Jim Palmer's Blog, page 77

There’s always been a secret life of Jim.

There’s always been a secret life of Jim.

Whether it was the kid suffering in silence as he watched his mother self-destruct by alcohol; or the codependent adult who abandoned himself to make others happy; or the Christian leader who quietly questioned Christian orthodoxy; or the appropriate and sensible guy, secretly waiting to extend his tribal tat from his shoulder all the way down his torso; or the life coach who would probably scare his clients if he revealed the tornado of volatile feelings that happen inside him each day… there has always been a side to me I’ve hid from people.

Maybe this secret life of Jim meant something was wrong with me; maybe it meant I was an orphan in the world; maybe it meant I would never belong; maybe it meant no one would ever love me – this is what I feared.

For many years as a Christian I operated on the premise of needing to be more like Jesus. This seemed to be the ticket for gaining the acceptance of God, whoever exactly that was. I certainly knew I’d never attain acceptance from anyone, especially God, by being me. I was as shocked as anyone to discover during my year of being Jesus that Jesus never wanted me to be him but wanted me to be me. Me???”

I am… An Inclusivist

I am…

An Inclusivist

I believe all of life is sacred, every human being is beautiful, and each moment matters.

An Atheist

I don’t believe in a “God” whose love and acceptance is conditional, or who advocates fear, shame, oppression, injustice, ignorance, repression or hatred.

An Agnostic

There is twice as much that I don’t know, than I do know. The mystery of it all cannot be cloaked in certainty.

A Student of Jesus

I want to be courageously human, a powerful expression of love, acceptance, peace, beauty, goodness, freedom and compassion in this world, and live without separation from myself, God, others and life… as I see Jesus did.

A Possibility-iest

I believe in the possibility of humankind awakening to our profound interconnectedness, and the possibilities of the power of love to transform our world.

I didn’t care anymore.

And then one day, like Forrest Gump abruptly being done with running, I was suddenly done deconstructing my Christianity. DONE! I just fell dead to it. If I had to have one more theological discussion I was going to either commit a violent crime, start smoking, or become a Six Feet Under fan.

I didn’t care anymore. I knew I was supposed to care…I still didn’t. These were the really big, important litmus-test God questions that you should have the right answers for. I still didn’t care!

Something shifted inside of me. The best way I know to explain it is to say that I didn’t need to have answers anymore. It wasn’t necessary for me to arrive at some defined set of concrete and conclusive beliefs about God in order to keep living life or even be at peace or content inside. The big theological questions became increasingly irrelevant and felt more like a distraction. I was more interested in ground truth―the stuff you need to know on location in your life in order to navigate the twists and turns of daily human existence.

The obstacle is starting with what you think you already know.

The obstacle is starting with what you think you already know. Consider that there is a world that lies beyond this… beyond all that you think you already know. Realize that what you don’t know… what you have yet to discover… eclipses everything you think you do know.

This is true of all things and could easily be applied to how we know God, even Jesus. Consider that the significance of Jesus… his life, his teachings, his death… is something we understand only in small part. We attach ourselves to what we think we already know, not realizing that what we know may not be more than a fraction of 1% of what there is. God… Jesus… were never meant to be something we “figured out”… or even “understood” in terms of being lassoed by our mind. Instead, walk through this day aware that God is in all things, through all things, as all things… and never appears the same way twice.

Set aside all the things you think you know today, and be open to the way life is showing up for you in the next moment. What is there in the next moment for you to see, feel, experience, let go, receive, offer, know, be, or do? Life is not what happens to you, it’s something you create by dancing with how it shows up in each moment. The obstacle is that we think we already know how the dance goes

I was in search of an identity.

