The Becoming God

Monday, April 03, 2017

Simona Rich Got Saved, Baptized With The Holy Ghost

I happened to be trying to associate Neville Goddard's prayer techniques and the Promise with the baptism in the Holy Spirit all believers need to receive, when lo and behold, I find Simona Rich has gotten saved and has become a full-on born-again Pentecostal Christian.

I knew of Simona through her videos and advice articles when she was a young, New-Age Law of Attraction Goddess and life coach. Believe it or not, my attraction to her was not her looks but her eloquent and concise way of stating things. She had done her homework and made things clear and practicable. Converted, she deleted all her Pagan materials, but here is a surviving clip about the old Simona: (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sImxqfEoXY8).

Like me, it was through demonic activity and Christ's intervention that she found God is very much real, and she was going the wrong direction! I personally think she may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in renouncing meditation, but in her case it may be best as meditation is not for the faint of heart. Experienced practitioners warn against going it alone in meditation, as spiritual forces can vastly overwhelm mental tourists.

Here is her new About page: (http://www.simonarich.com/about-simona-rich/) and her testimony: (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5d-p6huZ3Q). The sad thing to note here is that while Simona has gotten saved and baptized both in water and Spirit, she has also gotten involved with some sincere Christian morons. Sorry to be judgmental, but ye shall know them by their fruit. This moronacy is due to their radical worldview of God's reality combined with their natural limited understanding and experience. For them, everything else must be false. In their ignorance they misread the Bible and cannot believe that (that they do), because they KNOW God is real. Well, He is real, and you are stupid. Learn how to read.

I went through this, too. I got saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit among conservative Christians and wound up in theology school with radicals who would cast demons out of out-of-balance washing machines. What was out of balance was their perception and worldview. Kids, it is all God. The darkness and demonic are Ignorance. Like its personification, it wanders around seeking to devour, to steal, kill, and destroy. And the only salvation from it is Jesus Christ, the Power and the Wisdom of God crucified for us from before the foundation of the world. That consciousness is the Holy Spirit we are to be baptized with and empowered by.

Flat earth? Transgender conspiracy? Shape-shifters? KJV only? Come on, Simona, you have a very special talent and testimony and these things are going to ruin your credibility. THEY are the attack of the enemy upon your witness for Jesus Christ, for they are pure ignorance. Each is two-points below stupid, and people will write you off as being a nut-case. How does that glorify God? Do not dilute your effectiveness for Christ with this peripheral nutsy stuff. These points are not worth it. You advocated for the Law of Attraction. Now, for God you can advocate the Law of Assumption. That is spelled F - A - I - T - H. For "if you can believe, anything is possible for whoever believes" (Mark 9:23 Alexander).

I think you would do well to teach people HOW to pray and TO pray.

posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at 11:59 PM

19 Comments:

  • I'm curious about "experienced practitioners warn against going it alone in meditation..." Isn't imagining done in a meditative state... the state akin to sleep... theta brainwave state? I've long thought that was what Neville was doing when he said to get oneself into the drowsy state just prior to sleep. He was going into theta. For me, once I reach that drowsy state, I seem to have no control over the wandering mind, and I also have very limited time before delta ensues and I'm asleep.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:35 AM  

  • There are much more intensive, deeper states of meditation. Rabbis Aryeh Kaplan, David A. Cooper, and others warn against going into deeper states alone lest you not want to come back, or not know how to. You need someone who has your ear and can walk you back.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 3:03 PM  

  • Can I ask what you mean by "unless you want not to come back"? Where would you go? Insane? Or would you die?

    After you posted a bit about Bill Donahue, who I'd never heard of previously, I went and looked at quite a few of his videos. What interested me is that he seems/seemed confident that he possesses the information to finding the key to unlock the subconscious mind (and thus expunge all the negative programming). I listened to his take on "take no thought for your life." His interpretation made the words "take no thought" the operative ones. I tried for about a week, meditating as he suggested, trying to have no thoughts at all running in my mind. Couldn't come close, not even for a split second.

