Loving Kindness

Loving Kindness

Thursday, March 7, 2019

OLD SCHOOL ICON, MODERN DAY LYRICS

The lyrics are from the song, "How Deep is Your Love" by the Bee Gees (1977). The icon artist is Ann Chapin.

This icon piece represents that moment in the Last Supper, when it says that the disciple John reclined on the bosom of Christ to ask him who would betray him. (John 13:21-26). Jesus is holding the bread from which he will take a morsel and dip it before giving it to Judas.

The apostle John, in the Gospel of John, is also referred to as, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," which appears six times in The Gospel of John, though no other place in The New Testament.

How Deep Is Your Love...
I know your eyes in the morning sun
I feel you touch me in the pouring rain
And the moment that you wander far from me
I want to feel you in my arms again
And you come to me on a summer breeze
Keep me warm in your love, then you softly leave
And it's me you need to show...
How deep is your love,
is your love
How deep is your love?
I really mean to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools
Breaking us down when they all should let us be
We belong to you and me
I believe in you
You are the door to my very soul
You're the light in my deepest, darkest hour
You're my savior when I fall
And you may not think that I care for you
When you know down inside that I really do
And it's me you need to show...
How deep is your love,is your love
How deep is your love?
I really mean to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools
Breaking us down when they all should let us be
We belong to you and me








Tuesday, January 1, 2019

A Message from Andre' Maria and The Communion



Greetings Dear Friends,

DISCLAIMER: Some of the things you will read below may be difficult for you to believe, may challenge some or many of your held belief systems and may not be able to be taken seriously by you. It is OK. For my part, I have done everything in my power to present everything as truthfully as I possibly can.

INTRODUCTION:

On December 24, 2018 I created a post on Facebook where I stated that I had a message for some of my Facebook friends, though not for all of them. So, I asked people to “like” the post and that would indicate to me who needed the message. This message appears near the end of this post. A handful of others, for whom Spirit specifically indicated needed the message, were later added to the list, with their agreement.

This message will be divided into two parts. I first need to share some background information. The message itself will follow the background information. I regret the background section is so long. Everything I included seemed necessary.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Several months ago I moved to a small town in rural Southeastern Arizona. This town is approximately 55 miles southeast of Tucson. The population of this community is less than 1,000 people. The town does not even have a gas station. The name of this town is Saint David. The most prominent feature of this small town, by far, is a strikingly beautiful Roman Catholic Benedictine Monastery and its beautiful and sprawling property.

The monastery sits on 150 acres. On it sits a 70-foot-tall Celtic cross that can be seen very prominently from the adjacent highway and that informs people that they are approaching the monastery property. The name of the monastery is Holy Trinity Benedictine Monastery. Just a point of possible interest—I am a former Benedictine monk.

The monastery grounds include several beautiful ponds/lakes, a bird sanctuary, a conservatory, acres and acres of largely unspoiled natural land, dozens of extravagant full-grown peacocks that can roam freely, a retreat center and the architecturally significant Old Spanish style adobe monastery church, dedicated to Our lady of Guadalupe, which I believe has won several architectural awards.

Even though this monastery and property is in Saint David, the name of the town has nothing to do with The Roman Catholic Church. The town was settled a couple of hundred years ago by Mormons. The name Saint David references a Mormon man of great reputed religious stature. The town is named after him. This town, as well as much of the surrounding area, is still heavily Mormon.

I no longer live in Saint David. I now live in a larger small city (pop. 5,000) approximately six miles away, called Benson.

I had visited this monastery several years ago when I previously lived in Tucson. So, I have been familiar with the monastery for several years now.

Once I moved to Saint David, I found I had a very strong desire to visit the monastery. So, I did. I visited the monastery the very first day I moved to Saint David. After getting settled in, I went to the monastery. Once I arrived at the monastery, I found I then had a very strong desire to sit outside, near one of the meditation ponds, and meditate. So, I did that too. I ended up meditating for several hours. I had not meditated for several hours straight in many years.

