LSP56: The Roots of Christianity and Why They Still Matter

Early on in this collection of essays about finding relationship with God, I wrote a piece called "It's the Roots, Not the Fruits, That Matter," and there I suggested that the key to reconnecting with God is understanding how your brain-soul nexus works. I also said that if you insist on trying to find God by climbing trees that are covered in the horrible thorns of distrust in God, you're going to get stabbed and cut and covered in painful scars.

As I conclude the Lessons from the Spiral Path blog, I feel it's important for me to state why, despite everything my angelic friends have taught me about the perils of assorted ideologies, I still self-identify as a Christian.

When I first set foot on my own Spiral Path of wonder, science, and faith, I had no inkling that I'd eventually return to the Christian roots of my upbringing. I don't know where I thought I'd end up -- maybe at some pinnacle of New Age enlightenment? -- but I didn't imagine for a second that my spiritual journey would take me straight back to the core teachings of Jesus.

After many years of study and contemplation and conversation with God and God's angels, including Jesus himself, I think I can finally express why I now believe that Christianity in its best form (not Christianity in its worst form) is the surest hope for healing your brain-soul nexus and opening your inner heart to the experience of God's love.

Crown of Thorns plant

I've spent a lot of time in my other books on the problems I've seen in Christianity. I'm very honest about the many harms perpetrated under the label of Christianity. Paul's teachings in particular grafted some extremely abusive thorns onto the message of Jesus. We're still grappling today with the results of those thorns -- thorns that have hurt women and gays and children and God in the form of hate-filled fundamentalist and evangelical preaching.

But Paul wasn't Jesus. We have the power within our own hearts and minds to reject what Paul told us about God, and to turn instead to the roots of Jesus' teachings about God. We have the potential to grow the tree that springs from Jesus' two great laws: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29-31).

The roots of Jesus' teachings lead to many important spiritual and emotional and intellectual fruits, all of which may help you sense God's presence in your life. The Christianity of Jesus asks you to know yourself in positive ways; calls upon you to respect the balance between heart and mind; rejoices with you in the healing power of love and forgiveness; reminds you to use the gift of free will wisely and well; gives you uplifting ways to think of Mother Father God and your soul and the afterlife; and most of all tells you that God loves you just as much as God has loved all the famous figures of history.

Jesus knew what few religious teachers before him had articulated. He understood that Divine Love is a two-way street. He told us we must love our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, but this love we give to God is not a form of worship. It's a way of being like God, of honouring and respecting the God who loves everyone with a totality of heart and soul and mind and strength. When we love our neighbours as ourselves, we do only what God has already done. When we love, we are walking in the footsteps of God. We are living in the image of God.

There's nothing quite like the inspiration that comes from trusting the God who loves you.

My wish for you is that you may find the trust you seek on your own Spiral Path.

God bless!

LSP55: You, Your Life, and Your Afterlife: Abundant Gifts and Blessings

It's often said the best things in life are free. Nowhere does this hold more true than in your relationship with God.

St. Lawrence was a 3rd century church deacon who was martyred in Rome in 258 CE. Tradition reports that when he was asked to turn over the wealth of the church to Roman authorities, he instead gave it to the poor and the marginalized, those who are the church's true treasures. This stained glass window was produced in 1889 by Charles Eamer Kempe, and is now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England (gifted by Mr. Walter E. Tower). Photo credit JAT 2023.

The wonderful thing about having a relationship with God is that it's a gift -- a freely given gift between you and God -- that doesn't cost you any money and doesn't have to be carried out at a special time or a special place. It can happen anywhere. And it's an ongoing gift, not a one-time thing. Once you open your heart to a relationship with God, the blessings just keep coming.

Think of the things in your life that bring great joy. Start with your own conception. Maybe your parents had to spend some money to prepare a family home or to heal some medical issues that could complicate a pregnancy. But the moment of conception itself -- that was a gift from God, and it was free!

Think about your upbringing. Think about the experience of learning how to be a human being in a whole new world. When you picked up a something hard and heavy, like a rock, and you dropped it on your foot, you were learning about the laws of physics. And the courage to learn was free!

When you tasted what words meant, and you explored how the spices and flavours of words can shape your relationships, you were partaking of the mystery of language, a mystery that ties everything together in Creation. And it was free!

