Jim Palmer's Blog, page 14

We can save ourselves and this world (if we want to)

We think that the current condition of our world is inevitable. We don’t realize that it’s simply a manifestation of our ignorance and the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that rule us from within. At any moment if we collectively turned to what is real in our deep feelings and what we know to be true in our gut then a new world would be born. That spirit, atmosphere and reality of oneness, harmony, and wholeness that is depicted in the Garden of Eden runs through us all. We must turn toward and connect with that reality within us. It is there… in every last one of us. Each of us must touch and connect with it ourselves. Then we must together lift this reality up out of ourselves and into the world. There is no God in the sky or savior who will drop down from the sky to save us or our world. It’s not necessary. What we and this world needs is within each of us. Every day of suffering in this world is unnecessary, and is happening only because we are creating it. It doesn’t have to be this way. Humankind is mainly operating from the source of our human understanding, ingenuity and effort. There is another entirely different source within us. It isn’t a religious, woo-woo, alien, freaky think. It is the most fundamental and natural part of who we are. Imagine yourself walking in that Garden and atmosphere where there is only harmony, wholeness, and oneness. Feel it deep within you. Know it to be real in your deepest awareness and gut feelings. That reality runs through us all. That reality within us will save us and this world forever if we will turn toward it and lift it up.

Theology is dead

Do we need theology and doctrine to know God or does it just get in the way? This is the subject of today’s YouTube video.

Is Jesus dead or alive? (and how the Christian religion messed this up)

Is Jesus dead or alive? The Christian religion has confused this question so thoroughly that it is the the main reason why our world is in the mess that it is now. I discuss this in the below YouTube video.

How do we get roped into false beliefs and ideologies?

How do we get roped into the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that come to rule us from within and drive our lives? People who come out on the other side of shedding religion are often dumbfounded by the things they once believed about themselves and God. What are the factors that cause people to adopt false beliefs and mindsets that sabotage their lives? These are the questions I discuss in the below YouTube Video.

Dear Jim (that’s me in the corner losing my religion)

What follows are a few of countless emails I have received from those who expressed how their involvement in religion damaged their lives.

“Overall, I have to say that I lost my individuality through my experience with organized religion…. I felt forced to fit in, to fit some type of mould or shape or way to be. I joined group after group looking for acceptance… I changed my appearance, my language, even some of the things I enjoyed I gave up in order to fit in. I lost me in the process, the real me. That has damaged me more than anything. Now I’m trying to find the real me.”

*

“I was an Evangelical for 27 years of my life. What I got most out of church was: read and pray every morning, go to church every Sunday and Wednesday, tithe (one church wanted a tithe of my student loans), be republican, it’s okay to joke about gays, liberals, and Muslims, Harry Potter is bad, but magic in Narnia is good, alcohol is bad, sex is bad, woman are inferior to men, the bible is just doctrine and theology, etc.”

*

“I learned intolerance at church. Church insisted that only THIS church has the right answers, and that any other church, even another Christian church, is to be avoided because they don’t have the whole Truth. Church taught me to be prejudiced. I learned at church that women are lesser beings than men, that only men were capable of teaching, leading or making important decisions. At church, I learned that God loves me less because I’m female. Organized Christianity insisted that I am a filthy, stinking, horrible, sinful person deserving of Hell. I’m less than worthless, and knowing so is a godly attribute. Church taught me to despise myself and be afraid of God. In church, I learned that a grand performance as the ultimate Christian is preferable to an honest confession of failure, and that the honest, broken people are shunned, gossiped of, and never forgiven.”

*

“Through a lot of thinking and reflection I have come to realize that the times I felt closest to God were not through all by business and conscious effort on my part but just the opposite. It was in the quiet still moments. It was while driving in my car or standing in line at the check-out counter. It was while staring at a tree and seeing its branches move by an unseen force. It is in the quiet enjoyable moments and sometimes even in the daily mundane moments that I find myself growing closer and more aware of God. There is no magic formula to use or class to take. All I need to do is be open to Him and be His Love wherever I am.”

