John 3:16

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We all know it. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

God does not have favoritism, even though we do. Jesus was not God's only son. That would be favoritism. God created all beings equal. Humans fell asleep in their collective imaginative dream and believe hierarchy exists therefore humans believe that God judges based on hierarchy. 

What does the bible say about the subject? Galations 3:26-29 "26 So in Christ (title) Jesus (name of individual) you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ (title) have clothed yourselves with Christ (title). 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ (title) Jesus (name of individual) 29 If you belong to Christ (title), then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." 

"So in Christ (title) Jesus (name of individual) you are all children of God through faith". Remember the faith part, it will come up again in a minute. "If you belong to Christ (don't live in duality), then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise" The bible also explicitly states that we "ARE ALL ONE IN CHRIST (title) JESUS (name of individual). Jesus the individual gave up his life to teach us to do the same. If you knew the beauty that awaited you, you would crucify your "ego" in a heartbeat and wake up to eternal being you truly are. You don't kill your physical body; you kill your identity/"ego"/character/persona.

Going back to John 3:16 we see "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son (which means everyone, including you, remember we are all one in Christ)" "that whosoever believeth (have faith) in him (Christ = ALL) should not perish (no death), but have everlasting life"

Christ is your true nature without your "ego" making a mess of reality. The second coming of Christ is when you realize that you are in fact Christ (God's wholly perfect child) and there can be no doubt. You are not "Jane Smith" you are Christ. The second coming of Christ comes from within, not from without. When you fully accept who you are (Christ) and step into your purpose, you become the physical representation of the second coming of Christ. Christ Jesus realized that he was God's perfect child, he fully stepped into his true identity, and became a physical representative of Christ (Christ in human form).

We are Christ! Pretty awesome, right? If you had the faith (belief) of a mustard seed that what I say is true, you would instantly awaken and find yourself in heaven. No one knows the day or the hour, not even you, because you choose when you accept who you are (Christ) and wake up, everyone has to choose for themselves (free will). Love and Peace!

Psychedelics

Many observers see geometric visual hallucinations after taking hallucinogens such as LSD, cannabis, mescaline or psilocybin; on viewing bright flickering lights; on waking up or falling asleep; in "near-death" experiences; and in many other syndromes. Mediation can also lead to seeing geometric patterns. In this post we will discuss why this happens.  

When I was seven years old, I watched Ernest scared stupid. At the time, it was the most horrific terrifying thing I had ever seen. I had nightmares for months after and all sorts of other fears that stemmed from this. To my seven-year-old brain that mostly lived in imagination, this movie was as real as anything in this world. I have very vivid memories of what the troll in the movie looked like and he was utterly terrifying. 

About 30 years later, I decided to face my fear of that movie and so I watched it. My adult brain couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of my seven-year-old self. The troll looked like he got his mask from some cheap Halloween store, and it wasn't even secured to the actor's head. Seeing it at as in adult, it's hard to imagine how I could've ever been fooled into thinking that the troll was real even though at the age of seven it looked real.

Humans have the gift/curse of imagination. When we are a child, our entire world is shaped and molded by our imagination. We have imaginary friends; we fight dragons and live in castles. Somewhere along the way we are told to "grow up" and stop living in our head, to join the "real world". The joke is the "real world" is just another form of our imagination. Our collective consciousness that Carl Jung referred to would be easier described as our collective imagination. Our "ego" / persona / identity is all part of our imagination. We all live in a collective dream made by our collective imaginations.

Visual Aid Here

If you refer to the above visual aid you can see that in photo (A) that there is a blank piece of paper, think of this as reality/true self.

Our world doesn't make sense to our minds because the world is chaotic and messy, our minds use forms to make sense of this messy world in an attempt to understand it. In photo (B) we can see a tiny representation of different forms our mind projects from our imagination. A tree isn't actually a tree, that's just what our collective imagination tells us it is. A real "tree" is nameless and formless. This is why people experience visuals during meditation/near death/psychedelic usage often times in geometric patterns. Our brains think geometrically, they're pretty cool like that.

In photo (C) we can see that we also use our imagination to apply all of our beliefs which include, but not limited to, ideas, identity, character, religious affiliation, gender, numbers etc. These beliefs that we have about ourselves and "others" hides reality behind them.

