BOOK CLUB: WEEK TWO

Delving into The Mystic Jesus

Welcome back to the Book Club!

Here are the second set of pages of Chapter One of THE MYSTIC JESUS: The Mind of Love.

On these pages I discuss the path of the modern seeker and how the life of Jesus, from his birth to his crucifixion to his resurrection, are a psychological template for a deeper understanding of the human experience. In this time of rebirth—individually and collectively—love is that which corrects past errors and generates new beginnings. The mystic Jesus is an Internal Teacher who can guide the process.

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Enjoy!

The Only Story Ever Told

The life of Jesus is like a hologram that reveals to us the mysteries of the universe. The more we penetrate the mysteries of his life, the more deeply we understand our own. The story of the spirit is the story of the psyche, not only his but also ours. His birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection are not just the stuff of exoteric religion; they are codes and clues and harbingers of a different kind of existence. They are not just metaphors; they are principles that activate a reality that lies beyond this world.

Beyond this world there is a world we want, a world revealed not by the outer eye but by an inner eye. That world is an eternal reality unseen because it is eclipsed, hidden as with a veil by an egoic, fear-based worldview.

The world beyond that veil is a world of endless love, the one ultimate reality, the Mind of God. It isn’t evident because it’s hidden from our view, yet we are the ones who are hiding it. We hide it with the kinds of thoughts we think. We have denied ourselves vision of that world by denying it is there.

The light we seek is not something to be found but something to be chosen, not something we can get but only something we can give. It’s not some other place but rather another realm of perception. It is the same life we are living now, transformed by love.

The opening of the inner eye is not symbolic; it’s what happens when the veil is removed and we can see. My inner eye was opened, if only for a moment, when I looked at Salvator Mundi. I glimpsed another world in all its tenderness and power. It was a world invoked by forgiveness, in which our willingness to bless each other is far stronger than our temptation to blame, and the power of an infinite love casts out the power of fear.

The mystic Jesus casts out fear, thus breaking the chain of evil and returning us to our right minds. In the presence of his love, the fear dissolves. And the spirit is reborn.

Jesus was a man, yes, but he is also a spirit as alive today as he was two thousand years ago. The birth of Jesus as a physical being was the birth of the historical Christ; the advent of divine love into our thinking is the birth of Christ into the world today. He does not appear now as a man but as a state of consciousness, which does not make him any less real. The very concept of reality is transforming as we move further into the twenty-first century, humanity evolving beyond the limited framework of primacy given to external factors at the expense of internal forces. Once we recognize that the world of matter is simply a world of effects, the causes of which lie in consciousness, we begin to pay much more attention to the goings-on of the inner life.

We will not stop war or environmental degradation or world hunger or rampant addiction or any of the stresses that plague us today until we address the inner dynamics—the perversions of heart—that give rise to them. The problem of world hunger, for instance, is not hunger itself; the problem is that the people of the world find it tolerable that a child should starve. There is no dearth of food. There is only a dearth of willingness to put love for our fellow human beings before our acquiescence to a system that in essence doesn’t care if children starve. Global poverty is a symptom, not a cause. Its cause is our collective disconnection from adherence to the principles of a moral cosmos. That Jesus works with us on the level of cause, on the plane of consciousness, does not make him less relevant but even more relevant to the practical concerns of humanity today.

The Second Coming is synonymous with the evolution of humanity into our self-actualized state. The Second Coming isn’t the reappearance of someone who left and will return; it’s a remembrance of what has never left but has been obscured. The mystic Jesus is the Alpha and Omega that always was and always will be. His reappearance in the world means our remembrance of who we are.

How many times have people said to me, “I don’t know who I am,” or “I can’t find a place for myself in this world,” or “I don’t think I even belong here.” The world blinds us to who we are and why we’re here. The world as we know it is not home to the true self, and we cannot find ourselves within its walls. Even at its best it is a rickety, shoddy house compared to the light-filled mansion that exists within.