*

“For me, religious detox has involved a LONG, drawn out, painful, excruciating, lonely, heartbreaking, freeing, exhilarating, sometimes mind boggling, angry, happy, sad time in my life. It is confusing at times, totally clear at times. I mostly think I’m losing my mind. Unlearning everything I “learned” in the last ten years.”

*

“When I really became honest with myself, I realized that my involvement with organized religion comprised of two main things – trying to figure out what the rules to be accepted were, and trying in futility to obey these rules. As much as I heard the popular rhetoric, ‘it’s about relationship, not rules’ I realized that this was, for the most part, just talk. It was about rules, always was, always will be. This is the crux of religion. Yeah, on the surface, it did not seem this way. The last organized church I was part of regularly had a very casual and dress down style. It was not uncommon to see people coming to church in shorts and flip flops on the Saturday evening service that I attended, and the praise team usually incorporated secular songs that could have a spiritual interpretation into their routine. But after I got really involved in the church, I learned you weren’t supposed to have personal struggles. I was told that I struggled because I was not dedicated enough to God, not persistent enough, not faithful enough.”

*

“I was taught that this God who loved me demanded perfection and nothing short of perfection could please him. Since I could not be perfect, he would accept Jesus’ perfection in my place. Since I deserved to be killed and then eternally tortured, he’d take Jesus in my place for that, too. He could only bear to look upon me if he saw me wrapped up in Jesus’ bloody body. I get the image of a wolf literally wrapped in a sheep’s carcass when I think of those days.

Serving this type of perfectionist and schizophrenic God made me fearful, demanding and judgmental myself. I knew that even my love for him was a sham because how can you love a monster who creates a helpless, sinful creature then tortures it for being exactly what he created it to be? How can you love in “free will” someone who says “Love me or I’ll send you to hell for eternity.” How others around me could love this god made me feel inferior and evil. I knew that even though I had done the right things, said the prayer, gotten baptized, even spoke in tongues that I hadn’t really appeased him because I could never truly love him, only fear him.”

That is how I was most hurt by organized religion. Organized religion presented me with the picture of a schizophrenic, perfectionist, masochistic God and demanded that I love an unlovable tyrant.”

*

“Leaving the church and more recently, just giving up on the whole damn thing. I am now an open minded agnostic vs. a liberal minded Christ follower. I still think Love is the most important thing but I don’t know if God and Love are the same.”

*

“I just got tired of wearing the ‘Christian mask’. Sick of it, actually. I grew up in a conservative evangelical household where we read the Bible, went to church on Sunday and I attended the youth group. We were all expected to talk the same, pray the same, interpret scripture the same, and above all else, vote the same. It was more like we were members of some spiritually exclusive club. Yet I experienced deep loneliness. As my disconnect grew, I started to look outside organized religion and evangelical settings for some answers. I just wanted to be emotionally whole, but when I brought my issues up I was told to read more scripture. When my father found out I was looking for answers elsewhere, he told me I was going to Hell if I believed anything other than how I was raised (a nice conversation starter, huh?). Anyway, that was the day I left the institutional church and it became the first day of Freedom. I’ve never looked back. I don’t hold grudges against other Christians but my crap-detector goes off immediately when I meet anyone who’s wearing the ‘Christian mask’. I consider myself a follower of the teachings of Jesus and I strive to be like Him. The term ‘Christian’ carries too much baggage for me.”

*

“I’ve had many people question my “Christianity” over the past few years because my ideas don’t fit into their boxes. So to me, being a Christian has nothing to do with doctrines, even beliefs about Jesus himself. Whether or not somebody believes he was just a dude, was God, or didn’t even exist at all doesn’t matter to me. I’m more interested in following the recorded faith of Jesus, rather than the faith about Jesus.”

*

“Religious detox over all has been lonely as I am leaving much of my illusional security I collected over the past 30 plus years. I am developing my own personal life with Jesus and have little of the clichés and patterning that I so easily embraced. I kinda like it!!”

