Why Sadness Can Feel So Beautiful (Simple Spiritual Technology is All Around Us)

 This edited excerpt is from "How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying); Part One, Perspective, Chap. 6, Compassion

If you feel too caught up in the challenges of your life (as we always can) to unlock more open-hearted compassion, there is a guaranteed way that you can find the key to unlock it; and although it doesn’t sound too good, it’s such a deep part of our shared existence that (despite being rather painful) it can often seem almost comforting. The key to finding more compassion in our lives – a key that none of us can avoid finding – is this: Sadness.

Sadness visits us all like a long-lost relative whose company we don’t always look forward to but then become grateful for in a mysteriously profound way. There’s nothing good about it to the outside eye, but inwardly it does make you wonder: Why is this sad feeling so familiar and strangely appealing?

It’s because sadness opens our hearts (whether we wanted them open or not), and in our moments of soul searching it reliably directs us toward a “secret” passage into Heaven – a small side door that insiders already know exists. Sadness is a magical ‘sixth-sensory’ key into the state of compassionate consciousness (an application of Spiritual Technology), because it causes us to resonate with structures of the Universe at a deeper level than we normally encounter here on Earth. All of us can realize that kind of deep, shared reality through sadness, and perhaps for some people only through sadness. No one will completely escape it’s insistent embrace.

Imagine these scenes: The loss of a beloved one to illness or death; the bulldozing of a favorite piece of nature; the sight of an abandoned pet; the feeling that a favorite piece of music gave you way back when, and the feeling it stills gives you when you reminisce; the look in eyes of a homeless person when your eyes meet – the entire story of a different, lost life you might have lived yourself…

Do you feel the sadness in any of those scenes? If you do, then right now – in this eternal moment – you are connected to our shared compassionate consciousness. “You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion,” I’ve heard it said (by a Tibetan Buddhist), and almost nothing else needs to be said about this mysterious gateway into the realm of the heart. Sadness arises within all of us in those places that reveal a great shared meaning…and we all intuitively know that we must return it’s embrace.

“Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.”

                                    Khalil Gibran

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

How Spirituality, Religion & Psychedelics Are (and Aren’t) the Same – “Perennial” Truths We Can All Use

     Have you ever heard of Aldous Huxley? He’s the 20th Century author and philosopher best known for his prescient 1932 book, Brave New World, where he warned us about how future technology (and pharmaceuticals) could destroy the shape of our society and our lives. He’s also known for his ground-breaking account of the effects of psychedelic substances, 1954’s The Doors of Perception, which not only inspired the naming of the iconic L.A. rock band, but also open the doors to Flower Power, Sgt. Pepper, and “tune in, turn on, drop out,” the Sixties call to discovering a new, naturally ethical way to live.

Huxley was definitely tuned into something big earlier on his path in 1945 when his book The Perennial Philosophy was first published by Harper & Brothers. Intermingled with his observations about the nature of human being and our spiritual relationship to Life and the Universe, are excerpts and quotations from great spiritual texts and teachers, all of which define a set of principles that are consistent to every great world religion, and describe a greater “non-ordinary” reality that supports and enfolds all of humankind’s material knowledge and experience.

Pretty deep stuff, right? But when we break it down, as Huxley did, it provides us with four easy, direct concepts that answer those eternal mysteries: What’s going on here? And, What is the purpose of Life? Naturally, knowing those answers can give us much more practical ways to approach our personal day-to-day, here and now. Here they are, as simply as I can put them:

