JESUS AND THOMAS -TOGETHER AGAIN

An in-depth look at the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas [1]

as seen through the eyes of

A COURSE IN MIRACLES[2]

Volume I – Issue 1.0                                            November 1, 2008

IN THIS ISSUE

1^st ARTICLE – LOGION 16

EXCERPT from the interpretation of Logion 16 which was first    published in Vol. 21, Issue 5 (August 2007) of “Miracles Monthly,”
a monthly newsletter published by the Community Miracles Center.

 

Logion 16:  

(16) Jesus said, “­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world.  They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the earth:  fire, sword, and war.  For there will be five in a house:  three will be against two, and two against three, the father against the son, and the son against the father.  And they will stand solitary.”

 

Comments:

 

… The war that Jesus is talking about is characterized by the parable concerning the difficulties of a rich man gaining the Kingdom of Heaven.  Here Jesus is teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to gain the Kingdom of Heaven.  I believe in this parable Jesus was teaching that the attachment to things of the world and the body, the belief that the world and the body are valuable for what they offer, leads to the temptation to hold onto those things at all costs.  In doing so, we separate ourselves from our own peace, from others, and (in our minds) from God’s love.   If we believe that the body and the world is our identity, and our worldly possessions are our identity, then we have a need to defend these things in endless battles of attack and defend, pitting one person against the other whenever egos are threatened.   I believe Jesus wasn’t killed by the Romans or the Jews.  He was killed by the human ego.   The ego (the collective guilt of the powers that be at the time) saw his message of love and inclusion as threatening to its existence for the lifeblood of the ego is fear, guilt, and condemnation.  To the ego, the guiltless are guilty.   Jesus was the embodiment of love and saw no man as eternally damned.  This was dangerous to the ego that needs a scapegoat, a person or group of people, onto which to project its self-hatred, self-doubt and self-fears and then to condemn it there in an orgy of blame and condemnation.

 

“You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncovered its source.  For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it you must believe its goal is yours.”  [T-13.II.5:5-6]

 

“I have said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego.  When it was confronted with the real guiltlessness of God’s Son it did attempt to kill him, and the reason it gave was that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God.  To the ego, the ego is God, and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder.”  [T-13.II.6:1-3]

 

Love is dangerous to institutions, groups, and even to organized religions that adhere to dogma and doctrine, and then judge and exclude those who do not conform to those dogmas and doctrines.  Institutions and groups by their very nature, exclude - while love includes.  Love encompasses all and embraces all to its bosom.  The insidious savagery of the ego is exemplified by a religion that professes to have been founded by the teachings of Jesus, yet in many instances for the last 2,000 years, its actions have spoken louder than its words.   This religion has at its roots the belief in sin, guilt and the fear of God’s punishment.  It is built on the dynamics of the ego, the separating teaching that unless you believe that Jesus is your Savior, unless you believe that Jesus is the only Son of God, you are sinful, guilty and deserving of God’s condemnation and punishment.   

For example, unless you believe in the infallibility of the Pope, you are not a Catholic in good standing.  The infallibility of Popes that engaged in the Crusades (so called “Holy Wars” in which thousands of Muslims were massacred in the name of God) is accepted by the ego without question.  The infallibility of Popes who persecuted enlightened people (like Galileo and others who discovered that science was at loggerheads with the dogmatic teachings of the Church) was embraced by the ego that identifies with authority and the fear of that authority.  The infallibility of Popes who (contrary to the evidence of the Canonical Gospels) maligned Mary Magdalene as a whore, was embraced by the institutionalized ego of the Church that blamed women for sin since the Garden of Eden.  The infallibility of Popes that engaged in the cover-up of priests who sexually molested young girls and boys, was embraced by the ego which feared that the moral authority of the Church would be questioned.  The moral authority of the Church was, I believe, more damaged by the Church’s inability to admit that it is fallible.  As Jesus teaches in A Course in Miracles, we must confront our self-hatred and doubts, our mistakes and errors, so that we can come to realize that the belief in eternal sin is just that:  a belief in the mind. …

 

In this world, we wear the mask of the ego that separates us from our brother and from the light of Christ that shines in all of us - the light that reflects our eternal innocence and our eternal peace with God.  It is a trick of the ego that even Popes and organized religions fall prey to.  That is the need to project our self-hatred and self-doubts onto others and condemn them there, and in doing so, separating ourselves from our guilt.   The ego counsels us to project our guilt and feel better, but just the opposite is true.  Attack, anger and blame result in more guilt, separating us further from our brothers, from our own peace, and (in our mind) from God’s love.

