I think that for many of us, Jesus is perhaps one of the most challenging figures in history.
I know in my own case, he’s often been colored by my negative connotations with Christianity. For that reason, I’ve often done all I could to all but ignore him.
I don’t believe I’m alone in that. Most of us have probably had a difficult history with Christianity to say the least. I know personally I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it, leaning largely to hate.
And yet Jesus has often shown up for me in the most unexpected, sometimes the most unwanted ways.
I don’t often discuss it, but Jesus showed up in a vision back in 2010 while I was meditating, to let me know that my path would be walked alone. I’d often think of those words over the following decade, which turned out to be very true, as I found my beliefs and realizations not quite syncing up with any set spiritual system out there.
Then after an awakening experience in 2011, he would show up in order for me to channel certain messages, which I did for almost a year. Unfortunately those messages no longer exist, and they may have just been meant for me and Christine — who knows.
As the years went on, I did my best to ignore his very existence. That attempt culminated last year when I read The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur, which aimed to show how Jesus’ life really just reflected various other mythologies throughout history, and therefore it was doubtful whether he existed at all.
And I was pretty happy to leave it at that. Life would certainly be a lot easier if he hadn’t existed, and I could scoff at all the Christians who took his existence so seriously. I thought he was likely just a thought form created by the collective belief of billions of followers, with no more substance than that.
Heck, you may be wondering why we need waste time on this subject at all. Everyone will have their own belief about him — whether he existed historically as described, existed but was mythologized, or didn’t exist at all.
Part of this is a healing post for my sake. This area has been such a landmine, full of scary surprises that I’d rather shove off in a corner somewhere and forget about.
Of course it doesn’t help that I’m married to a Christian (sorry Christine), so it’s often been brought suddenly and painfully up to the surface. Christine of course doesn’t care what I believe and just wants me to be happy, but just her very fact as one who does believe in a literal Jesus would challenge me.
But I also think it’s an important topic for all of us. There’s a lot of pain and confusion around this figure in the collective unconscious, and it certainly doesn’t all come from me. 😛
I think his very existence (or lack thereof) is a challenge of sorts. In the spiritual community, we haven’t known what to do with him. Do we ignore him altogether? Do we channel him and update his message for a new age? I’ve certainly seen some cringe-worthy channeling out there, no disrespect intended to anyone who might believe in them. It’s just that many of the ones I’ve come across didn’t resonate at all for me.
Of course if you’re reading this, that’s no accident and perhaps there’s a message in it for you as well.
Or perhaps not, and this is just my way of making sense of a difficult subject.
My Fear Around Christianity
I mentioned above that I had a love/hate relationship with Christianity.
I grew up more-or-less christian, often attending a local Methodist church until I was about 7 years old. Then when I was about 9 or 10, I got introduced to Wicca and basically left Christianity in the dust.
Wicca, Paganism, and then eastern religions, would come to define the next several years of my life.
But then when I was about 13, one of my mother’s coworkers essentially badgered me into at least reading the Bible. This would prove to define my teenage years almost exclusively — for better or worse I really don’t know.
On one hand, I loved the Bible. I got an audio version of the Bible, the NIV I think, on CD, and would listen to it every day. I think I had listened through the whole thing in a few months.
The characters of the Bible — especially the Old Testament — really came alive for me.
In particular, the God of the Old Testament, though I know many people see him as angry and vengeful, was always intriguing for me. The OT really made God come alive in a way that would call back to me again and again over the years. Just read some of the Psalms, and their depiction of God is simply beautiful. Even the story of Exodus, where he was said to lead his people through the impossible, to escape Egypt and find the Promised Land, was incredibly moving.
The New Testament was a bit of a different story. I enjoyed the gospels, but remember being confused why everyone focused on Jesus’ crucifixion, when like 99% of the gospels were him just teaching about love. The rest of the New Testament didn’t really resonate as much.
After reading the Bible, I remember trying to find a church that captured what I had found there. I went through many different churches, starting at the Methodist church I had once attended, and even checking out a pentecostal church for a while (don’t. even. ask), but nothing quite captured it for me.
