note to all the people who still insist to me that in this present war, all the Palestinian people are entirely innocent. I am open-minded! But I would just note to you that the four Israeli hostages who were recently liberated were liberated from “innocent” Palestinian families’ homes, in “innocent” Palestinian communities. I refuse to take sides in any of this, but facts are facts. And it was Palestinian Hamas that started this war by attacking and murdering in the most brutal and sadistic way possible an unarmed Israeli community on 10/7/23, and now apparently civilians are supporting Hamas’s war on these innocent hostages. So, will those who still think we should be taking Hamas’s side in this war exclusively please tell me again: WHY??
The point of my story although somewhat off the subject but was an attempt to explain contradictory or missing information with respect to certain religious teachings. As highly evolved beings angels certainly had some plausible reason if they did in fact decide to rebel against God. I keep hearing there is no such entity as the devil yet Jesus was supposedly subject to its temptations. If God created all what is the source of this “King of Demons?”
My dear Thomas, there are various stories which suggest that Satan is a fallen angel, a member of the angelic class which serves God who fell from God’s grace and who dwells now in negativity, and is therefore powerless and filled with evil intentions and ideas. It has been a very long time since I knew any of these stories very well!
Yes, Roberta, my belief concerning the angels opposed to the mission of Jesus on earth suggests just that. If God does not judge I presume any “fallen” angels had or still have the opportunity to redeem themselves. Beyond that I should be more concerned with my own spiritual advancement
Yes, my dear Thomas. At one time long ago I was curious about all of this, and I researched it enough that I recall that it all did make sense to me in the end. All of it except the fact of the fallen angels’ rebellion against God. That really never has made sense to me at all!
The word “rebellion” is a vague term and I do not think the idea that man is a blight on creation falls into that category. Does anyone really know what the word Satan meant in Biblical times or what may have been lost through translations?
Please let me know if you are aware of any research material out there that might enlighten me on the subject.
My dear Thomas, we are generally told that Satan is a member of the class of Angels, who are pure beings in service to God, but that he rebelled against God so therefore he is what we would call a fallen angel. There is more to the story, and I used to know it, but it has been a long time!
Thank you, Roberta for taking the time to explain to me.As a child the bible and religion were used to instill fear in me.I carried that fear for decades.