 

“For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity.  You can condemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God’s Son.  You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blamelessness.”  [T-13.I.6:3-5]

 

I believe the subconscious guilt in the minds of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church  over:  the sexual abuse of children committed by priests, and other contradictions of Jesus’ teachings such as the Crusades and the Inquisition, was and is too great for the Church to bear.  In effect, this suppressed guilt and suppressed fear of a tarnished moral authority, and its resulting self-hatred and self-doubt, is projected outward onto the world.  I believe it is seen as the condemnation of scientific thought, the condemnation of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research and the prohibition of priestly marriage and the prohibition of women priests.  The explanation that the Church gives to oppose the above things is that they are not in keeping with how God thinks.  Yes, they know how God thinks!  Well, they do when it is expedient and suits their purposes.  However, when you ask the leadership of the Church why an all-loving and omnipotent God would permit such things as natural catastrophes and disease, that result in untold human suffering and misery, they explain it as a mystery.  They call it a mystery when it is out of their control and can’t explain it.  However when it is in their control to exert power to create rules and regulations as to who can become a priest, and so on, then they know how God thinks and create artificial rules that in the final analysis just separate and divide.  Again, we see the vicious and insidious nature of the ego coming to the fore. 

 

Here we see the official stance of the Church contrary to the basic teachings of Jesus.  For Jesus’ life was the embodiment of inclusion, seeing the common denominator in all, …

 

To further illuminate the deep and insidious grip the ego has over the human psyche, one only has to remember the incident when Jesus overturned the tables of the money lenders in the Temple.  These actions came from the person who said there is no justification for anger!

 

“The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted.  If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.”  [T-6.I.4:6-7]

 

….

 

The above example in the Temple demonstrates the depth to which the claws of the ego penetrate the human psyche, underscoring the choice to see peace and innocence and a call for love is fraught with the land mines of the ego.  The ego savagely seeks blame and guilt at every turn.

 

The war against the ego is a solitary journey.  It is a solitary journey of choices - choices to choose for the ego or for love.  Solitary, because not even the Holy Spirit can choose for you.  It is a choice you make for yourself, but once you do, once you choose for the judgment of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will begin to remove the consequences of your previous choices for the ego.

2^nd ARTICLE – LOGION 2

EXCERPT from the interpretation of Logion 2 of the Gospel of Thomas.

 

Logion 2:

(2) Jesus said, “­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­‘Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled.  When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all.’”

 

Comments:

 

One day while observing the innocent and gentle endearing qualities of the robin and sparrow, I was reminded of how easy it is to love that which is beautiful and non-threatening.  But what of the mountain lion or tiger, who would kill us, and devour our hearts in a second. 

We often adore the sparrow, but condemn the tiger as a ruthless killer; a killer who, because of the stealth required in capturing its prey, is perceived as a sneaky, cold and calculating predator; a killer who waits in ambush to attack its unsuspecting prey.  But how many among us take the time to realize that this is the same behavior we engage in when we tolerate those who are non-threatening to our identity, but react with brutal ferocity to those we find threatening to our ego or our identity. For when our self-worth and self-esteem is threatened, we need to defend ourselves at all costs.    In other words, like the tiger, in a moment’s notice, we prey on each other verbally and psychologically. 

