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On Human Relations . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 4

My Chorale PicIn chapter seven of her powerful book MARY MAGDALENE – Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, “Reclaiming the Path of Romantic Love,” Episcopal minister Cynthia Bourgeault paints a much different picture of the spiritual path Jesus walked than the one painted by Christian orthodox interpretations of the four gospels. Continuing from where we left off in the previous post, Cynthia speaks to the question “Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers.” I will let you read directly from the final two pages of this chapter.

Having described Jesus’s spiritual path as being anything but celibate, an “enstatic” path of conserving pranic energy, Cynthia makes her case against traditional Christian concepts and beliefs to the contrary.

By contrast, the path that Jesus himself seems to teach and model in his life, and particularly in his death, is not a storing up but a complete pouring out. His pranic energy is quickly depleted; on the cross, as all four gospel account affirm, he does not hold out even until sunset, but quickly “gives up the ghost.” Shattered and totally spent, he simply disappears into his death. The core icon of the Christian faith, the watershed moment from which it all emerges, is not enstatic but ecstatic — love completely poured out, expended, squandered. In contrast to clarity, it is the arche­typal image of purity, the complete self-giving of the heart.

THE PATH JESUS WALKED

And right here, I believe, we come to the fundamental problem with these celibate models of transformation. It’s not merely their monochromatic viewpoint or the implicit devaluing of a whole other stream of Christian spiritual wisdom whose roots are in passionate human love. Rather, it is the fact that at key points they seem to be slightly out of kilter with the path of transformation that Jesus himself walked and taught. One might say that this model points us toward John the Baptist rather than Jesus: to­ward those ancient and time-honored practices of renunciation, asceticism, and self-concentration through abstinence, whereas if we really look closely, we see that Jesus himself seemed to be con­stantly pushing the envelope in the opposite direction — toward radical self-abandonment, reckless self-outpouring, and the trans­mutation of passion in complete self-giving.

But it is right there, at the center of that cognitive dissonance, that a window of opportunity opens up. Rather than trying to smooth it over and pretend it does not exist, as the church has done for nearly two thousand years, we need to tune in and listen to it very carefully, for it gives us exactly the tool we need to proceed.

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers? To date, nearly everyone seems to be trying to solve that riddle from the outside, like good investigative journalists. It’s all about finding new evi­dence: secret documents and societies, new gnostic gospels, purported lost tombs, hidden mathematical messages embedded in the lines of existent texts — some new piece of data that would settle the issue one way or another. Equally, those who are ap­palled by the very notion of a romantically involved Jesus build their case by recourse to doctrines and templates that did not exist until three or four centuries after he had left the planet. It’s all external logic.

But there is another possibility, which has been sitting there right under our noses all along yet so far seems to have been consistently overlooked. That is to evaluate the evidence from the inside, on the basis of the path itself. For Jesus was, after all, a teacher, and the teaching itself is there to be consulted. Once one has compensated for the negative set and drift of the celibate current, it is merely a matter of asking a single question: In the light of what Jesus actually seems to have been teaching, is there anything in the teachings themselves that would have precluded such a love relationship?

If Jesus were indeed walking the path of classic monastic brahmacharya, then the answer is obviously yes; celibacy is an essential requirement of this path, and to diverge from this requirement would violate his integrity and sabotage his spiritual power.

But what if in fact he was walking a different path? A path difficult to identify because it was so close to its own headwaters that it was missed by nearly everyone both then and now? What if he was not an ascetic at all, but was in fact following a whole new trajectory, previously unknown in the West and with its own ways of understanding integrity and purity? Along this other trajec­tory, it might indeed be conceivable for him to be in a human love relationship, although that love would probably not look like what most of us are familiar with.

Let’s see what the teachings themselves have to say.

Thus ends chapter seven with a segue to chapter eight, and to the rest of Cynthia’s provocative treatise, for that matter. The title of chapter eight is “The Great Identity Theft.” Who was Jesus and how was his presentation of himself perceived by the world he came to save from itself?  There are two brief paragraphs midway through this chapter that speak to these questions.

In the Aramaic language of Jesus’s immediate followers, one of the earliest titles given to him was Ihidaya, “the Single One,” or the “Unified One.” In context, it speaks unmistakably of this state of inner oneness; it designates the anthropos, the fully realized human being: the enlightened master of Eastern tradition, or the monad or “undivided one” of hermeticism.

The “great identity theft” to which the title of this chapter refers is that in remarkably short order this term, which was so clearly intended to designate Jesus’s attained state of inner oneness, should come to be interpreted as “singleness” in the sense of being unmarried, “the celibate one.”

Jesus was not necessarily monastic nor ascetic, which leaves him available to a romantic relationship. Actually, according to Islamic scholar Ibrahim Gamard, monasticism was not mandated by the Koran. In a letter to the author in 1998, Gamard shared the insight that “in the Islamic tradition monasticism was disapproved of in the Qur’anic verse which states that the monasticism of the followers of Jesus was invented by them and was not something commanded by God.” As I said, this leaves Jesus with the option at least of having a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene as his wife and partner in a shared service to Humanity: personal transformation via a path of romantic love.

I will leave it there for now and continue with “The Path that Jesus Walked” in my next post . . . . or not. This series seems to be complete, so I may let this be the concluding post to the series on Human Relations. We’ll see what the Current of Inspiration brings us for exploration. Thanks for sharing this consideration with me. As always, your comments are welcome.  Until my next post,

Be love. Be Loved

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com for helpful information about health and wellness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Celibacy, Eros, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Spiritual intimacy before phsical, The path of romantic love, Transformation

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On Human Relations . . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 3

“Without the quicksilver of eros nothing transforms . . .”

My Chorale PicIn the previous post I presented and considered the first two of four propositions, or myths, that are all “firmly rooted in the soil of celibate spirituality–that together have subtly sabotaged our ability to see romantic love as an authentic path of spiritual transformation” presented by Cynthia Bourgeault in her boldly provocative book The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE — Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity.  In this post I will present and consider the third and fourth myths and share some of Cynthia’s thought provoking views and commentary from her book — which I highly recommend to my readers.

Myth Number Three: Human love is inherently different from divine love

This is what has been handed down through Christian church teachings. Actually, it was Plato who classified love by types: agape and eros — although he didn’t attribute agape exclusively to divine love nor eros exclusively to human love. After all, the Greeks had their riotous gods who were capable of both human and divine passions. Rather, agape love to Plato was impartial, disinterested love and eros desiring love, which both the gods and humans were capable of experiencing. Plato’s delineation, non-the-less, set the foundation for such discussions for two-and-a-half millennia since, writes Cynthia Bourgeault.

It was a Swedish Protestant theologian in the 1930’s by the name of Anders Nygren who relegated eros to human desiring. His “monumental” three-volume work Agape and Eros, in which he writes “eros is man’s way to God; agape is God’s way to man,” had a powerful and pervasive influence on contemporary Christian spirituality. Cynthia writes:

According to Nygren, eros is by its very nature filled with desire and neediness, hence impure; by contrast, God’s way of loving is free, clear and impartial, motivated only by the goodness of the giver. With one deft stroke of the theological scalpel, Nygen essentially divided the core energy of love into two separate species and assigned to erotic love (the only love humans are by definition capable of) a permanent second-class status that essentially negates its value as a spiritual path. It is hard to escape the implication that if one is following a path of passionate commitment to a beloved, one is on an inferior spiritual track, or no track at all. This despite love’s unassailable record as the most potent force at our disposal to unify the heart and transform the soul.

Fortunately, the damaging pronouncements of Nygren has impacted only the modern era. Earlier generations of Christian teachers considered eros a “wellspring” of transforming energy that one simply had to learn to work with in one’s spiritual path. Cynthia quotes John Climacus’ sixth-century writings to exemplify this historical fact:

“I have seen impure souls who threw themselves headlong into physical eros to a frenzied degree. It was their very experience of that physical eros that led them to interior conversion. They concentrated their eros on the Lord. Rising above fear, they tried to love God with insatiable desire. That is why when Christ spoke to the woman who had been a sinner he did not say that she had been afraid but that she had loved much, and had easily been able to surmount love by love.”

The goal of “surmounting love by love” for a thousand years formed the heart of the Christian mystical program of transformation, culminating in the twelfth century in the magnificent “monastic love mysticism” of St Bernard of Clairvax and those following in his wake (and notice that whenever eros is mentioned in a text, the figure of Mary Magdalene hovers right in the background). To the extent that it still conceives of God as an object that one can “concentrate one’s eros” on, it ultimately falls victim of that same dualistic fallacy we have already seen in the first myth. But it is far, far better than what has been served up today in the name of religious and psychological health; a gutless, passionless numb “agape clone” that goes nowhere at all. Without the quicksilver of eros nothing transforms: a secret which I believe Jesus himself knew and worked with in his teachings in a profound way, only at a unitive rather than a dualistic level.

Now, of course, if you were fortunate enough to escape such indoctrination in your upbringing, then none of this serves you very much, excerpt perhaps as an educational piece at an intellectual level. I am intrigued by perspectives on historical events that shed light on the path I have traveled over the last seventy plus years. You see, I was born into a Catholic family, groomed for a priestly vocation — which was more my father’s desire for me than my own — and educated in the hallowed halls of Roman Catholic seminary. Only the halls of Catholic seminary were not so hallowed as they were hollow and empty of any transforming energy. Eros was a path to a life of mortal sin, the punishment for which was eternal damnation and separation from God. So, it thrills me to have someone like Cynthia Bourgeault articulate so eloquently some of the undercurrents that were churning beneath the turbulent and confusing terrain upon which I spent the formative and developing years of my life, as well as their origins in history.

Don’t worry for me, however, for the Church’s brain-washing, for some strange reason, seemed like water poured over a duck’s back. It didn’t penetrate the core of me. My guardian angel was apparently protecting me. However, I did not escape the damage to my human psyche and the spoiling of my physical enjoyment of a fully enfleshed life of healthy sexuality as a young man. That came later after awakening to the truth of love and of life.