• The entire material world, witnessed through our human perception and the nature of our Consciousness, arises from a “Divine Field-of-Being” – a unified, infinite ground of potential and manifestation – in which all realities exist. Different religions may call this “the Kingdom,” “the Tao,” “emptiness,” “Brahman;” or scientists might name it “the Quantum Field.”
• Human beings cannot really know “The Divine” by presumption or by scientific theorizing, but only through a direct form of inner experience. Observation (particularly of Nature) may lead to some realization of it, but generally it requires the deconstruction of the material idea of our “self” – a psychic shift that often comes from a life-changing incident…because…
• Human beings comprise a duality, consisting of our outward, ever-changing, ever-demanding material self and ego-mind; and our authentic inner self, or “divine spark, or well-spring” that is always connected by its true, eternal nature to that Divine Consciousness, and to all of Life.
• Ultimately, we’re all here to identify with that eternal self – to recognize the transcendent part of ourselves that is alive, and connected to all of Life, in that greater spiritual reality. When we connect with the Divine, underlying Field-of-Being, everything that comes and goes – good or bad – is fine as it is, because we identify with that safe, grounding source instead. Creating that connection is the essential purpose of our human life on Earth – to realize that we are all One. 

Organized religions end up having a hard time bringing these concepts to bear because their institutional attachments and dogma tend to obstruct or define the pure personal experience (the idea that anyone can experience “Christhood,” or become a Buddha themselves). Many saints of organized religion were actually outsiders of a sort.

Psychedelics, or what indigenous people may revere as “sacred plant teachers” are effective, but do require ingesting some mind-altering substance to force entry into a non-ordinary state-of-being.

What is left as the authentic ground of of these fundamental, eternal realizations is what we call Spirituality – that exclusive, available, ’anecdotal’  form of personal inner experience which contains both religion and the teachings of sacred plants. It’s very personal – all it requires is your undivided presence. It experientially defines, and is intellectually defined by Huxley’s remarkable Perennial Philosophy. I think of it as “Explicit Spirituality,” and it’s a great way to inform and direct your life.

It is interesting (though not necessary) that Huxley’s Perennial explorations led him to open those psychedelic “doors” later on, because they do bring about some overlapping realizations (according to most authentic experiencers of mescaline, psilocybin, ayahuasca, etc.) – realizations that most religions struggle to impart:

• The unity and connectedness of shared, fundamental Consciousness.
• An unshakeable understanding of the sacred nature of all of Life.
• The awareness of a real, functioning greater reality; most often experienced as Love.
• A realization of the eternal, timeless nature of the moment – a sense of presence.
• A fundamental positivity and joyfulness (made possible by living principles, like Kindness, Honesty, Humility, Forgiveness, and Service).

If we literally take this trail-blazers simple schematic to heart, we can spiritually find ourselves where we’ve always belonged, heading in the direction we were always meant to go.

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear…of which our world is a mirror."

Bede Griffiths

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

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What Is Childhood to a Reincarnating Soul?

         What is childhood? Sounds like kind of a dumb question, doesn’t it? After all, it’s pretty obvious what childhood is – it’s the beginning of your life, and what happens before you grow up. That’s simple enough, isn’t it? But we all know childhood isn’t that simple, and that so much happens in our childhood to pre-condition the course we take that maybe it’s really the most critical part of life.

But what if we put childhood in a different context, in a larger context – in the context of our lives reincarnating, life upon life upon life? Then childhood isn’t just a stage we pass through in this life (since this entire human life is a stage we are passing through), but part of a continuum of human life-stages along with puberty, young adulthood, midlife, and old age (and even death and re-birth) – but notice none of those other stages seems to carry as much weight as “what happened to me when I was a kid”. 

In this larger “reincarnative” sense, the childhood we experience in our present life is something we’ve prepared for ourselves – something we’ve preconditioned, a foundational stage arising in the middle of our eternal soul adventure, over and over; similar to a re-booting, so to speak.

Most of us who can relate to this ‘lives of our souls’ intuitively understand that we carry the causes and effects of our life actions – our karma – along with us in every moment of whatever life we’re living; and that our karma is an indicator (and result) of the choices we’ve made, or paths we may take. So perhaps we can think of childhood as a 're-booted' starting point; a pre-conditioned ‘empty’ space, where our potential will begin to realize and manifest. So what kind of "re-start" is it?