I ended up going to the monastery every day, for the next month. Each day I ended up spending several hours in meditation, most of that time being spent meditating outside in nature. A minority of the time I spent meditating inside the monastery church.

Slowly, and then very rapidly, after several days of this routine, I noticed some very subtle changes and later more striking changes within me. These changes were internal. Some were emotionally based. Some were, for lack of a better word, spiritually based. They are difficult to describe.

I believe this protracted period of very intense meditation opened me up to some sort of portal to a different realm and/or consciousness.

The first very concrete experience connected, I believe, to the numerous days of several hours of daily meditation I experienced at the monastery in Saint David came in the early hours of November 15, 2018. It came in the form of a very vivid “dream.” By this date, I had already moved from Saint David to Benson.

Here is the information about this "dream." It is important.


In this dream I was back in the lunchroom/cafeteria of my high school in Lexington, KY. I graduated from this high school in 1978. I don't ever remember having a dream in all these many years that took place there. 


In the "dream" the lunch room seemed empty except for one other person. I was sitting at a lunch table and there was this male figure standing by the table looking directly and very intently at me in what I experienced emotionally as a very friendly and open-hearted way. I could feel that his gaze was also incredibly loving. I could also feel the presences of some other figures nearby, but I could not see them. I could only sense shadowy type figures of them. It felt as if these other figures were there is some sort of support capacity.


The man standing by the table, started to lean in toward me, without losing his gaze whatsoever, just a couple of feet away. He was smiling at me. I then realized he looked very familiar. He looked like someone I had gone to high school with and whom I knew well. He looked like a friend from high school named Steve. But he looked somehow different than how I remembered him (I had last seen him at our high school graduation ceremony in June of 1978). His eyes were much more sparkly than any eyes I can ever remember seeing. He also looked younger than I knew he would be now though not as young as he looked when I last saw him in high school. And there were a few other subtle differences that are hard to describe. I finally ended up saying to this man, "Do you know Steve (I also used his last name)?" You look a lot like him. Are you related to him?" The man just smiled very broadly in response to my questions. He got a big smile on his face. At this exact moment I realized I was not dreaming. Instead, I became aware that I was in my astral body and that I was on the astral plane and not on the earth plane. Upon this awareness I also had this flash of insight---"This is Steve! I'm on the astral plane and Steve is here. So, Steve must have died on the earth plane, if he is here!”


At this moment I woke up in my physical body. I felt very disoriented.


I grabbed my cell phone to see what time it was. It was 4:04 am. I then had this thought, "I have to go online and see if Steve has really died."


I then got up and went to the bathroom. After I returned to bed, I had the thought, "I'm so tired. I'll look up Steve online when I get up later." So, I tried to go back to sleep. But I was extremely restless. I couldn't go back to sleep. So, I got up, turned on the light and turned my phone back on, went onto google and looked up "Steve (with his last name), Lexington, KY." The very first entry that came up was his obituary. I clicked on it. Because of the information included in the obituary, there was no doubt that this was the Steve I gone to high school with. There was also a photo that I had seen before. I remembered that photo vividly because it had also appeared in our senior yearbook. It was Steve. Absolutely. No doubt.


Let me now take a few moments to say a few things about Steve from when I knew him in high school. Steve and I were not really close friends in high school. However, we were both in band--both marching band and concert band. Plus, we were both in orchestra as well. Steve was a percussionist. In Kentucky, back then, the music programs were extremely important and very competitive. And everyone in the music programs were part of their own clique aided by the fact that we had to spend so much time in rehearsals and band practice. So even though Steve was not a close friend in one way, in another way he was because everyone in band was close in some very real ways since we all spent HUGE amounts of time with each other in rehearsals, etc.


