Jim Palmer's Blog, page 16

Our brilliance can save us

Consider the possibility that the need of the moment is not to accumulate more data and knowledge. The answers we are searching for are not contained in any book, including my own. What we are looking for is inside ourselves. It’s not something we access on the level of taking in new ideas in our head. It is accessed in and through what is real in our deep feelings. A person who is illiterate is at no disadvantage to stepping into and touching what is real. A child has not yet developed an elaborate or sophisticated mental processing capability and yet Jesus said it would be better for us to become children in order to grab a hold of the truth. One day we will figure out that it’s not our mental brilliance that’s going to save this world. I just hope its soon.

#inneranarchy

The enemy in our head

“Our world is not working; it is coming apart at the seams. It’s human nature to find someone to blame. Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans; Christians blame atheists, atheists blame Christians; Israelis blame Palestinians, Palestinians blame Israelis, etc. My inbox is filled with emails from people expressing their anger toward institutional church and its leaders. We are continuously looking for a scapegoat—it’s Obama’s fault, it’s Mark Driscoll’s fault, it’s Justin Bieber’s fault, it’s fill-in-the-blank’s fault.

But consider the possibility that the current futility of the world is actually no one’s fault. The world is simply the way it is as scientists describe it. There are no people to blame or scapegoat for the suffering and misery of our existence. There is no person or people who are the enemy. Then what is? Isn’t the enemy the beliefs that rule and drive us from within, and many of those beliefs have existed for thousands of years?

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!

The way our minds have been trained to reason is fundamentally warped. No matter what avenue (including and especially religion) we search for truth and answers, we are not going to find them. We have been programmed with a kind of reasoning that keeps us locked in a futile world that we cannot escape except through death.

Why is our planet and humankind facing the very real threat of destruction?

It is because we are operating with sets of fixed ideas that have spread like a virus to every aspect of human society, sabotaging any possibility for a surviving, thriving world. It makes no difference where you turn. Religion is no different from politics, which is no different from science, which is no different from our education system, which is no different from pop culture, which is no different from . . . you name it! They have all been infected by the same false premises, and we have been indoctrinated by them. The enemy is not someone or something out there, but is inside each of us in the form of these beliefs.

We are never going to get out of this mess until we confront the reality that our existence (as it is currently unfolding according to these bogus ideas) is futile, doomed, and meaningless. Those religious and worldly beliefs have had their chance. The clock has run out, and it is now time for them to go. We can no longer allow them to rule over us and in us. The current brokenness of our world is the critique against this old order. The conclusion? It is finished! Over! Done!

We need anarchy! It’s time to revolt.”

- Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy

Why not live what is real? #inneranarchy

Are you planning to live an externally-authored or internally-authored life today? The externally-authored life is a life that is governed and ruled by external sources. It’s all the stuff that you have absorbed into your head from sources outside yourself. It’s a concept/belief-driven life with all kinds of false religious and worldly mindsets, beliefs, narratives, stories and ideologies that are ruling you from within. It’s living from your head. Expect lots of strife and stress with living this way. All that stuff in your head is going to put you at odds with yourself, others, and life itself. All day it will be a clash of belief and mindsets. That’s one option, and many people you cross paths with today will be living that life.

The other option is to live and internally-authored life today. It’s a life where the real you is running the show. It involves turning within to what is real in your deep feelings – trusting it, following it, speaking it and being it. It’s living life today in, as, and from the real you. It’s a very free and natural way of living. You will find as you operate out of what is real in your deep feelings that you have joy. Being in that place is a very uplifting atmosphere within you. You will notice you have no true conflict with any person, and you will approach others, the world and life in a completely different way. You may notice that how you’re living is very different from what everyone else around you is doing. People may even disapprove. But you hold fast because you know that the internally-authored life – living life in and from what is real in your deep feelings – is aiding the liberation of all humankind. Living the real along the everyday paths of life is what saves this world. And so you keep putting one foot in front of the other… lifting up out of you what is real.

Sometimes you cough up the truth in tears.

When are we going to refuse and deny the false mindsets and ideologies that are ruling us from within and running our lives, and start listening to what we know is real in our deepest feelings? Your head can be crammed full with all the bullshit but that can’t stop you from coughing up what’s real in tears.