That period of my life culminated in becoming a Jehovah’s Witness (yes, no kidding). It was a very bittersweet time of my life, because I felt super welcomed like I never had before. It gave me a sense of belonging. But then once I started to question, I was tossed aside like none of that had ever mattered.
After about two years as a Jehovah’s Witness, I started to drift and fall away. The restrictions were too much. Not to mention, they didn’t want me to take school seriously, because, you know, the end of the world could be any day now. I was a junior in high school at the time, and knew I wanted to go to college.
I also realized the harm Christianity had done to me. My study of magic and meditation had opened up infinite vistas of possibility to me. I had been awakened to the existence of energy, psychic abilities, the power of the mind, and the very nature of our reality. Then it felt like Christianity tried to squash all of those new-found insights, to call them evil and of the devil. I felt very repressed, very small, in Christianity.
I had actually had my first awakening experience when I was 13, not long before my foray into Christianity.
That glimpse allowed me to know that there was much that Christianity didn’t account for and did its best to ignore — or if it couldn’t ignore it, to demonize.
The thing is, I couldn’t suppress the beauty I had initially seen in the Bible. The manifestation of it in Christianity left much to be desired, but over the years, something in the Bible always called out to me.
And that’s why I could never quite ignore it I think. In college I actually became Catholic, which is how I met Christine.
But every time I would make another attempt at Christianity, I’d feel that old sense of repression, of restriction, and the need for my freedom would require me to once again leave it behind, a bit more jaded than before.
Every few years this would happen. The beauty of Christianity would call out, then its ugliness would repulse me.
The last time was towards the end of last year, 2020. I was at one of the darkest periods of my life and just needed to feel safe. Not knowing where to turn, I returned for a time to the Catholic Church, and the comfort of knowing God would protect me.
It did help: I climbed out of the pit I found myself in, improved my circumstances, then found I no longer needed that comfort, and once more was repulsed by the uglier aspects of the faith.
That was, as I mentioned earlier, around the time I read The Pagan Christ, which convinced me that I could safely leave this whole mess behind.
What was it exactly I hated so much about Christianity? Besides the hateful behavior of many of its adherents, which definitely was a huge part of it, I think at the end of the day it was its tendency to oversimplify things.
For example, how on earth could believing in the existence of a random person in history do anything to “save” my soul? How could someone’s death forgive sin? If God is all-powerful, why would he set up such a system in the first place which would back him into such a corner?
And it really did often sound like he was backed into a corner. The only way he could forgive our sins eternally was to kill his son, really? And if we didn’t believe in that one very specific person, we’d burn forever in hell — but you know, he really actually loves us. Really? He couldn’t just, you know, decide not to send anyone to hell? Did no one think of that option? But because he was backed into a corner, billions of souls would have to burn for eternity? It should make us feel better that he’d much rather not do that, of course.
With no offense intended, it sounded like something children would come up with. The whole thing obviously crumbles under the least bit of scrutiny, but in a perverse sort of way it also had the potential to bring comfort. It made the universe make sense, if you didn’t think about it too much — which they don’t want you to do of course.
And I think its very fragility, its very tendency to crumble when you look at it long enough, is why many Christians don’t believe in many of the actual tenets of their religion.
How many Christians, for example, actually believe in hell? In my experience, not very many. But the thing is, the whole religion falls apart without the central belief in hell. Otherwise, what did Jesus save us from? The belief is that he died so we wouldn’t have to be condemned and go to hell. After all the Bible literally says:
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. (John [3:36] NIV)
If you don’t have hell, you have Jesus who died, for nothing, to save us from nothing. If God could always just overlook our sin anyway, then the whole thing was just a farce.
Sure you could just see Jesus as someone who came to teach a beautiful message, and I think some Christians revert to this way of seeing him. Then sin, crucifixion, hell, and all the rest can comfortably be removed.
