In Defense of Thomas Westbrook: Raised on Unholy Koolaid

To regular readers of this blog, my apologies for a long absence. I have been pondering. I try to not teach error, and I was not quite sure where I fit with the error of Thomas Westbrook, who has become something of an evangelical atheist. Like Thomas, I reject religion, but unlike Thomas, I discovered God, whereas he has utterly (we will see how long that lasts) rejected the notion that there is a god. For Thomas, we are all on our own. For me: on our own, we have missed Him.

The deal is, if you watch and listen to Tom Westbrook's many Youtube videos ("Holy Koolaid,"which see), in his many years of devoted, dedicated, intense and sincere life and practice of what he believed was Christianity, he never gained any evidence beyond emotion that it was true. It was just sweet poison: feel-good dogma, doctrines, rituals, philosophy, and practices based on scripture. These present a picture or illustration of God, an "illusion." One of the most insightful lyrics I have ever heard is the line in the song "Torn": "Illusion never turned into something real." Thomas had been raised on Holy Koolaid, an illusion, and for him it never turned into something real, not into evidence which would convincingly demonstrate to him that God is real.

For me it went the other way. Raised with at least attendance in the Methodist Church, I grew away from Christianity into Eastern religions and kindergarten-ish occult philosophies and practices. I was convinced that an actual spiritual reality existed on a deeper level than we normally experience, and that both the superstitions of the church-minded and the occult were distant indications of its actual nature. That is why I got into meditation and the occult--to find the real thing.

Fortunately for me, my mother had gotten into Charismatic Christianity and had a kazillion people praying for me and her best friend, Lynn, whom I lived near in Honolulu (I had moved to Hawaii to get away from my crazy Pentecostal mother in California). Well, in one occult meditation exercise we were to open our minds to an ascended master, to allow him or her to enter our minds to teach us spiritual secrets one-on-one. My "ascended master" was -- ta da! -- Jesus Christ Himself!! Even Thomas Westbrook would have seen that he was as phony as a three-dollar bill, but he (it?) was there, and Someone opened my mind's eye, without my approval to do so, to see it for what it really was. I quickly figured that if all this was really happening, then I was going the wrong way!

Again, here is the thing: for me, illusion became something real. Really real. In this I learned that the Bible was explanation of spiritual reality, not secular history, and that the world really is the way the Bible says it is, not bound to the expectations of my experience and education. I was astounded by the miraculous. People were healed, prayers were answered, "doors" were opened by providential orchestrations sometimes occurring before prayers were prayed. GOD WAS ON DISPLAY BY HIS WORKS.

Jesus spoke audibly to me, and I decided to try to find out what he had said to other people. With no qualifications but a barely procured high school diploma, I started seminary as a college junior. I learned therein to really read, and began to distinguish between the Christian fantasy and the Consciousness which/Who is God. It has been a long haul, but Thomas Westbrook is correct in this: there is no god apart from us. My daughter pointed out recently that in Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel, "The Creation of Adam," God appears to be inside the human brain! THAT is where we find Him, within our consciousness. For we are Him pushed out!!

God IS on display if you are willing to go that extra mile to where He is acting (home churches, prayer meetings, full-gospel churches). Yahweh, Eil (Aramaic of the Canaanite El), and Jesus Christ are the Consciousness of the Ineffable. The Church has taught by and large the illusion the scriptures present and not the Consciousness of the Ineffable it is about. Kind of like a diagram of a ship and not the real vessel. We SHOULD be ON the ship, not looking at a picture of it. I wonder if Thomas Westbrook -- for all his Christianity -- ever learned how to pray.

Neville Goddard and Joseph Murphy learned Judaism, Kabbalah and Christianity from a Jew named Abdullah, that God is Mind, Consciousness, a Divine Intelligence powerful to become whatever It believes It is. THAT is what we are dealing with, and you expect to resolve any matters with an illustration of It? Treat the Bible for what it is, and treat the Consciousness, the Mind of the Ineffable for what It is, Eil the Almighty Shaddai. Reach for the Mind creating you, and you will get somewhere. Do not drink the Koolaid, SURPASS IT!