Jim Palmer's Blog, page 25

You don’t have to die to get to Heaven

Jesus said, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” You’re missing it if you think that Jesus is saying something about how he is divine and you are just human. That’s not it. Time and time again, Jesus points out that there are two different dimensions to operate in. One dimension keeps us tied down to the mindset, understanding and reasoning of the world. Religion falls into this category. It’s the heady/mental religious/worldly dimension. I wrote a lot about this dimension in Notes from (Over) the Edge. It’s a dimension characterized by dualism, and we have created a false God to rule over it. What Jesus was about has nothing to do with any of that mess. There is also a “heavenly” dimension. We have access to that dimension in and through the life-giving Spirit within us. You do not access this dimension in your head or through religious thinking. Instead, you access it very naturally through your deepest feelings. In involves turning toward what is real inside you. It rises up from a place deeper than your everyday thoughts and emotions. The “Kingdom of God” that Jesus spoke of is inside us, and we birth it out of ourselves and into the world when we speak directly from that “heavenly” dimension that is within us.

(Graffiti by Banksy) 

2000 years of confusion (about Jesus)

There were times when the people of Jesus’ day stood right in front of him, and heard his words audibly, but could not make sense of him or his message. Why? Because they were trying to process it through all their heady religious and worldly understandings. Many of these people were learned scholars, and they couldn’t make heads or tails of Jesus. You cannot access the truth Jesus taught with the religious mindset. All you’ll do is twist Jesus’ message into something religious. We’re gotten quite good at this – we’ve been doing it for a couple thousand years now! After all this time, most of the world is not any closer to understanding Jesus. What Jesus taught was not a belief system or a modification of their old thinking. The message of Jesus was: drop all that and start all over again. Therein lies the challenge. Most people wont do that. They have too much riding on all the stuff they think they know – identify, status, security, comfort, pride, etc… Jesus once said, “Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me!” We know how to listen with our mind… the mind that has been conditioned by religion and all the false narratives of our world. But to really hear Jesus, you have to listen with your heart. In other words, you have to turn inward and listen to the deep feelings that bubble up from within you. From where do these deep feelings come? The source is the life-giving Spirit within you. Stop all that religious stuff in your head! Stop being tossed to and fro by all the false narratives of our world! Get out of your head, and open yourself to that familiar voice your heart knows deep within you. Quit trying to be smart. Find that childlike part of you that naturally connects with what is real and true. 

That other way of knowing

Consider the possibility that there are two dimensions or layers from which we approach God and life. The first dimension is in our head, and is the worldly/religious mental understandings and mindset. This dimension is conditioned by the external cultural and religious narratives that we take on board and follow. The second dimension is deeper than the ordinary activity of the mind and the coming and going of human emotions. This layer is the Spirit-Self, which bubbles up from our deepest feelings, and is most naturally accessed by turning inward to what we intuitively feel deep inside is real.

This is a different way of knowing something. This sort of “knowing” goes like this:

I know it
I don’t know why I know it
I know it as more certain than anything I am certain of
It is inexpressible, but I will put it in my own words

(Photo by Darla Winn)

7 thoughts on giving up religion to follow Jesus

So many people are waiting on the future and the fulfillment of “the return of Christ,” not realizing that this “return” – this breakthrough of the life-giving Spirit into our world – is a reality that is birthed out of us. It is the “return of Christ” in and through YOU! This is not a futuristic religious event associated with institutional Christianity. It is a humankind event unfolding among us now in which people are turning toward that Spirit inside themselves, and connecting with what they most deeply feel is real and true. They are releasing that power into the world by speaking it in their own words and expressing it in their daily lives. Every time this happens is a “return of Christ” – a surge of restoration, transformation, vitalization, and freedom into our world.

The disciples were told to stop staring into the clouds, waiting for the return of Christ. Jesus was not going to be coming back down from the sky. Instead, they were told that Jesus would return in the same way that he departed. The Scriptures speak of Jesus’ departure from the world as a “lifting up.” People think of death as being lowered down into the ground as an act of finality. But Jesus spoke of his death as a new beginning – a “lifting up” – specifically, a lifting up of the Spirit in each of us. The “return of Christ” is the Spirit “lifted up” in and out of each of us.

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The scriptures speak of a great liberating power that will arise out of Bethlehem. The word “Bethlehem” means “house of bread.” More specifically, “an ever increasing house or family that brings forth food, especially bread, that prevails and overcomes.” What if the real “Bethlehem” is in us and this is where the real liberator is birthed from? In other words, the liberation we long for is not going to fall down from the sky, but is going to birthed from within us. We are the house that brings forth the bread.

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Ever before any doctrine is taught, a child already knows the life-giving Spirit inside them. The connection is very natural and real to the child. There is no need for religious instruction, structure or language to aid the child’s experience.

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There is an inner awareness that happens. It’s a “feeling” thing. It has more substance than a mental connection. I know you have experienced this, and perhaps you did and even brushed it off or didn’t give it much credence, and you went back into your head. This is how the Spirit opens up inside us. It might be triggered by something or suddenly sneak up on us for no apparent reason. This inner awareness, these deep feelings, these intimations that rise up within you – pay attention to them, listen to them, follow them, speak from them in your own words. Think of this as your spiritual path today.

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Once I decided to take Jesus’ message seriously, I realized that “God” is not some separate entity located somewhere in the sky. I understood that God’s life is not out there somewhere but is in me and you, and constitutes the very nature, essence and being of who we are. Religion too often turns our eyes outward to find God, which is looking in the wrong direction.

