01/31/15

A Filthy Mansion and Another Dimension

It seems that at least half the time, this site is a dream journal, so this morning, I’ll just go with that.

Last night I dreamed I was a maid in a huge, gorgeous mansion. I had previously been offered the opportunity to work in a smaller, more humble abode, but had turned it down because I loved the architectural beauty of the mansion. Soon after arriving, though, I realized that I had trapped myself. There was so much work in this mansion that I could never get it done.

There were rooms upon rooms. The bathrooms were stopped up, with filthy stagnent water sitting in the showers. The kitchen was filled with so much candy and other treats that the cabinents would not close. Candy was spilling all over the floor.

Knick-knacks were everywhere, gathering dust, falling on the floor and becoming broken. Piles of dust and dog hair were on the carpets. Cat litter boxes were overflowing, and the vacuum cleaner was clogged with filth.

The people who occupied the mansion were very spoiled and continued making a mess. They raised spoiled children who only thought of themselves. Stuff was everywhere. Piles and piles of stuff. Nice stuff, but too much. Of course, the people who had all of this stuff were completely miserable, and made others miserable as well.

I decided to leave. I encouraged other servants to leave as well, and we snuck out the door. I think this dream, like some others I have had in the past, is a reminder to keep things simple so I can navigate this world relatively unencumbered by things that are not important.

———————————————————————————-

In another dream, I had the opportunity to travel to the “God Dimension.” It was another world, another reality with different rules. It didn’t feel heavenly, really. I don’t really remember it. What I remember is my traveling partner saying to me, “Hey, you’re getting to hairy. It’s time to leave. If you stay here too long, your body hair will get thicker and thicker.” I looked down at my shoulder, and sure enough, black hair was beginning to grow there. I didn’t really care all that much, but he insisted that we leave.

We arrived back to our world, and tried to unlock the door to the entrance. While in the other dimension, our fingers had thickened, making it too difficult to open the lock, another side effect of being gone. I’m guessing that too much time in other worlds makes it harder to fit in to this one…

10/4/14

Why Searching for God Is Pointless

“You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!”
― Rumi

In my latest dream, I wandered around from place to place.

The first place I went was to a fancy hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, where there were many pools of water. I was asleep, and a preacher I knew lovingly set me in the shallow end of a pool, carefully covering the deep end so that I wouldn’t wake up. Once I did awaken, however, I saw that some people were in pools that were almost entirely shaded from the sun. Others were in a pool fed by a glorious, towering waterfall, but when I drew near, I saw that the waterfall pool had been encased in glass, given artificial lighting, and had slowed to a mere trickle. There was an uninspiring choir singing on a stage in front of the waterfall, and a couple of people were watching. It was blah, so I left.

Then I went to a chapel. It was dark inside, and the church had their own bibles in a translation that doesn’t exist outside of my dream. The people were nice enough, but superficial. I told one lady that if “Christians loved as much as they feared, the world would be transformed.” Walking out, I made a new friend. We walked down the street, and I told her that I was glad to have her along because I wasn’t familiar with the city. We made our way to another friend’s house and ate lunch. Then I went exploring in the neighborhood.

I visited a run-down store in an alleyway where a swarthy snake-like man eyed me threateningly as he tried to conceal the dark magic happening in the back of the store. I was afraid, but the friend I had eaten lunch with was there watching out for me. I became even more afraid when I realized that he might judge me for my presence in such a sketchy place, and I went and hid. He came and found me, comforted me and didn’t judge me at all. We walked along together in companionable silence.

Then I went for a boat ride in an underground river. It turned out the river didn’t actually go anywhere but in a circle, like an amusement ride. At the end of the ride, the operator told me that I was worthy of a Koran, and handed me the book. I got out of the boat, and my friend was waiting for me once again.

I felt such angst over all my searching, but my friend simply looked at me with bemusement. I couldn’t believe how accepting he was. I tried to justify why I was exploring all these things, but he didn’t really seem care one way or the other. He was the kind of friend who is there for you no matter how much drama you create.