But enough about me. Let’s look at the fourth myth, the one that lured me into the seminary and, ironically, disillusioned me at the age of 21 and sent me in search for the truth of love in human relations, both with the divine and with one another, a search that would last only seven years. Let me share some of her thoughts and perspectives right from her powerful book.

Myth Number Four: Celibacy is a state of greater purity.

The mistake here–and it is one commonly made in spiritual teaching — is to confuse purity with clarity. Clarity has to do with attuning the mind. Purity is about awakening the heart. The two can overlap each other, but they are not synonymous.

I enjoy her distinction between purity and clarity. She goes on to give a little history of the practice of celibacy.

In Hinduism, where the practice of celibacy as an applied spiritual technology (known as brahmacharya)  arose more than three thousand years ago, the objective has to do with conserving and concentrating prana, the vital energy or life force, so that it can be utilized for spiritual transformation. The modern Hindu master Swami Chidananda has restated the traditional wisdom by explaining it in this way: “Prana is the precious reserve of the seeker. Any sense activity or sense experience consumes a lot of prana [the sex act most of all, he claims] . . . The highest of all goals in life, spiritual attainment, requires the maximum pranic energy on all levels.”

For Swami Chidananda, the practice of celibacy harnesses pranic energy much like a dam harnesses the force of water for the purpose of turning huge turbines, and like a lens concentrates the rays of the sun to burn whatever they are focused on. Cynthia continues:

In the most ancient and powerful understanding of the practice, celibacy belongs among practices that can be classified as enstatic — those that have to do with conserving, collecting, concentrating. The positive side of this kind of practice is a significantly enhanced clarity — a relative freedom from the energy-consuming turmoil of the physical lusts and emotional passions and thus a greater capacity to stay present to the higher frequencies of spiritual energy.

For exactly this reason — that celibacy is a “storing up” process — its shadow side is avarice. One must be alert to a subtle tendency to withhold or “preserve”oneself, to hold oneself back from full engagement in the human sphere in order to have access to those higher realms of truth and light. Under all the aura of “selfless giving” with which the practice of celibacy generally cloaks itself, there can be a subtle spiritual acquisitiveness at work, betrayed in the very phrase “spiritual attainment.” Which “I,” one wonders, is this “I” who attains?

Cynthia gives her reader pause to consider what’s really at work in spiritual attainment. She then turns toward the life and death of Jesus in a most remarkable portrayal of him as being anything but enstatic in his public ministry.

By contrast, the path that Jesus himself seems to teach and model in his life, and particularly in his death, is not a storing up but a complete pouring out. His pranic energy is quickly depleted; on the cross, as all four gospel accounts affirm, he does not hold out even until sunset, but quickly “gives up the ghost.” Shattered and totally spent, he simply disappears into his death. The core icon of the Christian faith, the watershed moment from which it all emerges, is not enstatic but ecstatic — love completely poured out, expended squandered. In contrast to clarity, it is the archetypal image of purity, the complete self-giving of the heart.

Such is the character of unconditional love: “. . .the complete self-giving of the heart.” This reminds me of Jesus’s words to his disciples during his sermon on the vine and the branches: “Greater love hast no man than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.”  He was giving them all that he had to give, and for a truly selfless reason: “. . . that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” (John 15:13)

The joy of giving fully of oneself is like no other joy.  It’s a joy that utterly sets one free. This, I believe, is what’s really behind the mad rush to buy presents for loved ones and friends at Christmas time every year. We do get much joy out of giving.  I’ve actually read of a tribal community where there is no word in their language for “Thank you.” Such is their awareness that the pleasure and joy of giving are the giver’s as much as, if not more than, the receiver’s. I love Cynthia’s portrayal of this great Teacher as one who spent himself fully during his three-and-a-half years of public ministry. It is the Jesus that I can easily hold as a hero and model of true manhood.

In my next post I will share Cynthia Bourgeault’s view of and commentary on “The Path Jesus Walked.” So, stay tuned for more inspiring posts on my Healing Tones blog.

Wishing for you a Happy New Year and a healthy and happy 2016!

Anthony

Read my HealthLight Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.

 

 

Category:

Celibacy, Eros, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Sex, Spiritual intimacy before phsical

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On Human Relations . . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love, page 2

My Chorale PicFar from keeping one earthbound, romantic love, not celibacy, was exemplified and touted by Jesus as the highest path to spiritual enlightenment and union with the divine. From the very Genesis we were created male and female so that through our union as one flesh we could bring forth life. That was the original template.  We’ve obviously altered and thwarted the original template for the creation of human beings and produced a species of human doings who put achieving ahead of being and compete with one another in a “battle of the sexes.”

I’m in my second reading of THE MEANING OF MARY MAGDALENE – The Woman at the Heart of Christianity, a most provocative book written by episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault, in which she weaves the scenario of a romantic human relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. That alone should give you a clue about its provocative subject matter. To write this series of posts I dove right into the book to share poignant excerpts from chapter seven: “Reclaiming the Path of Romantic Love.”

In my last post I left my blog followers and readers with four options offered by the author to consider and choose from. They are:

1. That Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s mistress;

2. That theirs was a politically arranged marriage, strictly for dynastic purposes;

3. That they were sexual consorts in some Gnostic Mystery religion, ritually reenacting the sacred hieros gamos, or union of the opposites;

4. That the whole story is purely archetypal, a great Sophianic myth depicting the integration of the masculine and feminine within the human soul.”

I chose the third option. Here’s what Cynthia offers:

Sex, power, cult, or myth: not a great set of choices.  I have yet to see considered what in a sexually healthy culture would surely seem to be the obvious possibility: that they were faithful beloveds, whose lives were joined together in a fully enfleshed human love which was a source of strength and nurturance for both of them; which far from diminishing their spiritual integrity, deepened and fulfilled it. Why is it so hard to go there?  Well, obviously: because that is the one possibility our celibate template will not allow us to consider.

The “celibate template” of which she speaks is the scenario handed down to us by a patriarchal church and its celibate priesthood that portrays Jesus as a celibate bachelor, who had a virgin birth, and who gave himself utterly and completely to God and his mission without the “distraction” and high maintenance of a human relationship. Obviously, human sexuality has been a problem for the church for the past two-thousand years.

In this post, I will present the author’s four “propositions” or “myths”– all “rooted in the soil of celibate spirituality — that together have subtly sabotaged our ability to see romantic love as an authentic path of spiritual transformation.” Handed down as “gospel truth,” these myths in fact have “little or no scriptural authorization in the teachings of Jesus himself but instead draw their credibility entirely from the circular logic of his presumed celibacy.”

MYTH NUMBER ONE — Celibacy is the preferred means of giving oneself entirely to God

This myth as been promulgated and fostered by the church almost from the beginning of priesthood and monastic life.

Like so much else in church’s teachings on human sexuality, its scriptural origins lie in Paul’s oft-cited admonition, “The unmarried man cares for the Lord’s business; his aim is to please the Lord. But the married man cares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife; and he has a divided mind” (Corinthians 7:33). Clearly this is a highly effective recruitment tactic for the religious life. Virtually every Christian monastic I know has entered upon the vocation espousing some variation of Thomas Merton’s impassioned outpouring: “I want to give God everything.” Of course, from an operational standpoint Paul is quite correct: being in partnership makes the logistics of spiritual discipleship a good deal more complicated.

But the theology underlying this principle, if you really consider it, is monstrous. In fact, it seems to be saying that the wholehearted love of God and the wholehearted love of another human being cannot coincide; as our love for a particular human being increases, our love for God is proportionately diminished. Not only is this a theological nightmare; it is also a flat-out contradiction of Jesus’s own dual commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). Whatever the difficulty in juggling these sometimes contradictory demands, collapsing the tension between them is not an option.

I love her articulate way of stating the obvious in her writing style.  What she writes next, and the way she turns the usual perspective on its head, sends a delightful burst of sunshine into my heart:

The real solution to this paradox, I believe, comes in the gradual discovery that one cannot love God as an object. God is always and only the subject of love.  God is that which makes love possible, the source from which it emerges and the light by which it is recognized. Thus, “love of God” is not one love among others, not love for a particular “one” to whom my saying “yes” requires that I say “no” to another. Rather, God is the all-encompassing One who unlocks and sustains my ability to give myself fully to life in all its infinite particularity, including the excruciating particularity of a human beloved.

. . . God is the divine giving, who flows out and through our human expression to manifest love in all its fullness.  And so the way to give oneself fully to God would be to give fully of oneself

MYTH NUMBER TWO — Love divides the heart

The notion that erotic love divides the heart is so deeply engrained in monastic spiritual formation that renunciation becomes not only the imperative course of action but even a spiritual opportunity: the direct route to spiritual wholeness. The modern Jesuit John S. Dunne reflects this traditional view when he writes: “If I set my heart upon another person, then I cannot live without that person. My heart becomes divided. On the other hand, if I give my life to the journey with God, then my heart becomes whole and I can be whole in relationship with another.’ [Dunne, Reasons of the Heart].

. . . And yet the question remains: does love divide the heart? If God is considered an object of one’s love vying with other objects, then the crucial premise on which this theology hangs is true: yes, love would divide the heart. But if God is the subject of love, the place from which love emerges, then one could more reliably claim—as poets, mystics, and lovers have claimed throughout the ages—that love does not divide the heart, but is in fact the sole force strong enough to unite it. What divides the heart is not the love relationship itself but the passions: the strong emotions and shadow side that are always present when love runs strong. But these are not grounds for renunciation; rather, they are grounds for purification.

This story Cynthia shares next my wife and I can personally relate to, as she has spent the larger part of this year undergoing chemo therapy for breast cancer. Our hearts have been opened wider by this crisis so that we have been able to easily and gratefully give fully of ourselves to one another in a mutually loving and caring way. We have both been transformed in this challenging crisis so that we don’t see cancer as an enemy to fight against and conquer. Rather, by embracing it, the tumor has become a messenger bringing us an opportunity to grow spiritually and more intimately together in life . . . as well as to realize how many wonderful friends we have surrounding us and holding us in their love and prayers.