The entire Christian religion system will be obsolete by the end of this century

We have to move heaven and raise hell. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within us. All that’s left to do is to lift it up out of ourselves into our current situation. But we’re gonna have to raise hell too. This world is all bound up in false beliefs, mindsets, narratives, stories and ideologies that divide us from one another, ourselves, and the possibilities of a new world. Look inside yourself. Look outside the window. Most people’s thoughts, views, actions, interactions, and choices are being driven by a load of bullshit that has been programmed into our heads since we were kids, and we have moved right along through adulthood without questioning it. The prevailing religious and worldly mindsets and belief-systems stand in direct opposition to what we know is true and real in our deep feelings. We’re gonna have to raise hell first with these false beliefs, mindsets and narratives within ourselves, and then be willing to step out and follow what our deep feelings tell us regardless of how it calls into question the way things currently are. The biggest bullshit narrative going now is how powerless we all are and how nothing of any great significance is likely to change. People are sitting around on their asses waiting for Jesus to float down from the sky or for the next big scientific discovery to save the day. The power to transform everything is inside you right now. It’s the most natural part of who you are. Wake up! That’s why I wrote Inner Anarchy – to wake people the hell up!

The entire Christian religion system as it currently exists is collapsing and will be obsolete by the end of this century. This is a good thing because the truth that Jesus bore witness to and demonstrated is being unshackled from this monstrosity and lifted up for all the world to see. People will no longer think of Jesus as a religious person or as advocate of any religious belief-system or ideology. Instead, people will grab a hold of his truth, and turn to and lift up the power and authority inside themselves. A new world and reality will be born that is beyond anything we’ve ever seen, lived or even imagined.

How do you do inner anarchy?

I’ve had a lot of people emailing and messaging me about how to do inner anarchy – how to tear down those false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies ruling within us, and how to access and connect with that deep-feeling source within us.

In terms of tearing down those ruling mindset/belief-powers within us, I wrote a lot about this in my fourth book before Inner Anarchy, which is titled: Notes from (Over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering. The deal is that we have 20/30/40/50+ years of living our lives with those false inner religious and worldly beliefs and ideologies running the show. They have become so ingrained in us that we don’t even see them. We have built up a huge mass of habit energy, and the inertia of it drives us forward and runs our lives. We have a titanic-sized mass of bullshit in our heads and in the driver’s seat of our lives. I wrote a tremendous amount in Notes from (Over) the Edge about these particular issues – how to break the power of that habit energy in your life. 

I think the whole language of “feelings” when I talk about “deep feelings” in terms of inner anarchy can be a bit confusing to sort out.

Take me for example. I went through quite a pendulum swing from spending most of my life being shut down emotionally and feeling nothing, to finally facing and addressing many of my wounds and scars, which resulted in all kinds of intense and volatile emotions that I gushed out everywhere. I have always been a person who feels things deeply but those kinds of feelings have mostly been attached to those wounded mindsets within me. For example, during my severe codependency years it was my codependency that was driving those emotions. It has often been the case that dysfunctional mindsets have been driving the rollercoaster ride of the feelings I cycle through over the course of a day.

I wrote quite a bit about these kinds of things in Notes from (Over) the Edge and offered some practical tools for sorting through it. Each of us have all kinds of feelings and emotions that shift and change over the course of a day, and most of them are attached to and conditioned and governed by the beliefs, mindsets, stories, etc. in our head. So, that’s one aspect of who we are. We should not disown or condemn that part of us and there are ways of properly sorting through and relating to that aspect of our human personhood.

But when I speak of “deep feelings” in the context of inner anarchy, I am not referring to those kinds of human emotions. There actually is a source, consciousness, spirit, dimension (however you describe it) within us that is pure, untainted, free, powerful, and whole. That dimension is not accessed in or through the machinations and processes in our head. Instead, it becomes real to us in what I have referred to as “deep feelings.” It is different from the shifting and changing emotions we are continuously cycling through. The “deep feelings” I’m speaking of have a different substance, weight, and persona to them. They have real power and authority to them. It’s real… in a way that you feel it is the most real thing there is. You can’t explain it but you know it deeply.

If you have read Inner Anarchy and would like to join the Inner Anarchy LiveJournal Community, leave me a comment or send me an email and I will send you an invite. The purpose of the group is to dive into topics and discussions just like this.

Dear Jim, I am tired of the Jesus thing.

“Dear Jim, I see Jesus like an extraordinary man that accomplished the connection of the spirit within us, a spirit that already existed since the creation of humankind. Maybe he was the first (or second or third I don’t know) to access it and proved to us how this is possible, and it’s for this that he is special. But I am a bit tired of “the Jesus thing” because unfortunately it reminds me of my religious mindset.”