I remember Steve as a very friendly guy. He also loved to play non-mean pranks on people. He had a very infectious laugh--even more so than I did. I also had come out as gay when I was in high school. This was not a wonderful time (high school) nor place (Kentucky) nor point in time (1976) to come out. It was not fun. Steve was straight. But he was 100% supportive of my sexual identity, even though he was a devout second generation Italian-American Roman Catholic. He just didn't care. It didn't matter to him.


I was still awake in the wee hours of the morning, reading the numerous entries in his online obituary.


I discovered that Steve had passed onto the Spirit world on August  of 2009. He was 49 years old. He was divorced. He had no children. There was no information about what the cause of death was in the obituary. Because he had served honorably in the US Army, he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I began reading all the many entries in the obituary. There were more entries than I had ever seen in one of those online obituary sites.

At some point during all of this I closed my eyes and said this, silently: "Steve, if you are there, I have a few questions for you. Are you there?


I waited a few seconds and I got this response, "Hey man, I'm here!" "You know man, you never signed my yearbook. You are the only person I wanted to sign my yearbook who I couldn't find to sign it at graduation. I really wanted you to sign it, man!"


Those words were spoken to me telepathically. They were in the voice that I remembered as Steve's voice. Not only was it his voice it was the same cadence, intonation, accent, everything. So, I began to speak to Steve telepathically. I asked Steve if he was one of my Spirit Guides. He said that he was. He said that he is a fairly new Spirit Guide of mine. He said that he was brought onto my Spirit Guide team because there were some specific assignments, he was to help me with.


At this point Steve and I had a fairly long telepathic conversation that I don't need to go into detail about here. Among other things, he revealed things that absolutely convinced me that I was really speaking to the person who in this life was Steve, the person I had gone to high school with. Along the way I asked if it was really him, I was communicating with or if I was just imagining the whole thing. He just laughed that infectious laugh that I remember so well now. His sense of humor was very much still intact.


From this point forward, I am going to refer to Steve as Jerome which was his middle name in that incarnation.


Very soon after this experience with Jerome, I began to get extremely strong impulses to go onto youtube and watch very specific videos, all of them on metaphysical/esoteric/spiritual topics. I was intuitively guided to go to very specific videos. The vast majority of these videos featured people I had never heard of before although they were all apparently very well-known people in certain metaphysical and spiritual circles. The best way I have to describe the impulses to watch these videos is to reference certain scenes in a very famous movie. The movie is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The scenes involve the character “Roy Neary” who is depicted in the film by Richard Dreyfuss.  Roy experiences an insatiable drive to reproduce (in mashed potatoes, in mud, etc.) recreations of Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming. This is pretty much how I felt during this period when I was being drawn to look at dozens and dozens of videos on youtube, some of them being more than a couple hours in length.


I knew I was being directed to watch these videos by my Spirit Guides although this was never specifically stated. At one point I was spending between 12-18 hours a day watching these videos. It was brutal. It went on for weeks. Finally, nearing exhaustion, and finding that many other things I needed to attend to were not getting done, I contacted my guides and asked for a reprieve in watching so many videos. This request was firmly though compassionately denied. I felt I was going to lose my mind. Finally, at some point, I was given a reprieve. I was also instructed to keep a journal of a number of the pieces of information I received through watching these videos. Among the many videos I was instructed to watch were numerous videos by three highly respected channels also called trance mediums. I had never heard of any of them before.


At some point, when watching videos of the trance channelers, I realized that when they were channeling, I would sometimes hear, telepathically, the words that later came out of their mouths, from the entities they were channeling, before the words came out of their mouths. As shocking as this may sound, I experienced this as not shocking at all. It seemed completely natural. But then after the fact I would realize this was very shocking.


At some point this thought came into my sense of awareness…” OMG, I am going to be asked to channel some entity/entities. I just know it!” I was completely and totally horrified.