In closing this consideration, Cynthia writes:

What this purification might look like is captured with wrenching power in the memoir “Grace and Grit” by the contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber. In this remarkable autobiography he shares the story of his own love and transformation as he and his wife . . . wage a five-year battle against her ultimately fatal breast cancer. As their ordeal intensifies, one watches them each being melted down and refashioned in the refiner’s fire of their love for each other. Egotism, clinging, resentment—and other, darker shadows—rise to the surface and are released. Particularly in the last six months of [her] life, Wilber writes, “We simply and directly served each other, exchanging self for other, and therefore glimpsing that eternal spirit which transcends self and other, both ‘me’ and ‘mine’”

If this sounds like something you recall Jesus saying in the gospels, you’re right.

I do enjoy Cynthia’s style of writing and her bold expression of truth in the face of her own congregation and of the larger religious field in which she ministers. Fearless is perhaps the appropriate word to describe her writing. She is clearly in love with love leaving no room for fear of criticism and sanction.

The next two myths: “Human love is inherently different from divine love” and “Celibacy is a state of greater purity” I will leave for the next post. See you in a couple of weeks. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com. 

Category:

Celibacy, Healing Tones, Holistic Healing, Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Love heals, Man-Woman Equality, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, Romantic love, Sex, The path of romantic love, Transformation

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On Human Relations, . . . . . part 6: The Path of Romantic Love

My Chorale PicAn intimate, romantic, and sexual relationship with another human being, far from distracting one from spiritual attainment, can open a fast-track path to spiritual transformation: the path of romantic love.

This path is cluttered with signposts bearing moral Christian doctrines that warn of a sinful destination for those who seek erotic pleasure in natural sex drives that were designed to bring couples into a state of ecstatic union, along with the function of propagating the human species — sex solely for gratification not withstanding. The church is solely responsible for the degradation of sex from sacrament to sin in human relations, using Jesus, the celibate divine redeemer, and Mary Magdalene, the human “sinful prostitute,” as models upon which to base its thwarted and therefore false premise.

I’m in my second reading of Cynthia Bourgeault’s profoundly insightful and thought-provoking, if not controversial, rendering of  “The Meaning of MARY MAGDALENE – DISCOVERING THE WOMAN AT THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY.”

This is unequivocally the most powerful book I have yet read on the story of Mary Magdalene and her role in the life and ministry of Jesus. The author, an Episcopal priest, literally plumbs the depth of my soul and awakens dreams of a “perfect world,” almost to the point of disturbing my default inner peace by arousing once again that painfully familiar longing for a seemingly unattainable state of “singleness” as a whole human being — ironically, a singleness that can only be obtained, according to her insight and perspective, in the state of holy matrimony. Cynthia’s Jesus came to “reclaim the path of romantic love” and to uplift marriage between a man and a woman to its original state of “one flesh” that no man can “put asunder”– and he walked his talk. He was not celibate by any connotation of that word. Nor did he recommend celibacy as the higher path to spiritual transformation. His was a life fully “enfleshed” as a whole human being, and that’s what made him such a powerful magnet and lightning rod. The people loved him for his authenticity. The governing religious leaders of that time hated him for the same reason.  Actually, in their gross darkness, they simply did not comprehend his light, and it frightened them and threatened their self-serving authority.

This book has a Voice. One that speaks from out of the ancient past, spanning time from the “beginning”– the Edenic origins of Man and Woman — up to and including the life, public ministry and death of Jesus the Nazarene, only not the Jesus introduced to us when we were children and foisted upon the Christian world since the fourth century Council of Nicea.  Cynthia’s Jesus is a whole human being who “emptied” himself fully of both his humanity and his divinity, leaving no part of his soul and body unused in service to his heavenly Father and to Humankind. And it was his intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene to which Cynthia attributes the fulfillment of his mission and purpose for incarnating on the planet when he did. I should say the fulfillment of their shared mission and purpose.

That said, I don’t think that I can do Cynthia’s book justice in a blog-long book review. So, with the thought in mind that my readers may be inspired to read Cynthia’s book to fully enjoy her viewpoint on these timely issues, I will simply share a few passages from her book that moved my soul to the point of shouting “YES! That rings so true!” I will share and comment on them as they come up in my second reading. Enjoy and be blessed.

I will start at the beginning of Chapter 7, “RECLAIMING THE PATH OF ROMANTIC LOVE,” just to give you a sense of the tone of Cynthia’s voice, along with the context in which she writes. Here she speaks to the issue of celibacy in a priesthood supposedly modeled after Jesus and his celibate apostles — or were they?

NEARLY TWENTY YEARS ago, long before The Da Vinci Code uproar broke, I was serving as parish priest in a small Episcopal congregation in Colorado. When the gospel appointed for one particular Sunday in August was Luke’s account of that anonymous “sinful” woman with her alabaster jar, I decided to take the risk of breaking open some of the insights that even back then were beginning to emerge from a growing spate of Mary Magdalene studies. My parishioners were a bright and intellectually curious bunch, so why not? During my sermon, I gently presented Margaret Starbird’s assertion (in her book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, named after this very gospel passage) that the anointing of Jesus’s hands and feet described in the text was not simply a random act by a penitent woman, but an exquisitely symbolic ritual enacted between two lovers about to be separated.

The fire storm was predictable.

I had tried to pave the way as carefully as I could. My point in raising those issues, as I made clear both in the sermon itself and in the discussion that boiled over afterward, was not to argue the case one way or another, but rather to get at some of the attitudes underlying the way we Christians do theology — and more important the way we do love. “How do you feel about the possibility that Jesus had a human beloved?” I asked these parishioners. “Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Why?”

The responses were pretty much what I expected: “But if Jesus had sexual relations with a woman, he couldn’t be sinless.” “If he loved one in particular, he couldn’t love us all impartially.” “How could he be the son of God unless he gave himself completely to God?” The overwhelming consensus was that if Jesus had known erotic love, he could not possibly have also been the full embodiment of divine love. It would somehow disqualify him as the divine redeemer.

I could hardly blame the congregation for feeling that way.

After nearly two millennia of reinforcement, these assumptions have become so much of the landscape of Christianity that they appear to be part of the seamless structure of revealed truth. But in fact, assumptions are what they really are — not core tenets of the faith, not anything that Jesus himself taught, but superimpositions of a male, celibate, priestly theology which for nearly two thousand years has been the only game in town.

The complicated history of how this situation came to be could fill a book in itself (and in fact has several times over). The short version is basically this: during those first four centuries of Christian life, as leadership moved from a charismatic eldership model to the threefold sacramental ministry we know today (bishops, priests, and deacons), part and parcel of this evolution was an increasing tendency to view both Christ and his apostles through the prototype of celibate priesthood. This is of course a flagrant anachronism in light of the unambiguous scriptural references to Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8:14) and the only slightly more ambiguous allusions in Luke to the other disciples’ “companions.?”

But counterbalancing the testimony of the gospels themselves was a growing discomfort with conjugal intimacy, a discomfort whose roots probably lie in the extreme Essene asceticism out of which Jesus himself most likely emerged (we will be exploring this topic in greater detail in the following chapter). Beginning as early as Paul, this unease was magnified in each succeeding generation by a chorus of Christianity’s most influential thinkers including Marcion, Tatian, Jerome, and Augustine. The consensus grew stronger and stronger that sex and the sacraments simply didn’t mix. By the fourth century edicts were in place forbidding married priests to have conjugal relations with their wives. Not long thereafter married priesthood itself dropped astern in Western Christendom, and celibacy became the entrance requirement for admission to the power structure of the church.

It gives one a bit of a start to realize that for the better part of two millennia, Christian theology has been written, shaped, formulated, and handed down almost exclusively by celibates talking to other celibates. In that respect, it is extraordinarily monolithic. And from this exclusively celibate template emerges the only image of Christ our tradition has allowed us to entertain: of a celibate renunciate whose “sinless” purity would necessarily entail sexual abstinence.

At the age of twenty-one, this very requirement barred my own entrance into the Roman Catholic priesthood after seven years of seminary life, during which I tried in vain to suppress my body’s natural erotic urges and my soul’s longing for a feminine soul mate.  Cynthia goes right to the heart of the highly emotionally charged premise that in addition to all the roles attributed to Mary Magdalene — apostle, visionary, healer — “there is still one remaining to her, which may just be the most important of them all: soul mate.”

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers? Were they secretly married? That, of course, is the claim laid out in  The Da Vinci Code and a number of other books and documentaries and which the church angrily refutes.

The question would never have a fair hearing in Christian circles, she goes on to say, where the “mote” has not yet been cast out of our own eyes while we dare to pass judgement on those who entertain a different view from our own.

It is one thing to argue the case for reclaiming Mary Magdalene as apostle and wisdom-bearer, purveyor of a sorely needed feminine presence in the church; it is quite another to tie this claim to the theologically taboo subject of a romantic involvement with Jesus. Two-thousand years of dogma and tradition have left the field so thoroughly land-mined with negative assumptions and stereotypes that it is virtually impossible to see anything other than red, like my congregation that morning. The question will inevitably be heard as an attack on Jesus and as an act of sabotage upon the Christian faith itself.

After two-thousand years of programming that celibacy is the highest Christian way when compared to the second-rate path of committed spousal love, “it is hardly surprising that our Western anthropology of human sexuality is abysmal.”

In the secular version relentlessly foisted upon us by contemporary culture, it’s all about pleasure, performance, gratification. In the bedroom of the faithful, it’s still all too often about duty and shame: a begrudging debt to future generations which, even when carefully managed, is still tainted with carnal sin. Mention “erotic love” and people will immediately hear “sex,” then immediately thereafter, “dirty.” The idea that there could be anything holy about this kind of love is too alien to even consider. That’s simply the way our ears have been trained to hear it; we are all children of a cultural stream whose vision of human love  has been shaped by the shadow side of celibate spirituality.

From the gutter, the view of the gossip and speculation around Mary Magdalene and Jesus in various studies is less than holy and rather “scandalmongering,” Cynthia writes.

