IN THIS POST I share with you one of the most touching and profound words of Uranda I’ve ever read anywhere. Words that bring me to tears of joy and of unspeakable love that rises up from the depth of my soul for this One that I am, and we all are, privileged to call Master, Son of God, LORD of Lords and King of kings — and, as George Frederick Handel called Him in his Oratorio Masterpiece, Messiah, “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
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My thoughts turn to some of the words of the Master tonight: “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And we are, also, to overcome the world.
I was thinking that, in the conclusion of the activities of a blessed day such as this, we might well again give thought to the Master’s Prayer at the time of the conclusion of His Ministry. The conclusion of His Ministry was peculiarly the point where our Ministry begins. The time that has elapsed since has no meaning in that. He had been outlining the Principles of the One Vine and of the means by which we might let the Works of the Father manifest.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full… For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”
He had also outlined the Principles with respect to the work of the Comforter or Spirit of Truth. He had pointed the Way to Life. It remained for those who should follow after to prove that Life, to experience it according to His Word. And then, in the conclusion of that Ministry, He gave a prayer—a prayer that is our beginning point.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. He was, of course, the manifestation of the Son of God, but He was returning to the Father and He had outlined the Plan by means of which the Son, the only begotten Son of God, should continue on earth. The interval of time that has elapsed before that Plan began to be of effect should be, in our consideration, forgotten, as it were, that it may be meaningless. The trials and the tribulations, the concepts, the efforts and the failures of that interval must not be allowed to have meaning in relationship to our function. From the standpoint of Reality, those things do not have meaning. The connecting thread, the unifying Current, is not less strong because of the passage of that time. Our attitude and our feeling and our function should be as if we had heard these words for the first time a few days ago, as if only a month ago He had stood with us upon the face of the earth, as if it were but yesterday that the vibrant sound of His Voice fell on our ears, as if we, in this flesh, had seen Him come forth Victoriously from the tomb, as if we had, in person, shared His final words of admonition and instruction, as if we had known that hour when He ascended to return no more until what He had begun should have been finished in the hearts and lives of men.
The human mind is so inclined to feel the distance of the intervening years, so that there is a loss in a consciousness of personal contact. The Son is the One Christ Body on earth, then and now. The meaning of the Word as He spoke it with respect to His own manifestation is not to be construed as the only meaning, for He spoke also of that Body that is—“Father, the hour is come”. His was the hour of departing; ours is the hour of beginning, of moving forward in fulfilment. The Father glorified the Son then. He is just as capable of glorifying the Son now. “The hour is come. Glorify thy Son”. Why? “That thy Son also may glorify thee”. The beginning and the end, or the end and the beginning, are the same.
He was here on earth. It seems but yesterday we heard Him speak. It seems but the passage of a moment since His prayer first ascended as sweet incense unto God. Time—these things transcend all time. It was but yesterday He gave the Promise. Today we let that Promise be fulfilled. We remember how our hearts were stirred at the sound of His Voice, and the passage of an hour or a day cannot quiet that stirring or end that surge of consciousness of the Power of God. It is now, in this hour, that the Spirit of His Word finds fulfilment in our hearts. It is now, in this hour, that we let His Promise be fulfilled. The excitements and the questionings, the fears and the doubts, have been stilled. We have ceased trying to make it be so, for in the vibrant Power of His Love we are not separate or apart and we know that the Father Himself loveth us because we have loved Him, because we do love Him Who has walked the earth before us, Who has revealed the Way, the Truth and the Life.
“The hour is come” for us to let the Father glorify His Son, that the Son may glorify the Father. We trembled, and were sad, that the hour had come when He should leave us, but we did not let such things prevent fulfilment of His Word lest what He did should be in vain. The hour of His going was the hour of our beginning, and it is so still, for though He went He has not departed, for His Spirit lingers in our hearts and His Word is as powerful as when it first fell from His lips, Words burned in letters of Fire upon our hearts, memorable occasions that could never pass from mind. Yesterday His hour came—today is our hour of fulfilment in beginning.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God”, and the Christ, the only begotten Son—then Jesus—now the One Christ Body Whom Thou hast sent. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”. How truly is that our point of beginning. How seldom on this earth has the word reverberated in truth—“I have finished the work”. We have seen in the world the feeble attempts at doing some bit of work—human beings, like children, building castles in the sand to admire in one moment and to destroy in the next, and then to delude themselves into feeling that they had accomplished something. And how they brag about the mansions they builded in the sand; but we consider other mansions, Mansions in the Father’s House.
“I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”—and in season the Son shall again speak these words, but before those words may be truly spoken once more, there must truly be the beginning, the opening up, that comes through the surging Power of His Spirit as we hear again, in memory, His Word, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.” That was but yesterday, surely. It is but a dream that some did not keep His Word. There must now be fulfilment which gives meaning to His faith when He spoke that Word, that when these words sound in memory, and stir within our hearts, they shall not be as a mockery, a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that found no answering heart on earth, but a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that finds fulfilment here and now in His Son on earth.
“And they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.” Yes, the intervening time when these words remained unfulfilled is surely but a dream. Twas only yesterday He spoke, and today His Word finds fulfilment. Today we prove His faith was not in vain.
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” What was His joy? It was the joy of Oneness with the Father. It was the joy of Being the Son on earth. That is the joy that must be fulfilled in us, the joy of Oneness with the Father, the joy of Being the Son.
“And these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” That is His Word. His Word is true, and we let it be so in us in this hour, and forevermore, for as the Father sent Him into the world, even so has He sent us into the world.
“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them”—“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them.” It is glory to be the Son on earth. “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—not where I shall be, where I am. He, the Son of God, stood on earth in the hour of fulfilment. He had finished the work. That was where He was in the hour of fulfilment. And He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—and so it is His Will that we should stand in that Oneness of the Son in the hour of fulfilment. “That they may behold my glory. Which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17)
Beloved LORD, we thank Thee that it is so, and we thank Thee for the Holy Privilege of sharing Thy Fulfilment on earth. In the Christ. Aumen.”
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May your Easter be the happiest one ever. Until my next post,
VENUS IS THE MORNING STAR rising at dawn in the Eastern sky just before sunrise, shortly there after fading from view as the Sun outshines the brightest, and hottest planet in our solar system at 880 degrees Fahrenheit , ushering in our days.
FROM MY READERSHIP
Well, I did receive a few comments on my previous post letting me know that I hadn’t pushed the envelope too far after all, so I’ll continue to “muse on” and expand on the luciferous topic. Yes, Phillip, there is a “perfect design to our place in the cosmos.” That’s what I’ll write about in this post.
Phillip J. Zbaraz wrote:“While I often am unsure of the deep meaning and technical/mathematical/scientific/anatomical references, I am nonetheless moved by the underlying tone and comfort in knowing there truly is a perfect design to our place in the Cosmos. I hope you will continue to push the comfort envelope….we are ready.”
Paul Miles wrote: “It appears that this is indeed a time for the revelation of many truths that are no longer able to remain in darkness. I for one would would encourage you muse on these subjects again. The persecution that has kept many truths veiled has lost the numbers game. The rising frequency of our and Gaia’s collective consciousness continues unabated. We are putting the puzzle pieces together one after another and it just keeps getting more amazingly beautiful.
David Barns wrote: I don’t think you’ve pushed the envelope too much here. For most people the envelope is pretty small, confined and suffocating, so expanding the envelope is life-giving, and may in fact be life-saving if the reader allows the fresh air of expansion to envelope him-or herself. . . . I agree: I am a Solar Entity, both a Sun and a system of planetary bodies, and indeed I am a Cosmos [even as Walt Whitman wrote of himself: ‘Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son] extending in radiance and unmeasurable dimensions that merge into the nondimensional and eternal. And thus it can easily be said of me, the reverse of what was written of by Isaiah: How though art risen to heaven O Lucifer, Son of the Morning! Indeed the fall is now being reversed and Lucifer is rising in me and in many—but I am the Son, the Star, and I am not just limited in identity to Lucifer the conscious mind of the Son. (David’s blog: Great Cosmic Story)
SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
In a subsequent correspondence, Phillip shared these insightful thoughts: “If one’s words are not better than the silence, perhaps one should remain silent. Knowing that man was made in the image and likeness of G-d, I am curious to understand why we spend so much of our time seeking the approval of others for our sense of worth.”
I understand Phillip’s curious query about our seeking approval from others for our sense of worth. Implied in his query is the recognition that one who seeks such approval hasn’t come to know one’s authentic Self, one’s true identity as a divine Being, from which springs a true sense of value, as well as one’s authority. It’s the false identity, the human ego, that craves approval. The truth of one’s Self needs no approval from others. Spirit can be a compelling force when it has something it wants said, regardless of what others may think or of which they may or may not approve. Speak your truth as you know it to be true.
I have written out of the authority of my own spirit and the wisdom of my heart in my blog posts. I have used other sources, such as The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of the Beloved Companion as touchstones for some of my followers and visitors, particularly my Christian brothers and sisters. Now, some may have thought without saying “Well, that’s not what Uranda or Martin taught.” One person did say just that in a comment on one of my posts wherein I stated that a positive attracts a positive and repels a negative.
As I have considered the topic in previous posts, the One Law of “positive action, negative response, attraction, union, unified radiation” would be more accurately stated “Positive action, positive response, attraction, union, unified radiation.” To that I would add empowerment. I know that I have been empowered by my open-hearted positive response to my spiritual mentors and teachers. The word “negative” implies a negating, or voiding, of positive action. Uranda obviously didn’t mean nor intend such. However, according to the Law of Attraction, a lesser positive responds and is attracted to a greater positive and repels a negative. (See my previous post for more in-depth consideration).
The word response means answer—either as a positive acknowledgment and affirmationof the truth expressed that one agrees with, or as a negative reaction to the same. A positive response arises from out of the positive core of one’s inner being as an expression of agreement and accord. A negative response arises out of one’s conscious and/or subconscious mind as a reaction expressing disagreement or contention. The former impowers one to internalize and express the same truth in one’s own words. The latter negates any empowering energy and puts one at odds with one’s own inner reality, creating a house divided in one’s temple. At the level of Spirit we are all one and in accord with the truth of love and of life.