In order to save time here, I am going to skip the description of the process that led to me being OK with potentially becoming someone who channels messages from some entity/entities. What I will say is that it definitely was a process. And it was a process my guides had to work diligently with me on. While I have never viewed trance channeling in a negative light whatsoever, I have never, ever personally wanted to be a channel. My main thought process was this—I already have so many controversial, culturally, socially and/or spiritually suspect and negatively viewed things about me, I simply didn’t want any more. I wanted to spend the rest of my days with relatively little new controversy in my life. I knew channeling was very controversial in many quarters. I didn’t want any more controversy in my life. My guides informed me that because of agreements I had made before I incarnated into this body, it was going to absolutely be impossible for me to avoid rather extreme degrees of projection, controversy and misunderstanding in this life, until I die. The other thing is that I currently have a life that is often very stressful, intense, and overwhelming. I did not want something else on my plate to potentially add more stress and overwhelm to my life. At any rate, I have fully accepted this potential fate now, despite my many ongoing reservations.


The group of entities I channel refer to themselves as “The Communion.” They are a Collective of Multidimensional Consciousnesses. Some of them are viewed by some people here on earth as being various “Ascended Masters.” At least two of my own Spirit Guides are a part of “The Communion,” including Jerome. There are others. One protocol note, when The Communion refer to me, in their messages, they do not refer to me by name. They refer to me as “our friend.”


I have no idea what message The Communion will bring through. None.


THE MESSAGE

A message from The Communion…


Hello.


It is good to be here. We have a message we believe will be beneficial for all who come into communion with it.


Human Beings, while existing here on the earth plane, have a large spectrum of experiences that are felt and held as loss, pain, hurt, terror, grieving, challenge and so forth and so on. You call some of these experiences--the physical or impending deaths of loved ones, loss of a job, perceived loss of security and the perceived lack of the ability to take care of ones material needs, deep and frustrating conflicts with others—often with those you have a great love for, experiencing the pain and suffering of others who are either personally known or not known to you and having this experience in a way in which you feel useless in reducing the others pain. All these experiences can then become your own carried pain which settles in your Heart and Spirit as an aching, a sense of the stinging and ringing absence of justice, frustration and other felt emotional phenomena that do not feel good to you.


Whenever there is any group of Human Beings gathered there will almost always be someone present who has experienced one or more of these things we have mentioned above. While this is certainly true, we are here to tell you that we are aware that among you who are reading this message, at least initially, there are many of you who have experienced or are experiencing one or more of each of these. We are aware of this. We know you are in pain. We know that you are suffering. We know that you are grieving. We know that you are experiencing a sense of loss and/or confusion.


Comfort is available to you. The reduction of pain is available to you.  The reduction of suffering is available to you. The highest expressions of Love are available to you. All you need do is ask. For you are Love itself and manifested as such and are responded to as such. It is what you are made of. And Love has no regret. Love makes no apology. Love is not meek. Love is expansive. Love, when it is real, is given freely and in being given freely, it also receives freely and openly. Love is what, you at your core, are made of. So, the question often becomes how do you consistently be aware of all of this?


At root you are a Soul funneled through the Living and Timeless Creation of Love. You become aware of Your True essence by realizing you are, at root, a Soul. And you allow this realization to guide you, permeate your consciousness.


Your True Home is the place where Souls go once their journey’s on earth have come to completion. It is where you were before you came here—to earth. You have incarnated into a physical body in order to experience and learn everything you cannot learn outside of a physical body of some kind, in some form. Yes, you are a body, but you are more than a body. You are a Soul, but you are also more than a Soul. In order to understand what you are, in total, you must understand this…


There is nothing you nor your body can ever do that is wrong—not in the fullest sense of the word wrong. Everything you have done and will ever do that you can view as being wrong requires judgment on some level. And that which Created you has no judgment. It is not capable of judgment. And you are made up from that which you were Created. You may have heard that Love is the opposite of fear. This is true, in most cases. It is also true that Love is the opposite of judgment. In the universal language of the multiverse the words fear, and judgment are synonyms. So, you are advised not to judge yourselves. That bears repeating. You are advised not to judge yourselves. You were forgiven before you were born. Raise your vibration in the process. Understand that the year 2019 is the year of the massive incremental raising of both individual and mass vibrations. For the year 2020 will bring with it quite a different energy. We will speak of this later.