What if there really was a messiah?

What if there really was a “messiah” who could save this world from the misery and suffering that plagues humankind, and birth a whole new world where we live together, whole, free and one. What if there really was a “messiah” that had the power to remove every obstacle, and tear down every belief, mindset, narrative and ideology that divides and destroys us. What if there really was a “messiah” who could deliver us into a heavenly reality that is even greater than our deepest wishes, highest dreams, and widest imaginations.

What if there really was a “messiah” like that?

Oh, my bad. There is. Inside us.

That “messiah” is not in your head. It’s not located in this or that philosophy, religion, belief system or positive thinking. This “messiah” is that spirit and life that runs through us all, which we connect with in our deep feelings and what we know in our gut is real and true. It is a distinctly different source than our head. What mostly happens now is essentially a tandem ride between the stuff in our heads and whatever human emotions pop off in the moment. Mental reasoning and human emotions are part of the package for sure, but there’s something else we feel strongly inside that is different from the cycling thoughts and emotions that shift and change over the course of a day. I think you know and have felt what I’m speaking of. Jesus referred to this as “the kingdom of heaven within us.” It’s not a religious thing, and any word applied to it, doesn’t quite get it.

As children, we encountered and operated in this source very naturally. Then we grow up and went into our head as we were programmed with all kinds of beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies. Since then, most of us have been doing that tandem ride described above, and doubt those deep powerful feelings that at times push themselves up to the surface.

We have the “messiah” inside us, but we’re gonna have to really start sorting through this stuff together and grab a hold of what lies within us. If you want to explore this further, give Inner Anarchy a read and let’s get down to business.

Should you be an anarchist and why?

I am sympathetic toward anarchy as a social movement. Anarchy is typically described as a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies often defined as self-governed voluntary institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations. Anarchism opposes authority or hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system. People often equate anarchy with insurrection, chaos, lawlessness and violence because these dynamics have characterized several historical instances of anarchy. In this sense, anarchy has unfairly been given a bad name.

Characterizing anarchy as chaos, lawlessness and violence is not accurately representing what anarchism truly is. “Anarchism” and “anarchy” are undoubtedly the most misrepresented ideas in political theory. The word “anarchy” is from the Greek, prefix an (or a), meaning “not,” “the absence of,” or “the lack of”, plus archos, meaning “a ruler,” “director,” chief,” “person in charge,” or “authority.” In other words, “anarchy” is “the absence of a master, ruler, sovereign or ruling class.” Anarchy means more than just no government,” it means opposition to all forms of authoritarian organization and hierarchy. Anarchists envision a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals.

It’s not possible in this post to adequately convey what anarchy is as an idea, theory or philosophy, or to cover the historical origins and developments of anarchism. If you’re interested in exploring it further, here are a few resources that  may be useful:

(1) Panel Discussion About Anarchism (2) Noam Chomsky Lecture on Anarchism

Some central figures to anarchy that you can explore further are: Peter Kropotkin; Mikhail Bakunin; Emma Goldman; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; and Errico Malatesta. If you’re into history, the most successful anarchy effort is typically considered to be be the Spanish Revolution from 1936-1939.

A few quotes from these well-known anarchists include:

“We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.”

― Errico Malatesta

“The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her.”

― Peter Kropotkin

“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.”

― Emma Goldman 

I am sympathetic toward the idea of anarchy because I believe, as Charles Darwin pointed out in On The Origin of Species, that our capacity to cooperate is our most potent human survival characteristic. Human beings created the social technology of language to empower cooperative living. Our ability to effectively self-organize and take direct action precludes the need to establish rulers and hierarchies to sort things out for us. You could make an argument that even in the best of cases such as “democracy” (as opposed to totalitarianism) that hierarchical structures of power and authority become corrupt and seek to control people’s lives. Jesus is considered to have been an anarchist, evidenced by his denial of the religious and worldly power structures of his day, and lived in defiance of religion and government.

