A Life Not Lived
The truth hurts. Forty years ago, in my imagination I saw Jesus being scourged and crucified for me. It broke me. Lying on his hamburger-like back he looked down his outstretched arm and said to me directly, "Come unto me." He spoke audibly into the hearing lobe of my brain where nerve impulses from the ears are converted into the sensation of sound being heard. I physically HEARD him speak, even though his voice did not enter through either of my ears.
I was amazed, for I was at the time a homeless bum living in a pickup truck--as pointless a person as you can imagine on an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. That Jesus could monitor my thoughts and had the power to make his voice manifest audibly in the nervous system of my brain was a significant miracle. I figured that if God would even speak to someone as insignificant as I, then he must have spoken to many other people. Certainly some had published what he said to them. I determined to search out what God said to others throughout history, starting with the Bible. I was after all a Christian, and it was about time I actually read the Bible. Besides, I had absolutely NO idea as to what Jesus meant by "Come unto me," or how I was to actually go to him in heaven in response to his command. How was I, a limited physical being, supposed to get up there?
Through some other pretty significant miracles I, without day one of college prep, found myself in the upper division seminary classes at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California. (The school made a mistake letting me and some others in, but as we had already started, they "grandfathered" us to allow us to finish and petition for a degree after taking the preliminary courses--backwards of the normal procedure. Boy, did I scramble to figure out how to write a term paper!) The most important thing I learned at Melodyland was how to read! I can scan most pointless tomes in short order now, but a significant text will slow me down to about four words a minute, if I am lucky. In some cases those minutes can become a day, a week, a month or a year. And while I am "Christian," I read Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist and Chinese texts.
I am drawn to the mystical aspects of each religion. Mystical, because when Jesus stopped a demon from possessing me, it was mystical. When I cast my self-control out of myself and was baptized in the Holy Spirit, it was mystical. When I physically heard Jesus, it was mystical. And when my back was healed and my arm grew out, these also were mystical. The mystical aspect exists at the core of all religions. When I read Kabbalah or Gnostic works, or Zen and Confucian philosophies, these perspectives seem normal to me. The whole world is the image of a mystical, becoming God: an invisible No-thing transitioning Itself into Something--Itself in form. The form will be mystical. That is why I read and listen to so much Neville Goddard. He understood where I am coming from as a theologian, and he said it so much better.
So I was taken aback when Victor Alexander said that I was desperately trying to become a mystic. I was going to say that I already am, but I happened to read what Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya said: "A spirituality not practiced is a spirituality best left alone" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktQ2-qBHPkY). Oops. Wait a minute. That is me. I have read and studied and analyzed much mystical information over the years, and I have some mystical experience in my background, but I have failed to practice what I preach, what I know is true. I can tell you all about a mystical life, but I have not necessarily lived one.
It is funny how when God is teaching you something, so many lessons come together from so many different places. Neville taught that Jesus was never a unique, individual human separate from us; that the Jesus Christ of the Gospel stories was a life never lived by a man other than us. I do not know that, but I do believe that Jesus Christ is the life of God in us that we are supposed to live. To live it, we have to PRACTICE it. Moses practiced it, the prophets practiced it, intercessors practice it, seers practice it, swamis practice it, Abdullah practiced it, Neville practiced it, and the message I get from the scriptures is that IT WORKS IF YOU PRACTICE IT. THAT is the key to Moses' success manual!
Is this not the meaning of YHWH? that His becoming works because he practices it? that his practice is the source of his transition? "YHWH" is that it works! This is how Adam's "rib" becomes Eve, the mother of all living. You do not get any "kids" without engaging in the practice of creating them: you can learn all about it, but you do not get squat until you DO it. This is what Mark was saying to the Jews of his day: "God reveals in the scriptures the Life in you that is Jesus Christ, but you are not LIVING it." Neville was so popular because he readily practiced "investing" imagination for his friends. He said to imagine to create the world we desire and our spiritual evolution in it. He was a doer of the spiritual practice of imagining. Which leads me to another thought, again related to Mark:
I was SEEING Jesus crucified for my sins in my imagination when he turned and audibly spoke to me. My Church History professor at Melodyland, the Rev. Robert Whittaker of Rosemead Presbyterian, said in class that he once was counseling a young man and had led him in his imagination to the foot of the cross where Jesus was crucified, and suddenly the man, looking up, shushed him: "Shush. He's talking!" When Jesus spoke to me, he said, "Come unto me." The imagining of him was how I had gotten there. What if "Mark" is a collection of MEDITATIONS to envision as a method of getting to Jesus? The "going" device. Just a thought.
Neville says in Mental Diets (http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2014/06/mental-diets-text-improved-version-of.html, tenth paragraph) that to make an intense effort to hear as though you heard is to create. Is that what God did to create the heavens and the earth? "And God SAID . . ." I have news for you, bub, God does not have a mouth. He cannot "say," except to imagine that he HEARD. "And there was (became) . . ." Well, at least God knows how to live the life.