We are really presented with only four options:

1. That Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s mistress;

2. That theirs was a politically arranged marriage, strictly for dynastic purposes;

3. That they were sexual consorts in some Gnostic Mystery religion, ritually reenacting the sacred hieros gamos, or union of the opposites;

4. That the whole story is purely archetypal, a great Sophianic myth depicting the integration of the masculine and feminine within the human soul.”

With that, I will leave you to ponder these options for yourself and return in two weeks to compare your choice of options to Cynthia’s in my next post as we continue to explore romantic human love as a path to spiritual transformation. I will present four “propositions” or “myths”– all “rooted in the soil of celibate spirituality — that together have subtly sabotaged our ability to see romantic love as an authentic path of spiritual transformation.” Until my next post, then . . .

be love ~ be loved.

Anthony

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Human Relations, Jesus, Love, Man-Woman Relationship, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, On Human Relations, Romantic love, Sex, Transformation, Union with God

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On Human Relations, part 1 — What is love?

My Chorale Pic

In looking for what book to read next, Walter Russell’s MESSAGE OF THE DIVINE ILIAD came to mind.  I had read it some time ago and remembered the profound impact it had on me.  Looking at the front cover again, however, it was the subtitle that caught my attention: “THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY IN HUMAN RELATIONS.”

This theme also runs through Lao Russell’s book GOD WILL WORK WITH YOU BUT NOT FOR YOU, which my wife has been reading recently – which is likely why I was drawn to Walter’s book. What stands out to both of us reading these books is this matter of love, oneness and human relations. So, I would like to spend a few blog posts considering some of the wisdom that has come through these two authors . . . and perhaps add a little bit of my own.

As the “Golden Race” who are here to usher in a “Golden Age,” it behooves us to understand what love is. What does it mean to love God with all and our neighbor as our self? Let’s explore.

LOVE GOD

Of course this caption is redundant, for God is Love. When we feel love in our hearts, it is God we are feeling and experiencing. Love is God within us. When we love doing something, for example, we are experiencing the power of God working in and through us.

Here are some words of wisdom from Walter Russell:

A lady wrote me once that she hated making the beds and washing the dishes. I said: “Whenever you find that you do not like what you are doing, just remember that God centers you, and whatever you are doing you are doing it with Him and with His help. You cannot move your little finger otherwise. When you make your bed, just say, ‘Come, God, make this bed with me.’”

Later she wrote: “That made me love to make beds and do things I did not like to do. Knowing that God was helping me took away that feeling of loneliness and drudgery.”

Take joy in doing things; find happiness in doing everything the best way you can. If you have to do it, you must do it, so you might just as well love doing it. If you really love your work, you will not tire. Conversely, if you hate your work, you will poison yourself by that hatred and the poison must be removed by an understanding of the universal law of balance. Any other form of relief which does not remove the cause can only be temporary.

The way this truth is phrased quickened a fresh perspective in me: “…just remember that God centers you.” As I extend this truth outward to include everyone and every living thing around me, my worldview suddenly takes on a renewed quality of compassion. God centers all living creatures, including those who do “evil” deeds – terrorists, murderers, bank robbers and rapists. God centers them, too, although their actions do not seem to arise from that center but out of their conflicted hearts and misguided minds. Still, God centers us all, goes where we go, does with us what we do.  That’s a provocative thought . . . and, at the same time, empowering.  God does not pick up and leave us when we fail to act out of the Love that centers us.  God powers our every action. We simply provide direction. Nor does God abandon those who do harm to others and enact horrific crimes against humanity — our enemies. “Love your enemies,” the Teacher instructed, “Do good to those that hate you.” In other words, love God in your neighbor as your Self. Or, simply, love God.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS SELF

Lao Russell has written some wonderfully inspiring words in her book as well. In Chapter XVI, entitled “Love Ye One Another,” she speaks passionately and longingly about the family of Man as One Body of siblings who share One Father and One Mother.

“Man does not yet know how to live with other men. He has not yet found that every other man on earth is part of his very body, his very self, not merely his brother. . . . Three thousand miles away means nothing. What happens three thousand miles away happens in our own homes. People who are hurt three thousand miles away are being hurt in our own homes, for what happens anywhere happens everywhere.”

Then she waxes beautifully with deep passion as a mother who longs for the healing of her feuding family.

[The world] must see the good in man and not look upon him as sinful and evil. The world becomes what the world thinks. It thinks of man as sinful and evil and he has become what his own thoughts have made him. He has made a world of hate and fear, and where hate is love cannot also be.

There will come a time, however, when the whole human race will know itself as one family, with but the one FATHER-MOTHER of all. When that day comes every man will be the father and mother, or brother and sister, or son and daughter of every other man. As love comes into the world with spiritual unfolding, separateness and disunity go out of it. With love comes knowledge of the power of unity which makes the power of every man become the power of every other man. Separateness and selfishness breed each other. Separateness makes one man want for himself what every other man also wants for himself. Separateness takes. It never gives, and long ages of taking must pass before he learns that what he takes he never has, but what he gives he always has.

The long ages will pass, however, and every man will serve every other man whom he knows as his very Self. Blood relationship is mighty in its desire to serve sons and daughters, or brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers in one separate family. No matter what wrong a son may do to the whole world, the love of parents is greater than the fault.

The happy, peaceful and progressive home is one where each member of the family thinks first of each other member, serves first each other before himself, and freely gives without motive of self–gain. In the ideal family everyone will not only serve each other to make him happy but will refrain from doing anything to make any member of it unhappy. That is the ideal. That is what every home needs to make complete happiness for every member of it.

The world is one family of one world–home. The ideal world is one in which every member of it serves each other lovingly to give him happiness, and refrains from doing anything which will take his happiness away from him. That is the ultimate goal. That is what mankind is striving for. That is what he has been striving for over the long aeons. For these long ages he has ever been searching for the road which will lead to that goal of romance and peace. 

The road to peace is not war. War is the road to destruction and post-traumatic suffering for our sons and daughters who fight for . . . what? That’s a good question, a question that likely lies at the heart of every soldier who comes back home after killing other selves. I believe deep down inside every man and woman who goes to war to fight their country’s battles returns home with a profound awareness that there are no “others.” There are only other countries’ sons and daughters who are just like themselves. There is no “other.” There is only one Self.  Russell says it well here and expands the thought to include place:

We think that thoughts, sounds, and other happenings of which we become cognizant take place in other objects and in other places outside ourselves. This objectivity of belief is not true to Nature. Everything which happens anywhere, happens everywhere.

There are not two points, two positions, or two objects in the entire universe. Therefore, whatever you think of as happening outside yourself is actually echoing within yourself.

There is no other place in the universe than that place which you universally occupy. Likewise, there is no knowledge or thought in the universe that is not omnipresent in the Light of you. The reflection of a light in the mirror is actually within the mirror. All Creation is a mirror which reflects itself within itself universally.

He then answers this profound question, which I will close with and let you ponder:

What is meant by being One with God? 

The more you are aware that the Light of God centers you, the more you become aware that that Light is your very Self, and that your body is but an extension of your Self which you have created to manifest your Self. The more that awareness grows, the more you become the cosmic Being and the more you know.When you finally become fully aware of that Supreme Being as your very Self, you ARE that Supreme Being. 

Human relations are healthy when based on love, which gives birth to oneness. We are each one centered by the same Light of Love. Therefore, we are already One at a core level, the level of our Being. At the Human level, we are different but not separate.  Like the rainbow of many colors that are inseparable from the one white light they differentiate, as Human Beings we are diversified in our expression of the One Light of Love. Why, then, does it seem so hard for us as a Global Family–or even as couples and nuclear families–to find our oneness in Being? Perhaps it is because we are distracted by our Human differences.  ‘Till my next post,

Be Love. Be loved.

Anthony Palombo

Read my Health Light Newsletter at LiftingTones.com for informative and enlightening articles on health and related topics.  My blogs have now been visited over 88,000 times in 123 countries worldwide.

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Finding God, Golden Age, Golden Race, Healing the world, Human Relations, Love, Love heals, Walter Russell

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Golden Age & Golden Race, part 3: Time — Let it Go!

My Chorale PicAccording to David Wilcock’s exhaustive research, which he published in THE SOURCE FIELD INVESTIGATIONS, the history of the “Golden Age” has its roots in ancient Zoroastrian history. Interestingly enough, as Wilcock notes, “the original Zoroastrian concepts about the end of an age do not have the apocalyptic quality that many other prophecies do….  Zoroaster did not espouse the idea of human beings levitating up into the heavens and disappearing.” 

From A History of Zoroastrianism, Volume Three: Zoroastrianism Under Macedonian and Roman Rule by Mary Boyce and Franz Grener (1991), we read:

[Zoroaster’s] future expectations were fixed upon this loved and familiar earth. It is on it, restored to its original perfection, that the kingdom of Ahura Mazda is to come; and the blessed are to live here eternally in his presence, solid flesh on solid ground. . . . It was an end of history that he foretold, not an end of the world.

Prophecies of woes and iniquities in the last age are alien to orthodox Zoroastrianism, for Zoroaster’s fundamental message was that the triumph of goodness would come when evil had been progressively weakened through the concerted efforts of the just. . . . Human virtues, such as justice, faith, liberality, joyfulness, will then be increasing throughout the world, and vices such as tyranny, enmity, heresy and injustice will dwindle away. . . .

[Zoroaster] perceived the salvation of the world as dependent both on cosmic striving and on the sum of individual human choices; and these two conjoined aspects of his teachings — emphasis on individual responsibility and concern for the whole cosmos — made his doctrines strikingly relevant to the conditions and problems of the Hellenistic age.

Zoroaster’s teachings go back farthest in time and have been handed down from the Hellenistic age all the way to our present age by way of all religions. Of particular interest to our own age of barbarism, particularly in the Middle East, is Zoroaster’s teaching about evil.

Zoroastrianism taught the Ahura Mazda’s rule over the earth in the beginning had been deliberately brief, since he wished for the invasion of his Adversary, the Evil Spirit, so that he may defeat and annihilate him.

