The Truth Shall Make You Free

The ease with which we can walk away from our human conditioning and perceive the truth is directly proportional to how much we suffer in this world.  The more we are attached to our beliefs, which are a product of our personal sense of ego, the more we suffer.  When we let go of our attachment to material belief, we can walk through the trials of this world relatively untouched until the truth comes into our awareness and lifts us into the spiritual realm of oneness.  We can look at the life of Jesus to see how this is done.  Not only did he heal the sick and raise the dead, but also he went through the whole gamut of human emotions in being betrayed, falsely accused, tried, tortured and killed.  What was it that was tried, tortured and killed but the human concept of power and belief.  Did that ever touch the Christ?  Not one bit.  And Christ was the resurrection and restoration of Jesus to his divine selfhood.

From childhood Jesus lived a life of freedom, fully aware of his Christhood. He loved freely, both friend and enemy.  He taught freely, giving his consciousness of the Christ to all who had ears to hear and eyes to see.  He healed freely, bestowing on those in bondage to mental and physical limitation the gift of wholeness.  He saw his fellow man as children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, and joint heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.  He recognized heaven, God-consciousness, to be within the individual, and when it came time for him to go through the portal of death, he forgave those ignorant enough to think that killing him would keep them in power, since the Christ indwells all men and can never be extinguished.  Ultimately Jesus walked back through the veil to free mankind forever from the belief that life ends with physical death.

As long as we give power to human form, or we give power to an authority, or an enemy — as long as we are living in this world and being presented with pictures of joy and sorrow, disease and health, love and betrayal, we are going to have to make choices. Sometimes the choices are going to appear to have negative impacts and negative ramifications to our un-purged human beliefs.  Most of our suffering has to do with our acceptance of material concept as Reality.  Our freedom comes in the realization that whatever beliefs we’ve accepted as our own, are not really personal to us, but are universal limitations tempting us to believe them to be real and thus having power over us.  With Jesus as our example, all we need to do to experience our Christ freedom is to say no — “Away with you, Satan!”…[1] “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”[2]

Mystics talk about the little dance, or double talk, we do to pay lip service to this world.  We don’t go around to those with no spiritual awakening and tell them that the tyranny of this world — whether it’s political, medical, natural or financial — isn’t real.  When someone tells us his tale of woe, we inwardly correct the false beliefs and know the truth, because that is loving our neighbor as our self.  But we say nothing to create an argument or controversy.  As Jesus said, when you confront an adversary, “…let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatever is more than these cometh of evil.”[3] Why?  Because first of all, this world has no inclination towards nor interest in the things of God. This world is asleep.  It is in a dream. It is a mirage.  This world is the belief that there is a power other than God.  It is only when we have reconciled the appearances of this world, which is an activity of the Christ going on within us, to the truth that exists behind the appearance that we walk through this world untouched by its negativity.

The activity of knowing the truth that makes you free is an act of reconciliation. Our cultural background comes from the Judaic-Christian scriptures, so we are conditioned by concepts instilled in Western thought that misrepresent what we have to do to be reconciled to our spiritual center and experience the freedom of God.  The main misperception is that the individual must first suffer and die before he can taste heaven. Once he’s dead and buried, his spirit or soul, will rise up on the last day, and if he’s been good enough he will join Jesus in Heaven with God. That’s taking a spiritual idea and turning it into a myth.

If we look at life solely as a human being, our egos want to live comfortably, experience pleasure, and have as little pain and suffering as possible.  Our ego wants to be loved, and when the last day comes, die quickly without fear.  That’s the perfect human ideal.  But it’s not necessarily spiritual.  On the other hand, the orthodox view of a spiritual life consists of avoiding sinners, punishing every carnal thought, mortifying the flesh to drive out desire and lust, and living with no carnal distractions to communion so that your reward in the next life will be blissful.  The conclusion reached is that one cannot spiritualize a human concept.