I was in search of an identity. Having barely escaped a horrendous childhood and youth, I had no idea who Jamie Palmer was. I needed someone to tell me. Religion adopted me, gave me a new name – ‘Jim,’ and more importantly, gave me something solid to stand on for some sense of self. Religion made me a star. I guess that’s what I wanted or thought I did. Religion became my mother and my father, and I put my trust in them. My trust was so complete that I believed what they told me about myself – that I was bad, a filthy rag, repulsive to God, and lucky to be going to heaven when I die because of Jesus’ blood. I trusted them so much that I accepted the mission of telling others this same thing. Instead of giving me an identity, religion stole it and throw away the key. It has been a long and arduous process of learning to be free. There are days when religion is still like a ball and chain. I guess I could be bitter but despite what religion took from me, it gave me Jesus. Admittedly, the Jesus that religion taught me was a false one. But somehow I always knew deep inside that there was more to Jesus than what religion had told me. I was right.

There is no fear in love.

 

So much of religion seems to be about fear:

fear of going to hell;

fear of having bad theology;

fear of not satisfying your end of the bargain so God will favor you and bless you;

fear of others finding out how much you’re not really like the person you project and pretend to be;

fear of trusting your own inner guidance and fear of thinking for yourself;

fear of not upholding the expectations of your religious sub-culture;

fear of sexuality;

fear of people who are different;

fear of the world…

I spent over a year soaking in one verse of scripture, “God is love” and every one of those fears disintegrated. There is no fear in love, or so I learned.

My freedom filter

From the beginning, people have projected their own personal and cultural bias on the Bible, and claimed it to be the one-and-only correct and infallible interpretation. They often pride themselves in taking the Bible “literally.”

In the 1860s, Southern preachers defending slavery also took the Bible literally. They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, “slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling” (Ephesians 6:5), or “tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect” (Titus 2:9). Christians who wanted to preserve slavery had the words of the Bible to back them up.

One of the big questions I came to on the journey was whose interpretation of scripture is right and who’s to say? This question never really occurred to me during my 25-year odyssey through evangelicalism. Back then, there was no other interpretation. It was understood that there was only one interpretation―the right one, which was ours. Outside of my particular Christian sub-culture, I discovered many different views and interpretations of the Bible, stretching all the way back to the earliest days of Christianity.

In Wide Open Spaces I wrote about discovering for myself a reliable way to discern and determine truth. Jesus taught that the distinguishing characteristic of truth is that it brings freedom. I found this thing deep inside my gut that would tell me so. You’ve heard the phrase of how something can have “a ring of truth to it.” What part of you detects or experiences that “ring?”

I dubbed it as my “freedom filter.” Here’s how it worked for me. Whenever I was presented with an opinion or view of interpretation about God, my “freedom filter” would test it by asking, “Will this lead to freedom?” If the answer was “yes,” I went with it. If the answer was “no,” I didn’t.”

By healing ourselves, we heal the world.

Every day there are countless people who feel they are not making a difference in the world. They wake up with this burden an go looking for something to do or achieve to feel significant. People will go to great lengths to alleviate this burden.

But consider this. Humankind is interconnected and interrelated in the same way as the cells of our human body. The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is the building block of life. Humans contain about 100 trillion cells, but the condition of one individual cell has an effect on the wellness of the whole body.

So it is with the body of humanity. Each of us are individual cells – 7 billion of them. The healing of the body of humanity can only occur in the measure of its single cells healing themselves. Each time a human being changes his or her mind from false perception to true perception, the effect on humanity is immeasurable. The effect of one individual releasing fear, the cause of all spiritual disease in the body of humanity, is beyond measure. The impact of one person being liberated from the illusion of separation is incalculable.

By healing ourselves, we heal the world.

If only we knew what absolutely extraordinary healing power we have as single individuals, we would not hesitate one second in wanting to transform our ways from fear to love, and the healing of one’s own separation.

We feel we are not making a difference in the world and then we run out the door, expending tremendous energy doing nothing more than addressing symptoms, and applying band-aids. We are also very good at pointing the finger and blaming others for the problems and conditions of our world.