    With regards to both your posts about Simona, I'm wondering why you so easily dismiss *all* of her newfound "theories"? Like.. a flat earth. Is it so insane? Have you read anything on it beyond the blurb on her website? Just curious.

    Let me also ask you this, on a completely different track: I was raised Lutheran. The "Missouri Synod" variety. We were taught Calvinism, thought never taught that word or the name John Calvin. I recall the Pastor, in religious education class, telling us how if we are saved God gets all the credit, but if we're not saved it's our fault. I remember challenging him on that and him trying to explain it with some clumsy analogy involving me, God and a pulley system, or some nonsense.

    That said, it most definitely had a deep impact on my self worth, my experience of God, my feelings about God. Down deep, since childhood, I have always thought that God hated me, or at best, wondered if he did.

    I wonder if you could offer me an interpretation of Romans Chapter 8, which is the centerpiece of John Calvin's doctrine. Vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. Etc....









    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:24 PM  

  • We will have to address these questions in stages. If you were in a state of eternal, infinite bliss and had the option of returning to pogroms, what would you choose? The specific book which warned about not wanting to return was Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan. Yes, some may have gone insane. Others become more Universalist. Enoch walked with God three hundred years is euphemistic symbology. My supervisor's friend and neighbor was a meditator, and was declared dead though his body never went into rigor mortis. Simona experienced spiritual forces she could not identify in her ignorance. I have been there. What I did note then, and she did too, is that they cannot take over without our permission. We are above them, these embodiments of ignorance, in authority. They have been given unto us. In the Sabbath we are going through, the Son of Man -- us becoming the predetermined Man -- is Lord.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 1:03 PM  

  • I posted about Bill Donahue because he is interesting and what he talks about needs to be considered. I do not necessarily agree with him on a number of points. His taking no thought I think refers to a sense of yieldedness and submission to whatever God wants to go towards. Revelation wise, that is. Not letting "ascended masters" into your mind to teach or take over. Bill is a Pentecostal sort, and I don't think a non-Pentecostal can follow his sort of submission. It is an emptiness unto something else, and for a non-Pentecostal there is nothing there.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 3:04 PM  

  • I was a Navy Quartermaster on two destroyers for four years, following my father who was a deck officer in the merchants. We did the celestial navigation. Crossed oceans. Have flown around the world. I have taken astronomy classes. I have eyes. All of which is dismissed out of hand by idiots as "science." On the basis of, "If the Bible is true . . ." and their interpretation of waters above from the waters below. Well, the Bible is true, but not the way they read it. It was not written according to their principles of interpretation. Waters are thoughts. There is a blockage which keeps us from those higher thoughts. It keeps us ignorant for awhile to accomplish what God desires. If their interpretation was correct, where is the end of the upper waters? An infinity of water? A fish God?

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 3:17 PM  

  • Your pastor was correct. We are destined to fulfill scripture. God will being all to salvation unto His nature though all these futilities. We have been given free will to go with him or against him, and we do not choose well. What your pastor may have missed is that God TOOK the blame for our choices "from before the world was."

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 3:30 PM  

  • http://www.v-a.com/bible/romans.html

    Cut and paste the above in your browser and read chapters 8 and 9. The vast majority are confused because they read the Bible out of order. It does not start with creation, Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and then Moses. It starts with Moses, the germ of the Gospel, and its spiritual development in Exodus. THEN it goes to Genesis, what he learned of God in Exodus. Of God. Vessels of honor or dishonor are not good men and bad men as Calvin accounts them; they are spirit and flesh. Spirit is a vessel, flesh is a vessel. All the spirit is destined to honor, the flesh . . . not so much. The flesh, Cain, is an acquisition used by the transitory spirit, Abel, which is the true person who is being developed through it. So yes, we are joined, both are eternal, but we don't stay together. The flesh performs a service facilitating the experiences of the spirit and its ascendence. But man is not all on the same page. Some are aware of the spirit they are, but most think they are flesh and think only with their own brain. If a person does not catch on and become aware in this flesh, well, there is plenty more where this came from. His or her spirit is still destined to honor, the flesh/creation only through the ultimate success of the spirit.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 8:03 PM  