Photo (D) shows how we all see reality. Reality didn't go anywhere, it is still there, we can still see it and experience it. All of our form labels and all of our belief's hide reality from our perception. Some refer to this as "muddying the waters", some refer to it as a "mirror", it's also what's commonly known as the "ego". 

As people begin their spiritual journey a.k.a. start getting rid of identities/beliefs, they start to wipe away some of the mess as you can see in photo (E). As some of the identities and beliefs get wiped away you start to get glimpses of reality. These glimpses are referred to synchronicities. Most of us get to this point and develop a spiritual "ego" in which we believe that "we are spiritual and no one else is and it's our duty to save mankind from themselves". This is when we become "seers", "healers", "gurus", "prophets", "enlightened", "mediums", and so on. Most of us grab on to this new identity, in whatever form it takes and stop there, not realizing that we are missing out on so much more!

What psychedelics do is ripe away all of our beliefs, labels, forms, and identities. Think of it as ripping the band aid away as fast as possible. It's commonly referred to as "ego death", the "ego" can't die because there is no "ego", it's just how you imagine the world and everything in it. If you are someone who is very attached to your "ego" or identity, psychedelics could possibly be terrifying, there's nothing to be afraid of. If you aren't very attached to your "ego" or identity, psychedelics can be very freeing and liberating, they can help you to see what labels are still hiding reality. They help remove the labels.

Sudden "enlightenment" simply happens when someone decides to see reality instead of what their imagination wants them to see. It's not a special gift from God, no one is more special than anyone else, if a human can do something, then any "other" human can too. 

The spiritual journey consists of slowly wiping away the beliefs hiding reality. Most of us go slowly because we have a strange belief that if we get rid of our identity that we won't exist anymore. We still exist, we're right there in photo (A), we just think that we are photo (D). The ultimate goal is wipe away every thought and belief from the mind so we can truly experience reality in it's purest form such as photo (F). When we wipe away every thought/word/symbol/belief/idea and there is nothing left but reality that is what is referred to as "enlightenment" or "Christ consciousness" or "Buddha nature".

Very few individuals throughout human history have experienced "enlightenment" or reality. The vast majority live out our entire lives in our imagination. Most of us are too scared to let go of who we think we are in fear of vanishing from existence or ending up in completes darkness and isolation for eternity (if we come from religious upbringing).

The deeper we go into our mind/"ego"/imagination the further from reality we are. There's nothing wrong with that, each and every one of us gets to make the decision ourselves what we want and what realm we want to live in. Do we want to live in the collective imaginary dream world where nothing matters and everything is made up (hell), or do we want to live in reality where everything is infinitely more beautiful than you could possibly imagine (heaven)? The collective imaginary dream world is misery and suffering. Reality is flawless. I Love You All So Much and Peace Be With You!

Darkness / Shadow

Darkness does not exist by itself as a unique physical entity, but is simply the absence of light. Everything in the knowable universe is light, you yourself are made of light. The visible light spectrum is the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can view. More simply, this range of wavelengths is called visible light. Typically, the human eye can detect wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers. We are made of light but our own light is invisible to our human eyes. Human emit infrared light which we cannot see with our own eyes, so we use instruments that can detect infrared light that can see those light waves. Could you imagine if we could visibly see our own light that we emitted, we would never be able to sleep. Every time we closed our eyes, we would just see our own light, we would be driven to insanity and would die out as a species very quickly. 

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy aren't darkness, they are called that simply because we have no way (yet) of detecting what that dark matter/energy is. It is not dark, our human senses can't perceive it and we have no instruments as of yet to detect it. Dark matter / energy is the absence of whatever is there that we can't detect. 

How dark does space get? If you get away from city lights and look up, the sky between the stars appears very dark indeed. Above the Earth’s atmosphere, outer space dims even further, fading to an inky pitch-black. And yet even there, space isn’t absolutely black. The universe has a suffused feeble glimmer from innumerable distant stars and galaxies. 

Scientists Discover Outer Space Isn't Pitch-Black After All. 

We quickly covered light in the physical universe and how darkness in just the absence of light, which is impossible since light is everywhere. We will now explore the darkness within, the darkness of the mind.

Complementary to Jung's idea of the persona, which is “what oneself as well as others thinks one is” [CW9 para 221], the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors…

Our persona/character/identity is who we think we are, it is our costume for the world. Our shadow is simply the things we hide from ourselves. They appear to be in the dark shadows of our mind because we refuse to look upon them. When we do shadow work and look at the dark places in our mind, we see there never was any darkness or shadows. We have shadows because we lie to ourselves. When you let truth (light) in, no lie (darkness/shadow) can remain. Darkness is simply the absence of light, just as your shadow self (persona/character/identity) is just the absence of your true self.

For a lot of us when we think of hell, we don't really imagine fire that never ends or torturing or suffering. For most of us, we go through enough suffering in this life to really be concerned with an eternity of suffering in fiery hell. For most of us, if we really sit and meditate on what hell is to us and really try to imagine hell, it's usually an eternity of being completely alone and isolated in complete darkness of which there would be no light. If you think that's what hell is and you fear that hell, it is because you are already living in darkness. When you live in the light, there is no darkness, it doesn't exist, the fear of the illusion of darkness vanishes. 

Maybe you've heard that black dogs and cats are usually last to be adopted. It's no secret that the darker the human skin the less value you have. "the typical White family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family." We avoid what we fear, we fear what we are. We are a species that are living in darkness (lies) and are terrified of the darkness (lies) that we are living in. Peoples skin color has nothing to do with anything but the fear of darkness (our lies). I Love You and Peace Be With You!

In The City

Sometimes I go and sit in the city and meditate. There's something about watching life play out without interfering. When you just sit and watch life, all sorts of amazing and interesting things happen right in front of your eyes. When you don't have the need to do anything and don't have any kind of agenda. You find that life continues to go on and interact with you, without the need of you doing anything. This is a story about one of those days.

It was a lightly cloudy sunny Sunday afternoon. The temperature was pleasantly warm without being too warm. I arrived in the city around noon. I like to change variables as a method of seeing how those variables effect the environment in which I'm in, a form of experimentation. This day I had a couple signs with me, I was holding a sign that said, "You Are Loved" and I had another sign sitting next to me that said, "It's OK".  I was barefoot and wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt. I sat in the lotus position and remained still and silent.

For a while I interacted with those who wanted interaction. When someone would look at me, I would make eye contact with them. Sometimes we would share a smile, other times we would exchange Love or encouragement with our eyes. Most would pass by and read my signs out of the corner of their eyes pretending not to notice me or not even look in my direction. Most of those who would make eye contact with me or that would interact with me were women and children. Most of the men would avoid eye contact all together. That's not to say all men avoided me, there were a couple who smiled and made eye contact. Most of the young children would make eye contact with no thought whatsoever. The older children who are closer to their teen years were less likely to look in my direction. 

Several people took my picture, most of whom tried their very best to do it discreetly as so I wouldn't notice. They would pretend to take a picture of something "in my direction", one person walked towards me and just held their phone in front of them to take a sneaky picture of me. I had a couple people ask me for my permission to take my photo, in which I simply gave them my ok with my eyes or a simple nod of the head. After some time, I noticed a woman having her picture taken by her mom across the street from me. We made eye contact, and she came over and asked me if she could take her photo with me and if she could also hold a sign. I agreed and she sat next to me while looking through my signs, she decided to hold a sign that says, "You Are Not Your Thoughts".

When she first came up to me, I remained silent and communicated with my eyes. After her mother took the photo of us, she proceeded to ask me questions, so I spoke to her. She asked some questions about me and told me about herself and her parents, who were next to us. After a little while, they walked away to go about their day. It was at this time I decided to sit perfectly still and not interact with anyone whatsoever, I would just stare straight ahead and let whatever happen, happen. I became aware with my peripheral vision, that much more people were willing to look in my direction and read my signs without me looking at them.

After sitting still and not moving anything including my eyes for some time I decided to start looking around again. A women walked up to me and gave me a double fist bump and asked if I'm good or if I needed food, I gave her a thumbs up. There were several people who just stood or sat near me. This day happened to be when ArtPrize was going on in Grand Rapids. For those of you who haven't heard of it, in simplest terms, there is art all over the city and hundreds of thousands of people come to participate and view. Since ArtPrize was going on there were a lot of people downtown.

I couldn't help but notice that the majority of the people downtown at ArtPrize were Caucasian with very few of any other ethnicities. I also noticed that for the four or so hours I sat in place, I only saw two police officers who were causally strolling down the street having a chat as if they were old pals. Aside from the uniforms they were wearing, you wouldn't even be able to tell they were on duty police officers. A thought came into my mind at that time, it was "I wonder where all the police are, maybe the police have decided not to interfere anymore unless absolutely necessary". I looked around and thought "this is really pleasant, having all those people getting along and not needing a police presence".