 

How we perceive the world is a reflection of our interior condition, a frame of reference that has been developing since childhood, a frame of reference that is conditioned by our genetics and environment.  And so, the degree to which we perceive love in the world is dependent upon the amount of love we have in that frame of reference.  When our frame of reference is built on narrow-minded views, and rules and regulations that tend to separate and divide people, we will

see a fearful world that victimizes us at every turn.  And we will believe people are judging us like we have judged them.  A Course in Miracles teaches that we attribute the motivations to

other people’s actions and words as to how we would speak or act in that particular situation.  In other words, we can never really know anyone else, we are only projecting onto that person and reacting to ourselves.  Thus, when we condemn another, we condemn ourselves.  A Course in Miracles would teach that there is no world; the world exists only in our minds.  Our world is peopled with figures from our past experiences and, since everyone’s past experiences differ, when we react to other people, we actually are reacting to what isn’t there. 

 

….  If we believe someone is manipulative and exploitive and condemn them for it, then we must be manipulative and exploitive … 

 

We condemn cigarette companies for pushing their carcinogenic wares, but we work for and frequent supermarkets that tempt us with displays of cakes, cookies and all manner of sweets upon entering the store – foods that are a leading cause of obesity and therefore contribute to the development of diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.  We condemn pharmaceutical companies who in our belief push unnecessary drugs that have serious side effects, but at the first sign of the sniffles we run to the doctor demanding a remedy for something that has no cure …   So you see, we are constantly projecting our own guilt and self-hatred onto others and condemning it there, for it is much easier to condemn others than ourselves.  Troubling!

 

Whenever we become angry, annoyed, jealous or threatened by another, we are reacting to our own self-doubts, the part of ourselves that we like the least.  We are reacting to our own subconscious judgment of ourselves that we cannot bear consciously to examine.  And so, we project that judgment onto others, condemn it there, separating ourselves from them and from our own guilt. … But the world is built that way, with the insidious traps of the ego, that glitter like gold on the surface, but at their root, are the drab color of the bleached bones of death!

 

The world we see represents the dream of separation by the original mind of the Son of God.  It represents the guilt that is the result of the subconscious belief that we have attacked God and killed his only Son. …  But A Course in Miracles teaches that this is just a belief in the mind and that this separation never really occurred.  In other words, the world represents our belief in victimization as we have victimized God.  Troubling!

 

….

 

But the energy to wake up from the dream of separation, the Holy Spirit, is always with us.  And that energy is the ability to see we are not the victims of the world, but we have invented it.  The world is the dream of separation we share with … and the way to waken from that dream is to choose the judgment of the Holy Spirit.  That is, whenever we are tempted to condemn another for what is our guilt (that we perceive in them to be their guilt), we instead interpret it as a call for healing or a call for love. … Astonishing!

 

The ego counsels us to seek peace and happiness through the idols of the world.  These are the symbols of the ego – those things that would give us more intelligence, more beauty, more fame or fortune, than someone else.  And if you doubt this for a minute, think again!  The world is replete with the glorification of the idols of the world, the glorification of material and worldly success.  To this end we have:  World Champs, National Champs, Olympic medals, Congressional Medals, Bronze Medals, Silver …  

 

…

 

These distinctions underlie the ego’s tremendous need to see differences, someone not as good as another. … The ego seeks to diminish but what the ego fails to tell us is that ….  So when we seek for lasting happiness and peace in the things of the world, which of themselves are lacking an inherent reality, we are in the process seeking for what we cannot find and in so doing, we are seeking our own unhappiness.  Amazing!

 

A Course in Miracles would teach that the zeal to see ourselves as possessing more physical or material attributes than another eventually leads to our suffering.  

The Course teaches that our reality is beyond the comings and goings of the world, that our function in the world is to forgive others of the belief that their reality is the body and the world – a reality that needs to be protected in endless battles of attack and defend.  In effect, these endless battles are protecting an illusion while burying our true nature in the tomb of the body!  Amazing!

 

….

 

We are asked to find peace and happiness through religion and our religious leaders, a path that seems to make abundant sense ….

 

To be sure, I have met many saintly priests and nuns who have exemplified the love and compassion exhibited by Jesus …  But why must they labor under the oppressive burdens of the dogma and doctrine of the Church?