Wilcock concludes: “This, of course, suggests that the real purpose of the negative forces are simply to help us evolve in consciousness; but they were never intended to win — and never can win. They can only adapt to the basic nature of the Universe itself, which is loving kindness.” 

Can you hold that thought in your mind and heart as you watch the evening news? Evil cannot and will not win in a world that is populated by seven-billion divine beings, a relatively hand full of whom are here to enact the defeat and annihilation of evil in the world? The rest of us, by far the greater majority of incarnate beings, are here to manifest the Golden Age. 

TIME IS RUNNNING OUT

Those words tend to trigger anxiety about the future, when they actually point to a shift in consciousness that is already underway. As we enter the new Golden Age, time simply ceases to exist. More accurately, our consciousness of time changes, as it has already. Time is a linear measurement of space/time. In time/space, there is no linear measurement. Only the vertical reality of now, the present moment. The present moment is already become the safest place in which to be and gather up all one’s senses. If you try to keep up with the the changes going on in space/time as it transitions from third to fourth density — which is where planet Earth has already begun to ascend — your mind will soon become exhausted, confused and crazy.

The sane thing to do is focus your mind on what’s at hand in the present moment as an entry point for love, truth and life into the world, and let the world go its way to transformation — a transformation that is brought about by cosmic events and our living expressions of love, compassion, kindness, truth, integrity, joyfulness, and life itself. It’s what we all want anyway, and it will go in that direction faster and with the least amount of distress to human beings as we take our hands off of it. “Let it go!” as the song from the movie Frozen sings it. I love these lyrics by Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez:

It’s funny how some distance – Makes everything seem small – And the fears that once controlled me – Can’t get to me at all!

It’s time to see – What I can do – To test the limits and break through – No right, no wrong – No rules for me – I’m free! – Let it go! Let it go!

I am one with the wind and sky! – Let it go! Let it go! – You’ll never see me cry! – Here I stand and here I’ll stay – Let the storm rage on…

My power flurries through the air into the ground – My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around – And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast – I’m never going back – The past is in the past! – Let it go! Let it go!

And I’ll rise like the break of dawn! – Let it go! Let it go! – That perfect girl is gone! – Here I stand in the light of day…  Let the storm rage on!!! – The cold never bothered me anyway

Power-filled lyrics sung with such passion by Idina Menzel as “Elsa.”

“GREAT JUDGEMENT”

There’s a passage in Boyce and Grener’s book Wilcock spends a couple of pages on that speaks of a “Great Judgement” that I would like to end this series of posts with, mainly because it’s an opportunity to let some clear light shine upon the highly distorted concept religion has constructed. It’s rather a watered down version of what Zoroaster taught. The passage is excerpted from The Book of Enoch (2 Enoch) in the old Zoroastrian scriptures. 

Before everything was, before all creation came to pass, the Lord established the Aion of Creation. Thereafter He created all His creation, the visible and the invisible. After all that He created man in His image…. Then for the sake of man, the Lord caused the Aion to come forth, and divided it into times and hours…. When all the creation that was created by the Lord will come to an end, and every man will go to the Great Judgment of the Lord, then the times will perish: there will not be any more years, or months or days, the hours will not be counted anymore, but the Aion will be one. And all the righteous that will escape the Great Judgment of the Lord will join the great Aion, and at the same time the Aion will join the righteous, and they will be eternal…. 

Wilcock’s comment: “This all sounds very much like a blending together of space-time and time-space so we can function in both worlds at the same time. Boyce and Grenet give valuable context from other sources about the same thing on pages 444-445.”

In another passage (I Corinthians 7:29, 31) Paul, believing that “the appointed time has grown very short,” declared that “the form of this world is passing away.” Some centuries later Augustine … saw this change of the world’s “form.” … The cosmos, too, is to pass out of time into eternity, [and] is to share, according to its capacity, in the eternity of the immutable Truth…. In the final consummation of all things, therefore, time will be no more; all will be eternal-God, man, the world.” This teaching, found by Augustine in Paul, has been characterized as remarkable; but it is in fact what had been taught by Zoroaster, and believed by his followers down the ages.

Wilcock: “On pages 365-366, we hear about how we will have a ‘future body’ that is a ‘return to perfection.'”

Among Zoroaster’s eschatological ideas was his teaching about the” future body,” that at the Last Day the bones of the dead will be clothed again in flesh and reanimated by the soul (which has been existing apart, in heaven, hell or limbo, according to the individual judgment passed on it at death) …. According to him, each created thing, animate or inanimate, possesses its own indwelling force or spirit; and Ahura Mazda created these spirits first and then clothed them in material forms … at the end of time there will be a return to that perfection, with the blessed entering into the kingdom of Ahura Mazda in the ideal form of a just soul clad in an unblemished body, made immortal and undecaying.”

Wilcock: “Bear in mind this is not talking about a single Messianic figure–this is saying that “the blessed” will achieve this feat. This could be many different people.”

“Boyce and Grenet carefully trace how the difficulties of Roman and Macedonian rule affected Zoroastrian prophecies as well — causing later writers to adopt much more of a doom-and-gloom approach, which then seeded into all other Western religions. Nonetheless, what we see in the oldest, least-disturbed accounts is of a world that is transformed — in which time as we know it has come to an end, but not in a cataclysmic fashion. Evil is exposed and dwindles away, and humanity on earth appears to have transformed into an ‘unblemished body, made immortal and undecaying.'”

Here’s a link if you want to read from the Book of Enoch. It’s very fascinating reading. Keep in mind, however, that it is ancient scripture, part of the package of Old Testament scripture that Jesus said he had come to fulfill. He brought a new commandment of Love and opened wide the gates of heaven within the human heart: “…for the kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21).  Turn around and behold it is at hand, within and all around us.  

The Golden Age will materialize out of the heavens, where it awaits its birth through human beings, when The Golden Race wakes up fully from its slumber to manifest it. When we human beings who are on earth now begin to truly love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, and with all of our minds, and with all of our strength – our very life – and when we begin to truly love our neighbor as our Self so that we stop killing one another — with bullets as well as with words. Because our neighbor is our Self.

We ARE the Golden Race.

This concludes this series on the Golden Age and Golden Race.  Thank you for reading and sharing my blogs with your friends. I don’t know yet what’s next. So, stay tuned. 

Read my HealthLight newsletter online at LiftingTones.com. This series of posts is about “Living Medicines Vs Pharmaceuticals” and features healing herbs.

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Ancient knowledge, Aquarian Age, Ascension, Conscious Evolution, Cosmic events, Current cosmic event, David Wilcock, Fourth Density, Global Events, Golden Age, Golden Race, History of Middle East, Source Field Investigations, Time No More, Transformation, Zorastrianism

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Golden Age and Golden Race

My Chorale Pic

Our “Hero’s Journey” ideally ends with the hero defeating his nemesis and seizing the Elixir of Immortality, his journey’s quest. That quest for Humanity has come full cycle as we travel with our Mother Earth through the Zodiac belt into the beginning of a new cycle with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  To seize the Elixir of Immortality, we must defeat the nemesis of our own delusions of mortality hidden from our eyes by the fabricated human ego in which we have misplaced our identity. The delusion is maintained every time we excuse our shortcomings with “I’m only human, you know.” This lie is reinforced by the religions of the world, particularly by the Catholic Church which reminds its parishioners every year to “Remember thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The truth is you are divine and cannot die. The truth is you are a human being, made in the image and likeness of God. The religions know this, yet they view and treat their “believers” as sinners and dust.

The Elixir of Immortality is to be found hidden behind religious dogmas, although revealed clearly and proclaimed loudly by the very Lord whose Gospel Christianity preaches from its pulpits: “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” The kingdom of Heaven is the Elixir of Immortality and it is within us, not in some promised hereafter.  Religion itself is the nemesis humanity must defeat in order to end its quest for a heavenly state where suffering and death are not a part of life on planet Earth.

We are faced once again with a crucial choice that will determine the future of our progeny and the entire human race. That choice is between living in a “Golden Age” that is at hand to be welcomed, stewarded and enjoyed for the next two-thousand-plus years and plunging humanity down once again into the “Dark Ages.” The choice is our’s . . . and we are making it now by our behavior on the planet.

GAIA ASCENDING

The planet herself is moving into a higher vibratory state, driven by ancient cycles of evolution unfolding on schedule within the larger energetic field of the Milky Way Galaxy. The question for us to answer is: Are we with Gaia in her ascension process? If our answer is “Yes,” then she will take us into the Golden Age of Aquarius with little effort on our part. I say “little effort” because all that is required of us is that we live in peace and harmony with one another and with the Natural World. That we love the Lord of God with all and one another as our selves. That we put down our arms and stop warring over the land and its resources that we think will give us security, along with power and control over others. For in truth, there are no “others.” There is only Oneness. There is only Love.

If the answer is “No,” then Gaia will swallow up the world we have fabricated upon her surface and take most of us with it. According the prophecies in The RA Material, Book I of The Law of One, those of us who cannot move with Gaia will then have to be relocated to another third-density planet in the galaxy where we will have yet another opportunity to evolve spiritually and learn what it means to steward and care for our habitat. Planet Earth will go on to fulfill her destiny as a fourth-density planet. Those who can move on with her will return to Earth in fourth-density “rainbow bodies” — incorruptible bodies made of white light that refracts into the colors of the rainbow.

Gaia has been a generous and forgiving hostess to third-density human beings for tens-of-thousands of years. According the RA Material, She has been used to relocate other third-density beings, as well as second-density beings such as some of the animal, insect and plant species on the planet, beings that were left homeless when their planets were destroyed or made uninhabitable, such as Maldek and Mars respectively.  Maldek was once one of our sister planets that orbited where the asteroid belt now lies. Mars’ atmosphere was destroyed by weapons of mass destruction. Those beings who destroyed their planets have been living out their karma on Earth for thousands of years, incarnating over and again in order to learn their lesson and clean up their group karma. Apparently, they haven’t learned their lesson very well yet. They need to repent from their ways and be caused to wake up before it is too late to change and ascend to a higher level of consciousness and being. The Golden Age — the Kingdom of Heaven — is at hand and beckoning us all to enter in and enjoy living in this beautiful and magical world our Mother Earth has created and dressed for us.

