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The Heart: Door to the Garden

    The Heart Nebula

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Jesus, Luke 11:9)

I will start this post with words by Martin Exeter that are part of an excerpt I used in my previous post:

The Garden is so close that we cannot in fact get out of it, and yet we don’t know it is there. We don’t know it is there because there is this veil, or I suppose it might be called a transformer, in between, which steps down the Garden Radiation to something that human beings can stand in their murky state.

That transformer is the impure heart of humanity, filled with the residue of past failures to repent, turn around and see that the Kingdom is truly at hand.  That heart is the very portal to the Garden, the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven within.  How can one enter through this door, or even find one’s way to the door, what with all the stuff in the heart obscuring the way in?  Well, the answer is simple: Seek.  How does one open the door?  Knock.  How is one allowed to enter? Ask.  When the door opens, what one finds is that one has always been in the Garden, as Martin said, but didn’t know it for all the dense and cloudy heart substance that obscured one’s perception of the Garden.  As he put it, the impure heart steps down the Garden Radiation so that fallen man can live in his murky state.  The heart needs to be made pure so the radiation can shine through the heart into the world.  How does one purify one’s heart?  By allowing the purifying waters of the truth of love to flow through it. 

Using your imagination for a moment, imagine a glass full of dirty water.  Now place that glass of dirty water in the sink and run a steady stream of water into the glass so that it overflows.  The dirty water begins to be replaced by the clear water from the faucet.  Eventually there is more clear water than dirty water in the glass so that clear water begins to spill out over the rim of the glass.  Magically, the glass is soon full of pure water.  The heart is purified by letting the pure river of Life flow through it.   By giving expression to love and all its qualities: patience, gratitude, compassion, kindness, generosity, forbearance, acceptance, forgiveness.  This is the only way the heart is purified. 

There’s a passage in the Old Testament that speaks to this:

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you a window of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. (Malachi 3:10)

This speaks to the First Great Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, and with all of they mind, and with all of thy strength.” Nothing withheld, “all the tithe.”  And the blessing will pour out from the house of the Lord — blessing to you and blessing as you.  You receive blessings and you are the blessing poured out by the Lord of host to his world, your world.  The implication here is that the windows of heaven are opened from within by the Lord of hosts. Likewise, the door to the kingdom of heaven within is opened from within by the lord of the house incarnate to pour out blessings through the heart by how I express love, through the mind by what I think and say, and through the body by what I do in service to others and to my world. 

IT’S ABOUT RESONANCE WITH THE TONE

What we resonate with when someone speaks is the tone of a person’s voice while we do our best to hear what they are saying.  Sometimes the tone drowns out the words spoken.  What is the tone of gratitude compared to the tone of resentment, for example?  It’s sweet and uplifting, isn’t it?  No matter how justified a resentful attitude may be, the sound of it is draining and depressing.  This is because the tone of resentment is not resonant with the tone of love and therefore disconnects one from the integrating and uplifting power the permeates the Universe.  Gratitude, on the other hand, connects one with the integrating power of love that permeates the Universe.  It also dissipates the lower vibrational patterns in the heart, such as fear, shame and resentment, thereby cleansing the heart of dissonant and dissipating feelings and attitudes.  I will bring back an excerpt of Martin Exeter’s quoted in a previous post where he speaks to this cleansing:

“What is it that makes possible the cleansing of the heart? It isn’t anything that the mental apparatus of human beings can do. There is a means by which the heart may be purified. Fundamentally that means comes by reason of the sounding of the tone. This requires that the tone be sounded within the range of the substance of human minds and hearts. This process was described as the angels being sent forth with a great sound of a trumpet. If the impurities of heart can just be shuffled to one side sufficiently for the moment, there is the experience of that tone and love for the tone, the sound of the trumpet, and love for the source from which that tone proceeds. When that is greater than anything else, the human heart may be purified, purified by whatever this tone is.“

Resonance is a somewhat tenuous feeling-guide. Just because something someone says “feels right” doesn’t necessarily make it true and resonant with the truth of love, nor with one’s authentic Self.  It may just be striking a resonant chord in one’s heart or mind — a sympathetic feeling or a pet belief — rather then a chord of truth and love at the core of one’s being.  Or it may just be filling a void in one’s heart, or enlightening an area of darkened understanding in one’s mind.  The saying “That strikes a chord in me” can be honestly questioned and critically considered for its depth of resonance.  If it triggers an emotional reaction or knee-jerk response, it is likely a shallow chord.  When it causes one to pause and listen deeply, bringing a sense of accord and deep stillness with no impulse to react verbally, then it is very likely a chord in the fabric of one’s being. 

“DELIBERATELY THANKFUL”

There’s a saying in the Scriptures “In all things give thanks.”  This is easy to do when things are going our way and when blessings are being bestowed upon us.  It isn’t so easy when things are not going our way and when disaster strikes in one form or another; especially when it strikes home personally.  “Oh my, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?” It’s easy to see it as a disaster rather than as an opportunity for the Sprit of God to move through us in order to bring about change and something good.  In the excerpt below Martin Exeter offers a reason for being “deliberately thankful” that is worthy of consideration: 

An opportunity is being offered for the easy movement of the spirit of God in our experience. That easy movement will be known when we are thankful, and here is the evidence then of the beauty and the joy that is natural when the spirit of God is being experienced in expression. There is nothing more wonderful than that experience. Whatever blocks the spirit of God may run into, of which we become aware in our own field of experience, in our own worlds—we become aware of these things because obviously there is a lot of resistance in the world to the movement of the spirit of God—the spirit of God is going to move anyway, whether anyone likes it or not. It has been doing this for millennia. It has been doing it always, as far as that is concerned. But within the experience of resistant human beings the spirit of God has been moving, and in that movement it has produced a certain amount of enjoyment for human beings who are not resisting it at the moment; it has produced a good deal of discomfort and a great deal of pain for those who were resisting it. This is true of everybody from time to time presumably. But we are thankful for the movement of the spirit of God, no matter what it produces, because it is the spirit of God for which we are responsible in order to permit the re-creation that is to occur. So regardless of the results that may appear in any particular experience, we know that those results are there because of the movement of the spirit of God and we are thankful for that movement; not for the results necessarily, but we are thankful in a way for those too because here is the evidence of the movement of the spirit of God. It is what should be happening; even if it is painful it is what should be happening. 

