Monthly Archives: June 2014

06/19/14

Loving Enemies

love your enemies

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

This sounds like a nice enough Bible verse, right? Not really. If we fully recognize what Paul is saying here, and put it into practice, it will be one of the most difficult things we ever do.

If you have a stronghold in your life, you are enslaved to whatever it is that has power over you. For many people, the strongholds are things like anger and a desire for revenge. I think these feelings reside in every human soul. It is normal to have them, but once we decide to follow Jesus, it’s time to take out these strongmen and crush them.

I was reading and wish so very much that people would just GET IT. Whenever someone suggests that we should love our enemies to the point of embracing non-violence, you always get people coming out of the woodwork who say things like, “What if someone breaks into your house and tries to kill your child?”

I can understand this. Here’s the thing, though. First of all, the Holy Spirit is immensely powerful and can give us the wisdom in that moment to fix the situation. I love how Antoinette Huff handled this school shooter. Second, if the person DID kill your family, remember that Jesus destroyed death:

…it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 2 Timothy 1:10

In other words, Jesus put the lie to death. We are immortal souls! God has the whole thing under control. No worries.

Think of life as a dream you’re having. So what if you or someone else wakes up a little bit before you had set your alarm clock to go off? Not that big of a deal, really. I know this sounds flippant, but keep in mind that I am not 100 percent certain that my older son is alive. This knowledge keeps me SANE.

So we don’t have to hate or kill our enemies and continue the cycle that the satan would like to see perpetuated. I refuse to participate.

Of course, it’s easy to sit here and talk about unlikely circumstances or wars that I am at a personal distance from. It’s another thing altogether to talk about REAL enemies — the people in our everyday lives who slander us, provoke us and do other things that make us feel like a spiritual knife is entering our heart. Our normal instinct is to STRIKE BACK, or at the very least, engage in a good complaining session about the person.

But Paul says to take captive EVERY THOUGHT and bring it into obedience to Christ. So that means that if I choose to complain to my husband about someone who has hurt my feelings, denigrating them, that I am NOT being obedient to Christ. Yikes.

So what to do? I refuse to give myself a pass on the grounds that I am “only human” because I’m really trying to transcend my current level of consciousness.

The way that I take such thoughts captive is to implement Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:44, which says to “pray for those who persecute you.” So, whenever I am tormented by a yukky thought about another person, the only thing to do really is to pray for them. And boy do I not want to do that. But you know what? When I force myself to do so, I feel a wonderful peace. And if the thoughts return the next day, I do it again!

I don’t pray that the person will see the error of their ways or anything like that. What I pray is that the person will be most richly blessed and experience God’s joy, peace and love in their lives. In other words, what I want for myself. And you know what? I get what I pray as if I had prayed those words for me rather than the person I have struggled with!

This stuff is really really hard. And it’s not fun to do. And I don’t do it as much as I should. Some thoughts manage to get through in spite of my efforts to kick them back into the darkness. But it’s a journey that I want to undertake. I hate the darkness and don’t want any part of it, really.

The knowledge of God is that we are one, and how we treat our brothers and sisters is how we treat ourselves. I want NOTHING to come between me and this knowledge.

06/11/14

What Are We Swimming in — Polluted Water or Living Water?

God's cleansing waterI had this dream over a week ago, and I had to let it percolate for a while to let its meaning sink in. I had fallen asleep after reading a passage in Luke about the kingdom of God and asking God to help me understand it. Much confusion has arisen because of this passage, and no wonder. It is not a piece of cake to understand at first glance, that is for sure!

Then He said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Look here!’ or ‘Look there! Do not go after them or follow them. For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

“In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left.”

And they answered and said to Him, “Where, Lord?”

So He said to them, “Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together.”

So at 4:44, I woke up to the sound of my cats fighting. Biddlesworth and Gordon regularly fight right before bed, but they’ve usually settled down by the middle of the night. When I woke up, this intense dream had just ended and was fresh in my mind.

In my dream, I was at the beach. People at the beach started getting sick, mainly with cramps in their legs. I thought they were just out of shape, but then I got a cramp as well. The next morning, I started talking to a friend about how perhaps there were chemicals in the water from surrounding manufacturing plants. We walked down to the beach, and floating in the water was a large test strip in a long vial that showed that the water had dangerous levels of several harmful elements.