THE GOLDEN RACE

Roman poets wrote of the “Golden Age” and apparently mistranslated the words saecula and aetas as both meaning “age,” when in fact saecula may mean either “race” or “age,” and aetas should be translated as “race.” I lifted this information from David Wilcock’s exhaustive literary work The Source Field Investigations, which I am reading for the second time due to its density of interesting and significant historical research.  I would like very much to review this one section on the origins of the idea of a Golden Age in this blog, perhaps over several posts.

Essentially, the first Zodiac Age has historically been a “Golden Age” when life on Planet Earth is in every way a Paradise experience.  Wilcock writes:

The coming of the Age of Aquarius, surrounding the year 2012, is the repetition of a cycle that has already occurred before—a cycle in which everyone on earth apparently had mystical abilities much greater than what most of us now possess, leading them to have perpetual bounty of life ‘untroubled by strife or want . . . a Paradise inhabited by the souls of the blessed.’ [He’s quoting from H.C. Baldry’s 1952 scholarly paper “Who Invented the Golden Age?”]. The pursuit of gold was seen as ‘one of the causes of degeneration from that happy state.’ Unfortunately, our current scientific models are woefully insufficient to explain how something like this could be possible—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t actually happen.

These “souls of the blessed” are not necessarily a special select group of souls, as Wilcock points out.

It is extremely important to mention that this Golden Race is not some weird and sick Hitlerian vision of a bunch of blond-haired, blue-eyed wunderkinder, or Nietzschean overmen, that everyone else must die off in order to make room for.  Just like the Cayce Readings said about the “Fifth Root Race,” this Golden Race may well be everyone on earth, within a finite period of time—not just a particular nationality or skin color. 

We are the Golden Race. Every human being on the planet volunteered to come here at this time to bring one thing and one thing only: LOVE. Today we celebrate once again the incarnation and birth of Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One of God — the Lord of Love.  He came on Earth for the same reason: to bring LOVE. Apparently, he saw some potential is us because he said that we shall do the works that he did, and even greater works would we do.  He saw sons and daughters of God incarnate on Earth, not white, yellow, brown and black humans.

There are nearly seven billion sons and daughters of God incarnate on Earth today, so there’s a whole lot more potential now than there was two-thousand years ago.  There are some 317 million incarnate souls in the USA. There are 565 million in all of North America and 385 million in South America. That adds up to nearly one-billion souls living in the Americas — one-seventh of the world’s population — and on Google Globe you don’t see any borders between countries.

America is the land of love. That’s what the word means: Loveland. We live in a country that is consecrated to Freedom and to the Spirit of Love.  This is holy ground upon which we walk daily with freedom to be who and what we are.  Let us walk upon its sacred soil with respect and reverence for life. Let us exercise our freedom to bring love into the world. Not just at Christmas time, but always. Let’s be the Golden Race the ancients foretold would arise in the Earth to bring in the Golden Age of Aquarius.

Have a Golden Christmas and a New Year full of love, of peace, and of joy.

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

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Aquarian Age, Christmas, Conscious Evolution, Cosmic Consciousness, Current cosmic event, Cycles within cycles, David Wilcock, Divine identity, Evolution, Fourth Density, Golden Age, Golden Race, Jesus, Light workers, Love, Mars, Milky Way Galaxy, Reincarnation, Source Field, Source Field Investigations, The Nemesis, The new era, The New Year

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THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF AQUARIUS!

A GOLDEN AGE DAWNS ONCE AGAIN!

My Chorale PicIt’s happened once in our prehistoric past and it’s come around again. The Ancients speak of the return of a “Golden Age” every 22,920 years. This is the length of the Mayan “Great Year,” measured by the presession of the Earth’s axis (the time it takes for the wobble of the Earth’s axis to make a complete cycle through the Zodiac belt). The end of this cycle as we exit the Piscean Age marks the beginning of the new Mayan Great Year of 22,920 years and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which is thought by one source at least to begin sometime around July 26,2014, one-and-a-half years after December 12, 2012. That source is Edwin Bernbaum who, in The Way to Shambhala says that “the golden age will come when the Sun, Moon and Jupiter all meet in the same quadrant as the Tishya constellation (which is part of Cancer). The next time this was to happen was on July 26, 2014, according to David Wilcock’s Cyber Sky astronomical software. 

I love this topic as it takes me away from the myopic view of life on planet Earth and lets my spirit soar into the unknown realm of all possibilities. There is a larger, grander context in which we journey through this cosmos. It is written in ancient sacred texts that no man knows the day or the hour of the end time.  But that was then, and if we had prophets back in ancient Biblical days, why not in these modern days.  We have evolved, after all, and have capacities to know what we didn’t, or couldn’t, know two thousand years ago.

Exciting days lie ahead for human beings on spaceship Earth. At least for those of us who are ready to graduate from the third dimension to the fourth. The fact is, these days are already upon us and have been for at least the last three years since the year 2011 when planet Earth herself graduated to the fourth-density.  So, I will write a few blog posts exploring some of what all this means and implies for the inhabitants of our Home among the stars. For we truly live in time/space historical days of the great cosmic clock and calender marking the unfoldment of the evolutionary process for our planet and our race.  Let’s travel through some of the prophetic material that has found its way in print through radical and daring authors. We’ll start with this one . . . .

THE LAW OF ONE: BOOK I —THE RA MATERIAL 

The RA MATERIAL(Click on the picture for a larger view.) This book, “The RA MATERIAL,” written by Don Elkins in collaboration with Carla Rueckert and James Allen McCarty, is a transcribed channeled interview with RA, a sixth density social complex, a collective body of beings that comprise the “Confederation of Planets in the service of the Infinite Creator.”

 The main topic of the interview is “The Law of One,” which is powered by unconditional love, compassion and understanding. To live a life governed by The Law of One is to live a life of unconditional love out of a consciousness of Unity. This is the spiritual path that, when taken by an individual or a collective race, prepares them for ascension from third density to fourth density being.  

RA: The Law of One states simply that all things are one, that all beings are one. . . . 

I highly recommend these books to my blog followers and visitors. There are five volumes in all, each one dealing with a different aspect of the evolutionary process currently being experienced by our planet and available for engagement by all third density human beings on the planet.

Ultimately, according to RA, there will be a “harvesting” of souls in the near future as planet Earth is increasingly unable to support and accommodate third density life forms.  This evolutionary process, as I say, is already underway.  The time of this “harvesting” is not predetermined nor set in a space-time period. The manner in which it will take place greatly depends on the collective function of human beings. It can be natural and easy or it can be painful and apocalyptic depending on the size of the critical mass who are moving in the ascension cycle in consciousness, in harmony with the Law on One. Form follows consciousness. As consciousness ascends, so does form transmute to a higher vibratory frequency.

WE’RE SURROUNDED BY EXTRATERRESTRIAL BEINGS POISED TO ASSIST  

According to RA, our planet is surrounded by fourth, fifth and sixth density beings, with some even incarnate in third density forms and walking among us.  In answer to the questions as to how many are incarnate on Earth now and of what density they are from, RA says:

The number is approximate due to an heavy influx of those birthed at this time due to an intensive need to lighten the planetary vibration and thus aid in harvest. The number approaches sixty-five million. . . .  

Few there are of fourth density. The largest number of Wanderers, as you call them, are of the sixth density. The desire to serve must be distorted [bent] towards a great deal of purity of mind and what you may call foolhardiness or bravery, depending upon your distortion complex [human nature] judgment. The challenge/danger of the Wanderer is that it will forget its mission, become karmically involved, and thus be swept into the maelstrom of which it had incarnated to avert the destruction. . . .  An entity which acts in a consciously unloving manner in action with other beings can become karmically involved.

THE “HARVEST” — or perhaps “Rapture?”

Christians look to an imminent day when Jesus will return in the clouds of heaven and lift up all “believers” out of the earth and take them with him to heaven.  Is this “Harvest” event RA describes the “Rapture” of which Christians speak?  I rather prefer RA’s scenario of how it will take place over the Christian version of human souls rising out of the graves and being taken up out of their automobiles while driving on the freeway to join Jesus in the clouds of heaven.

RA: . . . There are certain behaviors and thought-forms consonant with the understanding of this law. Those who, finishing a cycle of experience, demonstrate grades of distortion [levels of consciousness evolution] of that understanding of thought and action will be separated by their own choice into the vibratory distortion most comfortable to their mind/body/spirit complexes. This process is guarded or watched by those nurturing beings who, being very close to the Law of One in their distortions [forms of manifestation], nevertheless, move toward active service. 

Thus, the illusion is created of light, or more properly but less understandably, light/love. This is in varying degrees of intensity. The spirit complex of each harvested entity moves along the line of light until the light grows too glaring, at which time the entity stops. This entity may have barely reached third density or may be very, very close to the ending of the third-density light/love distortion vibratory complex. Nevertheless, those who fall within this octave of intensifying light/love then experience a major cycle during which there are opportunities for the discovery of the distortions which are inherent in each entity and, therefore, the lessening of these distortions.

(Note:  RA uses the word “distortion” throughout these sessions.  Perhaps we can understand the meaning of this word as RA uses it if we consider anything less than perfect love and Unity as a distortion — which isn’t either bad or good, or even right or wrong. Just distorted. Perhaps the word differentiated serves our understanding better.) 

Here is what RA had to say about that:

Consider, if you will, that the universe is infinite. This has yet to be proven or disproven, but we can assure you that there is no end to your selves, your understanding, what you would call your journey of seeking, or your perceptions of the creation.

That which is infinite cannot be many, for many-ness is a finite concept. To have infinity you must identify or define the infinity as unity; otherwise, the term does not have any referent or meaning. In a Infinite Creator there is only unity. You have seen simple examples of unity. You have seen the prism which shows all colors stemming from the sunlight. This is a simplistic example of unity.

In truth there is no right or wrong. There is no polarity for all will be, as you would say, reconciled at some point in your dance through the mind/body/spirit complex which you amuse yourself by distorting in various ways at this time. This distortion is not in any case necessary. It is chosen by each of you as an alternative to understanding the complete unity of thought which binds all things. You are every thing, every being, every emotion, every event, every situation. You are unity. You are infinite. You are love/light, light/love. You are. This is the Law of One. 

(Note: “Love/light is the enabler, the power , the energy giver. Light/love is the manifestation which occurs when light has been impressed with love.” –RA)

CYCLES WITHIN CYCLES — WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

Every 75,000 earth years a “harvest” of souls is done, as the planet itself moves to a higher density vibration.  There are three 25,000 year cycles in this larger cycle, the time it takes for one pass of the Earth’s tilted axis through the complete Zodiac Belt of twelve constellations. Our planet began its third-density experience about seventy-five thousand years ago.  These are approximate figures.

RA: One major cycle is approximately 25,000 of your years. There are three cycles of this nature during which those who have progressed may be harvested at the end of three major cycles. That is, approximately between 75 and 76,000 of your years. All are harvested regardless of their progress, for during that time the planet itself has moved through the useful part of that dimension and begins to cease being useful for the lower levels of vibration within that density.

THE MISSION OF THE WANDERERS

The sole mission of the Wanderers incarnate on Earth is to increase the number of those who will be able to graduate to fourth density life on this planet. Those not incarnate are surrounding the planet ready to assist in the harvesting. Those third density human beings who are not ready for the fourth density will he taken to a third density planet in the galaxy where they can be supported and where they will continue in the evolutionary process. This has happened before approximately 500,000 years ago, according to what RA says:

At one time/space, in what is your past, there was a population of third-density beings upon a planet which dwelt within your solar system. There are various names by which this planet has been named. The vibratory sound complex [name] most usually used by your peoples is Maldek. These entities, destroying their planetary sphere, thus were forced to find room for themselves upon this third-density which is the only one in your solar system at their time/space present which was hospitable and capable of offering the lessons necessary to decrease their mind/body/spirit distortions with respect to the Law of One. . . .  

They came through the process of harvest and were incarnated through the process of incarnation from your higher spheres within this density. . . .

The population of your planet contains many various groups harvested from other second-dimension and cycled third-dimension spheres. You are not all one race or background of beginning. The experience you share is unique to this time/space continuum.

Perhaps this explains the many and varied nationalities currently dwelling on the planet. It seems the entities from Maldek are having a difficult time learning their lesson, bent as they appear to be upon destroying this planetary sphere as well.  Do you feel you do not fit in this world?  Welcome, Wanderer, to the graduation ceremony.

HOW LONG WILL THE HARVEST LAST?

In the Book of Daniel of the Old Testament, chapter 12, there is mentioned a period of “time, times, and a half.” That is to say three-and-a-half units of time . . . and this is where we shall begin the next post. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Antony

I just past the 40,500 mark of all time visitors to my blog from 118 countries globally!  This is such an exciting experience reaching out to so many people world wide. I send love and appreciation to each one who visits my blogs.

Someone in Namibia visited this post today. This makes 119 countries visiting my blogs. Click here to see where Namibia is. Welcome friend on the continent of Africa.  

Today someone on the tiny island of SAINT LUCIA visited my blog. Welcome friend! This makes 120 countries visiting my blogs. Here’s the updated list:

ALBANIA, ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, AZERBAIJAN, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELGIUM, BERMUDA, BHUTAN, BOLIVIA, BOSNIA, BRAZIL, BRUNEI DARUSSALAM, BULGARIA, CAMEROON, CANADA, CHILI, CHINA, COLOMBIA, COSTA RICA, COTE D’LVOIRE, CROATIA, CYPRUS, CZECH REPUBLIC, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO, DENMARK, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EGYPT, ESTONIA, ETHIOPIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GEORGIA, GERMANY, GHANA, GREECE, GUAM, GUATEMALA, GUYANA, HONG KONG, HUNGARY, ICELAND, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAQ, IRELAND, ISRAEL, ITALY, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JERSEY (island), JORDAN, KAZAKHSTAN, KENYA, KYRGYZSTAN, KUWAIT LEBANON, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, LUXEMBOURG, MALAYSIA, MALDIVES, MALTA, MAURITIUS, MEXICO, MOLDOVA, MONTENEGRO, MYANMAR, NAMIBIA, NEPAL, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PANAMA, PERU, PHILLIPPINES, POLAND, PORTUGAL, PUERTO RICO, QATAR, REUNION (Island), ROMANIA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, SAINT LUCIA, SAUDI ARABIA, SERBIA, SPAIN, SINGAPORE, SLOVAKIA, SLOVANIA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, SOUTH AFRICA, SRI LANKA, SUDAN, SYRIAN ARABIA, REPUBLIC OF (SOUTH) KOREA, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, TAGO (West Africa), TAIWAN, TANSANIA (UNITED REP. OF TZ), THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, TUNISIA, TURKEY, UKRAINE, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UNITED KINGDOM, USA, VANUATU, VENEZUELA, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZIMBABWE (South Africa)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Apocalypse, Aquarian Age, Ascension, Cosmic events, Evolution, Fourth Density, Frequency Shifting, Golden Age, Light workers, Love, Mayan Calendar, Planet Earth, Reincarnation, Transformation

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The Essenes, “Children of the Light,” Part 3:The Teacher

The Teacher’s Message

If you can forgive completely, the past disappears for you. If you forgive completely, you don ‘t need to worry about the future either; you can function as fully aware beings, fully conscious beings, working and moving in the moment and focusing the energies of the Divine Presence. (Excerpted from The Essenes – Children of the Light.)

Tony's picture 2 from PeggyI have been writing about the Essenes  and how they provided “The Teacher” with a core circle of trusted friends, as well as a vibrational hedge for his ministry. His twelve apostles and disciples were not all a part of that core. Only a few, such as his brother James, John the Beloved, his mother Mary,  Mary Magdalene, and Joseph of Arimathea.  Those who comprised his core and hedge lived in the Essene communities near the banks of the Dead Sea. Their purpose centered in living out of love, compassion and understanding. Their mission was about spreading The Teacher’s message of love among the people of the extended Jewish community. Few, however, had ears to hear and eyes to see. 

On Time and Timelessness 

(Click on the picture to enlarge)

The Essenes BkIn this book, pictured here, we are given a portrayal of  the Master Jesus and the essence of his message through a man named Daniel who lived in the Qumran Community at the time of the Teacher’s ministry. During a past life regression interview with Daniel through Stuart conducted by Joanna, here is what Daniel had to say about the Teacher’s personal atmosphere. Joanna had asked him about grace. 

Daniel: Grace is a gift of love and healing from the highest level. God going the extra mile to meet us upon the road of life. We considered that we were living in a time of Grace, and we felt that this Grace centered around Jesus. He was the bringer of our Grace because many cosmic energies focused around him, and made possible breakthroughs in consciousness, and a transformation in the lives of those who came into his presence.

Some ones, who had sight upon very high levels, told me that when they looked at Jesus they did not see only his aura, they saw this vast vortex of cosmic energy whirling around him. They said it was like the layers of an onion, an infinite number of transparent layers of energy moving out and out into the universe. So that he was the center of all things, the center not only of our drama but the whole drama of the planet. He was the center of all things, and forces were gathered around him that made many things possible. Others who were attuned to the higher reaches of the angelic realm said that around Jesus they sensed the presence of very high angels.

He was the bringer of Grace – who else could be a focus for all these energies? And because all these energies were focused together, we could move through our experience faster. It quickened everything. You could not be anywhere near him and not move more quickly along your path.

Joanna: Tell me more about this vortex of energy surrounding Jesus.

Daniel: We were aware that a whole vortex of cosmic energy revolved around Jesus and that anyone who encountered him stepped into that vortex. That was  really the miracle for us. Not that he did this or that remarkable healing, but that his whole being was a focus of cosmic energy, and thus he could bring profound changes into the lives of all those he met who could accept these energies.

As his work flowered he became more a timeless being, talking about timeless things which would be relevant in any age. Time did not touch him, he escaped from time and that was part of his work and part of his gift. But we knew that in the end time might dilute and distort the message he came to bring. Once the Teacher is no longer physically present, the Teaching may become changed and weakened. What needs to go forward is the essential message that Jesus was trying to convey: unconditional love working through the heart, and the surrendering of the will to the Divine Presence within.

The more one surrenders one’s will to the Divine Presence, the more one merges with that Presence which is within every human being, the more the path opens and the way becomes clear and straight. Then one can go forward and rise in consciousness and ascend into new frequencies of being. All of this was what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples and the groups around him. He was trying to teach this but
many did not want to hear this message, and would much rather have rigid structures. The inner truth is of the Spirit and lives, and anything which is of the letter has its day, flowers and is gone.

Remember always that Jesus lived in a difficult and troubled time. Many people were frightened, and in their fear they clung to the comforting thought of a strong Father who would protect them. They preferred a strong external perception of Deity, a strong Father rather than the Divine Presence within. They saw the within as weak, and the external forces as strong and threatening. Jesus came to show them how strong the Divine Presence could be. How it could burn like a great Light within him and illumine the lives of all those around him, but many in their fear were not able to see this.

He was offering them a chance to step out of the child state and become fully adult in the spiritual sense, but this step was too much for them. They wished to be the powerless children of a loving Father for a little while longer. You know, he never blamed them for that. He used to say that we should have faith in the ability of every human being to awaken at exactly the right time, like a flower which opens in its due season. If we choose to awaken and become spiritually adult we can become creators with God, but many were not ready for that. They wished to slumber a little longer, to be the passive children of creation, walking hand in hand with the Father but unwilling to share in Divine knowledge and Divine power.

Joanna: And the vortex of energy around Jesus helped people to awaken at the right time?

Daniel: Yes. Because of all the vortex of power around Jesus he was able to pull people out of an obsession with the past and into the moment. When they were in his presence, the past disappeared. They realized that nothing was important but the moment, and that they were free to act within that moment.