So we accept naturally the movement that occurs and we have a sense of thankfulness for it. There is no other reason for our being present on earth except to participate in the movement of the spirit of God into expression. We are thankful for that movement, and we are thankful therefore for the results that occur by reason of that movement, even if it may be a disastrous result from the human standpoint, even if it may be a painful result. You may say, “Well if that pain is my pain, how can I be thankful for that? It may be easier with someone else’s suffering over there.” You are thankful that the spirit of God is moving. Do you think that is a possible attitude to assume? We’d better assume it because this is the only way that we can sustain and maintain our connection, establish it to start with, and sustain and maintain our connection with that fine substance through which the spirit of God is moving freely. We are associated then with that free movement and we will find that it keeps moving on further out, producing whatever result will naturally occur by reason of the attitudes and the actions, the behavior, of people all around. If disaster comes, praise the Lord! That’s what should come.

Disaster is coming thick and fast these days.  How can one be thankful with all the pain and suffering in the world?  I personally feel a great deal of compassion for those suffering and dying — though death puts one “in a better place,” as we sometimes say.  One has to rise above it all and adopt the attitude that there is a reason and a purpose for everything that happens under heaven.  It is obvious that the lifestyle we humans have chosen and the world we’ve created need to be allowed to pass away to give room for something new and sustainable, even heavenly. 

The winds of change blow fiercely over the entire planet, evidence of the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters.  Wind-driven fires and waters wreak havoc in people’s lives, bringing about change.  “Give thanks to the Lord, oh my soul, for his mercy endureth forever.”  The Lord of Creation shows great mercy in bringing an end to the murky state of human existence and taking mankind our of its misery.  “Behold I create at new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and old earth are passed away.”  Praise the Lord and give thanks in and for all of it.  Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved. 

Anthony 

tpal70@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Climate Change, Entering In, Garden of Paradise, Global Events, Global Warming, Going Within, Healing Tones Blog, Kingdom of Heaven, Love, Purifying your heart, Thankfulness, Transformation

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The Gospel of the Beloved Companion

I interrupt this series to bring forward into the light of day something new and enlightening, something I have never seen in the Canonical Gospels of the New Testament Bible. It’s found in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which reveals a different view of the life and public ministry of Jesus — whose historic name, by the way, was “Yeshua.” I found this while reading THE GOSPEL OF THE BELOVED COMPANION  by Jehanne De Quillan, who translated her gospel directly from the original Greek.

The setting for these words spoken by Mary Magdalene is a room in the “House of Bethany” where the disciples of Jesus had gathered just after the crucifixion and resurrection of their Master. As the Canonical Gospels relate the story, Mary of Bethany – whom Jesus had called “the Migdalah” (which means tower of strength and courage) – went to the tomb where Jesus’s body had been placed and found the stone rolled back and the tomb empty. Mistaking a presence in the garden as the gardener, she asked where he had taken the body, at which point Jesus called her by her name, “Miryam,” to which she answered “Rabbouni.” Being moved to embrace her Beloved, Jesus said to her “‘Miryam, do not hold to me, for I am not of the flesh, neither am I one with the spirit….'” He then asked her to go to his disciples and tell them the good news of his resurrection so that, as he put it, “‘all would know that my words are true and that any who should choose to believe them and keep to my commandments will follow me on their last day.'” [These words are packed with historical significance – which I may unpack in a future post.]

So Mary went to the disciples and told them how she had seen and spoken with Jesus. They apparently were a bit disbelieving and even jealous of her intimate rapport with their Master, especially Peter, who said “‘Sister, we know that he loved you more than any other among women. Tell us the words of the Rabbi, which you remember, which you know and understand, but we do not, nor have we heard them.'” 

And here is what she reportedly answered them:

What is hidden from you, I will proclaim to you. 

My Master spoke thus to me. He said, “Miryam, blessed are you who came into being before coming into being, and whose eyes are set upon the Kingdom, who from the beginning has understood and followed my teachings. Only from the truth I tell you there is a great tree within you that does not change,summer or winter, and its leaves do not fall. Whosoever listens to my words and ascends to its crown will not taste death, but will know the truth of eternal life.” 

Then he showed me a vision in which I saw a great tree that seemed to reach unto the heavens; and as I saw these things, he said “The roots of this tree are in the earth, which is your body. The trunk extends upward through the five regions of Humanity to the Crown, which is the Kingdom of the Spirit.

“There are eight great boughs upon this tree and each bough bears its own fruit, which you must eat in all its fullness. As the fruit of the tree of the Garden [referring to the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”] caused Adam and Chav’vah [Eve?] to fall into darkness, so this fruit will grant to you the Light of the Spirit that is Eternal Life. Between each bough is a gate and a guardian who challenges the unworthy who try to pass.

“The leaves at the bottom of the tree are thick and plentiful, so no light penetrates to illuminate the way. But fear not, for I am the Way and the Light, and I tell you that as one ascends the tree, the leaves that block one from the Light are fewer, so it is possible to see all more clearly. Those who seek to ascend must free themselves of the world. If you do not free yourself from the world, you will die in the darkness that is the root of the tree. But if you free yourself, you will rise and reach the Light that is the Eternal Life of the Spirit.”

She continues to relate how she ascended the tree, bough by bough, entering gate by gate, until she reached the top crown of the tree. Each bough had its own unique requirement and its own unique gifts.

On the first level, she had to release all judgement and wrath in order to receive the nourishment of the gifts of love and compassion.

