Peace - are we doing it all wrong?

Syrian child

Peace is such a popular word, we use it frequently as a Christmas greeting, we use it daily when stressed, and we use it in response to war.

The strangest thing about peace is that there is always an expectation that it will come from an external source, “I send you Peace and Joy,” or “Give me some peace!” or “We want peace!”, or “Let us declare peace!” This kind of peace comes with a price: the price of compromise and protracted negotiations. It usually calls for a peace treaty, not only between governments but also in personal relationships - a contract that imposes conditions of agreement.

When we really understand what peace is we realize that this view of peace is superficial. To deepen our understanding of peace we can explore its meaning in the Bible where we find terms life Prince of Peace or Lord of Peace. Why is Jesus Christ referred to as the Prince of Peace or the Lord of Peace? His path to the cross was less than peaceful. Only when we ask the question: is peace given to us? or is it up to us to find this peace? can we begin to discover the true meaning of peace.

Stillness by Haris Tsappis

Eirene is the Greek word for peace and indicates freedom from disturbance, stillness. Shalom is the Hebrew equivalent and means soundness. This means that peace means to be still, to be sound, to experience inner harmony. This is a personal experience, not something that comes to us through others. We harmonize all that is discordant within us. Indeed, we can say that the noblest response is for us to be peaceful in the face of adversity, and the lowest response would be to expect someone else to do something so that we experience peace.

Imagine what it would be like if people took up the responsibility to achieve harmony within themselves, to be still, to achieve their own peace whenever their peace was disturbed.

I have written about this process before where I suggest that each time our equilibrium is disrupted we can place ourselves in the upper room. To achieve this we create the imagination of the disciples meeting in the upper room after the crucifixion, and Christ appears among them. It says that he walked through the wall (because the doors were locked), and the disciples experienced intense fear. To help build a vivid imagination read the story in the Gospel of St John, Chapter 20:19-31. Three times Jesus says, “Eirene humin,” “Peace to you” which essentially means remove the disturbance within you and reinstate soundness.

Appearance of Christ in the Upper Room (Cenacle) by James Tissot

If we try to do this when something fearful happens to us we know how hard it can be. The human condition is one of fear (which we will explore another time) and therefore we need all the help we can get to deal with fear. I have suggested that whenever we experience inner disturbances that we create in our minds an image of Jesus standing before us saying, “Peace to you.” This reinforces our own ability to reinstate inner harmony. By repeating this practice over time, it will become second nature and be of great assistance whenever we are alarmed. When we do this with success, we know that we have to create peace within ourselves. If we wait for it to approach us from outside we will never experience it.

This is one of the most powerful stories I have ever read about peace and love.

“In May 1945, immediately after the end of World War II, George Ritchie, a young American soldier, found himself with a group of American physicians in a German concentration camp near Wuppertal.'" They offered medical assistance to the thousands of former prisoners who were close to dying of starvation. In the midst of this unimaginable misery, Ritchie encountered a man who made a profound impression on him. He stood out among the other prisoners because, in contrast to them, his bearing was bolt upright, his eyes clear, and he had a virtually inexhaustible energy. 

Since he spoke five languages fluently, the Americans appointed this man interpreter, in the course of which he was tirelessly busy helping people for 15 to 16 hours a day. He radiated an atmosphere of love and compassion from which others drew nourishment. Ritchie called this man, a Polish Jew, 'Bill Cody'. To Ritchie's astonishment he had apparently spent many years in this camp, during which he lived on the same starvation diet as all other prisoners and slept in the same disease-infested barracks. But unlike the others he did not look like a living skeleton. 

