In my search for books by Carolyn Myss, Brene Brown, Dr Bessel van der Kolk, and Kelly Brogan, I stumbled upon this little book yesterday afternoon. I brought it home to glance through and see if it was worth reading. Well, it certainly was. You see, I misplaced my LDS fantasies of how I was going to turn out, and how my sons would serve missions, and my children would be safely encircled in the arms of other Mormons who knew us and loved us. I’ve learned the hard way that love hurts and though one may love a child, friend, spouse or parent, as a member of my Mormon story, one [all the other people, family, I thought loved me] loves the organization much much more.

It’s okay. All of it is okay. We are all each seeking for our Truth, and we are all doing the best we can, sometimes that best carries us and others through, sometimes that best lets us down. I resigned from the LDS church June 2015, but I do not walk away from who I am, the belief that shaped me and framed my world, or the God I learned to love and feel loved me in return. I finally accept the rejection of myself from the household of my faith, and I let go of trying to prove my worth and my longing nostalgia to be heard, seen, loved, understood.

For a long time I’ve mourned my loss; of self, of hope, of purpose. For even longer I’ve been keenly aware of my differences from other people, groups, ideas, ect. Yet today I’ve finally felt the beginning awakenings of the truth “that big messy spiral of people, moving, trying to find God. That right there is Zion. Get there however you can.” (Parentheses above taken from the book). The truth that I long believed of not belonging, it turns out that I actually do. I belong to this messy mass of beautiful humanity searching for truth. I never understood before just how much I truly belong!

Vi veri universum vivus vici – “By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe”.

In a number of both Eastern and Western meditative traditions, the principle of dying before you die is taught and practiced.

Christ, in his physical presence, could only traverse the geographic locations of his home, walking in sandals in the desert. As he went about he shared of his life presence “and Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him”.

In the garden of gethsemane, as Christ sweat great drops of blood, I believe he went through the greatest most triumphant die before you die, or better, while living he conquered the universe of all humankind experience, one that expanded beyond the personal, and reached out into the cosmos. I wonder if at this time he freely released within himself that power, or virtue, that he felt leave him as he healed, saved, forgave, and loved the world. Finally, in the last hours of his crucifixion, he forgave us all “for we know not what we do” and then he returned with his father in Heaven.

Now on Easter morning, as we approach the tomb and find it empty, we too, like the apostles of old who knew and loved him during his life, we get to ponder the words and opportunity before us “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

The kingdom of God is in the midst of you.

And like a wave with the epicenter being The Empty Tomb, Christ’s power has come to all the world. That Cosmic Covenant, more ancient and deeply abiding than the covenant of Moses, the one that all of the ancient fathers and mothers walked into, having died before they died, having been given a new name, walking in the inner kingdom of heaven where Christ sits as God of this world on his eternal throne in the holy of holies, the kpr or covering or atonement with him, we too are invited to find that inner kingdom, to walk the Christ path, to meet our Savior face to face, and to hear him know our name.

Christ is not dead, for he is risen. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes”. – Elizabeth Barret Browning Aurora Leigh

Have you found your own burning bush? Have you taken off your shoes and approached? Have you died to your old self and old way of life? Have you, while living, conquered your own personal universe?

The Empty Tomb invites you …..

Dr Zach Bush and Dr Daniel Pompa

Facebook video link

Viruses are a genomic information update. They are the response to the stressors we have placed on the planet.

“I have never witnessed in my lifetime a more egregious division between a public message and the science behind it. There is an extreme abuse of power, an extreme abuse of fear. Is there a pandemic happening? Yes, we’ve had twelve thousand pandemics and epidemics in viral kingdom just in the last 40 years.”

Masks are ineffectual and exacerbating the problem in more than one way.

“I think there’s an erroneous belief that we’re having any influence on this at all. Like, we don’t have a choice. Should we let this virus go, or should we sequester? We can’t control that, that virus was out and about, long before we even knew there was a problem. We had a global pandemic going before the media even started to realize [unintelligible]. The death curve and cases per population, even though those numbers have been completely and ridiculously utilized with very erroneous testing and everything else, we can say with quite confidence, even though the numbers are not accurate, the patters are consistent with every other pandemic that you would expect, and the pattern is around 42 days and every single country, it doesn’t matter what their response is, has seen 42 day curves. We’ve got this situation where we think we’re changing the pattern, or should we slow down the pattern…we don’t have a choice. This thing is going global no matter what. There is no evidence that we’ve changed the curve of infection by all of these ridiculous things that have been put in place. They’re there to change the way we fear things, they’re there for reasons, I think outside of science, but science is showing us that the curves of infection, the rates of death, and then the resolution of it is the same in every country, whether they put masks on, don’t put masks on, whatever it is, like shut down the entire economy, it doesn’t matter because the virus was out and did it’s thing before we realized what was going on.”

“Nature’s already fixed it. We don’t even have to do anything now. We just need to go back to a healthier relationship with mother earth.”

Transcript:

[2:20 – 4:00] Viruses are the communication network between the microbiome and other species form earthworms, to pigs, to humans. You’ve got this hierarchy of genetic information in the world, the fungi are 10x the number of bacteria, they rule due to their sheer diversity of life outside and within the human body. The only way we can be informed and connected to that, to not only the genomic foundation for life, but  for the adaptation necessary for life to continue.