On the second bough, she had to release ignorance and intolerance to receive the gifts of wisdom and understanding.

To enter the third gate on the level of the third great bough, she had to release duplicity and arrogance in order to receive the gifts of honor and humility.

At the  level of the fourth great bough, she had to confront and free herself of the weakness of the flesh and the illusion of her fears. Here she received the gifts of strength and courage.

Then she says this about her remaining ascent upward:

Only then, my Master told me, when you have rejected the deceiver, can you pass through the hardest gate of all, to attain the fifth bough and the fruit of clarity and truth. Only then will you know the clarity and truth of your soul and, knowing your Self for the first time, understand that you are a child of the Living Spirit. And as my soul moved upward, I realized that I could no longer hear the voice of the world, as all had become as silence.

Then in the Light above, I saw the sixth bough, the one that bore the fruit of power and healing. My Master told me that when you truly have eaten of the fruit of the clarity and truth of your Self, then could you partake of the fruit of power and healing. The power to heal your own soul and thereby make it ready to ascend to the seventh bough, where it will be filled by the fruit of Light and Goodness.

And I saw my soul, now free of all darkness, ascend again to be filled with the Light and Goodness that is the Spirit. And I was filled with a fierce Joy as my soul turned to fire and flew upwards in the flames from whence my Master showed me the eighth and final bough, upon which burned the fruit of the grace and beauty of the Spirit.

And I felt my soul and all that I could see dissolve and vanish in a brilliant Light, in a likeness unto the sun. And in the Light, I beheld a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white. The figure extended its arms and I felt my soul drawn into its embrace and in that moment I was freed from the world and realized that the fetter of forgetfulness was temporary. From now on, I shall rest through the course of the time of the age in silence. And then, as if from a great distance, I heard the voice of my Master tell me, “Miryam, whom I have called the Migdalah, now you have seen the all, and have known the truth of your Self; the truth that I Am. Now you have become the completion of completions.” And thus the vision ended.

“This is what my Master has told and shown me, and only from the truth I tell you, that all that I have revealed to you is true.”

When the Migdalah had told of all the Yeshua and said and done, she fell silent, since it was in that silence that Yeshua had spoken with her and revealed these truths.

And she has remained silent ever since. The Catholic Church and all of Christianity has kept Jesus’s Beloved Companion, along with the feminine in general, suppressed and silenced. But she is silent no longer. It’s no coincidence, I feel, that this Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion has surfaced in this day and at this specific time of the rise of the feminine movement. It may even be vibrationally causal relative to that movement. 

This passage bears much fruit for meditation. Just the revelation that the Spirit is feminine, “a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white,” is thought provoking in the context of a male-dominating world and religion.  Here is the Divine Feminine revealed to the world through Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s beloved companion.  Earlier in the text of this Gospel, Jesus refers to the Spirit as “she.” I felt a refreshing breeze blow through my soul as I read his reference to the Spirit as feminine — my own feminine energies, no doubt, stirring with recognition and acknowledgment.

In rejecting the Divine Feminine, the Church rejected the Spirit, leaving it spiritless and dead – my own personal impression of the Catholic Church and its priesthood, to which I once aspired as a young man. There is more spirit expressed in the Pentecostal religion, and in the worship service of the Black churches I’ve visited, than in all of Catholicism – in my humble opinion anyway.  

I will leave you to your own thoughts and realizations and return to share some of my own in another post.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my HealthLight newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.  

 

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Ascension, Books on spirituality, Catholic Church, Christianity, Divine identity, Entering In, Finding your Self, Going Within, Healing, Healing Tones, Jesus, Kingdom of Heaven, Know Thyself, Light, Love, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, True Identity

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The Journey Within

This is such a timely, clear and simple message.  Enjoy!

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Divine identity, Entering In, Finding God, Finding your Self, Going Within, Identity in the One, Self Realization

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The “Jesus of History” Vs the “Jesus of Faith” part 4:1 – The Kingdom of Heaven

“Jesus said: ‘The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After having been disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything.’ (The Gospel of Thomas)

The Gospel of Thomas, a product of Egyptian Christianity, was one of the collections of codices found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, now popularly called the “Gnostic Gospels.” Gnostic Christianity was considered heretical since the second century. Thomas, however, was not a Gnostic. Harvard Professor Helmut Koester, along with many other scholars, feel strongly that this gospel should be included in the canon of the new Testament. It isn’t for one reason only: it exposes the deception of Christianity which bought into the Egyptian tradition that heaven–the “Far-World”–was a place to visit while we live and eventually go to when you die. Thomas proclaims in his Gospel the revolutionary teaching of Jesus that “The kingdom of heaven is within you and outside of you.” In other words, it is not somewhere up there but right here on earth, and one does not need the Church with its creeds and dogmas to get there.

In his provocative book The Jesus Papers–Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History, Michael Baigent presents the Gospel of Thomas as the contrast to Zealot Christianity that it is.

. . . it is clear that its information comes from a hidden tradition that was passed only to a special few; as its opening sentence states, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. . . . It gives fresh information about the “kingdom”–or “the Kingdom of the Father.” Jesus’ disciples ask “When will the new world come?” Jesus replies “What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it. . . . The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it.”

In the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, another text found at Nag Hammadi, Jesus is recorded to have issued “a warning against looking for physical evidence of the kingdom of heaven. . . . The translator, Professor Karen King of the Harvard University Divinity School, has used a nonstandard expression to replace ‘Son of Man’–she uses ‘child of humanity,’ which is probably a better phrase, avoiding, as it does, the sectarian and dogmatic baggage; for similar reasons she replaces ‘kingdom’ with ‘Realm’ . . . .  ‘Be on your guard,’ says Jesus, ‘so that no one deceives you by saying “Look over here!” or “Look over there!” For the child of true Humanity exists within you. Follow it! Those who search for it will find it. Go then, preach the good news about the Realm.'”