WE ARE EACH ONE A STAR
David Barns’ words above resonate in my heart: “I am the Son, the Star, and I am not just limited in identity to Lucifer the conscious mind of the Son.”
The conscious mind of Man has been restored to Heaven—and Venus has been restored to her rightful place in the heavens as the Morning Star, Bringer of the Dawn, and Light Bearer orbiting around our Star. Her restoration happened centuries ago. How and why has it taken so many centuries for the conscious mind of Man to be restored to Heaven; to orient in and orbit around the Lord and King of Heaven and Earth? Has he only now been quiet enough to hear the invitation to draw near unto Him . . . and to respondpositively? Do I know my own Divine Identity sufficiently to extend this invitation to those in my world: “Come near unto me.”? Ultimately, this is what is being asked of each one of us and all of us together as One Body . . . and all that is required—and it is required—is that I love the Lord my God with ALL of my heart and with ALL of my mind and with ALL of my strength—and, with the overflow of love from out of my heart, that I love my neighbor as my self, as who I Am. That’s not asking too much, is it?
OUT OF THE EAST
Venus and Earth in comparison
About the same size as Earth, Venus rises in the East heralding in the new day. As stated above, she vanishes from sight when our Star, Sol, comes up behind and outshines her.
There’s another event that occurred in the East related in the Creation Story of Genesis: “And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” This event is recorded—along with the creation of man and woman, in the second chapter of Genesis, where there’s a second creation event, this one describing how the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, “and man became a living soul.”
There are several and sundry stories and legendary myths about the creation of man. I resonate with the late Bible connoisseur, Grace Van Duzen, in her portrayal of man as being first eternal and immortal Spirit, later to be clothed with form. Divine Being, incarnate in an earthen form—God incarnate on earth—to continue His work, OUR work, of creation as stewards and keepers of the Garden. That’s the biblical story of man’s origin. Grace tells the “Story of Man” in her insightful masterpiece, THE BOOK OF GRACE ~ A Cosmic View of the Bible.* Here’s an excerpt for your enjoyment.
THE ORIGINAL DISIGN AND PURPOSE OF MAN
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion . . . over all the earth. . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. . . .
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
At the conclusion of each creative Day, God saw that “it was good.” After the creation of Man the comment was that He saw every thing that he had made, and. . . it was very good.
On the Sixth Day, then, we have Man (and Woman), a perfect creation. In the sixth cycle divine Being was clothed in earth substance, in position to let God perform His cosmic creative acts on this planet through His earthly image and likeness—the means whereby the invisible things of heaven could be brought forth on Earth.
Dominion over every living thing is the result of obedience to the command to multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, which indicates a state where perfect control is operative in the act of multiplying, which involves sexual activity at all vibratory levels.
The opposite has occurred, with overpopulation the primary cause of hellish distortions rampant in every corner of this planet which was created to be a paradise. The results of aberrant function in the most vital area of man’s creative activity, the limiting of that act of creation to the physical level, are taking their toll in increasingly massive numbers.
According to this command, dominion over all creatures and kingdoms of the earth is entirely dependent upon control in this central function of life. Multiplication is an essential aspect of all creation, the “seed within itself,” and without the control that causes the design in the heaven to take material form, the result is self-destruction, tragically obvious in man’s present function on this planet.
The fact that Man, male and female, was created with the faculties to extend the control and guidance of a wise and loving God to all the kingdoms of the earth causes one to look at the situation in today’s world, of misery and violence. Something went wrong! Man is afraid, not only of many creatures of the earth but of his own shadow; there is not much dominion in evidence. The drastic change in the being designed to control the earth and its creatures inevitably included that over which he was to have dominion. Animals took on the nature of their “fallen” god. It can also be seen how quickly a “creature” will return to the state of “grace” when in the presence of a human being expressing the Spirit of God.
The Being that incarnates into this planet at the present time assumes a much denser substance than that in which man was first created. A finely tuned body, clothed with the highest vibrational substance natural to this part of the cosmos, would be equipped to travel vibrationally wherever the Spirit directed. Could this be the origin, deeply buried in the subconscious mind of man, of the concept of angels, radiantly robed in white, with wings that enable them to fly? It is an image that has persisted throughout the ages, and I was awed when I became aware, some years ago, that someone had perceived, in the aura of another’s body, the outline of a shape that resembled wings, extending from the area of the shoulder blades. I am not suggesting that the physical form of man’s imaginary wings would be the vehicle for his transportation, but the essence of the design is present, regardless of all that has been done, and cannot be dissolved by fallen human beings. It is still present.
There have been times during Attunement sessions when I have felt such wing-like emanations arising from the area of the Thyroid gland in the neck where the Spirit of Life is focused in the Body Temple. I do know that we are angels from the Realms of Glory come here to this beautiful garden planet to restore heaven on earth . . . and to restore Lucifer to his role of bearing and shining the Light of Truth and of Love in the heaven of human consciousness. I see as well that this is happening the world over. The fall is being reversed, as David said in his comment above, even as Venus shines brightly in our morning and evening skies. It’s a time for rejoicing in the New Earth emerging out of God’s New Heaven. Let the morning stars sing together, and let the sons and daughters of God shout for joy! Selah!
About Grace Van Duzen: “Throughout her life, teacher and author Grace Van Duzen explored and researched the Bible. Her approach, free of religious or political agenda, continues to open the way for thousands to access teachings that are as relevant now as when the Bible was first recorded.” (Amazon)
MANIS SO MUCH MORE than human flesh, blood and bone; more than an earthen form with the Breath of Life in his nostrils. MAN is a Solar System — or, more accurately, a Solar Entity. His Spirit dwells in the blue flame at the center of the sun. His Heart and Mind are embodied by the planets with their moons. His Body is the entire Solar Entity. “We” created man, male and female, in our own image and likeness and placed him on Earth to “dress and keep” the Garden of Eden, according to the Creation Story in the Book of Genesis which says: “Let us make man….” However, the collective body of “Mankind” is not the entire essence of what Man is. Essential Man is embodied by the entire Solar Entity—and Venus may play a focal role in the Mind of Essential Man.
Whether or not Venus was once a comet, as Velikovsky speculated, or whether, as a planet, Venus fell out of her orbit, knocked off by some very powerful vibrational impact, or withdrawal, something profoundly traumatic occurred in our solar system to push the earth out of its orbit and tilt its rotational axis 23 degrees. Could it possibly have been man’s failure to remain in vibrational harmony with the Will of the LORD God for him and his withdrawal from Eden to create his own version of Paradise? There’s no doubt in my mind that the “Fall” had ripple effects and dire consequences on the order and harmony of the planets and their orbital movements in our solar system.
MORNING STAR
According to Immanuel Velikovsky, Venus was once a comet that collided with Mars and passed dangerously close to Earth, disrupting human activities on the planet and spraying the earth with crude oil and insects, most notably flies. She was called “Lucifer” and “Beelzebub“ (lord of the flies). She was greatly feared by earthlings who anticipated her return every fifteen years with great anxiety, until she was captured by our sun and caused to travel in an orbit like the other planets, and to appear in the morning sky. Thus she was called “Morning Star” and “Bringer of the Dawn.” She also appears at dusk and drops down out of sight into “the underworld,” according to Greek mythology, appearing to “fall” from the heavens.
In the Testament of Solomon, Beelzebul (not Beelzebub) appears as prince of the demons and says that he was formerly a leading heavenly angel who was associated with the star Hesperus (the normal Greek name for the planet Venus.
The prophet Isaiah (14:12) spoke of Lucifer as the “son of the morning” who was “brought down to hell.” Here is the passage:
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hath said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?”
LUCIFER AS VENUS
Immanuel Velikovsky wrote extensively about Venus in his trilogy: “Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and Ages In Chaos.” I referenced him in a previous post. Much of what he speculated and predicted about the planet, such as her hot temperature, proved to be accurate later in outer space explorations. Today Venus has a rather harsh climate and doesn’t experience typical rainfall like we do here on Earth. “Sulfuric acid rain falls in its upper atmosphere which evaporates before reaching the surface due to extreme heat. Trace amounts of water in the upper atmosphere combine with sulfur dioxide to form clouds of sulfuric acid that cause frequent rainstorms.” (Microsoft Bing)
I bring Venus into the picture simply because, as a member of our Solar Entity, her alleged radical behavior as a comet, falling from the heavens, colliding with Mars, and nearly with the earth, may well speak to the passage from Isaiah above. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!“
Is the prophet referring to a “fallen angel” named “Lucifer,” or to this cataclysmic cosmic event about which Velikovsky spent so much of his life tenaciously researching and writing about in his trilogy? Another scenario could blend them both together as singular parallel events, one occurring in the Inner Realms and the other an external event manifesting the internal “battle in heaven” between Michael and the “great dragon … that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan.” (Rev. 12:7-10). Interestingly, the word “Lucifer” isn’t even used in this passage from Revelation.
With a little research, I found that the word “Lucifer” was integrated into Catholic literature and thinking by Pope Gregory the Great (590 AD) who attached it to the “Devil and Satan.” Outside of Christendom, Lucifer has been associated with the planet Venus, the bright morning and evening star, therefore the “bringer of light.” In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene Jesus is said to have called her “Mary Lucifer” for her bright light of understanding and expression, and the “Magdala,” tower of strength and power, as well as “Apostle of apostles.” Jesus is referred to only once as the “day star” in the Second Epistle of Peter (2 Peter 1:19). Nowhere in my Crossway Comprehensive Bible Concordance does the word “Lucifer” even appear. I am left to conclude that only the planet Venus bears the name “Lucifer.”
