Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience

For the last couple of months I’ve been sick. It’s very discouraging not being able to write or even think straight. I can understand the difficulty we're having trying to heal lepers and raise the dead, but how can a being made in the image and likeness of God be victimized by a bacteria that he can’t even cast out of his own body?

Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a Catholic priest, philosopher and mystic credited with making the observation that, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I have loved and quoted that statement for years without realizing its full implications. All this time I’ve been wondering why our experience of God doesn’t seem to fulfill our expectations and have concluded that it’s because of the church and what we’ve been taught to believe. But might it be simpler than that? As human beings wouldn’t we naturally be limited in our understanding of ultimate reality? If so, why then are we surprised and discouraged by sickness? And why are we dismayed by our difficulty knowing God in an experiential way? How could it be otherwise?  

A young preacher in a Unity Church I visited recently shed a new light on the subject for me – one that I had never considered before. Maybe our shortcomings and our lack of peace are just part of what it means to be human. He told us to imagine something. He told us to imagine that we were eternal beings who had lived 8,000 years in the presence and one-ness of God, who one day offered us an opportunity to “do something different”. In an extraordinary gesture of free will he would give us our own separate experience in a world of imagination that would be unlike anything we could ever know living with him. The only drawback was, in order for it to appear real it would be necessary for us to forget where we had come from and what ultimate reality was. And we agreed.

And it really wasn’t a bad deal. For the first time in our existence we’ve been able to experience the beauty of a sunrise on the ocean, the feel of a warm fire on a cold winter evening, and the taste of a ripe strawberry. We’ve also come to know the pain of sickness and the loss of a loved one – some things pleasant and some not so pleasant, but all part of an amazing gift that we never had in our purely spiritual realm. The problem is we’ve forgotten that our real life still exists in the spiritual realm. None of these things have taken that life away from us. They’re simply part of our human experience. We may have forgotten how it all started and where we came from, but that’s what we agreed to. It’s also why so many of us live our lives in fear and caution, afraid of doing the wrong thing and holding on to this life as if it were all we had. Why else would we spend the 75 or 80 years we’re typically given trying to get the best job so we can have money to buy the biggest house and the nicest car? 

Jesus told us not to put our faith in these things. He knew they don’t bring the lasting happiness for which we deeply yearn. That only comes from remembering that we have come to this temporary place directly from God who is always our ultimate reality. Jesus was able to remember this but we don’t – at least not yet. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t beat ourselves up just because we don't have the mind of Christ yet. Maybe he didn’t mean it would happen in one lifetime. Maybe we’re generations away from being able to do the things he told us we would do. And that's OK too.

But if we're ready to give up the illusion here’s a good place to start. We say that our souls are eternal. Let's make sure we know the meaning of the word. Webster’s Dictionary defines eternal as “having infinite duration”, “existing at all times”. Somehow we accept that it means without an end. But it also means without a beginning. That means there was never a time when our spirit wasn’t alive. Quantum Science is beginning to prove that to us. Once it becomes our reality we may begin to consider where and what we were before we came here. At some point we will begin to understand that we are far more amazing beings than we appear in this lifetime. We may not have all the wisdom and power we had when our lives were one with God, but that was part of the agreement. It is promised that we will have it again. 


In the meantime let’s be thankful for the extraordinary gift of our human lives. Let's enjoy every strawberry... but at the same time try not to get lost in the illusion. It’s just a part of the human experience.

Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God?

I began this blog by saying that going to a football game has become more exciting than going to church, and wondering how that could be. In so doing I came to the conclusion that we Christians don’t fully experience the reality of God’s presence in our lives. There are several reasons for this and I’ve discussed three of them. 1. Early church fathers didn’t allow the belief that we could have such an experience and succeeded in eliminating all the evidence that said otherwise. 2. The church, from its position as go-between, teaches a separation theology which infers that God exists in a heavenly realm set apart from man. 3. We don’t have a full understanding of the Holy Spirit and what it means that he is alive in us.

There is another reason which is just as debilitating. We’ve been taught to believe that we’re sinners in the eyes of a God who demands justice before reconciliation can be made. It’s very difficult to draw near and feel close to someone you think holds a grievance against you. Many Christians who’ve repented and claim to be forgiven don't seem to be sure they’ve done enough. There is historical tradition that fuels this uncertainty.

