Posted by Roberta Grimes • October 31, 2020 • 36 Comments
Jesus, The Source, The Teachings of Jesus
God has not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through;
God has not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
– Annie J. Flint (1866-1932), from “What God Has Promised” (before 1902)
Jesus was not the first divine messenger who told us what God actually wants. Nor was He the first to tell us God doesn’t enjoy our religious traditions. There must have been many of these forerunners of Jesus in sharing the Lord’s Gospel truths, but my favorite is Micah of Moresheth, who was one of the “Twelve Minor Prophets” of the Hebrew Bible. Micah lived seven hundred years before Jesus, and he told us even way back then that God doesn’t want our sacrifices. What Micah told us the Godhead wants is amazingly close to what Jesus also has revealed to us; and even so many generations later, his words sing!
“With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, Oh man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8)
No religion can presume to speak for God. And there is a radical tension between what the Godhead wants and what our various religions demand. Here are the five most important requirements that our religions have imposed on us since deep in our earliest prehistory; and by way of illustration, let’s briefly consider the role these requirements have played in Christianity:
At a minimum, we must affirm that there is a deity with certain characteristics, and that all the religion’s stories are true. We call these required beliefs “dogmas.” For example, all Christians must affirm the Judeo-Christian God and the notion that God requires a sacrifice so extreme that we have no way to provide it, so Jesus came to earth to die as our sacrifice to God for our sins. When I married a Catholic and tried to convert, I had trouble with some of the Catholic dogmas; for example, the notion that I was eating and drinking the actual body and blood of Jesus appalled me! The priest who presided over my conversion told me that I would have to “take it on faith” or I could forget about becoming a Catholic. So for my husband’s sake, I did that. For twenty-five years. 
everyone had to make the Sign of the Cross and kneel or stand repeatedly at Mass. Many young Christians of all denominations found it necessary to wear crosses at their necks. I have of late been told that I must no longer speak against Christianity. My role is just to propose the Lord’s love-based Way as an alternative for those who have outgrown the religion on their own. Thomas tells me that we must at all costs avoid injecting even more negativity into a situation that is already rank with centuries of fear and pain, so our only role must be to build a bridge for lapsed Christians to a new and better way for them to live in love with the genuine Godhead. As a result, in giving you here just a hint of how well Christianity conforms to all five of the longstanding characteristics of every other human-made religion, I have tried to be neutral. Just the facts! It is not up to me to make a case to you, but rather you alone will eventually decide what feels right in your deepest heart, in the silence that you share with God.
All of this comes from Thomas, of course. After I spent the first fifty years of my life as an earnest and devoted Christian, and then Thomas managed my past two decades of painfully falling through floor after floor of disillusionment, I must now renounce every negative thought. I feel as if I have been cast out and abandoned by the greatest love there is! But I am not to sneak into churches at night and vengefully break all the crockery. I am only to make you aware that the Jesus that you love as much as I love Him is more alive than ever for us now. And He is waiting for us just beyond the church door.
I want to share with you the fact that what we talk about here is apparently part of a larger movement that is bent on rescuing disaffected Christians. I may be wrong, but it looks divinely inspired to me! There are some ardent Christian leaders who have felt led from the religion they once loved and into a closer relationship with God, and some of them are now writing about it. My favorite of these spiritual pioneers is Keith Giles, who is a former minister now often published on the liberal Christian website Patheos.com. I haven’t yet read his books, but from his articles I find Keith to be a brilliant and highly spiritual man who shares a somewhat different message from the one that Thomas is giving to me, but one that still is consistent with the truth. Keith’s message will better appeal to people who are falling away from the religion and yearning for a truer relationship with God, but who do not feel ready to altogether abandon the religion they still love.