Childhood is a time of innocence, of playfulness, of discovery, of awakening. It’s a time when, ideally, we are intuitively carefree, and unconsciously surrendered to the care of our providers. This is so for one simple reason: These are the forms and characteristics of our authentic selves. These are the characteristics of our souls:

 

Our soul is innocent – part and parcel of a pure, loving, creative force. Our soul is playful – it’s not weighed down by the gravity of self-importance. Our soul is in a constant state of willingness, and curiosity. Our soul is always open to awareness and expansion. Our soul is secure in its connection to, and complete dependence upon a loving, creative source – a divine matrix of loving intelligence.

So karma delivers our soul into our place – into our family, into our physical being; but the forms our life lessons will take have yet to be determined. This is the crucial period of forming our interface with the world – our ego interface. This is the time when our soul’s true nature is either suppressed or energized, dependent upon how the potential of Love’s energy is demonstrated to, and realized by our child. The actual conditions of life may be bad around us, but Love in the right places can lead us to a transcendent path. 

When we look back at the hardest parts of our own beginnings, it’s clear that it was the absence of Love that created them. This results in children feeling abandoned by those they naturally want to trust in most –  a serious, in a way imaginary condition many of us may carry for the rest of our lives that underlies so many of our personal struggles. Our soul always knows better: We are never abandoned. That is only the great illusion of human life, that we so easily feel separate and unloved. 

So here’s what childhood can mean to our karmic practice in this life (or How to Get a Great Childhood – next time): 

• Intuitively, we all know how precious childhood and children are, and how important it is for children to be shown as much Love as possible, so we need to honor that responsibility absolutely – without fail.

• It is simply the lack of Love that has created the difficulties we carry with us through life from our childhoods, so we can only overcome these difficulties in this life by becoming channels – givers and receivers – of Love. (You’ll notice 'karmically awakened' children do this from the very get-go!)

• Realize that when life seems hard it’s because you’ve lost touch with your soul’s true nature – with your authentic self. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Do your best to open your heart, and return to a state of willingness. Try to be aware of the wonder and promise alive in every moment. Surrender to the natural design of your life, by releasing your willful urge to control things. Know that you are cared for.

• And then...just be more playful! Have fun, be creative, and enjoy all the lovely little moments of life!

Here’s something one of our greatest “reincarnated” spiritual engineers said about it all, a long time ago… 

Yeshua himself called them and he said to them, “Let the children come to me and do not refuse them, because the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these.”

  Luke, 18:16

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

Simple, Solid Bridges to a Working Spiritual Life (Learned the Hard Way)

 

      
            I'm known for having had the [mis]fortune of surviving multiple "near-death experiences," and as a result I (unintentionally) find myself absolutely certain that there's a spiritual reality that underlies, informs, and precipitates all of this success-seeking, bill-paying, precaution-taking material existence. It's a function of what the Hindus call Maya, the illusion of Life. While being hit on the head three times very hard may exclude me from what's normally considered as "sanity," I think it was what I personally really needed. I needed experiences that painfully proved the existence of a reality that's magically extra-dimensional in every sense – physically, spiritually, and conceptually. Realizations that I suppose are more commonly known as faith.

            Thankfully a lot of us acquire this understanding in easier ways, from our parents, or from religion, or just in the course of coping with the slings and arrows that life throws our way. Apparently being challenged by hardship does help to make us realize that there's a reliable order alive in the universe we can turn to, especially when things get tough. Naturally, I certainly can't recommend near-death as a means to bridging that elusive gap between the harsh realities of "material" life and a more grace-filled "spiritual" life, but I can offer you a few very practical bridges into that living magic that makes everything so much more enjoyable – grounded in this fundamental concept:

            We are spiritual beings learning through physical experience; we are designed to overcome the mental and physical barriers presented by human sensory experiences and realize our spiritual nature. There are bridges – invisible spiritual mechanisms (choices) – built into this physical experience that afford us passages to our spiritual evolution.