Each group in the camp seemed to regard him as their friend. If a quarrel erupted he was called to arbitrate and mediate. He also continually talked with the former prisoners, who were so locked into hatred that they wished to shoot every German on sight, and urged them to forgive their enemies. When Ritchie comments that this will not be easy for them after all they have experienced, Cody tells him his own story, as follows:

We lived in the Warsaw ghetto, my wife and I, our two daughters and our three small sons. When the Germans reached our street they put everyone against the wall and opened fire with their machine-guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me on a forced-labour crew. He pauses for a moment and continues: At that moment I had to decide for myself whether to hate the soldiers who were responsible for this or not. It was in fact not a difficult decision. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen all too frequently what hatred can do to people's body and spirit. Hatred had just cost the lives of the six most important people in my life. This is why at that moment I decided that for the rest of my life—whether this was a few days or many years—I would love everyone I came in contact with. 

Ritchie suddenly realized that this—love for everyone—is the force that had kept this man, Bill Cody, so healthy and fit despite all the misery and deprivation he experienced.”

Quoted from “Time for Transformation - through Darkness tothe Light” by Margarete Van Den Brink and Hans Stolp.

First published on HuffPost

St John’s Tide and the Four Sacrifices of Christ

On June 24 each year, we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist. His role in the entrance of Christ into this earth is not usually given the recognition it deserves. This is perhaps because Christ’s role is far from understood. Throughout these “Bible Unlocked”  posts we have considered Christ as a mighty Cosmic being, beyond our understanding, who entered into - penetrated - the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because Christ was such a mighty Cosmic being it took many stages of refinement and preparation before this earth could receive him. It also involved some highly developed individuals: Jesus, and equally important, John the Baptist. This is why many famous painters included John the Baptist in their paintings of Jesus. He is usually the one carrying the staff.

This mighty Cosmic Christ prepared for his earthly baptism and crucifixion over eons in the spiritual worlds through sacrificial acts. In fact, there were three preceding baptisms and sacrifices before Golgotha. The German philosopher Rudolf Steiner revealed this information, held secret in societies over the centuries, just before the start of WWI. It is likely that he spoke of it at this time because each of these sacrifices had the purpose of averting chaos. While we cannot know for sure all the details of these sacrifices, we can be open to thinking about them as we observe our own life - which is the real purpose of this knowledge.

The first sacrifice took place at the time of Adam and Eve when humanity assumed physical form for the first time. As we adjusted to occupying a physical body, we felt the separation from the Universal All. Imagine the sensation of standing on two feet - anyone who has lost the use of their legs, and then been able to stand, would understand this. Not only that, we began to experience our senses and our nervous system; they are the interface between us and the outside world. We felt this as a separation and our immediate response was to want to feel part of the whole again. This is like wanting to re-enter our mother’s womb after we are born. This pain of separation gave rise to extreme selfishness. To save humanity from this destructive situation Christ intervened and helped us to experience ourselves as individuals, replacing selfishness with selflessness.

Eons later a new selfishness arose as we began to speak. Our speech is directly related to our inner organs and metabolism, which is why when we are ill we can’t speak we just moan. The selfishness of our organs meant that they fought over the nourishment we ingested. Imagine the brain, heart, kidneys, liver and lungs fighting over which one gets the most nutrients; when an organ becomes selfish illness results. Rudolf Steiner says, “To be ill means that an organ has become selfish and is leading its own independent life within us.” Again, Christ entered to harmonize and balance the vital organs that rendered them selfless and gave us health.

The next intervention requiring Christ’s sacrifice took place around the time of the great flood which we read about in the Bible in the story of Noah. Selfishness arose in our soul, creating disorder in our thinking, feeling and willing. In my book “I Connecting : The Soul’s Quest” I describe how these faculties work.

