Excerpt: Jesus

Excerpt: Jesus

“What lies behind us and what lies before us, is of little value beside what lies within us.”

Excerpt from the Preface 

 

“How This Book Came to be Written…”

 

The Lost Years of JesusWelcome. You have embarked on an exciting new journey, a journey through the mysteries of our past and the promise of our future. In the context of this journey, we will be traveling through many different civilizations, sampling from the perennial wisdom of masters who have walked this planet in the past, and whose influence is still with us today. We will be hearing the stories of Jesus’ “lost years” as he passed through the many different lands whose teachings offered him wisdom. We will learn how his birth was planned by a spiritual hierarchy from beyond this world, and was supported by physical men and women who were members of many mystical disciplines. His birth had been prophesied by at least four separate Orders, and had been awaited for over 500 years. They had hoped that Jesus would be the central catalyst to lift world consciousness, and that his light would sustain the world in a time of impending darkness as the Age of Pisces rushed in.

You are about to enter the fascinating world of Hermetics, the secret language-code of the Cosmos, and discover the hidden links between the Ancients and true mystical Christianity. You will begin to enter the world of the true Initiate, one who is trained in the language codes of Creation itself, discovering the deeper meanings behind the cross, the Trinity, the ankh, the Tree of Life, the phoenix, and the reason that Jesus used light as one of his most powerful metaphors. You will also learn why he wore white, what his true mission was, and why he incarnated amidst two of the most repressive cultures on Earth – the Jews and the Romans.

 

How the Last Became the First

The Ahkh of Eternal LifeBut before we begin I would like to share a bit of my story with you and how I came to write this book, for I had never intended to do so. As a teacher of the Mysteries and an international speaker, I had come off the road to write a book on world prophecy. But in the midst of it I found myself backing up. I realized that my readers needed a better foundation for the many startling and miraculous events that I had uncovered, and to understand how I could interpret these signs and symbols, and this led me to explain how I had come from a simple Christian perspective into a broader knowledge of the Mysteries.

This meant writing a second book that I called Decoding the Mysteries of the Ages. It was going wonderfully, but I realized a full 600 pages into that profound volume, that my section on Jesus had grown from three chapters to seven. In fact, it was over 200 pages long! It slowly dawned on me that I had begun to write a book on Jesus as well, but I resisted that thought with all my might. I was already a thousand pages and two books further from where I had begun, so that was the last thing that I wanted to do.

In fact, if I am honest, there are many other reasons that I resisted a book on Jesus. Coming from a fundamentalist Christian family in the Deep South who had used the teachings of the Bible to cause division, heartache and separation, there was a part me that was thoroughly sick of the entire conversation about Jesus. I had merely included him in my second book because I felt that he was pivotal to revealing how so many beautiful teachings had been perverted by the patriarchy and created so much damage in the world. Furthermore, I had studied his hidden teachings in the “lost books” of the Bible and I wanted to illuminate that. And I also knew some of the history of his travels to other lands, and if I was going to talk about Jesus, I just wanted to set the record straight.

Jesus healing with LightLet me be clear about this. It was not that I didn’t love and honor Jesus in every way; it was just that as a child and an adult I had seen the enormous hypocrisy in the history and teachings of the Church who taught shame and blame, damnation and judgment to everyone in his name. No, I wanted none of that, and furthermore the last thing I wanted was to preach to anyone else about Jesus. The Course in Miracles tells us there are two great forces in the world; the power of love and the power of fear, and from what I saw, the Christianity of my childhood peddled the wares of fear.

That was not my path. The Jesus I knew was immensely loving, totally forgiving, and far above the preachers on television that seemed to be masters of manipulation and overly interested in everyone else’s money. Furthermore, I knew how proselytizing had driven me away from both formal religion and my family, and I saw the pain it had caused others as well. I felt that all souls have the right to follow whatever path they choose, and if it is a path with heart and kindness, then whatever rituals we dress it up with are just fine with me.

No, I did not really want to write a book about Jesus, let alone the series of books that kept filling my head whenever I lay down at night in my bed to sleep, but over time it became clearer and clearer that Jesus and the spiritual hierarchy had a different idea altogether.