* * *

Thanks for your message. Here are a few thoughts that came to mind.

After deconstructing my Christian belief system, I was left with the question of who was Jesus and if/why/how he was significant. For me, Jesus was no longer significant in the ways I had learned through the Christian religion. I started drilling into the question of Jesus in my third book Being Jesus in Nashville. The answer I came up with raised quite a ruckus – I was deemed a heretic and my book contract was cancelled. I also delve into the question further in Notes from (Over) the Edge. The issue and question has come up quite a bit lately, and I wrote a couple blog posts related to it:

Is Jesus real? (And why do I insists upon talking about him?)

Why I believe in Jesus (Why I am not a Christian)

I really like the way you put it -> ” I see Jesus like an extraordinary man that accomplished the connection of the spirit within us, a spirit that already existed since the creation of humankind. Maybe he was the first (or second or third I don’t know) to access it and proved to us how this is possible, and it’s for this that he is special.”

The Jesus story of the Christian religion has to be cleaned up. As it stands now there are 2.5+ billion people around the world who are worshiping a false religious Jesus and preaching a gospel that has no power and leads nowhere. If we could get the Jesus story straightened out with that group of people, can you imagine the impact it would have? 2.5+ billion people lifting up the truth! In addition to the Christian religion, that false Jesus story also has many other people messed up, and if the truth comes out I believe it would make a huge difference in freeing and opening things up for many people. That was part of the intent of Inner Anarchy – to tear down that false Jesus story, and to lift up the truth Jesus bore witness to and demonstrated, which is to rebel against all those false beliefs, mindsets, narratives, stories and ideologies that rule within us, and to turn toward the spiritual authority within ourselves.

In terms of being tired of the Jesus thing, I think the key is not that we sit around and talk incessantly about Jesus. It’s embracing and living the truth he bore witness to and demonstrated, especially his metanoia teaching.

It’s not Obama’s, Mark Driscoll’s, or Justin Bieber’s fault

“Our world is not working; it is coming apart at the seams. It’s human nature to find someone to blame. Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans; Christians blame atheists, atheists blame Christians; Israelis blame Palestinians, Palestinians blame Israelis, etc. My inbox is filled with emails from people expressing their anger toward institutional church and its leaders. We are continuously looking for a scapegoat—it’s Obama’s fault, it’s Mark Driscoll’s fault, it’s Justin Bieber’s fault, it’s fill-in-the-blank’s fault.

But consider the possibility that the current futility of the world is actually no one’s fault. The world is simply the way it is as scientists describe it. There are no people to blame or scapegoat for the suffering and misery of our existence. There is no person or people who are the enemy. Then what is? Isn’t the enemy the beliefs that rule and drive us from within, and many of those beliefs have existed for thousands of years?

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!”

- Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy

About Inner Anarchy

Inner Anarchy FAQ 

Memo to Humankind: Jesus is not going to save the world as we’ve been told

I was loosely raised Catholic but I left the church as a teenager and was never Confirmed by the church. While a student in college, I was persuaded to become an Evangelical Christian and persisted down this path through seminary and several years as a pastor. Despite my upstanding orthodox theology and mantra of “personal relationship with God,” I eventually had to confront the reality that my Christianity made very little difference in my life beyond what people saw at church, and that my supposed “personal relationship with God” sounded much better in sermons than it actually added up to in real life.

So, I left professional ministry, walked away from Christianity, and began writing my story of shedding religion to find God. In fact the title of my first book, which I wrote in 2005 was: Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you). Each chapter tells a different story of an unsuspecting person who mysteriously popped up on my path to show me something about myself, others, God and life that didn’t fit into the nice Christian box I had previously constructed. This book covers that part of my journey when I laid all my Christian beliefs and mindsets out on the table and questioned them. Most of it I left on that table, but I kept moving forward in exploring what it might mean to know God outside the box and mentality of religion, even the Christian one. This led to my second book: Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity. Each chapter in this book tells the story of how my previous Christian beliefs and practices were being replaced by new ways of relating to myself, God, others and life, and the peace, joy and freedom I found in this.