When you listened to songs and hymns and carols, and you sang them till your eyes brimmed with tears of devotion, that was free!

When you watched the buds on a plant unfurl in beauty, or paused at the majesty of a storm-filled sky, or smelled the gratitude of the soil after a long sought rain, you felt your humble connection to Creation, and the sacredness was free!

When your beloved one was close to death, and longed for release from pain and suffering, and you saw the time of passing was near, your grief couldn't take from you the trust that your loved one was close to God. As your heart broke, you felt the love -- the love which is free!

As you think about the most memorable, most transformative moments of your life (especially the feeling of God's presence, if you've had such an experience) you begin to realize that those feelings of connection, love, meaning -- they're all free. They all come from within your heart and soul. They're yours. You didn't "buy" them, because you didn't have to. You were born with them and you own them. Permanently. Nobody can take them from you unless you let them.

When you're going through a difficult time, it can help to think of your life as a one-of-a-kind story. The best stories are about rich characters, complex relationships, difficult decisions, and transformative change. Everything that's in your book belongs to you, and you'll take all of it home to Heaven when you die. There you'll have many opportunities to discuss with angelic friends and mentors what you learned during your life as a human being. You, in turn, will learn from the stories of your equally blessed friends. Every story adds to tapestry of Divine Love. This early 14th century Book of Hours, once used for private devotions, is part of the Kenneth Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

This brings me to the question of religion. All major world religions do some good things (such as teaching people about human morality) and all major world religions do some bad things (such as teaching people they won't be saved and won't be allowed into Heaven unless they follow all the right doctrines, all the right practices, all the right Saviours).

Questions about the afterlife continue to haunt countless human beings in every generation. Many people turn to religious leaders to try to uncover what will happen to them when they die. Too often religious leaders use this deep seated human need as a way to acquire power for themselves, to manipulate their flocks, to demean and subjugate others with promises about future punishments from God or Source. But they say these frightening things about the End Times for themselves, not for you. They say they're worried about your soul, but what they really mean is they're worried about their own authority. They want you to be scared about what happens when you die because fearful people are much easier to control than courageous people.

These same religious leaders use the trump card of justice to explain why their doctrines of afterlife are not only true but necessary. They say that future punishment for earthly crimes is the only way to balance the universal scales of right and wrong and help good conquer evil. But they're assuming when they say it that God is too stupid and too weak to intervene in our daily lives in ways that Mother Father God -- not human leaders -- deem appropriate. It's the very idea that God constantly intervenes whether we like it or not that undermines everything religion has to say about Materialist laws of cause and effect. Just ask Dr. Eben Alexander. He didn't ask to be put in a coma and sent along on a soul journey to the very gates of Heaven. He didn't ask to become a human messenger about the inclusiveness and expansiveness of Divine Love. But it happened anyway.

Dr. Alexander's near-death experience was an unusual, but nonetheless valid, free gift from God to help him better understand the pathways open to him for building a relationship with God and Creation while he's still here on Planet Earth. Despite the struggles he went through after he awakened from his coma, I have no doubt he'd do it again in a heartbeat. He can now be of service in ways he never could have imagined before his awakening. Such service is in itself a profound gift.

As you reflect on the free gifts you've participated in during your own human life, let me ask you this: if God surrounds you with innumerable free gifts while you're here on Planet Earth, why would God suddenly take away all those free gifts just because you've transitioned to a non-Materialist state of being? Why would God suddenly punish you for mistakes you can no longer fix in the absence of a 3D biological body? Why would God give you love and forgiveness while you're a human being (as Jesus taught) but suddenly rescind these gifts and replace them with laws and contracts and covenants as soon as you die? Does that make any sense to you?

God the Mother and God the Father aren't fickle. And they don't play favourites. So whatever you've been told by religious or spiritual leaders about future punishment or karmic rebirth is a load of treacherous clickbait.

Heaven is the place where all of God's children are welcomed after our difficult lives on Planet Earth. No one is excluded. We were angels -- persons-of-soul -- before we were born here. When we die, we resume our lives as children of God, though we understand as never before how secure we are in the infinite wisdom of God's love.

We are, as Jesus once tried to tell us, forever blessed.