I thanked God for sending us the capsule and we went to find the company whose name was on the top of the vial. We didn’t get very far. In the first building we passed through, some controlling administrator-type people took the vial from us and hid it in the plumbing of the bathroom. We managed to get it back somehow, though, and ended up taking it to the city manager, who oversaw the lifeguards whose job it was to protect the people swimming in the water.

The lifeguards were simply appalled. The test results showed that the water had been polluted for some time, and they hadn’t known to warn the people. They quickly painted signs with the color red to warn people that the water was polluted. All the while, the evil folks from the prior building were working to destroy the vial and somehow obscure the truth, continuing to lie to the people about the poison in the water.

Eventually, everything turned out pretty much okay, with a plan being set up to regularly monitor the water. Or so it seemed. Then the dream switched into some drama about the lifeguards trying to get out of the building on time. They were running down flights of stairs with piles of clothing, TVs and other things that merely slowed their progress, endangering their lives. Something intense was about to happen in that building, and destruction was near.

Once they were at the bottom, everyone started to relax. We went into a room that had at least 40 huge water mains that needed to be turned on. It was time to turn on this fresh water and let it flow. The amount of fresh water that would flow through this building was enormous. However, the motor that would pump the water out was temporarily malfunctioning. One girl (a lifeguard?) became impatient and went ahead and left the building, even though if the pump started working, she’d be washed away.

Finally, the pump started up, and water started to flow, faster and faster, more and more. The girl began to run. Her flight was slow because of a little dog she had with her that was holding her back. She kept pausing to wait for it, even though the water was coming. When the water finally came in all its power, it was terrible. It knocked down trees like matchsticks and swept them, cars and other debris down the street. It collapsed the hill the girl had run screaming down and she surely died. There was a lot of chaos as everything was swept away. This is when I woke up.

After giving it some thought, it seems that the water coming from the building with the lifeguards is God’s cleansing water. It washes away poison and cleans away the crap in our lives — and culture, if we — the lifeguards — turn it on. And the Church — people who love God — has perhaps been remiss in maintaining the engine that allows God’s love to flow through us. Once you decide to turn it on, there is no turning back. It will transform your life and sweep away the old you. You can’t hang on to your attachments. It will transform the lives of others.

I think this is what Jesus may mean by his words above about the Kingdom of God. These words have been interpreted to mean that some people will vanish into thin air when Jesus comes down out of the sky. While anything at all is possible, I don’t think this is correct. Jesus — the Christ-consciousness of truth, love and peace — can come into our lives like lightening at any moment. When it does, your self will die and be carted away to the garbage even though a person right next to you is perfectly happy living their old life. Meanwhile, you find yourself living in God’s Kingdom — here on earth in that other dimension that is accessible through love and God’s grace.

When Christ is revealed to us, all the eating, drinking, buying, selling, etc. becomes less important. It is “destroyed” by the light of His revelation that what is important is God’s true light — this world is but an illusion.

I have such a desire to see people recognize the poison in this world. We are having public shootings on almost a daily basis, and if that is not one barometer of a poisoned society, I don’t know what is. I pray that God’s cleansing water come enter the life of all and wash away what is not true.

If you are reading this and you do not identify as Christian, please don’t be offended. I believe God’s Kingdom is available to all, regardless of creed. Christ’s consciousness is for all who seek the light of God and Truth, even when it is called something else.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

06/10/14

Infinite Reality, Spiritual Sin and Illusion: Sage’s Dream

in my fathers house there are many mansionsWhen I was pregnant with my youngest, my mother told me that I should call him Emmanuel, “Christ is with us.” I ended up naming him Sage, of course, but the name my mom chose would have been even more accurate. When Sage woke up this morning and told me his dream, I truly felt that Christ was with me, illuminating my mind to the nature of reality that I always question so very much. The words coming out of my son’s mouth were simply beautiful.

In his dream, he was with an instructor who had a bunch of young folks with him. The instructor led them all to an infinite hallway, and gave them instructions.

“You’ve got this one lifetime to learn everything you can. We’ll meet up again in 70 or 80 years,” he said. “Don’t get lost. If you get lost in your reality, you’ll get stuck until you die.”