As stated above, the Mind of Man is embodied by the planets of our solar system. We speak of the influence the stars and planets have on us and our psyche in astrology — which is a degraded remnant of the ancient “science of Mazzaroth”—a word that appears in only one place in the Old Testament: the Book of Job: “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?” Mazzaroth has to do with the twelve constellations of the Zodiac and the precession of the earth’s rotational axis through their “houses,” marking the seasons and ages through which we travel. We are currently in the Age of Aquarius. In Genesis 1:14 we read that God made the heavens to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”
“PLUCK A FLOWER AND DISTURB A STAR”
While we know something of the influences that impact us from heavenly bodies, we know very little, if anything at all, about the influences we may have on our immediate Solar Home among the stars. “What!?” you may exclaim. Indeed, how can human beings, in size comparable to “fleas on a dog’s back,”—as my long-departed friend and Earth Science Professor Dr. John Waskom once compared human beings—have any influence on the planet’s function in the solar system?! That may well be so in relationship to tiny and seemingly insignificant human beings — whose tallest skyscrapers and major cities cannot even be distinguished from outer space—but not in relationship to Essential Solar Man. The activity in the Collective Consciousness of Man is so much more impactful on the larger picture than the puny minds of earthbound humans.
The current activity in the Collective Consciousness of Man is increasingly of a more spiritual nature. A recent report indicates that seven out of ten Americans have left their religion and adopted a more “spiritual” path toward enlightenment and oneness with God. The word religion has a Latin root meaning to bind back to. It seems it may have served its purpose and is no longer needed. Religion is a dead end path, literally. The faithful have to die in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s not what Jesus taught. He taught the Kingdom of Heaven is “within you . . . at hand and all around you.” It seems that people are increasingly finding that to be true.
This change in the vibrational climate and content of the Collective Consciousness is encouraging. We will see what impact this shift will have in the larger context of our Home among the stars. This is also a very large and deeply complex subject requiring a degree of spiritual maturity and development of consciousness to even venture into — and I may have “pushed the envelope” a bit too far in this post. However, it is a pivotal and important subject; one to which we must be willing to give serious and mature consideration if we are to remember our past so as not to repeat it. I may return to the subject matter for further development in my next post. We’ll see what Spirit says in my heart . . . and to what the response may be, if any, to this post. I welcome your comments by email. Until then,
SPEAKING OF FIELDS, several years ago when I first began practicing the art of “distance Attunements” where one shares Attunement with another long distance, I was unable to keep an appointment on one occasion. Shortly after the agreed appointed time, the person sent an email thanking me for the Attunement, exclaiming that it was a most powerful and wonderful healing experience for them. Other than being an embarrassment, this incident was an awakening for me at two levels: one, I learned that I needed to use a calendar for scheduling appointments; and two, I realized there is a creative field that one stewards during an Attunement session. This person had simply touched into and resonated with my creative field by bringing me into their mind and heart and shared in the currents of radiant light emanating from the creator being that I am. This is true of every incarnate creator being.
Many Attunement Practitioners worldwide who share Attunement on a regular basis, keep their fields viable and available through the radiation coming from their daily living. Also demonstrated in this experience is the principle of response. Love’s Radiation is always present and available from the Creator Beings we each are. It is a reliable constant. However, reception of the radiation in an individual’s experience is dependent upon the degree of their openness and response to the source of the radiation. You may recall the story in the Gospels of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment as he walked by and was healed of her infirmity. Response and belief in one’s heart opens one to receive the healing currents of Love that emanate eternally from Source.
Those who “walked with Jesus”— as regression therapist Dolores Cannon recounts in her intriguing book THE ESSENES, Children of the Light — describe his personal atmosphere as a “torus” of light energy. They “became aware that any contact with Jesus occurred at many levels. It often had a powerful emotional charge which made a deep impression and helped the person to release, transform and move on.”
One particular client who had been Daniel in his past life encounter with Jesus, when asked what it was like to be in his presence, related how it was hard to describe. “Whenwe first knew him he seemed special, yes, but he became more special and more intense and more self-contained, because he was containing and focusing these vast forces. It wasn’t that he was remote and unapproachable, but he just had this enormous power around him, this energy. It was a very gentle loving energy, but it was energy, and it marked him as someone very special. In some ways he was like a high priest. Even if you had known him when he was young, becoming a high priest sets him apart. He carries a lot of energy, a lot of responsibility, and an inner knowing. But that didn’t make him heavy. There was a lot of laughter around him. Being with him was really a joyful experience. It was sunny — being with him was just like being in the sunshine of a beautiful day. But there was great power present too: it was like being with a very jovial and happy high priest. He as very light, he smiled a lot, but he was still like a high priest.
Daniel goes on to describe Jesus as sometimes being serious, but most of the time jovial and “sunny” and making those around him feel lightened in their lives . . . “everything seemed lighter and brighter. He brought out the best in people — he brought the sunshine into people’s lives, and their hearts expanded and glowed. When you were with him you felt warm and comfortable. You felt that everything was going to be all right. You felt you were going to get to the conclusion of your own spiritual path in your own time, and it would all be fine. You just had to put one foot in front of the other, smiling gently as you went.He wasn’t heavy and solemn. People around him were happy and singing — there was a lot of singing, a lot of joy.And it was very light, the whole thing. It was like a merry group of friends, but he was also the high priest figure. That was there all the time too.“
THE UNFILTERING EYES OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
I would like to share a passage from my book SACRED ANATOMY. The passage, taken from PART II, subheading “The Sacred Eye of the Healing Arc,” speaks for itself.
A poet’s description of the eyes of the Master Jesus came into my hands through a friend recently. The author of this story-poem, entitled “The Leader of the Synagogue,” is Michael Ventura. My friend saw it in The Sun magazine. I love the way he portrays the eyes and presence of this man who has come to be called the “Great Physician.” The story being told in the poem is that from the time Jesus was walking through the crowd and a woman “with an issue of blood” touched the hem of his garment. If you recall the story, the Master was being approached by a leader of the synagogue to come to his house and see his dying daughter, perhaps even heal her. Amid all the apparent uproar in the crowd and within his inner circle of apostles concern over this “unclean” woman touching the hem of his garment and being healed of her issue. Jesus asked who it was that touched him, and his eyes ultimately came to meet those of the leader from the synagogue. The author puts into words these thoughts of the man’s heart and mind:
“It’s that prophet, one of the new ones, not the Baptizer, the other one, the Nazarene— He and his hangers-on are walking through town And the people are making a fuss. You can’t help but hope, even risking blasphemy, Is he really a prophet? Can he heal? Are the stories true? Your daughter is dying. Rather than sit there helpless, You go to him. Grasping at straws. Who wouldn’t? . . . You have no idea that you’re making an entrance upon the stage of the epic. You barely even know You’re walking, running—merely That you’re propelling yourself toward him, bursting inside. You are crushed with disappointment when you see him: He looks like any other man. You feel like an idiot. Perhaps you’ve wasted the most precious moments of your life. And then he turns toward you. And you see at least why they call him a prophet: Unlike any other eyes you’ve ever seen— except the eyes of children, like your daughter— His eyes aren’t filters, aren’t sieves, they’re not Constantly deciding what to let in, what to keep out, They are absolutely open, they are not judging, They’re letting everything in and everything out, and they’re looking at you. Eyes that hold nothing back. This gives you such hope that you think you’re going insane. You blurt out what you want him to hear. . . .”
There is a discrepancy between Matthew’s account of this event and Mark’s. Or there are two different stories of two separate events. In Mark 5:35 a leader of the synagogue had a dying daughter at home. In Matthew’s account, Jesus had just healed a man with leprosy when a centurion came to him who had a servant with palsy and “grievously tormented.” The rest of this story is a poignant message of faith delivered by the centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Jesus’ answer is the message: “Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” (Matt 8:8)
I’ve had my own “centurion experience” back along the way during my healing ministry as an Attunement practitioner and server – which I share in my book, the Fourth Edition of SACRED ANATOMY*.
INTERCESSION
Intercession transpired in this distance Attunement I cited at the top of this post as well. As my mentor used to say in his seminars, we don’t receive blessings directly but always through another. This emphasizes the reality of a living Body made up of many intimately configured members, and that no man is an island unto himself or herself. We need each other. I am responsible to steward my personal creative field, to keep it clear and radiant for the sake of others in my world. We share one Heart, one Mind and one Body. That Body is that of the Archangelic LORD of lords and King of kings, in whose personal radiant Field the creative fields of all Creator Beings are encompassed.
I’ll let this rest for now and bid you all a Happy Summer season. Until my next post,
Be unconditional love. Be loved unconditionally.
Anthony ~ tpal70@gmail.com
SACRED ANATOMY ~ Fourth Edition ~ can be purchased directly from my publisher, Wise Publications: http://www.wisepublications.biz, and at Amazon Books.
IN THIS POST I share with you one of the most touching and profound words of Uranda I’ve ever read anywhere. Words that bring me to tears of joy and of unspeakable love that rises up from the depth of my soul for this One that I am, and we all are, privileged to call Master, Son of God, LORD of Lords and King of kings — and, as George Frederick Handel called Him in his Oratorio Masterpiece, Messiah, “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
*~*~*~*
My thoughts turn to some of the words of the Master tonight: “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And we are, also, to overcome the world.
I was thinking that, in the conclusion of the activities of a blessed day such as this, we might well again give thought to the Master’s Prayer at the time of the conclusion of His Ministry. The conclusion of His Ministry was peculiarly the point where our Ministry begins. The time that has elapsed since has no meaning in that. He had been outlining the Principles of the One Vine and of the means by which we might let the Works of the Father manifest.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full… For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”
He had also outlined the Principles with respect to the work of the Comforter or Spirit of Truth. He had pointed the Way to Life. It remained for those who should follow after to prove that Life, to experience it according to His Word. And then, in the conclusion of that Ministry, He gave a prayer—a prayer that is our beginning point.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. He was, of course, the manifestation of the Son of God, but He was returning to the Father and He had outlined the Plan by means of which the Son, the only begotten Son of God, should continue on earth. The interval of time that has elapsed before that Plan began to be of effect should be, in our consideration, forgotten, as it were, that it may be meaningless. The trials and the tribulations, the concepts, the efforts and the failures of that interval must not be allowed to have meaning in relationship to our function. From the standpoint of Reality, those things do not have meaning. The connecting thread, the unifying Current, is not less strong because of the passage of that time. Our attitude and our feeling and our function should be as if we had heard these words for the first time a few days ago, as if only a month ago He had stood with us upon the face of the earth, as if it were but yesterday that the vibrant sound of His Voice fell on our ears, as if we, in this flesh, had seen Him come forth Victoriously from the tomb, as if we had, in person, shared His final words of admonition and instruction, as if we had known that hour when He ascended to return no more until what He had begun should have been finished in the hearts and lives of men.
