Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
When you consider the range and complexity of ideas presented through all the world's religions, it is only natural that there will be conflicts and opposing ideas. I don't see why that is something to be avoided. The religions are often in conflict with each other and almost all of them are willing to admit it.
What is so hard about admitting that the Cross is something that is diametrically opposed to the other world's religions? I just don't see the purpose in trying to explain this inherent tension...
Shoeshineboy,
Let me tell you about the cross that you don't know. First the problem, then the solution.
Man's
original sin was
judgment. That is the only sin a pure and innocent soul can commit. The immediate, inevitable, and unavoidable consequences of judgment is separation from the object of your judgment, and from God to the degree that the Creator is also part of that which you have judged. Judgements have a way of expanding and multiplying until separation from god becomes a real and monumental problem. A being in separation is unconscious of his Source, and therefore he will endlessly persue the task of creating himself.
Uniformly without exception, the separations of man have occured because man drifted away from God, the Source of love and reality, through his devotion to private fiction and ego projections. Man's headlong persuit of personal agendas and invented realities caused him to forget the love that he really is.
Without the long forgetfulness of separation, and the many densities of useless identity which result from it, a soul could never be led astray and would never concieve of misdeeds. What the world calls sin is the long term, tragic derivation of the real sin -- which is judgment and its resulting separation from God, reality, and brotherhood.
All misdeeds are sad events. However, to consider them to be the
real sin only furthers the problem. If man is to live together in brotherhood, immorality cannot be condoned. Yet, to condemn immorality only feeds into the vicious cycle of judgment.
This has been man's dilemma! If all judgment had ceased and the spirit of forgiveness had prevailed, man would have returned to his innocence by grace, and Jesus intercession would not have been necessary.
When Jesus came to earth 2000 years ago, he was not essentially different from us in potential, except that he had never know separation from his Creator...whom he lovingly called Father. And he had never known himself as anything but the love that he was, nor had he ever created fictions about himself.
You see, the point of his sacrifice on the cross does not lie so much in the fact that he died for us as that he
separated for us. Death meant nothing to Jesus, because he was utterly assured of his immortality and the pain of death could have been cancelled in a moment by his love.
His gift to mankind was the separation that he chose to experience.
Jesus separated as an act of love, so that love could then be united even with the state of separation. The long estrangement from God could then be ended. You see, many have died for us. Many have given their lives for a brother, for freedom, or for mankind in honor of cherished principles. Countless people have suffered for us.
But no one else separated for us! Jesus separated in the spirit of love, that love might be joined even with separation, and thereby the fact of separation would be reduced to mere illusion.
Yet while we walk around all day thinking we are separated and feeling fine about that, it was different for Jesus. He had never been separated. The event of his separation was the most extreme grief he had ever known in his entire existence. While on the cross, he momentarily experienced full release from his Father as he recieved to himself all the separations of the world.
Now, by the law of grace, all you have to do is accept the fact that
you are love and return to the Father. You see, Shoeshineboy, separation -- though essentially an illusion -- was once a very real problem. Now it is only an illusion that anyone may end by picking up the sword of truth and ripping the veil.
Here again is the alchemy of the cross:
The miracle evoked by Jesus death was the cancellation of separation
by equating it with love instead of with judgment.
The miracle of his resurrection was not so much that his body was made whole again
as that man was made whole with God, and separation was transmuted to an illusion.
This transfiguration is now available to anyone who will accepts the love that he is. Let me rephrase that: This transfiguration is now available to you, Shoeshineboy, when you accept the love that you ARE. You may perpetuate the illusion if you choose, or you may accept the gift.
This was The Gift, given freely to anyone who wishes to regard the change of potential which now exists for mankind. Jesus does not care if anyone knows who gave the gift. He would rather the gift be promoted than he, the giver. It is sad that the gift has been shunned because it was poorly understood, or because the giver was thrust upon them.
Once again, here is the gift: The illusion that you are separated from God will be transmuted when you accept the love that you are. This was freely and unconditionally given to all mankind without reservations. The giver is not even mentioned in this equation. It is all about YOU, accepting the fact that YOU ARE LOVE!
Personal salvation, in the way it is often regarded today, was not claimed by Jesus, nor taught by his disciples. A man is saved by his own return, not by the fact that Jesus made it possible! It was a man's choice to judge, to separate, and to miscreate himself with fictions. Now, it is for each one to seek his own return. Jesus knows that in savoring the blessing of the gift, the reciever will eventually seek out the giver.
The problem with the human condition which provoked the necessity of his gift is that free will had been virtually destroyed by the dysfunctional cycle of judgment into which man had fallen. In every generation, a few would return to their home, as the love that they were...but for most of mankind this was not possible. Free will is always a critical point of redemption or peril.
What Jesus did for mankind was to make it possible for him to go HOME, to return to a knowledge of the love that he is, and to restore a personal relationship with one's Creator. Separation is now an illusion that can be penetrated by anyone who seeks to know the truth.
Here is an interesting fact: No one can
evolve to perfection! That's not what reincarnation is about. Perfection is the
original state to which we must return! There is no greater gift that you can give to another than that of self realization. Even when we realize who we are, we can and do continue to remanifest/reincarnate infinitely...but it is according to our own purpose, our own love, and our own place of service and learning. It's one life, just a very long one with many chapters.
"HOME" is found inside you at the center of a magnetic vortex near your heart. Inside there, you will find yourself as the love that you are, pure, and totally innocent. And it is on the door of this home that Jesus said: "Knock, and it will be opened to you".
Johnnyk