  • The Pastor was right.... that people who are "saved" and get to go to Heaven and sit at the right hand of God and be in paradise for eternity, get that by "the grace" (free unearned gift) of God? And that those who do not get "saved" (do not get this free unearned gift by "the grace of God") and are therefore doomed to an eternity of torture... it's their fault? He was right about that? Because that's what he was saying.

    After the Lutheran upbringing, I actually spent quite a few years in the "Pentecostal" church. I went to a really huge megachurch for quite some time. I saw T.L. Osborn preach in the flesh. Cheryl Prewitt Salem, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, and a slew of other names I've long forgotten. I felt equally "left out" in that sect, as I never received any "healing" of my spiritual woes, didn't speak in tongues, and never flopped around on the floor (how I saw it).

    How could God take the blame for our "choices" when we are HIS imagination? I think free will is an illusion. How could it not be? In fact I think Neville even has a chapter titled "The Illusion of Free Will" in one of his books, doesn't he? If God is dreaming us, then what we think are choices is actually predestination.... I guess that was the part the Pastor got right??

    I sincerely wonder why you said (in another post, was it?) that Pentecostals are the only hope for the world? They surely don't preach what Neville taught. He taught that God's name is "I AM." He taught that WE ARE God, not separate from him.

    Please tell me how to accept a token of God's love. I would really truly sincerely like to do that. Do I ask and wait for a sign to appear? I'm so sad, it would feel so good to feel loved.







    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:43 PM  

  • As I think about it, it was the Lutheran Church that taught me that God played favorites, and it was the "Charismatic" Church that made me start to think I was one of the non-favored. I started going to that megachurch with a school friend who brought me there. I was maybe 14 when I started going. My mother, though no charismatic herself, was ok with it because she was just happy that I was choosing to go to church myself. I was baptized by full submersion at the beach.

    But all I recall was LONGING to have this supposed "relationship" with "the Lord" that people claimed to have. If they had no clue of the "truth" (God is you own wonderful human imagination), then how could they possibly have had an actual "relationship"? Looking back, I think the whole "slain in the spirit" floor flopping had to be either faked (by some people), or they got so caught up in the emotions and the idea of it, that they created the experience. There is a whole psychology behind that... basically mass hypnosis, with the music, and the metered, melodic, and dramatic manner of speech by the preachers, etc. I sat in church while people spoke "words of knowledge" and people shouted out in tongues while others shouted out the translations. You know... the whole shebang.

    I would sit there and wonder WHY God would not "reveal himself to me." I started to think, maybe I was one of those unlucky souls who was predestined for Hell. Then I decided to become an atheist. That crushed me... giving up the thought of "Jesus" ...some guy in the sky that loved me. Then I found Neville. I must admit, I still wonder sometimes if it's all bullsh*t. Even Neville, I mean.




    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:22 PM  

  • Thank you, thank you, thank you, Anonymous. I have always wondered about John 8:43, and you inadvertently illumined it. You are speaking a different language. The words are sometimes the same but the meanings are different. You said, "My pastor said if you are saved God gets all the credit," and I say yes, that is correct. And you said that if you don't get saved that is your fault. Yup. Now you bring all this other gobbledygook about heaven and hell and punishments which were not in your origin proposition and say that is what he meant, so I must be agreeing to that. No. I only agree to what you said, not to the stupid things he might have meant by it. Why are you speaking and thinking in that language? It is why you cannot understand the language I am trying to speak in.

    How could God take the blame for our choices when we are His imagination? That IS the reason.

    T. L. Osborn is the only Christian I recognize among those. Pentecostals are the hope inasmuch as they recognize God's oneness, though they do not think of it as I do. They are still by-and-by dualists, and I think of a non-dual universe. I think you might not have been healed of your spiritual woes because you believe they exist. So they do. What you have to get into your head it that they do not exist as for as God is concerned. He does not recognize them, and probably is wondering why you do.