Obviously the one thing we can guarantee in life is change, and that’s very true at the foundation of biology. Biology is brilliantly designed to be changing all the time, and at the genetic level, we have to change all the time for adaptation to occur. What allows human life to be possible is the eons of change in the genomics of the planet has allowed multicellular life to emerge and emerge in more and more complex forms. And so without the virus being that genetic code transfer system, we would be screwed, we would never have existed. So we need to come to terms with  the fact that viruses are not frightening, they are not even alive. They are a genetic transfer machine used to update the genome of the genome of the planet moment to moment. We are surrounded by 10^31 viruses in the soil, 10^31 viruses in the air, 10^ 31 viruses in the ocean water. We are surrounded by somewhere around a billion times more viruses than there are stars in the entire universe, yet we’ve been taught to fear these things, which is ludicrous.

[4:30-6:51] You bring up the immune system, and one of the issues is we think there’s a human immune system which is actually pretty erroneous based on the last ten years of science. We have kidneys, we have a liver, we have a gut, but we don’t have an immune system; we don’t have an immune organ. The immune system is a continuation a response mechanism within the whole system of biology. White blood cells look to be only a small part of what we would call some sort of immune system. Babies are born without innate immunity. It takes about six months for a baby’s immune system to get functioning to it’s full potential (as we think of it) B cells that make antibodies, T cells that clean up cells that have been damaged or overwhelmed by new genetic information from a virus. That whole system takes six months to come online after birth, but by one week into life, we know that there’s 10^8 viruses in the stool of any baby. And so the viruses aren’t hurting that baby, in fact the viruses are working to inform and be a continuum of information from the ecosystem into that child.

The immune system is global, it is not human. There is no human immune system. There is only the microbiology and its global immunity. We think of the immune system as fighting against things, when in reality, the immune system, through the continuum is a system of balance. And so we don’t want to kill anything, we don’t want to eliminate bacteria or fungi, we want there to be balance, and each species needs to play it’s important role and niche within that ecosystem. And so immunity for me is really expanded outside of the body to understand we are a continuum within nature, until our nature that around us is in a continuous path of information exchange, and the viruses are a big piece of that, but micro-RNA being another piece. There’s just so much genetic information being exchanged all the time, and that’s what leads to health. When we isolate away from nature, we immediately increase disease burden.

Pompa: In the last ten years, we’ve found in mice, the more sterile the environment, the more disease ridden they become. We’ve gone back to the hygiene theory that we’re going to kill everything.

[7:47-9:00] Bush: There’s no doubt that the current response of the media, the talking heads within the administration who have been allowed to pretend like they know what’s going on; I have never witnessed in my lifetime a more egregious division between a public message and the science behind it. There is an extreme abuse of power, an extreme abuse of fear. Is there a pandemic happening? Yes, we’ve had twelve thousand pandemics and epidemics in viral kingdom just in the last 40 years. These happen all the time, all over the world, and the one thing that kills more people than anything else is influenza every year, an so that’s where the problem really lies. We have hospitals stretched to their most extreme burden because of chronic disease and recurrent patterns of genomic shift around the planet due to this stress that we’re causing the ecology. An so we’re causing these things from an increasing destruction of nature an our connection to it, and our response, especially no more egregious than this episode we’re having now is to kill more things, and put ourselves at more odds with nature, rather than reconnect to is as the solution.

Pompa: Should we isolate the vulnerable and reach heard immunity?

[9:30-12:10] I think there’s an erroneous belief that we’re having any influence on this at all. Like, we don’t have a choice. Should we let this virus go, or should we sequester? We can’t control that, that virus was out and about, long before we even knew there was a problem. We had a global pandemic going before the media even started to realize [unintelligible]. The death curve and cases per population, even though those numbers have been completely and ridiculously utilized with very erroneous testing and everything else, we can say with quite confidence, even though the numbers are not accurate, the patters are consistent with every other pandemic that you would expect, and the pattern is around 42 days and every single country, it doesn’t matter what their response is, has seen 42 day curves. We’ve got this situation where we think we’re changing the pattern, or should we slow down the pattern…we don’t have a choice. This thing is going global no matter what. There is no evidence that we’ve changed the curve of infection by all of these ridiculous things that have been put in place. They’re there to change the way we fear things, they’re there for reasons, I think outside of science, but science is showing us that the curves of infection, the rates of death, and then the resolution of it is the same in every country, whether they put masks on, don’t put masks on, whatever it is, like shut down the entire economy, it doesn’t matter because the virus was out and did it’s thing before we realized what was going on.

So we can’t change the reality of genomics. The planet is a continuum of genomics. We can call them viruses, we can call them whatever you want, you can build fear around them, it’s irrelevant, because the genomics are going to spread around the planet, the same way they have since the beginning of the planet two billion years ago, and so it’s a very false belief system that we’re going to suddenly somehow change the way genetics travel around the planet. It’s impossible.

Pompa: Dr. Judy is concerned that the masks cause more problems, and you’ve said their ineffective, so will you elaborate on that?