 
Here are a few solid bridges that help us cross that dimensional divide:

Unconditional Kindness is the most available (and enjoyable) mechanism that engages us with our spiritual life by giving us an immediate heartfelt identification with others – the [proactive] warmth and support that we respond to ourselves, when it's unconditionally shown to us. Being unconditionally kind to others is being kind to ourselves, because we find we can easily forgive others for just being human, and realize that applies to us too. We give everyone a break, because life is tough for everyone. As part of that, Unconditional Kindness obliges there be no exploitation, manipulation, or participation in doing harm of any kind in our actions, so we end up being forthright, friendly vegetarians who work at something that contributes to Life in a meaningful, productive way. (We even get to forgive those who can't understand our approach to Life)
            Hindus call this Karma Yoga, and it instantly connects us to an unseen dimension of profound compassion and generosity that we may have never known was alive everywhere in the world. We make, and find others who are making, good karma.

Honesty in all our relationships and dealings, and in what you might think of as a variation of confession—owning up to our mistakes, not always needing to be right—is really a visible invisible bridge. We all know how it simplifies our life, since being honest gives us fewer of life's complications to fear, because you're simply never adding to them. Your motives remain those of a seeker of fairness, truth, and wisdom. You become seen and known as a person who is resolutely trustworthy, whose intentions are of the highest order...that sounds pretty spiritual, doesn't it? It's a kind of intellectual vigilance that Hindus call Gnana Yoga.

Giving, simply put, may be the single most important bridge, particularly to an agnostic that isn't interested in "extra-dimensions" but does want to live with a more graceful connection to Life. What we might call Compassionate Consciousness (altruistic effort like charity and volunteerism) – often referred to simply as service (like responsible parenthood, being a good friend, etc.) – is the most reliable bridge to a working spirituality. It's simply the singular most effective means to overcoming the sense of separateness we develop while sitting and thinking about ourselves and our own life situations – that selfishness that paints us into our own little corner, only using the color fear.
            In selfless service—with no regard for reward or recognition—we're immediately attached to a greater universal intelligence by the lightest of all yokes: the engagement created by contributing to the cycle of well-being. We almost immediately escape the harsh realities dictated by our ego, and instantly begin to lighten and align our karma. (Karma Yoga, again)

Humility – not as a form of self-deprecatory ineffectiveness, but instead as a subtle, powerful sense of reality and connection; as an extraordinary underlying energy that filters all of your Life experiences, and provides an intuitive ideal to live by with purpose and grace. We've all experienced this powerful kind of humility as a truth-bearing, holistic force in Life, often demonstrated by the people we really respect the most. Nobody is really that important—even if they are; and often people who don't act important but just show up with open-hearted willingness are the most important of all.

"Conscious Contact with Source Energy" is what all these bridges lead us to, actually. A personal attachment and conscious surrender into the energy and intelligence alive in the Universe, regardless of whether we personify that power in popular traditional ways, or form our own concept of it as "The Field of Love," or other force. In this way we surrender—as a strategy—into the power that energizes and directs our being, recognizing the true control that our choices give us over our lives. You become aware of all kinds of beauty, the inherent divinity in nature; and realize that your actions in Life can be devoted to this undeniable Source of Creation – to "God," to Life, to one another, to Love. The Hindus call this devotional, or Bhakti Yoga.

            I don't pretend to know the designs of the Universe, only to have experienced the effectiveness of these visible (invisible) mechanisms in my own life and in the lives of those I'm close to; but I do know this:
            You do deserve the life that you have – with most of your biggest difficulties defined by whether you willingly cross these bridges towards "the spiritual," or stay stuck (and frustrated) on this side of the river, avoiding the magical extra-dimension of Life.

