“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say
of the Lord, “He is my refuge
and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the
fowler And from the
perilous pestilence. He shall cover you
with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your
shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the
terror by night, nor of the arrow that
flies by day, nor
of the pestilence that walks in
darkness, nor of the
destruction that lays waste at
noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.
Only with your eyes shall
you look, And see the reward of the wicked. Because you
have made the Lord,
who is my refuge, even the Most High,
your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come
near your dwelling; for He shall give
His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your
ways. In their hands they shall bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion
and the cobra; the young lion and the serpent you shall
trample underfoot. Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will
deliver him; I will set him on high, because he
has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him
in trouble; I will deliver him and honor
him. With long
life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.”
(Psalm 91; New King James Bible Version). Material existence is a constant dance
between good and evil. We may experience
an extreme ‘high’ in the morning, only to feel the lowest of ‘low’ by evening. This dynamic exists because we really don’t
know what this human, fleshly condition is all about; nor do we know what it isn’t about. We start out as an enfant, knowing only
what we observe, feel, and have been taught by others around us. That’s what we know…just what we’ve
experienced. We don’t actually know the ‘why’, or even the ‘right’ of anything. We just
know what exists in our memory since infancy, piled on with all sorts of
indoctrinations that are supposed to make sense of this whole, material state
of being. One biblical reference
describes this murky sense of being as: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I
know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12; King James
Bible (KJV). And we know what darkness does to our sight; it
obscures it dramatically. So, we suffer from all sorts of
dilemmas. Why not, when we have so few
answers to our questions? Material
existence itself is a huge dilemma; but is there any way to find a path out of all
the questions that have no answers? Yes,
there is. It is to realize that mortal,
material existence is a state of self-deception, and it is not our true Home. The deception of finite materiality
isn’t to be understood; rather, it is to be mentally risen above. It is a false state of mind and a false sense
of being. It is the false sense of being
separated from God, our Creator, when
we are not. Material so-called reality is a collective
dream-state, which is symbolized in the Adam and Eve story of the biblical
Old Testament book of Genesis. The whole
story of this dream-state first tells us that Adam fell asleep. Then the
biblical account continues about all the descendants of Adam and Eve. But never
does the story say that Adam, nor any of his descendants, ever awakened from this dream of finite being, despite the generations
who followed Adam, which includes all of us who are still experiencing this
finite state of being in our own human experience. So, you ask yourself, ‘how can this be
true?’ How can the billions of people
who populate this false, material sense of time and space, including our world
and our universe, be merely part of the ‘dream’ of Adam’s creation? Ponder this: Does a night dream, even rarely, make
complete sense? No. But there is a reason for that. The reason is that, in sleep, we are in a
lower level of conscious awareness.
Our sleep-dreams are thoughts that are meandering around our lower state
of consciousness, which doesn’t’ even know we are sleeping. And, oddly enough, that lower consciousness
is where the whole, charade of finite being, (with all its good and evil
‘realities’) also plays itself out. When spiritual
awakening begins to occur, God’s true creation, invisible to the material
senses, becomes clearer in thought.
Gradually, such thinking unfolds more and more spiritual truths to our
daily lives. Our spiritual perception
broadens. We begin to perceive the
invisible dimension of divine Spirit, God, in sharper contrast to our
materialistic thinking. We also begin to
comprehend the reality of our own true, ever-lasting spiritual Selfhood…our own
Christly identity, as the sons and daughters of God, rather than as fleshly
mortals. Our fleshly sense of ourselves finally
fades from our sense of identity, until we are fully awake to our spiritual
identity. Upon awakening from the collective ‘dream’
of material existence,, we recognize that the so-called ‘human race’ was never God’s
true, immortal, spiritual children, at all.
Nor is the kingdom of God a physical place. We begin to realize that when Jesus the
Christ said, “The kingdom of God is
within you” (Luke
17:21; KJV) he was referring to our innate,
Christ-Identity (our spiritual sense of our individual selves) despite the
finite, materialistic collective false sense of things we had been entertaining. By mentally accepting materiality (the
‘dream’ or mental state of life in matter) we’ve also accepted the collective, false
material sense of ourselves, from
which we must spiritually awaken. Therefore,
we must awaken from this lower, collective sense of existence in order to
remember who really are: God’s immortal off-spring. As we gradually awaken to our ever-lasting
spiritual reality, our deeper memory begins to return. Then we can comprehend that we are Spirit’s
off-spring—not the children and descendants of Adam, never trapped in a finite
physical form, never ruled by the carnal mind.