Shallow anarchistic thinking tends to equate the problems in our world with the rulers, authorities and ruling classes themselves. In other words, they see the people or groups of people as the obstacle or enemy. The root problem is deeper than this and lies in the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that rule people from within. That’s the real obstacle and enemy – not the people or groups themselves, but those beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies. Even anarchy can become an ideology and function in the same way if it is originating from that same poisoned well.

This is why I coined the term “inner anarchy” – because nothing truly changes until we tear down and dethrone those ruling powers in our heads. I raise this issue in the book Inner Anarchy:

Solving the crisis of our world is not a matter of removing certain individuals or groups from positions of power. It goes deeper than that. The enemy is not the people, but the attitudes, narratives, mindsets, and belief systems that have poisoned us all and rule in our minds. These are the principalities and powers that have cast a darkness over our world, and they must be challenged and struck down. If you want to get angry about something, get angry at the false myths and ideologies that are governing our existence.  Here’s something else to get angry about—these ideas, myths, and ideologies are living inside your mind and ruling your life right now!…

We need anarchy! It’s time to revolt.

Yes, anarchy! Not political anarchy, but inner anarchy, in which we topple, dethrone, defrock, kick out, and cast aside the current ruling ideas that are programmed inside us. Those ideas have failed miserably. They were given plenty of time and opportunity to prove their legitimacy, and they have not succeeded. They cunningly and ruthlessly rule over us and continue to argue and fight among each other on the battleground inside us. This is the day of reckoning. Let all ideologies be put on notice. This is an indictment against all the bankrupt and powerless precepts that are governing our lives from within. They keep driving us relentlessly. Their authority must be decisively stripped away. They block us from being who we truly are. It is time to free ourselves from their power and control. It is anarchy or die!

Those ruling mental constructs must be expelled from within us. They are standing in our way. But they are not going to go easily. As futile as they are, they have become our security and our friends, and we fear striking out from them in independence. We have all built our little kingdoms and worldly statuses by using these beliefs, so they accuse the hell out of us if we try to drop them. We must get unreasonable to overthrow the current system that is ruling our world from inside our psyches. The old system is not going to fade quietly into the night without a fight. Our habitual way of reasoning has a titanic amount of energy driving our world and lives forward. We must unplug ourselves from the source of these powerless ideas.

We have to wake up! It is time to overthrow the system of ideas that rules our world and fills our heads.

The solution I offer in the book is to switch sources – to turn away from those false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies in our heads, and to turn to what is real in our deep feelings and what we know is true in our gut. Currently, all those beliefs and ideologies in our heads divide and separate us from each other. We know better than this. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs points out how all human beings essentially want the same things. Quantum physics obliterated the false view that human beings are separate from each other, and postulates a basic oneness of the universe. Spiritual leaders such as Jesus and Buddha taught that neither are human beings separated from God, the divine, or wholeness, well-being and liberation. It’s present inside each of us. All we have to do is get out of our head and turn within. We are too smart for our own good. Jesus said you have to become like a little child to find what’s real and true inside you.

Whereas most anarchists focus on the corruption of government, I have spoken out about the corruption of religion. In the book Inner Anarchy I give the Christian religion a bit of a lashing for hijacking the message of Jesus to serve its own self-interest.

The world has assumed that the Christian religion represents the life, message, and teachings of Jesus. But that view is changing. People are fed up and leaving the church, repulsed by its hypocrisy, irrelevance to the suffering in the world, greed, and fear-based doctrines of a wrathful God who saves a few chosen ones and sends the rest to eternal hell. In their heart of hearts, people are recognizing that many of the traditional teachings of the Christian religion are shams. The spirit of the times is shifting. People are no longer accepting the answers and explanations they have been given. They are becoming more confident in thinking for themselves and listening to their inner voice of truth…

The Christian church has preached a powerless gospel that has led countless people into a religious maze that goes nowhere. They have handcuffed the masses to a false God. The Bible has been misinterpreted and misused by religious leaders who claim to have spiritual authority, giving this bankrupt system a false air of legitimacy and credibility. I’m not pointing the finger; I was one of them. I was sincere, but I was sincerely wrong…

For the past two thousand years the Christian religion has been the immovable stone that has sealed off the tomb of the eternal life-giving Spirit within us. Christian leadership can’t even come to a unified agreement and oneness among themselves. Surely that fact alone gives us grounds to rethink a few things.