    All good gifts come from the Father. Think of any good gift you have received. Whether it is something you think of and get, or something you already have gotten, they are all from the working of our father who is in us as us. It represents some imagining that has worked, and if it works, then you have found Him. And it only worked because he loves you. EVERY good gift is an "I love you."

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 2:28 AM  

  • I think I meant by-and-large dualists, with ourselves part of a creation separate from God's being (as if that were possible). Aberrant worldview is the Devil we overcome. It is our "understanding," our awareness of what is real. Ignorance of the Oneness comes but to steal, kill, and destroy. It is not just the language of the scriptures that is off, it is what we make of that language from our worldview. The language evokes a sense of the Truth. Evokes it. It is a "like that." It is an outward illustration of an inward sense, a state of awareness that can be but for the taking. That is why I say that Pentecostals are the hope of the world, or something very much like them. The baptism of the Holy Spirit, as it is called, is but for the taking, received simply and by faith. The Holy Spirit is the Consciousness in us Who is saying "I am . . ." WHILE trying at the same time to change our perspective to Its. The evolution is in-house. God is big enough to be the whole thing, us included.

    For the sake of other readers, Anonymous had a second part to his or her comment. I am not sure I will publish it. It's not bad or anything, I think already answered.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 10:54 AM  

  • The second part of Anonymous' comment starts, "As I think about it, . . . " and bemoans God's not revealing Himself to Anony. (There sure are a lot of people named Anonymous.) I wonder what Anonymous expected as revelation? A physical manifestation? An "Hello. This is God"? Being caught up to heaven? A clever card trick? To all Anonymouses: what do you expect God to do for you? Oughtn't it be something that he does, and not something he doesn't do? Despite his loving you beyond measure, do not expect the Great King, your Source, to change his form for you.

    We are talking about an invisible being who has no corporal form beyond manifest imagination. If you cannot find his revelation in your own being (this is an imagic world, Anonymous), look for his manifestation in the working of the things you desire. His is the INVISIBLE part. You want something, and you get it. Be it a billion dollars or bus fare, the invisible power by which you got it was him. Your breath comes to mind -- the invisible part of your life. I have often said in my blog that it is not the physical manifestation of anything that is fulfillment of a desire, but its EXPERIENCE, the invisible part. Our inner, emotional and spiritual "Whoopee!" is all God gets out of it. THAT is his revelation. In that invisible moment is his manifestation. YOU, by the way, are an experience, and longer than a moment if you want to take a lingering look at him. The invisible part, not that mug in the mirror.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 2:42 AM  

  • Hi. I actually thought the fact that it was a Lutheran pastor was enough information to indicate that "saved" meant not going to a fiery place of torture. It's not as if they teach "God is your own wonderful human imagination" in the Lutheran church, or any other denomination of Christianity.

    What I was getting at was the fact that the hellfire and brimstone concept of God was embedded into my subconscious programming at a very young age. With that program perpetually running in the background, it's not so easy to just dismiss. That's what the Bill Donahue video I mentioned in another comment was about - deprogramming. Finding the key to your subconscious mind. Though he never got around in that video to telling the viewer HOW to find that key. He did talk about "taking no thought for your life" in context of meditating, trying to achieve even moments of thinking nothing - no thoughts.

    I understand that God would take the blame for my "choices" if it is HE that is imagining them... But then they are not really choices. If "the Ineffable" has imagined "the end" and is imagining me... then "the Ineffable" is imagining my thoughts, my beliefs, my choices, and so forth. You say that "you might not have been healed of your spiritual woes because you believe they exist. So they do." But they exist because I believe they do... because "the Ineffable" imagines that I believe they do....right? This is where I get confused. Neville said that God is buried in man; that God is dreaming he is man; that man is God with amnesia. So that would mean it is God who believes I have "spiritual woes," not me, because there is no "me." .......yes?