[12:30-14:00] Bush: So viruses are tiny, tiny, tiny little pieces of genetic information, especially in the case of a coronavirus which is an RNA virus, and so these are tiny little packets of genetic information, and our bodies are extremely permeable membranes. Putting a mask on is irrelevant to the overall size of your exposure to this virus. Your gut lining, starting at your sinuses, and going all the way down through to the colon is two tennis courts in surface area. Every time you slip that mask off and breathe, to go to the bathroom, you know wherever you think you’re in privacy, you’re breathing the planet’s air, and the genetic information we’ve seen with every influenza epidemic, you can show exactly where those viruses are going to be around the planet down to a square mile on the planet, at any given time or season of the year because we know how air travels around the planet, and the viruses are simply traveling by the air. And so there is no “Oh, now I’m outside and now I’m out of danger,” or something like that, it’s a continuum, everything is continuous, there is no isolated air pocket in your house that keeps you safe and then when you go outside you suddenly have to put a mask on, it’s erroneous thinking. And so yes, I don’t think it makes any sense. There’s no science stating that making masks mandatory in the public is going to change the path of a genetic spread of a virus around the planet, that science doesn’t exist, because it would be impossible for that to be real, because that’s not how the genetic information is traveling.

[14:35-17:33] There’s no question the masks can do harm, but the reality is if they do no good, and we know that it has no relationship to the actual reality and the science of how viruses move around and how they get in the body. Even if there was no risk to the masks, what you’ve done now is put an incredible amount of waste into the planet. And so right now China is making 200 million masks *a day*. 200 million a day is being pumped out of China right now to meet the global demand. The amount of plastic waste from that, that is going to end up in our oceans and destroy our planet faster, to accelerate us towards a much worse pandemic as we destroy the ecosystems further, send out bigger and bigger stress signals from the environ as we destroy our planet; the masks are doing that. So even if they had no effect on human health, I can tell you for-sure, 200 million masks a day that are all going to end up in waste dumps, and in oceans is ludicrous. It is literally getting at the root of why this thing happened, and we’re just accelerating it faster so killing the globe is killing humanity.

Now, is it directly hurting humans? It has to be directly hurting humans because this is polypropylene–this is plastic. The material they use in it is terrifying. It’s called mesh injected, or mesh blown glass, melt blown plastics; and so to make an N95 or any of these N99 masks that are supposed to be protecting us from the virus; they melt polypropylene or some other form of plastic there are also [mineral?] ones that are melting glass, fiberglass, but most of them are made with plastics. They’re melting polypropylene and injecting it with high speed air so that explodes out into a web and then the webbing plastic hits a screen and layers on top of each other to make this multi-layer spiderweb of plastic. And then you put that on your face and you’re breathing through plastic. Unfortunately these microfibrils, especially when manufacturing goes into a blitz of we need suddenly, 200 million masks a day suddenly quality control goes away and you’re just pumping these things out. The masks are prone and especially when heated and cooled in transport and everything else, the plastic starts to fray within that and you’re getting these nano-particles of plastic into your lungs. And so it’s a very bad idea to tell the whole population to start breathing polypropylene nano-plastics. That has been shown to absorbed through the lung into the bloodstream very quickly, and we know that polypropylene, especially in these nano-particle sizes is a huge endocrine disruptor, speeding up metabolic collapse, infertility, all these things that are leading to [unintelligible].

Pompa: Dr. Judy, since 2013 there are coronavirus strains in the vaccines. She believes that these coronaviruses that are in vaccines can be creating more of what you call firestorm and immediate cytokine activity and put people who have more of these vaccines at greater risk.

[18:28-21:30] Bush: There’s a nice NIH published study showing that the influenza vaccine increases the risk of getting coronavirus. And so it’s showing us that when we disrupt the human side of the immune system’s response to the biome, we interrupt a very important  information cascade.

Here you’re listening to me and there’s some sort of suspended disbelief going on because you’re told all these people are dying from COVID and the reality is nobody is dying from this virus. The virus is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic for the vast majority of people that get this genetic update. And so the virus is not responsible for your immune system’s response to it. It’s just a genetic code that’s updating your genome. And so your genome is updating and for some people, the new protein that is being made by COVID is triggering an interesting down-stream response, but it has to be a perfect storm. Your body has to be very, very vulnerable the changes that are happening in these people that are showing up with hypoxia and ultimately organ failure and potentially death. It’s a very, very small segment of our population. And remember this virus went pandemic very fast; before we had a response, before we had everything, it was in every nook and cranny of the planet. And so this virus has been updating the genome and we’re seeing a tiny fraction, and if it’s a million deaths world-wide, that’s a tragedy, but hundreds of millions of people die every year. And so it’s not going to change the population growth, it’s not going to be like the Black Plague  which eliminated 30% of the population. We act like this is a terrifying pandemic. We have no idea what terrifying looks like. The Bubonic Plague was terrifying. That, literally would wipe out a third or 25% of the population of every country in the world. We have never seen real plague hit. That we have such an erroneous, and backwards and non-scientifically backed and based response to this pandemic is a huge warning. I want scientists to start standing up. I want doctors to start standing up and saying, we have to have a response system that not there to sell more drugs and sell some theoretical vaccine. We need a system that responds to our ten years of science around the microbiome’s role in human immunity, and we need to start to react like that. As soon as there’s a pandemic, we need to get everybody to stop driving, because the main thing that Harvard found was killing populations was air pollution. And so there’s something in air pollution, likely heavy metals, that are cause a noxious secondary injury to the red blood cell and causing hypoxic injury. As soon as China stops driving, and their air pollution clears, they all stop dying. It was like somebody threw a switch and suddenly, over a 30 day period, they went from this…they build 16 new hospitals in less than a month and then less than two weeks after opening the hospitals they had to discharge everybody because there was nobody else left.