So the genuine Godhead in the person of Jesus assures us that God wants simply this:
Loving and Forgiving are God’s Only Laws
Strictly Following the Teachings of Jesus Will Transform Our Minds
The Teachings of Jesus Must Not be Incorporated Into Any Religion
We May Continue to Question and to Learn
Please read again that list of the five requirements imposed on us by our religions. Know that every one of these requirements that date back for thousands of years is now optional for you forevermore! If you have a printer handy, and if doing it feels right, you might even print out this week’s post. Then you can give yourself the gift of crossing out every one of the five demands made by Christianity that are set forth above. Or if just doing that doesn’t feel like enough, you can find a black marker and obliterate them. You can light a match and watch them burn. Or if you aren’t given to that level of drama, you can just sit with knowing that you have God’s invitation, delivered to us by Jesus Himself as a direct emissary from the Godhead, to cross the bridge that leads away from religions and into spiritual freedom. In your own way. In your own time. Thomas wrote during his famous incarnation that “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” And my dear Thomas wants us to know now that this sovereign truth applies even more to our spiritual life than it does to our 
political life! So you can move beyond Christianity in your own way and time. Or not. Your liberty is complete. And eventually you may decide to embrace with joy an ever more perfect relationship with the Godhead as Jesus sets it forth in His Gospels. It may indeed be time for some of us to embark upon following the Lord’s Way! But how will that look? How will it feel? We cannot yet know. Although perhaps we can guess….
But God has promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing kindness, undying love.
– Annie J. Flint (1866-1932), from “What God Has Promised” (before 1902)
Thanks, Roberta.
Dear Keith, I almost began this response with “OMG! Wow! Welcome!” But that seemed undignified. As I have been reading your work in recent months, I have thought of reaching out to you, and I should have done it. You are doing by far the harder thing, and doing it beautifully! I have given up on the religion altogether and now I’m a Mary, sitting at the Lord’s feet; but you are doing the Martha-work that still must be done, using everything you know to raise the religion away from fear and toward love from the inside. Thank you for doing it so well! And one day I believe the whole world will thank you.
Dear Roberta and everyone, it is important, as we have talked about many times, to contemplate the revelation intrinsic to knowing that a perfected being lovingly transforms His personal vibration from the highest aspects of the Godhead to share the experience we perceive as incarnation. I think this divine evolution for our sake is, for the most part, omitted from the canonical gospels we are exposed to through traditional Christian study. I am no scholar of ancient texts, especially the Coptic texts that were left out of the canonical scripture, so this is just one reader’s summation of a Coptic text known as the Pistis Sophia.
Scholarship and archeological analyses that I have looked at date this text to about the same era as the so-called Q source that the gospels we do study stem from. Those analyses also seem to think the Pistis Sophia — written in ancient Greek and translated — is actually a compilation of many cultural artifacts, so there is repetition, some contradiction and also many parts that seem to have nothing at all to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.
However, there are accounts of Jesus teaching the disciples after His resurrection, about where he came from and how He descended. These are, if one can work through the caveats above, indeed astonishing. One passage in particular tracks with certain parts of the canon and even explains in further detail that St. John the Baptist was the reappearance of the long-awaited Elijah — this is essentially a throwaway line in the passage that we traditionally read about the Transfiguration.
In short, there are ancient texts (and some modern, if I understand A Course in Miracles properly) that illuminate what we are discussing here about Jesus coming from the highest aspect of the Godhead (referred to as the “First Mystery” in the Pistis Sofia) and the act of His lowering his vibration (called agitation in this Coptic text). It was understood by some who followed Jesus after His death and resurrection in a way that we have lost or has been stolen from us. The Pistis Sofia may not be the go-to text for understanding, but it is an interesting clue on a long-ago swept-away trail.
In short, we have direct experience with what God wants every day. Which is another important teaching of Jesus.
Dear Mike, this is a very important point. Thank you for bringing up the Pistis Sophia, which I had heard of but never investigated. I don’t trust anything but very ancient writings to be of God; I even spurned A Course in Miracles until Thomas made me take a course in the Course. I assume that anything written after maybe 200 AD is likely corrupted with religious nonsense. But the Pistis Sophia is old enough to be taken seriously, and it is fascinating to learn what it contains!