Thinking about the dream, it was pretty obvious what it was saying about religion. But I couldn’t figure out why I kept dreaming about this friend who kept popping up everywhere. Soon, however, I realized that the friend was Christ. I was running around like a lunatic in this dream, filled with such anxiety over finding the “right” belief, but all the time, Christ was there. (Rumi calls God “the friend,” and I read him a lot, so that helped me to figure it out!)

It was really cool to realize that God loves me no matter what direction I find myself wandering in, and that if I want, I can just hang out with Him, take off my shoes, and not wander — or wonder — at all.

09/17/14

If You’re Not Pissing People Off, Something’s Not Right

Christian persecution

The world can take everything BUT the power of Almighty God!

A few things that are on my mind this morning.

Persecution Is a Sign You Might Be on the Right Track — Fight ‘Da Power

I’m not one to jump on the “Christians are always being persecuted” bandwagon, but in China (as in the Middle East), it is a reality.

I think the fact that Chinese Christians are being persecuted is a good thing. (Don’t confuse this with me liking the fact they are being oppressed.) I think shows that they’re on the right track. The true cross is an enormous threat to existing power structures. The fact that our government embraces the Christian religion ought to tell you something. Christianity in the United States supports the existing power structure rather than defying it.

Christians Don’t Have Rights

I just read someone on Facebook saying something about “standing up for our rights as Christians” against gays, Muslims and atheists who would take those “rights” away. Really? What rights? The right to walk in the power of the Living God? NO ONE can take that away! No one! Jesus never said we should have the “right” to pray in schools, etc., nor did His early disciples. They were put in prison for crying out loud, and kept on keeping on anyway in JOY — not righteous anger over losing some perceived “right.” Wake up, people!! The true power of the Holy Spirit has NOTHING to do with where we are permitted to pray or whether or not Chick Filet is a popular eatery. :-/ And anyway, don’t forget that there was plenty of “prayer” in schools when black children weren’t allowed to attend those schools because of their perceived inferiority. Why fight for the right for what must have been empty, repetitive words?

The Log in My Own Eye

So yeah, this sort of blindness is aggravating me to no end. I wish I felt more love than judgement about this. I suppose it comes from a couple of things: my despair at seeing the world in this state when the gospels so clearly state it could be otherwise if we truly followed Jesus, and my frustration at being told how to believe by Christians who themselves are not living a life of Light. I want to scream, “You whitewashed tombs! You are blocking the WAY!!” I mean, when my church split up because of a vicious marital breakup and I watched everyone take sides while cruelly maligning others, it completely blasted me into the reality that most often, Christianity is nothing but a bunch of blah, blah, blah that doesn’t hold up to the test. And that infuriates me, because I believe the Way of Jesus is the closest we will ever get to absolute truth in this dimension.

But then I remember that NO ONE on Earth really and truly knows what’s up, and that we’re all looking for a leader of some sort to follow. For me, of course, that’s Jesus. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt hopeful that a Christian preacher, yogi or monk had the absolute answers so I wouldn’t have to impatiently wait to be taught by the Spirit. So I need to ditch the anger about other people being on the wrong track, because shoot, we’re all on the wrong track to some extent.

I know I seem fanatical about all this, and I am. I have my reasons, which I’ll likely write about in my next post.

Until the next brain dump, Cheers!

09/16/14

The Early Disciples Were Stupid and Naive. Oh Yeah, and Crazy, Too.

stoning of stephenSo what are terrorists? Could they be, perhaps, a group of people who go around stoning people who disagree with their beliefs? Who imprison others who publicly voice different spiritual opinions? Can we agree that at the very least, living under this oppression would be undesirable? That we should, perhaps, do whatever it takes to keep such individuals far from our shores?

Wouldn’t it be better to bomb such people rather than risk yet another innocent person getting publicly murdered in a gruesome fashion?

Two thousand years ago, some folks in the Middle East had an awful problem with such people. These folks were called law-abiding Jews. The book of Acts does an excellent job describing the oppression that the early Christians of the day suffered living under these folks. The apostles were imprisoned, whipped and stoned.

