“The Lord is
near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have
a contrite spirit. Many are the
afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all.” (Psalm 34: 18-19; New King James Bible (NKJV). “The Lord hath done great things for us;
whereof we are glad. Turn again our
captivity, O Lord, as the streams
in the south. They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,” (Psalm
126: 3-6; (KJV). “The Lord hath appeared
of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness
have I drawn thee.” (Jeremiah 31:3; (KJV). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have
everlasting life.” (John 3:16; NKJV). When we are young, the world can often
seem like a shiny new toy, promising one exciting adventure after another. As we become more aware of our own ‘place’ in
the world, however, our fascination with daily life isn’t always so great. Some days are good, some days are bad; so, an
early lesson for living in this vast, material experience is that material
life isn’t always good or fair. For example, many fortunate individuals
experience a healthy body throughout most of their years, while others may
struggle with chronic ill-health from birth.
Many other individuals are born into a life of financial abundance,
while at the same time, poverty afflicts their neighbors. Yet, as time goes on in one’s life, almost no
one has a perfect human experience;
for there is plenty of lack, sickness and grief to go around in this physical world. Sooner or later, we all experience the ‘bad’
side of being a finite, physical mortal.
Still,
the questions arise: ‘Why do some fortunate
individuals among us seem to experience more harmony and good in their daily
lives? Why are they so blessed,
while the rest of humanity struggles just to stay alive? Why
do these fortunate ones have their daily needs met without struggle, or experience
a healthy body through most of their earthly existence, while others suffer
discord and unharmonious situations throughout much of their lives? One possibility comes to mind: Maybe
the material sense of relating to this
temporary, earthly experience isn’t the be-all and end-all reality of what our
earthly days, here, are meant to accomplish. Maybe our time here isn’t our ultimate reality of existence. Perhaps settling for material conditions, and
assuming that this earthly experience is all there is to life, is a belief we
are here to outgrow. Why do I say this? I say this because nothing material ever lasts. Everything about our earthly life experience
is temporary. So, perhaps, nothing
material was ever meant to last. Maybe material objects, and material bodies,
were meant to serve us temporarily;
but they were never anything we were meant to keep. Ultimately, even our physical bodies disintegrate
into dust when our spirit leaves them.
Why? because there was never any lasting
substance in them! After spending more than half a century
delving into this realization, here’s my own conclusion of the matter: I think
our days here in this material sense of existence is like a temporary, spiritual
‘school’ which we have each entered, for awhile, in order to ‘graduate’ out of
the false sense of existence in finite matter, which we believe to be our identities, but are not our true identities. I believe that, in reality, we are everlasting spiritual beings, rather
than finite, born-to-die material beings.
I think we have a whole other destiny in store, once our temporary human
life-experience is over; for our true destiny is not hidden in our future, but
rather hidden in our past, long before we
fell asleep in the collective dream of finite, material being that we are now experiencing. Everything in this collective, material
dream-state is temporary. Also, this finite,
material dream-state does not perceive the importance which Christ Jesus plays
in this false sense of reality. Christ
Jesus was, and still is, the key to our individual, spiritual awakening
process. Each individual who is awakening
to the divine, ever-present spiritual kingdom of God, must seek out the
spiritual truths; yet showing humanity that God’s spiritual creation is
ever-present, does us little good if we don’t perceive it. When the
external, material sense of things hides from us the spiritual facts of being, we
cannot perceive the spiritual truths we need in order to find our true Reality,
which is entirely spiritual. Spiritual truth and the immortality of
each of us depends upon our search
for divine Truth. Without our awakening
to spiritual Truth, the kingdom of God stays hidden to our perception, because
the five, physical senses do not perceive spiritual truth. We need to awaken to spiritual truth, for
there is no other, real, form of
truth. For, we are like one who,
sleeping in a night-dream, does not perceive anything ‘outside’ of the dream. For, when we are sleeping in a dream, our
consciousness is lower, and we don’t perceive anything ‘outside’ of the
confines, or boundaries, of that dream. So,
the reality of the dream, alone, seems
to be real. And we continue to sleep in
it. Thus, Christ Jesus entered this
material realm of thought to be our guide, showing sleeping humanity our way out
of the false sense of existence. The realm
of God, divine Spirit, is our spiritual Home.
Spiritual awakening alone must be the path out of materialism, so that we
can follow him out of the
dream-state of materiality. Knowing of our divine, spiritual Sonship
and Daughtership (our Christ Selves) saves us from the endless sleep of finite
materiality. The New Testament in the Bible, and especially
the four gospels, tell the stories of Christ Jesus’s life and teaching
ministry. The New Testament is the best place to read and ‘soak in’ not just
ancient history, but spiritual principles.
It also ‘speaks’ on several issues, such as spiritual healing, the
childhood of Jesus, the first disciples, raising of the dead (like Lazarus) and
especially, realizing that the kingdom of Heaven, our eternal Home, is always
invisibly present (although we don’t perceive it with our five, physical
senses). We have always been Home, in the ever-present,
harmonious, spiritual kingdom of God. We
need only realize this, even though our five material senses bear no witness of
spiritual reality. Jesus
and his disciples walked many places throughout the ancient world, spreading
the message of God’s invisible kingdom on Earth. While living and moving about in a temporary,
physical form, he was known as ‘Jesus.’