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We have been swept away by the narrative that the source for what we want is outside ourselves. Religion puts “God” as the source out there somewhere in the sky. Others are looking to the “universe” as the source for what they want. We are given a system or formula to coax God or the universe to fulfill our desires. All the while we are missing that the true source of what we desire is inside ourselves.

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Jesus once threw out the challenge to go sell all your possessions in order to follow him. Why possessions? It’s no mystery that our attachments can block the way for experiencing the life of the Spirit within us. It’s not uncommon for people to externalize their identity from “worldly riches” in which our sense of self and value is derived from our financial status, possessions, and upholding the cultural narratives about what it means to be “successful.” Once we buy into that system, there is very little chance that we will turn toward the ways of the Spirit within us. It’s also the case that people manufacture an identity based on what they believe to be their superior religious understandings or belief system. That’s where their status comes from. So think of Jesus saying it this way, “If you want to follow me and the way of the Spirit that I am teaching, go give up all your religious beliefs and understandings that you are holding onto.” Then imagine the rest of the passage with Jesus saying, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for a person holding onto their religious understandings and mindset to enter God’s Kingdom? Let me tell you, it’s easier to gallop a camel through a needle’s eye than for that person to enter God’s kingdom.”

We need a wrecking ball (the other kind)

Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when his disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to him. And he said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.”

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What was Jesus talking about? A wrecking ball demolishing buildings? No. Jesus was referring to all the invisible beliefs of this world and religion that are blocking people from entering the life-giving dimension and freedom of the Spirit within us. These invisible beliefs form a powerful psychic barrier that prevent our participation in the “kingdom” Jesus spoke of. This barrier needs torn down stone by stone.

Dismantling the temple of the religious mindset

Some of the followers were talking about the temple. They said, “This is a beautiful temple, built with the best stones. Look at the many good gifts that have been offered to God!” But Jesus said, “The time will come when all that you see here will be destroyed. Every stone of these buildings will be thrown down to the ground. Not one stone will be left on another!”

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Think of the “temple” as the religious mindset.

Every day the religious mindset is coursing through this world in one form or another. We have worked hard to make the religious mindset attractive, and we built it using the best we had – the best buildings, the best programs, and the best budgets. Within this religious mindset and system, we have followed the rules, regulations and doctrines for relating to God. And the wheels on the bus go round and round.

But Jesus speaks of a time when the religious mindset is dismantled and discarded stone by stone. In its place, we turn to the the life-giving Spirit rising up from within us, and a new reality is born. It is what Jesus taught… what he lived for… what he died for. That vision of Jesus is alive in each of us if we will turn our heart toward it.

How often do we really turn inward in life?

How often do we really turn inward in life?

Our identity is often wrapped up in what we want others out there to think about us or is about obtaining some sort of status in the world based on something we do or achieve.

Our spiritual lives are developed guided along by the books and teachings of the spiritual leaders and gurus out there that we become attached to.

Our way of life is governed by societal norms and expectations, and the rules and regulations delegated down from various societal institutions.

Our standards and values for success, beauty and happiness, and what we deem significant and worthwhile are driven by the agendas of mass-media and Madison Avenue.

We become attached and addicted to the people, places and things that make us feel good, never recognizing that the source of those good feelings and true well-being is within us.

Religious reasoning can only get you so far

I discovered that I had to entirely set aside the religious mindset I had for so many years lived. What I discovered is that each time the Spirit opened a new recognition in me, that I tried to understand it in my head by relating it to my past religions reasoning. Which meant I was getting nowhere. You can’t understand the truth and reality the Spirit emanates from inside you by trying to understand it with religious reasoning. Some people may replace an old belief system with a more progressive new and improved one, but you’re still barking up the wrong tree by trying to approach it this way. All your mind is ever going to do is create a poor parallel intellectual (and religious) concept of what you experienced inside through the Spirit, which shifts you away from the “heavenly” source inside you, and keeps you locked up in your head. This will kill off the revelation that opened up inside you and prevent you from manifesting it.

Go back to square one!

At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?” For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will embrace the fullness of God’s kingdom.”

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It is no easy task to return to the simple and elemental, because we have sufficiently made things difficult and complicated. Start by connecting with what is real inside you. Pay attention to what rises up in you through your deepest feelings. It is not necessary to add a bunch of religious words and concepts to it. Express it in your own words. When the Spirit opens up inside us and we touch reality, it can almost seem a little silly when we put it in the most natural words in which we experience it. Say it anyway in YOUR words! Don’t edit it with the nice-sounding theological jargon. Say it like a child would – simple and elemental.

(Photo by Darla Winn) 

Cutting the ties between God and religion

A “paradigm” is a pattern of thinking or a fixed mindset, system, model or worldview. The term, “paradigm shift” has completely entered mass consciousness. Everyone has heard the phrase. A paradigm shift occurs when there is a radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new way of thinking. The paradigm shift represents a transformation – or a metamorphosis – in thinking, which also includes a physical change.

Some examples of paradigm shifts would be:
the shift from hunter-gatherers to agriculture;
the shift from barter to money;
the Ptolemaic system (the earth is at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe);
Newtonian physics to Relativity to Quantum Physics;
technological revolution (internet, smart phones);
changing from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy;
globalization

What if there was a paradigm shift that cut the ties between God and religion? What if God and spirituality were embraced by people as a natural, thriving, vibrant, expanding inner reality and dimension that we share and live together? What if we carried forward the wisdom that has been offered by those who have gone before us without wrapping a different religion around each one?

(Graffiti by Banksy)