Mary Magdalene was not liked by the apostle Peter simply because she was a woman and “unworthy of the life,” as he said of her to the other disciples, some of whom were irritated by her closeness to Jesus, who favored her over the other disciples, kissing her often on the lips. Peter is recorded by Mary Magdalene as saying “Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all the other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.” As it turns out, Mary Magdalene had received secrete teachings from Jesus. She replies to Peter “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.” This irritated several of the disciples who began to doubt that Jesus ever said secrete words to her and not to them, that he even spoke to a woman in private without them knowing. “Are we to turn around and listen to her? Did he choose her over us?” Peter demands to know.

The disciple Levi defends Mary: “Assuredly the Savior’s knowledge of her is completely reliable. That is why he loved her more than us.” Baigent goes on to conclude that Jesus “taught secrete doctrines that concerned the passing over to the kingdom of heaven–a metaphor, as I have noted, for the concept described by the ancient Egyptians as the Far-World, or by the Greeks variously as the land of the Blessed or the Netherworld. All depict the divine world. The disciple of Jesus who understood his teaching the best was Mary Magdalene….”

It was Mary Magdalene who anointed Jesus with precious oils days before his royal entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. She alone knew the significance of this ritual anointing, an important aspect of which is that it be performed “by someone who understands what is being done, and by one who can participate in recognizing the messiah–for the anointment is just the final act of a longer process, the details of which have not been recorded in the Gospels.” Baigent concludes this chapter with these words of appraisal of the Catholic Church:

No wonder the power brokers of Rome wanted to exclude knowledge of this sacred path as well as knowledge of these additional gospels. Unfortunately–for them–they could do nothing about the Gospels that later became the New Testament except to control the interpretation of them–to control the “spin.” The conceit, of course, is that some theologians with attitude presume to understand hundreds, perhaps a thousand or two years later, what the writers meant better than they did themselves. Why ever have we believed this for so long?

Although there were always scholars and commentators who saw through the spin, it is only in recent times that the manipulation and error have come so much to the fore in public. But so far, particularly in the ornate halls of the Vatican, nothing has changed. Power prefers spin to truth.

“Kingdom-Consciousness”

Andrew Harvey, series editor of Steven Davies’ 2002 release, The Gospel of Thomas – Annotated & Explained, writes eloquently and passionately about this Gospel.  He describes the character of Jesus and his revolutionary vision for the world with such authenticity that one might think he knew Jesus personally. I will share much of his foreword in two posts simply because it articulates so well the “alternative” I promised to offer at the start of this series–as well as the primary purpose of Jesus’ mission and ministry. He speaks of a “kingdom-consciousness.”

The Gospel of Thomas is, I believe, the clearest guide we  have to the vision of the world’s supreme mystical revolutionary, the teacher known as Jesus. To those who learn to unpack its sometimes cryptic sayings, the Gospel of Thomas offers a naked and dazzlingly subversive representation of Jesus’ defining and most radical discovery: that the living Kingdom of God burns in us and surrounds us in the glory at all moments, and the vast and passionate love-consciousness–what you might call “Kingdom­-consciousness” –can help birth it into reality. This discovery is the spiritual equivalent of Albert Einstein’s and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s uncovering of the potential of nuclear fission; it makes available to all humanity a wholly new level of sacred power. By fusing together a vision of God’s divine world with a knowledge of how this divine world could emerge into and transfigure the human one, the Gospel of Thomas makes clear that Jesus discovered the alchemical secret of transformation that could have permanently altered world history, had it been implemented with the passion and on the scale that Jesus knew was possible. Its betrayal by the churches erected in Jesus’ name has been an unmitigated disaster, one major rea­son for our contemporary catastrophe.

Unlike the Buddha, or Krishna, or any of the Eastern sages whose wis­dom of transcendent knowledge left fundamentally intact the status quo of a world often characterized as illusory, the Jesus we see in the Gospel of Thomas saw and knew this world as the constant epiphany of the divine Kingdom and knew too that a wholly new world could be created by divine beings, once they had seen this and allowed themselves to be transformed and empowered as he was, by divine wisdom, ecstasy, and energy. What Jesus woke up to and proceeded to enact with the fiercest and most gloriously imaginable intensity was this new life of “Kingdom­-consciousness,” not as a savior and not as a guru claiming unique status and truth–the Gospel of Thomas makes this very clear–but as a sign of what is possible for all human beings who dare to awaken to the potential splendor of their inner truth and the responsibilities for total transformation of the world that it then inspires within them.

Jesus’ full revolutionary vision in all its outrageousness, grandeur, and radical passion is to be discovered in a close reading of the Gospel of Thomas. The greatest of the sayings are like the equations of physicists Werner Heisenberg or Niels Bohr–complex but intensely lucid expositions in mystical and yogic terms of the laws and potential of a new reality, an endlessly dynamic and fecund reality created by our illusory perceptions and their sterile hunger for separation, division, and stasis.

What I have discovered on my own journey into the increasingly challenging understanding of “Kingdom-consciousness” is that as I continue to uncover and develop in my own depths the “fire” that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel of Thomas, reading the sayings by the brilliant light of this “fire” becomes even more astonishing. The sayings expand in radiance, significance, and reach as I expand my own awareness of divinity and of the powers available to all those who dare to risk trans­formation.

What I want to offer here is a linked reading of seven of the sayings that have most inspired me. Through this linked reading, I hope to open up to seekers everywhere the full glory, as far as I understand it now, of what Jesus is trying to communicate through the Gospel of Thomas, not just to Christians but to the whole of humanity. Let us begin with saying 2:

“Jesus said: The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After having been disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything.”

This saying suggests that the Jesus who is speaking in the Gospel of Thomas is not presenting himself as a Messiah with a unique realization and a unique status of mediator. This Jesus–for me, the authentic Jesus–is like the Buddha, a human being who was awakened to the full glory of his inner divinity and so knows the secret of every human being and hungers to reveal it to change the world. The life to which this Jesus is inviting everyone is not one of endless seeking, but one of finding­–finding the truth and power of human divinity by risking everything to uncover them.