Look no further than yourself. Nothing will change in our world until we address the root problem. More specifically and importantly, nothing will change until you address the root problem within yourself.

Do you want to change the world? Change yourself. Do your personal work. Address the root cause of suffering within yourself – there is no greater difference once can make than this. Humanity is aching, needing your cooperation. When you awaken, the energy and reality of your awakening reverberates through all humankind like the concentric circles of a peddle tossed in a pond.

We are often ignorant of the truth.

We are often ignorant of the truth or the way things really are. Not because we are stupid, incapable or too dumb to know, but because the truth is wider and deeper than what our social conditioning will allow us to consider or explore. For example, our ego is highly invested in keeping our perspective small and tight because that’s where the ego draws it’s identity. The ego needs to define itself with something small enough to manage and control – your job, your achievements, your body, your personality, your relationships, etc. You may even become invested in your problems because they can even supply a way for the ego to define itself. It’s no secret that the reason many people have to be “right” about their view of God or interpretation of the Bible is because the ego is relying on “being right about God” as an identity. The ego will always be threatened by and fight a broader perspective or understanding because it feels too much like a loss of self – at least that’s what your ego wants you to believe.

The most common way to shrink our perspective or understanding is to be in a state of fear. Have you ever wondered why religious people can sometimes be the most narrow-minded people? Fear. Religion can have a way of putting “the fear of God” in people that actually assures that they will never know the truth or they way things really are. Why? Because what’s real and true lies beyond what fear will allow someone to see, understand or know. Fear shrinks perspective and understanding.

On the other hand, fearlessness expands our perspective and understanding. Fearlessness allows us to see and know the truth and the way things really are. This is why unconditional love is always the foundation of moving past our social conditioning to know the truth. One of the Bible verses that transformed my reality with God was the verse, “God is love.” Once knowing I was secure in God’s love I had the fearlessness to explore beyond what my social/ego/religious conditioning would allow before

Jesus didn’t fit.

Jesus didn’t fit. He had no home in any sect. He didn’t fit in with the Essenes, Pharisees, Zealots, Priests or Rabbis. He did not subscribe to any school of thought, whether it was the school of the great Rabbi Hillel, Philo the philosopher or the school of the Cynics which all had a strong following in his day.

Jesus identified with the whole of humankind irrespective of race, religion or gender. His vision was too transcendent for any sect.

Jesus was not a member of any exclusive group. He recognized that no group could have a monopoly of the supernatural human spirit anymore than they could restrict the working of God’s spirit to their little group.

Jesus’ friends supposed that only one group of people could work in Jesus’ name, whereas Jesus taught that everyone who responds to God’s Spirit and acts in a human way, is a Jesus in his or her own right.

Jesus was not part of any kind of Establishment – not an old one or a new one. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus did not replace Judaism with Christianity. At a later point, others built an Establishment called Christianity, but the itinerant Jesus had nothing to do with that. The very nature of an Establishment is contrary to his itinerant spirit.

Often to their dismay, Jesus’ close friends found that he would not stay in one place long enough for them to consolidate interests and central beliefs or take steps to organize a movement. Jesus always moved on. In fact, one time his three closest friends had a revelation on a mountainside, and wanted to build some kind of structure or monument to capture and display the glory of Jesus. But Jesus, the They wanted to build some booths or some kind of monument to capture the glory of the moment. But Jesus, the incurable itinerant, would have none of it.

Jesus freely taught those who’s heart was open. Some of them followed Jesus and took up his message and way of life for themselves. But it’s doubtful Jesus ever took any steps to organize the church by ordaining twelve apostles, which is more closely aligned with the Old Testament tradition of the twelve tribes and further implies that the organization of the Christian church was the new Israel, began by Jesus. The whole notion of Jesus beginning a new hierarchy ruled by the chair of Saint Peter is a grave distortion of the whole character, life and teaching of Jesus.