Even many modern Biblical scholars have trouble understanding Jesus because they don’t understand the primacy of consciousness and how the teachings of Jesus are meant to work (I think it’s likely that we are only beginning to get it now, but that is another story). Apparently this will be part of a point that we will be making next week. But it’s interesting to hear that these very early writers at least understood the concept!
Don’t you love how all of this is coming together? We don’t even have to try, but we just have to listen!
Yes, Roberta! It is wondrous indeed to realize that Jesus is still teaching us. A little disheartening to realize we still have a lot to learn, but He is a very patient teacher.
Incidentally, in a plug for our spirit Guides, their roles really do serve ad another manifestation of the teachings of the Godhead. My own guide emphasizes Love and Patience every day. I am sure she is working to enable me to better hear the teachings of the Master.
Dear Mike, I wish that everyone had similar experiences in knowing their guides! It really is a tremendous help in our developing knowledge and discernment, and as the veil thins it should be ever more possible for everyone to become sensitive to their individual primary guides. I have just had Peter Wright on Seek Reality again – the ninth time, I think – specifically to try to help people become more discerning; but I didn’t understand before how subtle these communications can be, nor how much depends on our developing our own sensitivity to them. It is just so much worth doing! I live my life now in constant dependence on Thomas’s help in big and little ways, and he always gives it. How much easier everything feels to me now!
There are also many people who have experiences of God and Jesus while attending churches services and adhering to their false beliefs/dogmas, on the simply basis of their love for God and Jesus. Let us not judge anyone, but trust the evolutionary process God and the spiritual world is steering the world towards, which some call Providence.
Witness e.g. the growing tolerance towards the LGBTQ community and the recent pronouncements by the Pope.
I highly recommend “Christ Returns – Speaks His Truth” (available on the internet) as well as “Jesus: My Autobiography” as channeled by Tina Louise Spalding. Also, the book “Love Without End: Jesus Speaks” by Glenda Green is very good.
Another great book is “Voices of Love from the Light; Conversations with 20 Great Souls in the Afterlife” by Philip Burley. Included are Jesus, Buddha, Lincoln, Einstein, Yogananda, Harriet Tubman, Edgar Cayce, Eleanor Roosevelt, Saint Germain, Mother Mary, St. Paul, St. Francis, Mother Teresa, George Washington and Black Hawk.
And… to add a shameless plug to what adri lists above, Liberating Jesus, from Roberta Grimes.
Still have to read that ….
Dear Adri, thank you for this! Please note, though, that Thomas pretty urgently wants to add a warning to these suggestions. He tells us that many of those who communicate through mediums and channels, claiming to be famous people, are in fact not who they claim to be. This problem especially exists with God and with Jesus and His mother Mary, since Thomas tells us that the Godhead never speaks to us as an entity called “God” and Jesus is an aspect of the Godhead so He very seldom speak to us at all. Thomas suggests that we not credit any communication that claims to be from God, Jesus, or Mary unless we have good independent reasons for doing so.
(And saying this feels ironic to me, since I am telling you that my primary guide was once a Founding Father and he was instrumental in getting me to channel the genuine Jesus. Oy. But I wouldn’t believe any of this, either, unless I had been there and had been given proof in both cases that felt satisfactory at the time and has been reinforced since that time. So, I know it can happen. You just can’t trust it unless there is considerable independent validation!)