 

A Different Kettle of Fish

It may help at this point if I tell you something about my own path, for it had always been different from my family’s. As a child I had experienced many clairvoyant “episodes” from communicating with the animals, to seeing fairies and devas in the forest. I chronicle these incredible experiences in my first book Dialogues with the Angels. When I looked at people I would sometimes see auras, or actual images of their past or future, and many times I would glimpse them as they had been in other lives. I knew what these things were, of course, just like I knew that we all live many lives and that an unseen group of spirit guides walks with each of us everyday.

Then sometime around the age of eight, I began to be visited by angels. These were ethereal looking beings of translucence who would sometimes appear in the forest when I was playing. They were always kind and communicated telepathically. Sometimes I would even sense them when I was kneeling by my bed to pray at night, like guardian angels. And then, about the age of twelve, they came to walk with me beneath the stars, counseling me to remember compassion as the keys to a more forgiving life.

But except for my somewhat mystical mother, who was still a fully-committed traditional Christian, there was no one who seemed to understand these mysteries. By twelve or thirteen I began to search for books on these subjects, but as you may remember such literature was limited in the seventies. Confirmed in the Episcopalian church at the age of thirteen, I had no problem with Jesus; it’s just their insistence that he was the “only way,” when it was clear to me that he came to set an example that any of us could follow.

Jesus and the Sacred HeartFurthermore, the whole idea of the “Son of God” thing seemed like a throwback to the Roman gods where the women were scooped up and impregnated by some extraterrestrial race. And why did it matter if Mary was a Virgin? Who cared? What was really important were the words that Jesus spoke and the wisdom that he shared. And what was the sprinkling with the water business anyway, or the dunking? They kept insisting it would make us pure, but didn’t they know that purity is really a state of mind? Taking a bath wouldn’t help. It just seemed to me that the Church was concerned with all the wrong things, as if they could not see what was really behind it. Later of course, I realized that these people had lost their ability to see, or hear or feel at the deeper levels, and so all they could do was guess.

Furthermore, lots of what the Church taught didn’t make any sense. It mostly seemed like negative propaganda. For example, why were men supposed to be superior to women? Why was Eve to blame for human suffering, when Adam ate the apple as well? And what was wrong with eating from the Tree of Knowledge anyway? Wasn’t knowledge supposed to be a good thing? And how about all those questions like who did Cain or Abel marry if they were the only people on Earth? And why did they teach that we are born into sin when we came into the world innocent and beautiful?

Later I realized that this had to do with making sex dirty or horrible. But how could that be true? After all, God had designed sex. If just being born meant that you were already damned, then things were completely messed up here. I mean, who made up these rules? They didn’t make any sense to me!

And furthermore, why did these people teach that we only had one short life to become enlightened or else be punished in hell for all eternity? That wasn’t true, and it wasn’t consistent with the God I knew. What Creator would condemn his children to eternal suffering with such a short span of time to get it right? And what about the people who had never heard about Jesus at all? Were they just automatically condemned as well? No, none of it made any sense to me!

 

Another Way

Egyptian Initiation inside the PyramidThus rather than trying to figure all this out, I simply took a kinder path. I began to study spiritual beliefs that seemed more coherent, more loving and more uplifting. After all, I knew only too well the emotional pain that Christianity had caused within my own family. It seemed that Jesus had been wrapped around the negative emotions of shame and fear, guilt and blame. In the name of God we were taught judgment at our parent’s knees, engendering separation from our sexuality, our God-given innocence, and own long-lived and eternal nature. No wonder the world was upside down!

So I became a student of Buddhism, Theosophy, Hinduism, Shamanism, Celtic mysticism, Native American spirituality and the Egyptian mysteries. For over three decades I worked exclusively with many different spiritual masters on both the inner and the outer levels, and I became initiated in several profound paths. As the years passed I began to gain control over my strong spiritual gifts through meditation and prayer. I started traveling and speaking about the Mysteries, helping people to connect with their own divine essence and remember who they really are. I began to do readings for people, helping them to unravel the places they had been wounded, and learn how to re-empower themselves. I took groups of like-minded pilgrims on sacred journeys to Egypt, England, Peru, Italy, Mt. Shasta, the Four Corners, and Greece. And I journeyed through the Magdalene Mysteries of southern France, tracking the path of the refugees from Israel as they fled from the tyranny of Jerusalem’s politics. And with each new discovery, I walked deeper and deeper into unraveling the Mysteries of the Ages.