But then you have Jesus saying certain uncomfortable things like:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 NIV)
So then such Christians have to see the Bible as not literal, or maybe even metaphorical. And by that point, roughly 90% of the actual religion has been stripped away. It becomes more-or-less, “Jesus was pretty cool.”
Another Way
Roughly 11 years ago, I came across A Course In Miracles. Studying that book helped me to escape the thought system of the Catholic Church.
After a while I left it behind, preferring to have nothing to do with any Christian language at all.
I picked it up again a few years later, but quickly left it behind for much the same reason.
If you aren’t aware, ACIM was written by a psychology professor, Dr. Helen Schucman, back in the 1970s.
At the time an atheist, she claimed that Jesus began dictating a message to her, which she wrote down, and which subsequently became A Course In Miracles as we know it today.
The Course uses quite a bit of Christian language, but redefines it in a way that means something completely different.
The Course teaches, essentially, that this world is an illusion — a dream that we made up, to make us feel separate from God. In so doing, we fell into a state of guilt and fear, which we then project out upon the world in an attempt to escape from it.
The only solution is what it calls “the atonement,” which is to heal our own perception of this world — to realize that we were never separate from God and thus were never under threat at all.
It basically uses Christian language to express a non-dual vision of the world.
The course simply describes itself thus:
This is a course in mind training. (ACIM, T-1.VII.4:1)
What is it training our mind for? To see the world with corrected perception, and thus to end our own suffering.
All that is well and good, but who cares?
I went for years without really thinking of the Course.
But recently when I was preparing for my new program, The Inner Path to Outer Transformation, something made me think of ACIM.
I was just writing down some notes, and something about what I was writing just reminded me of a concept from the Course.
Now you might be thinking, earlier I scoffed at those who claimed to channel Jesus. So why would I take ACIM seriously at all?
And the answer is, at one time I didn’t take it seriously. But with fresh eyes, with my current understanding, something just resonated.
I’ve been studying the LOA for 6 years now, and have realized a lot of things in that time. I’ve been obviously exploring spirituality for a lot longer.
And something in the words of ACIM just reflected right back to me all the realizations I had already come to myself.
I put it off for days. I had done just enough research to find the similarity between ACIM and the notes I had written, and I thought about maybe beginning to study it from the start.
But I put it off. I really, really didn’t want to study ACIM. I didn’t need the Christian language, I didn’t know if I believed Jesus dictated a message to a psychology professor in the 70s, and I didn’t want to figure out what all of that meant.
And then a crazy thing happened — in one way just a small coincidence, but in another, a validation.
I must have been subscribed to the mailing list of the Foundation for Inner Peace, the organization who publishes ACIM. And just a couple days after I started thinking about the Course, I got an email from them that they had just released the entire Course online, for free.
I don’t remember the last time I received an email from them, so this was quite a surprise to say the least.
So I started studying it. And the words just came alive to me. Every word reflected that which I already knew, but also went far beyond it to things I had never even thought of before.
It’s like if you had figured out addition and subtraction on your own, and then a math teacher came along, validated your understanding of this basic mathematics, and proceeded to teach you calculus.
It included all that I had already realized, but went lightyears beyond.
For example, look at this brilliant passage about the power of the mind:
Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level. (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:3-14)
There’s obviously quite a lot buried in that single passage. But keep in mind this is years before Abraham-Hicks existed or the law of attraction became popularized. And this was channeled through someone who professed to be an atheist before these events took place.
But I think this is one of my favorite quotes:
Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself. Spirit yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being. (ACIM, T-7.IX.2:6-10)
Our spirit, who we truly are, yearns to share its being. It wills to create. I can’t think of something more beautiful.
OK, there are a few other quotes that come close, but I won’t inundate this post with those. My point is simply to show the beauty reflected in the course, and how it says exactly what I’ve been saying for years, but much more.
A New Understanding of Jesus
Of course, let’s not get sidetracked. This post is about the figure of Jesus.
At first, everything was OK. I really connected with these words in ACIM, which purportedly came from Jesus.