I have just read your article and found it very helpful ,what has pushed me to send this message is the mention of one who was mentioned as a great soul his name is Black Hawk ,I had a very wonderful experience with one guide of this name who spoke through me to a group I was in ,I was aware that he was among a higher level than usual but have never seen his name until now ,I’m 78 years old and brought up catholic but have been a spiritual healer and now not practicing because of other circumstances ,blessings Elsie Mylonas ❤️
Oh dear Elsie, thank you for sharing you story with us here! Yours is a wonderful example of the kinds of experiences that those who have been practicing Christians are having more and more often as the veil between realities continues to thin. We had been told that this was going to happen, that as this centuries wears on the veil will become so vaporous that experiences with Spirit will be ever more common for those who are open to them; but I hadn’t imagined that it would happen so soon!
Black Hawk is indeed a being (probably the spokesman for an upper-level collective) who communicates, and is well-considered. It is likely, Elsie, that you have some natural abilities, and your own primary guide facilitated this connection. How wonderful for you! And what beautiful confirmation for you and for all of us that there is indeed a universe of highly developed beings in spirit who so tenderly care for us all!!
Thank you Roberta for your kind words ,I have had many proofs of the afterlife and communication ,also have seen spirit ,I got involved in trying to find out about things as I needed to help a dear son who had mental illness I learned many things over the 30 odd yrs I studied Spiritual healing which led me to communication and what you may call channelling,I sat in circles for years and the group I was sitting with every week was a very special one ,Black Hawk came through to try and prevent one of the groupe leaving and destroying the power ,sadly the perso decided to leave and our leader had to close the groupe down as he considered the power we were building for a voicebox was contaminated by her not telling him before we all sat ,I will never forget Black Hawk sitting behind me in a canoe and telling me to fast as we were going through turbulent waters ,I have good and sad memories as the reason I had become involved with everything I did was because I was trying to help my son sadly he had brain injury and I had breast cancer and spirit told me I needed to preserve my energy this was20005 and spirit have been helping me all these years sadly my boy passed away in June and I have been thinking about thing since ,I know he is better now ,Thank you for allowing me to tell a little bit of my story,Love and Rainbows 🌈 Elsie
Dear Elsie, thank you for this further explanation! So you were a member of a successful physical mediumship development circle that had attracted Black Hawk’s participation, and a member whose energy was important to the circle’s energy was going to leave it. Black Hawk spoke through you to try to prevent that from happening. Your circle was trying to establish independent voice mediumship using an ectoplasm voicebox of the sort that Leslie Flint practiced so well, but when a key member left the circle its energy was set back so substantially that the leader closed it down. All of this is perfectly understandable!
Everyone, it is unfortunate that there are not more such circles sitting, but it takes a very long time for such circles to develop sufficient energy to do amazing things – sitting in the dark for week after week over decades – so in this day of instant gratification, there are few who have the patience. As with so many things, Craig Hogan is a pioneer in the modern movement toward re-establishing physical mediumship circles: his own has been sitting for going on fifteen years!
Yes Roberta we had been sitting as you say for many years ,we had built up the power and were visited by many souls over the years Red Cloud was the leaders guide ,and Bigfoot said I was family ,as my son had to go into a care home and circumstances changed I served spirit in different ways through healing and helping the sick ,now my son has gone home to spirit I have my husband and his sister to care for she is 95 and he is 86 ,Myhusband. early stage dementia and his sister advanced stage ,I have been blessed with receiving help from spirit like your articles and sometimes people just appear wham most needed ,I got some of your books when my son died for my daughters to read when ready for them ,I believe everyone will find their way to understanding and knowing when it’s right for them ,my son had come to that knowledge himself and I felt I was just trying to keep up with him ,it’s not easy to explain a lifetime in a few words and I just want to say how thankful there are people like you still around to help others thirsting for answers ,Love ,Light and Rainbows,Elsie
My main problem in life by far is mental illness. Did Black Hawk give you advice on treating it?
Dear Ali, I am not familiar with the details of your situation, but I do have some friends and family with various kinds of what you might call mental illness. In every one of their cases, the best course has been a combination of treatment were possible, and then learning to adapt. It is what it is. For some the adaptation has been harder than for others, but with the love and support of those around them, all of them are now doing pretty well. In each of their cases, I have come to see their mental disabilities as simply another aspect of their life-plans, and the challenge to succumb to negativity in some of these cases has to be mightily resisted; but in each of their cases, it is being done.