The human mind is so inclined to feel the distance of the intervening years, so that there is a loss in a consciousness of personal contact. The Son is the One Christ Body on earth, then and now. The meaning of the Word as He spoke it with respect to His own manifestation is not to be construed as the only meaning, for He spoke also of that Body that is—“Father, the hour is come”. His was the hour of departing; ours is the hour of beginning, of moving forward in fulfilment. The Father glorified the Son then. He is just as capable of glorifying the Son now. “The hour is come. Glorify thy Son”. Why? “That thy Son also may glorify thee”. The beginning and the end, or the end and the beginning, are the same.
He was here on earth. It seems but yesterday we heard Him speak. It seems but the passage of a moment since His prayer first ascended as sweet incense unto God. Time—these things transcend all time. It was but yesterday He gave the Promise. Today we let that Promise be fulfilled. We remember how our hearts were stirred at the sound of His Voice, and the passage of an hour or a day cannot quiet that stirring or end that surge of consciousness of the Power of God. It is now, in this hour, that the Spirit of His Word finds fulfilment in our hearts. It is now, in this hour, that we let His Promise be fulfilled. The excitements and the questionings, the fears and the doubts, have been stilled. We have ceased trying to make it be so, for in the vibrant Power of His Love we are not separate or apart and we know that the Father Himself loveth us because we have loved Him, because we do love Him Who has walked the earth before us, Who has revealed the Way, the Truth and the Life.
“The hour is come” for us to let the Father glorify His Son, that the Son may glorify the Father. We trembled, and were sad, that the hour had come when He should leave us, but we did not let such things prevent fulfilment of His Word lest what He did should be in vain. The hour of His going was the hour of our beginning, and it is so still, for though He went He has not departed, for His Spirit lingers in our hearts and His Word is as powerful as when it first fell from His lips, Words burned in letters of Fire upon our hearts, memorable occasions that could never pass from mind. Yesterday His hour came—today is our hour of fulfilment in beginning.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God”, and the Christ, the only begotten Son—then Jesus—now the One Christ Body Whom Thou hast sent. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”. How truly is that our point of beginning. How seldom on this earth has the word reverberated in truth—“I have finished the work”. We have seen in the world the feeble attempts at doing some bit of work—human beings, like children, building castles in the sand to admire in one moment and to destroy in the next, and then to delude themselves into feeling that they had accomplished something. And how they brag about the mansions they builded in the sand; but we consider other mansions, Mansions in the Father’s House.
“I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”—and in season the Son shall again speak these words, but before those words may be truly spoken once more, there must truly be the beginning, the opening up, that comes through the surging Power of His Spirit as we hear again, in memory, His Word, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.” That was but yesterday, surely. It is but a dream that some did not keep His Word. There must now be fulfilment which gives meaning to His faith when He spoke that Word, that when these words sound in memory, and stir within our hearts, they shall not be as a mockery, a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that found no answering heart on earth, but a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that finds fulfilment here and now in His Son on earth.
“And they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.” Yes, the intervening time when these words remained unfulfilled is surely but a dream. Twas only yesterday He spoke, and today His Word finds fulfilment. Today we prove His faith was not in vain.
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” What was His joy? It was the joy of Oneness with the Father. It was the joy of Being the Son on earth. That is the joy that must be fulfilled in us, the joy of Oneness with the Father, the joy of Being the Son.
“And these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” That is His Word. His Word is true, and we let it be so in us in this hour, and forevermore, for as the Father sent Him into the world, even so has He sent us into the world.
“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them”—“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them.” It is glory to be the Son on earth. “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—not where I shall be, where I am. He, the Son of God, stood on earth in the hour of fulfilment. He had finished the work. That was where He was in the hour of fulfilment. And He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—and so it is His Will that we should stand in that Oneness of the Son in the hour of fulfilment. “That they may behold my glory. Which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Beloved LORD, we thank Thee that it is so, and we thank Thee for the Holy Privilege of sharing Thy Fulfilment on earth. In the Christ. Aumen.”
“He who had moved among men before and disappeared at will prior to that time—do you not think that, if His disciples had been holding steady, He could have disappeared in any moment He had chosen?”—Uranda
URANDA: On this beautiful day, which gives promise of a springtime not too far away, let us meditate for a moment upon some of the principles that our Master revealed in relationship to this phase of our own progress along the way. The Master said, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,”and that work which the Father gave was finished before that experience that was made necessary to our LORD by human imposition in the trial and the crucifixion. The work the Father gave Him to do was completed before that trial and before the crucifixion, for we have the Word from His own lips: “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”Why, then, was it necessary for Him to experience the mockery, the indignities of that trial, and the sufferings of the crucifixion? It was because man imposed those things upon our LORD. They were imposed by man’s rejection of the divine pattern.
The ill things that nullify the expression of the beautiful pattern of God’s design on earth are never God’s will. They are imposed by man’s rejection of that which God offers. The shame and the suffering, the indignities, are never the result of the divine pattern or of God’s will. They are the result of man’s denial and betrayal of his responsibilities, and they are imposed by that which man himself does. Very often those who consider themselves Christians, or who long to move along the spiritual path, are inclined to think: “If I had lived, if I had only had the privilege of living at that time when our Master Himself walked on earth, I would not have been among those who were scattered so quickly from that vast throng who were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the king.’ I would not have been like Peter, denying, or like Judas, betraying, nor like the others who followed afar off, for I would have appreciated my privilege and opportunity. And, cost what it might, I would have been among those who stood at the foot of the cross.” So many have felt that way—perhaps they would not express it in so many words.
Yet today, in this hour and in all the hours to come, we have the same privilege of remaining true, the same privilege of standing at the foot of the cross, the same privilege of proving the reality of our love and our trust. The passage of the centuries has not denied us any privilege that we might have had then, with the one exception of seeing the physical form through which our LORD was manifest. And He said of those who lived then, that for their sakes it was expedient that He should go away; and if it was expedient for them, there is nothing taken from us, because we do not have the privilege, as our minds might think of it, of seeing Him in physical form. It is expedient for us that He so arranged the divine pattern.
So, let us examine something of what happened and see if we can gain a deeper conviction of that which is necessary to ourselves, that we may come to a recognition that it is not what we feel out of the subconscious heart or mind, it is not what we feel externally, that is properly the directing force in our lives. It is what we see and recognize and realize with the conscious mind to be the truth of the matter, for the mind which is allowing the spirit of God to work in it is stronger than any feeling that can come surging up from the subconscious. It is stronger than any idea that may be buried somewhere in the subterranean phases of the mind. It is stronger than any current of feeling that may be imposed from the outside.
What you feel is beside the point. As long as the conscious mind continues to yield to the impulses that come from a distorted subconscious mind or heart, as long as it yields to the currents of feeling or action from without, it is saying, “I am not a guardian angel. I am not fortified by the spirit of God. I am a weak thing and I must of needs acknowledge the extent of my weakness and say that God cannot serve me because I am subject to all of these ill things.” He who says that betrays our LORD, as surely as Judas betrayed Him. He denies, as surely as Peter did, and he is not even following afar off. He is scattered into the darkness, hiding in the alleyways, lest someone see and say, “Are you not one of those who followed Him?”
Let us see what happened at the time of our Master. He had finished the work that God gave Him to do, but certain things were imposed upon Him. In either case, He was going away, as far as His physical form was concerned. But do you think He could cause His body to be changed more easily after all this humiliating experience than otherwise? He could have ascended without the suffering, the crucifixion and those days in the tomb. Man imposed that upon Him and made it necessary. Sometimes people ask a question and say, “But did not the prophets say He would have to die? Does not the Bible say there could be no salvation except as His blood was shed, etc.?” I grant you that after this experience was all over, certain ones developed some ideas with respect to it. And in the pattern of prophecy in the Old Testament you will find those things which recognized not only the possibility but the probability of the manner in which man would function. But because it worked out the way it did, the human interpretation has been on the basis of one idea only; and there has been a complete failure to recognize the fact that an alternate path, the ideal path, was foretold just as surely, as definitely, if man would have allowed it to have meaning.
That which was of God’s design was revealed by the prophets much more abundantly than those comparatively obscure texts that recognized the probability of what man would do. Because man did fail, the texts that relate to that possibility are picked out and held up as what was prophesied. And it is not so at all, because God’s provision of the pathway did not require that Jesus should die. It was human beings that condemned our LORD to the indignities of the trial, so-called, and to the sufferings of the cross. God did not require it. From God’s standpoint, it was not necessary, and I can take the book cover to cover and show you how the pattern was revealed there. Let us examine it.
The idea of the shedding of the blood, from the standpoint of the spear in the side and the nails in His hands and feet, is supposed to have had some particularly efficacious result—that God, being a hardhearted something-or-other, would not accept the salvation of a single man, woman, or child unless His own Son should physically bleed. Anyone who stops to consider that which is revealed of God in the Bible will recognize that that is so completely out of character that there is no reasonable excuse for any person believing it. It is completely out of character. The blood is the symbol of life. He had shed His blood, in the true sense, before He ever reached the agonies of Gethsemane or the sufferings of the cross. He had shed His life upon the earth. He had shed the currents of His life in the revelation of Deity. He had revealed the principles of life. He had given His life to the revelation of the things of God, and He Himself said before any of these things took place, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” There was a recognition that certain things were yet to be faced because of what man had imposed upon Him, but it was not the divine plan or purpose or necessary from the standpoint of God, as if He were a bloodthirsty being who demanded that blood be shed. No. That is not the character of God. It was not the plan or purpose of God. And the only reason why our Master accepted that outworking was because man imposed it upon Him.