In Acts 8:4, the writer describes how Peter calls for retribution after the stoning of Stephen. He talks about how it would be unjust for even a single other innocent to be killed, and how the Christians, as God’s new chosen people, should not allow a group of religious fanatics who worshiped God the wrong way to limit their rights.

Oh wait.

I got a little carried away there. That must be out of my Americanized version of the Bible. Here, let me check out a traditional translation. Let’s see. The NIV says, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.”

Hold on a minute.

They didn’t engage the these crazy Middle-Eastern religious fanatics in warfare? They kept on preaching Jesus? Stephen’s last words asked the Father to forgive them for gruesomely stoning him? What the heck kind of book is this, anyway??

Something is wrong here. This book I’ve been reading is anti-American. No God-fearing person could possibly be okay with Middle-Eastern crazies running rampage all over God’s people without putting a stop to it, right? Shoot, these people don’t know what they’re talking about! Didn’t they read the scriptures with all the smiting?

They preached Jesus. What unrealistic nutcases. Totally out of touch with reality, they were. Didn’t they know that they would end up being dead?? That their loved ones would suffer as well? Talk about fanatics!

It’s a good thing that we have better wisdom today. That we can stop terrorism in it’s tracks with a few well-placed bombs. Those folks two thousand years ago had no idea what was up, obviously. Maybe all they really needed were better-developed weapons. Today, there wouldn’t be a need for all that wimpy forgiveness and passivity. They could press a few buttons, roll up in a tank or two, and BAM — problem solved.

That must have been the reason, right? Why else would they have let these terrorists run right over them like that? Weren’t they afraid of DEATH?

Or were they just naive? Conquering terrorism and oppression with nothing but preaching and prayer — LOL.

Or maybe they knew something we don’t.

Just a thought.

09/15/14

Which Jesus Do You Follow?

barabbasI was reading the book of John this morning, and I came across something that hit me like a ton of bricks. You know how Pilate asks the Jews who they want to be pardoned, and they choose Barabbas over Jesus? Well, Barabbas was an insurrectionist — a likely Zealot who had committed crimes against the Roman Empire in an attempt to gain freedom from Roman oppression for the Jewish people. He was a man who was a Jewish nationalist.

What is really, really interesting about this story, however, is the name Barabbas. Bar Abbas, in Hebrew, means “son of the father.” As if that wasn’t strange enough, the original manuscript of Mark had his name as “Jesus Bar Abbas.” The early church father Origen had the name “Jesus” removed from the text in the second century.

So, you have two Jesus’s being held by Pilate. Both are named “Jesus Son of the Father.” One is crucified, one is set free. The one who was set free was the nationalist who fought to protect the national interests of the Jewish people. Does anyone think that perhaps the gospel writers were trying to make a point here?

Barabbas sounds like a noble guy — a person you’d like to have on your side if the country was in trouble. Yet, the gospels clearly show that his approach was not the God approach. The God approach was self-sacrifice. The God approach healed the soldier’s ear after Peter cut it off defending Jesus.

One argument against non-violence that I hear quite often is, “What if an innocent child was being attacked, what would you do then?” While I don’t have a good answer to that question, I can say with confidence that Jesus was most likely the most innocent person ever attacked. Yet when this was happening, He told Peter to put the sword up, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

I’m guessing the gospel writers had a good grasp of the tempting pull of nationalism over the Kingdom of God. After all, it seems right. Yet, we see who the mob persecuting Jesus chose to free — the brave nationalist who would preserve their state and way of life. He must have been a real hero! Jesus the Christ, on the other hand, wasn’t at all interested in preserving national interests or a particular way of life. “Pick up your cross and follow me,” he said.

Christians are being told that “Jesus died for your sins. He went to the cross and was resurrected after three days, and if you believe in him you will be saved.” The thing is, how on earth can anyone believe in Him if they don’t know him? And how can anyone know him if they are following Jesus Bar Abbas?

It’s something to think about.