Having left the Christian religion behind, I was still very much interested in Jesus. I began to suspect that the Jesus I learned through the Christian religion might not be the full picture or story. I discovered in time that my suspicion was right, and that even some of the most fundamental things I had learned about Jesus were not true. I was compelled to devote a year of my life to figuring out what if anything Jesus really had to do with me. This was my fourth book: Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life (whoever and wherever you are). This year and book had a profound impact on my life. Over the course of writing the book, I lost both my parents and miraculously survived two Near-Death Experiences. What radically altered my spiritual path was a shift in how I understood Jesus and his relevance to my life. It involved letting go of the Jesus of Christianity as someone to be worshiped and imitated, and to see myself as Jesus at the most fundamental level. The book was not without controversy. My Christian publisher refused to publish the book and abruptly cancelled my book contract under the charge of heresy.

This was just the beginning of my uncovering the spiritual significance of Jesus and his message, unchained from the premises of the Christian religion. My fourth book, Notes from (Over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering addresses several of the Christian religion’s misrepresentations of Jesus and his teachings. The book gives guidance to those who have been damaged by organized religion and a plan for recovery and freedom. There is also a set of spiritual tools offered for taking responsibility for one’s spiritual path, as well as cultivating inner serenity and well-being, and a new relationship with oneself, life and the divine.

Writing those four books covered a span of ten years. But one matter that lingered in my mind was the return-of-Jesus story that the Christian religion has been proclaiming for the past 2,000 years. Christendom has sufficiently convinced billions of Christians that Jesus is one future day going to come back in the sky to save the world, and how his true followers will receive eternity in heaven as their reward. Hmmm. Something about this story seemed a little fishy to me, and the more I pondered it the more I questioned it. I tugged at one of the threads of that story and the whole thing unraveled, and an entirely different story about the salvation of our world and humankind emerged in its place. Jesus is not the savior of the world in the way the Christian religion has told people, and that story is actually preventing the world from experiencing the salvation and freedom that Jesus promised. Jesus the person cannot save anyone, but the truth he bore witness to and demonstrated has the power to birth a whole new world, order and age that every human heart has imagined, dreamed and longed for. This powerful truth that Jesus demonstrated is simple and uncomplicated but is difficult for this very reason. It requires starting over. It involves dethroning all the religious and worldly beliefs, mindsets, narratives, stories and ideologies that are ruling us all from within, and turning to an entirely different source within us, which a child accesses naturally. This is why I wrote Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World - to lift up the truth that can save us all… a truth that applies to every person and can be embraced universally  without being religious or becoming a Christian.

The Jesus story that has the world stuck

Christmas is in two days. People will be filing into churches everywhere and celebrating a Jesus story that has humankind and our world stuck! On of the most-read Bible passages at Christmas is the prophecy in Micah 5:2-4. This is where we started to get things messed up with the Jesus story, which I talk about extensively in Inner Anarchy. Below is an excerpt from the book.

“Micah’s prophecy states:

Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are one of the smallest towns in Judah, but out of you I will bring a ruler for Israel, whose family line goes back to ancient times. So the Lord will abandon his people to their enemies until the one who is to give birth has her son. Then his fellow countrymen who are in exile will be reunited with their own people. When he comes he will rule his people with the strength that comes from the Lord and with the majesty of the Lord God himself. His people will live in safety because people all over the earth will acknowledge his greatness, and he will bring peace.

Christian clergy use this well-known prophecy to support the divine authenticity of the birth of Jesus. It is bandied around the world with great rejoicing at countless Christmas services.

But let’s think about this. Why the celebration? This prophecy has obviously not yet been fulfilled. One could hardly claim that people all over the earth live in safety and that peace reigns. If it had been fulfilled by the physical birth of Jesus in the actual town of Bethlehem—if indeed the messiah had come in that scenario—then our world would not be in the mess and misery that it is in right now. That is logical, isn’t it?

But if you take another look at this prophesy and the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, we find some clues that point to the true messiah.

Just what does “Bethlehem Ephrathah” mean in the Micah passage? The Hebrew translates it as “an ever-increasing fruitful family, or house, that brings forth food, especially bread that prevails and overcomes.”

Does that sound like a little town near Jerusalem to you?

It sounds to me more like a group of people—a family, an atmosphere—that brings forth a sustenance in the world that is powerful and triumphant. Who would this family be? Us! And what is this bread that we bring into the world? It is the “living bread,” which is the life-giving Spirit within us. In other words, there is a “heavenly” Bethlehem—a spiritual dimension inside us—and from this inner Bethlehem, a powerful and triumphant reality is to be birthed out of us into the world.”

- Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy