Personal Follow-Up to Yesterday's Article ...

I'm currently going through a life-transformation.

Challenging, to say the least ... painful in ways I didn't previously fathom.

Many of my (few remaining) friends are concerned ... which, I understand.

I'm concerned.

This conversation is currently happening ... and since it allowed me to clarify and formulate some of my own thoughts, I thought I'd share.

My friend wrote this:

"Dena - GOD just spoke to me to tell you how you can get your life back -

Jesus said, "Whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospels will find it." - (Mt. 10:38-39, Mark 8:34-36, Luke 9:23-25)

I love you."

Now, I have often found it interesting, that, in the realm of Christianity, God/Source seems to prefer to speak to other people, rather than to the person who needs the speaking-to ... there's this seemingly prevailing view that second-hand communication is preferable to direct communication ... leaving one (or at least me) wondering, "why wouldn't God care enough to talk to me personally?"

This seems to foster a dependency upon others at best (something I'm being led *out* of), and a domineering hierarchy at worst ... as well as a distrust in one's own inherent ability to commune with one's own Creator/Source. It also goes contrary to the very words of Jesus (whom, I no longer believe, ever intended to inspire or create a religion in general ... much less Christianity in particular), when he emphatically said that the realm of God (or the "foundation of power of the Source") is within you.

Here's my response:

Thank you for loving me and caring about me ...

I see Jesus quite differently than I once did ... I think the traditions of man created what most Christians now believe about him ... I don't see him as the "savior of the world" because I no longer believe that we ever had anything to be saved *from* -- except for our faulty thinking, i.e., thinking that we had somehow become separated from the Source of All Life, or God.

I also don't trust how the Bible was tinkered with ... I think some of the older, less altered writings (i.e., Gospel of Thomas, etc.) are more reliable ... but, even then, they are penned by humans ... I believe, ultimately, that we have to hear Spirit speaking to us, through us, by means of the heart, intuition ... that which is within. For the realm of God is within us, not outside us ...

and the ultimate gospel/good-news, is, I believe, that we are One with God -- always have been, always will be ... we come from God, we return to God ... all of the universe is a hologram of God -- there is nothing but God.

I believe that THAT is what Jesus came to tell us, to show us, that we are all like him. We just don't realize it yet.

So ... yes, I need to find my Life (in/of God and true inner Self -- one and the same), by losing my ego-perspective life ... that which erroneously believed/believes that I can find joy outside of myself, in any other person, relationship, situation, circumstance, or place. In reality, we can only truly enjoy relationships with others when we know who we really are, and experience that inner-divinity ... and flow to another from that place of inner-security.

So, we may be saying the same thing in essence -- but I no longer see/think of this in religious/Christian terms ... which I find to be very limiting, and even damaging, as the myth of separation is perpetuated through Christianity.

Yes, I believe all that I just wrote. But ... I must apparently also believe something else, for I am experiencing suffering. I'm discovering (really, I've always known, I'm just now deeply *experiencing*) how we can have hidden, (false) core beliefs ... usually those things we "inherited" from our parents/caregivers, in the first 7 years of life, when we were like absorbent little sponges ... soaking up the perspectives/beliefs of those around us ... as-yet-lacking the means to discern truth, or to filter deeper reality ... and most of us continue to live, throughout our adult lives, subconsciously, FROM those very beliefs ... double-minded, in how we SEE the truth in what we take in, and yet cannot overcome the force of that which is unconsciously, unknowingly, unquestioningly at our CORE.

IOW, what we think in our minds cannot overcome what we believe in our hearts.

We need to discover what it is we really believe, and question THAT, and live from a deeper place of freedom.

(for more on this, see Greg Braden's powerful book, "The Spontaneous Healing of Belief")

Shalom & Namaste ~
Dena