The thing is, I believed it. Though he sounds far more intellectual in ACIM than in the Bible, I account that to the channeler, who must obviously have been very intelligent. But otherwise, his words rung true, and sounded like exactly the kinds of things the Jesus of the Bible would have said.
He did not claim any special position for himself. In ACIM he calls himself our equal, like an older brother — someone who figured out this stuff first and can guide us along our own path.
Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful, implying that one of a lesser order stands before his Creator. You are a perfect creation, and should experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection. The miracle is therefore a sign of love among equals. Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. (ACIM, T-1.II.3:1-6)
There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you. (ACIM, T-1.II.[3:10]-13)
This reminds me of exactly the kinds of things Jesus said in the Bible.
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” (Mark [10:18] NIV)
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John [14:12])
The difference is, in ACIM it says that this is just one of many ways. This comes from the preface:
It emphasizes that it is but one version of the universal curriculum. There are many others, this one differing from them only in form. They all lead to God in the end. (ACIM, Preface)
So then why did I say everything was OK “at first”?
Because though ACIM does say Jesus was just like us, it also gives him a special function of sorts.
Before I get too deeply into this, I want to define some basic language the Course uses, because if you read what follows without knowing how it uses the language, it can sound almost scarily Christian, along with all the associated meanings, when that’s not really what it intends.
- Father, God, Creator
- The One, the All, the Ground of Being. Think of Brahman in Hinduism. He is so non-dual that he barely knows of our belief in separateness, only that we aren’t fully connected. (Note: I use “He/Him” for convention when referring to such concepts; “It” is just as acceptable).
- Son of God
- An extension of the Father, but in all other ways one with Him. The Son is a collective of all of our individual souls, each perfect in essence. We have all the power of the Father, including of creation.
- Christ
-
Like the Son: the collective of all that God created. Christ expressly does not refer to Jesus, though he is part of the Christ. The Christ is in all of us.
- Atonement
- The healing of our perception that we are separate from God. We were never separate and could never be separate. Our imagined separation results in all the suffering that we perceive in the world. Atonement has no connotation of sin because sin cannot exist. We are already perfect: we have just forgotten that fact.
- Salvation
- The process of atonement — i.e., the process of bringing all souls back into the awareness of their inherent oneness with God. You could think of it like enlightenment in Eastern traditions.
- Holy Spirit
- God’s answer to our belief in separation. It is “the voice for God”: God’s extension into this illusory dream of ours. The Holy Spirit guides the process of our awakening, and uses the events of our lives as lessons to facilitate that awakening. I think of it sort of like how I often refer to the Universe.
Now with those out of the way, the text repeatedly says that Jesus is in charge of the atonement (the process of awakening).
I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. (ACIM, T-1.III.1:1)
Now don’t get me wrong. It also says that we all help with this process, as we ourselves find our own awakening. For example it says this (speaking to us):
This is why you are the light of the world. This is why God appointed you as the world’s savior. This is why the Son of God looks to you for his salvation. He is saved by what you are. (ACIM, W-67.1:2-5)
So obviously Jesus isn’t alone in this. But in a sense, he was first. And it says he was first because he first completed this process of awakening perfectly.
[The Holy Spirit] has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out His plan since he was the first to complete his own part perfectly. All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours.(ACIM, C-6.2:2-3)
“All power” here I believe simply means that we will share in the responsibility with Jesus to help bring others out of the dream of separation.
It reminds me in a way of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Someone had to be the first to realize their state. And once awakened to it, they went back in to free another. And once others were freed, they, too, could help to free others.
Nothing was special about the first except that they were first.
And so similarly, nothing is special about Jesus, except that he was first to complete this process.