From his own harrowing experience, Jesus knows that finding cannot be without suffering; to find out the truth and power of your inner divinity is to be “disturbed”: disturbed by the gap between your human shadow and its dark games, the abyss of light within; disturbed by the price that any authentic transformation cannot help but demand; disturbed by the grandeur you are beginning to glimpse of your real royal nature with all its burden of responsibility and solitude. Jesus knows too, how­ever, that if you risk this disturbance and surrender to the unfolding of your divine nature, extraordinary visions will be awoken in you–visions that will astound you and drag you into what the Sufi mystics call the “kingdom of bewilderment” that “placeless place” where everything you have imagined to be true about yourself or about humanity is rubbed by the splendor of what you discover. And from this increasingly astonishing self-discovery, tremendous powers to influence and transform reality will be born in you. Just as unprecedented energy is unleashed by the splitting of an atom, so through the “splitting” of human identity to reveal the divine identity within it, a huge new transforming power is born, a ruling power, the power that great saints and sages have displayed through gifts of healing, miracles, and undaunted stamina of sacred passion and sacrifice. The seeker that becomes a finder and ruler makes a leap in evolutionary development from human being, unconscious of the Divine hidden within him or her, to an empowered divine human being, capable in and under the Divine of flooding reality with the glory of the Kingdom. To reveal this secret, live it out, and release it in all its radical power, to make “finders” and rulers of us all, is why the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas lived and preached and died.

I will share more of Andrew Harvey’s foreword in my next post. We are headed toward Holy Week and the Easter Season in the Christian world during which I will bring this series to its climatic conclusion with a provocative scenario of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, a drama that forms the very foundation of the Christian Faith. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

I invite you to visit my HealthLight Newsletter blog at LiftingTones.com.

 

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Ancient knowledge, Ancient Technology, Buddha and Krishna, Catholic Church, Christianity, Divine identity, Easter, Entering In, Finding God, Going Within, Heaven, Jesus, Jesus in Egypt, Jesus' missing years, Kingdom of Heaven, Love, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, The "Jesus Papers", The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Messiah, Transformation, Union with God

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The “Jesus of History” vs the “Jesus of Faith” part 3:3 – The Book of Enoch

Enoch was a name given to an ancient Jewish text that was written, according to religious historian Michael Baigent, by several authors. It stands as a testament to prior mystical traditions influencing Judaism, although many Jewish rabbis would not accept it. Early Christians in Ethiopia, on the other hand, accepted it as part of the Old Testament, especially the parts that tell of the coming of Jesus and a reference to it in the New Testament in a Letter of Jude (14). Ultimately, the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 sidelined the Book of Enoch and it was eventually banned by late-fourth and early-fifth-century theologians such as Jerome and Augustine.

According to Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, Enoch was the seventh generation of Adam and Eve and the father of Methuselah, who lived 969 years and was the grandfather of Noah. In those days it was common to live several hundred years. Enoch didn’t hang around quit as long. As the story goes, “And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” (Genesis 5:23-24). The story of Enoch, of course, is a travelogue of his visit to heaven–which greatly influenced the writers of the New Testament and contributed to much of the dogma of Christianity and especially Catholicism.

Michael Baigent gives a brief summary of Enoch’s visit to heaven in his book The Jesus Papers–Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History:

[The Book of Enoch] uses many of the motifs that are now familiar to us: Enoch has a visionary dream (13:8); he asks for an explanation of the Tree of Life (25:1-3); he mentions three eastern portals through which stars pass on the eastern horizon (36:3), in accordance with the Babylonian and Assyrian astrolabes, which date from around 1100 B.C.; and he also speaks of the actions of men as being weighed in the balance, like the Egyptian concept of afterlife judgment (41:1).

We are once again on familiar ground: we have esoteric matters taught to a seeker by means of dream visions of the Far-World—and in a Jewish context. As we have seen, these dream visions occur as part of an initiation, and the dreamer goes to a quiet, dark place, such as a cave or a temple crypt, and uses the techniques he or she has been taught to enter the stillness from which the Far-World is accessible. So we would expect, somewhere in the Book of Enoch, to find a reference to the experiential, the initiatory. We are not disappointed. (underscores mine)

“And it came to pass,” the text explains,”‘that my spirit was translated and it ascended into the heavens: and I saw the holy sons of God” (Enoch 71: 1). This report has all the appearance of being an account of something that truly occurred to the writer—a mystical experience that could be induced by someone seeking initiation into the esoteric tradition of Judaism.

Enoch was taken up “from amongst those who dwell on the earth … he was raised aloft on the chariots of the spirit” (Enoch 70:2).  This image seems to be a Judaic equivalent of the Egyptian winged Ba. But there is no doubt that this event concerned an initiation, since the text explains what happened to Enoch after he had been raised to heaven but before his spirit became transfigured:

“And the angel Michael seized me by my right hand, and lifted me up and led me forth into all the secrets, and he showed me all the secrets of righteousness. And he showed me all the secrets of the ends of the heaven.” (Enoch 71:3 – 4)

The anonymous ancient writer continues, describing what then occurred: “And I fell on my face,” he recounts, “and my whole body became relaxed, and my spirit was transfigured” (71:11).

This is precisely the type of experience that we would expect to find among the Therapeutae, for example. And crucially, just in case we have failed to spot it, the text makes a point of explaining that this ascent into the heavens occurred while Enoch was still living – as the text puts it, “during his lifetime.” This is virtually identical to the explanation in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts that the king has “not departed dead” but has “departed alive.” It is hard not to see the two statements as describing an essentially similar experience, an experience deriving from an initiation into the mysteries of the Far-World.

