GOOD NEWS: WE HAVE SOME LAST MINUTE CANCELATIONS IN THURSDAY’S SMALL GROUPS CHANNELING CALL WITH ERIK! You can register at the following link: https://withloveandlight.com/shop/category/personal-growth/ This is such an easy and inexpensive way to ask Erik to bring forth deceased loved ones so you can have conversations with them. You can also ask him questions about your career, your health, your spiritual mission, your relationships, and more. General questions about the afterlife, the human experience, etc. are not off the table either. Come join us for the fun. Now for Ashley’s wisdom!

Last week, we established that at least a few religions have some similarities when you don’t take their doctrines so literally. Christianity and Islam are dualistic religions that explain Heaven, Hell, God, and Satan as places and forces outside of themselves. Buddhism explains these forces as internal – Heaven is not a place, it is a state of being – Nirvana. The role of “Satan” is played by the ego – not the ego of psychology which is perceived as a “good” thing because it controls the id and the sub ego – but the ego that we are talking about when we discuss spirituality – the “self” that you perceive. It is this ego and its wants that cause suffering, which would be parallel to “Hell” in the Christian and Islamic mythology. For us to understand this as a complete parallel,  “God” in the Buddhist sense would be the observer of the thoughts, even though Buddhists are not concerned about the afterlife.  We also glossed over a few similarities between science and religious creation stories, which is where we’ll pick back up today!Most religions attribute everything in the universe as the product of a single being – for the Hindus it’s Brahma. For the Christians, it’s God. For the Muslims, it’s Allah. For many pagans, it’s Nature. New Agers know “God” or “Source” as love/light/energy.  God is energy. And interestingly enough, we know that scientifically speaking – everything is made of electrically charged vibrating particles, which is energy.  Ask a Christian if they believe that God is love. Many will say they do. So, if we are to understand that God is Love (and energy) why do people insist that their version of God is a different being from anyone else’s? Are “Allah” and “Yaweh” simply two different words that both mean “God”? And why the need for all of these rule books? Think of them more like guidelines. What is right and what is wrong (and mostly according to the time period in which the rules were written).  Morality is fluid. What was moral 2,000 years ago, or even a hundred or so years ago – slavery for example – is no longer moral today. Morality is subjective to the individual. Like Erik has said, right and wrong as solid concepts do not exist. It’s all in the eye of the beholder…. and as Jesus stated when we heard from him through Jamie – you must first teach a person what is right and what is wrong, before you teach them that there is no right and wrong. Why? Because all hell would break loose if you didn’t!I once had a long conversation with a friend, describing the principles of spirituality to him and how there basically was no “right” way to do it. At the end of the conversation, he said, “But where’s the rulebook? How do you know if you’re living right?” I said, “Who says there’s a rule book?!”  There’s no need for a rule book – it can all be boiled down to one spiritual law – perform every action out of love – or, as God…since God is love. That “Have no other gods before me” commandment suddenly has new meaning when considered in this light. Have no other Gods before “Love.” Also, wanting to be “God” doesn’t seem like such a bad thing if your definition of God is “love”…by that virtue we should all strive to be God, and perhaps we already are… we’ve just forgotten it.

The one law seems simple enough, but it’s very hard to live that way in this madness, as the Hindus call it. The number one obstacle is fear, which is self created, just like suffering. So have faith in God – or otherwise, faith in Love – and all will be ok. I like to think that “Love” was Jesus’ and many other prophets’ message also, they just felt the need to elaborate on it in different ways so the people at the time could come to a greater understanding of it. I think of Jesus as a great spiritual philosopher with a large following whose message was, perhaps, hijacked by the Romans as an opportunity to unite an empire. Historically, it kind of went downhill from there…

Now that I’ve gone off on a completely random tangent, let’s wrap it back around to the Hindus. The Hindus say this is not the first world, nor is it the first universe. There have been and will be many more worlds and universes than there are drops of water in the holy river Ganges. The universes are made by Lord Brahma the Creator, maintained by Lord Vishnu the Preserver and destroyed by Lord Siva. Since the universes must be destroyed before they can be recreated, Lord Siva is called the Destroyer and Re-creator. These three gods are all forms of Supreme One and part of the Supreme One. The Supreme One is behind and beyond all.

Once a world is destroyed, all that is left is water, and Lord Vishnu appears, floating on the leaf of a Banyan tree atop the great serpent Ananta,

which is the story I told last week. The sanskrit word “Ananta” means “without end.” Picking up where I left off –  the unmanned voice was speaking to Vishnu. The voice asked Vishnu to meditate upon his soul, which he did (introspection… like with Buddhism). A thousand petaled lotus emerged from his navel, in which Brahma appeared (yet another manifestation of the same supreme soul, Brahman). It was Brahma who created the entire universe and all that is in it. Lord Siva (also known as Shiva, Maheshwara) the destroyer God is also depicted to have come through Brahma, though he is not considered as a creation of Brahma, but as an equal of Lord Vishnu and Brahma.

