Creating the New Earth Together

Posts tagged ‘Kingdom of Heaven’

A Nuclear Community, Part 4: Collective Sovereignty

If you continue in my word . . . you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (Jesus)

Continuing from where we left off in the last post:  In her timely and important book THE RETURN OF KING ARTHUR, poet and spiritual author Diana Durham speaks to the tenuous phase in the transitioning from the old to the new paradigm of leadership in community.  Letting go of our former beliefs—particularly those about the model of leadership in community—in order to let go to and fully embrace the new world being born, can be daunting, and hesitation for too long could prove fatal. One could drown in the rising tide of change in the direction and speed of the currents in the river of life if one holds onto the familiar shore of the past.  The only sane thing to do is let go and swim out into the central current of the river. 

Our beliefs about the truth—that the Spirit of God dwells within us, for instance, and that we are gods—are not the truth; they are but guides to the truth.  When we know the truth of our oneness with God, we move beyond our belief to knowing that I Am an aspect of that Divine Spirit.  We find freedom in knowing the truth, freedom from our beliefs. But oh how we love our beliefs and defend them with religious vigor:  “Oh no, I am not divine. I am only human.” Beliefs may need defending, and can be denied.  Truth, however, the Word of Life, needs no defense, and cannot be denied.  The Word of Life is “You are divine, made in the image and likeness of God, and in that Image and likeness you share the authority of God in speaking truth.”  

Heretofore we have depended upon leaders and mentors to lead us in the truth.  That model is fading away, leaving many floundering in the dark waters of today’s chaos looking here and there for someone to tell them what to do and in what direction to go, what to hold onto.  Looking around, we only see our elected leaders floundering themselves in the rising tides of rebellion and protestation desperate to hold onto power and control of the masses; and our mentors are fading away, moving on from their earthly roles. The pews in churches are emptying in the wake of corruption among the clergy, and in Rome itself, and their failure to deliver the goods, even offer resolutions to moral issues, such as contraception and abortion, by which the Faithful are able to abide.  The churches are largely out of touch with the Faithful’s spiritual needs and moral issues in life.  They cannot teach what they themselves do not know—and know that they know.

Our leaders and mentors have traditionally been men . . . even holy men such as Buddha and Jesus.  Someone recently posed the question in a conversation we were having about abortion, “What would Jesus do?” Unfortunately (or fortunately), Jesus is not recorded as having said anything about abortion in the scriptures. His only answer to a crowd poised for stoning a harlot was “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Today we have many “good” people casting stones at “bad” people.   

We’re left to decide our own course in the abortion controversy . . . and it is a conundrum that has found no resting place of resolution in the legal or legislative debates or courts of justice.  We are totally on our own solving this problem we ourselves have created.  A solution will not be forth coming without a fundamental change in human consciousness and subsequent change in human behavior.  Primarily a change in identity from human to divine.  We sometimes say “God only knows.” Well then, let us find our true identity in God and know and act with love in divine authority. 

Rise of the Feminine

A very interesting turn of events takes place in the story of the Grail Quest Diana revisits in her book when Sir Bedivere finally yields to King Arthur’s command and lets go of the sword.  The dominant masculine energy that once empowered leadership from the top is met by the rising Feminine, who comes to take back her power (the sword of truth) in equal and balanced partnership with the Masculine, a very poignant and prophetic event in the story.  This is from chapter eleven, “The Chalice of Collective Sovereignty,” as excerpted from my book SACRED ANATOMY and the chapter on the spiritual significance of the Pituitary gland:

Speaking of her own personal transformation within the container of intentional spiritual community that went through a transformation itself in the wake of the passing of its spiritual God-parent and leader, Diana writes:

There is a great fear of losing the sword—a fear of losing the tradition and forms that have embodied the truth for us, and a desire to try to preserve them in some way—to disobey Arthur’s command.  Twice Sir Bedivere, that most loyal and trusted knight, tries to hide Excalibur before finally obeying Arthur and throwing the sword into the lake.  After all, if we don’t preserve the sword, we might lose everything . . . .