Fearing that his congregation was falling away from the faith, renowned 18^th century theologian Jonathan Edwards began a revival in Northampton, Massachusetts that became known as the Great Awakening. In 1741 he set the stage for future fire and brimstone preachers by “awakening” the church to these fearful thoughts: 

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! You hang by a slender thread over a great furnace of fire held up by the hand of one whose wrath is provoked against you. It would be dreadful to suffer the fierce wrath of Almighty God for one moment; but you will suffer it for all eternity. There will be no end to this horrible misery. When you look to the future you will see a boundless duration lying before you. It will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul. And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any rest at all. You will know with certainty that you must suffer for millions and millions of ages in accordance with God’s merciless vengeance. And then, when so many ages have been spent by you in this manner, you will know that it has only been a moment compared to what remains. The horror of your punishment will indeed last forever.

Authorized as church doctrine and offered for scholastic study in religious Colleges and Universities, this frightening message may sound overly dramatic today, but it hasn’t been easily dismissed from our culture. We still sing these words in my church every Sunday as we continue to speak the reality of our unworthiness into existence, thinking it will somehow excuse us and maybe soften the heart of God.

Lord of our shame. Lord of our sinful hearts.

I know I’m undeserving, so I get down on my face and call out to you.

Help me know you are near.

Here I am, knowing I’m a sinful man.

Naked and poor, wretched and blind I come

Break these chains. Wash these filthy stains.

Clothe me in white so I won’t be ashamed.

Is it any wonder we feel separate from a Holy God? Is it any wonder we go to church and pray to him, and sing to him, and listen to stories about him, and then leave without any feeling that we’ve been in his presence?  

In order to overcome the idea that we’re separate from God we’ve got to come to an understanding of two things. 1. We have created that idea ourselves, and 2. We can un-create it anytime we want to. We are separate from God only as a cup of water drawn from the ocean. As the water retains the true nature of what it was in the ocean, so we, drawn from God in the beginning, have retained the true nature of what we are in him. 

Imbued with the gift of creativity by God, we have created the separation we’re experiencing. Imbued with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we’re beginning to see what we’ve done.  

The Times, They Are a'- Changin'

Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
Admit that the waters around you have grown
Accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
and don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside is ragin'.
It'll shake down your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

I thought it might be appropriate to read these words again today. Bob Dylan wrote them in 1963 and boy was he right! The ‘60s were a time of change for many issues that defined our cultural identity. It may not have happened as quickly or as completely as we expected but fundamental systems were being exposed that needed attention - so many that it was sometimes hard to define it as a unified movement. As a result we discarded much of what we had inherited and wound up leaving a lot of things undone. Being a peace-love hippie myself I’ve often felt guilty about that. I feel a Iot better today seeing it all in hindsight. What we thought was the beginning was only the beginning of the beginning. Now we're seeing the real Beginning. The Sit-ins of the ‘60s have become the Occupy movements of today. Local Civil rights, Women’s Lib, Gay rights and anti-war protests were only the predecessors of a global awakening which now involves everything from government, political and financial institutions to environmental issues, energy development and health care. Nutrition is the latest thing to come under scrutiny. On top of everything else we’re realizing we’ve been poisoning ourselves with the things we eat. It seems as if every aspect of life is being readied for correction.

No one intentionally engineered the systemic collapses we’re facing today. We've created them ourselves little by little while watching Monday Night Football and Dancing With The Stars. The good news is if we created them we can also create something new. There weren’t as many of us in 1963. Today we are a global community connected by electronic media and social networking devices. Now the whole world is watching.

Unfortunately the Occupy Movements seem to have the same problem that we did in the ‘60s. There are so many things in our culture that need attention no one is able to voice a unified vision for the future. The reason for this is because there’s one other thing that needs to be corrected - the correction of which will solve everything. Our religious systems and the beliefs that support them must be reinvented. It’s been 2,500 years since the world’s great religions first started separating us. As Dr. Phil likes to say, “How’s that been working for you?”