But once he had gone through his material death experience, and came
back into life, (showing us all that physical death is not permanent) he was no
longer to be called, or labeled as a material mortal, born to die. Instead, his
spiritual identity was to be referred to as ‘the Christ’, because once he had ascended, he was no longer
playing the part of a material mortal.
His spiritual identity demonstrated that all God’s children are really, and forever, spiritual beings,
beneath all their material appearances. After
his resurrection, Christ Jesus was showing the world his real identity, and in so
doing, he was revealing to finite, mortals the hidden immortality of themselves…our spiritual Selves. Christ Jesus’s material death on the
cross, and his spiritual resurrection, were the parts of his divine mission that
he suffered for all humanity. His great
gift to us was to show us that we are spiritual, not material beings. And the sting
of death leaves us, when we perceive the fact that physical death never had
any power in the kingdom of God, for God’s children were never born to
die. Christ Jesus was the Savior because he
was awakening us to spiritual reality.
He showed humanity that no one ever really has a material identity, in the first place, to die out of a material identity, in the
second place…we just believe we were fleshly mortals, born to die. Our temporary, material name, was never meant
to be our spiritual name; for once the material dream is broken, we awaken to
who we really are, and remember. After the ascension of Jesus, St. Paul told
the followers of Jesus not to call him ‘Jesus’ anymore…for he was now, ‘the Christ’…a
spiritual, not material identity. In 2nd Corinthians 5:16-17,
King James Bible Version we read, “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a
new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Underneath our
fleshly form, we’ve always been a spiritual being; for a material identity
means mortality; and none of God’s
off-spring have ever really been a material mortal…we just believed
that we had. That’s why we will not
come back to playing the part of a material being, unless there is a spiritual
reason to do so. In spiritual reality, we were never a
mortal in the first place. Rather, we
are each ever-lasting, spiritual beings, living within the infinite Spirit we
call God. And even those of us who are
still here, sleeping in the mortal, Adam dream of existence, are still God’s
immortal children. So, I repeat: we are in the harmonious kingdom of God,
right now, even though we’re not perceiving it with our material senses. We’re in the heavenly realm of the Almighty, for
there is no other place to be. God’s spiritual
kingdom includes all creation. The Master left the shared name of ‘the
Christ’, for all his followers to bear, or hold in their thoughts…like ‘Tom,
the Christ’; ‘Betty, the Christ,’ etc….not
as an individual name, but as a label, or collective name, as
a symbol of God’s own spiritual children.
We are each meant to bear this universal symbol. We ‘put on’ this universal Christ label,
showing ourselves secretly, or openly, to be a child of God, and no other. So, ‘Jesus, the Christ’ told his disciples,
and everyone on Earth, to also claim ‘the Christ’ identity. It is a universal term…not an
individual name. When seen in the
finite, fleshly form, he was known as ‘Jesus.’; but in his true and everlasting spiritual form
(after he ascended from the material death experience) Jesus became the
‘Christ’ (the spiritually, immortal one).
He was never, really, the earthly identity; he was always the spiritual
identity. He merely took a finite, human
form in order to communicate with those of us still in this physical, false mental
sense of being. So, in those days when he walked the
Earth, Christ Jesus, like ourselves, seemed to have a finite, physical
form. But his ministry was always trying
to show us our higher selves…our own
Christly Selves. His death on the
cross was to show that no one, and nothing, can destroy whomever God has
created. We will all ‘get up’ one day,
when we spiritually awaken from our belief in materiality. Our fleshly form is never, and was never, our
true identities. Our true identities are
our spiritual identities, having no fleshly substance. When we awaken from the ‘sleep’ of life and death
in matter, (as Jesus did) we’ll remember our true, Christly (spiritual)
identities. We’ll also remember our own,
true, spiritual names…for each of us has one. Do you doubt that we are God’s own spiritual
children? Then read again the biblical
voice of John: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
(John 3:16; NKJV). Notice just one more thing here: John
referred to Jesus as God’s ‘only begotten
Son’. This word “begotten’ means that
the birth of Jesus came about without any physical male taking part in
the conception of Jesus. Jesus was the only individual that was
brought forth into the material scene without the natural conception-use of the
male seed. For this spiritual fact
alone, Christ Jesus was, and still is, above all humanity’s spiritual knowledge
known to mankind. In other words, he is
the One we are told to follow for our own spiritual awakening; for his
spiritual knowledge is above all the material
beliefs of this earthly experience. So, concerning the wants and woes of
the inhabitants of Earth, it is good to know that all the bad things we suffer have
never really touched our true, spiritual Selves, at all, even when we
believed that we ‘felt’ the sensation of the flesh. (Even material scientists know that pain is
something controlled by consciousness, not the flesh.) Material sickness, wars, poverty, discords
and physical death never touch our true, spiritual being.
For, the Christ Mind within us always knows of our ever-lasting
wholeness; and, eventually, all will awaken to our spiritual identities, not of
the flesh. The flesh, good or bad,
never belonged to us, at any time in
our eternal lives. Our spiritual bodies remain
forever-untouched, by anything in this false, material sense of life. Instead, we’ve been safe and sound in the
forever-Love of God. In spiritual
Reality, no one has ever, really, died. |