This was one of the gifts Jesus brought for many ones, the ability to focus and act in the present in a way they had never experienced before he came. If you can forgive completely the past disappears for you. If you forgive completely you don ‘t need to worry about the future either, you can function as fully aware beings, fully conscious beings, working and moving in the moment and focusing the energies of the Divine Presence.

Nothing else is important; nothing else will exist for you. That is why Jesus excited so many people. They could feel themselves being pulled out of time and into timelessness, out of the past into the everlasting present which is the only place in which you have power. The past and the future, if you are entangled with guilt or with worries and anxieties, rob you of your power. Only the present gives you power, and forgiveness is the key to ensuring you stay within that focus, expanding your awareness and living fully within the moment. This is living as God intended. This is joy. This is freedom – and this is what Jesus taught. This is the most wonderful gift which he gave to us.

We feel that this section was one of Daniel’s greatest gifts, too. It made us see the work of Jesus in a totally new light, and we realized that it is as much needed today as when he taught this wisdom two thousand years ago. Somehow in these words of Daniel all the dead weight of centuries of dogma and doctrine fell away, and the message – and the gift – of Jesus shone through.

I know because I was there. With this post I conclude this series on The Essenes, Children of the Light. Until we meet here again in a month, 

Be love. Be Loved.

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.  The current theme is the causes of depression. 

Chris Foster recently posted on The Happy Seeker “Listening to our own calm steadfast spirit.”

Category:

Cosmic Energy, Divine identity, Finding God, Going Within, Healing, Jesus, Love, Love heals, Past life regression, The Essenes, Union with God

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The Essenes, “Children of the Light,” part 2: Group Souls


My Chorale PicI love books that arouse in me that gut-wrenching deja vu that shouts  “I know, I was there!” Stuart Wilson & Joanna Prentis’s book The Essenes – Children of the Light is such a book.

Have you ever had a deep core feeling that you are part of a group Soul that’s been on Earth before, probably in several incarnations? I have. I’m having that gut feeling  again as I read about the Essenes, especially about how they healed with sound and practiced attunement on a daily basis. I have the feeling when singing with or listening to a choral group, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. To me all musicians are angels of sound, of which there are legions, most of whom dwell in the Realms of Light singing praises to the Creator of the Universe. Others comprise groupings that incarnate together to bring the music of heaven to earth to facilitate specific outworkings in human affairs and world events . . . and perhaps to make life in this “vale of tears” a bit more enjoyable. 

This is the case with the Essenes, who lived in intentional communities along the shores of the Dead Sea prior to and during the life of Jesus, whom they called “The Teacher.”   They are a group Soul that has incarnated on many occasions to prepare the way for the incarnation and mission of great ones, like the Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus, all three of which are believed to be the incarnations of the same great Being, the Lord of Love.  They are back — or perhaps I can say “we are back” — and have been for the duration of the last century, at lease since the early 1900’s. Our purpose is to bring the New Heaven into the world to provide a living foundation based on the truth of love and of life upon which the New Earth is to be created and is being created even now. 

Is Jesus Returning?

Does this mean that the Lord of Love is about to return? I don’t know. What I do know is that we have been visited by great ones in our time. I personally know of two such ones who have come and gone after bringing the same message of love that “The Teacher” brought two-thousand years ago, and more. They were my spiritual teachers and guides, and they had their group Soul around them to assist in their missions. And there are others, such as the Dalai Lama, who has his “followers,” or group Soul, around him. David Wilcock is now known in some circles to be the reincarnation of Edgar Casey, and he has his group Soul with him again in this lifetime.  He even looks like Edgar Casey, as do some of his close circle of friends look like those who where part of Edgar Casey’s entourage. His books are compelling reading.  

So, what are these great ones with their group Souls heralding if not the coming of someone or something great into the world at this time?  I’ve written in a previous post about the Archangel taking back his Body for the purpose of returning to His Father’s world to reclaim its kingdoms and make them once again the “Kingdoms of our LORD, and of his Christ,” as St. John wrote about and foretold in his Book of Revelation (11:15).  I’m not preaching here. Just citing historical evidence that something BIG is afoot.  And the Essenes are back to assist in giving it birth and full revelation in our day.  This is exciting! This is unprecedented. This IS the Day which the Lord has made, and we can rejoice and be glad in it. Now I’m preaching. But why not? Are we going to just sit around the TV and mope and whine about the dire state of our world, especially in the Middle East and with our run-away economy? Little good it does toward changing anything.  Only makes matters worse. We can change ourselves, however, and how we see what’s going down in our time.

What is Poverty, Really?

I awoke this morning at 4:30 with this thought pressing to be entertained — and I’m sure it arises out of all the fuss and bother we’ve been making over the top 1% who own 90% of the wealth (money) and the bottom 10% who live in various degrees of what is called “poverty.”  I may have my percentages wrong, but you get the idea.  The thought that came rushing into my awakening mind was this. What is poverty? Who has decided that a person’s collection of money and goods is the measure of his economic state, be it an individual or a nation of people?  The Federal Poverty Line in this country is around $23,000 in yearly income.  That’s what an average family needs to sustain itself in America.  Of course, it depends on where you live. If you live in California, for instance, you need two or three times that amount in yearly income just to stay afloat.  

But poverty is a state of mind. My yearly income is around $24,000 with my Social Security check and what little I earn as a semi-retired healthcare practitioner.  Yet, I don’t consider myself as being poor or living in poverty. Between our combined SS checks, my wife and I do alright. We eat well and probably more than we need to sustain life. We have a roof over our heads and a cat and birds to feed and keep us company. We even have a garden in our back yard and maintain two automobiles. Sure, we would like to have more money to travel and spend time with our children and grandchildren, all of whom live on the West Coast, where we can’t afford to live — or rather choose not to afford.  But we don’t consider ourselves to be living in poverty.  It’s definitely a state of mind, created by those who use money and possessions as a measure of a person’s “net worth.”  

So, why are we so bothered, or at least entertained, by the fact that 1% of the population owns 90% of the wealth in this country?  Or is that a global phenomenon? Is it the media that keeps shaping our perception of reality?  Or is it rather my own narrow-minded perception of who I am and what I am; my occasional forgetfulness of the abundance that surrounds me in the natural world, and even in the man-made world. We see new buildings and houses going up all around us.  So, there’s obviously no lack of money in the world.  It’s all a mater of perception.  And who in their sane mind wants the headache and stress that comes with worldly wealth. I buy lottery tickets and sometimes, when the pot is in the hundreds of millions, I get a little worrisome fear that I might win! 

The Simple Life for Me

I’m going to close this post with a couple of excerpts from “The Essenes – Children of the Light.” They didn’t care much about material possessions and yet they apparently lived very rich, full and meaningful lives. They also had a spiritual basis and purpose for their lives.  

The working day of the Essenes gave a balanced discipline of practical work, creative craft and art, exercise of the body, a period of study of great masterworks, a time of teaching and learning and of recreation. And through it all is the sense of working closely with the nature spirits and the angelic worlds, with all activity dedicated to the glory of God, and with joy in the heart. (Sir George Trevelyan, Summons to a High Crusade)

They lived literally in heaven on earth, and they made it so. The simple life is not a life of poverty nor of lack of what one needs to live a meaningful and creative life here on Earth. It’s rather a life lived in balance with nature and with one’s particular environment and circumstance.  A life lived with respect for the natural resources of the planet, such as water, which is rapidly becoming a precious commodity due to its scarcity in some places, like the West Coast.  Here’s what Daniel had to say about that in the interview in the book: 

The Kaloo [ancient ones from Atlantis] told us much concerning the use of water, and over time we became expert in this area. Our buildings were fashioned so that the walls were continuous, one flowing into the other. Using common walls and adjoining roofs enabled us to channel the rainwater down into great storage tanks. Where there was a nearby wadi  [a rocky watercourse which is dry except during rainy season] the waters from this were also directed down into the tanks.  So we preserve every drop of water, and this enables us to survive in arid areas that are considered too poor for any other people to farm and settle. Water is one of the most vital things, and we respect it and preserve all the water which comes from the heavens. There is a special quality about rain which has fallen through pure air in a good place. These are the essentials of life: pure air and water. Without these how can we be at ease within our bodies?

“Ease within our bodies.” Isn’t that really enough? Do we actually need more? More stuff? More luxury? More energy? To do what? Destroy our natural habitat and that of the animal kingdom? Unfortunately, we don’t have pure air nor pure rain water in most areas where human beings conglomerate in communities. But we do have filtering systems.

The point, of course, is that we can alter our perception and our perspective about so called “poverty” and  “wealth.” And we can do better than we have been doing in managing our economy and stewarding the natural resources of the Earth.

As I lay there this morning with my head comfortably on my pillow thinking on these things, I called my mind away from entertaining depressing and stressful thoughts and toward an awareness of the richness and abundance present with me in the present moment, the eternal Now.  It felt good and I felt secure in my Father’s world where peace eternally abides and love yet rules the day.  His love for His world and for us, for each and every human being on the face of the earth, is what keeps us from total annihilation.  The Father provides all that I need, has done so all of my life, and I have no reason to believe He will do less in what days I have left here.  God loves us more than we can ever imagine.  If it were not so, we would truly be living in abject poverty.  A timely thought in the wake of Fathers Day.

Until my next post in this series, 

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony 

P.S. Speaking of the scarcity of water, here’s a link to a revolutionary idea that’s taking hold in Africa. Just the music is worth the two minutes of watching. https://dana.io/roll-a-hippo

Read my HealthLight Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com. The current theme of consideration is “Depression: Its Causes and Cures.”

Bill Moyers posted an up-to-date article on poverty in America at http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/28/generational-poverty-is-the-exception-not-the-rule. Just click on “poverty in America.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Buddha and Krishna, Economics, Edgar Cayce Reincarnated, Golden Age, Group Souls, Heaven, Incarnation, Light workers, Love, Money, Poverty, Sound Healing, The Essenes, The New Economy, The rich and the poor, Wealth

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