A major shift is underway right now. The changes that are made in the years ahead may bring us to a new and wonderful place on this planet. In order for that to happen we need to accept the truth about our oneness with each other. For that to happen it is critical that we have a new understanding of our oneness with God. Once we find that, the other changes we want will happen by themselves. To put it another way, if we seek Him first everything else will be added.

One With God

Jesus said many things in the Gnostic Gospels which show he had an understanding of the universe that only recently is being proven by Quantum Physics. Yet as we have seen, those sayings were discredited and systematically removed from the public record. Gnosis, based on our innate ability to access the spirit of God was strictly forbidden by early church fathers. The church didn’t get to be the oldest and most successful institution in the world by encouraging man to find God inside himself. I grew up believing that unless I confessed my sins to a priest God wouldn’t know about it. Yet in the gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the Father's kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you.” If the kingdom of God is within me that would explain my “innate ability” to connect with him. In light of what we’re learning about the interconnectedness of the universe we can begin to see why we have this ability, and why the bible says God created man in his own image. 

First Einstein discovered that everything was energy. As scientists move further and further down into the sub atomic levels they find a force which appears to be present even when energy vanishes. This force is best described as a field of information. It seems the ocean out of which energy arises is a sea of pure consciousness. Noted British astronomer and physicist Sir James Jeans said, "The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine." This thought is the essence of all things - the one universal consciousness that created the universe. It is omniscient and omnipresent, and my consciousness is part of that consciousness. As was said in the Upanishads 8,000 years ago, “You are that”. When we begin to understand the truth of this we will be able to drop any idea of our separation from God - and any thoughts of unworthiness that accompany it.

Those who must reject these things because they are non-biblical will continue to have a difficult time experiencing oneness with God. If the evidence contradicts the written Word it is the evidence that must be thrown out. Thus the church is full of sincere people beseeching God and praying for him to “come”. Last Sunday our pastor told us we are strangers in this world and quoted 1 Peter which says, “Live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. Set your hope on the grace which will be brought to you when Jesus comes again.” Foreigners? Fear? Future hope? There is something very debilitating about this kind of thinking and I can no longer accept it. We don’t need to cast our hope on some future time in some better place. This world is our home. It is part of us. We didn’t come into it. We came out of it. It’s time for a new understanding about who we are and what we're here for. Thankfully the spirit seems to be awakening us to it. From the fundamentalist Muslim to the fundamentalist Christian - we're all the same in our oneness with God. Think for a minute what a belief like that could do if the human race could ever accept it.

I started this blog with the intention of examining our church experience in the hope of finding what was missing. What I have found is that, even though many Christians want a deeper, more intimate relationship with God, they don't find such an experience because the church doesn't model it. No matter what it teaches about the holy spirit, our felt experience is still that God is "up there"  and we're "down here". It is separation theology and it's not true. I don't say it is willful or malicious. I don't say that church founders weren't hearing from God nor that our pastors are intentionally keeping us in the dark. I only say we haven't learned the whole truth about God and shouldn't insist that we have. We must be open to continuing revelation, no matter how different it may be from what we are familiar with. If allowed to, spirituality will evolve like everything else. It may take some time for this understanding of oneness, but it will happen - even if Max Planck (founding father of quantum physics) is correct. He once observed that, “A new idea doesn't always triumph by making its opponents see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is more familiar with it”. One way or another, in this generation or the next - or the next, it will happen. Man has been lost long enough in the illusion of his separation from God and the world has begun to suffer serious consequences. The good news is, like the pigs' food did for the Prodigal Son, it's bringing us to our senses. Life is correcting itself. Something better is coming.

Meet Irenaeus and Athanasius

Irenaeus (130 A.D. – 202 A.D.)

Bishop of Lyons, France and early church father during the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius in the second century, Irenaeus became the principle architect of the four gospel canon of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Just as the prophet Ezekiel had envisioned God’s throne borne up by four living creatures, he boldly declared, “It is not possible that there can be either more or fewer than four”. What made the four gospels trustworthy, he claimed, is that their authors actually witnessed the events they related. Few New Testament scholars would agree with that claim, but Irenaeus compelled his followers to accept it.