I don’t know whether this helps you or not, but I do know that there is no way to become magically all better, so the challenge – and the satisfaction – lies in learning now to live with and make the best of these situations.
What’s causing the thinning of the veil?
Dear Ali, what we call “the veil” is energetic, a kind of mental barrier that makes it easy for those at the higher vibration of people not in bodies to lower their vibrations sufficiently to be with us, but makes it impossible for people who are in bodies to move higher into the realms of spirit unless they first leave their bodies. When they do leave their bodies, as we all do at night, they can travel in the non-material astral plane but their guides generally give them waking amnesia about what has happened during their travels. It is important for us to take our lives on earth seriously, since it is only if we believe this material illusion is more real and solid than it actually is that we will be able to use it to raise our personal spiritual vibrations. Which is the only reason this material universe exists at all!
Now, though, with the earth in actual danger because its consciousness vibrations have sunk so deep into negativity, upper-level beings who govern this material reality have begun to very slightly lessen the strength of the veil, with the deliberate objective of making it easier for us to be aware of the higher levels of consciousness, but not so aware that we lose our respect for this illusion altogether. Or so we are being told! This process began more than a century ago, and it is apparently an experiment that has never before been tried so it is being done very gradually….
Hi Roberta. The issue of discernment is a very important one, and is on my mind a lot these days. As the veil thins, and more people endeavor to connect with spirit and with guides, it becomes vital to know who you are really speaking to. Even when and if electronic means become readily available, the issue of deception or interference by negative beings comes up. Mark Pitstick recently wrote in his Soul Phone newsletter that he is working on that very problem because many people have asked about it. I look forward to hearing what Peter Wright has to say on the matter. Any nuggets of advice in the meantime?
Dearest Roberta,
Thank you for being so kind to me in your blog replies. You see, I am just grateful that you make time to reply to every comment; therefore I have no expectations about when in a given week you reply. I just enjoy the whole process. I cannot imagine how much time and effort you put into your work in any one week, but I have a feeling that it’s a full time job and then some.. And you are so consistent:- every – single – week ! 🙂😉😊
As you said to me before, this is the right time in history for people to understand the true message of a Jesus.
Human understanding has evolved since the Iron Age of Jesus’ incarnation on earth. The grim, miserable, superstitious Medieval mindset has given way to increasingly modern thinking. Since the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment and specifically the American Revolution and Independence people have moved towards freedom and humanism and they have seen the fruits of scientific discovery. Since the end of WW2, we humans have increasingly tended more towards spirituality than to unquestioning, religious dogma with its blinkered view of life. With increasing understanding we seekers are gaining confidence to step away from fundamentalist dogma.
And as seems clear now, the veil between this world and the Unseen is thinning. Discoveries based on consciousness will become increasingly possible in the near future. And this doesn’t just mean discoveries by teams of (true) scientists – it means each of us will be able to get evidential results at home. From connecting to our spirit guides to feeling increasing love & joy via the inner transformation of the Way of Jesus, we will make our own remarkable discoveries.
In short, ripeness is all.
And at this time of spiritual ripening, I am comforted to know that you my dear, won’t have to spend time criticizing Christianity or religion. Neither will any of us need to criticize someone else’s religion, or our own. (Apart from simply discerning false beliefs about the message and nature of Jesus, in order to clarify who He really is.) How wonderful it is just to focus on love and positivity and let the teachings of the Master, of Jesus Himself, transform us into highly vibrating beings of love. Thank you Roberta, I am beginning to see these things now. ❣️🙏🏼🌅
Dear Efrem, yes, this is indeed a full-time job. And then some! Between preparing for weekly Seek Reality programs (often including reading a book) and writing weekly blog posts (which Thomas lets me flounder with drafting until Friday mornings, but if I don’t have a draft by the time he gets down to it then I’m really in a mess!), this work consumes my whole week. I am working on two other big projects, and in most weeks they get “a lick and a promise” for now. I think that when I have to get serious about them, I may need to drop to every other week with either SR or blogging, or both. Something will have to give!