In the hallway were many other hallways branching off. Within those hallways were individual rooms. Within these rooms were more infinitely long hallways, and so on.

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

Some of the people had fun visiting other people’s realities and even becoming part of them. Others were frightened by the entire experience and decided not to participate. They just sat there.

Eventually, the instructor came back and offered the group the opportunity to either rest for a while in an astoundingly peaceful place called the “break room” that was simultaneously everything and nothing, or to go to another place for another period of time. The trip to the break room or yet another world of infinite realities is what we call “dying.”

When the instructor said not to get lost in your reality, what he meant was for us not to get caught up in ego and fear. For example, not to worry about what other people think, or whether or not we live in a “safe” neighborhood or have enough money for retirement. Getting caught up in these things stops the spiritual growth we were put here to experience.

You can go INTO your own reality, or you can go OUT into truth, considering everything that could possibly be. Realize that everything we see is an illusion and we can avoid going inward into a reality in which the argument we had with our mother is important, for example. To go into truth, is simply focusing on helping others and being kind. In other words, LOVE.

The instructor warned not to get stuck in a personal reality in which one thinks they have risen spiritually as far as they can go — in other words, believing one is Godlike and has nothing left to learn. This reality leads to spiritual stagnation and death, he said. When I heard this, I immediately thought of spiritual pride, and Sage confirmed that is what the instructor was referring to.

You can get other people lost in your own reality. This is a spiritual sin. Think of someone who ropes another person into an unhealthy belief system, subsequently blinding that person to the ultimate truth of his existence.

The dream continued.

Sage went to another world. In this world, he met our deceased cat Varmint. He hung out with her, and on their journey, they ran into some people with a meat grinder. These people were throwing plants, animals and people haphazardly into the meat grinder. They tried to grab Varmint, but Sage grabbed her and saved her. They left, and Varmint found a nice comfy couch to lie down on. Then her spirit arose from her, and it was one of an old lady. (I hooted at this, because Varmint always acted like an old lady.) Then the spirit changed into a young woman, who thanked Sage from rescuing her from that body, which was now represented as a metal prison of sorts. She told him that he rescued her by caring for her and loving her.

The meat grinder people, says Sage, are greedy world controllers — brainwashers, manipulators, power lusters. Think governmental and corporate control.

The whole point of it all, says Sage, is that we are here to learn, and we rise by helping others. Everything else is an illusion.

The entire time he was telling me his dream, it resonated with me so much. I felt my spirit saying, “YES!!!”

I think about the Beast in John’s Revelation, and I can see it being the meat grinder in Sage’s dream. Regarding the spirit being let out of the prison, I think of Jesus’ words about “setting the captives free.” There was so much spiritual truth here, and as I talked to my son, I felt as though I was talking to an old, old person with a very clear mind. I asked him questions and he answered them as though he were a direct channel to the divine.

I just told Sage about my sense of him being an open channel while talking to me about the dream, and he agreed. He said, “I still am. Ask me questions while you still can. Work that soul!” 🙂 Love it.

Life is cool. The joy of the Lord is my strength.

06/8/14

Are We Being Unfair to School Shooters and Other Mass Killers?

mass shooters and scapegoatsIn ancient Jewish culture, they had this tradition of symbolically burdening a goat with the sins of the people and then releasing it into the wilderness.

From Leviticus 16: “Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.”

Of course, today most of us read things like the book of Leviticus and find them hopelessly antiquated. The thing is, as a culture, we do this exact same thing. We have failed to realize that Jesus has showed us a different path.

Certain people play the role of scapegoat in our culture. These are folks like Aurora theater shooter James Holmes, Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger, and the latest — Seattle Pacific shooter Aaron Ybarra.

We can argue about the causes of such shootings and seek to eliminate them. Gun availability, violent media, mental illness and social rejection seem to almost play a role. But these “causes” are like blaming money as the cause of poverty. It’s related, but the root of the problem lies in our group consciousness and behavior.

I believe people like these young men bear our sins and are then punished for them — even after death. Most likely sensitive folks, they have internalized the dark side of our culture and are now expressing it. Once they express it, we get to point our fingers at our scapegoats and talk about how depraved they are and how much better our society is off without them. Our sins, at least in our own eyes, are absolved.

