Horoscopes and what might be

“Yesterday’s high-spirited mood keeps the fun going today, but without incurring any penalties. You will be in an irresistibly charismatic mood, which bodes well for your relationships. Attached Pisceans can look forward to a cozy evening, while singles can look forward to a buzzing one! “

I’ll admit that I’ve never been a great fan of horoscopes. During my Christian years I viewed them with deep-seated suspicion for their clearly demon-inspired error, and nowadays as a free thinking New Ager with nonchelant indifference.

BUT ….

(and please humour me if you have already figured this out for yourself) I have discovered a rather handy way to use my horoscope. Rather than viewing it as a predestined prophecy of how my day will be, I see it as a possible reality that I can create for myself should it so appeal to me.

There you have it.

Nothing to sell

This afternoon we visited a school function and I found myself chatting with a couple I had never met before. After discussing one thing and another the subject of the church came up and they asked me if i was a member. I offered a brief answer that I had been a member of the church for a good number of years, but was now no longer involved.

However, the observation that interested me most was that not only did I feel neither a need nor desire to justify or explain why I had left Christianity, but also that I felt neither a need nor desire to justify or explain my new “New Age” beliefs. I was content to simply let it be.

Its a wonderful freedom to simply be, to allow others to be, to bless that which you do not choose, and to have nothing to sell.

Blessing that which I do not choose

During my years as a Christian I was very good at presenting my viewpoint (this was called evangelism) and also very good at attacking opposing viewpoints (this was called apologetics). I spent many hours studying the various religions, cults and other wrong world-views, and learnt ways to argue how wrong they were in light of the teaching of the bible.

From my reading of “Conversations with God”, I now see what unbridled judgementalism ruled my mind, and have now discovered (re-membered) a far better way of living:

“The job of the soul, of course, is to cause us to choose the grandeur-to select the best of Who You Are-without condemming that which you do not select.

This is a big task, taking many lifetimes, for you are wont to rush to judgement, to call a thing “wrong” or “bad” or “not enough” rather than bless what you do not choose.

You do worse than condemn-you actually seek to do harm to that which you do not choose. You seek to destroy it. If there is a person, place or thing with which you do not agree, you attack it. If there is a religion that goes against yours, you make it wrong. If there is a thought that contradicts yours, you riducule it. If there is an idea other than yours, you reject it.”

(quoted from CWG, Book 1, p78 )

Free Will is actually Free Will

Above all, you are not to ask such logical questions as “If God wanted strict obedience to His laws, why did He create the possibility of those laws being violated?” Ah, your teachers tell you – because God wanted you to have “free choice”. Yet what kind of choice is free when to choose one thing over another brings condemnation? How is “free will” free when it is not your will, but someone else’s which must be done? Those who teach you this would make a hypocrite of God.
(quoted from Conversations with God, Book 1, p62)

When I first read these words I was astonished that I had never made this self-evident observation for myself. But of course I had no choice but to ignore its obvious truth, otherwise my whole christian house of cards would have to come tumbling down. To be quite honest, sometimes I am so overwhelmed with gladness to have finally broken free from the tyranny of christian fundamentalism that I feel like weeping for joy.

The joy of …

A few years ago I decided to certify in the Microsoft Windows Server 2000 products and spent 8 months studying many volumes all about this product. Many times I would experience an inner thrill as the lights switched on in my mind as I realised what they were on about and how a particular component actually worked.

It’s a great feeling. The joy of learning and discovery. The delight that comes with understanding.

It’s the same feeling David had as he studied the Hebrew law and delighted in learning and discovering its wisdom and its message for him.

The past year I have been reading and re-reading (and re-reading!) the three books of the trilogy “Conversations With God” and almost every time  I read I feel a delicious welling-up of joy as my soul and mind respond to its simple message. While I don’t agree with every word that is written in its pages, I love the overall message of the book and I embrace it as my own. It has become a “lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” and I am grateful that this message has been given to mankind at this time.