“It is the will element that links or separates our thoughts. Feeling always permeates our thinking when we decide to like or dislike something. We experience feeling in our will when we are satisfied or dissatisfied with something we have done. Also, will plays through our feelings to give life to our thinking. If we think of walking the dog, it is not until our intentions are fired up with the warmth of feeling for the love of the dog and its wellbeing that our thought really comes to life. Otherwise it is just a thought and the dog won’t have its walk.” I Connecting : The Soul’s Quest by Kristina Kaine 

The fourth sacrifice took place to avert the selfishness of our individuality, to prevent us from becoming self-absorbed, so that we could observe ourselves from the outside. This sacrifice began with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan conducted by John the Baptist and enacted three and half years later on the cross at Golgotha when the blood flowed into the earth. Adriana Koulias, author of Rosicrucian Quintet  says,

“The reason people faint at the sight of blood has to do with the fact that they are observing outside them what inwardly gives them life and makes them individual, and it comes as a shock. We meet this mystery in stories and fairy tales, for instance in Sleeping Beauty when the beauty’s finger is pricked by a loom she is shocked into a deep sleep and so is the entire castle. In the story of Parzifal it is different when he sees blood fall on the snow he is shocked into wakefulness and remembers the suffering of his poor wife who he has not seen for long years. Parzifal exemplifies the new selfless consciousness. A consciousness, which is inspired by a memory of Christ who shed his blood selflessly for all humanity.”

At St John’s Tide, we can contemplate these ideas with deep gratitude for the sacrifices of the mighty Cosmic Christ who makes it possible for us to become true human beings by moving from selfishness to selflessness, still today. If we choose selfishness, we turn our back to him and play into the hands of all those forces that seek to destroy this world.

First published on Huffington Post 19 June, 2016

The New Commandment - a prerequisite for remembering past lives.

Why don’t we remember past lives? Well, some people do, but most of us don’t - consciously at least. The reason is simple; we don’t love enough. Not just any love, but a special kind of love which Jesus spoke of when he said “love one another as I have loved you.”

Not being able to remember our past lives means that we don’t understand reincarnation and therefore don’t see it mentioned in the Bible. The main reason we don’t understand reincarnation is because we are lack awareness of our spiritual vision. Our vision is confined to what we can physically see and touch.

Yet within the physical lies spirit, spirit gives physical form and life.
When we die spirit leaves this form an empty, lifeless shell.

The best way to understand this is to contemplate the life cycle of a butterfly; compare the pupa to our body and the butterfly to our spirit.

Thank you for the great photo Learn About Nature

Watch this time lapsed video Amazing Life of a Monarch Butterfly

When we consider spirit, and the spiritual worlds, we need to think of spirit as an invisible force within us and around us - giving us life and form - not something “out there.” When we begin to traverse the boundaries of what we can see and touch, we realise that one of the most spiritual things we do in life is to love. Love is not something “out there,” it is an activity we constantly experience in one form or another. We can’t touch love, but we can see it in the expression on people’s faces and in their gestures.

Through love spirit reaches out to touch us.

Love is a complex and even mysterious feeling. It has many layers and different expressions. We can even disguise our hatred as love. In the Bible, we see how love plays out in the life of the man Jesus as he took into himself the Cosmic Christ. Even though he was berated, mocked, scorned and immobilised on a cross, he never stopped loving.

Jesus is the role model for our own journey of spiritual growth; we can apply his experiences to our inner self, within our consciousness. Our inner Jesus is that part of us that always tries to act in a higher way, that part of us yearning for purity, purity necessary before the Christ impulse will become an active part of our consciousness. This is not a straightforward process as we soon discover.

As we begin to commit to a higher expression, something within us then mocks and immobilises us. We hear an inner voice saying, “Don’t be such a goody-two-shoes, you could be bullied for that.” In this way we are mocking, scorning, and crucifying our inner Jesus.

This leaves us asking the question: how was it possible for Jesus to love so much that he could bear all that he bore on his journey to the cross? The answer tells us how we can recognise the presence of Christ in this world, in us and in each other.

The New Commandment is the answer:

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jn 15:12

Innocence (L'innocence) - William Adolphe Bouguereau (1893)

Love is not a simple straightforward feeling; it has different expressions. The Greeks used four different words for love.

1.      Eros is erotic physical love. Eros is the Greek god of fertility. This is passionate love involving sensual desire and longing. This kind of love leads to procreative urges to ensure the survival of the species.