Pompa: military study. Those who were exposed to the vaccines had a 30% increase in SARS types of viruses. That’s huge, to the point that there is something predisposing us, and flu vaccines could be one of them.

[22:21-23:09] Bush: It’s so frustration that we keep thinking that we need to fight against the microbiome. The microbiome is not at fault. We are at fault. We keep destroying ecosystems, we keep destroying the connection between us and that ecosystem, and that’s what’s driving pandemics. We did not see a single virus jump species until 1976. It’s crazy that we have now after the last 30-40 years seen 12,000 episodes of these massive genomic shifts happening across species because we are stressing these species to such a state that they are going extinct. And so in the last death throes of adaptation when they’re trying to not go extinct, they’re putting out information. We call them viruses, we create fear around them, really all we’re doing is breathing the stress of the planet we’ve created.

Pompa: We need to be exposed to certain things. Science shows the more we’re exposed to different pathogens, viruses, bacteria, etc. from childhood, the stronger our immune system. We’re now teaching the opposite of what we have learned in the last decade.

What can we gain from this. What can we do?

[23:57-26:20] Bush: Nature’s already fixed it. We don’t even have to do anything now. We just need to go back to a healthier relationship with mother earth. We need to start growing our own food again. We need to start growing food in our backyards again. We need to put the chemical industries out of business by taking responsibility for our own health and food systems. It’s that simple. Nature has already solved this. SARS, MERV. They go away within 2 years, no vaccine ever created for those. They simply go away because we create what we call herd immunity, I look at it differently and say no, the genetic update happened, and we didn’t need any more reactivity to it because the majority of those of us that can absorb that genetic information did so, found homeostasis and balance and we moved on. This is going to be over, this is not going to wait for some technological advance to save us all [unintelligible]. If it took four years to create a coronavirus vaccine that worked, then we would have done it in 2001 with SARS. We would have done it in 2011 with MERS. It’s not that it takes time, it’s impossible. It’s not actually a germ, it’s just genetic information. You can’t create a vaccine against genetic information. The genetic information is being produced by our own cells. Human cells are producing the virus that is making people sick. It has to be made by the human system for it to affect humans. And so the genetic information comes floating into our experience, and single human cell picks it up and says “Oh, cool. New genetic information,” it makes a new protein, I’m going to use that protein for, who knows what. We don’t even know what this new protein for COVID-19 is, which I’m exited there’s a new protein, and it’s probably go some sort of adaptive importance to us, as it was put out by nature as an adaptation to stress. So we have a new adaptation genome that’s been inserted into human cells. We’re now putting that out in volume to make sure it gets out to the entire global population.

Pompa: Do we want to get exposed?

[26:25-28:15] Bush: Not only do we want coronavirus, we want continuous information update from nature, and you want the least stress possible in that nature that you’re touching. Which means that if you just go out to the dog park every day, and that’s your definition of nature, and you’re standing in glyphosate sprayed, Round-up ready “grass”; it’s ludicrous that you think that’s nature. You’re breathing, already a damaged ecosystem. You’ve got to go out and get in nature, you’ve go out into the ocean as far as you can, you’ve got to into the national parks as far as you can. Is there any part of the planet that’s not damaged right now? No, but it’s resilient. It’s going to show you in nature, that the less stress you get, the less information you need, but get into as many ecosystems as possible. Our lab has been working on the communication network between the microbiome for the last seven years, and it’s just been so encouraging to see how resilient biology is when it’s given enough information. So when you see a cell communicate with an adjacent cell, you see immediate repair and resilience happen. The bizarre think we’ve discovered is that one human cell doesn’t talk to the other human cells through a human language, it talks through a wireless communication network made by bacteria and fungi. So whether it’s the bacteria and fungi creating the wireless network of communication between your cells, or the constant updates of genomic information that you need from the viral kingdom, this is your support network for life and resilience. And we’re seeing this all over the world. [Unintelligible] are more likely to die right now. Not because of the virus, but because of the cumulative stress you have consumed by separating yourself from nature.

They go on for a few minutes to talk about the product Dr. Bush’s labs have produced to support the microbiome in the sinuses and gut.

The following was written by Jacob Wright yesterday, and I though explained the foundation of what I was getting at in my previous article.

—

Someone asked me if there are consequences for unbelievers. The word “believe” is a poor translation of “pistevo” which means to wholly trust or surrender, not to have a mental adherence to something. Trusting in Christ is bigger than cultural indoctrination and identity. Just because you were born in the East and therefore identify with that culture you were shaped in and are therefore a Muslim or a Buddhist does not mean you do not trust Christ. Christ is bigger than belief system that was engrained into you by your culture and his Spirit is at work in all places everywhere.

Christ is not just the man from Nazareth that came into history 2,000 years ago, but as apostle John said he is the cosmic Logos that the whole universe is expressed through and who gives life and light to all humanity. Christ is the reason a universe unfolded towards consciousness, rationality, and intelligent beings, and furthermore why these beings live their lives through an assumption of truth and meaning reaching after fulfillment. Christ is enlightening everyone of us, but all on our own personal subjective journeys.

