The Big Picture

I thought it was time to summarize what I have come to believe through reading, discussing but mostly deep thinking and receiving answers. To start with, you must forget almost everything the Bible, your parents, pastor and whoever told you about most things and be willing to ascribe new meanings to words you have long used, like God, Soul, Spirit, etc. I wrestled with using new words for these things, but decided to use the old words and figured if you are reading this, you can handle it.

What is God?  "God" is simply the interconnection of the spirits of all things with Souls to one another. I have likened it to a spiritual internet. From the great prophets in many cultures, well before Jesus, through Jesus himself, to many many brilliant connected theological thinkers since, it has been made clear that God is within each of us and we have a direct connection with and to God. Just because everyone calls it by this name, lets go ahead an refer to the spirit within us as the Soul.

God is not a separate being. We are God. We are all God together. We, connected and acting in harmony with one another without even knowing it, are God. We control God, not the other way around. We control our universe. You control YOUR universe. We use the Laws of Physics to do this.

Us.  We are composed of two parts. Our bodies and our Souls. Our bodies are very complex machines controlled by a very complicated computer. The Laws of Physics govern how it does what it does. Lots of the things that your body does, it does simply be operating properly. Heart beats, breathing, endocrine, lymph, waste and hundreds of other systems just function in accordance with the Laws of Physics. So the fact that a heart beats before birth does not mean the body has a Soul. I do not know when that happens.

There are all sorts of bodies out there that operate in this way, that may not have a Soul. The machine just functions by absorbing energy and functioning to stay alive until it dies. Plants just operate. Do they have a Soul? Are they connected to the God network? I don't really think so, but do not really know. Contemplate one-celled animals, reptiles, and amphibians; all of which are almost completely reactive critters. What about mammals up to dolphins and primates? Perhaps the complete balance of nature means that all of them are? Who knows?

Like any machine, it requires an operator for it to work. When your Soul enters any body, your body, whenever that is, you become the operator of that body. As the operator, you drive the machine. You choose where to drive it. Coolest thing is that by interacting with God, the spiritual internet, the super energy connecting all of us to one another, the super energy that wants all things to stay in harmony, you can change your universe to get what you want for YOU.

How does that Work?  Since you are always connected to the spiritual internet, you can tap into it. If you ask, the answer will be provided. If you need something, ask for it in a positive way, focus on it, believe with deep faith that you will receive it, and then act in accordance with the guidance from the spiritual connection we all share, what you need will come to you.

Nature strives for balance and harmony. That is not always good for any particular animal, as, of course many are inevitably food for others. Generally, however, food animals tend to reproduce rapidly and it tends to be the weakest among them who perish. So in essence, balance in the entire system is maintained.

Jesus noted that the sparrow never worries about where his next meal will come from. Assuming the sparrow is connected, it knows what it needs and has absolute faith it will find it and being connected, does without even thinking about it exactly what it is guided to do to find what it needs when it needs it. Except, of course, the weaker ones eaten by hawks or cats. Circle of life.

I saw a video that likened it to the genie in Aladdin, "Your wish is my command."  I think it is more like what Jesus said, "Ask and you shall receive." Jesus did not heal anyone. In the stories they came to him, asked for what they needed and because he was there and they truly believed in him, what they asked for happened. He even said that. He told them, because of your faith you are healed. He never said, because of me and my great powers, you are healed.

There are three requirements:

• Ask for what you need in positive terms.
• Really believe that it will happen. Faith must be strong to keep the spirit working.
• Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do, always, all the time, no matter what.

The Power of Positive Thinking: The spiritual internet, God, is part of nature. It does not think. It is just a force, the force, creating harmony and balance among all living things.

Inexperienced soccer coaches often make the mistake of telling their shooters "Do not hit the goalie." This is a negative statement. The result is they hit the goalie. Zero percent will score. Experienced coaches tell them to hit the goalpost, knowing that most of the time they will miss the skinny goal post and a percentage of those will be inside the goal post for a chance at goal. The difference is the first is what NOT to do, which does not work, and the second is a positive action, which does.

If you are in debt, pray for, ask for, what you need. Do not ask to get out of debt. That is negative. If you want to lose weight, don't focus on what NOT to eat or do, but instead on what weight you are going to get to and what you will eat and do to make that happen. Cast whatever you need in the positive.

Do not be greedy. As Mick Jagger pointed out, "You don't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." Mostly greed is something that you never really believe deeply enough that you will achieve. If you truly believe you will receive/achieve it, ask for that.

That being said, go for more than the minimum and ask for what YOU need. I own two houses I am going to sell soon. I acquired them for purposes of helping others, which happened, but not to my benefit. I did not ask for that. That is why good people sometimes do not get what they want. Because they think it is greedy or inappropriate to ask for it. They ask only for things that benefit others. Your wish is my command. Ask and you shall receive.

Believe:  When you truly believe and have faith that what you have asked for will happen for you, this reinforces daily, momently, what you have asked for to the spiritual internet, to God. It creates an imbalance that the force needs to balance to return nature to harmony. If you do not believe, there is no actual request and thus no imbalance to remedy. You may not get what you are asking for in a day, a week, a whatever, so faith has to be complete and constant.

Act:  Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do. The world spirit will communicate to your spirit how to guide your body to remedy the imbalance. You must do all of these things all of the time or you will be fighting against the very thing you have asked for.