ACIM does indeed say there are other “helpers” of God besides Jesus:
Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one. Beyond each one there is a Thought of God, and this will never change. But they have names which differ for a time, for time needs symbols, being itself unreal. Their names are legion, but we will not go beyond the names the course itself employs. God does not help because He knows no need. But He creates all Helpers of His Son while he believes his fantasies are true. Thank God for them for they will lead you home. (ACIM, C-5.1:3-9)
And there is also this paragraph, which is another line I think is one of the most beautiful in the Course:
Is he God’s only Helper? No, indeed. For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized. But Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ’s single message of the Love of God. You need no other. It is possible to read his words and benefit from them without accepting him into your life. Yet he would help you yet a little more if you will share your pains and joys with him, and leave them both to find the peace of God. (ACIM, C-5.6:1-7)
So in other words, there are many other helpers. But if we choose, he’s also all we would need to guide us. We can benefit by just reading his words, but to work with him directly, he could help us even more.
Now the question is, why would he be the first? I mean, obviously there were previous “helpers” / masters, like Buddha for example. Why wasn’t the Buddha put in charge of the atonement?
And the answer is, I don’t know. Perhaps that’s just the purpose Jesus was chosen for. Or perhaps he completed a further stage of awakening than did the Buddha. It doesn’t really matter, as again, one isn’t “better” or “more special” than the other: they just have different functions. The Course makes that clear.
But I do find one thing interesting.
I developed a theory last year when I was trying to reconcile my own beliefs with a Christian worldview — which inevitably failed. Still, I wondered, what if Jesus wasn’t really different at all, but somehow he opened a door, performed some function, which made awakening easier and more accessible for all of humanity?
Certainly I didn’t, and couldn’t, believe that only those who happened to believe in his existence could go to heaven. But it also seemed almost cheap to say he did nothing except preach a nice-sounding message.
Now I abandoned that line of thinking and had since moved on. But imagine my surprise to see my thoughts reflected in ACIM thusly:
Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed. He was “called down upon the earth” in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. (ACIM, C-6.1:1-4)
The Course is saying that in completely awakening to his true nature, Jesus thereby made the Holy Spirit, or the voice for God, more accessible to us. In so doing, this allowed this process of awakening to accelerate for us.
How many times have you heard it said that our level of consciousness is rising more rapidly than ever before? How many more people are there today, and in the recent past, who have been awakened, than at any other time in history?
How many more people are there today, who know about the laws of the Universe, the law of attraction and the like — who can indeed influence their reality in a greater way — than at any other point in history?
Is it possible that one of these “helpers” of God, in reaching his own awakening, accelerated the process for the rest of us, and indeed is now in charge of this whole process?
Maybe. If you could separate the figure of Jesus from all the negative baggage that has been added onto him, certainly it’s easier to see that this is possible.
The Course acknowledges how badly Christianity has damaged Jesus’ image, but invites us to relate to him anyway.
Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God. (ACIM, C-5.5:1-9)
I think that’s more beautiful yet than anything else I have quoted here. Such a beautiful image it paints.
This whole section of the Course is so beautiful, so evocative, that I am going to quote it in its entirety at the end of this post. Reading it piecemeal like this doesn’t really do it justice.
My Conclusions
This has been quite a journey we’ve taken in this post. If you’re still with me, I thank you.
What do I take away from all this?
To be honest, I fought against many of the conclusions ACIM was bringing me to. Christianity has made me hate Jesus and want nothing to do with him. Even saying his name, or hearing his name said, would often make me uncomfortable.
And sure, I could say that this is a random text written by a psychology professor 45 years ago.
Except I can’t. I see too much beauty in its words. I have no choice but to believe that it reflects a deeper reality.
It captures too many of the realizations I have come to independently over the last 6 years and more. These are realizations I see very few teachers get right today. Even if you think Schucman may have had influences from other sources, such as Christian Science as some claim, that doesn’t mean it would result in the level of truth reflected in the Course. Our minds are very limited, and even from teachers like Abraham-Hicks who is supposedly a channeled source, I have never seen truth reflected so perfectly.
I’ve read far and wide. I’ve discarded about 90% of the sources I’ve read as totally useless. About 9% I’ve filtered heavily to get anything useful out of. Maybe 1% or less is so perfect as to warrant adoption unfiltered. The Tao Te Ching is really the only other source that has reflected this level of truth for me.