You may think that the creation of such scapegoats has nothing to do with you. The thing is, though, is that all of us play a part, some more than others. Here are a few things to take a look at. Until each one of us addresses these issues in our behavior and our hearts, we will continue to foster a consciousness that creates these bearers of cultural sin.

If you’ve ever looked down on another person.
If you think that violence is a solution.
If you support our violent media with your dollars and attendance at the latest mind-destroying flick.
If you’ve turned the other way when someone is being mistreated.
If you let your kids play violent video games.
If you think that your thoughts, actions and beliefs have no bearing on the whole.

There are many other causes of this scapegoat-creation, some of which I am not yet aware of. And I still struggle with some of this. But I’ll tell you what — I want to uproot each and every one of them from my consciousness and throw them on the fire. I want NO part of this sick ritual of creating such ugliness and then blaming the one who fully embodies what WE have created.

Just because we do LESS of what the scapegoats do doesn’t get us off the hook while they run into the wilderness of prison or suicide. For example, if I spend time denigrating another person, I am engaging in the same behavior — I just haven’t taken it as far. Why should I get a pass to engage in hateful talk about an “enemy” who is also a son or daughter of the Most High while being able to point the finger at a school shooter? When I allow him to be my scapegoat, I am spared examining the hatred within my own heart. And that is like allowing myself to continue to eat Oreos and Cheetos because, hey, at least I’m not 400 pounds. I’m still going to be unhealthy.

Jesus showed us that the scapegoat system was unnecessary. That God could forgive even people who tortured and killed an innocent — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

We can forgive these scapegoats. We can forgive them and love them and in doing so, acknowledge our own darkness and walk forward on the path of accepting the enormous love that God has to offer. If we persist in allowing the scapegoats to carry our burden, we’ll continue to allow our hatred and other dark slimy things to fester inside, stalling our spiritual growth.

And if we all made this decision to look inward? Well, I doubt we’d have a problem with mass shootings.

06/8/14

The Two Words of the Bible You MUST Believe

God is our fatherI’m not going to mince words here — this is ridiculously simple. Jesus gives us the key to recognizing not only who WE are, but who OTHERS are as well in the Lord’s Prayer. Without further ado, the two words that will transform your world are…

OUR FATHER.

When you believe this — and I don’t mean intellectually, but from your HEART — that the supreme creator of the universe is your genetic FATHER… Well, then.

You are a SON or DAUGHTER of God. Period.

Not only that, but everyone else is ALSO a son or daughter of God.

Whoa.

So how would that change how we treat ourselves and others (love our neighbor as ourselves)? I have to say, if we aren’t treating EVERY SINGLE PERSON in our lives with love borne of the recognition that we are borne of love itself and are interacting with the sons and daughters of love, then we don’t really get it. Not yet.

It can be difficult to understand. Our culture puts up blinders that obscure reality. We’re told that we are evil, and indeed, there are impulses that we must fight that certainly are. But who we are at the core? Sons and daughters.

Not servants, not slaves, not sinners. Sons and daughters.

If you truly believe in your heart that you are a genuine SON or DAUGHTER of the Most High, then you will love yourself. You will be free to express your true self, the opinions of others be damned.

You will find it impossible to judge. After all, some of the other sons and daughters might not have seen their birth certificate yet, but that doesn’t change who they ARE. Our only role is to shine the light for our literal brothers and sisters so that they know their true identity. And how better to do this than by treating them as sons and daughters of the most amazing royalty?

Do we treat everyone in our lives as the royalty that they are?

If not, why not? Could it be that we haven’t truly internalized the truth of our lineage?

06/7/14

My Rock in the Storm

Jesus is my rock Last night I dreamed that I traveled to a far away island. There were a chain of islands, and a boat dropped me off at the most distant one. There was only one other person on the island, a man. I don’t know who he was, but he had an appealing assurance about him.

The island was very small and had no shelter of any kind. This was potentially a problem, since there were often severe storms and tornadoes that would appear. I told the driver of the boat that I wasn’t worried about it, and he drove off, leaving me there.

The man showed me a rocky ledge that I could climb up onto when the storms hit. And sure enough, soon a very strong storm arrived. I climbed up onto the ledge. Clinging to it, I watched the storm. There were buckets of rain pouring out of the sky and strong winds. I got a bit wet, as a few of the drops hit me, but I was protected from the majority of the rain.