My stomach decided to make it known that it wanted some food so I decided to order some food from a restaurant downtown. I packed up my signs, and went and picked up the food. On the way home after getting my food, I went through a predominantly black area of town. As I was approaching an intersection, I witnessed an officer stop at the light and turn the lights on the car. He proceeds to get out and walk up to a black man who was sitting peacefully on a city bench minding his own business. Within less than a minute, two more officers came racing up on bicycles. The three officers proceeded to surround the innocent black man and put their hands on their guns. From my perspective, this black man didn't appear to be doing anything but sitting on a bench. I didn't see any drugs, weapons, bombs, or anything illegal whatsoever. They were simply asking him what he was doing and if he was committing any crimes.

I stood there not understanding what was happening, I couldn't understand why this black man was being surrounded but three white officers with their hands on their guns. It felt as if they were just trying to intimidate him and trying to provoke him into committing a crime. I wanted to speak up and say "why are you bothering this man?" I wanted to walk up and sit next to the black man on the bench, but I knew the officers wouldn't want anyone "interfering with their investigation". I didn't know what to do, I felt helpless, and I could only imagine how the man in the middle of them felt. I thought "he must be feeling extremely helpless and scared", what is someone to do when the people who are responsible for keeping them safe are the ones making them feel unsafe.

I did all that I could think to do in the moment. I committed a crime within 15 feet of the three officers. I am not going to say what crime I committed but I assure you it was a crime, and it was within direct view of all three officers. I didn't really have a plan, my thought was "maybe if the cops have to deal with my actual crime, they will leave this innocent man alone". To my chagrin, the officers were completely unaware of my presence whatsoever, to focused on the black "criminal". My mind couldn't make sense of what was happening. Here I was blatantly committing a crime within 15 feet of three officers and all they cared about was protecting themselves from someone who was simply trying to mind their own business. The thought came into my mind "it's because I'm a white man, they don't care, they only care about what "crime" they can charge the black man with.

I made every attempt I could to get their attention so they would leave him alone to no avail. I did everything short of screaming "look at me, I'm committing a crime". I wonder if I had yelled that, if that would've even made a difference. I knew there was nothing I could do, and I knew that they didn't care about my actual crime whatsoever, so I decided to move on and head home with my food. I said a prayer for that man and hoped the officers would just bored with him and move on. As I was leaving more officers were showing up to protect us from this "extremely dangerous black man minding his own business".

Black people have been speaking up about police injustice for a long time. As a white man, I acknowledge that I have 100% have white privilege and just because you may be white and have never personally experienced it, does not mean that it doesn't exist. This is one story about one incident in one city involving only a few officers, but people of color say this is happening all over the country all the time and I believe them wholeheartedly.

Have you ever asked yourself why, most of the people who seem to be in favor of the police and not wanting to hold any of them accountable are white people. While people of color are mostly saying the police and justice system is broken. Why do white people need the police so bad. Simple answer, white people think they need police to protect them from people of color, that's it. I am not here as a voice for people of color. People of color are just that, people, and they don't need me to be their voice, they have their own to give. I am here as a white man being a voice to white people saying, "the system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. THIS IS NOT OK!". This is a discussion white people need to have, we can't just make it go away by ignoring it. People of color have been trying to have this conversation for quite some time to no avail. More white people need to step up and start having this conversation.

I will no longer use my white privilege to remain silent and ignore the injustices of ALL PEOPLE. People of color are treated as less than in this society. I have witnessed it firsthand. White people claim persecution simply because people of color want to be treated as humans. Every human being treated equally isn't persecution towards white people, it's equality. White people view themselves as "better than" people of color so when people who are "less than" try to be equal, it's viewed as persecution. 

These statements do not apply to everyone and every situation, not all white people are racist, not all police officers are bad at their job, and every situation and person is different. Police need to be held responsible for their actions, the same as anyone else in any other line of work, it's that simple, police accountability. If you kill someone as a McDonalds employee, you will lose your job and go to prison. If you kill someone as a police officer, you get a paid vacation and a pat on the back, if you kill enough people, you might even get a promotion. Does no one see how truly fucked up that is? Love and Peace!