So here we are again with the problem of being in the world but not of it.  We want to be of a pure heart and mind as prescribed in scripture, yet we don’t want to miss out on the joys and pleasures of life.  If  desiring the pleasures of this life means experiencing some pain and postponing our spiritual revelation, we more often than not go for the pleasure.  As mystics we are taught not to desire the good of this world, and not to fear its evil. There seems to be a conflict, then, between the spiritual life of no desire and no fear and normal human existence.  In truth, there isn’t.  As Jesus taught, it is the middle path that is the way to freedom.  Walking the middle path requires recognition of our true identity.  It requires a detachment from fear and desire, which allows us to look temptation in the eye and not be moved.  And it requires an attitude of non-judgment so that we may be instruments of Divine Love.  Jesus told us that knowing the truth would make us free.  Another great spiritual light of the last century said, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”  With this in mind, let’s look at some aspects in Jesus’ life that illustrate these principles.

In the Book of John, we have a different twist on the whole idea of Baptism and of the recognition of the indwelling Christ.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.  He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.  That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.”[4]

The activity of spiritual baptism recognizes our Light.  I say “our” Light.  There is only one Light, but this Light is universal and It expresses itself uniquely and individually.  When It is recognized within the individual, first by the individual and then by another with spiritual discernment, then that individual experiences a spiritual awakening or illumination.

This Light is in the world, and the world is made by this Light.  In other words, the I thatI am, is the same I that God is, and It made the world.  But the world does not know this Ibecause this I is spiritual.  So the world does not know anything about Oneness.  The world is hypnotized into believing that there are two powers, but there are not.  There is only one power  When we realize we are not born of man, but that we are the children of God, eternal beings, expressing Light individually and uniquely, and when we are aware of this truth consciously while in the world, then the Word becomes flesh and this activity of truth and love in the world becomes the leaven that lifts consciousness out of the belief that there is power outside of God.

Once you recognize the activity of the Christ, you become aware of the mental belief structure of this world, and you can see how the power composition of this world temps you to glorify the ego.  You can heal through the mind.  You can get rich.  You can get famous.  You can have everybody worshipping you. You can have instant food.  Instant gratification.  You can become god like.  With the awareness of being tempted comes the realization that we have a choice — once the Christ has been activated in us.  With choice comes liberty, but also responsibility.

When we live a completely material life, we aren’t aware that we are being tempted, so there is no choice.  Also, if we have not developed the discernment to know when the ego is pumping us, and we think the good coming into our lives is because of what we know, or what we’ve done, we’ll soon fall by the wayside because spiritual activity is not personal — it’s universal.  It is impersonal in that it is no respecter of persons.  The spiritual rain of truth, falls on the just and the unjust.  If the Christ in us says “No!” to temptation — that’s it.  There’s no battle because our spiritual discernment reveals temptation as the belief that some good can come to us from outside our consciousness, and we know that is untrue.

The synoptic gospels show us how to deal with temptation through the example of the Master.  They portray him as a man struggling to come to grips with his revelation of the Christ.  You will note the chronology of being tempted by Satan comes right after the recognition of the Christ.  After Jesus’ baptism by John, God declared Jesus His beloved son.[5] In each of these stories Jesus hasn’t come into his full awareness as the Christ, therefore he must contend with the material expressions of good and evil.  Also, we see a personalized concept of evil in Satan.

“Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”[6]When this awareness of the presence of God is awakened in the individual, there is the realization that there seems to be two worlds.  I’ve just experienced this overwhelming sense of oneness, and peace, and joy, but look, the world is still here and there are still people fighting, and there is still disease and poverty.  So the spirit takes one into the wilderness, away from the world, to face the activity that has been recognized within.  And in the wilderness, the tempter comes.  The first temptation is hunger.  Jesus is in the wilderness and he is hungry.  Now in the mystical sense, when we are in a wilderness experience and are awake to the spiritual nature of our being — as it says in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness…”[7] — we want to be filled with the spirit of God.  But, if we still think God is out there, that our fulfillment is going to come from something in the world, that our hunger is going to be fed by something outside of the I that I am, then we fall for the temptation.

“And when the tempter came to him, he said, if thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread,”[8] After all, you’re hungry.

Jesus said: “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” [9] Our good, our hunger, is not satisfied by anything outside of our spiritual Self.  It will be satisfied by an inner Spiritual unfoldment because we are awake to the nature of I, have recognized It, so It is active.  The more we seek satisfaction in the material world, the bleaker it becomes.