Some will recognize in this lifetime that the historical Jesus is this Spirit whom they have been seeking to follow all along, and some will not. But those who love are born of God, those who are peacemakers will be called sons of God, and those who manifest the fruit of the Spirit follow and trust in Jesus whether they know it or not. On the other hand, those who confess “belief” in Jesus but hate their enemies and have no desire for peacemaking or compassion don’t trust in Jesus or love him.

The historical Jesus, in his life, teaching, ethics, and revelation of God in his self-sacrificial and enemy-forgiving death, forever changed and is changing the world, even when people who claim exclusive ownership to his name by their “doctrinal rightness” sell him out to everything that he opposed. Many who allegedly reject Jesus, only reject a false Jesus that they were presented, all the while following his Spirit.

I believe everyone will eventually surrender to the self-giving love at the heart of the universe, that is, Christ. The self-sacrificial love that happened 2,000 years ago on Calvary is bigger than that one event, but is cosmic, universal as the truth of who God is and is within everyone of us, waiting to be unveiled. It is what propels the universe forward, and one day every knee will bow (submission of heart) and tongue acclaim (overflow of the heart in declaration) that Jesus is Lord, that this Personality of love is the true universal reigning power, to the glory of our eternal Father and Origin who fills all and is through all.

This post is more of a framework of belief, than a detailed description. Pains have gone into fleshing out concepts, but do not attempt proofs. The writer assumes the reader is already very familiar with scripture, and can decipher and pick up on scriptural statements.

Questions this post covers:

What is law, and how is it related to grace? Why do Christians think they live by grace, but actually practice law? How is the Law of Moses and religious laws in general related?

Are Eastern-type enlightenments legitimate, and if so, how do they relate to an understanding of Christian and Mormon experiences and teachings?

What is the Light of Christ? Why is it so named? Is it the same as, different, or inferior to the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Who is Jesus, what is the meaning of his primary title “Christ”?

What is the commonality between Socialism, monarchies, Libertarianism and democracy. What attracts people to these systems on a fundamental level? What constitutes a heavenly government?

What is authority that so many people define in varying ways? What is priesthood, what is Melchizedek and Aaronic priesthood and their relation?

Who is the Father? Are the Father and the Son two separate beings? Why do some visionary accounts have Jesus telling them he is, and always has been the Father? Why do some accounts say they are separate beings? Is one deceived and false, or can they be reconciled?

Why isn’t this explained more clearly in scripture? Why is it not more clear here?

What is meant by the mansions of heaven which God prepares for us? Where and when is heaven?

What is the significant of “day one” of creation as opposed to “day two”?

What is the relation between the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life?

Who are Gentiles and how do they manifest authority?

Why can the Father not appear without a host?

Law. There is the Law of Moses, given as a schoolmaster for failure to receive grace. There is grace, which one can obtain after coming through the law. The Law which Moses gave and its temple were inspired, prophetic and pointed to grace, not just pointing to the time of Jesus in the earth, but the time of Christ to come in us. Some obtained grace even before Christ was born a babe and received their Second Comforter. These were the prophets of the OT. Receiving the SC does not clear up all of your misconceptions, but is there for you to experience what God is like and have the ability to report that to others. The purpose of the Son is to reveal the Father, to prepare the vessel to open their mind wide to the vastness of creation, to know the Father is to come into a host. When the Father is known, all things point back to his creation. The following is an experience of Richard Bucke:

This is a manifestation of the Father. The son may appear, but it is not requisite if the vessel is prepared² and open to receive the Father. The Son is the fulfillment of the expression of God. A vessel who fully manifested the Father. The Father is at the core, he is like the third rail or live wire, the source of the energy of the universe. Coming into contact with that can be electrifying, terrifying, exhilarating, for everything that has hidden the Father must shake, and fall away. The person must pass through the eye of the needle, must pass the cherubim which guard the way with a two edge sword which cuts to the marrow and so discover true riches.

The Law of Moses was not a universal law. It was specifically for Israel and those who wished to join them. It was not needed.³ There are others who come into contact with the Universe and experience God. These come back and as a result they can be broken, can he left without utterance, can be a stranger in a strange land, or can attempt to lead people into the light they enjoyed by recreating their path to connection.⁴ In many ways they may not understand what has happened and it is not lent easily explanation, and perhaps more importantly if it were fully explained, it would be able to be exploited by the self-serving who serve their vain ambition and lead away sheep with something that can seem genuine to some, but is detected by the “humble followers of Christ” as a fraud, though usually with pain and great travail of soul.