09/3/14

War Begins in the Minds of Men

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If I believe that Jesus actually said the words above, and believe that he meant them and that He was telling the truth, then I have some things to think about. We all do,actually.

love your enemiesAnyone who knows me remotely well knows that I am anti-war. I believe it is a complete hypocrisy that people call the United States a Christian country while we are warmongering gun idolators. In my mind, a truly Christian country would have extended an olive branch after 911, seeking reconciliation. To those who argue that we had to “defend ourselves,” what we did was not self defense, it was retaliation and political opportunism. Self defense is more along the lines of the increased airport security we implemented. Anyway, that is beside the point when your defense is the Most High who created the amazing universe.

But I really shouldn’t be worried about what the nation or, in fact, what anyone else is doing. The focus right now needs to be getting the darn log out of my own eye.

What I am concerned with is digging the roots of bitterness and hatred out of my own heart. Change starts with me, right? In ourselves, in our families. Then our communities, then our nation, and then the world.

Who among us doesn’t harbor animosity toward another person? You know, the kind where if you read on Facebook that they got a bad haircut or gained 50 pounds, you wouldn’t be exactly sorry. Who hasn’t sat ruminating about the unkind words another person has said to them? Or talked about how messed up another person’s attitude and behavior is?

The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that.

At all. I don’t see any exceptions. Jesus never says, “Love your enemy except when they talk trash about you.” He doesn’t even provide an exception for when the enemy murders your entire family. Or invades your nation. Nope. He says, “Be perfect.”

It’s all well and good for us to talk about the atrocities that ISIS is committing, for example. Once again, someone has provided a convenient way for us to get the focus off of ourselves and onto a “bigger” sinner. We don’t get to do that, though. Jesus says, Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Not just ISIS. He means me when I think hateful thoughts about someone who hurt my feelings or behaves in a manner that I don’t agree with.

Jesus knows the nature of reality. In the spiritual world, there is little (if any?) difference between murdering someone physically and murdering them in your spirit with your thoughts and words. Our entire universe is constructed of energy, and thoughts and words have their own energy. They are REAL. We must not hate or entertain the demons of hate.

We should pray for ISIS. We should say a quick prayer for the harried person who cut us off in traffic. For the friend who betrayed us. For the parent who didn’t meet our needs. For the husband who cheated. Everyone.

If we truly believe in prayer, how could we doubt for even one second that it’s more effective than bombs or any of the other fallout from hatred?

07/5/14

The Earth Experience — Now Available on PS4

life is a video gameSometimes I feel like life here on Earth is like a video game. When you overcome one obstacle, another one takes its place. And if the obstacle is too big, you can be busted back several levels and have to struggle through some of the same stuff again.

It is fun reaching new levels, though. When you do, just like in a game, there’s all this new stuff to see along with the new things to overcome.

I don’t feel like I’m close to a new level, though.

A few days ago, someone tried to provoke me by calling me an assortment of unflattering names. It felt like a little demon sailed through the air with each word, like a succession of witches on broomsticks. I felt weighted down all day. Sage helped me. He told me I was the most awesome mom ever, and what mom doesn’t live to hear a compliment like that? A couple of the demons lost their grip and fell screaming to the ground. Then his friend told me how much he appreciated something I had done for him last summer. Another one bit the dust, having been poisoned by the surge of blessing I got from this kid.

There’s still a couple hanging out, it seems. One of them is fairly indistinct — an almost translucent gray figure hanging around me like a cloak that could almost go undetected. That is, if I wasn’t hip to the spiritual nature of depressive episodes.

It feels like I had reached a life force of 12,300 in the game of life and got busted down to 8,000 for not having had the skill to cast off the hurt before it dug its greedy claws into my soul in its attempt to plant a seed of bitterness in my heart.

I can’t emphasize it enough. Spiritual attack is real. Paradoxically, however, the key to overcoming it is not focusing on it. It’s much better to choose to focus on stuff you’re grateful for. Then the stuff clinging to you will feel nauseated and go away.

It feels like gratitude builds up your life force, helping you to increase your points so that the next time you get blasted, you’ll have a bit of a cushion.