I gather from Thomas that this whole gigantic project of raising the planet’s consciousness vibration is being timed and orchestrated far above his pay grade. He will tell me we are on time or even early with something, and then suddenly we will have to rush to do it! He had me write The Fun of Loving Jesus two years ago, but it still isn’t time to publish it; ditto our second children’s book; and ditto Seek Reality Online, which I have known about for years and have been trying to work at but apparently the time still isn’t right. He tells me now it’s next year.
Apparently there are so many guides working with so many people in bodies on this project, and the timing of each step is important; but apparently those steps depend on certain events that the guides aren’t orchestrating, but are responding to. One of the great things about going home for me is going to be finally getting to see this process from their side!
And yes, dear wonderful Efrem, this learning more and more of the truth is a literal feast of joy for those who are deep into it now. I love seeing it happen for each of you!
Dear Scott, in my view the only way to protect yourself is to raise your personal vibration high enough that no negative being can get near you. Then to develop a close relationship with your guide, and to always take the Biblical advice to “Try the spirits to see that they are of God” (I think that’s 1JN 4:1).
People who use electronic devices for communication, and people who are practicing mediums, are literal beacons for non-material beings! Nearly all of those who hover around are more mischievous than actively malevolent; but they will impersonate whatever beings you would prefer that they be, so it is always best to assume that every being is doing that unless you establish methods for protecting yourself. For example:
1) Good practicing mediums will work closely with their guides and go through a spiritual purification process before opening to spirits.
2) Mediums who work with famous dead folks will have guides who are specifically attuned to discerning who is genuine. For example, independent-voice medium Leslie Flint hosted a great many famous dead people, and his team seems to have been able to do excellent traffic-control.
3) Those who work with one specific entity need their own rituals with that entity. For example, Mikey Morgan requires that Carol call for him by name before she opens to spirit; and the one time she forgot to do that, she immediately got some random entity swinging her pendulum around until Mikey rushed in and chased the entity away.
Sometimes you need a lot of validation. When Thomas first came out to me, I took his claim about who he was at face value but I didn’t really believe it until (a) he told me I was about to channel Jesus, and that overwhelming energy, that whole experience was indisputably genuine; and then (b) I heard Leslie Flint’s tape of Thomas Jefferson. I had been a young protege in his old age in that lifetime, and I recognized both his voice and his whole attitude toward a lot of things. The medium who had first brought him through to me had the same reaction to the Flint tape: the Thomas who had come out to us had said some of the same things about his Jefferson life that this Flint version of Jefferson had said. After that, I believed. And so did she.
Discernment is a very imprecise science! It is important that we both protect ourselves against negative entities and keep testing even the beings who seem to be genuine.
Dear Roberta and everybody, after reading the comments so far and considering for myself our various experiences with spirit, it occurred to me that we all may be doing things out of order. The four things God wants may in fact be an ordered process. Step 1 is love everyone, forgive everything. That is the foundation, without which we cannot have the confidence to do the discernment that is referred to above.
Processes require Patience. One thing my guide has helped me realize (it took time to do this and, interestingly, a lot of patience) is that my whole life has been about learning Patience.
It is hard to focus on steps 1-3 when step 4 seems so exciting and others seem already to be there. But a lot depends on this Patience.