Thank you, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya: IT WORKS IF YOU PRACTICE IT.
I was amazed, for I was at the time a homeless bum living in a pickup truck--as pointless a person as you can imagine on an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. That Jesus could monitor my thoughts and had the power to make his voice manifest audibly in the nervous system of my brain was a significant miracle. I figured that if God would even speak to someone as insignificant as I, then he must have spoken to many other people. Certainly some had published what he said to them. I determined to search out what God said to others throughout history, starting with the Bible. I was after all a Christian, and it was about time I actually read the Bible. Besides, I had absolutely NO idea as to what Jesus meant by "Come unto me," or how I was to actually go to him in heaven in response to his command. How was I, a limited physical being, supposed to get up there?
Through some other pretty significant miracles I, without day one of college prep, found myself in the upper division seminary classes at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California. (The school made a mistake letting me and some others in, but as we had already started, they "grandfathered" us to allow us to finish and petition for a degree after taking the preliminary courses--backwards of the normal procedure. Boy, did I scramble to figure out how to write a term paper!) The most important thing I learned at Melodyland was how to read! I can scan most pointless tomes in short order now, but a significant text will slow me down to about four words a minute, if I am lucky. In some cases those minutes can become a day, a week, a month or a year. And while I am "Christian," I read Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist and Chinese texts.
I am drawn to the mystical aspects of each religion. Mystical, because when Jesus stopped a demon from possessing me, it was mystical. When I cast my self-control out of myself and was baptized in the Holy Spirit, it was mystical. When I physically heard Jesus, it was mystical. And when my back was healed and my arm grew out, these also were mystical. The mystical aspect exists at the core of all religions. When I read Kabbalah or Gnostic works, or Zen and Confucian philosophies, these perspectives seem normal to me. The whole world is the image of a mystical, becoming God: an invisible No-thing transitioning Itself into Something--Itself in form. The form will be mystical. That is why I read and listen to so much Neville Goddard. He understood where I am coming from as a theologian, and he said it so much better.
So I was taken aback when Victor Alexander said that I was desperately trying to become a mystic. I was going to say that I already am, but I happened to read what Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya said: "A spirituality not practiced is a spirituality best left alone" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktQ2-qBHPkY). Oops. Wait a minute. That is me. I have read and studied and analyzed much mystical information over the years, and I have some mystical experience in my background, but I have failed to practice what I preach, what I know is true. I can tell you all about a mystical life, but I have not necessarily lived one.
It is funny how when God is teaching you something, so many lessons come together from so many different places. Neville taught that Jesus was never a unique, individual human separate from us; that the Jesus Christ of the Gospel stories was a life never lived by a man other than us. I do not know that, but I do believe that Jesus Christ is the life of God in us that we are supposed to live. To live it, we have to PRACTICE it. Moses practiced it, the prophets practiced it, intercessors practice it, seers practice it, swamis practice it, Abdullah practiced it, Neville practiced it, and the message I get from the scriptures is that IT WORKS IF YOU PRACTICE IT. THAT is the key to Moses' success manual!
Is this not the meaning of YHWH? that His becoming works because he practices it? that his practice is the source of his transition? "YHWH" is that it works! This is how Adam's "rib" becomes Eve, the mother of all living. You do not get any "kids" without engaging in the practice of creating them: you can learn all about it, but you do not get squat until you DO it. This is what Mark was saying to the Jews of his day: "God reveals in the scriptures the Life in you that is Jesus Christ, but you are not LIVING it." Neville was so popular because he readily practiced "investing" imagination for his friends. He said to imagine to create the world we desire and our spiritual evolution in it. He was a doer of the spiritual practice of imagining. Which leads me to another thought, again related to Mark:
I was SEEING Jesus crucified for my sins in my imagination when he turned and audibly spoke to me. My Church History professor at Melodyland, the Rev. Robert Whittaker of Rosemead Presbyterian, said in class that he once was counseling a young man and had led him in his imagination to the foot of the cross where Jesus was crucified, and suddenly the man, looking up, shushed him: "Shush. He's talking!" When Jesus spoke to me, he said, "Come unto me." The imagining of him was how I had gotten there. What if "Mark" is a collection of MEDITATIONS to envision as a method of getting to Jesus? The "going" device. Just a thought.
Neville says in Mental Diets (http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2014/06/mental-diets-text-improved-version-of.html, tenth paragraph) that to make an intense effort to hear as though you heard is to create. Is that what God did to create the heavens and the earth? "And God SAID . . ." I have news for you, bub, God does not have a mouth. He cannot "say," except to imagine that he HEARD. "And there was (became) . . ." Well, at least God knows how to live the life.
Thank you, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya: IT WORKS IF YOU PRACTICE IT.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
1:12 AM
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