Christ is a title, not specifically a person, unless Christ is perfectly embodied such that the terms are synonymous. It’s not so much a title as Gentiles think of it, as it is a power. Joseph Smith described it clearly when he said:

“…through Jesus Christ his Son, he that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth, which truth shines. This is the light of Christ, as also he is in the sun and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made; as also he is in the moon and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; as also the light of the stars and the power thereof by which they were made; and the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand. And the light which now shines, which gives you light, is through him who enlightens your eyes, which is the same light that quickens your understandings, which light proceeds forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space: the light which is in all things, which gives life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sits upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.” (D&C 88)

Christ is in all things, even us. The all-in-all as some writers put it. When Jesus declares his glory and light, he declared he did the will of the Father. There are examples of renaming something, giving it the name of the vessel who typifies it well. Melchizedek was an example of this. Melchizedek itself was a title Melchi-zedek meaning king and priest. So there was a priesthood originally named The Priesthood after the Order of the Son, which was renamed simply Melchi-zedek priesthood⁵ or the priesthood of kings and priests, however that was not the original name, though it has nearly the same meaning if it is truly understood. The Light of Christ is also an example of this renaming. Jesus declared his light was the Father, the light which led his way was the Father, this light being renamed for the one who exemplified the Father, and at the same time declaring the source of the that light, the Light of Christ which is in and through all things, and the “center” as it were of all planets, rocks, water, plants, animals and people.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes…
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

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The concept of redemption is a powerful one; the closer a person is to the Father the more powerfully that message resonates. When Darth Vader’s stony heart broke, even in his physically weakened condition, he, with might tapped from deep wells, threw the Emperor to his death. The message of redemption resonates powerfully, and is one of the most powerful, endearing and calculated ways to make sobbing babies of us all, even in a fictional, archetypal or mythical account because it speaks to this core, or this center. When we hear about a sin⁶ revealed, in which we, ourselves are guilty, we tremble, because our center is trying to throw down our false foundation, and trying instead to expose the bedrock upon which we might build a more solid structure.

So “Christ” is in and through all things. This light is in the Methodist, the Mormon, the Buddhist, and the Atheist, without which they could not breathe.⁷ We look at labels such as these and we think they are the pure, original form of the thing. We think of a pure Christian preserving the sacred teachings of Jesus, a pure Mormon, who accepts Jesus through their “more updated” tenets, or the Buddhist who we make the same or equal to Buddha himself. The truth is none of these are pure or original. They are but pale imitations. While what started the movements might have been pure, what resulted afterward wound up attaching a lot of garbage, false traditions and pride that needs to be removed before the follower of any tradition can see clearly. Did Joseph Smith gaze into heaven? I believe so. Did Buddha connect with the source of the Universe?⁸ I believe he did, but just as with the Methodist, the sacred to which they place hope in their hearts omits the possibility of Buddha or Joseph Smith as authentic and only look to the historic figure of Jesus. All of these original actors had intimate access to the author of the universe (as do we), and when each one tapped into that light, it was profound, left them without immediate words, but each of them began to teach others about the depths which they experienced, to bring others to the Father. However what these founders inevitably found, was that the people needed a schoolmaster, a law and a straight and narrow path until they too could taste the Tree of Life, the love of which is so large and wide, that it “sheddeth itself abroad” into the hearts of every creature.

Given that all people subject themselves to a law in an unending verity of forms, to which they believe, if they hold true, will bring them salvation. The law might be the Law of Moses to the Israelites. It might be the letters the apostles wrote after the death of Christ to the Christians. It could be patriotism, crunchy health-food proponents—anything can be turned into a law. Each child eventually partakes of this Tree of Knowledge which brings death, releasing their connection to life. It is this tree and its effects which must be, and is so painful to shed, before being allowed to partake again of the Tree of Life. No so much “allowed” as it is always there, but it is not accessible to the “knowing” mind, and getting rid of this knowing mind is so painful, that it is likened to a cherubim and a flaming sword, which cuts both joint and marrow, and as a result it winds up turning nearly every way from life, or the tiny eye of a needle through which those who think themselves rich with knowledge must pass through.

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The concept of authority. In Gentile kingdoms and organizations, there is a central head, board of directors or a quorum of twelve that is the final word in that kingdom. In these kingdoms, the central authority appoints officers to carry out their will, the central authority being the author of that will. These Gentile kingdoms may be more or less enlightened by true author-ity, but they, nevertheless, run according to a central mind, giving out direction, letters, memos, operations manuals and commandments to their darkened following like a beehive zion-reich, appointing each their place. The kingdom of heaven is run in no such way. There is a central mind, but it is at the center of all things. It doesn’t reside in Salt Lake, the Vatican, New York or Washington D.C. Each person who has re-entered the Garden, recognizes this author in them, and it is the source of author-ity for all things. There is no need for an apostle or prophet, or president, as the writer said these things are given until we come to a unity of the faith.⁹

True apostles/prophets, those who have access to real author-ity may exist and may create earthly organizations in an effort to lead each person into true author-ity for themselves such that no one need say “Know ye the Lord?” These enlightened organizations have the goal of making their people free, not in continual bondage. It starts with a person who knows the universal mind. But this organization becomes more or less dead as the organization grows and spreads from that mind in hierarchy and in time. This is a hybrid system, not fully dead, and in this state, it usually only lasts until the death of the testator (Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, Buddha) after which, the organization quickly descends into a dead Gentile hierarchy with someone claiming leadership over the organization. The exceptions to such a rule are rare, but do exist as in the case of Enoch and Melchizedek who’s followers did receive their own light and it is said that God walked among them. These enlightened hybrid organizations are where the concept of Lesser priesthood comes into view. Aaron, who had not the vision of Moses was given “priesthood” because he had an association with Moses, who had been transformed into a being of light.  These are Melchi-zedeks, who live in day one of creation, leading Aaronics who live in day two. One being unity, and two being division. (The day in which they live being obvious by the behavior which they emit.)