2.      Philia is the love arising in friendship and even in business connections. There is mutual admiration that can be supportive and nurturing but also exclusive. If the usefulness of the relationship changes, so can the relationship.

3.      Storge is the love of family, tribe and nation. It can be defensive and aggressive to those outside the group. This is the kind of love we also find in the animal kingdom.

4.      Agape is the highest love. We can call it divine love, Christ-ened love. This love is expressed by those who experience the highest in themselves - which they also see in others. It speaks of unification and intense compassion. This love is expressed without fear or favour and therefore it is not sentimental. It may not always be interpreted as love because it can cut like a sword.

In the New Commandment the word used for ‘love’ is agape, “that you agape-love one another as I have agape-loved you.” This is the only love strong enough to see our own past lives. Why? Because seeing our past lives requires agape-love to be able to deal with our karma - the consequences of our actions in a past life.

Generally, we respond to our karma by blaming the other person for what they have said or done to us. For example, if someone undermines us, we need to look for the cause in our own actions in a past life - perhaps we caused them to fall through a floor, or lose their footing somehow.

Facing our karma takes courage and it takes agape-love for self. St Paul knew this which is why he wanted to record these words for perpetuity.

“Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” Gal 6:7

There are many quotes in the Bible about reincarnation, and many references to agape-love. When we truly understand the purpose of living repeated lives on this earth, we come to understand that karma is a blessing; it enables us to act in a higher way. It also enables us to experience agape-love. The higher our response to our karma, the closer we come to a true experience of Christ Jesus.

First published on Huffington Post

Becoming a Christ

The Bible is the story of the developing human spirit. The books of the Bible tell us where we came from, where we are going, and how to get there. From the very first words in Genesis, to the very last in The Revelation, the story of the human journey, in the presence of Christ’s activity, is told.

The ultimate goal is to become Christen-ed. I use this word purposefully because the being we call Christ is the human archetype. We strive to be like him.

“Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2

In other words, we become a Christ. St Paul speaks about this often, particularly in this statement:

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me;” Galatians 2:20

Therefore, Christ is the model for what we are to become. This mighty Cosmic being who had never experienced this earth before, entered into the human being Jesus, to show us what is possible. John puts it this way:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” John 14:12

To understand what this means in our lives, we must first try to understand what Christ is for us. This is not about being religious, nor is it about attending a particular church. Christ is a spiritual force present in the whole of humanity; this force is present in every human being, in nature, in this earth and in the universe.

In his highest expression we can call him the Cosmic Christ and find him as part of the Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At the other end of the scale we can see him in the body of Jesus who lived on this earth. This spectrum from mighty spiritual being to human being is the story of the Son of God becoming the Son of man. His journey is revealed in the Bible as well as in the many myths and legends passed down through the ages.

The immediate question arising from this is why? Why would such a mighty being bother to come to earth? Surely not to save us from our sins - wouldn’t that be a bit of an overreach? Since sin, harmartia, means missing the mark [explored in a previous post] nothing should interfere with us perfecting our aim. Why would we let someone or something else shoot our arrow for us?

One simple reason this mighty Christ Spirit made the journey into the sphere of this earth was to save this earth, to give it a new lease of life, thus enabling us to continue to perfect our aim. His union with the body and blood of Jesus, and the subsequent gushing of blood from Jesus’ side when he was struck with a spear, enabled the spirit of Christ to literally penetrate this earth and hence every human being on this earth who eats food grown in the earth.

This is the basis for the Last Supper when Jesus explained that the bread, a product of the earth, was his body, and the wine made from sun-ripened grapes was his blood. While this event is celebrated during Holy Communion, we can also celebrate it each time we eat. We can think of the journey Christ made through the spiritual spheres of the universe to enter into us, because he entered into Jesus before us.

The reason he came is directly connected to a new phase in the development of the human being. He didn’t come to take something away from us (sin), he came to give us something which we could not access by ourselves - our Higher Self, our True Self, which is our I AM [discussed in this previous post].