Looking at the storm, I found that I was able to see through it. On the other side was the most gorgeous sunrise. I knew what awaited once the storm passed — peace and beauty.

I love how I stood on the ROCK during the storm. That’s exactly what I do in my waking life. Knowing how much God loves me definitely protects me from a lot of the fallout from the storms in my life, which have been numerous lately. This dream comforted me.

Before I had went to bed, I had asked God a question — something that I have been doing more and more often lately. I asked him how I could help my husband to not suffer from the fibro-type thing he has been struggling with.

As my dream continued, the answer to my question was revealed. My husband picked me up from the island in a fairly big boat. We cruised through the water, and I was filled with joy. Soon, however, I noticed that the boat was leaky and had about two feet of standing water in it. My husband was fine with it, but I told him, “We can do better than this.”

Then we were on an ocean liner. My hubby was the captain of the ship. The ship, which was in perfect condition, ran on lettuce. When we stopped at a port, I’d run into the store to buy some more fuel — spinach, carrots. On this fuel, the ship traveled all the way around South America.

When I woke up, I realized that I can fuel up my husband with lots of veggies and he’ll likely experience some relief from his symptoms. 😀

I love writing these dreams down. I want to remember them, and I want any interested parties to know that God is present and available. Ask and you shall receive.

06/4/14

WARNING: Disturbing Content Ahead

Art by Caia Matheson.

Art by Caia Matheson.

This post carries the title it does because some of these thoughts have sent me into anxiety attacks in the past. It can be very frightening to question your reality.

As usual, most of my thoughts here come from my dreams.

Last night, I met a powerful religious leader. He had set up a communal society that looked like freedom from the outside. Inside, however, it was very repressive and dark. He had a forceful personality that was able to pretty much control the minds of whomever he came into contact with. People believed that their roof was supposed to leak because he said it should, for example. It made me think of how we say, “God meant for that (bad thing) to happen,” because a preacher has told us that’s the way the world works.

A woman was crucified on the side of a cliff by this man. Her bloody wings of flesh spread out in gruesome magnificence as she hung there. Religion does indeed crucify women, does it not? The people who participated in this crucifixion did not know they were doing wrong. They were following the religious leader.

They say that Jesus died for our sins. I think I have an inkling of what this means. Jesus was crucified by religion and other world power (government). He allowed it, I believe, so that we might see that religion and other world power is DEATH. To participate in those powers is to sin — ie. participate in something that brings death rather than love.

Not that love can’t be an outcome of someone who is participating in religion. It’s obvious that religion, to a point, can steer people to love, and that there are many loving people who practice religion. But at the point where religion becomes a hollow structure of mind control, well, that’s where the evil starts. And when you are the one leading people into mind-chains, well, woe unto you, right?

It’s okay to question things, even things you’ve been told about God since you were a child. I think God WANTS us to question. In fact, when we ask questions, He ANSWERS them! 😀

I also dreamed of worlds within worlds. When I woke up, I Googled, “world within worlds,” and found this article about theosophy. A lot of what I read rang true. I had already been imagining something very similar. This was like confirmation that my hunch could actually be true.

The thing is, matter vibrates at different frequencies. So you can have matter vibrating at a high frequency that you can’t see around you and matter that is vibrating at a low frequency that you can’t see around you as well. The article describes our visible world as an “octave on an endless scale.” So it’s possible that there are entities going about their daily lives in the same physical space we are in — we just can’t perceive them.

Unless you are born with superpowers, that is.

My sons have superpowers, as do many other people who have been labeled intuitive, psychic or schizophrenic. If this theory is true, they were born with senses that can perceive matter vibrating at frequencies that elude most other people.

It’s kinda scary to think of all this, and really cool at the same time.

I’m also starting to realize just how involved God is in my everyday life. I’m perceiving him in my reality more and more, and I simply love it. I asked him a question about some things Jesus said about the Kingdom of God the other night, and that very night he gave me a dream and woke me up at 4:44 right in the thick of it so I would remember His answer!

This is the type of thing that makes life truly joyful. It is the treasure in the field that makes you not care about owning anything else but that treasure.