Very often this is the way. The injection of spiritual reality brought by the great avatar, like Jesus or Buddha, one who is able to pull the sword of power, of spiritual authority, back out of the stone of fixed belief and tradition and wield it as a living reality, is turned after their death into a religion, a series of beliefs, a tradition.  And people warm themselves on the little spark that still glows in the embers of that tradition, but they don’t inherit the mantle of spiritual radiance. They have not become entrained into the understanding of what it really means to “Worship God”; they have not completed the quest . . . .

. . . . Thanks to Guinevere and Morgana (the heart’s wisdom), Excalibur is not destined to become a sacred relic of past glory “stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings.” The heart’s instinctual knowing of what is right has overridden the fears and the structures of the mind, thus ensuring that Arthur’s true legacy—the legacy of potency, of truth, as represented by his sword— has become a living possibility available within the subconscious mind for us all to draw on.  It has not fossilized into a tradition for the elite to fight over—whether a political elite or a priestly elite; it is beyond the reach of corruption, and can only be accessed by the innocent and the true. Thanks to the quest for the Grail, thanks to the heart’s compulsion to take on one’s individual path and authority, the Round Table could become what it was a promise of.  Our network could be transmuted from a community into a new and potent consciousness of oneness.

This is why no matter which thread of the plot we retrace to uncover the cause of Camelot’s downfall, we find ourselves staring into the face of the feminine, whether it be the actions of Guinevere and Morgana or the quest for the Grail itself.  Only the heart’s wisdom knows how to take us from symbol to reality and carries the passion and assurance that will allow the “old order” to change and find renewal.

So we can begin to approach the meaning of the fulfillment of the Grail quest from a number of different—but related—angles. First of all, the finding of the Grail . . . means that the sense of personal separation from inner source—which I have also called the Grail King energy, love, or God—is healed.  Once this happens, our dependency on a King Arthur mentor figure ceases, and we begin to live our lives from a direct sense of what fits, of what is ours to do.  We can trust the compulsion of our heart because the heart realm is now operating as a direct “transmitter” of our own inner being and purpose.  In this way, the heart realm is the place of connection, or oneness, with God or spiritual source, and once that consciousness of union with source is a grounded reality within us—once the ego that thinks of itself as the center of the universe is no longer dominant—then there is a basis for connecting deeply with others. The heart realm becomes the means of connecting with others, with one’s “neighbor.” Therefore, we also begin to share a sense of oneness with one another, and a sense of being—hologram-like—parts of a whole that also contain in miniature the design of the whole.

The sense of oneness with others, combined with the ability to discern direction for ourselves, enables the other meaning of the Grail to emerge, which is the aspect of collective leadership: the circle of many individuals forming one body.

Collective leadership is not possible while we are still dependent on a mentor figure both for our own sense of spiritual alignment and for a sense of direction.  Nor is it possible unless there is a sense of oneness to bind us together—as well as the ability to discern for ourselves (as opposed to being subject to “peer pressure”) what our actions need to be.

We remember that the individual sword—or sense of authority—is earned by going on a quest for the Grail.  Perceval is given the sword on his first visit to the Grail Castle.  The return of Arthur in a form of the return of many individuals wielding their individual swords—in other words, the condition of collective leadership—cannot come about until the Grail is found and this collective consciousness is formed . . . .(pp. 203-206)

The Grail is found in the legends, and finding the Grail symbolizes not only the individual experience of open-hearted connection to spiritual source in oneself but also the emergence of the possibility of collective leadership.  When Sir Bedivere throws that sword into the lake, a woman’s hand reaches up to take it. A new opportunity has been fertilized: a new union between masculine and feminine, and the emergence of an era of collective sovereignty. When we talk about the rise of the feminine we are describing a crucial aspect of this new era. Obviously this new possibility has been emerging for some time in the form of the suffragettes and the women’s movement.  Closely allied with the struggle for equal rights for women was the civil rights movement in the United States. Leadership has been rising up from the grassroots, bringing immense changes and balancing out some of the injustices of society’s myopic structures. Collective leadership implies both the roundness of the chalice cup—without hierarchy, containing all—the feminine; and the absoluteness of the sword, the element of individual responsibility required for true leadership: the masculine. (pp. 6-7))

     What Durham is describing here is a renewal process of the Pituitary Gland that appears to be underway, both within individuals and within the collective body of Man.  As these two energies find a way to work in harmony and balance within us as two in agreement, individually and collectively, the Spirit of the Womb can then work its hormonal and alchemical magic of renewal of life on the planet.  Paradise (Camelot) can then be restored.  