Who imposed it upon Him particularly? Who among men? Herod or Pilate or the power of the Caesars? Oh, no. Who imposed it upon Him? His disciples were the ones who imposed that upon Him. It is true. They simply accepted the focalization of the world in the hour of stress, rather than remaining true to their focalization in Him. But consider if the hour of crisis had come and all twelve of the disciples had remained steady. There are those who say Judas, poor creature, was predestined to do it; someone had to do it in order for God’s plan to be fulfilled. Someone on earth had to be a traitor and betray our LORD! Oh, no. God is out of character the moment anyone begins to conceive such an idea. God never predestined anyone to be a traitor or to betray the things of God, let alone the Son of God! Judas did not have to betray Him. It was not necessary; it was not a part of the divine plan. It was a part of human failure.
Consider. If it had worked out according to that which God had made available to them, if according to God’s true plan there had been a following through—of course the Master knew, particularly toward the last, that they were not going to hold when the crisis came; but, even so—suppose Judas had not betrayed Him, suppose Peter had not been of that type who would deny Him, suppose twelve men had stood faithful and true to their LORD on earth—twelve men, not one wavering, not one breaking in the face of the crisis—then His Body on earth, the body of these twelve men who were supposed to be the key men of the Christ Body which should fill the earth, holding steady, would have allowed Him to carry out God’s plan. Not from the standpoint of continued work on earth in the sense of His doing it, but His doing it through the members of His Body—the very principles He had outlined to them such a few hours before, the principles and Laws that He had expounded to them over and over again through the three and a half years of His ministry with them. But if that Body, the focalization of the Body in twelve men, would have held the pattern, hundreds and thousands who had received blessings at His hand, who had cried “Hosanna to our king,” would have stood if the twelve disciples had stood. And there would have been a Body on earth.
He who had moved among men before and disappeared at will prior to that time—do you not think that, if His disciples had been holding steady, He could have disappeared in any moment He had chosen? Could humanity have heaped the indignities of the cross or mockery of the trial upon Him? No. Why did He accept that imposition? The Body that He had been building through the years of ministry died, scattered first—the scattering of the disciples. When they broke, when they slept in Gethsemane instead of watching with Him one little hour, when they slept, when He came to face the final pattern, of course the LORD would not have suffered as He did—even in Gethsemane—had this pattern been holding properly. Because already Judas had gone out to betray, His body had started to decay and die, the body of His disciples. That body of the disciples was scattered, brought to the point of death before His physical body as a man was brought to the point of the crucifixion.
If that body of twelve disciples had remained steady and true, no power on earth could have touched Him, because then the victory would have been assured without His going through what He did. The same truths would have been revealed in the outworking of the cycles of time, but there would have been a Body established—twelve key points, with others rallying around vibrationally. And if they had sought to touch Him, whether He would have used spiritual power to prevent it or whether He would have disappeared is beside the point. That would have been for Him to choose and it is not for me to speculate upon, but they could not have touched Him. That we know. If the body He had built, or undertaken to build—the Body of many members—had held true, His physical body would not have had to be on the cross. But on the cross of spiritual creative activity, the crossing between heaven and earth, there would have been a revelation of divine power that would have carried through effectively and saved man centuries of suffering, sorrow, misery and death. The Body would have been complete and this world would have been restored already.
It is not until after this plan had failed to carry through that we have the prophetic portrayal, for instance in Revelation, of that which should yet be done. Because in Isaiah, and many other places, there is mention made: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” That is part of the prophecy of what was divinely ordained for the time when Jesus Christ should come on earth, that which could have been, but man prevented it. Man spoiled the pattern of God, so there was a divine reorganization and a re-projection of the same goal under a new pattern. Not all was lost, it is true. Our Master had finished the work. He had revealed Deity, established the truth on earth, set the pattern. And somewhere there would be those who would follow through, those who would not be so quick to betray for thirty pieces of silver or their own human desires.(Emphasis added)
I wonder how many of you know why Judas betrayed, what the working of his mind was. . . .
If you make people think they think, they will love you. If you make them think, they may hate you.
I LOVE TO THINK CRITICALLY. To be found wanting, and sometimes completely wrong, about what I have believed, especially for years. It helps to distance my sense of identity from my intellect . . . and my human ego, which has been rather large, and troublesome at times. I have a good mind and I enjoy using it correctly. It’s given me much pleasure and service. But I am not my mind.
I invite you to think with me for the length of this post about the current state of humanity . . . honestly . . . and about the way we’ve been going about creating our world. I will use Plato’s allegory of the Cave in order to demystify where we have been in our awareness up until today, when we appear to be emerging from our hypnotic sleep. I hope that you will enjoy the thinking process.
♦ ◊ ♦
MOST OF WHAT WE HAVE CREATED in our world has been patterned after reflections from out of the past cast upon our clouded mental lens and filed away in our subconscious mind. Much of it is reflected in the opaque substance of the veil separating human consciousness from Divine Consciousness, blocking inspiration from within.
For example, here in the USA we love our freedom and our democracy that grants us that freedom . . . and we have historically sought to destroy (as in kill) anyone who threatens, or whom we think threatens, that freedom or our democracy. It’s just the way we’ve always done it. History doesn’t repeat itself. We keep reenacting history and stuffing the expansive nature of life into historical molds. Uranda spoke to this “mould” acceptance several decades ago:
Human beings have banded together to accept a mould into which all shall be crowded to smother a consciousness of those powerful inner drives. Society has tried to crowd the individual into an arbitrary mould; and to whatever degree one accepts that mould, he is “good.” To whatever degree one resists that, he is “bad.” Doing bad things is almost always the result of a misapplication of the principles of living in the early life of the individual, which has set up a pattern of internal conflict. We need to emerge out of the prison that has been established by these arbitrary moulds. In the world of humanity it is conceived that the only safe place for any good person is in “prison.”
The Master Jesus saw this condition in his day and sought to free the people from their culture of hate for the suppressive and persecuting Romans. His teaching to “Love your enemies; do good to those that hate you” did nothing for his popularity. On the contrary, he was hated by the Scribes and Pharisees who kept the faithful imprisoned by the Law of Moses: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you teach the Law of Moses, but you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” We have our own Scribes and Pharisees today continuing to keep the faithful from entering the kingdom of heaven before death takes them Home, and refraining from entering themselves. Religion is big business — as are wars . . . and the politics of both.
WARS CAST THEIR SHADOWS OF FEAR AND HATRED
As my friend on the other side of the pond reminded me, the English still hate and fear the “Hun”— a derogatory term for the Germans in WWI who crushed neutral nations and imposed brutal rule upon conquered peoples. More recently the British suffered the destruction of much of England by Hitler’s German forces. Hatred and fear of tyrants in neighboring countries continue to ignite and fuel confrontations and wars. The past tends to condition our perception and the way we handle our affairs in the present, as well as our expectancy of the future, clouding inspired vision of new possibilities and ways forward without fear and hatred, and absolutely without war.
The saving and redeeming grace is that what separates also connects. Cleaning up our mental lens, both conscious and subconscious . . . and purifying the veil of our hearts connecting us with the Divine . . . is the only way to see what IS rather than what we have been taught and deeply programmed to BELIEVE. Love alone casts out fear and purifies the heart.
Our future arises from out of what we do now; the seeds we plant in the soil of the present moment. We chose to pattern it after the way things have always been. It’s time we let go of the past entirely . . . and let the dead bury the dead.
Waking up out of our hypnotic stupor, we may be bedazzled by the beauty that’s always been there under our noses, so-to-speak, but covered over by our dark projections.
The following story came to me today as I read from blogs that I follow. I won’t reveal whose blog this came from so as not to arouse any bias that might get in the way of seeing and realizing what is being implied by this allegory. Suffice it to say he’s a very reliable and trustworthy blogger. It’s an old story that still holds sway in today’s world. It demonstrates, for one thing, the wise saw that says it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled. Here’s the story.
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PLATO’S CAVE
About 2,400 years ago, the Athenian philosopher Plato(student of Socrates, mentor of Aristotle) described the Allegory of the Cave, writing while using the voice of his martyred mentor Socrates. Socrates is most famous for his powerful logical approach for avoiding hubris, beginning all philosophical and logical quests for truth with the position that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”.
In his political masterwork “The Republic”, Plato uses the Allegory of the Cave to justify his core political thesis that the ideal ruler is the “Philosopher King”, essentially a wise philosopher-dictator who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are collectively wise enough to choose a good master. Modern readers can immediately detect the conflict of interest which lies at the heart of this Platonic ideal, that being that Plato (and by inference Socrates) are basically nominating themselves as authoritarian rulers over Athens. Personally, I find the logic that the Cave allegory justifies the philosopher-dictator as the ideal leader both a bit contrived and circular. However, I suggest that the Allegory of the Cave is a profound and immortal insight into a fundamental aspect of human society which is at the center of the observations of both 20th century political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt as well as her 21st century intellectual successor Dr. Mattias Desmet.
The Cave is essentially a metaphorical thought experiment which uses a literary device similar to those employed in Aesop’s Fables, in which stories of talking animals are used to bypass the human mental defense mechanisms that can make it so hard for each of us to accept observations and critiques concerning fundamental behaviors. The Cave relates a fundamental, prototypic human myth. It tells the story of the inevitable coupling of human discovery with the tribal rejection which all true innovative pioneers, all dissenters, all paradigm shifters know far too well.
