Al Owski’s Reviews > The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe > Status Update

“The great irony is that we have often done this in the name of praying to God, as though God would protect us from the very process that refines us! God protects us into and through death, just as the Father did with Jesus. When this is not made clear, Christianity ends up protecting and idealizing the status quo—or, even more, the supposedly wonderful past—at least insofar as it preserves our privilege.”

“The miracle of healing came from the inside; all I had to do was wait and trust. In religion, though, many prefer magical, external, one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of growth and healing through loss and renewal. This universal pattern is the way that life perpetuates itself in ever-new forms—ironically, through various kinds of death.”

“Jesus invariably emphasized inner motivation and intention in his moral teaching. He made religion about interior change and "purity of heart" (Matthew 5:8), rather than anything people can see, or anything that will produce any social payoff or punishment. This refines religion at the very point where it's most likely to become corrupt and manipulative.”

“We must learn how to recognize the positive flow and to distinguish it from the negative resistance within ourselves. It takes years, I think. If a voice comes from accusation and leads to accusation, it is quite simply the voice of the "Accuser," which is the literal meaning of the biblical word "Satan." Shaming, accusing, or blaming is simply not how God talks. It is how we talk.”

“Most Christians have been taught to hate or confess our sin before we've even recognized its true shape. But if you nurture hatred toward yourself, it won't be long before it shows itself as hatred toward others.”

“"We must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us." I personally was so trained not to trust those voices that I think I often did not hear the voice of God speaking to me, or what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature." ”

“If something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God.”

“If you can trust and listen to this inner divine image, this whole-making instinct, or what I called in an earlier book your "True Self, you will be moving forward with your best, your largest, your kindest, your most inclusive self. (I should also add "your most compassionately dissatisfied self," because the soul's journey invites us to infinite depth that we can never fully plumb!)”

“This is why saints like Augustine and Teresa of Ávila and thinkers like Carl Jung seem to fully equate the discovery of their own souls with the very discovery of God. It takes much of our life, much lived experience, to trust and allow such a process.”

“Without the mediation of Christ, we will be tempted to overplay the distance and the distinction between God and humanity. But because of the Incarnation, the supernatural is forever embedded in the natural, making the very distinction false.”