Youtube: Resurrection of Resuscitation?

“Where I am going, you cannot come.”

John 8:21

Critical scholars have long understood that while some events recorded in scripture have their basis in history, the writers used these facts to support their own narrative. The Gospel writers, after all, were evangelists, not historians. As such, their purpose for writing was to advance the narrative of the early church rather than produce an accurate account of historical events. John, for example, has Jesus cleansing the temple in the beginning of his ministry while the other three Gospels place the event in the last week of his life. Historically speaking, both accounts cannot be true. An event like this may indeed have occurred, but each writer uses it to bolster the story they want to tell.  

My research into the near-death experience has prompted me to raise some interesting questions about the resurrection story of Jesus. For example, death by crucifixion normally took from between two days to two weeks. The victim would succumb to suffocation or exposure to the elements. Jesus was pronounced dead only six hours after he was crucified. When Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for his body, Pilate, an experienced executioner, wondered how Jesus could be dead so quickly. He summoned the centurion who made the death pronouncement to confirm it. The centurion, who believed Jesus was an innocent man, assured Pilate that he was dead.

What if Jesus had slipped into a coma and revived or spontaneously resuscitated prior to being entombed? This could certainly explain appearances after his “death” and serve as a factual basis for the rumors that he had been raised from the dead. When he told his disciples that he was going away, and “…where I am going, you cannot come” (John 8:21), he could have been telling them he was fleeing the country and they could not go with him. Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea arranged to have him smuggled from the port city of Caesarea to another Mediterranean country safer from the long arm of Roman law.

For me, this is an intriguing possibility that can provide a factual basis for the resurrection. After all, resurrection and resuscitation both carry the same meaning of bringing one back from the dead.

Youtube: Understanding the Seed Self

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

John 12:24-25

Our focus throughout the Easter season is on two seemingly incompatible terms: death and life. Generally speaking, we treat death as a negative and life as a positive. In the above passage, however, death is required to advance the expression of life. With seeds and plants, we understand this relationship. When we drop a seed into the ground, we do not mourn its impending death but anticipate its forthcoming transformation into a fruit-bearing plant. The experience is characterized by positive expectation.

In our spiritual endeavor, the seed self is our body-based identity, our life in this world. While John suggests we hate this life to gain eternal life, we should take this as an attention getting exaggeration intended to make a point. Everything about our earthly experience responds best to praise and acceptance. Dying to this seed self is not a rejection of it but rather an understanding that our true essence is something much more.

That Jesus referred often to familiar, agricultural metaphors to illustrate spiritual principles tells me he was not merely calling attention to himself but trying to make these principles practical to the average person. It is the same principle he discussed with Nicodemus when he spoke of the need to be born again. These also bring to mind the popular metaphor of the caterpillar’s transformation into the butterfly. In each case, we are acknowledging that a greater condition is poised to emerge from a presently existing condition.

You and I spend most of our time operating in and around our seed self-awareness. It is to our advantage to spend time letting go of the cares and concerns of this limited aspect and allow the truth of our eternal nature to shine its light into our awareness. Perhaps Paul said it best when he wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind …” (Romans 12:2). This is certainly a great summary of what the Easter story is all about.     

Youtube: Self Love is Your Divine Birthright 

Erika Satie

In this day and age, we are bombarded with the mindset that our value comes from the outside world and that what our friends, partners, and coworkers think of us is of utmost importance. I don’t know about you, but haven’t you noticed that looking to others for your self-worth can be very short lived and unsatisfying? 

It is crucial and vitally important that we find ways to love and nurture ourselves rather than look to other people, places and things to provide it for us. 

Think of how your life would look if you really knew that you were God in human form? How would you feel, and how would you behave? Would you walk with confidence and love, knowing that the Force that orchestrates the universe is within you? Would you have a more loving and faith filled experience of life itself? Can you imagine knowing that you could never be without love, health and money because you were part of God and that it was God’s absolute pleasure to give you the keys to the Kingdom? 

We will address all of these questions and more this Sunday when we explore the topic of self-love.

Dear friends,

You’ve probably noticed by now that I didn’t post last Sunday’s episode. I woke up Sunday morning with a very sore throat and no voice. Audrey, Diane, and Bev figured out how to do the live service, so that was all good. I anticipate being out again next Sunday and hope to have a guest speaker and a new youtube video.

Thank you for your understanding. Believe me, I would much rather be giving a talk than dealing with the effects of a physical inconvenience.

Blessings,

Rev. Doug

Youtube: The Road Never Traveled

Many take the road widely traveled.