These visionary texts cannot be any other than records of initiations—records gathered together under the name of Enoch in much the same way as in Egypt those attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were collected together in the Books of Hermes.

I don’t agree with the author’s conclusion that Enoch’s visit to heaven was an “initiation into the mysteries of the Far-World.” We’re talking about several thousands of years before the Egyptian Mystery Schools even existed. I rather attribute Enoch’s visit to the realms of light to the fact that heaven was still accessible by virtue of the yet uncluttered veil between heaven and earth in human consciousness and to certain vibrational factors that were still in place at the time that made visits Home possible. It rather seems more likely that this ancient story played an inspirational and intriguing role in the Egyptian’s efforts to visit the Far-World themselves, just as Enoch reportedly had done. Again, looking back to ancient times and events and attempting to understand and interpret them using a much evolved (or devolved) state of consciousness and set of values, is presumptuous at best and misdirecting at worst.

Given the visionary nature of this text, it is, at first sight, curious to discover that seven pieces of the Book of Enoch form part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. All were found in 1952 in the Qumran cave in the marl cliff face near the ruins of the community, now called Cave 4. So, on the face of it, it seems as though the Zealot group that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls and was so important a part of Jesus’s political milieu and the messianic Jewish group that gave rise to Christianity were both well aware of the Book of Enoch. But an analysis of it reveals an interesting fact.

The Book of Enoch, as we have said, is a compilation of texts from different authors. In fact, scholars have separated the text into five sections, each distinctive and different from the others. The section that contains the report of the mystical ascent and transfiguration is the second section, which is also known as “the Parables.” This mystical, initiatory section is completely absent from the texts found at Qumran.

The Dead Sea Scroll texts contain fragments, written in Aramaic, from sections one, four, and five only of the Book of Enoch. Not only is the mystical section missing, but so too is the following section on astronomical and calendar matters — in particular, the section providing the basis of the solar calendar, which, we will remember, was evidently used in the Jewish Temple of Onias in the Egyptian delta.

We can see here the same clash of traditions that we find expressed in the story of Jesus when he rejects the Zealot position on the payment of taxes to the emperor. Jesus took a mystical approach; the Zealots took a worldly approach. The Zealot Book of Enoch clearly rejects this mystical approach. This stands in further evidence that — as we have said before — Jesus could not have learned his skills among the Zealots of Galilee.

Mystical texts like the Book of Enoch, texts that would have been very dear to the Therapeutae, would also have been very dear to those who taught Jesus. With the Book of Enoch, we finally have a text that appears to issue directly from the Jewish milieu within which Jesus was nurtured and from a group concerned with initiation into secret teachings, with an ascent to heaven, and with an experience of the Divine Light. Of this there can be no doubt, for according to the Book of Enoch (96:3), “A bright light shall enlighten you.”

All of this, of course, is supposition and speculation on the part of Michael Baigent, admittedly so.  Joseph B. Lumpkin, author of The Books of Enoch published in 2009, shares some interesting insight into this ancient story and the book itself:

Of all the books quoted, paraphrased, or referred to in the Bible, the Book of Enoch has influenced the writers of the Bible as few others have. Even more extensively than in the Old Testament, the writers of the New Testament were frequently influenced by other writings, including the Book of Enoch. However, things are never easy when such a span of time is involved. Over the elapsed two-thousand years, three major works attributed to Enoch have been discovered. . . .

. . . However, recent discoveries of copies of the book among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran prove the book was in existence long before the time of Jesus Christ. These scrolls force a closer look and reconsideration. It becomes obvious that the New Testament did not influence the Book of Enoch; on the contrary, the Book of Enoch influenced the New Testament. The date of the original writing upon which the second century B.C. Qumran copies were based is shrouded in obscurity. Likewise lost are the sources of the oral traditions that came to be the Book of Enoch.

It has been largely the opinion of historians that the book does not really contain the authentic words of the ancient Enoch, since he would have lived several thousand years earlier than the first known appearance of the book attributed to him. However, the first century Christians accepted the Book of Enoch as inspired, if not authentic. They relied on it to understand the origin and purpose of many things, from angels to wind, sun, and stars. In fact, many of the key concepts used by Jesus Christ himself seem directly connected to terms and ideas in the Book of Enoch.

It is hard to avoid the evidence that Jesus not only studied the book, but also respected it highly enough to allude to its doctrine and content. Enoch is replete with mentions of the coming kingdom and other holy themes. It was not only Jesus who quoted phrases or ideas from Enoch, there are over one hundred comments in the New Testament which find precedence in the Book of Enoch.

Other evidence of the early Christians’ acceptance of the Book of Enoch was for many years buried under the King James Bible’s mistranslation of Luke 9:35, describing the transfiguration of Christ: “And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son. Hear him.'” Apparently the translator here wished to make this verse agree with a similar verse in Matthew and Mark. But Luke’s verse in the original Greek reads: “This is my Son, the Elect One (from the Greek ho eklelegmenos, lit., “the elect one”). Hear him.” The “Elect One” is a most significant term (found fourteen times) in the Book of Enoch. If the book was indeed known to the apostles of Christ, with its abundant descriptions of the Elect One who should “sit upon the throne of glory” and the Elect One who should “dwell in the midst of them;” then the great scriptural authenticity is justly accorded to the Book of Enoch when the “voice out of the cloud” tells the apostles, “This is my Son, the Elect One,”… the one promised in the Book of Enoch. . . .

. . . . The Books of Enoch, and especially 1 Enoch, seems to be a missing link between Jewish and Christian theology and is considered by many to be more Christian in its theology than Jewish. It was considered scripture by many early Christians. The literature of the church fathers is filled with references to this book. The early second century apocryphal book of the Epistle of Barnabus makes many references and quotes from the Book of Enoch. Second and third century church fathers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origin and Clement of Alexandria all seemed to have accepted Enoch as authentic. Tertullian (160-230 A.D.) even called the Book of Enoch, “Holy Scripture”. The Ethiopian Coptic Church holds the Book of Enoch as part of its official spiritual canon. It was widely known and read the first three centuries after Christ. This and many other books became discredited after the Council of Laodicea. And being under ban of the authorities, it gradually disappeared from circulation.