Why does that happen. Because the world spirit, the spiritual internet, God, whatever you want to call it, is driven toward balance and harmony for every creature in the system. It does not make decisions. It does not screw you over. It does not think. It just does. The system simply strives through natural processes to balance itself. You are simply letting it know how your world is out of balance and then doing the things required to re-balance your world.

You can be and have everything you need and want as long as you ask, believe and act.

Christianity is Simple (not easy though)

In my humble opinion (and I suppose since I write this perhaps humble is a matter of opinion itself), Christianity is not as complicated as so many seem to make it. Afterall there are a lot of people out there making a lot of money telling you what you are supposed to believe. It would suck for them if it was not very complicated.

So by Christianity I mean, what Jesus taught. That is in the four Gospels (and perhaps other writings if you like them). It is not necessarily in the rest of the Bible.

The Old Testament:  The God of the Old Testament is irreconcilable with the God of Jesus. The God of the Old Testament was viscious. If you take the Bible literally (which I don't), the first thing the offspring of God's first humans did was fight and kill and then run away. God later killed thousands in a flood, destroyed two cities, turned a woman to salt, killed every first born son of an entire country, killed the Egyptian army, and ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child and every animal in Jericho, and punished the Israelites who did not do so. These are just a few of the murders commited by or ordered by the God of the Old Testament.

The God of Jesus is about love, kindness and non-violence. The God of Jesus is the love your enemy and turn the other cheek God. So, either there are two completely different Gods, which I suppose is fine, or the Old Testament is like the mythologies of the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians and other ancient peoples of the same time period, just stories of human-like anthropomorphized gods to explain things in nature they could not understand and the violent orders of violent leaders hell-bent on taking land from a foe. Nothing increases the subservience of a people in scary times than the much scarier fear of being smited by God.

So, to me the Old Testament is not relevant to being Christian. There might be some inspiring words and sayings in it, but it is not what being Christian is all about.

Paul:  Most of what is quoted from the New Testament comes from the letters Paul wrote, or allegedly wrote, to various rising groups of Christians. We quote Paul as though he was Jesus, but he was not. Paul never met Jesus while Jesus was in his ministry. He ran into him on the road to Damascus after the resurrection. So, everything that Paul knew about Jesus and his teachings came from what others must have told him or what he read in whatever was written about Jesus at the time, none of which we have now.

Paul was a man. Just a guy, like you or me, or perhaps more precisely your minister, priest or someone else who has dedicated his or her life to spreading what they believe to be the word of God as expressed by Jesus. He was hugely important to the birth of the Christian faith and arguably without him, there would be no Christian faith. He spread the "Word" to non-Christians all around the Mediterranean. This was not all that well received by the disciples, who generally believed that Jesus' teachings were for Jews. So without Paul, Jesus would just have been a prophet of a sect of Judaism.

BUT, he was NOT Jesus. Like the Old Testament, what he says has to be taken as inspirational, but not how to be a Christian.

Jesus:  So what did Jesus say Christianity is. To me, it is very simple. Hard perhaps to execute, but very simple. Here is how I see it and you are welcomed to disagree.

1. Personal Relationship: He explained that we have a personal relationship with God through the metaphorical Holy Spirit or Spirit of Truth. This was revolutionary. Jesus explained that you do not have to ask your priest, minister, a saint, an icon or anything else to intercede on your behalf with God. You can speak directly with God and if you ask for guidance, and listen, you will know in your heart what the right thing to do is. The priests and rabbis of the time did not like this message. Their careers depended on being the source of God's word for the people. Great rulers also did not like this. They waged wars and convinced the ordinary people to follow them out of fear that they are God's chosen ruler and God will smite the masses if they do not follow the ruler. This was radical but it is the core of Jesus' new religion.
2. Unconditional Love:  Jesus taught us to love everyone without limitations of conditions. This includes not just our families and friends but enemies, the poor, children, women, the diseased, the infirm and everyone else no matter who they are. These teachings are clearly inconsistent with the teachings of Paul which are often interpreted or translated, perhaps inaccurately, as intolerant of homosexuals, women and others. Loving unconditionally is difficult. It does not require, I suppose, for us to particularly like everyone. Bottom line, love everyone completely. Respect them. Care about them. Be real for them. But most of all love them for who they are, where they are and what they are all about, no matter how much they irritate you, annoy you or their positions are contrary to your own. That is what Jesus taught us.

Really everything else is a corrolary from those two. Non-violence is an extension of loving everyone, including your enemies; as is tollerance of others, foregiveness of others for everything they do for you or others. Love your spouse and don't covet those other's love, etc. If you love everyone, you cannot be greedy. You cannot take things from those you love. You cannot kill those you love.

I actually consider that everything derives from the first rule. Anyone who has read anything I write knows that I go by that first rule exclusively and it has never led me to any result other than the second rule. I ask God for guidance, to know what is the right thing to do. I feel that when I do this, and listen for the answer, I find I come to know in my heart what the right thing to do is. It does not always lead to great financial results. But in the end it makes me happy. I feel like my decisions help make others happy. I feel as though I live in harmony with others.

If Jesus actually performed the miracles reported in the Gospels, they were illustrative of the power of love for everyone, even people Jesus did not know at all. They could have been horrible people. He did not care. He loved them, period.

All of that stuff is window dressing on the very simple message of Jesus. The spirit is with you (wherever you believe it comes from). Ask and you shall receive relates to guidance, not stuff.

All that being said, following that one simple rule, followed by the second simple rule, is very difficult to do every day. Being a Christian is simple, BUT it is NOT EASY.