We should not take this idea of Christ entering into a human body too lightly. It was not an easy thing to achieve. If we read the accounts of the crucifixion from the point of view of Christ’s difficulty rather than Jesus’ difficulty, we can have new and different understandings. What was it like for a mighty being who had no idea what it was like to live in an earthly physical body, whose consciousness had no limits, to be confined in Jesus’ body? We could liken it to a university professor suddenly having to use the mind of child.

To recap in very simple terms what I have come to understand and experience about this event over the last 33 years. Jesus was the most highly developed human being ever born, his purity exemplified by his mother, the Virgin Mary. His journey to the cross was a series of events that prepared him to receive into himself the Cosmic Christ. Jesus was a vessel prepared for generations through the Hebrews so that he could be the channel for the Son of God to enter into a human body. In so doing, he showed us how to follow in his footsteps and prepare ourselves to become aware of our True Self and awaken the presence of Christ within us.

Our immediate response might be to say. “I want that.” Yet, we have to be able to bear the powerful presence of Christ. Since Golgotha, Christ is within us as a potential, as a seed, to which we must give life. As we know, no seed can survive without being nurtured.

Image: Crucifixion by Giotto di Bondone

First published on Huffington Post 

2 Jesus boys + Jesus & Christ = I AM, Our True Self

The Bible remains locked to us if we gloss over the facts. Examining the difference between Jesus and Christ while exploring the purpose behind the birth of two Jesus children, as well as the baptism of Jesus, does not completely make sense unless we understand the reason why Jesus was born in the first place. He didn’t come to save us; he came to show us how to save ourselves!

To express it in the simplest way possible; a human being was required - Jesus - to take into himself a mighty cosmic being called Christ, so that every human being could personally experience the I AM.

What is this I AM? The first time we hear about the I AM is after Moses sees the burning bush which is not consumed, and then he has his famous conversation with God. Moses asks God what his name is, and the response is Ehyeh asher ehyeh I AM that I AM (Exodus 3:14). We also find this term I AM in the New Testament in the Greek words ego eimi.

Moses and the Burning Bush by Arnold Friberg

Before the time of Christ, human consciousness was not sufficiently developed to experience the I AM. To have this experience required high levels of initiation as was the case for the great initiate Zarathustra. The only way the general population could experience the I AM was in a secondhand way through Elijah in the Old Testament, and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.

Elijah's Chariots of Fire, Byzantine Museum, Athens, Greece

Only through the birth of two Jesus boys, as well as the baptism of the 30 year old Jesus when the Christ Spirit entered into him could we have this personal, firsthand experience of the I AM. Because of Zarathustra’s initiation into the I AM before its time, he played an influential role in this process through his involvement in the birth of the Matthew Jesus. A second Jesus, described by Luke, whose pure being was not tainted by life on this earth, was also required.

Why did this I AM take so many convoluted paths before it became accessible to human beings? The short answer is that it can’t just be given to us, we have to earn it. Human consciousness had to evolve to a point where it could handle the power of the I AM, and it has been a long time in the making; from Adam to Elijah to Jesus and now to us. The power of the I AM is like fire; it must burn in us but not consume us. One way we can recognize it our consciousness is when we are angry but the anger does not consume us.

So what is this I AM, is it God or is it human? Well, simply put, it is both. The I AM is that part of God that is in us. Its main role is to make us creative as God is creative. Whenever we express our talent, in those amazing moments when we do great things, it is the I AM expressing itself in us. We also see it when people who don’t like each other ignore their differences and work together in, for example, an emergency. The I AM knows no boundaries of color, creed, gender or nation.

A powerful example of the nature of the I AM arose in a conversation between Michael Parkinson and Paul McCartney which went like this:

“This is just me in here. Paul McCartney is some guy over there doing amazing things. If I thought that was me constantly it would blow my head off.”