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Six [Dangerous] Modern Fairy Tales on Being Human

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

                        Marianne Williamson

 

            Let’s begin by casting our imaginations into a popular fantasy that resembles spectacular science fiction a little – namely that we’re not simply human beings fashioned from muscle, bone and blood, but that in a larger reality we’re really beings of pure effervescent energy wired into these clunky human robots, yet simultaneously connected to the limitless intelligence of the Cosmos...(science fiction and fairy tales can have a lot in common).

            Escaping those misperceptions of the human form we could then detach and observe Time itself as an assemblage of discreet moments in “eternity,” and witness the greater forces at work in this world that we fail to perceive from down here on the ground.

 

            Immediately, we might realize that we humans are unconsciously confined to a set of powerful beliefs suggested by the ‘evidence’ of our world around us as we see it, as our limited powers of perception present to us – so as humans, we simply have a misperception problem.

            Then, people who knew more about manipulating these powerful beliefs could be called wizards, witches, or “movers and shakers.” They would have the power to mold human illusions to suit their own purposes. In the metaphoric terms of Fairy Tales we may say “a darkness had fallen over the land,” the result of a spell cast from the wizard’s castle – the source of all confusion…the source of all evil.

 

            In the ancient Vedas of Hindu philosophy, this world of illusions/delusions created by our limited human senses is called Maya – an elaborate veil before our eyes. This veil is universal in human experience, so its effects can be explored and uncovered personally, or manipulated through the energies of larger groups into collective systems of delusional thought and action, in short, into different “realities” (like what we see today with the QAnon phenomenon).  

            In Fairy Tales (or The Bible) when this happens, there can be plagues and pestilence, famine, fires, crazy storms; waves of fearful insanity seizing the leaders and sweeping through the masses, leading to accelerating division, the destruction of Nature and a pandemic of fearful selfishness…sound familiar?

            

“We cannot solve our problems by using the same consciousness that created them.”

                        Albert Einstein

 

            Now that we’ve got our cosmic fantasy caps on, and we’re objectively looking down on humanity, let’s look at six of the delusional beliefs being propagated by our culture, and its wizards – political movers and shakers, and magnates of the media elite:

 

1. We are separate from one another, and from Nature

 

 Because of the insular experience of our human form, our independence is probably the easiest, most persistent delusion to maintain. Our sense of our disconnected self is so powerful that we can’t seem to see ourselves like a school of fish, or flock of birds…but we are.

Ask any astronaut you know and they’ll tell you that the arms-length view they had of the Earth completely destroyed that delusion of separateness. We truly are all one life here on this planet. Why even the nature of our material composition insists that the very atoms that make up our physical selves were part of something before they were part of you – rocks, plants, animals…dust (to dust).

Even though you feel separate and special, you’re not at all. You are one with everything you see, and a lot of what you can’t see. The truth is that we are all absolutely, inexorably bound and connected by our collective thoughts, energies, elements, and actions.

 

 

2. What is “real” is observabl­e – you can only believe what you can see

 

            The old expression, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” got turned inside out years ago when Quantum Physics essentially redefined it in reverse. The fact is, we really can’t see the elemental forces that create our observable world. What we do witness is the evidence of all of those mysterious processes, like gravity, or electricity, or Love…or human ignorance. It’s a scientific fact that the apparent material reality around us – the places and things in our lives – are less tangible, less real, than they appear to be.

            Quantum Physics informs us that the subatomic particles that coalesce into what we see around us look less like Newton’s little billiard balls, and much more like tiny, fuzzy clouds that don’t actually become solid until they’re observed – and so their transformation into ‘reality’ occurs only by engaging with our limited observational perceptions. It seems to be our single global mind – it’s focus and engagement in a great, intangible reservoir of consciousness – actually constructs the “reality” of our reality.