Where the kingdom is, there also is the King. Paradise cannot be restored until Man is restored.  Man will be restored when he acknowledges and pays homage to the King of Heaven; when he turns his heart away from the material world and toward the King in utter abandon and worship—not in some separate heaven somewhere, but right here within himself where the Kingdom of Heaven abides patiently awaiting for us to repent, turn around and enter in.  

In the Grail Quest story, when Perceval finally finds the Holy Grail, he was asked a test question, which he failed to answer correctly. The question posed was “Whom does the Grail serve?” If I recall correctly, the promise of the Grail was abundance of all that pleases and satisfies.  It seemed to Perceval, the simple fool that he was sitting there amongst the Knight of the Round Table, about to partake in the feast spread out before him, that the Grail serves human beings, and in that assumption he failed to answer the question correctly. The correct answer was, and still is: “The Grail serves the Grail King.” Having failed to give the right answer, he found himself outside the Grail Castle and in the company of an old hag who proceeded to list all his faults and shortcomings. 

And so it befalls men and women in the realm of self-serving and self-pleasing human relations, where the Grail King is not allowed to drink and savor the sweet nectar of love from the Holy Grail of the Pure Heart of Humanity.  We judge and measure one another by our faults and shortcomings.  Perhaps I will find words to expand on this theme in my next post. I welcome your thoughts.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

Paradise Remembered: Tending the Garden of Consciousness

HAPPY EASTER

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Einstein 

The miracle of life lies in the alchemy it creates to manifest forms from out of “nowhere” to “now here”—out of an invisible Heaven and into a visible Earth. “As above so below.” We invoke this alchemy, consciously or unconsciously, each time we recite the Lord’s Prayer and pray the will of God in heaven to manifest on earth. How this works is by Divine Alchemy — only it can’t and won’t work in human affairs without Man’s/our participation.

Words of the Teacher speak to this order of creation: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”– counsel my passionate father imparted repeatedly, and for which I am most grateful.

ALCHEMY Vs CHEMISTRY

In our scientific approach, we employ elemental interactions in chemistry, and physical labor, to manufacture products.  We even view conception and embryonic development as a biologically driven process. We till the ground to grow our foods and rape the earth for our fuel and building materials.

Forms may appear to rise up from out of the earth, and they do, as my sprouting beans in the garden magically demonstrate.  However, it is the subtle energy of life that creates the irresistible force of attraction that draws form up from out of the earth.  Man uses chemistry to make things.  Life uses Divine Alchemy to manifest Creation.  Everything is a miracle, including the chemistry. Even this coronavirus!

What is it that drives these alleged “lifeless” germs, made of RNA messaging molecules with protein mooring apparatuses, held together with fat, to attach themselves to cells so they can steal their DNA to reproduce themselves?  As Krishna exclaims in the Gita: “Life it is! Life’s urge it is! . . . man’s enemy or friend!” A harbinger of death, perhaps, nevertheless a miracle of life!

Consolation may be found in words penned by Charles Eisenstein in an excellent online article entitled The Coronation: “Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home.” Why, then, do we fight it and stave it off? Seems we would be happy to be going Home.

That said, my heart goes out to those who are mourning the loss of loved ones and dear friends, and to those special souls, heroes all, who are taking care of the afflicted, putting their lives on the line while struggling with fear and uncertainty, yet passionately going about their tasks caring for the sick. God bless and protect them each one. 