 

For example, a standard teaching of the Church is that if a child dies before he is baptized into the faith, he will not enter into the Kingdom of God.  What loving Father would condemn his children for the sins of another?  What loving Father would withhold the eternal peace of God from a son who failed to receive the Last Rights?  What ritualistic act in this transient and imperfect world can ever diminish that which God has created perfect and eternal?  We are asked to believe that Popes, and the hierarchy of the Church, know how God thinks and they can act in His name.  This isn’t blasphemy?!  We are asked to believe that the Pope has God’s ear.  Is this true for all Popes?  Does this notion of Papal infallibility hold for Popes that engaged in Holy Wars, killing people in the name of God, and in modern times, Popes that concealed the acts of sexually abusive priests?  Does it hold for Popes that forgot Jesus’ pronouncement “for what goes into your mouth would not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth is that which will defile you.”  [Gospel of Thomas, Logion 14]  Troubling!

 

….

 

When we seek to find peace, lasting happiness, and fulfillment in the world, we are sucked in to a vortex of competition, jealousy, treachery and psychological cannibalism. …. The roads that the conventional wisdom of our society teaches is the way to peace happiness and fulfillment are fraught with the landmines of the ego.

 

For example, we are told that knowledge and education is the key to success.  And from the first day we enter school, we are bombarded with the symbols of differences and separation.  We are of different sizes, different looks, different colors, different ethnicities, different abilities, and different intelligence. …And these differences determine our value and self-worth.  All this we perceive as our identity.  To be sure, we are all different here in the world of the dream, having different abilities, talents, etc., but this was what the world was created for, to teach that

 

differences are important, obscuring our true nature of eternal unity and peace and equality in God’s eyes.

 

….

 

And more than that, if God is pure love, why does it seem that He favors or loves some of us more than others?

 

….

 

Some religious leaders would say that this seeming unfairness is a mystery.  They say it is a mystery that God created some people brilliant and others lacking in intelligence.  And yet these same religious leaders …

 

On the level of the dream of separation, the nature of our physical bodies is such that it has certain biological needs.  How can our bodies not be real if they need to be nourished and in the process of this nourishment, other living things must die?  The nourishment of our bodies reflects the eternal dance of attack and defend where one must die so another may live.  And so we see the nourishment of the body is a re-enactment of the ….

Troubling, isn’t it?

 

….

 

Our biological bodies drive us to seek completion in another person and to propel our genes into the next generation. …. How could anything that elicits such strong emotions not be real?  Not be important?  Such are the traps of the ego and the illusions of the world! …

 

… I believe the basis for our addictions, here in the world of the dream, is the subconscious yearning for the eternal completion in the bliss of God’s love and protection …

 

The ego seeks the murder of your higher Self, your true nature as love, so that it may live.  That is, your unity with God must die, so that your belief in individuality may live. …

 

3^rd ARTICLE – LOGION 44

EXCERPT from the interpretation of Logion 44 of the Gospel of Thomas.

 

Logion 44:

(44) “Jesus said ‘Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven.’”

Comments:

….

 

“You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this:  God gave the Holy  Spirit to

 

you, and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has

 

laid upon himself.  It is impossible that this mission fail.  Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment.  Whatever reactions to the Holy Spirit’s Voice may be, whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God’s Will is done.  You will find the peace in which He has established you, because He does not change His Mind.  He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.”  [T-13.XI.5]

 

If A Course in Miracles teaches that we will eventually awaken from this dream of separation, how can we interpret the lines of Gospel 44 that say:   if you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit you will not be forgiven here or in heaven?  To understand this in the context of A Course in Miracles one must understand what the Holy Spirit is.