Then the next temptation came: “… the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, if thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.”[10]

Again “Jesus said unto him, It is written thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” [11] Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.  Why?  What is the principle here?  God knows nothing of the human scene because God is spirit.  So if we say, “I’m going to go up to some high place and jump off, and I’m going to prove the power of God,” God is not going to come and save you because God knows nothing of this human sense of existence, this human ego that thinks it has some special relationship to God.  All God knows is Himself, and that is one.  There is not God and man.  There is not God and Christ.  There is only one.

In the beginning of man’s awareness of God, in our Western tradition, God was constantly making covenants with man, and every covenant had two aspects; “If youbelieve on me, then this is what I will do for you: I will protect you from your enemies and I will give you all that I have, I will give you abundance.”[12] This was the basis of the whole unfoldment of Hebraic history. This unfoldment of consciousness was always saying, “If ye believe on me, then I will be your protection and I will be your supply,”and this has been demonstrated and demonstrated.  If you don’t “believe in me,” as Jesus said, “You’ll be as a branch that is cut off.”[13] Why?  Because God knows nothing of the material world.  The material world is the acceptance of a belief in a power outside of God.  There is no power outside of God.  What appears as power is the acceptance of a belief, and God knows nothing of it.  It is the hypnotic state of material belief.  There is no way as a human being in the material world that we are going to go out and test God; that we are going to go out and beseech God to come down into this human level and heal a cancer or heal a broken arm or whatever.  If we have that kind of relationship, it is a dualistic relationship and it is false.

Healing takes place with our recognition that there is only one, because in that state of consciousness where we are aware of the presence of God and rest in that presence, nothing unlike God can exist in our experience.  No disharmony.  No discord.  No disease.  No bondage.  God never comes and heals anything.  It appears a healing has taken place, but in reality the individual has become aware of his or her oneness with God to the degree that the erroneous concept no longer exists in their consciousness.  Their consciousness is filled with Divine Love, and nothing harmful or negative can exist in the presence of Divine Love.  With that realization, any discord, disease, disharmony or poverty dissolves.  It is erased because of our conscious awareness of our oneness with God.  God has not come down into the human picture to heal a disease or to make us healthy, wealthy and wise.  That is a concept based on separation.  God is always at the standpoint of completeness.  God never withholds anything.  How could God, who is constantly this Infinite Expression, Infinite Creation withhold anything and say, “OK, I’ll give that person a healing, and not the other person.” That is not the nature of God.

Jesus does not resist the devil, or this tempter.  Jesus does not battle or argue with the temptation.  The Master just says, “No, that is not the truth.  That is false.  That is two plus two is five and I’m not going to fight with you over it.  I’m not going to contend with you. I’m just going to say, that is not correct. I know the truth. No, I’m not going to turn the stone into bread because man does not live by bread alone.”

Then the third temptation: “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith unto him, all these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”[14]

The devil has said, “If you worship me, I will give you the world.“ That’s probably the greatest temptation, because it’s the temptation of personal power.  What would happen if we would fall for that?  We would be giving power to something outside of God.  We would be worshipping a human concept, and accepting as truth the lie of personal power.  Material knowledge and its manipulation would become our god, and our strength would be in mentally controlling every situation to our benefit.  We might be able to sustain that kind of an attitude for a while, given the relationship of mind to matter.  We might even appear to heal but it would not be spiritual and ultimately it would be subject to the karmic belief that there are two powers because, we have accepted a power outside of God.

Jesus doesn’t respond with anything except, in the King James version, a “Get thee hence Satan” — be gone!  Don’t come to me with this idea that there is a power outside of God“for it is written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”[15]

In Eastern philosophies God consciousness is termed as nothing — no thing.  And that is true.  When we are in a state of silence, in a state of peace, there is no thing.  There is nothing in our awareness but being.  We cannot make a concept of being.  Being just is.   Being has no desire.  Being has no thought of the future.  Being has no awareness of the past.  This sense of being, which we experience in the silence, is the I that I am and that Iis universal.  That I is unbound, unlimited.