ORIGIN MYTHS ABOUND 

There are many myths about the origin of our species, including the Creation Story of Genesis.  In the previous post I excerpted passages from The Book of Grace in which its author, my dearest late friend Grace Van Duzen, offers insights into the biblical account of the Creation and Fall of Man from grace, stature and dominion.  I also shared excerpts from Richard Heinberg’s MEMORIES and VISIONS of PARADISE, and I’ve received several comments, one from a friend and fellow wayfarer, Donald White, who offered this critique and encouragement:

While I agree with much of your treatise here, I’m still wondering why the “story of man” as presented by the most ancient cultures known to have lived upon the planet with actual written records (the Sumerians and the civilizations that followed) are not part of your consideration of our origins on planet Earth. Atlantis (and Lemuria) may have existed…I don’t dispute that they MIGHT have…but we really don’t know (with apologies to the late Edgar Cayce!).

(True, even the Greek philosopher Plato used the Atlantis legend in his Socratic Dialogues as a fictitious tale, a mythical parable about the cultural and political deterioration of life in the state — casting a shadow onto our modern day.)

The biblical texts regarding these ancient times are highly mythologized, having been translated several times so that we have a version in English (King James Bible), but they still allude to more substantive, extant ancient writings in cuneiform from Mesopotamia (Sumer, Assyria, Akkadia & Babylonia). It just seems that what these ancient scribes had to say about their ‘gods’ and the origins of their culture (attributed to their gods) should have at least equal validity to any of today’s lucid dreamers, biblical pundits, and scholarly professional authors on this subject.

Are we as a species the product of a ”magical’ divine Creation or a design-driven, divine Evolution? Are we still evolving (with fits and starts from proto-human to Neanderthal to Cro Magnon) where angelic consciousness emerges as a whole in the world, or do we need to experience a resurrection from a fall from a place of divine identity where we already knew that identity in human form? These questions are key to your subject matter and I welcome your current focus in this area as it has allowed some deep meditation on my part about where we are today as God’s vessel and representation for this world. This I agree with wholeheartedly, beyond belief!

THE GARDEN OF HEAVEN 

In the Beginning, Man was given a garden called Eden to dress and to keep. No tilling was required because this garden was, and still is, an invisible one.  It was the Consciousness of the Creator, who was willing and eager to share with Man its care and creating magic, along with its material manifestation — a desire that awaits fulfillment.  That’s why we are here today.  Eden awaits Man’s return to dressing and keeping it — the topic of my next post.  

In this series I have also been sharing some of Peter Watson’s commentaries, which have actually provided thought-provoking upgrades for my own understanding of things hidden in the Creation Story handed down to us in the Book of Genesis, for which I am profoundly grateful.  Here is an excerpt from his most recent dialogue:

As the heaven – the realm of preform – must logically precede the realm of form, as with invisible life that designs and then grows the forms it inhabits, the idea of debris from dead suns being drawn together by gravity, so that under the right circumstances, with water air and earth, and a safe distance from the fire of a sun, the collection of debris would be suitable to support animated ecosystems is far-fetched to say the least. Such a materialistic view is clearly in denial of heavenly preordination, and is therefore flawed inasmuch as it cannot account for our invisible animating force, life, nor its origin; i.e. the Father and Mother of Life.

Fortunately Jesus foresaw the scientific dilemma that would eventually surface as men of intellect probed only the heavens, and the past, for mankind’s meaning and origins, instead of looking within, and perceiving the kingdom-of-heaven as instructed. His remedial advice, and blueprint for the way life works, are contained concisely in the so-called Lord’s Prayer, portraying the simple outline of the order in which life works (i.e. from the heaven and then into the earth; “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”), which must be complied with if our latent human potential is to be realized and made manifest. All of this he liberally demonstrated in working with the four forces, starting his ministry in a water cycle, and miraculously healing those who responded appropriately to his presence, “Wilt thou be made whole?

(His brief earthly life and ministry ended in a Fire cycle with his celebratory entrance into Jerusalem, commemorated in the Christian world on Palm Sunday, and his crucifixion and victory over death that led to his resurrection from the tomb and ascension back into Heaven from whence he came — commemorated during Holy Week and Easter Sunday throughout the Christian world.)  