Those who have author-ity need no man to command them, but operate in harmony with each other, each doing that which they ought because it is what heaven endowed them with, or endowed them to do, flowing in harmony with the will of the universe, no one engaging in ridiculous strife, position-jockeying or competition. Contrary to dead Gentile organizations, this source of all life is a powerful creative, curious and cooperative energy and unfathomable variety that needs no one to direct it.

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This cooperative aspect of the energy is what leads some into a system known as socialism, where the dead organize and lead the dead and redistribute their wealth by a committee of thieves. The central mind aspect of this energy is what causes people to gravitate towards a king, whom they follow as if he were God. Most cultures wind up declaring their king to be God himself, or at least his mouthpiece on earth, and to follow him, is to do one’s duty to God and country. Examples of this are in Egyptian, Japanese, English cultures, as well as what has become of the American system. Both of these systems try to emulate some aspect of true author-ity, amongst a dead people who never have to seek the light, but rely on a strong-man to show them the way, relieving themselves of all obligation to come alive. Libertarians emulate the freeing aspect of not being ruled by man, and ironically have little representation in the history of governments. The American system came as close as it could, but among those who wish to remain dead, it is doomed to decay into rancor and become some other system or -ism. The Greek democracies represented another aspect, in that that they recognized that the power was in each person (dēmos: people, cracy: rule), yet here again is only a shadow of the hopes of mankind, which similarly devolves into great chaos.

While each system represented some aspect of pure government, each starts on a false foundation of control and manipulation, which is required if a people are determined to be dead. This rotten foundation leads some people to rightly declare all taxation is theft, all voting is unrighteous dominion that takes money or life-energy from one to put to use by the will of the system, even if that system is a constitutional republic. Even if all people wholeheartedly agree to the system at first, it doesn’t continue, and children born into it are already slaves of whatever they are born into. The children gradually lose their heavenly connection to conform to the forms of the dead.

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The Father cannot make himself known without a host, the Light of Christ resides in every soul, in everything. The Light of Christ, as declared by Jesus, is the Father. When God revealed himself to Moses, he showed Moses every person and every particle of the earth, and let him know that there were other countless worlds like this one. He showed him, as it were the clay tabernacles or “mansions” housing God.

The concept of Christ and the Father, some being reported to appear separately and some singly. Some reporting Christ to declare the he is, and always has been the Father, and some reporting that the Father and Son both appear, I believe can be reconciled harmoniously, if pondered upon, the meaning of the word “Father”.

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Notes:

1. Experience of Richard Bucke, a Canadian psychiatrist who was President of the Psychological Section of the British Medical Association and later, President of the American Medico-Psychological Association. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New American Library, 1958, pp. 306-307.

2. “Prepared” gives one a sense that there must be some effort involved. And in some cases that may be, however “prepared” may have more to do with the circumstances (joys, anguishes) one is faced with in life that prepares them. “it shall be in his own time, and in his own way, and according to his own will.” (D&C 88) In some cases the user of the word “prepared” may be intentionally making the reader think they must effort, in order to provide a “straight and narrow” way discussed later.

God follows types and patterns, but is not bound by them. I think God would rather keep us guessing and making judgements (if that is what we are inclined to do) than bind him down to a specified pattern. He is not a tame lion.

3. It was not needed in one sense because the Israelites could have immediately received grace. It was needed on the other hand because they refused grace, and this was a merciful second measure for them and their generations.

4. Jim Carrey is an example of one of these types. He had an experience. He came back and tried to express the joy of what he felt. As a result he found our society completely unrelatable and intolerable. As a result, people view him as a mad-man.

5. I am not referring to what LDS call Melchizedek priesthood, though there is some superficial resemblance. The LDS have no Melchizedek priesthood, and when it appears, they cast it out from their church. The ritual of bestowing “Melchizedek priesthood” upon “worthy” makes may have been intended by Joseph to have been more of a teaching opportunity, and invitation to “go get it”. However it has since be conflated to being the thing itself and the pride of being “chosen” rules the mind. Someone once said “More Mormons die of paper cuts than have Melchizedek priesthood.”

6. I use “sin” as a shorthand, but sin is both more and less than a misdeed that we need to ask for forgiveness for. To sin means to miss the mark. Sin has come to mean a lot of things in our minds but Jacob seems to be pointing out its most accurate and intended meaning when he specifically says the Jews “looked beyond the mark.” This tells us that God originally gives us what is good, and when we want more, or something else, he, as a good and patient teacher, assists us in looking beyond the mark (or in sinning). He gives us what we want, so we can make more informed decisions.

“Looking” has more to do with “perspective” than it does a set of deeds. If the perspective is missed, then we have “missed the mark.” The Jews looked for a set of rules to govern their conduct. A set of rules was not what God originally intended for them. They missed the perspective, they looked in a different direction and God patiently gave them what they wanted with sign-post invitations to “come higher”.