The thing is, though, the more you play the game, the more skilled you get. There’s always something to learn, even when you make a mistake you’ve made in the past. I’m trying to summon gratitude for each lesson, even when I’m struggling through a level that has a fog of hopelessness along the path that I must strive to see through.

Putting ideas into practice is hard. It’s easy to lay around and whine or indulge in feelings of sadness, but that just has us repeating the same level again ad infinitum, doesn’t it?

Feeling super-glad the the source the game is plugged into never runs out of power. 🙂

Note: If you doubt the power of words, I challenge you to watch this most excellent documentary.

06/19/14

Loving Enemies

love your enemies

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

This sounds like a nice enough Bible verse, right? Not really. If we fully recognize what Paul is saying here, and put it into practice, it will be one of the most difficult things we ever do.

If you have a stronghold in your life, you are enslaved to whatever it is that has power over you. For many people, the strongholds are things like anger and a desire for revenge. I think these feelings reside in every human soul. It is normal to have them, but once we decide to follow Jesus, it’s time to take out these strongmen and crush them.

I was reading and wish so very much that people would just GET IT. Whenever someone suggests that we should love our enemies to the point of embracing non-violence, you always get people coming out of the woodwork who say things like, “What if someone breaks into your house and tries to kill your child?”

I can understand this. Here’s the thing, though. First of all, the Holy Spirit is immensely powerful and can give us the wisdom in that moment to fix the situation. I love how Antoinette Huff handled this school shooter. Second, if the person DID kill your family, remember that Jesus destroyed death:

…it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 2 Timothy 1:10

In other words, Jesus put the lie to death. We are immortal souls! God has the whole thing under control. No worries.

Think of life as a dream you’re having. So what if you or someone else wakes up a little bit before you had set your alarm clock to go off? Not that big of a deal, really. I know this sounds flippant, but keep in mind that I am not 100 percent certain that my older son is alive. This knowledge keeps me SANE.

So we don’t have to hate or kill our enemies and continue the cycle that the satan would like to see perpetuated. I refuse to participate.

Of course, it’s easy to sit here and talk about unlikely circumstances or wars that I am at a personal distance from. It’s another thing altogether to talk about REAL enemies — the people in our everyday lives who slander us, provoke us and do other things that make us feel like a spiritual knife is entering our heart. Our normal instinct is to STRIKE BACK, or at the very least, engage in a good complaining session about the person.

But Paul says to take captive EVERY THOUGHT and bring it into obedience to Christ. So that means that if I choose to complain to my husband about someone who has hurt my feelings, denigrating them, that I am NOT being obedient to Christ. Yikes.

So what to do? I refuse to give myself a pass on the grounds that I am “only human” because I’m really trying to transcend my current level of consciousness.

The way that I take such thoughts captive is to implement Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:44, which says to “pray for those who persecute you.” So, whenever I am tormented by a yukky thought about another person, the only thing to do really is to pray for them. And boy do I not want to do that. But you know what? When I force myself to do so, I feel a wonderful peace. And if the thoughts return the next day, I do it again!

I don’t pray that the person will see the error of their ways or anything like that. What I pray is that the person will be most richly blessed and experience God’s joy, peace and love in their lives. In other words, what I want for myself. And you know what? I get what I pray as if I had prayed those words for me rather than the person I have struggled with!

This stuff is really really hard. And it’s not fun to do. And I don’t do it as much as I should. Some thoughts manage to get through in spite of my efforts to kick them back into the darkness. But it’s a journey that I want to undertake. I hate the darkness and don’t want any part of it, really.

The knowledge of God is that we are one, and how we treat our brothers and sisters is how we treat ourselves. I want NOTHING to come between me and this knowledge.

06/11/14

What Are We Swimming in — Polluted Water or Living Water?

God's cleansing waterI had this dream over a week ago, and I had to let it percolate for a while to let its meaning sink in. I had fallen asleep after reading a passage in Luke about the kingdom of God and asking God to help me understand it. Much confusion has arisen because of this passage, and no wonder. It is not a piece of cake to understand at first glance, that is for sure!

