How can one talk about Jesus without:
A.) sounding like a fanatic or
B.) pushing a religious agenda?
This is what I have been grappling with as my love, yes LOVE, for Jesus comes in stronger and stronger.
So let me clear the air-- I was raised largely without religion, without a concept of dogma and church. We were raised in a loving home with a family who allowed us to pursue "religion" on our own terms. This seeming lack was a beautiful gift allowing my relationship to God and my innate curiosity to lead to me to MY path, not one that was prescribed nor one I was chastised for not keeping.
I explored Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism with equal zeal. Picking and choosing the aspects that made the most sense to me. I was as comfortable in a church as I was playing on the 2 acres of Louisiana swamp we called home-- feeling God in both locations equally! What I found was in nature, I could connect, feel and ponder without anyone I telling me I was wrong.
After a couple of years in a Baptist school in Baton Rouge and being punished (detention, scolding and calls home to parents) for not believing what I was told to believe, I found "religion" to be a degradation of what I felt in my own heart. I turned from organized religion and flitted my way into my own brand of spirituality.
So when Jesus came to me in 2005, asking that we have a conversation, I told him I wasn't one of "His" and he should look elsewhere. At that point in my burgeoning psychic career, I was receiving guidance from Angels, my own Spirit Guides and Teachers I wasn't savvy yet enough to identify who was who. Yet when Mary Magdalene showed up, bringing Jesus with her, it was my first experience working with Ascended Masters -- beneficent beings who are master teachers dedicated to enlightening humanity.
I told them both in fact to go away... sure that a heathen child such as myself couldn't possibly be who they were looking for. They both persisted, Mary providing information that she still insists will be a book and Jesus with a loving and gentle presence I have come to rely on.
Last year, my work with Him began to take on more of a mentorship as he began teaching me some of the more estoeric teachings of the Essene tradition. I can recall past lives I worked with him closely and find his guidance to be of the utmost benefit in my spiritual path. Going through grief of my own, I relied heavily on him... to the point of near co-dependence! Ha! In calling to him to soothe my grief, and protect my heart, I lost my own inner strength... I became dependent and needy.
I again asked him to step back, which he did with great respect, allowing me to return in my own time. The year since has been one of warrior like insights and healing work-- powerful, majestic and sword yielding as I overcame the grief of losing my Gram & my child within a month.
As a gentle wind, he appeared this spring, asking if our work could resume. He expressed his pride in my reclamation of my inner strength and suggested that he may simply augment rather than replace it. Wow-- this I was not prepared for! What Divine Love, patience, and grace he allowed me to find on my own as he gently allowed my journey to return to him.
It was then that I would hear myself exclaiming to clients: "Yes, but do you really know the real Jesus?!?" How could I temper my overjoyed experience with him without the gush of dogma rushing in? It is still a question I try and balance but I know him to be kind, generous, ever loving and so very wise.
Here's a bit of what he's taught me:
- He wishes to appear as hippie brother rather than dying man on a cross ("you know, like guy next to you at a Phish concert")
- He is funny as all heck and amazingly detached from "that thing that happened back there"
- He never takes himself too seriously, so we should all just relax a bit and let ego move aside
- Women are the teachers of faith... our connection to God/Goddess/Source
- There is no creation without the work of the Sacred Masculine and Divine Feminine, "without life form is empty." It is up to man to create form and forge reality and it is the gift of the women to breathe life into it to allow it a place on this earth.
- Jesus was a shaman! he was healer and worked with the invisible energies to benefit his community -- yup, I still want to make it a bumper sticker
- Death was meant to be a most joyous act, a celebratory return to God not one filled with fear and anxiety
- Those sincere souls wishing to find him should practice cultivating a personal relationship with him through meditation, prayer and even channeling, rather than seeking it in the Bible or church
I know him as Brother and am grateful for those moments he does gift me with. He appears often for clients in session and I try my best to represent him well. I love him like I do no other and feel lifted by him in every waking moment-- this is done by my choosing, and his grace, without the need for any church, book, or intermediary.
How does your relationship with Jesus unfold?
Here's one song I can always feel him in...