My clairvoyant readings began to deepen and I began tracking souls back to their place of origin, discovering the higher worlds of countless angels and spirit guides; ultimately penetrating into the Source of Creation itself. I was visited with angels and masters who taught me of the nine Orders of the angels, and the celestial origins behind all of us. My healing gifts began to blossom, and I was used as a vessel to heal or help over 6,000 people around the world. And after I had published my first book, Dialogues with the Angels, I found myself on dozens of radio and television shows.

 

The Distorted Reality

But then I would come back to Atlanta and find myself once more in the fractured, dysfunctional circle of my family. In place of the open hearted communication and love of true Christianity was  silence, suspicion, judgment and fear, all in the name of the Prince of Peace. My arms full of presents and my heart full of love, I was told that because of my unorthodox beliefs I could not be left alone with my nieces or nephews for even five minutes because I might cause them to corrupt their thinking about God. A shadow of doubt might cross their rigidly proscribed world, or the desire to find a broader base of knowledge, and this would contaminate them.

And I was not the only target for these injunctions, although I was the largest. My mother, a devout Christian in her own right, was also chastised for having angel statues in her garden because my sisters claimed she might be worshiping them instead of God. And the one time my mother made a joke in passing after a Thanksgiving meal, that she might come back as a man in her next life so that she could take a break during holidays, she was barred from seeing her grandchildren alone for five long years!

So you might understand that while I thought Jesus himself was fine, the bitter fruits of Christianity did not sit well with me. Those who claimed so proudly to be Christians usually used it as an excuse to manipulate, judge, or condemn, causing separation between themselves and others. Furthermore, they covered up their actions with a type of smug self-righteousness, and I was not interested in having anything to do with that.

 

The Bathroom Prayer

So some twenty years or more into this painful family dynamic, I got down on my knees and prayed about this situation to Jesus. I had been speaking at a conference in San Francisco, and I had stayed over for the week to see private clients. Three lovely women for whom I had read had taken me to lunch, and suddenly right in the middle of the restaurant, Jesus had swept into the room. His spirit was quite pronounced as if he had descended in a column of light and beamed into the bistro to sit beside us. I could not ignore it, and although I said nothing to the women as they sat chatting away, I was so distracted by his presence that I could barely respond to their questions. Finally I got up and excused myself. Where could I be alone with this, even for a few minutes? I was used to masters, of course, but this visit had come quite unexpectedly, and other than encountering Jesus in other people’s past-life readings, I had never had him appear to me before.

Jesus and the Tri Fold FlameI found the Café’s bathroom, an adorable artistic place with a single sink and toilet, and I locked the door and got down on my knees to pray. The floor was cold, made of red terrazzo tiles. I closed my eyes, trying to tune into this powerful and enormous spirit. The presence of Jesus was palpable in the room. I surrendered myself to it, trying to listen to why he had come.

Praying in the bathroom was not unusual for me, by the way. I had done it for years during my successful speaking career. It had all started with the sudden butterflies I got in my stomach each time that I faced a room of hundreds of people. So over the years it had become my custom to excuse myself before a talk, and go into the bathroom to pray. I would ask Spirit that I might release my own preconceptions about what I was supposed to say, and get out of my own way. I would ask to be used as a vessel that would touch the lives of those in the audience, perhaps in ways that I had never dreamed of, but Spirit alone knew.

But today, this prayer was different. After all, I was not at a lecture hall; I was having lunch with three kind hearted women. But something was going on – something completely unexpected, and without warning I was in the grip of it. His heart energy was enormous, and it filled me up entirely. It had come out of nowhere and it seemed that nobody but me could see him. I was in some sort of non-ordinary reality. And suddenly the crushing sadness of my family felt like it would overwhelm me. Years of love and patience had yielded nothing, for each of my sisters was utterly convinced that anyone who disagreed with them was damned to hell.