Then He said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Look here!’ or ‘Look there! Do not go after them or follow them. For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

“In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left.”

And they answered and said to Him, “Where, Lord?”

So He said to them, “Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together.”

So at 4:44, I woke up to the sound of my cats fighting. Biddlesworth and Gordon regularly fight right before bed, but they’ve usually settled down by the middle of the night. When I woke up, this intense dream had just ended and was fresh in my mind.

In my dream, I was at the beach. People at the beach started getting sick, mainly with cramps in their legs. I thought they were just out of shape, but then I got a cramp as well. The next morning, I started talking to a friend about how perhaps there were chemicals in the water from surrounding manufacturing plants. We walked down to the beach, and floating in the water was a large test strip in a long vial that showed that the water had dangerous levels of several harmful elements.

I thanked God for sending us the capsule and we went to find the company whose name was on the top of the vial. We didn’t get very far. In the first building we passed through, some controlling administrator-type people took the vial from us and hid it in the plumbing of the bathroom. We managed to get it back somehow, though, and ended up taking it to the city manager, who oversaw the lifeguards whose job it was to protect the people swimming in the water.

The lifeguards were simply appalled. The test results showed that the water had been polluted for some time, and they hadn’t known to warn the people. They quickly painted signs with the color red to warn people that the water was polluted. All the while, the evil folks from the prior building were working to destroy the vial and somehow obscure the truth, continuing to lie to the people about the poison in the water.

Eventually, everything turned out pretty much okay, with a plan being set up to regularly monitor the water. Or so it seemed. Then the dream switched into some drama about the lifeguards trying to get out of the building on time. They were running down flights of stairs with piles of clothing, TVs and other things that merely slowed their progress, endangering their lives. Something intense was about to happen in that building, and destruction was near.

Once they were at the bottom, everyone started to relax. We went into a room that had at least 40 huge water mains that needed to be turned on. It was time to turn on this fresh water and let it flow. The amount of fresh water that would flow through this building was enormous. However, the motor that would pump the water out was temporarily malfunctioning. One girl (a lifeguard?) became impatient and went ahead and left the building, even though if the pump started working, she’d be washed away.

Finally, the pump started up, and water started to flow, faster and faster, more and more. The girl began to run. Her flight was slow because of a little dog she had with her that was holding her back. She kept pausing to wait for it, even though the water was coming. When the water finally came in all its power, it was terrible. It knocked down trees like matchsticks and swept them, cars and other debris down the street. It collapsed the hill the girl had run screaming down and she surely died. There was a lot of chaos as everything was swept away. This is when I woke up.

After giving it some thought, it seems that the water coming from the building with the lifeguards is God’s cleansing water. It washes away poison and cleans away the crap in our lives — and culture, if we — the lifeguards — turn it on. And the Church — people who love God — has perhaps been remiss in maintaining the engine that allows God’s love to flow through us. Once you decide to turn it on, there is no turning back. It will transform your life and sweep away the old you. You can’t hang on to your attachments. It will transform the lives of others.

I think this is what Jesus may mean by his words above about the Kingdom of God. These words have been interpreted to mean that some people will vanish into thin air when Jesus comes down out of the sky. While anything at all is possible, I don’t think this is correct. Jesus — the Christ-consciousness of truth, love and peace — can come into our lives like lightening at any moment. When it does, your self will die and be carted away to the garbage even though a person right next to you is perfectly happy living their old life. Meanwhile, you find yourself living in God’s Kingdom — here on earth in that other dimension that is accessible through love and God’s grace.

When Christ is revealed to us, all the eating, drinking, buying, selling, etc. becomes less important. It is “destroyed” by the light of His revelation that what is important is God’s true light — this world is but an illusion.

I have such a desire to see people recognize the poison in this world. We are having public shootings on almost a daily basis, and if that is not one barometer of a poisoned society, I don’t know what is. I pray that God’s cleansing water come enter the life of all and wash away what is not true.