When we become comfortable in this silence, we start to realize that this is the essence and nature of creation.  We start to realize that it is from this nothingness, this no-thing-ness that our world takes form, takes shape.  It is from this silence that all transformation takes place; because in the silence there is no human activity.  There is no mental activity.  There is a rest.  When we come to the realization in this silence that there is no time or space,  it wipes out past transgressions.  This silence is not a void, or a vacuum, but it is Love Itself.  It brings into conformity all outer expression.  It brings us into conformity with Divine Love as the activity of individual being.  Our individual recognition of this brings the freedom of God into our experience.

Jesus’ prayer to his disciples, which was one of his greatest gifts to the world, was this;“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; continue ye in my love.”[16]

Our evolution into mystical living is the growing awareness of the meaning of “My love.”  Not only do we perceive the importance of “My love,” we become aware of “My peace” and “My joy” — all of which are felt as we start relinquishing our attachment to the material concept of self and start experiencing the Christ.

These feelings are not personal.  This love is the activity of seeing only one.  It is the activity of forgiving all misconceptions to the point where there is no longer any condemnation, any guilt, any ego based reaction at all to the outer world.  Then all that is left is peace, and this peace is active in Divine love.  It ushers into our life a joy that cannot be taken away.  This peace that we experience, “My peace,” is not a void.  It is not empty.  It is filled with understanding and compassion.  The love that comes to up in this atmosphere of peace guides, motivates and directs each and every one living out from Soul.

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love…”[17]

And what are His commandments?  He taught us “to love the lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul.”  If we love God with all our heart and mind and soul, our focus is on the spiritual nature of life.  Because it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom of heaven, His will is fulfillment.  The will of God is not suffering.  It is not limitation.  The will of God is total freedom.  We can experience oneness.  We can totally give ourselves over to the will of God because we know that His love for us is expressed in fulfillment, joy and peace, harmony, happiness and freedom.  Abiding in this love is life eternal.

And the other commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourself.”[18] Loving our neighbor as our self is to see the Spirit of God in our neighbor.  There is only one Love — the love God has for Itself, and this love expresses itself on every level.

“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”[19]

There is no sorrow; there is no suffering in “My kingdom.”

“This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.  Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  Ye are my friends, if ye do whatever I commanded you.”

To lay down our life is to comprehend that I am not material.  It is seeing the eternal Christ, God incarnate right where the appearance of a human being stands.  It is seeing our Self as we are, spiritual and whole, perfect, as is our Father in heaven.  I will lay down this material sense of life; I will completely shed all material concepts and live as I was created, in the image and likeness of God.  This is dying daily to material sense.

Jesus taught that we must love our enemies.  How do we love our enemies?  How can we love the manifold examples of cruelty man has visited upon his neighbor?  Here is the secret.  Because there is only one, behind the most hideous example of humanity sits the Christ waiting to be called forth.  In the presence of a Christ filled individual, the most vile human being is transformed in the twinkling of an eye.  “Though your sins be as scarlet…”  This activity of the Christ appears as forgiveness, and loves Its neighbor as Itself.

Now, because we have opened ourselves to spiritual judgment, allowing the Christ to mediate, we come to the realization that any negativity that appears as a person, is but the belief in a person separate and apart from God.  God never created evil, therefore it has no stature, power, or influence except what human belief gives it.  Removing in our own perception the attachment of a belief to an individual is what is termed impersonalization.  Right where the negative appearance is, whether it appears as hatred, jealousy, sin, disease, poverty or death — behind it is life everlasting.  Behind that appearance is the child of God.  And as we love as Jesus loved, as we see through the appearance with Christ activated eyes, we nullify the hatred.  We comfort the downhearted.  We release the infirm from their bondage to mortal concept, and we discover that we have no enemies.  To have an enemy is to admit to duality, where in reality, there is only one.  Living out from spiritual oneness, we find that we are in a world of friends.

There is a spiritual activity in me that is greater than any material concept in the world.  No matter what degree of illumination we have experienced, our mandate is that illumination be used to lift human consciousness. How else is that done but by recognizing only One? Recognizing this Christ activity in every individual.  Elijah demonstrated this in the story of the widow’s son.  The whole purpose of seeing material sense dissolve is to reinforce our spiritual aptitude.  Because our senses are constantly reinforcing the material picture, we strive to live beyond the confines of sensory perception, in the realm of the unknown, where what the world calls “miracles” validate our progress and keep us moving forward into the deeper experiences of the spiritual universe.