The I AM is certainly a mysterious and powerful thing. It can make us anxious and even fearful. Perhaps for this reason knowledge of it has been hidden from us by the churches and secret societies down the ages. The time has come for us to be aware of it and to use it to the best possible effect in our lives. The challenge is that we have to discover it ourselves; it can’t be taught. We can read about it but then it is up to us to have our own firsthand experience of it.

Every detail in the Bible about the life of Jesus shows us how we prepare ourselves to work with the I AM. The previous posts about Repent, Sin and the Word introduce us to ways in which we can strive to become fully human, which means fully integrated with this I AM. In my book I Connecting : The Soul’s Quest I explain it in a non-religious psychological way.

While I recommend the Bible to discover the true meaning of the I AM I must stress that it is NOT about any specific religion; each religious expression is a path up the mountain to the pinnacle of knowledge of the I AM. Nor is it about dogma and definition, this knowledge can only live in us if we strive to become aware of our own true nature, that is, to really know ourselves.

I am always uplifted and inspired when I read the final words in St Matthew’s gospel: “I am with you always, to the close of the age." In the Greek it says: ego eimi, I AM, always with you till the consummation of this period of time.

Contemplating the ego eimi statements in the Bible is one good way to awaken to the activity of the I AM within us. You will find my fist book about the seven I AM sayings helpful, and all my books focus on this work.

First published on Huffington Post

It took Two Jesus’ to make THE Jesus

It is no accident that the genealogies in St Matthew and St Luke’s Gospel are different. One traces the ancestry of a highly developed human being living on this earth. The other traces the spiritual legacy of a pure human spirit incarnating for the first time on the earth. Wisdom in one, innocence in the other.

The question we can ask is this. Could Christ, a mighty Cosmic Being beyond our understanding, who had never experienced life in a physical body on this earth, just be born through a mother as we all are? That would be like saying the sun could enter this earth and shine from within it.

By looking closely at the two genealogies, it is not difficult to see that two different Jesus children were born to two different Marys with two different fathers called Joseph. The Matthew Jesus descends from the Solomon line of the House of David. The Luke Jesus descends from the Nathan line of the House of David. If we look into our own genealogy, we know that we are quite different from our cousins whose parents were siblings of our great grandparents - then multiply that for all the generations mentioned in the Matthew and Luke Gospels.

The Matthew Jesus child was the product of 42 preceding generations from Abraham to Joseph. Kings visited him when he was born, whereas shepherds visited the Luke child. The Luke Jesus’ genealogy reaches back to Adam when human beings first left their spiritual domain and took on flesh - as told in the story in the Garden of Eden. These details are very important yet often skipped over.

I have written about this in detail in my book Who is Jesus : What is Christ, Vol 1. Why mainstream theologians do not explore this information is a mystery. Others have written about it and some artists have painted the two Jesus children. In this painting Raphael has painted them with John the Baptist and the Luke Jesus’ mother.

Madonna Del Duca di Terranuova by Raphael

Not only that but also these children were born at different times. The Matthew Jesus was older, born at the time when Herod ordered all male children to be killed.

“One notable fact is that Herod ordered all male children aged two and under to be killed, which led to the Matthew Jesus being taken to Egypt, there is no mention of the child described by Luke going to Egypt. Even John the Baptist, who Luke tells us is 6 months older than the Luke Jesus, seems to have escaped Herod’s horrendous order, supporting the fact that these children were born at different times and in different places.” Who is Jesus : What is Christ Vol 1 by Kristina Kaine

To make sense of this story we also need to keep in mind that Jesus and Christ are different beings. Matthew states it clearly when we read the original Greek. Immediately after the genealogy he writes: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.” In the original Greek it says, tou de iesou christou he gennesis outos ne which more accurately translates as ‘of the yet anointed Jesus the origin thus was’. Christ comes from christos, a Greek word meaning ‘anointed.’ Matthew is saying Jesus is yet [to be] anointed, Christen-ed, which points to the future baptism.

Before that can happen, these two Jesus children will become one. We read about this event in Luke when his parents lost track of him. They found him three days later and he was a changed person.