In 1773, rumors of a surviving copy of the book drew Scottish explorer James Bruce to distant Ethiopia. He found the Book of Enoch had been preserved by the Ethiopian church, which put it right alongside the other books of the Bible.

What emphasizes itself to me in all of this is the longing in the human heart to return Home to an Edenic heaven we somehow lost sight and experience of, and the human mind’s futile endeavors to devise ways of exploring higher levels of consciousness, as exemplified, for example, in the mind-altering drug culture. We rather believe that heaven is “up there” somewhere in the heavens, whereas Jesus clearly stated that the kingdom of heaven is within us and all around us–and that will be the topic of my next post in this series. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Antony

I invite you to read my HealthLight Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.

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Ancient knowledge, Ancient Technology, Angels & Archangels, Catholic Church, Christianity, Easter, Entering In, Going Within, Heaven, Jesus, Jesus in Egypt, Jesus' missing years, The "Jesus Papers", The Council of Nicea, The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Essenes, The Jewish Zealots, The Messiah

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Sound — Carrier Wave for Intention

       When I am in my Sacred Heart my world and all those in it are there with me and my Father.  They are flooded and bathed in His love.

        While sharing attunement long distance today with a dear and faithful friend who was working with ancestral past issues that needed healing and peaceful resolution, I was keenly aware of our oneness within the tangible substance of love.  Love has no limitations when it comes to geographical distance.  Whatever my friend needed to have transpire in her world had a loving surround within which to heal and resolve.  This constitutes my sole role and purpose in offering attunement, close in or from a distance — to provide a loving enfoldment in my healing hands and let love work its magic without concern on my part for results.  The outworking is always perfect and magical.

To create a healing field for transmitting and extending the current of sacred energy, I use sound. Powered by a passionate desire to serve and provide a blessing, sound is the perfect carrier wave for spirit and consciousness.  Sound is a creator tool.  It carries intention where unto it is sent to set heavenly design and purpose in form.  

Through attunement with love, we answer the question posed to Job from out of the Biblical whirlwind: “Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?  Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?”   (Job 38:33)  

Occasionally, after an attunement, a curious client will ask if I felt anything, perhaps hoping for some insight into what may be ailing them.  Funny how we tend to suspect  something’s not quite right inside our bodies, a latent disease perhaps that hasn’t manifested symptoms just yet.   I usually say something that will point the client in the direction of life: “I felt a strong current of life moving through your body.”

Actually, what I focus my sense of perception on are the subtle ordinances of heaven, the patterns of health and wholeness in life itself, landing and being set in the earth of the physical body . . .  and sound is part of the technology the Creator uses to convey and set those ordinances.  I like what noted American journalist, George Leonard, author of Silent Pulse, so eloquently wrote about sound:

At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. More than 2,500 years ago, the philosopher Pythagoras told his followers that a stone is frozen music, an intuition fully validated by modern science; we now know that every particle in the physical universe takes its charac­teristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular frequencies, its singing. And the same thing is true of all radiation, all forces great and small, all information. BEFORE WE MAKE MUSIC, MUSIC MAKES US.

We could paraphrase that last sentence and declare: “BEFORE WE MAKE LOVE, LOVE MAKES US.”  Unfortunately, “making love” is a phrase that is commonly associated with human sexual activity. As we know, Love is not “made” at a physical level of sexual intimacy between human beings.  Love is first “made” in the heart, the Sacred Heart.  Actually, love is not “made,” is it? Love is eternally present everywhere.  My point here is that Love makes us, and it does so in its own image and likeness.  We are love.  I am love.

Coming back to sound, I find recorded sound very useful in creating a carrier wave for heavenly ordinances.  World renown sound guru Jonathan Goldman has produced some very powerful CD’s of sacred sound.  I use and recommend his Ultimate Om and his award winning The Divine Name,  available on his website http://healingsounds.com.  You can listen to his CD’s on his website to see which one resonates with you.  

I also use and recommend Deborah Van Dyke’s Chords of the Cosmos for recordings of quartz crystal bowls being played on thirteen 5-minute tracts in triads of sacred harmony for balancing the energetic fields of the endocrine glands with their complementary chakras and with the cosmic energies of the zodiac.  She has some great CD’s for meditation and transformation, such as her Traveling the Sacred Sound Current.  She is a beautiful muse and powerful angel of sacred sound.  I know you will love and cherish her CD’s, as I do.

After 45 years as a chiropractor and nutritional therapist, I’ve come to realize that my real love is music – second only to attunement – and not healthcare.  Healthcare earns me a decent living and puts bread on the table, but music and attunement bring nourishment to my soul.  

Discovering the relationship between music and attunement has been a delightful process of awakening to the secrets hidden within the mystery of life itself.  There is so much more that we haven’t yet even begun to discover and revive, much less utilize, in the magical field of what is being called “sound healing.”  This is a misnomer, as sound doesn’t do the healing of itself but merely provides a carrier wave for the healing currents of Love.  Only Love heals.  

When I use sound to convey the healing currents during attunement sessions, I am transported in consciousness to a magical temple of the sacred healing arts that has never been destroyed in heaven.  It was in magnificent form on earth at one time in the ancient past, and it will be in form again. . . when we are ready to honor it and use it to fulfill sacred purpose.   This is what I came to bring, and I will hold it in my Sacred Heart as a seed if only for my time here.  In the meantime, anyone with clean hands and a pure heart can visit this temple and enter in to work with its divine technology.  

Sound is a powerful energy.  Self-serving humans only hurt themselves and create chaos with sound.  Musicians of today, and those who frequent their loud concerts, have destroyed their delicate hearing mechanisms — not to mention the noise they send out into the world that creates chaos. Ear phones are dangerous in this regard, as are cell phones with ear pieces.  