Effectually, spirituality teaches the same thing. God is all there is. Love is all there is. Everything is energy, the energy is God/Source. God is everything…. and everything in the universe is just a unique manifestation of God. A creation, yes… but also God itself. God… creating him/her/itself… through us.So Biblically speaking, where is the parallel? How would we define this? The Trinity. God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ.They are all three manifestations of the same supreme soul. God – the universe, the holy spirit – the energy or the Love, and Jesus Christ… the spirit made flesh… us. Yes, the Committee was, of course, correct in their assertion, “We cite your Jesus as an example; to walk the Earth and set an example of generosity and goodwill was a benefit for this soul just as great as will be the benefit to you of this life and then more than that.”In the Bible, Jesus never says that he is the only Son of God. In fact, he never even says that he IS the son of God. He only responds “Yes, it is as you say,” when asked if he is the son of God. He never says he is the ONLY son of God, Jesus only refers to God as his Father. Jesus says, “I and the Father are One.” “He who has seen me, has seen the Father.” “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.” It’s obvious to us now that Jesus is saying he is God, and God is he… just as we know that we all are God, and God is us. Jesus implied that we all were sons and daughters of God – the Bible refers to us all as Children of God many times – that we were JUST LIKE HIM. The only difference is, he knew it,  and humans, as a general rule, have forgotten because we’ve passed through the veil.

Jesus represents “Christ Consciousness” – remembering. He said, “I am the truth, the way, and the life. Follow me.”  He, like the other masters, was here to set an example to us all what our full potential could be. To show us not to act like “sinners” and then beg for forgiveness, but to act like him every waking moment of every day – live as he lives. Be as he is. That’s how you get to “Heaven.” That’s the fundamental misinterpretation, I think. A lot of Christians look at Jesus as though he is an escape route to some other place where all their problems will be magically solved. That we can repent at the last minute and save ourselves…. Indeed, many Christians live their lives just like that.And save ourselves from what? Eternal damnation? By not being as Jesus was (or any of the other masters), we’ve already created a hell on earth. It’s the world you make for yourself when you live from the ego (Satan). He’s whispering in your ear alright, every single moment of every single day as every single selfish thought you’ve ever had.Jer. 17:9, “The mind of mankind is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can even know the depth of their wickedness.” – Clearly this passage is not referring to men, in general, as wicked. It even says, “the MIND of mankind is deceitful.” Buddhists know that the wants of the egoic mind do not bring peace and enlightenment. The ego is deceitful. The ego is desperately wicked. Buddhists seek to destroy the ego by being in control of their thoughts and their emotions, and they use meditation as a tool to do so.And yet I’ve had Christians warn me against meditation, against clearing my mind, because they think that’s how Satan influences you, you silence your mind and he sneaks in – because he’s the “Prince of the Air.” The prince of wicked thoughts. Satan IS the egoic mind. And God is found in the stillness within.Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening for the response.

Many christians  interpret the whole, “God created man in his own image” to mean our physical bodies- and since he created Adam first, it must mean that God is a man. As though God is walking around in Heaven with a penis. Pray tell, what use does a noncorporeal being have for genitalia? God has no gender and no physical body. I seriously doubt there’s a Men’s Room in heaven.  So what does it mean, then, when the Bible says we are created in God’s image?  It means our soul – our consciousness, our self-awareness. That is the non corporeal part of us.  THAT is what God created in his own image.

The Bible says he breathed the breath of life into man in Genesis chapter 1. A body can be alive without a soul. Some would argue that animals are alive without souls. I’m not one of them – Erik has said animals have souls just like you or I. I think they just don’t have egos like we do.

The Bible talks at length about Heaven and the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven, depending on which version you are reading). Genesis actually says that God created the “Heavens” in the plural, so we are to understand that there are multiple meanings to this word, Heaven. I think the Kingdom of God is not only Heaven, but the here and now. In the Gospel of Thomas (of the books that didn’t make it into the Bible), Jesus says, “The Kingdom of Heaven all around you, but you do not see it.” I think this has multiple meanings,  much like a lot of the stuff Jesus said. Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God) refers to situations where two seemingly opposing views are actually both true as a “divine dichotomy.”  Heaven is not a place up in the sky, it’s the here and now – the present, like in Buddhism. But you cannot see it, because you do not perceive it. You have to change the way you think about it. I think it also means, quite literally, that Heaven – the other dimension or spirit world where we go when we die – is also not another place, it’s all around us, we just can’t see it – not all of us anyway – some of us retain more ability to contact the home base than others. We call them mediums.