The American spiritual teacher Neale Donald Walsch, some years ago, received considerable flack, from various quarters, for dictating in his channeled book, Conversations with God, these words… “Hitler is in Heaven.” Well, we have additionally and equally shocking news for you—so is King Harod, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson and the makers of the atomic bombs that were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. And all of them are now very good friends with the Master who walked the earth two thousand years ago named Jesus of Nazareth (aka—Sananda, Yeshua, Ascended Master Jesus, The Christ, and so forth) So, do not create an unnecessary “Hell’ for yourselves while you are here on earth. The key word in that last sentence, by the way, is not “Hell,” it is the word unnecessary. For, when you return to your True Home, you will find out that “creating Hell's” may not have been the best way for you to have used your time here. For, Love is also your True Home. And there is no other, for you nor for anyone else. You are Love. Love is your True Home.


We thank our friend for hosting this communication.


That is all for now.

END OF COMMUNICATION



Friday, April 15, 2016

Testify to Love








 
For as long as I shall live,
I will testify to love.
I'll be a witness in the silences
When words are not enough.
With every breath I take,
I will give thanks to God above.
For as long as I shall live,
I will testify to love.

Art by Alex Grey


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Monday, April 11, 2016

A revolution of the HEART



Perhaps you have felt it. Maybe it was almost indistinguishable at first--incredibly, fantastically subtle. Maybe you questioned if it was real or if you were simply letting your imagination get the better of you. And then again maybe it came upon you so quickly and with such force that it literally knocked you to your knees or onto your back and simultaneously out of your head as well. For irregardless of what you have been taught, this experience is truly the experience of being "out of ones mind."

 These are just a few of the endless ways one can experience the breaking open of the human heart. It is a return to love. For it is from this place of utter open-heartedness that each of us came here from. It is our birthright. It may also be what you came here to teach others how to reconnect with. For in every age there has been a pervasive forgetfulness that has seemed to permeate the masses. And so in every age there has simultaneously been a call for this remembering, a longing for the heart to make its permanent residence inside of your consciousness and inside of mine too. And so, if this opening of the heart has come to you, good. And. Welcome Home!

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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Why "bad" things happen to good people




Why do bad things happen to good people? This is a question that has been asked by all kinds of people for time immemorial. Well guess what? I'm going to answer the question. Yes, that's right! I'm first going to give a very general answer and then I am going to give an answer much more tailored to a very specific type of person--which I will identify.
First, the very general answer. The general answer has its roots in the fact that human beings have free will. With this free will comes the ability for all kinds and forms of chaos and madness to be unleashed and that impacts all kinds of people, including people that, at the most basic level, had absolutely nothing to do with one person's actions of free will that may have occurred hundreds or even thousands of years ago. So there's that.

Now I want to give the answer that is specifically for men and women of faith--men and women of faith who have some very specific and very important work to do in this life. Pay close attention. You just might be such a person without even knowing it. Perhaps reading the words here themselves will clue you into the fact that you are such a person. Once again, free will is at the root.

OK? Here we go. 

 
Some of us people of faith are called to be prophets, certain types of healers, and other specific types of people of faith. Because of the nature of our assignments or calling (which we agreed to before we were born) we must undergo certain trials. In the human experience such trials are often called, "bad things." We have to go through these trials because the work we have to do on this earth requires that we choose this work very seriously and very carefully and even, if necessary, after we have undergone many things that are labeled, "bad things." This is one of the ways we begin to understand just how incredibly deeply our work must, must, must be grounded in LOVE. After undergoing these trials, because of free will, we can choose to break that agreement we made before we were born. And no penalties are assessed. However, if we undergo these trials and our faith is eventually strengthened and our hearts are broken open and we are filled even more with LOVE, then we are fit and ready to carry on with that agreement that we made before we were born. It is extremely important to understand that God/Goddess/Universal Consciousness nor no one or nothing else is "testing you. You are testing yourself.