The setting for the Allegory of the Cave is a hypothetical dark cavern inhabited by a group of prisoners who are all bound hand and foot facing the same wall. The prisoners have been there since birth; they have grown up together, and this is the only reality that they know. Behind them is a burning fire maintained by the rulers of the cave. The rulers have different objects and puppets which they hold up so that the prisoners can see the shadows cast by the objects as they interrupt the light of the fire, and the rulers make sounds and generate echoes for the prisoners to hear. These rulers of the cave are the puppet masters, able to control the reality which the prisoners are able to experience. As these shadows and sounds are all that the prisoners have experienced since birth, they do not question and do not know anything different from this shadow reality. They think that this is what life is, a reality of shadow, sound and echo.
The prisoners compose and share names for the shadows, develop competitions to determine who is best able to guess which shadow will turn up next, and give each other awards and praise for the ones with the most accurate predictions. From their standpoint, this is life.
One day, one of the prisoners gets loose. His chains break, and in a confused state he stands for the first time, looks around, and sees the fire. Lying on the ground next to the fire he sees the puppets and objects which correspond to the shadows on the wall. In a great leap of insight, he concludes that the shadows came from these objects, and that the puppets and fire represent a greater reality than that which he had previously known.
Feeling empowered and energized like never before, he begins to explore the cave, finds his way to the entrance, and leaves the shadowy fire-lit confines. The bright sun burns his eyes causing great pain, so he shields them with his hands. Gradually his eyes adjust to this new environment. He drops his hands and opens his eyes fully, seeing for the first time the greater world outside the cave. He sees color, sun, trees, animals, grass, mountains, and has yet another epiphany that he has become able to see the true nature of the world for the first time. The shadows had been mere surrogates of this greater truth. There was much more to life than he had ever imagined. Filled with joy over this new experience, he feels a wave of gratitude and awe as awareness dawns that he has become able to directly perceive the true nature of the real world.
Then he remembers his fellow prisoners, the people he had shared his entire life with. He pities them for being trapped in their limited understanding of reality, for their ignorance of the larger real truth which they are neither able to experience nor perceive. Overwhelmed with waves of pity, empathy, and anger at the puppet masters who have imprisoned and manipulated the reality of those that he has grown up and spent his entire life with, he returns to the cave determined to share what he has learned and help the prisoners see the larger reality, and to help free them from their bondage by the puppet masters.
The freed prisoner returns to the cave and his friends, hoping to enlighten and free them from their chains. But they cannot understand what he is saying and trying to do. He tries to explain the greater reality that he has seen and experienced, but they cannot even begin to understand what he is trying to describe. Imprisonment in the cave is the only reality they have ever known, and they cannot understand anything else. They notice that the eyes of the freed prisoner have changed due to exposure to the sun, and that he now has trouble seeing, naming and interpreting the shadows. They laugh at him, and all concerned agree that leaving the cave is a waste of time. They then threaten to kill both the escaped prisoner as well as anyone else who dares to break their bonds and leave the cave.
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Human beings defend their beliefs, often with their life blood . . . and with the life blood of their fellow man. We as a race have yet to unshackle ourselves and come out of Plato’s cave? We are still held prisoners of our past . . . and we appear to feel safe and comfortable in our state of deception . . . too comfortable. Thankfully, some of us have felt uncomfortable with our comfort, as many have awakened . . . or been awakened by one global crisis or another, and the politics thereof . . . and masses of protesters are begging and eager for the leaders of our nations to stop making war with one another . . . and to please do something about banning assault rifles on the streets again, as they were banned between 1994 and 2004, thank you then President Bill Clinton! And that’s all I’ve got to say about that!
Returning to the first line of this post, without critical thinking and extensive research, one is not likely to see the profiteering and manipulative politics churning beneath the deceiving surface play of events. One has to turn away from the news media and peer through the smoke screens to see the puppeteers controlling what we see and hear about what’s going on in the world . . . the cave wall. Then throw off the shackles and leave the cave, without taking up battle with the puppeteers. Bask in the sunlight and breathe the fresh air of the beautiful world of Mother Nature. As one enlightened soul commented on Facebook on the R.E.M song lyrics “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. . .“Mostly I have such a deep appreciation of Life with all of its sides. Gratitude seems to give me a door to bring love to the scene.” Now that’s what’s real . . . and peacefully comforting.Until my next post,
“Whoever has come to know the world has found a corpse. And whoever has found (this) corpse, of him the world is not worthy. . . . If you do not abstain from the world, you will not find the kingdom.” —Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas
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The world is a corpse . . . so said the Master, the “Prince of Peace.” Not the planet, just the world of man’s making. Especially the world we’ve constructed of concrete, iron and plastic — of consumptive commercial enterprise, political polarization and division; of poverty, greed and avarice; of mass starvation and hysteria; of war and genocide. That world is dead and is only sustained by the life-energy men and women pour into it, draining away their own life substance, their God-given birthright.
War is such a waste of life energy and natural resources. Those who declare and conduct wars lose their lives just as surely as those who die on the battlefields. And those who seek to profit from manipulating the masses and selling them false security are foolishly and deceivingly selling dishonest goods. The lie of the serpent has always been a futile endeavor to be honest with dishonest good. One cannot give what one doesn’t have oneself. One cannot sell peace to a world at war with itself who does not own peace oneself. Nor can one revive a corpse who has not the power to infuse flesh with life. Best to put one’s efforts toward bringing forth a new world. (The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi . . . Life Out of Balance and needing a new beginning . . . comes to mind.) A world out of balance is destined to topple.
LIFE IS A GIFT AND A MIRACLE
I resonate with the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. This saying by Jesus is powerfully resonating in my heart and mind as I approach writing this post:
“If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a wonder. But if the spirit (came into being) because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has taken up residence in this poverty.”
I marvel at how wonderous and mysterious is my own sustained incarnation after eighty-two years, and how this flesh body still pulsates with the breath of life. I marvel at how my mind arises from my body to meet and share the Consciousness of God descending from Heaven above, a gift that connects me with my Creator making my personal world one, as heaven and earth are one. This saying of Jesus brings sadness and hope into my heart:
“I stood in the middle of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found all of them drunk. None of them did I find thirsty. And my soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their heart, and they cannot see; for they came into the world empty, (and) they also seek to depart from the world empty. But now they are drunk. (But) when they shake off their wine, then they will change their mind.”
Will we change our minds and our hearts? My hope is likely in vain. That was some twenty-two hundred years ago; not very long when one considers the length of a human lifespan — in terms of generations, perhaps as little as sixty-five or seventy. How much do you think the world has changed in such a short period of time? Do you think the Master’s words still apply to this generation? He is on record as having said “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.” I believe the man-made world is just as dead today as it was then. That said, still . . .
“The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.”
The “ordinances” for the earth and its fullness are established upon the sea of Divine Consciousness, the Heaven for the unfolding of Earth’s journey through the Cosmos. Our part is to set them in the earth, to materialize creation. The true creator stays with his creation throughout the cycles of its existence, and according to astronomical predictions, this planet has several more billion years ahead of it . . . but not necessarily as it now is or has been. Change is definitely afoot for the earth and for earthlings.
I’m preaching to the choir here, of course, just sharing the thoughts and meditations of my heart that started flowing in upon seeking, asking and knocking on the door of Heaven. The rest of Psalm 24 wants to be shared here as well, perhaps as the focus for this post.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.
Who was Jacobthat his face would be sought by this generation? He was, of course, the Father of the Nation of Israel, having received the blessing of Abraham, the father of his father Isaac, from whom he stole his brother Esau’s birthright and their father’s blessing. (The commentary and open forum the link above will take you to is insightful and worthy of your time.) The overarching answer to that question, of course, lies in the Akashic records of the several incarnations of the LORD of lords, who was incarnate in the man Jesus — and that information lies in the realm of knowledge of a much higher order — which is not unavailable to us today. According to the words of this psalm, the Lord was incarnate in Jacob as well.
We are in the Day of the “Second Coming” of the Christ , who was incarnate in a number of great beings of renown whose timely and appointed appearances are all part of the restoration of Man to his original state of oneness with the Creator. The significance of Jacob’s “face” lies in the manner in which Jacob “wrestled with God” and therein proved his worthiness and stature of spirit to bring forth a nation¹ . . . and thereby initiate a cycle of restoration of Man to his rightful state of co-creator with God. The story in the last chapters of Genesis — along with the dramatic episode of their wandering in the desert for forty-years as told in Exodus — are remarkable stories telling of the hardships the Nation of Israel suffered as the LORD God purified and chastened his children and proved them in the fire of love and truth. From out of all they went through emerged the opportunity for life to be restored to the body of Man, the Body of God on Earth. That restoration failed with Israel, and failed again with the re-initiation by the Lord of Love himself.
This generation once again seeks the face of Jacob through whom the first opportunity of Man’s restoration was initiated . . . only that face today is the face of the Prince of Peace. For it is peace the peoples of planet Earth now seek and for which we all yearn. We will bring peace to the world when we look into the face of one another and see the face of God . . . and love what we see . . . what the pure of heart see. In a sense, we have to wrestle with our traditional concept of who and what God is, just as Abraham wrestled with the angel of God over the tradition which required the sacrifice of his firstborn, Isaac, to Jehovah. With that denial of tradition, Abraham brought to a close the era of human sacrifice. Today we sacrifice human lives in the marketplace of Wall Street and in the battlefields of warring nations. To find peace we need to wrestle with and overcome our own addiction to war and to that which we seek to gain by waging war . . . war of any and all kinds.
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(The painting of the face of Jesus at the top, “The Prince of Peace,” was done by Akiane Kramarik at the age of 8. According to her story, she felt asked and compelled from within her spirt to paint it. If you click on her name you can listen to her amazing story. She also painted this one.)