I began to pray. The light around me was filled with effervescence. My heart expanded in my chest. It seemed strangely surreal that I would be praying to Jesus, although for years I had invoked him as a protective guide in my healings, along with Buddha and the Divine Mother and Father. “Lord Jesus, whatever it is you want of me, I surrender to it now. You know the situation with my family. I ask you to heal this if you can, for it is beyond anything that I can do. And if you need for me to serve you in some way, I will do it. My heart is yours. I surrender my will to Thy will.”

The power of his all-pervading love was immense. It filled my heart to overflowing. I remained there kneeling on the cold stone floor for maybe five more minutes, and then at last I felt complete. The energy moved off. I stood up; feeling somehow altered, I unlocked the door. I went back to my lunch. I never said a word about it to the women, and after an hour or so, the whole experience seemed to melt away as if it had been a dream.

 

Jesus Returns

Four years later, in the middle of writing my two other books, Jesus returned to see me. I had been working at my computer all evening and had laid down in the middle of my office to take a break. Around me stood the sacred images of the masters and angels I had worked with for decades, and the incense from my prayer altar wafted through the room. My eyes were closed when I slowly became aware that Jesus was standing over me. I could see the energy of his golden-white aura through my eyelids as clearly as if I had had my eyes opened. His radiance seemed to penetrate my forehead. “I want you to write about my lost years and secret teachings,” he sent telepathically, “There has been enough struggle… enough war and bloodshed in my name.”

Well, I thought, I’m in the middle of writing some other books right now. Maybe when I finish these… His light grew stronger, and I could not help but receive it. He was smiling down on me, and somehow the glow of his radiance made writing another book seem effortless and easy, as if it wouldn’t take but a moment. I could do this for him and then go back to my other projects. Right? Maybe I could do them all.

And then an image of my family flashed through my head. Oh no, I groaned… not this! Not a book on Jesus! There were millions of people like my family out there – good Christians – or so they thought – who were more committed to the letter of the law than to the Spirit behind it. If I thought my life had been difficult before, I would never hear the end of it from all those other self-righteous people. Many of them were essentially good individuals who meant well; they had just been brought up in fear; they were conditioned to believe that their interpretation was the only true way. They had been raised with conditional love and this is all they really knew; a love that manipulated through the twin powers of reward and punishment, fear or acceptance, love or judgment, all stemming from what they had been promised about going to an eternal heaven or an infernal hell.

If I wrote these books, the books that Jesus wanted me to write, then surely these people would attack me too. Just like my sisters, they were willing to fight tooth and nail for their limitations, believing they came from a morally superior position, rather than embracing a larger vision of reality. Even if I showed Jesus the utmost respect and devotion, who knew what I would be setting myself up for? I had learned first-hand how the fear-based conditioning of even looking outside the box caused many people to freeze. They ceased to ask what any eight-year-old child could see clearly because they had become blinded through years of consensus thinking.

Jesus still hovered above me, waiting. I didn’t even have to open my eyes to see him. He was letting me take my time… to work through my own thoughts.

And yet… there were many people just like me out there; people who loved Jesus with all their hearts, but who had seen the damage of this dualistic kind of thinking, yet did not know the reasons behind it.

But I did. I had spent my life uncovering it. Like me, many of these people realized that there was an underlying cancer at the heart of the social, political and emotional controls exercised in the name of all dualistic religions, and they were trying to find a more inclusive vision. Some had even thrown Jesus out of the equation altogether, being sick of the whole hypocrisy. They could see that the world was divided, torn apart by people arguing about God, but they didn’t know how to fix it. Like me they realized that there is a path of unity we have somehow missed along the way that would allow Jesus to be integrated into a larger reality, and if we could truly live this, it would bring unity into the world.

But why would Jesus choose me? I wondered. I was no Bible-thumping Christian. In fact I avoided people who quoted the Bible at all cost. Oh… because I knew how these pieces fit together; because I had been studying the Mysteries my whole life long. Yet I had always carried him with me in the back of my mind, along with the burden of that painful family that I could not divorce. I knew about the documented records of him in India, and the stories of Jesus among the Buddhists. In England I had done ceremony at Glastonbury and walked upon the same hills of Priddy that the songs say he had frequented when he was there. I had felt the quiet calm of Joseph of Arimathea’s spirit in the gardens of Chalice Well, and I had been ordained as a bishop of the Madonna Ministries in the now abandoned Chapel of Mary at Glastonbury Abbey, the first Christian community ever created in the world.