Dear Mike, when I first read your thoughts here, I had to think about what you seemed to be saying. Is it in your mind that these are steps that should be taken in order? Actually, their order on the page is to a large extent accidental. I do think that to Jesus loving and forgiving is his most important rule, but it is becoming increasingly clear that without the other three steps we really cannot love and forgive in the personally transformative way that Jesus teaches. I’m glad you brought this up! Now I see that in fact all four of these steps are of equal importance, and any one of them can be successful on a spiritual level only if we are giving equal weight to all four. I’m not sure that’s true, and I’d love to hear what others think, but that’s the way that it looks to me now!
Hey Roberta and Mike,
This is a great point raised (by Mike) and discussed (by Roberta) here. My sense of it is that the four points are a quartet played in harmony. They blend.
Also all this seems to be better defined by awareness: In a clear and awakened state, wouldn’t one love God and fellow humans both, and out of this love feel grateful for what God bestows and forgive our fellows as a natural outflow of that love? Wouldn’t we want to draw closer to Jesus out of love, and therefore follow his teachings closely? In deep desire to know God wouldn’t we delight in seeking new revelation and knowledge? And having a clear awareness of how human things go and loving Jesus as we do, who would want to bind His teachings and mummify them; shutting them into the sarcophagus of religion?
In short, perhaps an enlightened love awareness moves this quartet to play as one. 🙂
PS: Please let me add that the first of the four above mentioned things (loving & forgiving) does seem to be the main thing. Mike is right to highlight the love-forgiveness awareness as key. It feels right to me. 🙏🏼🌅❣️
Dear Efrem, indeed this is a quartet that plays in harmony! I’m pretty certain that is true, and furthermore it seems to be impossible to love in the way God wants us to learn to love unless we are espousing all four of God’s wishes simultaneously.
It does feel emotionally right to say that our loving and forgiving is the most important thing that God wants, but to put it that way doesn’t seem to work as we would hope that it would work.
Simply put, the way that most of us “love” and “forgive” is simplistic. It is merely facial; and if you are choosing to try to love and forgive as best you can, you are not really affecting your personal vibratory rate very much. And it seems likely that you never will. Loving and forgiving are mere situational choices if all that we are doing is choosing to try to do them! They are like putting on a new suit of clothes without first cleaning and purifying the body beneath those clothes.
I venture this opinion because I have been making a guinea pig of myself for the past decade.
What I set out to learn in 2011 was what the effect would be if I rigorously, ardently applied the teachings of Jesus to my everyday life. And what I learned in that experiment is set out in The Fun of Growing Forever. Within months, I was altogether transformed! And one of the effects seemed to me to be that I was loving my family less – differentiating them from other people much less. It felt like a lessening of love for them, but what I soon came to see was that actually, I was loving strangers very much more! And that was all the direct result of my efforts to rigorously apply the teachings of Jesus. Amazingly, too, the effect seems to be permanent. Even almost a decade later, I still am loving strangers. I still am living above daily stresses, somehow. It feels like a miracle!
So, yes, this is apparently a quartet that works in harmony together. And simply stressing making an effort to love and forgive doesn’t seem to work nearly as well. It really must be all four together!
Roberta, this is an extremely important point you have made here. I cannot stress enough how many people who try to grow do not know of this effective way of raising one’s vibrations. So many people just attempt to love and forgive situationally, often in a random and erratic way. (I reckon we humans have trouble truly grasping abstracts as opposed to material things).
I’m so glad you outlined your self-experimentation in ‘The Fun of Growing Forever.’ This shows really us how to do it.
So many good hearted Christians (and others) just think that to follow Jesus means to love and forgive where you can and where the opportunity arises. If only they knew what Thomas is revealing here and what you’ve experienced.