Thanks Be To...LOVE (which some people sometimes call God). But that post is for another day. I Love you!


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Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Testify.



In some church's people do what is called "testifying." Some people believe they are too educated or too well-bred or too something or other to testify. Thank God, I am not one of those people.

So I am going to testify...just a little bit here.

Psalm 23 verse 4 says, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

I want to tell you something. I have known this bible verse *by heart* since I was 5 or 6 years old. By heart, baby. Yes. I'm telling you the truth. And I want to tell you something else. Between January 2014 and June 2015 I was walking through that valley of the shadow of death. And I was walking and walking and walking. But you know what I forgot? I forgot the "I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me," part. Yes. You see, I forgot that part. So I just kept believing that I was meant to be walking through that damned valley of the shadow of death, wearing out pair after pair of shoes, with no end in sight. I intuitively knew there would somewhere be an end to it. But I didn't think about comfort or someone who could provide comfort being there with me through it all.

And then in one unplanned moment of grace last June my heart was opened up just enough and just long enough for Yeshua to come to me and remind me of the "I will fear no evil, for you are with me," part. Just enough and just long enough for that message to come through loud and clear. And even more miraculously---I believed it. Logic gave me no reason to believe it. Science gave me no reason to believe it. I am still a man of both logic and science. However, on that day it was a voice that spoke through the void, through the mystery of it all that got through to my heart. It was not a voice of science nor a voice of logic. And I believed it, even though logic and science gave me no reason to believe it.

Hallelujah!

Like I said, this is a post of testimony. It is not an evangelizing post. It is not a post of proselytizing. It is not really even a post about Yeshua even though Yeshua is mentioned several times and a photo of Yeshua accompanies the post. Find your own way. Find your own ecstasy. My way in no way needs to be your way. I know there are endless ways and endless routes to get there from. I hope you find it brothers and sisters. I hope you find it. I want everyone throughout the earth to experience the joy I am now experiencing. I hope you find joy. I hope you find peace. I hope you continue to work for justice. I hope your life is guided by the drive to birth endless forms and expressions of Loving Kindness onto the planet and out into the universes...AMEN.

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Saturday, April 2, 2016

Who is it?


Trigger Warning: Sexual exploitation, sexual violence, violence, and looking at our own possibly disowned and unacknowledged hatred, bigotry, and emotional directed hatred and violence

Who do we believe it is OK for us to marginalize, disenfranchise, dehumanize or hate? Is it convicted pedophiles, convicted rapists, transgender people, gay or lesbian people, women, the far right, murderers, serial killers, white supremacists, atheists, immigrants, refugees, sex workers, people who work in the porn industry, people involved in human trafficking of all imaginable kinds and expressions, women who have abortions, black people, various other people of color, rich, white, heterosexual men, members of the so called 1%, billionaires, corporate executives whose companies are destroying the earth and exploiting millions perhaps billions of people, people who oppose marriage equality, leaders of organized religion, Christians, Muslims, Christian extremists, Muslim extremists, Jews, Palestinians, homeless people, people on public assistance, anyone who is actively and seriously religious in any way, lawyers, bankers, phone solicitors, Mormons, Democrats, people who owe us money, people who have sexually exploited us in some way, people who are responsible for the deaths of people we knew and loved, your parents, family members other than parents, creditors, Satan, devil worshipers, pagans, drag queens, addicts, people with intellectual limitations, people who cut us off on the road, people who discriminate against us. Who is it? Who?