Sound is a creative force . . . and it will manifest the intention sent forth upon its waveform.  It does manifest it.  Look around and behold what has manifested over the years and continues to be maintained.  

There are those musicians and bands who are sending out positive and transforming intention upon the waveform of their music. These I acknowledge and celebrate.   If you know of some such groups and concerts you’ve attended, I would appreciate hearing from you.  Thank you.

Sound is a carrier wave for intention.  Let it be used for sacred purpose to bless and uplift . . . to create the New Earth. 

Thank you for reading my blog.  Till my next post, 

Be love . . . be loved.

Anthony

Visit my second blog, Health Light Newsletter, for articles on health and wellness.

 


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The Power of your Sacred Heart

The heart is the soul’s gateway, both into life and beyond into eternity.  The heart is the timeless and indestructible source of all higher knowledge. It is the one point within each person where the inner and outer forces are the same.  Within the heart, the will of God and your own may be brought into harmony”   — Jesus

Continuing my book review and sharing of Glenda Green’s inspiring book, Love Without End —  Jesus Speaks, the author contemplates in her chapter “The Heart is Your Higher Intelligence” the historical celebrations of the heart, such as on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and other holidays on which we celebrate some aspect of our heart’s devotion.  Then there’s country music which raises verse and song to the broken hearts . . . and the subsequent need for counselors to fix them.  “How little,” she writes, “we know about its fullest and truest meaning.”  

She then cites medical evidence and scientific data concerning our physical heart: “…physicians report that the physical organ has never been stronger, which accounts for our larger bodies and greater longevity. Yet, at the same time, heart disease is still on the best seller list of tickets to Heaven!  The physical heart is a life-giving organ, with deep and wonderful resources, most of which have yet to be discovered.”

Our physical hearts exemplify innocent perception and awareness.  Just consider how, for instance, without judgment, complaint, or condemnation it pumps clean and dirty blood through its chambers with equal vigor and blessing. Sort of inspires me to have a more non-judgmental attitude toward what the River of Life brings through me and my world for blessing and passing on to other members in the larger body of Man, the Body of our Creator.  

Speaking of the physical heart, Glenda also cites Oriental medicine and philosophy for bringing to our awareness “an important and wonderful energy field which surrounds both our bodies and our physical hearts, and every day more evidence is surfacing that this complex and intricate field of electrical energy is a life enhancing source to the physical heart.”  She cites acupuncture for revealing deeper and more pragmatic evidence of this energetic field in its exploration and therapeutic use of the meridians in and around the body, opening a door to “alternative” or “complementary” medicine’s debut into western science and healthcare. 

Moving from the physical heart to the psychological perspective of the heart,  modern psychology has introduced the now popular view that there are “right-brained” and “left-brained” approaches to life, the right-brained people considered “heart people,” who are “more intuitive, emotional, empathic and responsive, while, in contrast, left-brained people are more logical, analytical, competitive and initiatory. This dichotomy,” she suggests, “is often carried to the extreme of referring to ‘heart people’ as feminine and ‘logical people’ as masculine.”  She lends a certain amount of credibility and truth to these observations based solely on the “bicameral nature of the brain.” The real truth, she offers, lies in the “reflection such limited assumptions cast upon  the culture in which we live….  In our culture, the heart has generally been considered  the emotional, empathic, intuitive, and feminine side of our being.  The complete spectrum of the heart’s power has been missed by most people. All of the above considerations about the heart are important and valid, yet each alone is incomplete.  Even taken collectively, they do not equal the Sacred Heart of which Jesus spoke.”  

Here is what Glenda recorded Jesus — whom she knows more historically as “Jeshua” and more intimately as “The Beloved” — as saying about the significance and power of the heart:

There is a point within each person where the physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual components of one’s existence are in perfect synchronicity.  At that point, there is no difference in  elements, time, space, or condition.  This is the personal ‘zero point’ which is known prior to birth, immediately after death, and anytime in between when a person’s will has been perfectly reconciled with the will of God.  A person is forever able to connect with his Creator in that sacred place, regardless of how far he has strayed through the process of living.  At the point of true simplicity, you may enter into perfect communion with the Father.  Whenever you do, your life will be renewed or even transformed.  

The heart is a magnetic vortex through which the blessings of all essences and potentialities are received, integrated, and focused into living.  Through the laws of electromagnetism, that power is converted into life energy.  The heart, being essentially magnetic, functions best through innocent awareness which attracts and receives.  Acts of judgment, which divide and repel, will shut the door of the heart behind you.  If you would make the heart strong, you must first learn to perceive with innocence, accept, and forgive.  As you empower your heart it will open to you.  At first you may simply notice this change as more passion for living, more peaceful sleep, or better digestion of food.  The heart is the center of your health and quality of living, therefore those things will be addressed first.  As you progress in your affirmations of the heart, however, your life will begin to have more abundant fruits, and you will have the energy needed to make more dramatic changes.  Eventually, what you gain from your heart visitations will surpass your wildest dreams.  There will be levels of energy which are transformational and transmutational.”

“In a world so preoccupied with power,” Glenda writes, “is it not ironic that the heart is so little understood.  For Jesus said, ‘The heart center is the true source of human power.'”

Food for much thought and meditation.  Certainly enough for today. See you in my next post. Until we meet again. . .  

be love and be loved.

Anthony

  

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Attunement, Books on spirituality, Creation, Divine identity, Divine Matrix, Endocrine system, Energy anatomy, Energy Healing, Entering In, Field dynamics, Frequency Shifting, God Particle, Healing Tones, Holistic Healing, Incarnation, Love, Pineal exercise, Sacred Anatomy, Sacred Healing Arts, Sacred Heart, Sacred Sound, Sound Healing, Subatomic particles, The Father within, The Field, Toning Aum, Union with God, Your Sacred Heart

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