    I'm not trying to be difficult, I promise you. I'm really trying to get it. And the part I wrote about God "revealing himself" to me... I also sincerely thought that needed to explanation or translation, with you having the religious background that you do. People in that charismatic church were constantly telling me to "ask God to reveal himself to you." And I did repeatedly. But he never did. There was no "God revealed himself to me" experience... like they all claimed to have.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:48 PM  

  • It was way back in the 1970's that I read of exegesato, the last word in the Greek John 1:18 (declared, explained, made known) that without an object, IT MUST BE TRANSLATED AS 'REVEALED'. The translators won't, though, because it does not fit their theology. There is no 'him'. Jesus is the revelation of God the Father . . . because he is God the Father. He hath REVEALED. There is no jack-in-the-box pop-up revelation of God coming. It does not come from some place. It is an awareness. It may come in waves of understanding and perception or as a sudden epiphany. You cannot conclude Jesus from general revelation alone, but Moses probably perceived the idea of 'Jethro' from general revelation with the aid of his Egyptian religion, which has life coming from the sun, and Jethro is Jesus. "Oh, we are that--the top of the soft stuff of the earth--with Mind and Speech. And our prayer WORKS. And if it does work, then . . . " And we get Exodus chapter 3.

    Note the past tense: revealed. It is a done deal. You are waiting for . . . what? You ain't getting another scoop until you eat this one. Your Charismatic friends didn't ASK God to reveal himself to them, did they? They fathomed that Jesus is, and were duly impressed. What, the gift of life you have received from God the Father doesn't impress you? I think it is a pretty good trick. He is me thinking that I am me, and we are both "Jesus Christ." Pretty miserable at times, but that is because I do not recognize what is causing things. The free-will thing is like throwing darts at a spinning bullseye. Is my free-will predestined? Maybe it is the Eternal's inside joke. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO EXERCISE IT!! Fatalism is deadly. Like your Lutheran pastor might have said, salvation is up to the measure of heaven, and hell is coming back here again and again until we stop blaspheming the Holy Spirit and believe what she is saying, which is that we are God . . . imagining.

    I want you to receive the Holy Spirit. She doesn't come from outside in, she comes from inside out--from the bowels up to the brain and filling to overflowing. She is the very consciousness of God within, the power and the wisdom--the Kingdom--your life. The gift is simply received, because it was given long, long ago. It is a little hard to illustrate the receiving of the Holy Spirit because the word 'receive' means 'take'. Perhaps I can liken it to a woman much in love who says, "Take me, I'm yours." You simply need to embrace.

    I hope you get it all.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 12:28 AM  

  • Yes - life - it is a pretty good trick. Sure it impresses me. But the bottom line is it's not always a "gift." If a person is not having a good experience with life, but rather suffering, in whatever way, what's the point? I think, therefore I am? I feel pain, therefore I am? I feel sorrow, therefore I am?

    I just want to feel happy.

    And I hope I'm not bothersome to you with my comments.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:06 AM  

  • I had to go outside to check my shingle. I am not qualified to be a psychotherapist, but okay--I always say theology is the technique--let's give it a shot. You seem not to have read Maxwell Maltz' book PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS, all of about a dollar at the used book store. Judy linked to a digital version in Russia. Basically says that if you think you are happy, you are. You do not think you are, and that is what is becoming the out-picturing of your inner life--Gregg Braden: The Seven Essene Mirrors on youtube. Try Maltz' seventh chapter to begin with: How to Acquire the Habit of Happiness. This is the stuff the Law of Attraction is made out of: the Law of Assumption. Rich, successful, happy, and fulfilled people live in this state. It is drilled into them in childhood, and they apply it throughout life. Okay, so you are a late bloomer. Blossom.