Do we truly believe this is consistent with our professed Buddhist practice? Do we truly believe this is consistent with our professed Christian practice? Do we truly believe this is consistent with our Muslim or Sufi practice? Do we truly believe being a professed atheist gives us a pass on this?

My current facebook cover photo contains a quote by Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. It says, “We are here to awaken from our illusion of seperateness.” I believe addressing these type questions is consistent with that awakening. Thich Nhat Hanh has also written a poem entitled, “Call Me by My True Names,” sometimes presented as, “Please Call Me by My True Names.” This poem also addresses this to some degree though not perfectly, of course. It is very easily found on the internet.

Finally, my goal with this status update is absolutely not to guilt or shame anyone. The other day I read an article about an adult male celebrity who was sentenced many years ago for having sex with a young girl. There was no evidence it was consensual and he also tried to blackmail the girl. As I was reading the article I could feel a sickness slowly developing in my stomach and I began to notice that I started looking at the photo of the celebrity that accompanied the article with something very closely resembling disgust. I was shocked that this was occurring to me. But, BAM! There you go. As my Dharma Brother Seiho Morris is fond of saying, “We All Share the Same Sky." I love you.


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Monday, March 28, 2016

My Beautiful Life with Christ Yeshua: The Circle is Completed, Part VI


As I mentioned in an earlier installment of this series, forty years ago, when I was sixteen years old, I had what would end up being a life changing experience.

At age sixteen I had the first powerful and memorable spiritual awakening/kensho/samadhi/mystical experience of my life, at least that I am consciously aware of. This ended up being only the first of several such experiences I would end up having throughout my life. As I have also mentioned earlier, each experience, including this first one, contained several of the standard elements many people in certain spiritual circles have now become very familiar with. These include an unexplained experience that seemingly comes completely out of nowhere (now here), a total feeling of oneness with everything in the large and expanding cosmos, the complete disappearance of a sense of separation with all of creation of any kind, including the disappearance of a sense of there being a separate “self.” There was also the sense of a seamless oneness with everything and everyone, and a complete sense of inner and outer peace, loss of time, etc. It was also my first experience of what I would call complete and total bliss.

There was also an aspect of this experience that involved the fully human yet fully Divine Yeshua (Jesus) as well as an intense connection to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that has never, ever left me.

At the time of the experience I believed that Yeshua had in fact come to me in physical form. In the ensuing years I have come to believe instead that during the experience I must have fallen asleep and that it was in a dream state that I experienced Yeshua. This does not make the experience any less real nor any less powerful for me in the slightest. It simply helps me understand it more clearly and I believe more accurately. 

During this presumed dream, that was a part of the overall experience I had, Yeshua placed his right hand on his chest, over his heart area. He then extended his left hand and touched my chest, over my heart area, and then said, “We are of one heart.” This aspect of the overall experience, without question, was the most powerful, most moving, and most impactful aspect of the entire thing for me. This aspect placed me on a lifelong quest for mystical union with the divine, cemented in my heart connection with Yeshua that I received in that vision/dream I had during that first consciously aware mystical experience in this life.

And so for the last forty years I have formally and informally studied, practiced, and immersed myself in as many wisdom traditions of the world that my heart and mind could handle.

From there the world became my religious, spiritual, and wisdom oyster, as it were. I delved deeply into Judaism, went deeper into Hinduism by studying Advaita Vedanta, studied Sufism, Native American spirituality and many other earth based spiritual traditions and practices, and I also studied Buddhism, and established a Buddhist practice, first beginning with a Vajrayana practice and then moving onto a serious Zen practice.

Early on it became very clear that I had a very prominent appetite and very natural inclination toward mystical traditions of every stripe. Meanwhile, in the catholic seminary while studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood, I studied both the Old and the New Testament very deeply as well as Catholic Church history and the lives of the saints in the Catholic Church. I became an amateur hagiographer in the process and still am to this day.