Honesty

The only thing that we can change in this world is ourselves since there is no "other". Some of us like to think that we can change "others" but it is an impossible feat. We use "evidence" that since saying a word or doing an action can appear to directly result in a change in "another's" behavior, that we must in fact have been the cause of that effect. In reality you did nothing to cause any effect in anythig but yourself. If someone or something changed its because that's what happened, it had nothing to do with anything you did. 

Some of us will get married in the hopes of changing our spouse into who we want them to be. Since it's impossible to change anyone but yourself, we spend years in a marriage attempting to change the other person. We either try our entire lives to change the other person or we give up and try to find someone else who will be easier to change into who we want. Instead of accepting who someone is, we try to change them.

As long as you're lying to yourself, no one will ever be able to communicate with you. You will always feel disconnected and alienated. When you lie to yourself, you don't believe anyone but yourself, therefore if people happen to say things that you agree with, you will listen, since they are confirming your own beliefs to you. If anyone ever tries to say things that you don't agree with, you convince yourself that "it must be a langue barrier" or "we are on different frequencies" or "we're just too different".

When you lie to yourself, you believe whatever lies that you tell yourself and no longer believe anyone else, unless they coincide with your beliefs. There is no "other", we are not on different "frequencies or wavelengths", it's not a "langue barrier", It's just us lying to ourselves and convincing ourselves of those beliefs. If you can't seem to understand another person no matter how hard you try, it's simply because you are lying to yourself about something, it's usually one big lie that has infinite lies attached to it in order to preserve the original lie. 

When you lie to yourself, you think everyone else is a liar, unless they happen to agree with you. When you are completely honest with yourself you see that there are no lies. Noone lies about anything, everyone truly believes their own lies, therefore they believe that they are in fact telling the truth. It's not a lie to you if you believe it to be true, even if it is in fact a lie. Truth doesn't need to do anything, truth doesn't need to speak, and truth doesn't need to defend itself. Truth just is. Lies on the other hand need to do, lies need to speak, lies need to defend themselves, and lies need to blame "others". Lies make excuses. Truth doesn't need an excuse since it just is.

We are are all looking for a universal, fundamental, eternal truth. The issue is we lie to ourselves so much that when someone tells us an absolute eternal truth that can't be changed or altered in anyway. We choose to believe our own lies over the truth, no matter how miraculous that truth is. We are willing to pass us heaven, nirvana, bliss, "enlightenment" just as to keep our lie intact. We don't want to be seen for the fraud that we are after all. We would rather live our lives in hell clinging onto our lie, instead of just accepting the truth and living in heaven. 

Luke 17:21 "You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” Heaven is in your human psyche, it's not a physical location. "Nirvana is "blowing out" or "quenching" of the activity of the grasping mind and its related unease." Lies cause you to grasp onto the mind as to not accidentally let those lies escape you. When you stop grasping lies and grab hold of the sword of truth your mind can relax and let out. Think of nirvana as letting out a secret and following it by letting out a deep breath, feeling like you've been released from the prison of the secret.

Those of us who live in the truth, live free from stress and misery, we have nothing to hide, no secrets, no shame, no judgement. We've paid for mistakes and learned from them. We are free to live in bliss and ecstasy with the knowledge that we are in fact in heaven. Heaven is real and we are living in it now.  

Those of us who are living with lies, live in a constant state of stress and anxiety, we have plenty to hide, plenty of shame, plenty of judgement. We just keep paying for our mistakes over and over again and never learn from them. Reincarnation isn't your "soul" leaving your human body and going into "another" physical body of some sort. Reincarnation is simply your "character" repeating the same patterns. We do so because of all the lies we tell ourselves. Time is an illusion and now is all there is. The traditional view of reincarnation is impossible, there is no future in which to reincarnate to. Every instant we are being reincarnated. If we live in lies, we remain in the cycle of birth and death. If we live in truth, we are freed from the cycle of birth and death and stop reincarnating.

The truth is, you know what you're lying to yourself about and you know what you're lying to others about. If you don't believe you could ever release your lies, you will spend your life in the cycle of life and death destined to live in hell paying for your karma. Release your lies and see the truth, and you can spend your life in heaven where you already are. For many Karma takes thousands of "lifetimes" meaning thousands of "nows" to be released. The truth is you could be freed from all of your karma if you released your lies and accepted the truth. It only takes an instant to be released from karma, to be raptured into the heavenly realm, or to be awakened. Just stop lying to yourself. I Love You and Peace Be With You!

 "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." - 1 Corinthians 15:52