The story of the pencil lead and the garage

 A few years ago, a friend of mine Christine was working in HR and was dreading the job of having to tell two staff that they would be losing their jobs. One was an older woman nearing retirement, so Christine imagined that she would be happy to simply take early retirement. The other however was a younger man, recently married and two small kids. Christine felt so bad for him and the hardship this job-loss would place on him and his family.

The big day arrived, and the two meetings were held.

The young man was first, and responded to the news with a wide smile and delight. His wife had just got a great new job, and he was glad to get out of this job, become a house-husband, and finally finish the alterations on the garage.

Next was the older woman, who became so enraged by the news that she grabbed a pencil off the desk and attacked Christine, stabbing her in the thigh.

Each person chose their own reaction, their own experience of this situation, and in doing so both revealed and determined Who They Are. 

The chief aim of man

Why do so many people admire Ozzy Osbourne, when you could easily argue that he has done nothing but fry his brains on drugs and set a bad example for an entire generation?  My feeling is that he is admired because people recognise that he has “lived himself out to the full”, and that this is the inate desire of each soul – to fully express and experience itself. It seems to me that this is why prison is such a terrible punishment because it denies the soul the usual multitude of opportunities to express and experience itself.  

This is surely the chief aim of man: to express and experience Who We Really Are.

 

It speaks

I have not posted anything new on this blog for 3 months now!

The main reason relates to why I ever started this blog at all, which was as a way of me venting first my frustrations with the church, then my exploration of “post-church” christianity, and finally moving to a “post christian” position following my discovery of the “Conversations with God” books. All of these processes gave me a lot to punch and kick about, hence this blog.

The fact that I have not posted anything recently is simply because I have finally found a new resting place now that the dust has settled, and I am no longer in a place of struggle and conflict. This process has taken about 1 year, and the process of deconversion from fundamentalist christianity has been one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life.

To anyone who is struggling and battling with life, whatever your religion or creed, I encourage you to read “Conversations with God” Book 1 as it may be just the right thing for you to get out of the “rut of small thinking” that you are locked into, and open up whole new ways of thinking about your life that you do not even realise are available to you.

It worked for me. 

 

 

Discussion Group Meeting #3

Once I finally got this unruly lot to get onto the actual topic of the evening (that took about an hour), the question we considered was “how do we decide or judge what is right or wrong?”, and the answers boiled down to a surprisingly simple set of ideas (for the record, all the other bits and bobs we discussed were also wonderfully interesting):

1) Does doing this (having an affair, stealing, lying, whatever) make an accurate statement of Who I Am? Does it express a grander version of myself and who I aspire to be?

2) Am I prepared to accept the consequences of this action?

3) If I be still and listen to my heart, my feelings will tell me the truth. Call it conscience or whatever you want, in reality if we are prepared to admit it the fact is we “know” darn well whether or not what we are doing is right by listening to our own heart.

So there you have it. Another of the great questions of life the universe and everything solved for you all. 

WWANAD?

During my christian days, one method of resolving moral/ethical conundrums was to apply the WWJD method. (For the dim and slow-witted amongst my readership, this stands for What Would Jesus Do). Or even better (but I digress), the classic variant “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”. Anyway, this leads me to wondering what answers we would come up with to similar questions with WWANAD. (What Would A New Ager Do?)

Thus here some questions I propose for our next discussion group (which will be Wednesday 27th at my house, 7:30pm)

“Is abortion OK? If not, why not?”

“Is watching porn OK?’ (you would simply not believe how many search hits this blog gets each day with poor christians tying themselves up in knots over porn and masturbation)

“Should marriage be abolished?” (Stats show that marriages are busting up faster than ever, and that many that are married are just going through the motions. Is there a better way of doing this?)

For these, and whatever similar questions arise out of the discussion, the underlying question of course is “on what basis do you make your answer?” For christians, the appeal is to the bible of course. But New Agers don’t have a bible, so who says which answer is right? How do we decide? How do we know? Hmmm.