And heck, I’m a fallible human, too. You could totally disagree and think A Course In Miracles is drivel.
But, as for me, it evokes the beauty and truth that called out to me as a child, without all the ugliness created by humans in Christianity. I see the God I came to know, without the egoic filters placed on His message. I also see room for the knowledge I’ve come to in the awakening experiences I’ve had, when for a time I saw clearly.
Who am I? I don’t bother to label my journey anymore: none seem to fit. Despite my new-found respect for the figure of Jesus, I could never adopt the label of Christian, as it has gone way too far off the rails. I have Taoist influences, to be sure, but don’t see the point identifying as such. I get a lot out of the messages of Abraham still, but take their message with many grains of salt. At the end of the day, even ACIM was scribed by a human, though I believe it’s one of the purest channelings I’ve seen, but this doesn’t mean it’s free of error. Really, nothing could possibly be in this world.
So, I am simply who I am, ever shifting and ever growing.
Hopefully, this post has reflected well my own journey and how I got to where I am. None of this was meant to convince you, though if you walk away with deeper insight and a deeper connection with the Universe, that’s all I can ask.
And now, as promised, I want to quote the entirety of ACIM’s chapter on Jesus.
1. There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality. Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one. Beyond each one there is a Thought of God, and this will never change. But they have names which differ for a time, for time needs symbols, being itself unreal. Their names are legion, but we will not go beyond the names the course itself employs. God does not help because He knows no need. But He creates all Helpers of His Son while he believes his fantasies are true. Thank God for them for they will lead you home.
2. The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.
3. In his complete identification with the Christ–the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him–Jesus became what all of you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it. He made a clear distinction, still obscure to you, between the false and true. He offered you a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God’s Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death.
4. And therefore all your sins have been forgiven because they carried no effects at all. And so they were but dreams. Arise with him who showed you this because you owe him this who shared your dreams that they might be dispelled. And shares them still, to be at one with you.
5. Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God.
6. Is he God’s only Helper? No, indeed. For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized. But Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ’s single message of the Love of God. You need no other. It is possible to read his words and benefit from them without accepting him into your life. Yet he would help you yet a little more if you will share your pains and joys with him, and leave them both to find the peace of God. Yet still it is his lesson most of all that he would have you learn, and it is this:
There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God’s Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you.
Brandon,
After reading Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch years ago, and being introduced to the idea of a loving, non-judgmental God, I walked away from Christianity completely. After walking away, my resistance to the subject dropped and I eventually aligned with people who are truly walking the path of Christ entering my life. I was amazed! Here were Christians who were truly loving, nonjudgmental and inspiring people. I realized that my negative focus on the subject had simply attracted lots of negative stuff about the religion to focus on in years past. After having loving Christians enter my life, I started having new views of Jesus show up. I ran across a teacher calling Jesus the ultimate manifestor. I’d never thought of him like that. However, when I thought about a lot of quotes from the Bible, I realized it was a valid viewpoint. That got me more open to his teachings. Recently, I began reading E Squared by Pam Grout. In the book, she points out that Jesus said “follow me” not “worship me.” There is a huge difference there and the difference means a lot to me. I still haven’t ever gone back and revisited Christianity but now I respect the path, as much as I respect any other. I enjoy seeing articles like this show up in my experience because it gives me interesting insights and more good things to ponder. Interesting post, thanks for making the time to write it!
Namaste
Hi Namaste,
Thanks so much for your response. It’s definitely a challenging one; I’m glad you were able to see him in a more positive light. It’s been a huge challenge for me. I think I had a lot of negative momentum about Christianity — probably still do.
I like that distinction between “follow me” vs “worship me”. I really do believe he did not intend to start a religion where he was made the only Son of God, and where the religion was all about him. I think it makes perfect sense he’d return in a sense, 2000 years later to kind of try to set the record straight if you will.
And I think he’s probably sharing this message not just through ACIM, but through many other paths as well. Abraham-Hicks claims that Jesus is part of their collective, and when you can zoom out a bit and take a broader view, it’s astonishing how much of what Abraham says is also reflected in ACIM.