 

A Course in Miracles essentially teaches that the Holy Spirit is the energy within ourselves to choose for peace and forgiveness in the context of the present moment; the present moment being the eternal reflection of God’s presence in this world.   Put another way, the Holy Spirit is the energy within us to forgive others of their belief that the world is their reality and is valuable for what it offers.  The energy of the Holy Spirit is the ability to choose to see that only expressions of love are true and to judge anything else as a call for healing or help regardless of the form it takes.  That is, when we are confronted with a situation where someone is manifesting something other than “expressions of love”, we can choose to interpret their words and actions as a call for love or a call for God’s love and protection; or we can interpret their words as an attack and respond in kind.  Now if we are in our ego mind and must defend our specialness or individuality at all costs, then we are buying into the belief that we are vulnerable and that there is something in ourselves to be defended and something in the other to be attacked.  At this point we are far from believing that our true nature is eternally innocent, forever held in God’s love and protection, but totally immersed in the ego’s thought system of sin, guilt and fear.  We have separated ourselves from our peace, from our brother, and (in our mind) from God’s love and protection.  As a result we believe we will be condemned by the other as we have condemned them.  Feeling sinful and guilty, we believe that we will be punished by our brother in the future, and by God Himself, for our sin.  In other words, if we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit we believe we won’t be forgiven here or in Heaven, and since the wages of sin is death, the world now becomes a picture of the crucifixion of God’s son.

 

“For as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve death.  You will think that death comes from God and not from the ego because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe that you want death.  And from what you want God does not save you.” 
[T-12.VII.14:4-6]

 

Our brother becomes our savior when we understand that we are not the victim of his words and actions, but rather the victim of our own thoughts that we have projected onto him.  To awaken from the dream of our victimized thinking, we use the energy of the Holy Spirit to interpret attack as a call for healing or love.  The Holy Spirit then becomes the translator of the language of the ego into the language of love.  And since we are of one mind when we do this, we are answering our own call for love. …  A Course in Miracles teaches we will eventually awaken from the dream of separation.  We cannot blaspheme against God because God, as the ground of being, just is.  God is beyond the dualistic nature of the world.  Having created us as everything, He knows of no lack.  We can condemn our brother but since our brother is ourselves, we condemn ourselves. But A Course in Miracles teaches that God wills us to waken from the

dream.  But from what we want God cannot save us; again, because God, as the ground of being, just is.  He cannot change, and since he cannot change, he cannot change what He did not do.  He did not create us as separated, He created us as having everything.

 

“What is the Will of God?  He wills His Son have everything.  And this He guaranteed when He created him as everything.  It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you have is what you are.” [T-26.VII.1-4]

 

God wills us to have everything?  So how come we don’t feel like we have everything?

If God made the world, then he made it unfair, because the world is unfair.   Some people are smarter than others, some people cannot even make a living, yet some people are millionaires, and it goes on and on.  So if God wills us to have everything, and A Course in Miracles teaches that we have everything, then this is not the world of God.  So, we have to forgive ourselves and others the belief that the world ….

 

…

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that we must forgive God for our belief in the separation and from our illusions of specialness.  We must forgive God for the belief in our self doubts and our self-hatred.  We must forgive God of our feelings of superiority as well as our feelings of inferiority.  We must forgive God that he permitted us to dream the dream of separation.  We must forgive God of the ego belief that God can enter our dream of separation.

 

“Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of life, of love and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect Son, for your illusions of your specialness.  Here is the hell you chose to be your home.  He chose not this for you.  Ask not He enter this:  The way is barred to love and to salvation.  Yet if you would release your brother from the depths of hell, you have forgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace, in perfect safety, and without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to mar your rest.  Forgive the Holy One the specialness He could not give, and that you made instead.”  [T-24.III.6]

 

…

 

God recognizes us only as innocent.  Therefore to forgive God for something that could never have happened, we must forgive others for their belief in what could never have happened. … In this way you are teaching that there is nothing in you to be defended and nothing in them to attack.  Since the separation is an idea, an idea that represents something that could not have happened, the antidote is an idea that is alien to this world.  And that idea is the judgment of the Holy Spirit.  And that judgment is that only loving thoughts are true and everything else is a call for love.

 

“The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing.  Being thought, the idea gains as it is shared.  Being the Call for God, it is also the idea of God.” [T-5.III.2:1-3]

 

…

 

God can’t protect you from yourself.  God is love and can’t enter the world of the ego, but he has placed in our mind His energy to remember Him through the judgment of the Holy Spirit to choose for Love.  God just is.    ….