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Luke 2: 46

If we put ourselves in Joseph and Mary’s shoes as they entered the temple and found their unearthly, innocent son - autistic in today’s terms - in deep dialogue with the teachers in the temple, we can experience their amazement. These teachers had devoted their whole lives to understanding the sacred texts and here was a twelve year old boy matching their understanding! What was incredible to the parents was perhaps understandable to the teachers who knew what was about to take place when they found the two Jesus boys together in the temple.

The twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple. Borgognone, fresco, San Ambrosius in Milan

In this fresco, the Luke Jesus sits on the throne having just assumed the wisdom of the Matthew Jesus, who then leaves the temple. Notice that all eyes are on him as recognition of his mighty sacrifice. Now the innocent Jesus takes on earthly wisdom. This is part of what it takes to prepare for the entrance of the Christ into this earth. This twelve year old boy will grow into a thirty year old man and meet his childhood friend John the Baptist by the river Jordan where the Holy Spirit, which always proceeds the Christ, can enter into him.

First published on Huffington Post with 1.3k likes

When Jesus met Christ

After the enormous response to my last Huffington Post, I want to share some more of the story about why Jesus and Christ are two different entities. They do become one eventually, in full maturity, in a similar way that a child grows in the womb, is born, and develops into an adult over time.

What is the point of understanding the process of Jesus taking into himself the Christ you may ask? Isn’t it simpler and easier just to worship the one being and be done with it? In fact why even differentiate between God, the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit?

If the detail is not important, why does the Bible have so much detail? Surely not so we can boil it all down into a few basic ideas! What is the point of that?

We unlock the Bible when we look into the detail and see its place in human evolution, and in our own lives - that is its point and purpose. The Gospels tell us quite clearly that Jesus began his intimate relationship on this earth with Christ at his Baptism when he was 30 years of age. For this reason, the Gospels of St Mark and St John begin with the baptism of Jesus. St Matthew and St Luke begin with the birth of Jesus and that is a story for another time.

It is also interesting to note that Jesus is not referred to as the “Son of God” until after the baptism.

A thorough study of all four Gospels shows that each writer looks from a different angle at the life of Jesus; the first time their views coincide is with their accounts of the baptism.

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Mt 3:3, see also Mk 1:2-3, Lk 3:4-6, Jn 1:23

The baptism of Jesus is celebrated each year on the sixth of January with the religious festival of Epiphany. The word epiphany is a combination of two words, epi, meaning on, to, and phainein, meaning to show. Epiphany then means to manifest, to come into view. At the baptism of Jesus, facilitated by John the Baptist, the physical appearance of the mighty Cosmic Christ Spirit manifested. How did it manifest? Like a dove. Let’s look into that.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." Mk 1:9-10 

We find three main points in the accounts of the baptism; heaven opened, spirit descended as a dove, and the Son of God announced. The dove is the sign of the Holy Spirit, always the precursor to the Son, as the Son is the precursor to the Father. St John explains:

"These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Jn 14:25-26 

If Christ was already present in Jesus why send the dove / Holy Spirit? We can look at these beings as The Trinity, or we can look at them individually to see the different work each one does. We can also ask, if Jesus and Christ were one being all along, was this baptism necessary? Also, why was it suggested that John the Baptist might be the Christ? Read what St Luke says.

As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ, John answered them all, "I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." Lk 3:15-17 

Jesus was no stranger to these people; he was part of their life working as a carpenter. If Jesus and Christ were one, why would people say John might be Christ? Luke also says they “were in expectation” which means they knew something was going on, just as we sense something is going on in our own lives at times.

What was going on here was the entrance of the mighty Christ being into the earth, or at least the beginning of the process. It was begun by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the most pure person on the whole earth able to withstand the power of these heavenly beings. Taking the Christ into himself took three and half years. It wasn’t until he was nailed to the cross, immobilized physically, that the Christ could enter fully into him, right into his bones - which is why "Not a bone of him shall be broken." Jn 19:36

Understanding these details can give us a greater sense of expectation during Holy Week as we walk to the cross with Jesus knowing him more completely.