I was once one of those religious leaders. As I mentioned in the first chapter, I was the seminary graduate with a master of divinity degree. I was the successful senior pastor whom people turned to for truth. I was the religious leader and Bible expert whom people trusted. But I was the one who preached that powerless gospel, held up that carrot and the stick, handcuffed people to that false God, misrepresented Jesus, and misused the Bible—all the while claiming to be divinely anointed. I was sincere in doing all of these things, but I was sincerely wrong and ignorant.

This is an appeal to others out there like me. We are the “priesthood” that dropped the ball. We created quite the clusterfuck that has led people in circles for centuries. We have sufficiently buried the entire spiritual dimension that could have saved this world beneath layer upon layer of theological doctrines, worldly mindsets, and religious constructs that have no power. We have conditioned people into a dependency upon external things—Sky God (aka “Father”), the institutional Christian system (aka “church”), religious dogma (aka “Bible”), and religious gurus (aka “pastors,” “authors,” “spiritual leaders,” and “teachers”)—and have failed to connect people to the eternal, life-giving Spirit within them.

We cannot go back and undo the past, but we can courageously act now for the salvation of all humankind. We screwed up. That was then. This is now. And now we must be on the front lines, making things right. We have to remove every stumbling block that people are tripping over every day. We need to release the Spirit of Jesus into the world. That is what we have been appointed to do.

In the book I also mention how our world is on a crash course with extinction and doom, evidenced recently by the multiplication of terrorist attacks. To stop terrorism we must tear down the beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies within us that divide and pit human beings against each other. People who commit terrorist acts are pawns to those ruling mindsets and ideologies within them. It’s more than stopping individual people and groups; it’s those beliefs, mindsets and ideologies that must be rooted out. They must be supplanted by what we know is true and real in our deep feelings and gut. Right now those false beliefs, mindsets and ideologies are manifesting themselves in people and groups who self-organize to take direct actions to do harm, violence, and destruction in our world. The people who turn toward what is real in their deep feelings can’t sit back and be timid. We have to lift up out of ourselves what we know is real. We have to speak it to one another, and take direct actions to manifest a new way and a new world that is real. We have to lift that world up out of ourselves, and birth it into the here and now.

John Lennon was singing about that world when he sang Imagine, and Martin Luther King, Jr. described it when he said, “I have a dream.”  His speech was not spoken from his head. It has the ring of power and authority to it because he was lifting it up out of his deep feelings. He challenged people to turn away from what was programmed in their heads, and to turn toward what was real deep inside them – that all human beings are equal brothers and sisters in one human family.

In the end, I wonder if inner anarchy leads to the other kind of anarchy anyway. As we turn away from those false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies in our heads, and turn to what is real in our deep feelings and what we know to be true in our gut, than we can birth a whole new world where those power structures and hierarchies won’t be necessary.

It’s actually quite simple. The world is a manifestation of what we are choosing to listen to inside us. Most people are listening to the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that have been programmed into their heads. That’s the world we have. However, we can switch to a different source, which is what is real in our deep feelings and what we know to be true in our gut. That’s an entirely different world. It’s inside us. We have to lift it out.

So, Inner anarchists! I say to you that it is time to dethrone the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that have ruled us from within and corrupted our present age. They have held power over our world for too long. No more! Their day is done! Over! A new world lies within us, and is waiting to be born. It is time for each of us to turn within to that inner fire that burns within our hearts and deep feelings. We are the beacons that must shine forth now! We must lift that new world up out of ourselves. This is the dawning of a new age. Rise up! Have the courage to follow the authority within yourself! No longer can we sit in silence. We must speak what we know is real inside us. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. We cannot go back to the world as it is, we must stand for the new world. We must speak and live that world into existence. Light the beacons of inner anarchy everywhere.