It’s now up to a precious few of us who are remembering and enacting the instructions of Jesus, so that what he initiated may be brought to fruition as intended. I rejoice in sharing these words with you and seeing the seeds planted by Jesus replace the superstitious seeds of religious fear, and bring the Garden-of-God, Eden, back to life on earth. “I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Having followed up on Don’s encouragement to at least expand my research to include the Sumerian and other ancient mythical stories of the formation of the human species, and having meditated on Peter’s commentary on the two accounts of the Creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, as well as on Grace’s insightful interpretation of the biblical Creation Story, I have finally come to terms with my own inner struggle to make sense of it all — and it all comes down to the first paragraph of this post: the Heaven gives form and birth to the Earth.

In Genesis 1, God, Elohim, created Man male and female, in their own image and likeness and placed them in Eden, a Paradise where everything they needed in the way of food and sustenance was freely provided, requiring no tilling but only a thought form to manifest what they needed to sustain their heavenly forms. God blessed them and gave them dominion over all the life forms in Eden, instructing them to be fruitful and multiply and “replenish the earth.” We’ve done a lot of multiplying of our species, but very minimal replenishing of the earth.

In Genesis 2, “The LORD God” (a conclave of God Beings, as Grace explained) is said to have “formed” man (male only) from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man “became a living soul.” Life, the originating and organizing force of Creation, is given to this man after he is formed by matter — the heaven and the earth in reversed order — “when the earth and the heaven were created”— contrary to the way the Law of One works to bring forth Creation out of Heaven.

Here we again have a committee of God Beings, not creating but forming a man out of clay, as many myths describe their various “gods” did.  As for woman, well, she was an after-thought by the rogue creators seeing as how the man was alone and in need of a “help mete”— not an equal partner but a helper.  So, it’s been a man’s world ever since the Fall.

This conclave of God Beings “planted a garden Eastward in Eden, and there they placed the man whom they had formed.” Here we have the first division, that of Man, created by God male and female in His own image and likeness, divided into a man and a woman, a pair of opposites — from oneness to duality.  One myth describes the First Man as being male on one side and female of the other.  Hmm?

Peter’s Comments:

Let it be said that any compromise, or reversal of the principle of cause-and-effect, heaven-and-earth in that order, would inevitably result in a state of decay, and eventual death. We cannot deny or ignore the way-of-life; i.e. what Jesus demonstrated admirably, with impunity.

Let’s say, in Genesis chapter one, we have a true account of creation, with Man, male and female, designated to share God’s dominion . . . .  Alongside, we have chapter two that denigrates mankind (not Man) to have come from the dust-of-the-ground, subject to externals and a tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil, a tree-of-death, with no mention of dominion, only subjection, and we have a reliable perspective of how humanity has been coerced into falsely interpreting God’s will.

Earlier on in this commentary:

Fortunately, death and decay can only spread so far in either direction in the microcosm and the macrocosm at a form (material) level, beyond which life reclaims waste and renews it in the mineral kingdom and on up. As is recognized by physicists, no energy is ever lost; you cannot have a ‘dead’ (motionless) atom, or indeed a motionless galaxy. Where there is motion there is evidence of life; where there is life there is the ever-present origin-of-life.

We cannot separate matter from motion. Even using negative numbers, Euclidian geometry, or quantum mechanics, matter and motion are inseparable except in human imagination. However, designed as it is to participate in the furtherance of creation, imagination of the human mind can and will manifest if concentrated over a sufficient period of gestation. Beyond a certain point it becomes questionable as to what human imagination manifests is of any practical value; we may use disease and weaponry as examples of negative manifestation.

Stephen Hawking asks, “What place for God” in his imaginary universe.  Einstein said “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Observational science limits itself to the analytical view of “nothing is a miracle.” Participatory science (ontology) expands its parameters to see “everything is a miracle.” Einstein’s vision extends the reach-of-science beyond the grasp of mankind.

The grasp of mankind is limited to material observation and measurement, a phenomenal mental approach to understanding the universe, but which denies or otherwise ignores the essential encompassment of a motivating force, such as that which makes vegetation grow, human digestion allocate protein where it belongs, and guides the constellations along their celestial paths.