This is the crux of what Christ Jesus
was trying to bring to sleeping humanity; for the way home isn’t found in the
material illusion of creation. Rather,
it is found in our deepest remembrance,
back within our deeper consciousness, (our innate, spiritual consciousness, the
universal Christ Consciousness) just awaiting our sleeping self to awaken. And, in our awakening to our spiritual
selfhood, we will perceive that our
safety is, and always was, in God, Spirit’s, everlasting kingdom, always
present with us, but hidden beneath the finite,
material sense of things. And in our
higher, spiritually-enlightened Self, we discover that we already are eternally
safe, sound and forever whole in the realm of the all-inclusive, infinite spiritual
Kingdom of God, never trapped in a finite body form, never separated from our
loving Source and Origin, but forever safe and sound. This is the reason that Christ Jesus
didn’t stay dead. He was not the fleshly
identity called Jesus; that was his material-sense identity. Instead, beneath the material form, he was
always one of God’s ever-lasting children, who was showing us the truth of our
own being. That’s why Jesus kept saying
to the masses, ‘follow me’ (See New Testament Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John;
KJV). That’s
why Jesus also said, before his ascension, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” (John 20:17; KJV). Jesus came into the material dream of
life in matter to show us that we aren’t what we seem. We aren’t, and never were, fleshly
beings. Instead, we are the sons and
daughters of God, who have pre-existed
before we fell under the collective spell
of material being, and spent time in the collective Adam-dream…the human
experience, (where we seem to be finite, fleshly creatures.) But there is always good news in the
kingdom of God, and here’s the good news concerning our human experience: All
we have to do is awaken from the “deep
sleep” that fell upon Adam. (See Genesis 2:21; KJV.) For God’s children (off-spring)
cannot die…ever. We each shall awaken,
when ready, from the Adam dream of having been separated from our Creator, when
no such thing ever occurred. For, as the
Bible tells us, we “live, move, and have
our being” in God…infinite Spirit (Acts 17:28 to semi-colon). In this temporary,
material sense of ourselves, however, we simply do not detect God with the
false, material senses. So here’s the spiritual truth that everyone
will one day perceive: From the start, human, material existence has
always been an illusory, mental dream state that we all share. (We’re all swimming in the same pond, so to
speak.) We are experiencing one, general
consciousness level. We all live in the
same material-mind set. This is what is
called the ‘carnal mind’. It is the
material sense of reality. Yet, no matter how good, or bad, our individual,
human experiences have been, here, in this finite dream-state, the whole
experience was, and still is, a ‘dream’.
This human experience of life in finite, material form is a lower level
of perception, from which we shall all
awaken, when ready. Remember that
whatever and whomever God has created cannot die. Neither can we be sick in mind or body, poor,
or lacking in any other good thing created by God. So, don’t cling so hard to the physical
sense of yourself. It was never the real
You to begin with. Pay attention to what
Christ Jesus has tried to demonstrate for everyone in this troublesome material
sense of existence: that life is
deathless and God is good. Jesus was
showing us our spiritual Selves, in contradistinction to the finite born-to-die
sense of material being. There is a You (your spiritual
identity) that has always been safe in God’s forever kingdom. This You cannot be separated, for one
instance in time, from our divine Source and the divine Love of God. This You is the eternal one, and this You has
never left home. Like Dorothy in the
story of the Wizard of Oz, we never left home. We only spiritually fell asleep, and dreamed that we left home. But neither our physical births, nor physical
deaths in this material sense of reality, were ever real. For, no one is a Creator, but God. And no one and nothing can ‘kill’ anyone, or
anything that God has created. Do you
think Christ Jesus went through that material experience of physical death
because he couldn’t avoid it? Of course
not. He knew what he was doing. It was his
spiritual mission to publically die in the physical sense, to show
struggling humanity that there is no death for anyone, in reality. He was showing us that physical death is not
a permanent condition for any of God’s children, or creation. Jesus was showing us ‘the Christ’…our
spiritual identities. Our immortal,
spiritual Selves are always alive…we just aren’t always awake! |
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