If you are reading this and you do not identify as Christian, please don’t be offended. I believe God’s Kingdom is available to all, regardless of creed. Christ’s consciousness is for all who seek the light of God and Truth, even when it is called something else.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

06/10/14

Infinite Reality, Spiritual Sin and Illusion: Sage’s Dream

in my fathers house there are many mansionsWhen I was pregnant with my youngest, my mother told me that I should call him Emmanuel, “Christ is with us.” I ended up naming him Sage, of course, but the name my mom chose would have been even more accurate. When Sage woke up this morning and told me his dream, I truly felt that Christ was with me, illuminating my mind to the nature of reality that I always question so very much. The words coming out of my son’s mouth were simply beautiful.

In his dream, he was with an instructor who had a bunch of young folks with him. The instructor led them all to an infinite hallway, and gave them instructions.

“You’ve got this one lifetime to learn everything you can. We’ll meet up again in 70 or 80 years,” he said. “Don’t get lost. If you get lost in your reality, you’ll get stuck until you die.”

In the hallway were many other hallways branching off. Within those hallways were individual rooms. Within these rooms were more infinitely long hallways, and so on.

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

Some of the people had fun visiting other people’s realities and even becoming part of them. Others were frightened by the entire experience and decided not to participate. They just sat there.

Eventually, the instructor came back and offered the group the opportunity to either rest for a while in an astoundingly peaceful place called the “break room” that was simultaneously everything and nothing, or to go to another place for another period of time. The trip to the break room or yet another world of infinite realities is what we call “dying.”

When the instructor said not to get lost in your reality, what he meant was for us not to get caught up in ego and fear. For example, not to worry about what other people think, or whether or not we live in a “safe” neighborhood or have enough money for retirement. Getting caught up in these things stops the spiritual growth we were put here to experience.

You can go INTO your own reality, or you can go OUT into truth, considering everything that could possibly be. Realize that everything we see is an illusion and we can avoid going inward into a reality in which the argument we had with our mother is important, for example. To go into truth, is simply focusing on helping others and being kind. In other words, LOVE.

The instructor warned not to get stuck in a personal reality in which one thinks they have risen spiritually as far as they can go — in other words, believing one is Godlike and has nothing left to learn. This reality leads to spiritual stagnation and death, he said. When I heard this, I immediately thought of spiritual pride, and Sage confirmed that is what the instructor was referring to.

You can get other people lost in your own reality. This is a spiritual sin. Think of someone who ropes another person into an unhealthy belief system, subsequently blinding that person to the ultimate truth of his existence.

The dream continued.

Sage went to another world. In this world, he met our deceased cat Varmint. He hung out with her, and on their journey, they ran into some people with a meat grinder. These people were throwing plants, animals and people haphazardly into the meat grinder. They tried to grab Varmint, but Sage grabbed her and saved her. They left, and Varmint found a nice comfy couch to lie down on. Then her spirit arose from her, and it was one of an old lady. (I hooted at this, because Varmint always acted like an old lady.) Then the spirit changed into a young woman, who thanked Sage from rescuing her from that body, which was now represented as a metal prison of sorts. She told him that he rescued her by caring for her and loving her.

The meat grinder people, says Sage, are greedy world controllers — brainwashers, manipulators, power lusters. Think governmental and corporate control.

The whole point of it all, says Sage, is that we are here to learn, and we rise by helping others. Everything else is an illusion.

The entire time he was telling me his dream, it resonated with me so much. I felt my spirit saying, “YES!!!”

I think about the Beast in John’s Revelation, and I can see it being the meat grinder in Sage’s dream. Regarding the spirit being let out of the prison, I think of Jesus’ words about “setting the captives free.” There was so much spiritual truth here, and as I talked to my son, I felt as though I was talking to an old, old person with a very clear mind. I asked him questions and he answered them as though he were a direct channel to the divine.

I just told Sage about my sense of him being an open channel while talking to me about the dream, and he agreed. He said, “I still am. Ask me questions while you still can. Work that soul!” 🙂 Love it.

Life is cool. The joy of the Lord is my strength.