 

As a metaphorical example of the non-judgmental “just being” nature of God, we can examine the “just being” nature of an atom of carbon.  An atom of carbon is just as happy being part of a lump of charcoal, or part of a chlorophyll molecule that’s part of a beautiful green tree.  The carbon atom’s ground-of-being nature just is.  Whether we choose to destroy the world through

global warming or not, its true nature doesn’t change.  Whether it’s an atom of charcoal or an atom of chlorophyll, its true nature (relative to the dream of the world) is eternal, birthless and deathless:  because it just is.  And because it just is, it cannot help us choose against global warming.  On a certain level, the carbon atom, by its lack of preference of being an atom of charcoal or an atom of a beautiful green tree, is teaching its lesson of non-judgment, reflecting the just-being, non-judgmental essence of God.  And so, God, as the ground of being, is just eternal, pure love. And God’s infinite nature is incapable of anything except just being.

 

“Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go.  Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear.  What needs no protection does not defend itself.  Defense is of your making. God knows it not.” 

[T-14.VII.7:1-5]

 

…

 

When we choose for the ego rather than the Holy Spirit, we axiomatically choose against our own peace and choose for the thought system of the ego.  Choosing for the ego results in feeling guilty and this reinforces the belief in the ego’s thought system of sin, guilt and fear.  This is a thought system that teaches that our brother and God will do to us what we have done to them.  In short, we won’t be forgiven here or in Heaven.

 

God, or the universal life force, is often referred to as unity, pure love, an inherent reality that is beyond birth and death – a reality that is beyond coming and going, beyond being and non-being, beyond the grasp of our dualistic minds.  So how can our minds get a handle on it in an attempt to grasp the ineffable?  It can’t.

 

….

 

That said, the philosophy of the Tao gives a description of the ground of being using words to describe this unity that has no counterpart in the dualistic world.  According to the Tao, the ground of being is perfect and formless; it is eternally serene, empty, solitary, unchanging, infinite and eternally present.  It is boundless and eternally flowing and constantly returning. 

 

Now, do you know of anything like that in this world?  So it seems to me to be a pretty good description of that which cannot be described.  So how can we touch the true nature of the ground of being here in the dualistic world.  To me, the present moment is the reflection of God’s grace here in the world because it is the moment that is pregnant with pure potential. …..

 

it is the moment eternally pregnant with the possibility of change; the moment eternally awaiting the birth of our true nature, midwifed by our choice for forgiveness rather than aborted by our choice for attack and condemnation; the moment eternally present regardless of our anger and hatred that we exhibited in the past.  It could be seen as the moment of St. Paul’s awakening to his true nature by finally asking himself, “Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting yourself?”  Yes, in terms of A Course in Miracles, there is nobody to condemn, or to be condemned by, except yourself.

 

 

 

 

… But St. Paul, seeing Jesus as the Savior and the one who judges mankind, heard Jesus as saying, “Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?”   Being in his ego mind, Paul was guilty, and since he believed Jesus was the son of God, and more than that, God, he believed God would do to him what he did to God.  That is, he believed he would be condemned as he condemned the followers of Jesus.  St. Paul was projecting his vulnerable ego nature onto Jesus and interpreted Jesus as being persecuted by him. …

 

When the grace of God is perceived to be the present moment, we see that it is for all and accessible to all.  It is not just for the chosen few who are blessed with God’s love and protection; that would blaspheme the notion of God as being a loving Father who sees all of his children as equally deserving of His love and protection. …

…

So seen in this context, God is not unfair, but we are unfair – unfair to ourselves while we believe that we are sinful and guilty and deserving of God’s punishment. …

 

… the energy of the Holy Spirit within ourselves to choose forgiveness can be seen in the analogy of a flowing stream in the context of the philosophy of the Tao.  When the flowing stream meets a rock, it doesn’t contend with the rock as to who should occupy the space.  The water realizes that its true nature is not its form, but rather …

 

And so as the Gospel of Thomas 44 teaches, if you blaspheme against the father you will be forgiven and if you blaspheme against the Son you will be forgiven.  For our reality created by God as one with Him can never be shaken by our dreams of separation, and as we forgive others of the belief that the body and the world is their reality, we awaken ourselves from that belief. …