In Luke, Jesus says says: 20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

This can also be interpreted in many ways – to most Christians, it probably means that you achieve the kingdom of God within when you accept Christ as your savior. But it can also mean that the kingdom of God is within all of us, all the time – it does not come with observation, it is not a physical place, it comes from looking within. The kingdom of God is not a place, it is a state of mind.. a way of living. A state of being. It is within you. Bring it out. This is what Buddhism teaches! Salvation is a choice – not to ask Christ for forgiveness – you are already God – forgive YOURSELF. Make a choice to BE Christ-like.  Choose salvation – choose the truth, the way, and the life.

Honestly, I think this alludes to inner peace. Heaven is all around us, and peace is within us, yet we can’t see it, because we are blinded by our own negative thoughts, which affect our reality.  The way we think influences how we perceive the world around us. And when we let the Satanic ego rule our thoughts, we are condemning ourselves to Hell. It will be all we see. In fact, the Bible says so.

“but whoever rejects the Son will not see life” “They will be punished with everlasting destruction” “…he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”  Never does it say the punishment is death. Whoever rejects Jesus’ way of life will not SEE life… they will see hell – everlasting destruction. All we need to do to see this is look around at the world today.In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “Those who come to understand [these teachings] shall not taste death.”  At first glance, one would think Jesus is teasing at some secret to immortality, to live forever. If you can only figure out what the true meaning of his parables are, you will be immortal. But we already live forever. Our souls are immortal. So what does this mean? Well, how do we “taste” something? We have to eat it.  But… could we eat something without tasting it? Experience the act of eating, but without the sensation of tasting?  We still die… but we won’t experience the sensation of death. Those who come to understand this will not FEAR death.  They won’t taste it. They will understand that they never truly die, they simply leave their bodies behind.

A big part of the Christian mythology is the fall of Lucifer – all of us brought up with a Christian background, or who have at least seen the movie Constantine have been taught about the war in Heaven and how Lucifer rebelled against God and was cast out. But this story is actually never truly mentioned in the Bible.  Lucifer is only mentioned once in the scripture, in a story about the fall of the King of Babylon, and many would argue that it is a translation issue – the world lucifer means light bearer or light bringer in Latin, which was translated from the original Hebrew word “heyal,” which means “morning star,” and when that story was translated from Latin to English, they kept the word lucifer as a name rather than literally translating it to English.

Many biblical teachers have decided that this story of lucifer is an analogy for Satan, who Jesus says he saw “fall from Heaven like lightning” somewhere in Revelations of the New Testament – but Jesus doesn’t say when, whether it was before the creation or after, or some time in the future. Satan was first mentioned in the Old Testament as an angel tasked by God to tempt men in order to prove their righteousness, who first shows up in Job.

So Satan was an angel – a being of light – who fell from Heaven and now tempts men to prove their righteousness. And we are all beings of light. We all make that journey, from Heaven to the earthly plane where our “righteousness” is in question, if not by anyone but ourselves.

How can we be evil if we are all, inherently, a being of light?  Neale Donald Walsch’s parable of the little soul and the sun is the perfect explanation of this. Before we incarnate into this plane, some of us will agree to play the bad guy, no matter how awful it may seem for all parties involved.  When you get down to it, isn’t that what the story of Satan’s all about? A being of light, who comes to earth to play the role of the bad guy so people must choose good or evil? Jesus teaches on the positive end of the spectrum. Satan assumes the negative role. There we have the yin and yang again. Western religion sees this as a struggle. Eastern religion defines it as a balance. Two perspectives of the same thing.

In Genesis Chapter 2 comes the story of Adam and Eve – a separate story from creation that uses the same characters. As I mentioned earlier, that’s an analogy for the soul leaving the spirit realm – Eden. God told Adam and Eve that to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil meant that they would surely die. The serpent in the Garden tempted Eve and said, ‘No no no… you will not die.”

The Bible never explicitly says the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Satan (or lucifer, for that matter) – it was the Q’uran that did that, and some of the Gnostic texts.This is an example of modern Christian interpretations pulling from other similar religions to fill the gaps This has gone on throughout time, even before the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, which are what most Christians will point to as a sign of the Bible’s infallibility since the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls are pretty much the same.

The symbology of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is interesting though. Christianity and Islam assign the serpent’s image as evil, but it was worshipped and revered in many other religions, which, coincidentally, tend to be cyclical rather than linear like Christianity and Islam. Cyclical religions like the Maya, Hindusm, Astrology (though it’s not necessarily a religion), tend to see the world more accurately as it really is – they view the universe as repeating cycles of creation and destruction and then more creation – the scientific theory that the universe expands (Big Bang, creation) and then contracts – the breathing in and out of God.  Christianity and Islam take a more linear view – the way reality looks from within the Illusion. From within the illusion, we perceive good and evil as external forces acting upon us – a constant struggle, just like in Christian and Muslim mythology. From outside the illusion, we recognize that good and evil are in an internal balance, and we understand that they serve a purpose – like most eastern religions teach. Is it also interested that “good” is just “God” with another O, and “Evil” is “Live” only, backward?