    Neville's father looked hungover in the morning, but he was working in his mind how he was going to deal with people that day, and how they were going to deal with him. He was not thinking of what pain and sorrow he was going to suffer. The gift is life itself. Individuality. Its purpose is His--God's. "What are you doing with My life?" that one might ask. Is asking. "Oh, I've been contemplating the pain and suffering You have given me." No. Erase-erase. "I have been contemplating love, peace, joy, success, health, prosperity, and how to help everyone in the world enjoy your bountiful goodness." "Okay, good. That is what I created you for. Carry on."

    I am a trained but avocational theologian who has read a lot of Neville Goddard's materials. What he learned from Abdullah that is to be practically applied is to believe you have received what you desire, to acquire that state, for what you are inwardly you will become outwardly, varying according to degree of intensity and thoroughness of acquisition. You too-thoroughly believe you are unhappy, and the Law yet applies. YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR MIND. There are no knobs for me or anyone else to turn. It is your decision what you are going to think, what state you shall be in. Read Maltz. It is cliche, but smile, be happy. Sing, even as terribly as you might. Hum, anyway. APPLY happiness in your thoughts and actions. This is God's intelligence, and His intelligence is power to become. Pray. You need power to apply happiness to your life. Ask God for that, and accept that you have RECEIVED it.

    I wish you well.

    By Blogger Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 4:51 PM  

  • Dan, thank you for wishing me well. I receive that to the best of my ability. May it be so.

    Not that you care, or that your shingle says "psycho therapist," but I can at this moment articulate a "block" and perhaps other readers - anonymouses - who've had this same trouble can commiserate, or who've overcome this same "block" can illuminate.

    Neville gives many examples of his own causative imagining where he "slept there." When he wanted out of the army, he slept each night in his apartment in NYC. When he wanted to go to Barbados, he slept there, in his mother's house. He gives an example in Assumptions Harden Into Fact: "I can stand here and place myself in London. Knowing London quite well, I can close my eyes and assume that I am actually standing in London. If I remain within this state long enough, I will be able to surround myself with the environment of London as though it were a solid concrete objective fact."

    "Knowing London quite well....."

    What all of these examples have in common in he's manifesting experiences he's ALREADY had. Places he has ALREADY been. Things he ALREADY knows. Which expalins WHY he is able to "make there here" or "here, there" so easily. How does one go about appropriating a state they desire to experience but are unfamiliar with? What does one do if they want to experience something they have never experienced? Go somewhere they've never been? Etc?

    He gives, what I see as, two or three very different means of goig about it. All of which he expresses as if it is THE WAY to do it. On the one hand he says to distill the fulfilled desire down to a single action that you repeat over and over before sleep. I've tried this and find it laborsome. I end up straining to keep my attention on the act of "doing" the action with sensory vividness, and I really don't "feel" anything in terms of what it's supposed to imply.

    On the other hand, he goes to sleep in Barbados, goes to sleep in his NYC apartment, etc... which is more a state of *being* than a repetitive action done over and over until sleep ensues. This technique seems to make more "sense" to me. Ok, so I can imagine this night that I'm sleeping in my childhood room... because I'm familiar with it, because I slept there for years. But I cannot imagine going to sleep someplace I've never been, though I may desire to be there. How do you go someplace you've never been? How do you feel something you've never felt? If I could DO that, I wouldn't being trying to manifest it; I'd BE there already!

    I think this is why my circumstances never change. Try as I may.. and I DO try each night, I can't seem to sleep anywhere but where I ALREADY am. I keep churning out more of the same and I can't seem to get control of it. It's so frustrating! Neville said he didn't use the Law all the time BECAUSE he was generally happy with his life as it was. He used it in moments of "crisis" as he put it. When he wanted to shift something. Well that's great for him, but I'm not generally happy. How do I get me to a place of contentment so I can ride the wave of out picturing more of it?

    This comment is all really just a way of me expressing. I know no one has answers.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:20 AM  

  • Please see April 23, 2017 post "Continuing With Anonymous (From Simona Rich Got Saved)": http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2017/04/continuing-with-anonymous-from-simona.html

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:24 AM  

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