The problem was, there were other sects of Christianity all over the Middle East and into Africa in those days, many who had different beliefs. Even members of his own flock were splintered into various groups, often quarreling, all of them claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. How could he sort out all the conflicting claims and impose some kind of order? He began by ridiculing those who claimed to be investigating “the deeper things of God” and seeking revelation on their own. He undertook his massive, five-volume On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, vowing to track down all illegitimate writings which “have no truth, but are full of blasphemy” 

Yet Irenaeus recognized that even banishing heretical writings could not safeguard the Christian movement. What if someone read the right gospels the wrong way? What if well-meaning Christians could “cast truth aside” by spawning new heresies? This was happening even in his own congregation. So Irenaeus set out to construct even stricter guidelines for believers. It became heresy for anyone to assume they could discover truth about God by exploring their own experience. Christians had to accept his interpretation of the gospels as the only correct interpretation. Any who did would be called an “Orthodox” Christian – that is, one who thinks straight. He encountered resistance from those who said they had confessed the correct faith when they were baptized, but were following Jesus’ injunction to seek and find truth by which they could attain spiritual maturity. Irenaeus was appalled at such practice. Truth could only be attained by invoking the authority of the apostles from whom it was directly handed down. It therefore became a necessary requirement to obey the priests who followed in that line of succession. Irenaeus's instructions about which revelations to destroy and which ones to keep - and how to interpret them - became the basis for the formation of the New Testament. 


Athanasius (293 A.D. – 373 A.D.)

By the beginning of the 4^th century Christianity had been declared a lawful religion and was tolerated throughout the Roman Empire. But within the Church, doctrine continued to be so unsettled, with bishop fighting against bishop, and believer fighting against believer, that the death toll actually exceeded that suffered during the persecutions. Word of the continuing dispute made its way to the newly converted Emperor Constantine the Great. "Division in the church," he told the bishops, "is worse than war." To settle the matter he convened The First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Bishops and church leaders were invited to fix an official party line, and to declare an edict that all "Christians" must believe. They argued, fought, and eventually fleshed out a document of “correct belief” known as the Nicene Creed. Henceforth it became "unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to compose a different faith as a rival to that established by the Holy Fathers of the Church who assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa." 


Among those assembled Holy Fathers was a short, dark-skinned Egyptian named Athanasius. Bishop of Alexandria for 46 years, he was a devout believer in a unified Christian orthodoxy, and a Church appointed “canonical” bible.The Church, by this time, had reached an informal consensus about which books would be included in the New Testament, but he was the first to officially declare them. That declaration appeared in his 39th Festal Letter written in the year 367 AD. “Since, however, we have spoken of the heretics as dead, but of ourselves as possessors of the divine writings unto salvation, I hearby set forth those writings that have been put in the canon and confirmed as divine, in order that everyone who has been led astray may condemn his seducers, and that everyone who has remained stainless may rejoice. In these 27 writings alone is the doctrine of piety proclaimed. Let no man add anything to them or take anything away from them”.
 

A champion of orthodoxy, Athanasius had helped lay the foundation of Church doctrine for millenniums to come. John Henry Newman described him as a "principal instrument, after the Apostles, by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world." Although he had many theological enemies, Athanasius had spent his life defending the Church against the onslaught of heretical teaching. In the end his enemies’ works were removed, condemned as heretical, and excluded from any ecclesiastical use.

In 381 Christianity was made the official state religion of the Roman Empire which insured its protection from further apostasy. 

I Wonder Who Wrote The Word Of God?

I’ve been doing a lot of studying about early church history lately, trying to find out who decided what books would be in the Bible - a worthy undertaking I thought - after all, it is the Word of God. It has the final answer to questions about life, death, salvation, heaven, and hell. But who knew? All my life I’ve been told it was the Holy Spirit working through men. That always seemed a little too simplistic for me - and a little too convenient for the Church. Not only did it confer unquestioning authorship on God it also helped shroud the identity of the men who interpreted him for us. I wouldn’t mind, I have nothing against the Bible except the Church's tendency to take it literally, but the Holy Spirit apparently told them what things shouldn’t be in the Bible too - and that included the Gnostic Gospels. As a result a lot of insightful books about Jesus were forbidden, burned and successfully kept from public knowledge until the 20th century! Until 1946 in fact! A mere 65 years ago! Why? What was so threatening that they had to keep it from us? But that’s another question. A very important one, but right now I want to talk about who “they” were. Led by the Holy Spirit or not, it was men like you and me who made those decisions. It seems reasonable to want to know - who were these men who wrote the Word of God?

