Can We Escape Our Past?

 We are all, in a way, immigrants from the past. --- God, A Biography

I just started reading this book this morning , and this quote stuck out to my mind. That's an interesting thought that he explains well. He uses the example of someone raised in extreme wealth, and as adult gives away his. his wealth. He still has his history of being raised in luxury and cannot erase it, for.it affects everything he does.

He also asserts that even though the West has turned considerably away from Christianity and Judaism, it still affects our points of view and our values. You can see it when you visit another country that is different and somehow also has strains of a different history showing up currently.

I was thinking of my life my particular life. It has been a mixed bag of positive and negatives, growing up and along the way. All of it was my teacher. If you read my recent book, "The Book of my Life, I Wouldn't Believe It Either If I Hadn't Lived It," you know all the gory details.

But I can see how I'm an immigrant from that past. I have carried on some of the positive traits that were ingrained to me in my childhood, and I have endeavored to not incorporate the negative things in my life, in my relationships, or or in my child rearing. 

Yet all of it is carried within me because it's my history, my experience. I can't really escape it, but I don't have to reenact it. 

Some people are like immigrants who come here from a violent and repressive country, but try to make this country into the country they escaped from. 

Some people who had difficult childhoods keep re-enacting it in the here and now, keep imposing their dramas on their children and grandchildren, rather than breaking the chain, beginning a new story.

It is challenging to be an immigrant, whether to choose to leave a country and begin again in a new country, or to choose to leave the family story behind the begin a new story. Either way it takes courage I encourage us all to break the chains of anything negative holding us back, tying us to the past that was dysfunctional, and began a new functional life so that we can be all that we are meant to be. Each of us have gifts within us that we need to give. I know that to be true. Have courage to be an immigrant who lets go of the past and moves into this present day fresh and new and glorious and listening to the highest spirit to guide you into magnificence!

Has the World Gone Crazy?

 In so many ways as we look around, It seems like the world has gone crazy.   But is it any more crazy than it has ever been?

My minor was in history, and I frequently read historical things because it is one of my interests. It seems like humanity has always been struggling to find sanity.  Many many bizarre things Have happened throughout the whole course of history. 

And yet it seems to me that the vast majority of people have just been trying to live a life the best they can. It is the minority on the fringes that create the craziness and the many many problems.

 However, people seem to get caught up in other people's craziness. In almost every part of the world, some person has called out for killing some other people and got an otherwise normal group of people all riled up, and who then went out and killed people with rocks, clubs, machetes, catapults, swords, bullets, bombs, and words, mostly shouted in slogans - in other words with whatever weapon they happen to have at that moment of human development.

A group frenzy is hard to quell. Perhaps we humans have a fatal flaw We allow, or cannot resist, someone else's shouting to engage our emotions We then do things we would not normally do, and are later ashamed of.

Standing at perhaps another tipping point of history , it might serve us well to ask how can we protect ourselves from being part of someone else's frenzy and doing things that are not good for other humans including ourselves actually? How can we refuse getting swamped by our emotional brain and somehow stay in our critical thinking part of our brain? How can we  refuse to get caught up in someone else's battle  cry and slogans and craziness?  

 Is it possible for us to stand strong, clear, and sane in the midst of other people's emotional haranguing? I think it's important for us to take charge of ourselves and do all we can not to get cut up.  If we can somehow remain sane, history will look back on this time and salute and celebrate those who had the courage to hold  the line and not let things fall apart.

Words Silenced for 1600 Years

 The resurrection is different. It is real, it stands firm. It is revelation of what is, a transformation of things, a transition into newness. --- The Treatise on Resurrection

This is quote is from another one of the writings in the Nag Hammadi Library.

This reminds me of writings I've shared here  at Easter time. Things are made new in the spring time. Seeds sprout and become beautiful flowers. Caterpillars in cocoons dissolve and reform as a butterfly and come out in their glory. Dead looking trees suddenly have green leaves sprouting all over.   So I agree, yes, resurrection is real. I can see it in our world.

I also see it in our own lives at all levels. Our bodies are making new cells everyday. Scrapes and cuts and bruises are healing and disappear as if they were never there. The foods we eat somehow magically transform themselves into muscle and bone and hair and skin and everything that our body is. Newness is everywhere. 

 I also see newness in my emotions, and my understanding, in my intellectual abilities et cetera. I'm certainly not the same person that I was when I was a child, for I am so much more. I have learned and done and been in so many places, so many things have happened Newness is around every corner.

I have had spiritual experiences that have proven to me that my spirit or soul is here, but is not locked into my body.  it is rhe eternal part. I also know, with a near death and life after life experiences, that we all continue after death of our bodies. We all are accountable for what we do in this life, with the gift of life on earth.

I one way, I could say this whole thing is a resurrection experience There are clues everywhere. Just start looking for them And you will find them

PS—I am continually excited about reading words that Christians read and honored and discussed and argued over in the 1st - 4th centuries and have not been available until recently for us. It is exciting to hear the voices that have been shuttered by people afraid of hearing them so very long ago. It appears that the shuttering was very profound beginning in the 4th century although some of it happened earlier. So just imagine we can now read words that have not been read for 1600 years.