Somewhere along the line, while not completely losing my Christian faith, it somehow definitely got placed somewhere on the back burner. In the 1990s, for example, in America, Christianity, at least the fundamental expression of it, became deeply enmeshed with very conservative politics. For me this seemed very much like a marriage made in Hades. For much of those same 1990s I also lived in a conservative southern American state—Kentucky—and so this made it doubly worse for me. And so it became very natural for me to distance myself from the prevailing expression of Christianity in the USA and the prevailing consciousness I was living in at that time.

I however, didn’t shun the Christian faith completely. I found my way to Unity and Universalist Unitarian churches for my Christian fixes and they kept me connected to Yeshua in ways that were quiet yet fairly fulfilling. Other practices and other wisdom traditions were always more at the forefront though; always more receiving of my attention and my heart.

This more or less remained the state of affairs with me with regard to my Christian faith until that fateful day last June when I walked into St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bremerton, WA. I cannot stress enough the importance of this day. Perhaps I have even mentioned it in every single part of this series. That is because that day and what was rekindled on that day is the bridge that connects my sixteen year old self, forty years ago, to my fifty-six year old self today.
 

Forty years ago Yeshua came to me and symbolically connected his heart to mine. Forty years later he came to me again, this time in a church, and said to me—“I have not forgotten you my beloved brother and I know you have not forgotten me either. Unburden yourself. Come to me, and I shall give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me. For I am meek and humble of heart. And you’ll find rest for your soul. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Forty years. Two messages of love and connection from and with Yeshua. A universe of experiences of both fear and love separating the two points. A fierce and fiery return to Love.

It took me several months after the revelations I received on that first day at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bremerton to accept that Yeshua had come back into my life in such a powerful and meaningful way—that our heart connection was still there, real, alive, and not just something created in my very active imagination. It took me that long to believe words like…”and he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.”

So many of us sing and proclaim words like those so much in Christian life. Yet, most of us do not believe we are at all worthy of these words being true, at least not as applied to ourselves. I was no different. I too fought this truth with every ounce of my strength. And finally, finally during this recent Holy Week, while in prayer, the overwhelming love of Yeshua was made so clear and so pure and so present to me, I simply could no longer deny it. I could not deny that it was and is making itself available to me freely and generously and completely. Alleluia!

And something else has been revealed to me that may be very shocking and unbelievable to many Christians. Yeshua is not the only eternal savior who has walked the earth who has this unfathomable amount of love for all creation that is available to all humankind. Additionally, the word salvation itself has very different meanings throughout the world, all of which are correct. Yeshua however, is the one who has connected with me deeply for reasons that are not entirely clear to me at this time. I will perhaps say much more about all of this much later as more is revealed to me should it feel like information that needs to be revealed, information that will increase the probability of healing and transformation, should they be revealed.

With Yeshua at my side and The Holy Spirit as my guide, much has been revealed to me in the last several months. I now know what my true vocation is in this life. I understand the things that I must do in order to live my life in the way that has been ordained. I now understand that everything that has occurred in my life has been a preparation for what I will do from this point forward. There have been no mistakes. I have no time to waste now. I have a lot to do. Much of it is crystal clear to me. Some remains mystery. None of this makes me special. During a moment of grace (while at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church) I had a moment of openness. It only took a moment. If it had taken longer I might not have been able to remain open. However, it only took a moment. Hallelujah!

Humility and Love must now become my two most enduring and foundational traits. It has taken me forty years and two exquisite moments of grace for my heart to be broken open—to go from being broken to being broken open. Praise God! It has taken me fifty six years to discover what my true vocation in this life is. Many people come to understand such things much earlier in life. I am not special. And yet again we all are because we are all filled with the Light of God which is to say we are all filled with LOVE!


To read all the essays in this series simply follow the label at the bottom that says, My Beautiful Life with Yeshua (series) 

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