First published on Huffington Post  

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Jesus and Christ

Understanding the true meaning of words in the Bible unlocks the meaning of this ancient and sacred text. Before we go any further, we need to look at the central character in the New Testament, Jesus Christ. Is this one being or two different beings?

A survey of the New Testament reveals that we rarely find the names Jesus and Christ expressed together. This is an important observation because not only are they two different beings, they are not interchangeable. We can only understand this if we understand who these beings are. To begin with, one is a human being; the other is a spiritual being.

In the Gospel of John for instance the name Jesus is always used alone except in two places:

Jn 1:17 “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” and,
Jn 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

In fact, St Paul reverses the names to Christ Jesus. This could suggest that Christ is a title; like saying President Obama or Queen Elizabeth.

If we read the New Testament with this in mind, a new story unfolds. Here is a man called Jesus Iesous meaning saviour, who becomes Christ Christos meaning anointed, or we could say Jesus becomes Christ-ened. This is our task too, but it is not plain sailing as Matthew points out in his discussion of the pseudochristos or false Christ:

“For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray.” Mt 24:24

If we take the Bible as a manual for evolving consciousness then we could have a goal to become like Jesus striving to achieve Christ-ened perfection. The New Testament is full of descriptions of the nature of Jesus and how this nature might be attained, or followed. The word follow is akoloutheo that literally means ‘alike-way’ and gives the sense of becoming like Jesus, copying the way he is. The way he is has been greatly misunderstood.

When considering human consciousness it isn’t enough to say human beings are conscious and have consciousness. This state of being awake and aware clearly differs from person to person and changes within each of us throughout the day. Nor is it sufficient to say things like; I am health conscious, I have a national consciousness of shared beliefs and feelings, or I lose consciousness if I faint, or the way I think represents the kind of consciousness that I have. This is generalizing, skimming the surface of what it means to be conscious.

To be fully aware of our consciousness means to consider it in detail. Human consciousness has three core activities: feeling, thinking, and willing. We each use these activities differently, and in different combinations.

These three activities actually take place in the human soul, psuche. We form our feelings, thoughts and actions in our soul and express them in our body. The more aware of this we are, the more conscious we are.

In the biblical Greek there are more than thirty different words for these three activities. If we look up “An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words with their precise meanings for English readers” by W.E. Vine, M.A. we find fifteen words for think, five for feel and seven or more for act, commit, do (will). Each particular word reveals a specific quality of human consciousness, and a particular aspect of our soul, and it is in the specific use of these words that the real wisdom of the Bible unfolds.

Aristotle (384BC-322BC) was among the first to write about the human soul. Prior to this, it wasn’t necessary to write anything about the soul because the soul wasn’t differentiated into different activities as it is today - pointing to the fact that human consciousness changes.

Aristotle was aware that a differentiation was taking place which led him to described the soul as having three qualities that he called: Orektikon, Kinetikon, and Dianoetikon.

1. Orektikon refers to desires, appetites, sensations, impulses which is the soul activity of feeling.
2. Kinetikon means to set in motion, to try every way, reasoning, which is the soul activity of thinking.
3. Dianoetikon is about intention that is the soul activity of will.

If we take these things into account, the difference between Christ and Jesus, representing the evolution of consciousness, makes a lot of sense. Jesus had to prepare himself by becoming more aware of his consciousness, giving him the ability to be as objective as possible when he was treated the way he was.

Understanding this, we can follow Jesus on his journey to Golgotha and see how the human being makes way for the spiritual being to arise. Jesus was able to bear all things through his ability to be fully aware of his feeling, thinking and will, just as we are able to bear life’s difficulties when we control our feeling, think clearly and act consciously.

First published on Huffington Post - causing quite a stir, hundreds of people commented.