🙏🏼❣️🌅
Dear Efrem, I think you’ve nailed it. The key point of the teachings of Jesus is profound inner transformation in this lifetime, and while ever more perfectly loving and forgiving are the goals, we cannot simply “will” that transformation to happen! This is something that no one could have understood before we learned around the start of this century that the only thing that exists is consciousness. Consciousness is the base creative force. Consciousness exists in a range of vibrations from fear, anger, and hatred at the lowest vibrational level to love at the highest. And – amazingly – there is a physics at play here which is simple and oddly mechanical! Jesus, who came to us from the highest aspect of the Godhead, understood that fundamental spiritual physics and knew how to use it, so applying His teachings can do for us spiritually in mere months what the more exotic spiritual practices take years of tremendous effort to accomplish!
I am not the only one who has experienced this effect. I hear from others now who have been using those teachings and achieving similar results to my own. We’ll have more to say about this next week….
Dearest Roberta,
In a reply to Efrem you wrote “Simply put, the way that most of us “love” and “forgive” is simplistic. It is merely facial; and if you are choosing to try to love and forgive as best you can, you are not really affecting your personal vibratory rate very much.” I don’t understand “It is merely facial” Could you please expand on this? I’m not sure, but this seems to be what I have been doing, to little avail.
Thanks,
Cookie
Dear Cookie, this is a great question! And the term “merely facial” means that we put on or try to enact love and forgiveness, but it doesn’t happen internally. The whole point of the Lord’s teachings is to transform us from within, so our external emotions and behavior – the extent to which we love and forgive – is the natural manifestation of who we actually are. When the teachings of Jesus are properly used as a training process for our minds, they raise our personal vibration substantially; so then we love and forgive without thinking, every time and no matter what. Loving and forgiving becomes who we are, through and through!
Dearest Roberta,
I must admit that I have fell off the wagon with even facial forgiveness this week, but I am getting it together now.
I have become a much more loving person thanks to your blog. Now when I see someone who is perhaps homeless and likely on drugs, I do not react in fear or judgment anymore. I send out loving thoughts to them and the journey they are on. I so want to “help” them but recognize they must make the choices to help themselves. When I meet people of color, I wonder what kinds of racism they might have experienced in this country (and are they somehow afraid of me, an older white male, and assuming I am probably racist), and when I see an “old” person (I’m older, so say someone in their 80’s or 90’s, even if I must wait for them in line, or perhaps be inconvenienced by their slow driving, I wonder what their life has been like and what terrible and lovely things they have witnessed. Conversely when I see younger children, I wonder whether they have good parents or bad and what trials they have experienced, and have they been bullied? Though, they may be loud and boisterous perhaps or nearly run over me with their skateboard. But, being human, I certainly am not perfectly there but I think about it less and less and I am getting better at flipping the script, and asking myself, “what is your predicament in life.”
It is much easier to extend feelings of love, acceptance, and non-judgement when you are not caught up in a religion of do’s and don’t and trying to live right only to make it to the “good place”. With every blog written and the deeper perspective added by your readers, that only they can do, it is beautiful to be part of this discussion. Yet, I am sometimes saddened that Jesus and his teachings were so much simpler than what I grew up believing. So many years lost.
Tim
Hi Tim, Dear Roberta, Hi everyone. I too lament about lost time, having been directed to to this Way for forty-five years! I recall the sentiment: today is the first day of the rest of your life. You all seem headed in the right direction to me.
Dear Ray, I agree that there is a strong and positive sense of directions in these comments. And I think that all of us who have spent our lives loving Jesus are feeling at least a bit sad now that for most of our lives we believed Christian teachings about the Lord that were frankly nonsense. But, yes, this really is the first day of the rest of our lives! And no matter how old we are, there still is time for us to achieve more spiritual growth in this precious lifetime.
Oh my dear Tim, you are on your way! The first changes I noticed in myself when I began to experiment with using the teachings of Jesus to try to raise my personal consciousness vibration were just the sort of thing that you describe, a much more loving attitude toward strangers. I love watching it begin to happen for you as well! And yes, this is such a beautiful community. I think of their contributions here as fully as important as anything that I can write! But please don’t think of your time in the religion as lost, dear Tim. All of it has contributed to the beautiful being that you are becoming now!