And from an earlier commentary:

So there’s the so-called Fall-of-man in a few lines, sustained by, but not initiated by Eve — the cloned after-thought companion of a simple gardener when it was noticed, “It is not good that the man should be alone”. Unfortunately, Sunday-school translation has made them both appear to have been the original sinners, upon which religion has capitalised in using a ‘sinner’ identity to cover up the rogue’s role of Godlessness, and at the same time keep congregations in the dark regarding our true identity in original Man, male and female, not made from the dust-of-the-ground, but by the male and female spirits of God incarnate. “BIG mistake!” as Schwarzenegger would say.

ANCIENT MYTHS 

Now, the Sumerian, Babylonian and other ancient myths tell of many gods flying in the heavens and roaming the earth making things they needed, which included laborers — more like slaves — to till the ground; and warring with one another over the manner in which things were being done, especially in the slave-making department.  They also created “giants” to do the heavy lifting. 

Donald’s Commentary:

Here’s a short summary of the story of mankind’s creation as told in the Sumerian ‘Enuma ‘Elish’ (deciphered from clay tablets uncovered when ancient Ninevah was excavated circa mid 19th century):

“… What is extremely interesting in the ancient Sumerian Creation Story is the fact that initially, man created by the Gods was not able to reproduce on their own. This is why the Gods ‘MODIFIED’ mankind with the help of Enki and his sister Ninki. After the Gods had modified mankind, Adapa was created as a fully functional human being which had the ability to reproduce. However, this ‘modification’ was done without being approved by Enlil, brother of Enki and Ninki, which created a conflict among the Gods.

The conflict made Enlil the first adversary of human beings and according to ancient Sumerian texts, mankind went through an extremely difficult time while serving the gods.”

As you can see, there are numerous similarities between the creation story of Ancient Sumer and other ancient cultures and religions around the globe, but interestingly, in all of them, we learn that mankind was literally CREATED by the GODS in their own image.”

Perhaps the beginning of religion and slavery imposed upon our earliest ancestors? What an awful implication (and indictment) on our false ‘god/creators’!

I think Don is onto a hidden truth.  Here’s an interesting side-story I came upon in my limited studies of ancient cosmology. The word El, as in Elohim, is feminine in gender, indicating that it was a Goddess who created Man — or at least the Elohim may have been a group of feminine deities who were commissioned by the Godhead to create the world and Man in it.  Heinberg cites a man’s near-death-experience in which the God he saw was a woman.  I rather like this kind of musing about God being both male and female and how this works in the invisible order of angelic and creator beings.   

RECLAIMING OUR ORIGINAL INNOCENCE

So, Don, I trust I have adequately addressed your queries about who we are and were we are in our evolution of consciousness — our heaven out of which our earthly forms and world continually and momentarily materializes.  I’m right in there with you meditating on our current role as representatives of God on Earth, and as co-creators and keepers of the Garden — and with you Peter, in uncovering the clarifying truth of the Creation of Heaven and Earth, in that order, and of Man and mankind, hidden in myths until a time when we can bear to hear it — realizing that we can correct the “Original Sin” of Adam by reclaiming our Original Innocence.

In our innocence — not by faith and belief in an unknowable God, but by conscious knowing of our own divine identity as Sons and Daughters of God, co-creators with God — we can intelligently engage the Law of One that governs Creation to create Paradise on Earth.  As we hold the image and likeness of God in our consciousness as the template of our outer forms, letting love radiate without concern for results, our bodies will continue to evolve and be transformed, ultimately transmuted into angelic light forms. “As above so below.”

It was Man’s concern for results and his self-determination that reversed his polarity, repelling our first parents from God and ejecting them from Paradise.  We are here to “repent,” literally turn around, restore our polarity in God, in Love, and allow a resurrection and ascension to take place.  All we have to do is dress and keep the Heaven.

I’ll leave it there for your meditation. Until my next post,

Have a Happy Easter and/or a Joyous Passover.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

The Stone That Scientists Rejected

“I have thrown fire on the world. Look! I watch it until it blazes….Whoever is near to me is near the fire. Whoever is far from me is far from the Kingdom.” (Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas: 10 & 82)

Continuing in this series, I come to the gift of my meditation on the Spiritual Significance of the Pineal Gland: the realization of its strategic position in the center of the brain from which it speaks Love’s commands to all the cells in the body temple via the network of nerve fibers and the six hormonal glands located in strategic places in the body.  Like the Great Commandment of Love upon which all other laws and the prophets hinge, the entire endocrine system of our sacred anatomy is oriented in the Pineal Gland at the seventh and highest level of union with the Divine Presence in the temple of the living God on Earth.