In some symbologies, the serpent represents duality itself and in others it represents knowledge and enlightenment – so for the serpent to give Adam and Eve the apple – the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, so that they can experience it, and have the ability to choose good – makes a lot of sense. It sets events in motion that allow humanity the ability to choose the salvation that Jesus offers us – by showing us the  way, the truth and the life –  over our Satanic ego. God said that Adam and Eve would surely die if they ate the fruit of the tree – and die they will. A physical death from the body that they incarnate into.  The serpent says, “No, you will not die.” The serpent is correct, also, for we never truly cease to exist. Our soul lives on.

If you have some spare time, take a good read of the symbology of the serpent and all that it means in various religions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(symbolism)

Also, as you read it, keep in mind that Satan is often referred to in the New Testament as the serpent and dragon. You’ll see that the serpent and the dragon often times represent god-like qualities in other religions. So if God is good and good is God… but the Serpent/Dragon can also represents aspects of God…then Satan is also God? That’s right – because God is all there is. Satan is a creation of God, sent by God to teach us that which we are not. But Satan seems so destructive – only from inside the illusion. Yet in the Hindu religion, everything is an expression of the supreme soul – even Siva (Shiva) the destroyer – he serves his purpose in the balance – creating destruction so that we can be created yet again. Resurrection. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. Even the Bible discusses the destruction of Satan’s army and the Antichrist, which is a manifestation of Satan. Even in the Q’rran, it’s still Jesus who slays him, not Muhammad. Jesus is Christ Consciousness. Christ Consciousness destroys the Antichrist – the opposite of Christ Consciousness, which is a manifestation of the Ego.

Most Christians can’t give you a straight answer as to why God allows evil to exist – why God doesn’t just destroy Satan. Why did God even create him in the first place if God is all knowing and knew what would happen? What’s the point of this whole charade?  This is why. We have already discussed the duality of the God vs. Satan/Good vs. Evil paradigm.  God is you – your spirit, your soul and Satan – in most instances, represents the ego. This forms the yin and the yang – the balance within the illusion of duality.  We would not know what it meant to be good if we could not first experience evil. That’s why Adam and Eve needed to eat the apple and why Satan had to fall from Heaven – why we had to forget who we were and why some spirits choose to play the villain – to allow these experiences, this evolution, the choice for salvation, to occur.

God doesn’t need to destroy evil, because evil does not truly exist! We only think it does – in fact, we NEED to think it does in order for us to choose good.

God doesn’t send souls to hell, souls send themselves to hell. But hell isn’t a place either – it’s also a state of being, a state of suffering. Just like Heaven. And we all know that occurs within us gets reflected back to us on the outside – we create hell around us. Change your thoughts, change your world. BE the change that you want to see in the world.

The mystic undertones of all religions intertwine with one another. Serpents tend to show up in a lot of Shamanic symbology as well as Egyptian mythology, Mayan mythology, Native American Mythology, Greek Mythology and more. The Old Testament, which has its roots in Judaism, as well as the New Testament which began in Rome, have both evolved a lot throughout time, incorporating elements from various other religious teachings – we’ve already examined the similarities between Islam and Christianity. The two came out of the same region, it makes sense that they’d be similar. The story of Set in Egyptian mythology is also very similar to the story of Satan. Egypt was also pretty close to the middle east and undoubtedly had some influence on the Judaic and Islamic religion as well.

When the Roman Emperor Constantine and his descendents put the Bible together at Nicea, they were cobbling together bits and pieces of a still-evolving religion that was rooted in mysticism. The Roman influence is what drives the modern-day interpretations. The Romans are solely responsible for the New Testament, which was created a hundred years or more AFTER Jesus’ death. You can’t rely on a single interpretation of the scriptures found within, because they were all written by different people with different intentions, revised by different people, reinterpreted, given new connotations and meanings – and many of them have intended multiple meanings. People have been trying to make sense of it all ever since! You can find all of the details about the history behind the Bible on your friendly internet browser in wikipedia.  Unless, of course, you think like my boss who said, “Wikipedia is not the Bible, Ashley. You can’t believe everything you read in there.”

Jesus (from Elisa’s interview): “Back in the day that it was written, it was considered very enlightening, but over time, people have outgrown it. The morals are still true, but the stories they weave around them are being taken too literally when in truth they are written by humans with personal perspectives or personal opinions.”