The race for communication part 2: talking to Christians
posted by DavidA | March 9, 2010
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IcerocketOk so if we're going to come together we've got to communicate... In the race for communication part 1 I talked about my inner experiences of a vision involving people running.. but not linearly.. it was if everyone started from the outside and was running into a point of singularity. As the circle of people got smaller, some had to back out of the front lines, but we all should try to get as close to that center point as possible...
Here's that vision working itself out in this our day to day reality. I was reading up on ascension this morning, and became interested in the way christians view Jesus' ascension (thanks wikipedia). Apparently, in the Bible it said one of the last things Jesus said to the apostles before he ascended was that they will receive the power of the "holy spirit", or "comforter".
This made a connection with a quote from the gnostic gospel of Thomas that says..
Jesus said, "When the Comforter has come, whom I will send to you, he will lead you into all Truth. Search the Light within your souls, for there will you find the reality of all things."
So now I'm like AHAH! Its like finding the rosetta stone... seeking truth withint ones' self is the comforter, and the comforter is the holy spirit!
So I e-mailed my Christian aquantances, lol I only have one friend who considers himself Christian.. and one of them said that the difference between the idea of "introspective truth" and his beliefs, are that in one sense (the evolver sense), truth is found from in yourself (like the g of t says up there) and christianity says you find truth externally from God alone... BUT what is the difference between God and my "inner divine presence" or "god-self" anyway!?!?!?
So can we now communicate with christians and let them understand that the whole time they have been talking about the holy spirit.. they really were talking about the truth being revealed to them, through them? It's sort of a radical new way for them to understand the triune, father, son, holy spirit...
...but honestly they've sort of dug themselves into an akward framework over the last 2000 years
Jesus, come back and clarify it for them ha
Comments
exactly
— Mar 10, 2010
I think you're exactly right. I've been having similar conversations with my Christian acquaintances lately, testing whether they are open to that interpretation. I think also the whole idea of Jesus coming back and fighting the Anti-Christ is meant to be taken as a symbolic idea, that each person now has to find the "Jesus" within him/herself and fight against the "anti-christ" that tells him/her that s/he is crazy. To me, the "anti-christ" in this world is materialism and the denial of our spiritual natures, and the battle of the "end times" is being fought right now in every single person who is struggling to wake up to the reality of his/her own divinity. I think there is a lot of truth to be found in Christianity, if we can just convince those fundamentalists that the whole thing isn't meant to be taken literally, that it's actually a symbolic, metaphoric way of expressing an internal process we all must go through.
Try talking to more than one Christian
— Mar 12, 2010
I am an Evolver, a shaman (well, an apprentice shaman) and a Christian. So, um, yeah. I haven't made a great effort to intellectually reconcile all this. It's been more of a process of following that "inner truth."
American Christianity, especially the Protestant variety, is a peculiar strain. One American Christian is far from a representative sample. You might try talking to Eastern Orthodox, Coptics, Trappist monks, and Charismatics to get a fuller picture. Many Christians DO believe that the Holy Spirit reveals truth from the inside out.
You really don't need to even go to the Gospel of Thomas to find this strain in Christian thought. It's right there in the plain old Bible. The New Testament gospels are full of Jesus talking about the Kingdom of Heaven within you. The upper room discourse, which covers about the last third of the gospel of John, has Jesus talking at great length about the intimate indwelling of the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and the Son. Yep, they're all inside.
Where Christianity went wrong, from my limited perspective, is when the Roman emperor Constantine glommed on to Christianity as a way to cement his power over the empire. The bishops back then made a deal with the devil, so to speak: we'll support your empire if you support our church. This led to a rapid consolidation of power within the church, along with efforts to stamp out anything that challenged the bishops' authority. And, well, if God is inside you then the bishop doesn't have absolute authority, now does he?
There is a movement within Christianity to connect more fully with the Divine presence inside. See, for example, Contemplative Outreach and Christian Meditation.
My two pence.