A few take the road less traveled.

Only you can take the road never traveled.

J Douglas Bottorff

The lines above are obviously a play on the poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, but with a different twist. For me, the road widely traveled is mainstream thinking about the spiritual path. The traveler finds assurance in the large numbers of people that take this road. The road less traveled is an alternative to the mainstream. The numbers of followers are smaller, but the alternative resonates with the traveler’s logic and growing need for deeper understanding. Yet, this road is still a system of thought developed by others. The road never traveled is the spiritual path discovered through personal revelation. The person on this path has met the advocate, the comforter spoken of by Jesus, who reveals by direct impression the truth of their being. They no longer believe, they know.

It has become abundantly clear to me that we are not here to develop the soul. In taking on a body, we have become so distracted by its needs that we’ve lost conscious connection with who and what we are at the spiritual level. To complicate matters, using people like Jesus as examples, we develop ideas on what a spiritually enlightened person should look and act like. We then compare ourselves to this phantom image and never measure up. Nor will we ever, because this imagined perfection does not exist.

The man in Jesus’ parable who discovered the treasure buried in the field (Matt. 13:44) experienced in that instant of discovery a life-changing event. He was illumined by a treasure whose full value was already established. There was no further development required of the man. All he had to do was sell his possessions to buy the field containing the treasure. Jesus summarized in two lines the true nature of the spiritual path. It has nothing to do with development. It has everything to do with discovery of a fully developed treasure totally within the man’s ability to acquire.

We will make the most progress when we think of our spiritual path as one that only we can travel. We each have the faculty and the design to know God, the source of our being. Our quest must be a commitment from the heart rather than an urging from the pages of a book. All guidance points us to what we already know but have forgotten. Yet we have not forgotten, which is why Jesus gave this advice: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).  

YouTube: The Intelligence Factor

“And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

Genesis 1:3-5

It is significant to observe that the ancient Hebrew has God calling forth light as the first step of the creative process. This light is not a reference to the sun, which was created on the fourth day. Rather, it is the underlying light of divine or universal intelligence that the author understands as the foundation of the observable world. According to the account, when God first spoke, the world was “… without form and void.” Following the affirmation of light, things quickly took shape.   

All living things express varying levels of intelligence. Mainstream science, assuming intelligence is generated by the brain, emphasizes the importance of brain size. The emerging science that is gaining traction, however, treats the brain more as a receiver than as an originator of intelligence. Think of the brain like the “smart” phone that taps into an “omnipresent” communications network. Because the network is not located inside the phone, the status of the phone – turned off or even broken – has no impact on the network.  

When Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20),” I believe he was referring to the differing capacities of living creatures to access and express intelligence. Plant and animal kingdoms are governed by instinct, while the son of man, the human being, possesses the more expanded abilities of imagination and intellectual reasoning. Having nowhere to lay his head is a way of saying that, unlike animals, the human being has the creative capacity to move beyond mere instinct, to rise above the belief that we are enslaved to circumstance. There are no predetermined outcomes.  

The affirmation, let there be light, is a means of stimulating the greater expression of creative intelligence that enables us to work through our challenges and turn negative appearances into exciting opportunities.   

Youtube: God Is Spirit

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

John 4:24

Last week we explored the idea of the Second Coming, which is grounded in the ancient Jewish and Christian hope for a messiah to appear and usher in the kingdom of God. This hope depends on the belief that we are separate from God. However, the understanding of God as omnipresent – everywhere present, equally at the same time – makes the condition of separation impossible.

To say that God is Spirit conforms to our understanding of omnipresence. We can at least conceptually grasp how the energy of spirit can be everywhere present, permeating all things, seen and unseen. It is interesting that the default philosophy in 19^th century Western thought, before materially based science emerged, was panpsychism, the understanding that mind rather than matter is a fundamental feature of the universe. Even more interesting is that current developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have revived interest in panpsychism. The exploration of what modern philosophers are calling the hard problem of consciousness is causing some scientific heads to turn back in this direction.  

Because of the imagery it naturally evokes, naming the spiritual dimension the kingdom of God is, for many of us, problematic. Spirit, as Jesus explained, is like the wind that blows. You cannot see it, but you can feel it on your face and see its effect in the swaying branches of the tree. In our culture, we would better understand this spiritual domain or dimension as the creative life force that is the underlying reality of all things.