The Gospel of Truth

 Steady the feet of those who stumble and extend your hands to the sick. Feed the hungry and give rest to the weary. Awaken those who wish to arise and rouse those who sleep, for you embody vigorous understanding. If what is strong acts like this, it becomes even stronger. --- The Gospel of Truth

The Gospel of Truth is another one of the Gosoels in the Nag Hammadi library. I find it quite fascinating The above quote is one of many that touch my soul. It calls us to do the things Jesus taught, and at the same time it says doing these things makes us stronger.

The side effect of becoming stronger by caring for others is something of a new idea to me. I've thought of it as making my faith stronger, making me want to do more good in the world, but the author of the Gospel of Truth says it makes us stronger. Seems like that's a wonderful benefit of being a good person. I can see the converse. Being a bad person and not doing good makes us weaker in spirit and in body.

I suggest that we do those wonderful things and allow ourselves to become stronger and make this world a better place at the same time.

The Secret Book of James

 Understand what the great light is. The Father does not need me. A father does not need a son, but it is the son who needs the father. --- The Secret Book of James

 The Secret Book of James comes from the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945 in Egypt. In the year 367CE Athanasius sent out an Easter letter declaring there were 27 books to be read as sacred.(the first known list of what ended up to be the New Testament) Other books were destroyed, but at least some monks hid the other books for safe keeping. Some have been found including the find in 1945. Because of this we now can read books that were quoted by some of the early fathers, but we didn't have copies of. I thought I would share bits of it along the way with you.

One thing is that we have discovered is that for sure early Christianity had a lot of diversity. There was deep thinking in all sorts of directions.  For me it's exciting to go back to those days and read what was being written and circulated by the early Christian thinkers.

The quote above brings something of a new idea. God doesn't need us, we need God.  Since it is Jesus speaking, he needs God, God doesn't need him -  now there's an interesting twist! 

Another quote reminds me of something from our New Testament. "Become better than I. Be like the child of the Holy Spirit.” That reminds me of when Jesus said greater things than this shall you do. I see those statements as related. It is somewhat startling to phrase it this way - become better than I. Although many of us strive to be as Christ-like as possible, I don't imagine any of us thinks we've come better than Christ. I guess that's an aspirational goal flung at us.

I hope you will think about these things and join me in a little romp through these ancient books and letters.

Where can we find the soul?

 Hildegard of Bingen In the 12th century said that the soul is not in the body. The body is in the soul.

This reminds me a little bit About Plato. He hypothesized that reality had 2 aspects - the physical world and the unchanging realm of perfect forms, and the soul belonged to the second realm, and that's why he knew or  hypothesized that the soul would survive death and even existed before birth.

It also leads me to think about the new neurology that says the brain may be more of a receiver and the mind or soul or consciousness is sending thoughts to it and directing it.

All the current information about near death experiences also comes to mind in relation to all this.

There are intriguing thoughts to explore here. I am fairly certain that our essence, our soul, existed before we were born. I actually started thinking about this when my children were born. They were so different right from the very 1st moments of their lives here in earth. 

 I have come to believe that earth is a school for our souls to have experiences, to develop, and to grow. I am fairly certain the main broad outlines we decided before coming to earth. I am also certain that our soul continues after we leave our body to earth. If you have read my latest book you know the story about how my certainty was born.

So I am somewhat aligned with Plato then. I'm also aligned with Hildegard. And I am convinced by the life after life, near death experiences, at least some of them. I don't really know enough about neurology to know if the new model is accurate, but it does seem To hold merit.

It seems to me we are responsible to learn our life lessons. We are here with a purpose You have a purpose, or purposes, as have I. Let's strive to do our best with the raw material of this life. Turn darkness into light. 

New Bible

  If you are a student of history, you know that  Athanasius the 4th century ordered all books he didn't think should be read to be destroyed. It seemed they pretty much had been destroyed, but in 1945 in Egypt, near the town of Nag Hammadi, many of them were found hidden in buried jars. It was thought that monks from a nearby monastaery likely buried them to save them from the destroy order. It was known that they had existed at one time because early writers mentioned them or quoted from them.

 We knew there was much diversity of thought in early Christianity, but now we had writings that were outside of the Canon that told the story Of the great variety of early Christian thought.

Many of the manuscripts Did not speak so much from the voice of a believer, but more from the voice of a seeker of God. One of them, the Gospel of Thomas ,had 114 sayings of Jesus, half of which were in the current New Testament, and half of them were new to us.

I mention this to point out that Christianity is not just one stream. There are and have been many ways to look at Jesus and what became Christianity. There are many brilliant thinkers along the way and some very messed up thinkers. I think a dialog today would be healthy instead of different groups sort of standing in their corner and shouting we're right and you're wrong Theere is another way to look at it, many other ways in fact.