            So as a result, it’s closer to the truth to say: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

 

 

3. All of life has forward momentum, and all arising problems are reversible

 

            Recent discoveries about Mars tell us something amazing – that there is and has always been water there, and that at one time Mars probably looked quite a bit like Earth. Before it got too hot and started drying up, and the sun’s radiation soaked up its atmosphere and it got too cold, the folks up there probably thought they were on a carousel of never-ending abundance too. The idea that we can harvest the bounty of a planet’s resources indefinitely, ignoring the imbalances we cause, holds about as little water as logging the Sahara Forest once did. We are quantifiably in the midst of one of the great mass extinctions known to humankind, and extinctions aren’t reversible. Time isn't going anywhere, it's results are always present.

            We’re not going to terraform Mars anytime soon – not while we’re so busy transforming the Earth to look like Mars. We can see the paradise we could have, or the Hell we can create.

 

 

4. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution demands “Survival of the Fittest”

 

            While natural selection efficiently promotes characteristics that ensure survival, our cultural misunderstanding of Darwin’s theories (encouraged by the “haves” of industry and media) has to do with what characteristics actually constitute “the fittest,” and what evolutionary direction those traits take us in. In biology, and in the natural world, it’s not greedy leaders that drive evolutionary ascendence, it’s the characteristics that enhance the endurance and viability of the entire species, and that sustain those conditions that support the success of the whole community – “haves” and “have-nots” alike.

            It’s quite democratic, really – there isn’t one strong leader or small group that determines the most beneficial direction for a community to move in, in fact it’s usually a sudden shift (about 51%) of the colony that ‘breaks’ in the direction of collective progress (As our elections should demonstrate…)

            The real lesson of Darwin isn’t dog eat dog – it’s that animals move in groups. It isn't really “survival of the fittest,” but actually “survival of the most cooperatively adaptable.”

 

5. New advances are always superior to old, and technology provides all the answers

 

            From the unimaginable aberration of an island of plastic refuse the size of Texas floating out in the Pacific Ocean, to the warped lunacy of “fracking” toxins into bedrock beneath the water table to release more hydrocarbons, to the nefarious insanity of using GPS and the internet to track every person on the planet, the benefits of technological advances clearly depend on to what purposes they are employed. Those technologies dedicated to exploitation, destruction, and personal power are harmful to the human species, and to our non-human fellow Earthlings.

            Indigenous cultures have created advanced technologies too – often to a higher level than ‘establishment’ anthropologists are willing to acknowledge – but here’s the difference: theirs have often been organic technologies of respectful sustenance, in accord with the energies of the Earth – what I like to call Spiritual Technology.

The answers actually lay in a spiritual approach to all of life, what are real “technologies of the heart” – like free energy, transpersonal communication, and inter-species collaboration – most of which are labeled “woo-woo” by the selfish guardians of our status quo who have the most to lose materially.

 

6. What's “miraculous” or “paranormal” is automatically considered foolish and impossible

 

            In an earlier article called Paranormality is the New Reality, I discuss the simple fact that most of what we take for granted as modern science was at one time considered “paranormal." ­Unfortunately this is still the case, but as those cultural blinders are being swept away by rapidly spreading Consciousness – the great field of intelligence at work beneath and beyond our human forms ­– it becomes ever clearer that our cultural delusions are kept alive and manipulated by a fairly small group of people who are ignorantly dedicated to self-enhancement and gratification, using the power of irrational fear. That is what destructively deepens their delusions and prevents them from experiencing “the miraculous” spiritual solutions to all the overwhelming problems they create.

 

     So let’s go back to our beginning sci-fi scenario and imaginatively re-enter our human bodies with this expanded knowledge, perspective, and purpose. Now we ought to be able to consciously recognize, and lovingly acknowledge, the limitations of our present human form. By compassionately freeing ourselves of those veils of human delusion, we can see that our answers lie in the “unimaginable” spiritual potential that we are all heir to – beyond simply being a human being. Life is already quite miraculous, let’s make it moreso.