Yet the point is not to ignore the world or to reject it. We are here to transform it. Our purpose is to become the light that casts out the darkness, to be harbingers of a different world by becoming different people. The more we understand the deeper meaning of events, the more powerful we are at transforming them.

The deeper meaning of any situation is a universal longing for love. All of us long for it; all of us are looking for it. The miracle occurs when we realize we ourselves are here to provide it.

We can see God’s love only when we are willing to express it.We cannot find what we are looking for without realizing who we are. I think of all the years I was struggling so hard to “find God,” not realizing that I would see His love manifest in my own life only when I sought to make it manifest in the lives of others. Any wall we build to keep out others will keep God out of our conscious awareness. The only way to find His love is by giving it away.

The mystical birth of Jesus is the opening of the heart. Just as Mary gave birth to the historical Jesus, the mystic Jesus enters the world through us. He is born any moment that we are willing to give birth to him. He is born again in any moment of unconditional love. This isn’t simply an abstract idea; it’s a practical moment we either do or do not choose.

In every moment we are making a choice, whether we make it consciously or we make it unconsciously. We can either open our heart or close it, and our lives unfold accordingly. In every instant we are generating a thought, and every thought will have an effect.

How often we choose to blame instead of bless, judge instead of accept, take instead of give. And why? Because we were trained to think that way. The ego constantly tempts us to separate ourselves off from the rest of the universe. But the mystic Jesus has the power to override the ego’s dictates, to save us from our chronic temptation to withhold our love. Choosing to align with him, we cocreate with God a different kind of world.

Our power to work miracles lies in our choice to think differently. Choosing forgiveness, choosing to extend our perceptions beyond the level of someone’s guilt, choosing to see ourselves as present in any situation to be the presence of love, we align our minds with the Mind of God and rise above the ego. The thinking of the world is no longer like quicksand that sucks us into it. The vibrations of higher consciousness—that is, thoughts of love—MysticJesus_ make us invulnerable to the chaos that dominates the world. In fact, they make us its transformers.

And that is the miracle. A miracle begins as a shift in our thinking, a change on the causal level of things that then transforms the realm of effects. Even the tiniest candle casts out darkness. “All expressions of love are maximal”* (T-3), like a tincture of God’s power that makes all the difference. Even the tiniest thought of forgiveness, of mercy, of love, can change the trajectory of our lives.

I learned at a seminar years ago a technique that I’ve passed on to many others. We were told to look at people and silently say to ourselves, “The love in me salutes the love in you.” How often I’ve been in situations where I’ve done that and seen extraordinary changes. For all minds are joined. The vast majority of data we receive is registered subconsciously. We can feel it when we are being judged, and we can feel it when we are being loved. Our greatest power to effect change begins with our power to think differently. There is no greater preparation for a meeting than to blast the room with love before we get there. It changes the meeting because it changes you. How you show up in life—not only what you do, but who you are—determine in large part the reactions of those around you.

Love is the organizing principle of the universe. Just as the body organically organizes itself, so does the universe when we allow it to. And just as the body has a tremendous capacity to heal itself when something has gone wrong, so does the rest of life.

Miracles are the natural unfoldment of the universe, an expression of the Mind of God as every loving thought is followed by another loving thought. “Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong”* (T-3). What has “gone wrong” is a wrong-minded thought—that is, a loveless one. But God’s universe is like a GPS. As soon as we take a wrong turn, the GPS simply recalculates our path. That recalculation, that return to right-minded thinking when the heart has been closed, is called the Atonement. The world is moving in a dangerous direction because our collective thought patterns are infused with irreverence. This is the century to turn things around. This will be a century of miracles, if we so choose.

As someone whose mind has been purified of all ego thought, Jesus has literally become the Atonement. In calling on him we are reaching for divine correction: the thought, the feeling, the situation that will free us from the ego’s grip. He is a portal to a different world because he is a portal to a different kind of thought.