LSP54: Why Hatred Is a Free Will Choice - And Why Everyone Needs to Face the Truth about Hatred

It's common these days for spiritual leaders of all stripes to speak eloquently and volubly of love's power to heal the world. We're especially keen to talk about the power of love after we've been asked to deal with yet another horrific attack on innocent people, such as the recent gun attack at Stoneman Douglas high school  or the van attack in Toronto. When our fellow human beings choose to behave like monsters, we're quick to respond by offering our thoughts and prayers on social media, hold candlelight vigils, and make donations on crowd-sourcing sites. This is all well and good. What I don't see is a willingness on the part of influential commentators to ask why the perpetrators in question felt such hatred towards others and why they thought it was okay to act on their hatred. I don't see people asking what hatred is and why we're seeing a resurgence of this beastly human emotion throughout the world.

It's not good enough to sweep these questions under the carpet by proclaiming that hatred is simply a void in a person's head where love should be, as if it's not the hate-filled person's fault.

Hatred is not a lack of anything. Hatred is a choice. And unless you can demonstrate that your biological brain has been catastrophically damaged by a head injury or a viral attack or mercury poisoning or something else along the lines of an extreme physiological force, you yourself are responsible for your choice to hate others.

Here is my working definition of hatred: Hatred is the choice to project your own personal responsibility onto somebody else so you don't have to deal with the consequences of your own thoughts, feelings, or actions. 

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own lack of happiness.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own selfishness.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own status addiction.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own lack of self-knowing and self-love.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you've made a mistake.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you're not special and you're not chosen and you're not "better" than anyone else.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you're not perfect and you're never going to be perfect.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people because you don't think you should ever have to deal with your own feelings of shame or guilt.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people when you realize you haven't yet achieved your rightful place as a saviour, Messiah, or enlightened teacher of justice and mercy, a place you're so certain you deserve.

Hatred is an inevitable consequence of believing that happiness is more important in your life than meaning; that morality is and should be fluid because our genetics demand we survive at all costs; that status acquisition is a true measure of why you're worthy of worship; that self-knowing is dependent on measures of happiness instead of measures of meaning.

Hatred is an inevitable consequence of your own belief that you already know yourself so well that you couldn't possibly fool yourself into believing things about yourself that simply aren't true.

Among the self-delusions that create no end of human suffering are these: a belief that you're incapable of making mistakes because you have all the right education and all the right knowledge; a belief that you're better than other people because you have the only correct ideological understanding of the universe; a belief in the superiority of your own mental processes because your logic is obviously impeccable; a belief that you deserve to feel moral outrage if anyone suggests you should feel shame or guilt about the choices you've made; a belief that you're using all your exquisite knowledge and specialness and logic to save other people from their own stupidity (though you usually have the sense not to say this part out loud).

In short, hatred is your brain's way of trying to prove to itself that you're a really nice person who's trying to save others when, in fact, you're a mean, nasty person who's narcissistic and selfish and refuses to take personal responsibility for your own choices and beliefs and attitudes towards others.

Hatred is a terrible force, and it creates indescribable suffering in the world, but it exists only because individual human beings and certain communities allow it to exist.

It exists where individuals and ideological communities (including many religious and spiritual traditions, not least several branches of Christianity and most branches of Buddhism) refuse to be honest with themselves about what human beings are capable of when they embrace a loving and humble relationship with both God and with themselves as souls-in-human-form. Of course, the choice to love with humbleness and courage is also a choice. Love and hate are at opposite ends of the free will spectrum. Choose one or the other because you can't have both

. 

What love looks like: lots of open space. The well in the cloister garden of Westminster Abbey, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

What hatred looks like: lots of rigid words. It's your job to listen to what your preachers tell you and decide for yourself whether the words you're hearing come from a place of love or a place of hatred. Don't be fooled by hatred masquerading as a promise of salvation. Photo credit JAT 2016.

A particular passage in the New Testament summarizes these thoughts beautifully. The passage I'm thinking of is found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-8a, so it's long been attributed to the apostle Paul. I'm pretty certain, however, that this short and timeless ode to Divine Love was written by Jesus and later stolen by Paul as part of the latter's ongoing efforts to make his teachings seem more closely aligned with those of Jesus.

It goes like this (using the NRSV translation, mostly):

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have piety, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

Amen.