You think that if you can somehow learn the most significant truth, that you can become whole, that you will become fully realized. You think that if you can somehow see the greatest spiritual reality you will then be able to overcome and rise above, to transcend your mundane and your damaged soul, and spread your spiritual wings and fly off to a state of perfect oneness with all things.

    The problem with this notion is that you already have seen the greatest spiritual reality, and you have already known the most significant truth (in fact you are constantly seeing it), and you are still the same troubled, stalled, dysfunctional human you have always been. No, chances are you are even worse off now than you were before.

    The greatest spiritual reality and the most significant truth are shouting at you, from the colors and textures and sounds and smells and sensations and patterns, of the universe all around you and in you, and you cannot appreciate any but the smallest measure of it all, because there is something broken inside of your consciousness. You do not work properly, and the attainment of more self-originated experience, however profound, will not change that.

    And yet, you say, people have been spiritually transformed. So, how did they become spiritually transformed? What did they do, or know, or see, that changed them? Again, I say, they did nothing to change themselves. We are the problem, and deploying our problematic human being to bring restoration of our dysfunctional humanity is to guarantee that the same human errors will be repeated in our sad lives, but only dressed now in the camouflage of new and different-looking terminology and ideas.

So how do some people experience spiritual restoration?

    The answer lies in the fact that we have been made by a spiritual force underlying everything in the physical universe. And because we have been made by this force, there is logically only two possibilities as concerns our potential for change and realization. We are either already what we were made to be (in our present condition), or else, because this force also made us with the special ability to opt out of harmony with it, and consequently become damaged goods (and we as a species did, somewhere in our past, opt out of harmony with this originating and maintaining spiritual force), then we will somehow need to have a state of harmony with this originating force restored to us in order for us to become fully realized.

    And here is where we come to understand why most of our previous efforts at becoming whole, and becoming realized souls, have failed miserably. We have become, just because we have become bereft of our natural harmony with this originating spiritual force underlying our physical existence, uncomfortable facing the facts of our present disharmonious state of existence, and equally predisposed to rely upon our damaged psyches for the solutions to our worsening condition.

    In fact, some of us even come to a point of hatching the delusional idea that we are not made by that spiritual force, and that nothing has been made by that spiritual force, and that therefore, we are already all that we can ever be. Denial of the problem is without a doubt a much easier road to travel, than is the scary road of humbly dealing with the reality of our problems, in the hope that the spiritual force that made us will be willing and able to remake us, to restore us.

    So, we have been in denial of our state of disharmony with the spiritual force expressing itself as our human existence, and we have thus turned to ourselves as the source of the resources needed to restore the life that we have lost as a result of our broken harmony with this spiritual source.

    In as much as we are turning to ourselves, out of fear of the truth of our true state of disharmony, we are also afraid to receive any aid we might be offered from the spiritual source we are now in a state of disharmony with.

    It is not fear that keeps us from receiving this harmony-restoring aid from our spiritual source however, it is pride. Love can conquer all fear. It won’t conquer pride, because pride is volitional. It is our choice. We don’t choose to be afraid, but we do choose to rely on pride.

    And our pride is wrapped up in every religious path we think to travel. There are no exceptions to this. It is only our responding to spiritual experiences offered to us by this spiritual force underlying our existence that ever produces restoration of harmony and the wholeness and realization generated by that harmony.

    And we are, each of us, carrying much pride. And some of us choose to turn from pride in order to embrace the aid of this spiritual force underlying our human existence, and most of don’t. There is a direct tradeoff for us: we embrace the aid at the expense of our pride, or we cling to our pride at the expense of the aid we need.

    And, of course, most of us will not agree with this particular breakdown of the human condition, because we are still choosing pride over aid. And until and unless we humbly turn to the spiritual force underlying our human existence and plead for its aid in overcoming the disharmony between it and us, we will always cling to our pride, because we blindly think that is all we have left.