 

 

            "Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

                                    Bede Griffiths

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

Jesus, The Easter Bunny, and the Real Renewal of Spring

At the time of the earliest stirrings of the philosophy that was to become Christianity there were numerous centers of nascent world religion, from the Gandhara region of India thru Asia Minor, Persia, and Greece, to Alexandria and Jerusalem – and other spots within and beyond the Roman Empire and the rest of the known, civilized world. To literate religious academics of the early Christian era, all of this knowledge was available. Christianity, like all religions, was not born in a vacuum.

You'll notice in the retellings of the Passion Play that Christians celebrate each spring, as well as throughout the New Testament, there are plenty of references to the Pharisee sect of Hebraism, the proletariat and middle-class Jews of the time. The Sadducees, the bourgeois, aristocratic sect get very little airtime comparatively – despite making up most of the temple priesthood. Edited out of the story completely are the Essenes, which were not actually a single sect but instead a collection of differing gnostic beliefs grouped together generically.

Beyond their numbers, which were significant throughout the middle east at the time, the Essenes were the original Christians, eschewing sacrifice and materiality, living simple lives based in practices of healing and service. They were dedicated to cleanliness, to communal, all-inclusive dining, to the practices of foot washing, vegetarianism, and holistic herbal healing. Their "inns" and white robes were the inspiration for our present-day hostels and hospitals, and doctors' white coats. It's likely that the Jesus of mainstream Christianity was drawn from this model. 

Most sects labeled "Essene" fully embraced a more personal, inward, mystical path to the realization of a divine simplicity, and so were the foundation of the esoteric forms of Gnosticism and Kabbalistic practice. In some groups, Buddhism was very influential, and in fact "Theraputae" Essenism was likely one in the same as the Buddhist community located near Lake Mareotis, outside of Alexandria (from Theraputta, sanskrit meaning "from the old ones"). Buddhism was alive throughout the region for hundreds of years prior to Christian mythology, and it's very important to note that the Buddha sat in the wilderness alone and was tempted by the devil, walked on water, fed the multitudes from a single basket, and drank at the well of an outsider (and more) 500 years before the Christ story came about.

It's very likely that the teacher Yeshua, whose philosophy – resurrected in the  discovery of very early pre-canonical scripture like The Gospel of Thomas – serves as the basis for the teachings of the Jesus of the canonical, Roman gospels.

The selectivity of Christian myth runs roughshod over much of what is actually known, as is the case with most inventions of organized religion. This is not limited only to religion, the same is true for organized historical dogma, organized cultural dogma, and organized social dogma. In a contemporary American context, for example, we have the assertion that Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union, or that John Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin; both nascent myths that aren't based in fact, but still canonized as historical truth by many. 

Likewise, American frontier identity was actually rooted in the genocide of the indigenous Americans, whose culture was, so to speak, crucified by "Rome." The positivity and popularity of much of contemporary American culture is based on the transcendent adaptations of African people held in slavery for hundreds of years. The implications of these truths are truly biblical, but not in the self-enhancing way traditional white male American historians would have us remember it.

So the suggestion that the Christian Passion Play is mythic, and was created in the centuries following the decline of Rome to serve political purposes by commandeering an authentically mystical path actually makes much more sense than the assumption of the canonical gospels as historical fact. The first big tip-off is the fact that the eventual authors of those gospels weren't actually named Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John – those were pseudonyms of journeymen writers of their day. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are you might want to duck.

More recently there are the examples of Mormonism, whose co-creator Joseph Smith is not hard to prove as a plagiarist, philanderer, arsonist, and possibly worse, but not at all proven to be a prophetic witness to an early ancient American Judaic civilization; Scientology, whose inventor was unquestionably a hard-drinking, womanizing, egomaniacal science fiction writer – but highly questionable as an enlightened channel of godlike alien entities; and, going back a little further, Islam, the transcendent, mystical heart of which is regularly betrayed (like the other Abrahamic religions) by random acts of violence. 