Significance of the Cornerstone

One of the key elements of the presence of this One who dwells in the midst lies with the secrets inherent in this “little stone.”  The Pineal is “a stone cut out without hands,” rejected by men of science for many decades as being insignificant and irrelevant to any important or vital processes in the body.   This “stone which the builders rejected . . . has become the cornerstone of the temple.”  In truth, it has been so from the beginning. What comes to focus by virtue of this tiny gland, the Spirit of Love at the physical plane of being, is even now bringing about a transformation of the body of Humanity. 

It is, without doubt, by divine design that the Pineal gland is situated between the two hemispheres of the brain, where all the structures of beliefs, concepts, busy and ambitious thought processes and images of gold used in building and maintaining this empire and civilization are held sacred. Here this little stone, with its radiant field of love, is in the most strategic position to strike the great image of this mind-made empire on its feet — made of a mixture of truth and deception.

The feet symbolize the capacity of understanding.  The image’s feet were made of a mixture of iron and clay, substances which do not bond together. They also represent the foundation upon which this mind-made world stands and the mental under-standing as to how it works and is maintained.  As that foundation crumbles, as it is doing today, all hell breaks loose, literally, as disorientation creates havoc. The foundations of human civilization are synthetic, composed of constructs produced by science, politics and religion.  It is held together, not by the power of Love and design of Truth which govern the natural world, but by the concepts and beliefs of those who rule the masses, and by the masses who worship these beliefs and concepts.     

Those concepts declare, for example, that if someone has something that you need or want, you have the right to go to war with him and take it from him if you can, and that the lives of young men and women are dispensable to that cause and end. The whole world supports this belief.  The whole world is thus deceived.  The world’s concepts also declare that if someone hates you and seeks to do you harm, you have the right to hate him back and seek to destroy him first – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.     

Man’s civilization is governed by the laws of the Medes and Persians, with one exception. The laws of the Medes and Persians could not be altered.  The laws of this civilization can be changed and are changed when they no longer serve the needs and purposes of those who make them.  Fortunately for us the God of Heaven does not rule his Kingdom on the same arbitrary basis, nor out of convenience. The ordinances of Heaven that govern the kingdoms of this world are absolute and immutable. They hinge on the One Law of Love . . . and Love never fails.  Love radiates forth and substance responds, leaping to obey its irresistible commands. Community happens, bringing blessings to the whole and to all the parts that make up this Whole Holy World.

In other words, man’s civilization is founded upon an understanding of how hate, fear and greed can get us, as individuals and as nations and peoples, just about anything we covet.  The only price we pay is that we must, upon acquiring it, treasure it with our hearts and guard it with our lives or else someone will come along and try to take it from us.  For where one’s treasure is, there one’s heart is as well. 

This is the basis upon which we have established life in this world and have learned to survive in it.  It is not the truth of how life is meant to be lived, and deep down inside our heart of hearts we know this.  At deeper levels, we desire companionship, trust, meaning and a genuine sense of purpose. There would likely be no coveting were these desires met in us individually and collectively.

Upon the very altar of our hearts we continue to worship the gods of gold, silver, brass, wood, stone —  and now oil, plutonium and the silica of the computer microchip — along with money and all the stuff money can buy. In return these gods give us fleeting power and control over our worlds and over others. We may praise the God of Heaven on Sundays — and at times when He comes through for us as in the story of Daniel — but we turn right around and resort to worshiping these other gods and appeasing them so that they will continue to deliver the material goods we so earnestly believe will bring us life, liberty, security and happiness.  In so doing we compromise our hearts and therein defile our temples.

This paradigm of understanding is being dismantled by the Spirit of Love now intensifying its radiance through the point of focus this little stone provides in the body temple. Those who find themselves drawing near to Love and leaving the world to its own devices are experiencing a transformation the likes of which has never before occurred in the recorded history of this planet.  Responding to the Spirit of Love, we find ourselves drawn toward love and toward others so responding. 