Before I start I need to clear something up. I’m a man who came to Jesus with a truly repentant heart and a desire to know God. I know without a doubt that he called me and that his Holy Spirit is in me - the Spirit that Jesus said would guide me into all truth. Lately I’ve been guided to a new understanding of scripture which the church says is not the right understanding. I’m supposed to believe someone else's understanding - someone who was guided by the Holy Spirit. Is the reason for my question becoming clear? I don't intend to blame anyone or find fault with what they believe - just to remind us that they were simply men doing what we can all do - listen to, and hear from God.  What they heard was what God needed them to know. What he revealed about himself was what they could understand. I have no doubt they were hearing from God. What isn’t clear is why they insist it was something for all people, for all time. If the Holy Spirit was sent to lead us, then he must still be leading us, and God must be revealing himself in ways we never could have known before. Maybe that’s why the Gospel of Thomas was hidden for so long. It's only now that science is able to show us what it means. There is great wisdom and truth in that Gospel for anyone who cares to look - things that align perfectly with what we’re learning about the reality of life and the nature of the universe we live in. The more I learn the more I realize I really am being "guided". And I believe it is toward the truth. The church may say the devil is doing it but that's impossible. The devil can't be where the spirit of God is. If the spirit of God is everywhere.......? But that too is a topic for another discussion.

What I'm going to do next time is name some names - not to discredit them - just to put faces on them so we recognize them as flawed men like all the rest of us trying to hear from God. It's time we knew these people from the early church who decided what The Word was - and what it wasn’t.

“There’s Only One Of Us.”

Neale Donald Walsch said that and he’s right. Science is showing us that what we think of as “you” and “me” are really just parts of a whole - momentary flashes in a unified energy field blinking in and out like fireflies on a summer evening. This newly discovered oneness with the universe may seem somewhat impersonal and not all that comforting for someone who is fully vested in the illusion of their personality, but our personalities are not reality. In fact they separate us from reality. Thankfully we can (and do) discard them whenever we’re ready. But how did we get so caught up in the illusion of separation in the first place?

Long ago in the history of life on earth there was no awareness of “I am”. The first kinds of life were not able to distinguish in a clear way the “out there” experience from the “in here” experience. Somewhere on some dim, distant morning in time the first creature looked up at the sky and it occurred to him that he wasn’t that. He looked at the ground and the grass and he wasn’t that either. He was the thing that was looking at those things. He was different from them. He was different from everything he could see. He was himself. This was a momentous occasion in the evolution of life on our planet. Freud called it the development of the Ego. The bible calls it the Fall of Man. Both are right about one thing. It is a false reality. It hides our true nature and separates us from one another - and from God. 

As a young boy I wondered what would happen if somehow the cells in my arm decided they wanted to be independent and do their own thing. I figured my body wouldn’t function properly and my arm would turn blue. I would probably get sick. I figured that’s what happens when cancer cells develop - when the body no longer operates the way it was intended to. Thankfully, although we can get sick, the cells of our bodies usually don’t develop a consciousness that aspires to individuality. And so our bodies function according to their intended purpose. But it’s easy to look around and see what our belief in separation has done to the world. It has inspired and encouraged deceitful competition in all walks of life that no longer knows any moral restraint. It has bred division along racial, religious, and geopolitical lines which has caused jealousy, hatred, and war, and brought us to the edge of extinction. Jesus knew it was in the heart of man. But he also knew the oneness of our true nature - like him, part of that which created us. That’s why he told us to love our brother as ourselves. But it's up to us as a people to come to that awareness. No one is going to come down from heaven and rescue us. Our desire to maintain and defend our separateness from each other must be understood for what it is and what it has done to us.

We may have distanced ourselves from reality and gone astray as in a far country, but I see signs everywhere of people coming to their senses. Just like the prodigal son we are becoming dissatisfied with what the world offers and are looking for the way home. The good news is the father is waiting. He doesn’t care how long it’s been, where we were, why we left or what we’ve done. Because no matter who we think we are, the real reality is we’ve never been apart from him. We can’t be. There is only one of us.