I appreciate your thoughts as always.
Brandon,
Good points! By the way, I’m really impressed by your relationship. The fact that you two can have such differing views on this subject and be in a serious relationship together is a testament to you both =)
Thanks so much. It has certainly been a challenge in the past, but neither of us wanted to allow religion to get in the way. Religion/spirituality is meant to unite, not divide. I believe very strongly we made a soul agreement together: our connection is that strong.
Brandon, thank you so much for this beautiful post!
Having grown up in the Lutheran religion, I have been lightly pondering the idea of Jesus since the 80s but have never come to any real profound conclusion. I never really rejected Jesus, but I rejected the idea that his “followers” were to be such lowly beings as represented in that song of Amazing Grace that states how wretched we all are unless we endlessly run at His heels.
Today I see Jesus as a human who understood who he truly was/is and loved the rest of humanity so much that he wanted to teach us all to see ourselves as we truly are, to help us save ourselves from allowing our lives to tumble down into the illusion of the dark abyss, or to at least recognize what happened when we do tumble and know where to find help.
Your post today prompted me to ponder Jesus again, and I thought about how my not-so-definite path since I was a teenager has at least had one common theme all throughout: HUMOR. I have a crystal that I carry on a regular basis who I have named “Smiley”. Smiley serves as a reminder for me to lighten up. What came with that name was the image of the wrinkly face of a laughing old Tibetan man, surely to have a little harmless mischief up his sleeve. Right then I realized for the first time how the images of Jesus in church were always so serious. I don’t remember ever seeing one picture of Jesus laughing, let alone smiling. Perhaps Smiley’s face is just another manifestation of Jesus himself since it was easier for me to resolve the humor in a laughing face I had already seen an image of before. Even as a teenager God answered many of my prayers with some humor, and I learned back then, long before I ever heard anything about vibration, that my smiling or laughter always brought me at least a step or two higher from before. How difficult that was to attain with the solemn images of Jesus being thrown at us on a regular basis! Also, to this day, I cringe when I hear the most beautiful Christian people only address him as “The Lord Jesus Christ.” Not that I don’t agree that He is Lord and Christ, but always stuffily addressing someone in full title seems to be another way to keep yourself on the “lower rungs” from that person. Just like in the old days, many employers were addressed with Mr. in front of their last name instead of simply by their first name, in order to keep employees in their place.
Thanks for sharing all of your spiritual processing. Bless you and Christine!
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for your comment. I agree 100%: people make Jesus out to be way too serious. I love your crystal named smiley! I think that if spirituality isn’t humorous, what’s the point? Most awakened masters I find tend to be very humorous, almost irreverent at times, so I love your imagery you’ve come up with.
Have you ever read the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach? It’s a great parable about why we should go after what we want, no matter what the world thinks. But if you get the version with the fourth chapter in it, it also is a great story of what Jesus might have been like, and how he would see those who took him and his message way too seriously. I think you’d greatly enjoy it.
I have not read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but Illusions, also by Richard Bach, is one of my favorites! The story of the Reluctant Messiah in that book was very thought provoking for me. I will definitely read Jonathan Livingston Seagull soon, thanks for the recommendation!
Hi Brandon! Did you ever create Returning to Zero, or just continued with this site? What happened after you made the commitment to an entirely effortless resistance? I’m curious because I’m going to do the same thing.
Hey, thanks for your comment.
I 100% believe in living effortlessly and that’s basically all I teach privately. I just haven’t updated the public site for a while but I’ve been busy running a private 12-week group coaching program. There’s lots of work I plan on doing publicly in the coming months.
I actually had started Returning to Zero. But some things came up in personal life and I left it all behind for a while. Unfortunately I then lost the domain and so darkascent is all I now have. But I do plan on a rebranding to better reflect my new focus. Again this isn’t something I’ve really discussed publicly but Dark Ascent doesn’t really reflect where I am these days.