From my studies of the Anunnaki gods of the Middle East, I knew of the teachings of the Neteru; I had studied Zoroaster and the parallels between Jesus and the Solar Lord Mithra. I knew about the illuminated “savior gods” of ancient Egypt who had come to lift mankind from darkness – Horus, Osiris, and Thoth. And I had heard the legends of the phoenix, central to the mysteries of Heliopolis. The Egyptians had believed that this divine and radiant being descends periodically from the higher realms and sings its song of beauty, only to be destroyed by darkness, and then reborn in light. This was the Christ of course, the very essence of Jesus himself.

He stood above me waiting, his radiant light patient and loving. He brought tears to my eyes. Just a little more time, I asked of him, just a little longer. I was putting the pieces together one by one.

Behind all of these Mysteries there was a single unifying thread. I just knew it. There was a plan that ran through everything, all the spiritual teachings, all the esoteric paths, as if each of these masters had been a part of something far larger, something orchestrated at the higher levels. And Jesus had been at its center, and that is why he had traveled across the world, following the trail like a golden thread through the wisdom of many lands. The hermetic symbols and customs between these paths are Universal, and unbeknownst to modern Christians, were common to many traditions. Then after his travels Jesus returned to the fear-based culture of his youth and distilled his vast wisdom into only a few simple precepts that anyone could understand:

 

“Love your neighbor as yourself; turn the other cheek;
judge not lest ye be judged; and the Kingdom of Heaven is within us all.”

 

Such was the nature of his mastery.

The Dead Sea ScrollsBut what about the other things he taught? Was the world really ready to hear them? Slowly the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts were being published, and a few of the Lost Gospels had come out. But there were still so many things that most people didn’t know. If I could just find some of these gems of wisdom and bring them forward, would it bring some sanity into this world? Would people really listen, or were they simply too committed to conflict and separation; were they ready to grow into a larger paradigm, or would they cling tenaciously to self-righteous anger, all in the name of a religiously justified higher ground?

Some would, of course. But others might realize that they no longer had to punish in the name of God. And if that happened then a little more of Christ’s light could come into the world. Would it be worth it? After all, there were certainly those who would rather make me the target of their hatred rather than be open to a larger perspective. And then there was the growing circle of cynics and intellectuals who had finally discovered the template of the ancient World Saviors, and become convinced that Jesus never really lived because his story was echoed in those saints and saviors who came before him. They believed that Jesus was an amalgamation, a “myth” constructed by a crumbling Roman Empire intent upon consolidating its power.

I sighed. Why did we have to make it all so hard? Why couldn’t people just live and let others live, allowing each of the world saviors to be who they really were, and let them all get along? I took a deep breath, letting the thoughts flow from me. Jesus still hovered above me, waiting, like a golden light. I felt the ancient power of his presence, and the infinite patience he had for all living beings caught up in conflict and turmoil. But somehow, when I concentrated on him, all the conflict stopped, and there was just the Light.

What would Jesus do? I suddenly wondered.

Jesus on TrialLook at what he had faced in his day and age. The world that he had been born into had had the religious tyranny of the Pharisees and Sadducees on one hand, and the military tyranny of the Romans on the other. One group had wanted to stone him, and the other crucified hundreds in the name of disobedience. Only the bravest of souls imagined they could step outside of those rigid boxes. But Jesus had done so, even to the point of death; even against members of his own family who did not really understand that he was teaching a higher law until after he had been resurrected.

What would Jesus do? I felt him smile above me. Of course… he would write this book. Then I remembered my prayer in the bathroom four years before. My will to Thy will, oh Lord… So this was what he wanted me to do.

Suddenly all the pieces of my life seemed to fall into place: why I had been born into this crazy family; why I had traveled the world in search of answers; why I had been born a clairvoyant and clairaudient; why I had studied with the Great White Brotherhood and Vairagi masters and why I had been a writer and a teacher for twenty years.

My heart melted and I knew what I had to do.

 

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