As the radiation of Love increases and permeates the cells of the brain, it cleanses the atoms which comprise it.  The Pineal becomes a powerful magnetic center which draws all the atoms in the human brain into a pattern of service in the temple.  Its bio-magnetic force field, much like a computer’s default restoration program, erases useless programs in the memory cells of the brain.  Thought patterns that were once held sacred for the security they promised are become as iron mixed with clay as they no longer hold together. Beliefs that were once held sacred are suddenly seen as shams and levers for manipulation by commercial advertising and evangelists.  Belief in “the truth” gives way to the actual experience of Truth and the resultant freedom from these limitations.

These thought patterns and beliefs have been established by isolated and competing human egos. As these old concepts and viewpoints of how the world of man works crumble, giving way to new thought patterns born out of love for Truth, our world does not make sense any longer.  Nothing is certain anymore, as though it ever was.  We just believed it was because of the structures, the golden images in our brains. 

As we no longer function out of fear, hate and greed, but begin to function out of love for Truth, the feet of this great image continues to crumble, for we the people are the feet of this great civilization, the “grass roots” as we are called in the political system.  When we change the way we see things and the way we behave toward God, toward ourselves and one another, and toward the natural world, then will the empires of gold, silver, brass, iron, stone and oil come tumbling down to be blown away by the wind of spirit in expression through us so that there will not remain even a memory of it.

The Spirit of Love is even now melting the feet of this golden image in the heart and soul of humanity through this little stone.  Speaking to us vibrationally through the Pineal, it is compelling us all to listen to its voice and heed its command:  

Love one another as I have loved you. Do good unto those that hate you.  Love your enemies. . . . Do unto others that which you would they should do unto you.

The Golden Rule is returning to human consciousness, and its power is destroying the “laws of the Medes and Persians,” all by virtue of the radiant presence of Love focused in and shining through this tiny gland.  The changes are occurring in everyone at the same time even as I write because of one thing and one thing only: God loves each and every one of us the same and His Spirit of Love, even the Lord of Love who incarnated 2000 years ago, is with us and has been all these two thousand years.  What He set in motion then has now come full cycle. The victory is His and well at hand for those who believe in what He brought and do what He commanded.  Such are the friends of God who make up the Body of God on earth.

What He brought was unconditional love, the One Law upon which all other laws hinge.  He sounded the Tone of unconditional love and has filled the Seven Levels of Being with the substance of love.  He has opened the Seven Seals that are even now pouring out radiant currents of love into the hearts of human beings everywhere, bringing peace to hearts that are open and turbulence to hearts that are closed. Purification is underway in the temple of the living God. (Sacred Anatomy)

Kingdom of Fire

The quote at the top of this post is taken from the book The Gospel of Thomas, edited by Andrew Harvey and annotated by Stevan Davies. Stevan’s annotation on this passage sheds insightful light on its implied meaning:

The implicit identification of “fire” and “Kingdom” [in saying 82] is interesting. Something of the same idea is present in saying 10 as well….  Saying 10 implies a radical near-future change coming in the form of a cosmic conflagration sparked by Jesus himself. In accordance with saying 10, where Jesus has control of the fire that will soon blaze, saying 82 almost identifies that fire with Jesus and certainly identifies that fire with the Kingdom. One might therefore re-read saying 10 as “I have thrown the Kingdom on the world.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is said to be within us and all around us. It governs through our hearts where the fire of love empowers our creativity, and through the subtle energy that grows and manages the world of Nature. Even as the climate of the natural world heats up, so is the furnace of the heart of humankind being heated seven times hotter than it is want to be heated so that the bonds that bind us to the material world can be burned away, leaving us standing in the midst of the fire bound only to the One I AM standing in the midst.  Those who draw near to Love draw near to the fire of purification. This is great cause for rejoicing. 

I will bring this series to completion with my next two posts. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

To order my book, email: tpal70@gmail.com

Picture credit: Mysteries of the Pineal Gland by Dr. Linda Gadbois  http://drlindagadbois.com/the-mysteries-of-the-pineal-gland-and-the-true-nature-of-the-imagination/ 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kingdom-Consciousness”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

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

 

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