    If we do choose to humbly face our disharmonious condition and ask for aid from the spiritual force underlying our existence, then we will be given all of the aid we need. This is guaranteed in as much as this underlying spiritual force is essentially perfect love.

    And we can know this spiritual force is love, even in our disharmonious state, because we see love’s harmonious order, and love’s design of free will, and love’s systematic patterned production of matter, throughout the universe around us.

    Love made us, and love will remake us, if we turn from pride and seek love’s aid. Love made our ability to opt out of harmony with the spiritual force underlying our human existence, and love made a way for us back into the state of harmony we require in order to become whole, and fully realized human beings.

    And this way produced by love is a way that is completely produced by love, by the spiritual force underlying all things. No aspect of this way has been produced by us humans, or originated in our humanity. This is important in as much as any solution originated by humanity would include the errors generated by humanity’s damaged state of harmony.

    This gift from the spiritual force underlying our existence is completely contained in, and fully expressed in the person of Jesus, the full expression of God (another word for the spiritual force underlying all things). That such a solution would have taken form in a particular part of the globe, and within a particular society, should not cause us to reject it unless we are, out of pride, upset that it did not take form in our own part of the globe, and in our own particular culture.

    Jesus is what he is, and there is no reason to reject him other than pride. There is nothing in Jesus (or the biblical account of him) that expresses anything other than love. There is nothing but love’s forgiveness being offered us in Jesus, and only pride would induce us to turn down forgiveness. Only pride would protest that we don’t need it.

    Whether it is intellectual pride (and its many reasons for believing that Jesus could not truly have existed (or truly be what he claimed to be), or cultural pride (and its silly excuses for spurning something wonderful that takes form outside of our own culture), or pride in our own moral condition, or pride in humanity, all pride will only seal our human dysfunction, and our spiritual demise.

    What can you possibly lose by turning and kissing the Son, by embracing Jesus and his sacrifice’s provision of forgiveness of all of your sins? What will you have to give up, except the pride that has left you buried in your own private emotional and spiritual crypt?

    Receiving this aid from the spiritual force underlying your human existence will produce a foundation under you of harmony between you and this spiritual force. And you need this foundation of harmony (this spiritual rebirth) to begin to grow more and more in harmony with this spiritual force.

    When it comes down to it, it is just you and this spiritual force facing each other, waiting to see what direction you will choose for your self. No one else is there, no culture surrounds you, no society, no ideology under girds you, your friends and your family are not present, it is just you and this spiritual force.



    I should also mention that receiving Jesus (whom the Bible refers to rightly as the Way, the Truth, and the Life) does not imply that you do not already have a spiritual path/way, or spiritual truth, or spiritual life. Nor does it mean that your culture, or society does not have these things. You and they do. All humans have spiritual life, and thus every culture’s religion contains much spiritual truth and a spiritual path, and spiritual life, and yet there remains something singular about Jesus.

    The writer of the biblical text known as Hebrews, expresses a concept that applies to every religion. I will quote the entire passage here, so that you may see it in its context, and then I will summarize it for you.

Heb 8:3  For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that this high priest also have somewhat to offer.

Heb 8:4  Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the law;

Heb 8:5  who serve that which is a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses is warned of God when he is about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mount.

Heb 8:6  But now hath he obtained a ministry the more excellent, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises.

Heb 8:7  For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second.

Heb 8:8  For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;

Heb 8:9  Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt; For they continued not in my covenant, And I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

Heb 8:10  For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, And on their heart also will I write them: And I will be to them a God, And they shall be to me a people:

Heb 8:11  And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: For all shall know me, From the least to the greatest of them.

Heb 8:12  For I will be merciful to their iniquities, And their sins will I remember no more.

Heb 8:13  In that he saith, A new covenant he hath made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing away.