He cannot do for us, however, what he cannot do through us. Without our willingness, the miracle cannot occur. When we are willing to forgive, be merciful, be gentle, be kind, then we are allowing our lives to be channels for his appearance. And when he appears the world is made new. Thinking of ourselves as vessels through which God is trying to express Himself, the birth of Christ begins to make sense on a psychological and emotional level. The light Jesus brings to the world is the light he brings to your world. When we are more compassionate, more forgiving, then our lives begin to change.

So often we’re busy searching for an answer to a problem, unaware that the answer begins with us—with the way we’re speaking to others, thinking of others, or behaving toward others. The solution to whatever problem confronts us is always available within the ethers of an unlimited universe, simply blocked when our hearts are closed. Love in our hearts—and most important, expressed in our behavior—attracts help, respect, and willingness to help us when we need it. When our hearts are closed, we deflect the miracles we desperately need and long for.

I remember years ago when I would sit in a therapist’s office complaining about how hard it was for me to attract support in my office. So much time and money I spent trying to analyze what had happened in my childhood to create the pattern I constantly reenacted. If only even one therapist had thought to ask me, “Can we look at how you behave toward those who are trying to support you? Do you realize that in your pain you close your heart to others? You are responsible for your effects in life. Your childhood is not an excuse; no matter where you got the problem, it’s yours now, and you are responsible for it. No matter what happened in your past, the miracle lies in who you choose to be now.” It wasn’t analysis of the problem that freed me, it was a prayer for a miracle: “Dear God, where I am harsh, please make me gentle.”

How profound that love truly is the Answer. Salvation itself isn’t complicated, and perhaps that’s the reason we so often ignore it. We think it can’t be that easy, that the answers to our problems must surely be more complicated than simply choosing love. Yet “complexity is of the ego”* (T-310). The truth is very simple, really. If a child is hungry, you feed them. Voilà.

Choosing love is not what’s difficult; what’s difficult is getting over our resistance to choosing love. The ego comes up with very complicated reasons why love is rarely the right answer, using the power of our own minds to obscure the obvious. The ego makes strength appear as weakness and weakness appear as strength.

The ego’s thought system is like a consciousness hack, and the mystic Jesus unhacks it. He transforms the world by transforming us. He transforms our attitudes, our nervous systems, and our relationship to others. It is not hyperbole to say that he gives us new life.

From the immaculate conception to the annunciation, from his birth to his family’s flight into Egypt, from his teaching in the temple to his baptism, from his temptation to his transfiguration, from Gethsemane to the crucifixion, from his resurrection to his ascension, the life of Jesus has meaning on both outer and inner planes. Yes, those are stories, but they are also states of awareness. All stages of his life have mystical equivalents. The birth of every child is the birth of God’s love, or the birth of love into the world. The thinking of the world then inevitably violates all of us, leading to pain and despair; that is the meaning of the crucifixion. When we choose to respond with forgiveness, love prevails; that is the meaning of the resurrection. The lesson of the resurrection is that love corrects all things.

That’s not just the story of our lives; in some ways it’s the story of almost every situation. Everyone’s life is different, with unique circumstances and experiences. Yet on another level there is only one story. Every single moment, we’re living out the same one.

The dynamic of the life of Jesus—his birth, his crucifixion, and his resurrection—is a template for a deeper understanding of the human experience. As we recognize the workings of those dynamics, we’re empowered to claim the miracle of resurrection in our own lives. In him it is already done. The power of the ego has been overcome in one; therefore his overcoming is available to all. The point is not to share the crucifixion of Jesus, but to share in his resurrection.

Understanding the mystical journey makes it easier, quicker, more miraculous.

Mary’s Love

Just as the figures in a dream are various aspects of who we are, so are the figures in scripture. The mystical Mary represents the human heart, the receptive feminine aspect of the psyche.

Humanity is pregnant with a new phase of its history, and for most of us it’s a difficult pregnancy. Every life is a microcosm of the evolutionary changes occurring in the world. We’re experiencing rebirth as individuals as well as the rebirth of human civilization. We’re either headed for a death spiral, or else we are preparing for something new. That something new will not emerge just from science or politics; it will emerge from