Sadly for true believers, the historical references to the actual existence of the Jesus of the canons is still limited to the scant testimonies of Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Flavius Josephus, whose less-than-second-hand accounts came well after the fact, and were subject to powerful political and cultural influence, and countless subsequent rewritings. The most compelling testimony of Josephus has been known to be a forgery for a long time now, while Judeo-Roman historians contemporary to the times, like Philo, never mention the man or events, despite having every reason to. Josephus, in all his authenticated accounts in fact, mentions at least twenty different people named Jesus.

Then what should we really be resurrecting today? If the religious establishment now neatly sequesters the whole of the ancient Essene world into the austere walls of the community at Qumran, and the timeless teachings of philosophers like Gautama and Yeshua are respectively redefined as platitudes and tragic morality plays, rather than as the radically effective calls to action they truly are, then clearly what requires resurrecting is the spirit of divinely shared consciousness that Aldous Huxley called the "Perennial Philosophy." 

"The All came forth from me and the All came into me. Split the wood, and I am there. Turn over the stone, and there you will find me."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77  

It's forgivable human nature to transmute certain realities into conveniently avoidable practices, or for people suffering from the fearful manifestations of low self worth, greed, and delusional self-centeredness to act out in our shrinking world, but what we really need is to rebirth the elemental compassionate unity, the eternal springtime of human spiritual evolution alive in each Easter every day, if possible. That is the message continuously carried by the spirit of Yeshua (not to mention the Buddha, Krishna, Gandhi, et al).

We can all "sit in the wilderness" – take the inward path to realization of our shared being; "walk on water" – rise above and make foundational our psychic afflictions;  "feed the multitudes" – know that we have plenty with what we always have;  and "share water from the well" – understand the eternal that unifies us, regardless of our outward labels. The Jesus of the Christian Easter is purely a symbol for the real power for transformation each of us carries within – all the time...not just every Spring.

"Whoever seeks will find; whoever knocks from inside, it will open to them."

"When you bring forth that within you, then that will save you."

"What you are waiting for has already come, but you do not see it."

"Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me and I will become them and what was hidden from them will be revealed."

The Gospel of Thomas, 94, 70, 51, 108

Since I believe that we all only die to this world, and so resurrection is a simple, personal realization that we will all get to experience, is it possible that the spirit of the Easter Bunny could actually be a better shepherd? The brand we want to revive each Spring? Could that be a better metaphor than the image of a good man suffering – the gentle lapine, the playful, prolific, vegan creature of the woods and meadows? Could a bunny be smart and wise enough to easily share that level of consciousness? For the answer to these, and possibly other questions, I invite you to watch this video:

 http://www.dogwork.com/buhr9

Happy Easter! 

[re-edited and reposted from an earlier time]

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

"The Perspective of Presence," It's Always Been Now, and Will Always Be

      This excerpt from How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) comes from Chapter 8:  

Finding Presence Now: It's Always Been Now, and Will Always Be

      Maintaining presence allows us to respond appropriately to life's personal challenges. Our ego always wants to be in control by labeling, judging, comparing, and making demands, while being truly present lets us recognize our harsher ego demands and reject them, allowing our deeper, intuitive intelligence to arise within that eternal moment. If we let our ego-mind – our feeling offended, our sense of injustice, our need to be right – spontaneously dictate our actions, we tend to be reacting, or often over-reacting to simple circumstances.  We can blow situations out of proportion, losing the perspective that kindness, humility, honesty, forgiveness, and compassion can give us. In fact, we can make proper choices only when we're fully present to do so, because not only does presence give us the priceless gift of constraint – the ability to take that extra moment to let sanity and reason arise – but it also puts us in touch with an existent intelligence that is greater than our own. Just stopping and intently focusing on one breath can instantly allow us to check in with Heaven, so to speak.

      In Heaven nobody gets caught overreacting in senseless or destructive ways. Everyone relishes taking that eternal moment to adjust to every situation. In fact, in Heaven everyone is quite calm and thoughtful, as you may have already imagined.


Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!