    The gist of this rather radical idea is that our religions were a type, a shadow of the restoration that was to come in the gesture of restorative forgiveness by this spiritual force underlying our human existence, known to us as Jesus the messiah. I see in every religion that I have looked into just such symbolic truths, which point to the need for, and the promise of, a spiritual gift of restoration, made by the spiritual force underlying our existence, not by us (Islam is an exception to this, in as much as it developed after the coming of Jesus. Islam is essentially Muhammad's externalization of his conscience's prideful reaction against his own soul's rebellion against the spiritual force underlying his existence. In as much as this is so, Islam has become an institutionalized mockery of Jesus and all he represents. Islam's renowned mistreetment of females is a testament to the distrust of, and disharmony with, and prideful reaction against, the soul, which is the feminine counterpart to the spirit).

    This text goes on to say that each of our religions is incomplete, and that we need a second phase of revelation/insight (or a second covenant), in order to complete what the first spiritual phase/covenant began in us.

    Lastly this text states that receiving forgiveness will promote a highly individuated state of existence in mankind. The text expresses this in terms of; no one will teach his neighbor truths any more, because God will put his truths in their heart by fully restoring their harmony with Him via full forgiveness of their sins.

    Jesus is what every human religion is pointing to. The Muslims have this thing about authority and submission to it, and authority and submission to authority are two very valuable ideas/truths for social creatures such as humans. And Jesus is the way back to harmony with the very source of all good authority, and the source of all healthy trust in good authority (which manifests as sincere submission).

    The Hindus have this thing about the Oneness of all things. And Jesus is the means that the spiritual force underlying all things has provided for us to feel a firm harmonious connection with this Oneness, this underlying spiritual force (and not merely a recognition of this Oneness).

    The Buddhists of course have a thing for the need for the balancing of things.  And things have come to a state of imbalance in mankind because of the disharmony between humans and the spiritual force underlying their existence. And Jesus is the means of restoration of the lost harmony between mankind and this spiritual force.

    The Tao Te Ching has this thing for quiescence being the way to life. Jesus (and the forgiveness we have because of him) is described as being the full embodiment of the rest that God brings us into.

    The Europeans were once a hybrid of shamanistic practices and Greek and Roman Pantheism. Yet they found that Jesus fit there needs wonderfully. Then, they replaced Jesus (as the mediator between them and God) with the Clergy (followed by a resulting dependence upon a collectively agreed upon notion of orthodoxy), so that Jesus was moved out of the picture. When they did this, the European Christians came to have very little to do with Jesus, and correspondingly came to embrace their old hatred of other people’s religious ideas.

    It has thus come to past that much of the rest of the human race now considers Jesus to be associated with the outright rejection of their individual spirituality, and their culture’s spirituality, yet it is in fact merely European Christianity’s rejection, not Jesus’.

    If the European Christians (and their descendants) had held onto Jesus, instead of turning to the clergy, as the mediatory factor in their relationship with God, then they would have been able to love people of other cultures around them, and would have seen the spiritual life present in their respective religions.

    Therefore, it must be said, Christians must come to embrace Jesus as the mediator between them and the spiritual force underlying their human existence just as the rest of the human species must.

    The human species is headed into the dark night of our collective human soul, in which there will be those who attempt to fix our collective human problems with human originated solutions. Among these solutions will be an effort to rid the world of humanities inability to love and respect each others religious and ideological differences by forcing us to accept a homogenized blend of our respective religions. Our religions are unique because we are unique, and our cultures are likewise unique. Uniformity is a bad version of unity. It replaces harmony with conformity, which effectively kills individuation and wholeness.

    Jesus is the antidote for this coming spiritual calamity. Jesus empowers the individual, in as much as they who receive him are directly connected to the spiritual force underlying their own existence. They need no human go-betweens. They need no membership in any social group in order to thrive. They just need Jesus.

    And now I have preached this spiritual truth to you as best as I could.  If you have read through this document to this point you have what you need to make an insightful choice. And yet, in order for you to choose to embrace Jesus and the forgiveness and harmony you get via his sacrifice, you will still need to trade off your pride for love’s aid.

I will leave you now to your choice.