I’ve come to love this One, Jesus (aka Jeshua), in whom the Christ incarnated to bring love into the world and thereby initiate the final cycle of redemption and restoration of Man to his true state of oneness with His Heavenly Father, a oneness which he proclaimed for himself and exemplified to his disciples and to the world during his life and brief public ministry. I’ve come to know him as my Self, as the One I Am, for I am, and you are, as much a son or a daughter of the Father as He is. We are in the days of his “Second Coming,” this time through the hearts of human beings — and as the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of the heaven of consciousness. These final words of Psalm 24 describe what we all must do to welcome His coming and complete the cycle of restoration that He initiated two-thousand year ago.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.Who is this King of glory?The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
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I leave you to ponder these words and those of this blog post, which I’m feeling may well be my last post on Healing Tones. Thank you for sharing the thoughts and meditations of my heart. May God bless and keep you safe from harm in the loving arms of The Prince of Peace. Aumen
Be love. Be loved
Anthony
tpal70@gmail.com
¹ “Jacob wrestles with God before going to meet his brother. What do we make of it? Obviously God could beat Jacob in a wrestling match so it seems that it may be that Jacob was having doubts or that God needed to test him. The NJBC says, “Jacob is truly a man of blessing, but this time he wrestles for it and receives it from God (in contrast to his cheating Esau in order to receive Isaac’s blessing.” Jacob has just prayed to God and laid his thoughts bare. Now he has wrestled with him and won. Now Jacob is ready to become the father of Israel. As Orual asked in C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, Till we have faces, “How can the gods meet us face to face till we have faces?” Also, “I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?’” Jacob now has a face and is ready to become the father of a great nation. First he must make things right with his own brother. Jacob may have been struck by earnest doubts in the face of possible bloodshed and death but this meeting was too important for covenantal history. God had to intervene.” (The BioLogos Forum)
“I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known, and so I created the worlds both visible and invisible.” — Islamic Tradition
CHRISTMAS IS A YEARLY CELEBRATION of the incarnation of God’s only son, the Lord of Love and Prince of Peace, on Earth. I would like to share with you an insightful view and perspective of the incarnation of Jesus as a fully humanized being, taken from Cynthia Bourgeault’s beautifully written and profoundly insightful book THE WISDOM JESUS. Its author is an Episcopal priest who has written several books exploring Jesus’ life as a mystical teaching and sacrament.
Having emerged from a Catholic upbringing myself, and having spent seven years in Catholic Seminary, I do enjoy sharing this author’s vision of what Christianity could be simply by adopting a more metaphysical view and understanding of it core truth and of the One whose birth we celebrate this week. Cynthia takes us from where we’ve been in our religious path of worshiping God, to where we are now at the threshold of opportunity for a radical shift in our attitude and consciousness, and forward to how we could easily move into a more spirit and love based path to knowing God. I will share selections from her book in two or more blog posts. I hope you will enjoy her as much as I do.
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THE INCARMATION
IN THE FIRST PART of this book we explored Jesus’s teachings as a comprehensive spiritual path. In this second part we will be shifting our focus to consider Jesus’s life itself as a teaching. By “a teaching” I mean a model, of course; all authentic teachers walk the talk. But more than just a model, I want to consider his life as a sacrament — that is, as a spiritual force in its own right. The traditional definition of a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” But what to my mind this definition does not make sufficiently clear is that a sacrament does not merely symbolize a spiritual reality; it lives that reality into existence.
Jesus’s life, considered from this standpoint, is a sacrament: a mystery that draws us deeply into itself and, when rightly approached, conveys an actual spiritual energy empowering us to follow the path that his teachings have laid out. This sacramental life of Jesus rests on four cornerstones which are both historical events and cosmic realities: his incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension. Together they compose the foundation of the Christian mystical and devotional life, and to open oneself fully to the meaning of these great mysteries is to be able to read the inner roadmap of the Christian path. In the next four chapters we will be exploring each of these mysteries in turn. My hope is to move beyond the usual theological and critical-historical explanations in order to follow the living mystical thread that will allow us to appropriate each one of these mysteries as food for the journey.
Since the ground we will be traversing is also the sometimes prickly shared territory of Christian liturgy and sacramental theology, let me remind you once again of my own background here, so that you will know where I am speaking from. While I wear the collar of an Episcopal priest, most of my lived liturgical life has been within the wider stream of Benedictine monasticism, primarily Western and Roman Catholic (although the Episcopal liturgy is in most respects identical), and it is from this perspective (as well as my earlier training as a medievalist) that I will primarily be speaking when I describe the ritual celebrations that unfold these great mysteries. I am less familiar with the Orthodox traditions (except through my exposure to the Christian inner tradition), but at ease within the Celtic and Oriental Orthodox spiritual streams, whose extraordinary insights I will draw on at appropriate moments. As Meister Eckhart once observed, “There is no being except in a mode of being,” and the Western Catholic mode of being is the stream in which I have primarily come to know what I know. With that disclaimer in place, let us see what we can discover about the first great mystery, the incarnation.
“For God So Loved the World . . . .”
I remember being struck many years ago by an insight from the contemporary mystic Bernadette Roberts that crucifixion wasn’t really the hard thing for Jesus; the hard thing was incarnation.” Crucifixion and what followed from it — his death and resurrection — were simply the pathway along which infinite consciousness could return to its natural state. What was really hard for infinite consciousness was to come into the finite world in the first place. With nothing to gain from the human adventure — nothing to prove, nothing to achieve, and a dangerously unboundaried heart that left him defenseless against the hard edges of this world — Jesus came anyway: that, claims Bernadette Roberts, was the real crucifixion! As we saw earlier, Paul grasped that same point in his beautiful hymn in Philippians 2:9-16. The first self-emptying that Jesus goes through is the self-emptying that lands him in bodily form on this planet, a human being. There is definitely something spiritually counterintuitive about this business of incarnation, and to really get what’s at stake in this mystery is for me the acid test as to whether you understand what Christianity is all about.
Unfortunately, this understanding is hard to come by: not only outside of Christianity, but inside it as well. Make no mistake, Christianity is intensely a religion of incarnation. Millions of people caught up in mass hysteria during the Christmas season can’t all be wrong! But even the sentimental excesses of the season only go to reinforce the point. There is a deeper truth at work here that stirs us in spite of ourselves. Who among us has not awakened in the wee hours of Christmas morning to catch the live broadcast of the Ceremony of Lessons and Carols from Westminster Abbey and thrilled to the sonorous reading of those immortal words from the prologue to the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us”? There is a deep soul-truth here that both contains and redeems our frantic efforts to penetrate its meaning at a more superficial level.
If you were to imagine the great world religions like the colors of a rainbow, each one witnessing in a particular way to some essential aspect of the divine fullness, Christianity would unquestionably hold down the corner of incarnation — by which I mean the vision of God in full solidarity with the created world, fully at home within the conditions of finitude, so that form itself poses no impediment to divinity. There is another beautiful phrase in John’s gospel proclaiming: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16). At its mystical best, Christianity reverberates with the warmth of this assurance: with the conviction that creation is good, that God is for us, and that what ultimately gets worked out in the sacred mystery of Jesus’s passage through the human realm is a profound testament to love.
Who Screwed Up?
Unfortunately, Christianity as a religion has never had a sufficient metaphysical understanding of its own core truth. The message gets obscured by its primary interpretive vehicle: the theology of fall and redemption. Virtually all Christian teaching begins from the supposition that Jesus’s incarnation is brought about by the fall of Adam and happens in response to it. “As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive” is the classic Pauline formulation of this idea (I Corinthians 15:20). The primordial parents Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and plunged the world into chaos; Jesus came to rescue it. Thus, incarnation is framed from the start within the context of God’s response to a mistake that should never have happened in the first place. This assumption, in turn, deeply colors our understanding of the phrase, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” It sounds like: “God didn’t give up on us; God bailed us out.”
In a more mystical nuancing of this same basic idea, we encounter the theology of “0 felix culpa”~”O happy fault”~ to quote the first line of a traditional Gregorian Advent hymn which expresses this theology particularly clearly. Rather than blaming Adam and Eve, this line of argument claims, we ought to be grateful for them because their mistake set in motion the chain of events through which Christ would fully reveal himself to this world. Without that initial fall there would have been no need for the redemption. In the most subtle versions of this teaching (as in Karl Barth’s Christ and Adam) linear cause and effect are reversed, and we see Adam and Eve falling into this space/time continuum out of God’s “prior” decision (that is, already made in eternity) to reveal himself in human form. Rather than being the cause of the fall, Adam and Eve become the instruments of the ultimate divine self-communication. This is a much more affirmative teaching, which brings the theology of fall and redemption to its most mature expression.
But I would like to push the metaphysical envelope still further and see if we can approach the mystery of the incarnation through a conceptual framework that does not rely on fall and redemption at all but unfolds along an entirely different line of understanding. Instead of a cosmic course-correction, this other approach envisions the steady and increasingly intimate revelation of divine love along a trajectory that was there from the beginning. The best expression of this idea is actually contained in a beautiful saying from Islamic tradition (although its roots go down into perennial wisdom ground): “I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known, and so I created the worlds both visible and invisible.” Both the saying itself and the understanding that illumines it derive from a profound mystical intuition that our created universe is a vast mirror, or ornament (and the Greek word “cosmos” literally means “an ornament”), through which divine potentiality — beautiful, fathomless, endlessly creative — projects itself into form in order to realize fully the depths of divine love. And remember that “realize” has two meanings: “to recognize” and “to make real.” The act of loving brings hidden potential to full expression, and the more intimate and costly the self-giving, the more precious the quality of love revealed. This subtle and beautiful understanding of creation will also, as we shall see, have something very important to show us about our true work as human beings.
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We are each one an incarnation of Divine Being. Our personal incarnations were stressful and limiting, descending from the peaceful Realms of Light and landing in the dark wet terrain of busy embryonic cellular activity; from flying freely in the air of spirit to crawling on our bellies until our toddling forms learn to walk and run. How we yearn for the freedom we knew before incarnating. I remember very vivid dreams of flying above the ground at breakneck speed in my youthful years. Who hasn’t had such dreams? And I can relate to the thrill a jet pilot must enjoy flying through the air at supersonic speed. One has to be fit and well trained to fly a jet. Likewise our human capacities need compassionate care and vital nourishment in order to be fully fit and available in accommodating the incarnate divine beings we are.
