For about a year now and increasing in intensity the last 4-5 months I’ve been being what feels like thrown into places and experiences to learn more about Jesus. I’ve been a recovering catholic for over half my life and although I’ve always felt like Jesus really did live and that he stood for peace and forgiveness, his attachment to Christianity and the Old testament just didn’t jive with me on many many levels.
My earliest memory of “what I wanted to be when I grew up” was when I was 7 or 8 and I wanted to be a Nun. I believe it took that form because in the catholic church if I wanted to serve God, that was the role I would have to play. I can remember feeling a powerful connection to God/Spirit/Jesus that was unlike anything else I had known. It felt right. However, I can also remember being very frustrated in the church because I had a lot of questions and no one seemed to be able to answer them to my satisfaction. Slowly as I humanized the connection through unanswered questions my connection to the source faded. Overtime I began to see the farse which was the catholic church and I turned my back on it all and have continued to explore divinity in many other ways.
So naturally thoughts of Jesus or being drawn to books or writings about him has been uncomfortable. I’ve told myself that with all my working to release fears and the junk in my subconscious it’s only natural that this would come up so I could release it and let it go. After all, I associate Jesus with religion and religion (although a seemingly necessary part of spiritual evolution) with destruction. In a nut shell I haven’t really trusted it except for a way to heal the past.
When I left my job and I started on this traveling journey, I’ve asked for my true work/path to be shown and how I can serve. I ask to be shown my next steps in my spiritual evolution? I made a commitment to follow my intution daily and let that be how I decide where to navigate and what I should do. These have been the strongest held intentions outside of always holding Love as my beacon.
It seems that everywhere I would go, conversations about Jesus would pop up. Strangers I would meet along the way or even friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. The interesting thing though was that I noticed the topics of Jesus being around what was Jesus REALLY like. Had the apostles got it wrong? Did they not really understand what he was doing and showing them? Did this get mistranslated through oral history until it was written down. Were those stories just passed from lots of other traditions and have no basis from Jesus at all?
I found myself intrigued yet still very resistant and cautious. I had decided long ago that Christianity wasn’t truth so I didn’t want to get brainwashed back into something that was drilled into me deep as a child. I had been actively working towards peeling those layers away along with other ‘norms’ that had piled onto my should and shouldn’t / right and wrong list. So what the hell was this about? Those childhood feelings that Jesus was really about love, peace and forgiveness kept surfacing so I felt like perhaps I was supposed to see a new perspective on what I had learned about Christianity. I kept reminding myself that I had to trust spirit and the intentions I was holding regardless of the form they were coming in. But it’s been challenging every step of the way.
I ended up being given some audio books by Rob Bell and hearing his perspective on the Bible and Jesus was completely refreshing as I traveled the highways of the US. He has a book titled, Jesus wants to Save the Christians, and overall it resonated with me. There was relief in hearing interpretations that were more aligned with love and less around the wrath of god and sin. But still at the end of the day I don’t get it. In fact, I have found myself several times asking Spirit to guide me differently. That I really don’t want to understand Jesus or the work that it is going to take to undo all my perceptions of the old. I then would sit feeling silly and apologize to myself and spirit for such childlike behaviors. I had been asking for my path and guidance and so I had to walk what was being given to me.
I was heading to the South and by golly I had to trust that my path has always been narrow in terms of people walking in likeness and I’m sure my journey around Jesus was no different. I was looking forward to meeting a friend of my Mom’s that lives in the retirement community here in Florida. She is a seeker and teacher and knows many things of the spirit world and its discplines. I thought to myself, at least when I need to talk about past lives, or communicating with spirit guides, or talking about my chakras, someone within a one mile radius will understand. I won’t feel completely alien and out of sorts as my journey down a new path to Jesus seemed to be unfolding.
We made a time to meetup and get to know one another. We discussed all sorts of things and I felt so grateful to have someone of this mind just down the street. At the end of our discussion I told her that I had been struggling lately with truth and conspirancies related to the government and the world as well as being guided to trying to understand Jesus in a new light. Her eyes got big and she said I have a book for you. She handed me “The Disappearance of the Universe” by Gary Renard. On the cover it said, “Straight Talk about Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness.” Well heck, this has got to be the book for me right now I thought.
When I was leaving she stopped me and said, “Remember that Jesus is Master. There are many on the other side that guide us home, perhaps he is trying to show you that he is yours.” As I got on my bicycle to peddle home, I recognized I was once again being given another perspective or idea around Jesus. I thought to myself that whoever it was on the other side, they had my attention and they were working very hard for it.
So I begin reading the book and in fact I couldn’t put it down. Deep inside I knew I was reading Truth but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It had taken some of my ideas or feelings around illusions and God and reality and was shining a light on it. It was showing me a clear picture yet my reality was spinning and being turned inside out and upside down. It was stretching every piece of me and I could feel the resistance strong as ever. Yet through it all I could here the voice nudging me along encouraging me not to be afraid and to trust.
This book was written to help people further understand the overall picture and point of another book, A Course in Miracles. It was written by a guy who had visitations from ascended masters who came to teach him this stuff and tell him he would write a book to help others. Gary had recorded these sessions so that he could get the transcripts acurate and not write them through his biased filters.
A Course in Miracles is supposedly the Voice and messages from Jesus. His words, written down directly through one individual who took the information short-hand and had another individual type it out. You can read the opening of the book to understand how that came about, but once again, I’m being led to try and understand Jesus and his message. It seems like this time, they could actually be his true words and not be lost in translations of sorts.
At this point, I find my resistance to it all really quite silly and at times infuriating. I mean how much do I need to be shown to trust? How many times do I have to go through these trials to believe the first time around? Why do I pretend I don’t understand the hold the ego has on keeping me asleep?
I know this is all part of my evolution in trusting. It is getting better and better. I am accepting more of where I am as I am all the time. I recognize that I am being given what I am asking for and I have to keep riding the train and believing in it. In the end, it’s all in line with Love, and that is my beacon. I realize I need to let go of my judgments around Jesus and everyone elses. I have to let go of others understandings of him and listen to what he is telling and showing me.
I am being given real answers to so many questions and the tools to help me fully realize and understand it all. The love that is being extended to me through all of this to keep pulling me towards the Truth leaves me humbled and grateful. I am a truth seeker and I want to fully awaken. I have to trust the narrow path that always seems to be mine and walk it with courage and light. All of what I’ve learned and experienced till now continues to be a foundation but I must remain curious so I can hear the voice inside, guiding me along.
Today, in honor of Debbie Ford’s passing, I will be true to myself and that which is being shown to me. I will trust in the power of Love and begin to call Jesus my friend. After all, I’m pretty sure he is trying to be that and much more.
P.S.
I also finally understand that Jesus was not about religion. The idea of Christianity was not his and came hundreds of years after his death. He did come to show us another way to live in this reality, which the people of his time didn’t fully understand and so it got interpretated through their filters of what they already knew. I don’t think most people of our time now are ready for his messages either, but I’m open and curious and willing to listen.