The Original Gospel of Christ
The Original Gospel of Christ
Part One
Authentic spiritual practice and discipline are founded and grounded in responsibility, not beliefs or metaphysics, which are way downstream from What is always already the case: seamless unity between matter and consciousness, self and God, part and whole. Our emotional recoil, our collapse from Reality, from Love, our assumption of separation from Truth, creates the stressful search for unity and meaning, which cannot be found because we are pushing it away. Endlessly repeating this creates the structure and mechanisms of egoity, a belief that we plaster on to the Beauty and Innocence of Life.
Truly, there is no discrete entity living inside my head or heart, there is only Reality fractalizing into versions of Itself that I call “me”. Failure to understand this results in a confusion that prevents me from being intimate with That which lives Itself as me and everything else. The part is lived by the Whole and there exists a deep and passionate intimacy between the Two.
Thus, to “repent” means to turn back from our foray into identification with one side of the equation (matter/body), and, to “sin no more”, becomes a sacred commitment to face and embrace Reality’s descent into the body, that which I actually am. That’s right. I am the living, embodied Presence of Reality and so are you. We are embodied consciousness, intelligent Light that creates appropriate forms for its expression.
You, for example. And me.
Waking up to this already existing Fact is crushing and humbling and illuminating because it outshines my assumption of separateness, (egoity) and relieves me of the burden of being a searcher, a somebody. Yes, I am a “somebody”, an individuated being, a self, a personality, but it’s not separate from God any more than a whirlpool is separate from the River.
We are the whirlpool and the River, human and divine, intimate with each other, lovers that are simultaneously “separate” and one. We are only apparently separate, which is the way Reality incarnates, making endless distinctions and variations of Itself, playful themes and modifications of its own intense dynamic. To assume that organic distinctions in Nature, such as the leaf on the tree, is evidence that the leaf is separate from the Tree is what creates egoity and suffering and the search for God. However, it is not God who is lost and must be found. It is we who are lost and must step back from the ludicrous and arrogant assumption of our separation from Truth (Reality), which is Love and Unity of all Life. There is only One Life living Itself as all beings and worlds. Only God exists and you’re it.
All techniques, remedies and solutions to our imaginary, self created problem, spiritual, religious, psychological, political or otherwise, are doomed to not only fail, but to guarantee our endless enslavement. It hurts to be an ego and going to the doctor or priest only hurts more because he, like us, assumes our problem to be real. Instead of telling us to take our hands off our throats and our fingers out of our eyes, he gives us a prescription for the pain and sets up another appointment. This is like waking up in prison and asking the warden for a better pillow as a solution to feeling despair and longing. Break out of the prison! The door isn’t even locked! We think it’s locked. It isn’t.
All the grievous maladies and injustices in the world stem from this spiritual error and nothing will change on planet Earth until we wake up from our exclusive identification with a separate self, a false self, and be Who and What we already are: Love embodied, the Word made Flesh.
That’s right. Each individual is always in a state of seamless unity with the Mystery and Wonder of Existence, that which we call God. Christ’s original Gospel was certainly this very message, the Good News of Unity with God, the Treasure the man finds “buried in his field”, as he is recorded as saying in the New Testament. It had been there all along.
This message is what got him killed. After his murder, he was ruthlessly abused yet again, by those who put the Lie in his mouth, that we are separate from God and need blood sacrifice to atone for the sins of Man.
Jesus Christ was vehemently opposed to blood sacrifice and told his followers to repent from the false self which imagines itself to separate from the Father. “You shall be one, as I and the Father are one.”
Our emotional recoil from Life, from Trust in Love, is what he identified as sin, literally “missing the mark”. His call was to face the already existing State of Happiness, of Love, that is Alive as Everything, and to not wander off into fear or doubt, love God and our neighbors as ourselves.
What a glorious message.
Let us give this gift to ourselves and to each other as we celebrate Christmas, the Season of Giving, whatever our traditons may be, and embrace the infinitely Passionate Current of Life and Love, and fulfill the work of Peace on Earth, Good Will to all.
Jesus Christ in the light of Sanatana Dharma
http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2460
This is beautiful, Bob. Thanks for sharing it.
I could spend hours in mental masturbation, enjoying myself, while I discuss and ponder what you have written and respond to it with essays about the subjects that you have written about. Another option is to enjoy what you have written and recognize the fact that if we are not able to connect with the promises of Jesus’ message, for whatever reason, we are not to blame. I affirm and assert that people who demand accountability from preachers and ask hard questions are sincere human beings. Rejecting the Bible because it is hurting you and does not offer you the answers that you are looking for is a holy act. I do not support country-club xtians, even though, maybe in my actions, I have supported them. I continue to follow Jesus and decorate my life with His presence, and I invite others to do that if they get a connection/epiphany/revelation. Jesus’ words were mysterious even in His own times, as you can tell from the reactions that are described. Some of the parables are not obvious, and require explanation. For me, it is worth the trouble. I do not judge anyone who does not accept the statements of faith.
It’s hard to find educated people about this topic, however, you
sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
glad to hear!!
robert
please do, and share far and wide!
robert
many thanks!
r
it’s been a few years since I first read this. i re-read it today. thanks Robert. It is a good teaching. I also expressed a similar counseling today to my neighbor, who was frustrated by his lack of faith in xtian church teachings. I told him that the usual manner of xtian churches is to blame the church follower for their lack of faith, and praise those followers who are able to smugly feign their association to the church for the sake of appearances and conformity. I told him that if I desire to teach someone and they don’t trust me enough to follow through with a teaching, then I am to blame for that and not the student/audience/follower.
Specifically regarding the proposition of ransom of a perfect man for the sins of all mankind. We are unable to connect to this proposition with the same depth of emotion today because we do not accept the legal principle that it is dependent upon. In ancient times, when someone committed a crime, they aggrieved the crime’s victim and the victim’s family, i.e. not the state. The aggrieved party can be made whole by the criminal and the judge closes the case. How can they be made whole? with a payment of money in some cases, or a substitute person to serve out the sentence of penalty (including execution).
We do not accept the payment of ransoms, nor substitutes for the criminal’s penalty, today in our courts of law. The payment for tort claims such as wrongful death, resembles some part of this, however, we’re getting off the subject now.
The point is, if you were the judge, and you wouldn’t accept the ransom of another person for the defendant in a criminal case, then how can you now use this as the basis for your moral teaching? You cannot. And only people who are pretending to do that get any credibility in xtian churches. As you teach in this post, the real sin is to believe that we aren’t worthy of God’s love ( or substitute a more meaningful terminology if you can ). Shame/Guilt/Condemnation teachings had a very beneficial effect on the simple people who were unable to control their behavior and build a civilization. Teach us then, not to gloat over the victory, but rather to bathe in it’s perfumed delightful presence.