When Alma says that Melchizedek priests “could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence,” I’m not sure we can say that these priests never did things that were against a set of established rules, rather, after obtaining the perspective God gave to them, they abhorred altering that perspective, or going back to their old way of seeing things. They no longer “looked beyond the mark”. They were perfect in Christ and understood what that meant. Like Paul “all things were lawful” to them, but not all things were expedient. They were able to “obtain a sufficient hope by which [they could] enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time (right now) henceforth until [they] shall rest with him in heaven.” (Moroni 7)

“The English Biblical terms translated as ‘sin’ or ‘syn’ from the Biblical Greek and Jewish terms sometimes originate from words in the latter languages denoting the act or state of missing the mark; the original sense of New Testament Greek ἁμαρτία hamartia ‘sin’, is failure, being in error, missing the mark, especially in spear throwing; Hebrew hata ‘sin’ originates in archery and literally refers to missing the ‘gold’ at the centre of a target, but hitting the target, i.e. error.[4] “To sin” has been defined from a Greek concordance as ‘to miss the mark’”. (Wikipedia, Etymology of “Sin”)

7. “I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.” (“King” Benjamin, Mosiah 2:21)

8. “In visionary encounters, friends have seen themselves as an enlightened beings, and in that role experienced peace, joy and love. They have overcome the pains, jealousies and distress of the mortal sphere…” (link)

9. We read that and say, “Ah, these apostles must remain because, the church has not yet come to a unity of the faith.” However, perhaps “unity of faith” has more to do with uniting an individual to heaven, the “Church of the Firstborn”, than it does a body of people that believe something or other to a greater or lesser degree.

I was blessed to have several children and love and observe each one. The longer I see them, the more convinced I am that their behavior is more intimately tied to what they came here with, rather than the good or bad environment in which they’re raised.

In one tradition, Zion was established only after the most wicked people were killed during a massive upheaval of the earth. If this is true, then consider that being in the presence of God, and establishing a perfectly just and equitable society, or in other words, being raised in a harmonious environment, would not sufficiently alter the determination of “the wicked” to turn it into another selfish, rancorous nightmare.

Death can be looked up on as a punishment for the wicked. The pains and fear of death can also be an opportunity to transcend the ego-centric, fear-based life which that individual leads. It can be looked on as a regeneration, rather than a punishment.

The same can be said for working out the emotions, anger, selfishness, “possessions” or “generational curses” that we experience in life, that put us into a rut, or bog of the same behavior. During our lives, letting death come to things that ought to die in us is regenerative, renewing and additive, rather than the opposite. It is like having a sickness where you feel miserable and close to death for days, and one morning you wake up with dried sweat, the sun is shining, you feel amazing, and now have an immunity to the disease that took you.

While coming into the presence of God may be fearful (like the Israelites who shrunk from the mount and would not go up when invited) and may feel like being submerged into a lake of fire and brimstone as we consider what we really are, but the being who “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance” cleans you up, regenerates you, elevates your vision, and brings you closer in the orbit of Christ.

Dickens’ archetypal character Arthur Clennam in Little Dorrit, was not so much a product of his familial situation (though I believe it’s troubles further helped him gain his own clarity) as he was a product of many opportunities of death and regeneration.

All “knowledge” is finite because, by its very nature, it is a conclusion. Any conclusion regarding the infinite and eternal is also an exclusion, thus must be only a part, i.e., this is so but that is not so. Our natural minds, even with great revelations, cannot comprehend the whole. That is why the infinite light shines in the finite darkness and the darkness comprehends it not. – Max Skousen, Finding the Mark

Leslie’s Sonnet

When sorrow feels itself my truest friend

The world, upon my breast, is weighted down

I cast my eyes about, “Is there an end?”

My troubles hang about me, I am bound!

Confusion calls my name, and I am lost

Such fiends, as of old, strike deadly blows

The world exacts from all tremendous cost

The price of which the Lord most surely knows!

The baby in my arms will gently rest

My children standing with me at my side

I find shelter on my husbands’ loving chest

With these loves my spirit doth confide.

When nations fall and worlds are torn apart

My family holds me safely in their heart.

I wrote this sometime in 2010.

“As we work on taking personal responsibility for our behaviour, confront our own dysfunctional patterns and grieve our losses, we are taking steps toward living at an altitude that transcends the level of the petty, the inane and the insipid. We disconnect from the narcissism of popular culture. We do not take things anywhere near as personally as we did before. We keep our pride in check and recognise we are not the centre of the universe. We heal our wounds before we inflict them on others. We recognise that our capacity to harm and persecute others is equal to our capacity to be victimized by others. We begin to crave the wisdom of the ancients and of our elders – recognising that perennial truths never die and will always satisfy a seekers soul. But, the price of admission to living and breathing at this altitude is high, very, very, high. The price of admission is a suffering which is transmuted into the courage that only faith can produce – the courage to be fully human. Otherwise suffering just leads to more suffering, whether in the form of a victim or persecutor – and the line between these two roles can be ever so thin.”

Abdul Saad, clinical psychologist at Vital Minds Psychology, Sidney Australia

“If you alter or obscure Jesus’ portrait of God in order to attract Bible converts, you don’t get converts to Jesus, you get converts to the Bible. This is not evangelism, but deception.” (John Piper)

To be known, he has to be comprehended. He is too great to be fully comprehended by any one person, even if he reveals himself to that person. Even if that person knows God in part, that part has to be communicated through words. Words are a communication system frought with misapprehension of meaning. So all portraits, Biblical or otherwise are portraits of, and conversation to, illusion. The more sure a person is they know God, the worse that illusion is.