This is the story of what happened

I’ve written five books. The first book is Diving Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you). The big question for me in this book was: Why do I believe this stuff? The book tells the story of the people and circumstances that caused me to begin questioning many of my long-held Christian beliefs.

The follow-up book was Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity. This book is that part of my story where I charted a new path of knowing God beyond the beliefs, mindsets and practices of organized religion. Each chapter shares a different way this evolved in my life.

After leaving most of my Christianity behind, I was left with the question of if and how Jesus mattered. I decided to take a season of my life and focus on this question. That period turned out to be much different than I expected, which included having two near-death experiences, losing both my parents, and having my book contract cancelled under the charge of being a heretic. On the question of Jesus, I got my answer. The title of that book is Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life (Whoever and Wherever You Are).

My fourth book is Notes from (Over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering. This book has one purpose – to help people escape the tentacles of religion so they can be free. Despite all our best efforts in knowing God and spiritual truth, why do so many of us continue to suffer? Notes in a very direct and non-nonsense guide to rooting out the religious mindsets that hold us back, and addressing the root cause of our suffering.

My most recent book is Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World. The book calls humankind to turn away from the false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that rule us from within, and turn to what is real in our deep feelings and the truth we know in our gut. The book takes issue with the God-story and Jesus-story perpetuated through history by the Christian religion, and the need to bury that story so people can access the spiritual authority within themselves. The book envisions a new world unfolding as more people courageously lift up what is real inside them.

Start listening to your gut

Yesterday I did a post, asking people to express naturally something they felt inside when their deep feelings were triggered.

Here was one response:

“That moment I was awakened, it was like a gushing river overflowing its banks and I felt Unconditional love and oneness with everyone and a freedom to be me. The feeling of love was overpowering. I felt one with God and everyone else, even people I had never met.”

My response to the comment was this:

“That picture of ‘a gushing river overflowing its banks’ resonates with me. I saw the picture of a flood. A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land which is usually dry. When the water rises and floods like this, there’s no stopping it. It has great power. In fact, you referred to it as ‘overpowering.’ What if that unconditional love and oneness was like rising flood waters that overflowed up out of us, submerging our world? I wonder if those deep feelings were trying to tell you/us that we have the power within us to release that unconditional love and oneness into the world and nothing can stop it.”

**

When those deep feelings are triggered within us, it usually has the following characteristics:

1. It rises up within us from a different place than just our ordinary human emotions that shift and change over the course of a day. You know it when it happens because there’s a certain substance and weight to them that is different.

2. These deep feelings have a real power and authority to them, and can sometimes feel “overwhelming.” It’s a very expansive and enveloping type of sensation.

3. These deep feelings are bigger than ourselves and transcend those things we might personally desire for ourselves. It often pushes up as a wish for the whole world… a very all-encompassing feeling that includes all of us as one.

4. It’s more than an idea or concept or fleeting emotion. Accompanying the deep feeling is a real power and certainty to it. You know just by speaking those deep feelings naturally that you are actually empowering the reality into existence.

It may be that the term “deep feelings” can throw some people off by thinking it’s simply whatever human emotion might be hanging around at the moment. Perhaps another way of saying it is that it’s something you suddenly know in your gut is real and true. The trick is to lift it up out of ourselves by speaking it naturally as we experience it in our own words.

Here are a couple YouTube videos I’ve done on this recently:

What do I mean by turning toward what is real in our deep feelings?

Turning toward our deep feelings: Part Two

That thing inside us – what to call it and how to experience it?

Inner anarchy is turning toward what is real in our deep feelings. That place inside us is difficult to pin down with words, but simple to experience. That’s the subject of my latest YouTube video. It’s Part Two of a previous video I did on this subject.