Yet here we are, fully awake and learning how to navigate a multidimensional universe of energy-shaped-and-driven hard and complex materiality only God comprehends. Being incarnate gods ourselves, we have been gifted the privilege of sharing in Divine Consciousness and comprehending reality that is incomprehensible to the human intellect—for the darkness cannot comprehend the Light in the same way that Light comprehends the darkness. We incarnate to bring Light into the dark corners of Creation to bring forth a heavenly world here on Earth where we are. This gives us great cause for celebrating, at Christmas time and throughout the year.
I celebrate you, dear reader, this Christmas, along with my own Divine incarnation—and my gift to you and myself is unconditional love and acceptance. May the joy of Love fill you full to overflowing during this Holiday Season. Until my next post — which will be published this coming Wednesday,
Be love. Be loved.
Anthony (tpal70@gmail.com)
Credits: Artistic drawing by Rose Meeker, author of MAGIC AT OUR HAND – Releasing Our Lives into Order and Beauty
“I have thrown fire on the world. Look! I watch it until it blazes.” —Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas
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IN MY PREVIOUS POST I spoke of a restoration process underway since the Fall, so far made in two approaches. The first one was initiated with Abraham and the nation of Israel. The second approach, from the physical plane as was the first, was initiated with King Solomon. Both failed to bring mankind back into the Garden state and alignment with the governance of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The third and forth approaches were from the mental and spiritual planes respectively and was initiated by the Master Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord of Love. Both of these approaches failed as well due to the hardness of men’s hearts and failure to comprehend his dual command to love the Lord God above all and one’s neighbor as oneself, which embodies the essence of his life and teachings.
This post is about the third approach which led to a fourth for him personally, opening the Way to restoration and ascension for all of mankind. The following is from my book SACRED ANATOMY.
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The Way of the Master
There was a Man sent from God—an incarnate God Being—who returned to Heaven with his human capacities restored to their glorified state. His name was Jesus and he was called “Master” by those who loved and followed him closely.
Putting these cycles of restoration in a certain perspective, Uranda called them “Sacred Schools” in that they were periods of spiritual education, a time when human beings were taught by great spirits and masters how to function spiritually in each level of ascent as the restoration continued to unfold. Jesus initiated the second cycle, at the level of the mental plane, and opened the door to the third, the level of the expression of Spirit, with his two Great Commandments of Love. But those to whom he brought the Way back into the “kingdom of heaven” either didn’t comprehend him or rejected him out of hand and sought to erase him from the face of the Earth by destroying his personal temple. This time it was men who failed to defeat the Divine Design for restoration, as it was beyond their reach.
Jesus dealt with human consciousness from the “mental plane approach.” He offered tranquility, a quality of the Spirit of the Single Eye in the second plane of being, to minds frantically busy with the letter of the law and the prophets. “Peace, be still,” were words he often spoke before preaching and ministering to his disciples. He took issue with the Scribes and Pharisees, for example, which he blatantly characterized as “hypocrites” and “whited sepulchers full of dead men’s bones” for the way they allowed the letter of the law to overshadow the “spirit that giveth life.”
He came to fulfill the law and the prophets, not to impose them upon the faithful in order to “lord it over them.” Above all, he met and dealt forthrightly and in singleness of purpose with his own human mind and restored order and beauty to his house of Being. “Get thee behind me, Satan” were his words of rebuke more than once to his own human mind and through it to the collective mind in the larger body of mankind.
He brought one law, the law of love, to replace the many laws that were on the books and enforced in order to keep the people subdued and under control. That law was stated as two Great Commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart and all of thy mind and with all of thy strength,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
In giving this one law of love, He began opening the third level of consciousness and plane of being, the spiritual-expression plane approach, which is made from the level of the heart. It is simply the expression of the spirit of God in living, which brings a realization of the presence of God in one’s temple and an outpouring of blessing into one’s world. We have seen how this level is the domain of the Spirit of Blessing.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” He taught, and in so teaching began to open the way leading up into the fourth level of consciousness, which is the plane of being connecting heaven and earth and the level of awareness of divine identity. The Spirit of Purification reins here to bring clarity to the heaven.
In order to enter this level of consciousness, where one knows with assurance one’s own divine presence in the world, the heart must be purified by the continual and consistent outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Love. It is the only way—and the Master Jesus went that way, even though no one at the time was willing to go with Him. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” He proclaimed and then proceeded to exemplify for all who had ears to hear and eyes to see.
Here was the Lord of Love himself incarnate on earth attempting to gather human beings back under his wings, “as a hen with her brood,” but they “would not.” The gospels say Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem. It was not for himself that he wept but for what he saw human beings were doing to themselves. He came to initiate the process by which human beings could come out of the state of dying souls and back into the state of original innocence as living souls, only he was met by all sorts of resistance and considerable opposition.
When it became apparent to him that he was not going to be allowed to initiate that process for the whole body of mankind through His personal hedge of followers, he accepted the responsibility himself of ascending to the third and fourth planes of being. But he did not stop here. There had already been too much failure in the past. He went all the way through the remaining three levels of being: the fifth which is that of radiance under the domain of the Spirit of Life, the sixth which is that of wisdom under the domain of the Spirit of Truth, or the Womb, and finally the seventh, the dwelling place of the Spirit of Love, with his transfiguration, resurrection and ascension into heaven.
He stepped from earth back into heaven from whence he had come—and from whence we all have come—giving the simple and apparently achievable instruction to simply follow him: “He that believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” (John 14:12)
Going unto the Father is the first step and the last that leads to union with God and glorious transfiguration. He established agreement on earth with His Father in heaven, and where two agree on earth as touching anything “in my name” (in the vibration of love), it shall be done of them by the Father in heaven. He was able to step, body, soul and spirit, back into the realms of light by reason of the working of this law of love, and the process of ascension manifested in His humanity.
Each one of these steps of ascent, from one level of consciousness to the next, manifested changes in his outer form. They each had their impact on Him physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Throughout this process he experienced amazing feats of all sorts: levitation, transfiguration, command of the wind, mental telepathy, long distance healing power, a potently radiant and highly charged personal atmosphere that when but touched by those around him in faith, wrought healing, power to raise the dead, and many other miracles of transformation. The greatest transformation was that of his own consciousness to the clear, absolute realization that “I and my Father are one.” He attained to the vibration of the Father, who is love, as he himself had long since earned the title of “Lord of Love.”
Probably the toughest of all the outer manifestations of change to move through was his betrayal and subsequent crucifixion. Yet move through it he did, maintaining His connection with his Father and thereby maintaining the continuity of the cycle he had initiated which took him step by step back into the Realms of Light from whence he had come. He surely saw that experience as a door through which he had to pass in order to go the Way he had chosen. Death with its seeming finality was to him but the shadow side of eternal life itself, and not just for his spirit but for his own body temple as well.
The door that leads into the light is always hidden in the shadow, because it is closed. He opened that door and found resurrection and ascension on the other side, and he opened it with unconditional love for and forgiveness of those who had put him on the cross. His heart was utterly purified in the fire of love he shared with his Heavenly Father, and which he sought unceasingly to share with his disciples and the world which his Father so loved and had sent him to save. His outer form was transformed by the Spirit of Purification as He moved through the fourth plane of being on his way up in the ascension process. Indeed, he became the Spirit of Purification himself at the fourth level of being, the crossover point between spirit and form, and burned his way through the thick veil of the impure heart of humanity.
In a service entitled “The Way of the Master,” Martin Cecil describes these events in a remarkably clear and thought-provoking presentation. He refers to a “tone” sounded:
What a task! What an unbelievable undertaking, and yet He did it, in spite of everything . . . He established what we have called the true tone of life for man, an actual vibratory radiation that has been sounding on earth all down the centuries . . . . It was set of course not by a man as such but by the Lord through a man. That trumpet tone has been sounding without diminishing for nineteen centuries . . . .
When He did proceed through the creative cycle in His own personal experience on earth He did what He might to assist those who were present with Him to come along into an experience of greater understanding, but they didn’t get very far. You may recall, in the Gospel of John, Philip and Thomas, two of the disciples, had no faintest idea as to what it was that our Master was talking about. He’d been speaking: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” And He said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” That’s the way He was going, moving through these successive levels of consciousness in the creative cycle, the ascending cycle, thereby preparing the way. Nobody was going with Him at that time. The disciples were completely at sea. They enjoyed being with Him, they loved Him, but they didn’t know what was happening and apparently no one has known since. Some beliefs have been generated, some ideas have been produced, and there may have been a little truth back of some of these things. But only now, when it begins to surface and come within the range of present human experience, does it once more become meaningful. It becomes meaningful to the extent that it is experienced; not to the extent that it is thought about or discussed, or to the extent that doctrines are established; it means something only on the basis of actual experience. So because there begins to be some actual experience it begins to be meaningful . . . . (Excerpted from Third Sacred School, Vol. 2, Chapter 28)
It is the experience that this One Divine Man undertook himself that has established what the body of mankind is to experience and has experienced since he set this tone and sounded it all the way through the seven levels of being as he ascended with his body temple restored to its glorified state. This is the path that all of mankind has been invited to take and that we each must travel if we are to experience fully the salvation which he brought, the path leading well beyond worship of God to resurrection and ascension in sacred union with God. Until the reality of such union is actually known, man shall continue his search for Eden outside himself and worship God at the foot of altars made of wood and stone — but not for long. ♦
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The purpose of restoration relates primarily to the return of this world, the earth and the fulness thereof, to the One whose world it is, through Man restored. In my next post, “The Transmutation of Planet Earth,” I will give in-depth and specific consideration to the divine design by which the Earth is restored to the One who is responsible for it. Until then,
What a task! What an unbelievable undertaking, and yet He did it, in spite of everything . . . He established what we have called the true tone of life for man, an actual vibratory radiation that has been sounding on earth all down the centuries . . . . It was set of course not by a man as such but by the Lord through a man. That trumpet tone has been sounding without diminishing for nineteen centuries . . . .
Healing Tones 