Our previous religious indoctrination may make it difficult for us to think of God as omnipresent energy. If we start from the basis of God as Spirit, however, the transition is not so challenging. To worship in spirit is to become intuitively receptive to the ever-present life, love, power, and intelligence that presses in upon us. I believe it was the mission of Jesus to persuade people to understand that they are designed to know God firsthand, and that to love God with all their heart, mind, and soul is the path that leads to the spiritual awakening we all crave.   

Youtube: The Second Coming Revisited

Rumble: The Second Coming Revisited

I do not believe in the second coming of Jesus, I believe in the first coming.

Please understand that I do not say this with the intention of persuading anyone to think differently on this subject. I am simply sharing what has become clear to me from my studies, and my own spiritual logic. Jesus taught and demonstrated a system of ideas based on principles of oneness with God. These principles include an understanding of God as omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient; one presence and one power, as we would say. He taught that God is centered in everyone, and the individual’s relationship to God is inseparable unity, a relationship of oneness that can never be broken.

The system he taught was known as the Way. “About that time there arose no little stir concerning the Way” (Acts 19:23). The name change to Christian was later applied because the disciples were teaching that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah: “… in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians” (Acts 11:26). It can be argued that this name change represents a transition from the teachings of Jesus to teachings about Jesus.

The principles of oneness do not allow for a future time when God’s kingdom will finally be established. As the following passages make clear, Jesus understands this spiritual dimension as a present reality:

“The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21).

^“Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest” (John 4:35).

Perhaps the most compelling reason for the mainstream’s shift to a futuristic kingdom is stated in the Gospel of John: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The spiritual dimension cannot be observed with ordinary physical vision. As William James wrote: “Its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.”  

The kingdom is accessible to any who are willing to stop looking for signs that can be objectively analyzed and become intuitively sensitive to the living Source of his or her own being. This way of knowing lies at the heart of the message Jesus brought. Should he decide to return, he would simply repeat what he has already said. Some will hear his voice, but most will probably “… see but not perceive, and hear but not understand” (Mark 4:12).

Youtube: The Truth About Sin

Rumble: The Truth About Sin

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Jesus’ listeners said they were descendants of Abraham and had never been in bondage to anyone. He is speaking of an inner bondage. “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34).

The classical definition of sin is to miss the mark. The mark is truth, the understanding that we are one with God. We were born into a culture programed around the belief that we are separate from God. This starting point of logic is the sin, the untruth, that manifests as many forms of enslavement to material appearances.  

John quotes Jesus as saying, “The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Notice in the second line, the word Son is now capitalized, giving the impression Jesus is referring to himself, a very different and unintended meaning. Jesus would have used the phrase, son of man, in the same way the Old Testament used it.

“ … what is man that thou art mindful of him,
    and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God, …” (Psalms 8:4-5).

The phrase simply means, a human being. John or his translators have taken liberty with the term. We see this again in Mark when Jesus, prior to healing a paralytic says, “The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10). This would read, “The ordinary man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

Jesus is presenting two contrasting images, slave and son, to make his point. He is not using the son as a reference to himself. The permanent resident of the house is the soul. The slave is the senses-based self-image, operating from the belief in separation from God, and enslaved to material appearances.

Spiritual freedom starts with the understanding that our soul, made “… little less than God,” is now free of the material limitations we have mistakenly placed on it.

Youtube: A Valentine for the Enemy

Rumble: A Valentine for the Enemy

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?”

Matthew 5:44, 46

Central to the message of Jesus is the subject of the kingdom of God. Scriptural evidence strongly supports that he understood this kingdom as a subjective experience, that the kingdom of God is within the individual (Luke 17:21). Because this is true, he placed much emphasis on the need to keep people free of mental and emotional attachments. Resentment toward others can bind us in ways of which we are not aware.

How do we love a person we consider an enemy? First, we look at how we think of love. Do we see love as a basket of rose petals that we toss toward those we favor and withhold from those we do not? Because the basket is only so full, we take care to toss our petals only to the deserving.

Love, however, is not a thing we do. Love is a fundamental aspect of our being. As such, love is not limited to the basket of rose petals we carry. Love is a universal and perpetual action that draws to us that which is for our highest good and dissolves that which is not.

To love and pray for someone you are not fond of is to affirm for them this action of love. Hold them in your thought and declare: Love draws to you that which is for your highest good and dissolves that which is not. There is no greater blessing you can give. It frees you from the belief that love is something you must do. Love itself is doing its perfect work.

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that the Father “… makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” He is pointing to the unconditional nature of God. He concludes this section by saying, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In other words, behave in this same unconditional manner.

We do not deplete ourselves when we give the blessing of love to another. Doing so, in fact, is one aspect of the truth that sets us free.