Nothing causes more suffering than living within a story that bears no resemblance to the truth, literally living a lie. It would be hard to find a greater lie in the history of humanity, a more outrageous fabrication than the narrative that grew out of the short life of the 1st century prophet who was transformed into the Christian Redeemer. Jesus is being held hostage and at the same time has been used as bait to entice frightened humans into a hell known as the human condition. If we can find the keys to set the mystic of Nazareth free, we will have also found the means of our own liberation from the Underworld of abject human suffering.
We must learn to affirm the truth as we have experienced it to keep from getting lost in the collective unconscious and the story surrounding Christianity which has captivated or mesmerized many of our fellow humans over time. Jesus was used as a convenient vehicle to fulfill 1st century mythology. We can tell a new story and reveal a much more profound narrative than the one cobbled together over many centuries by the warring factions that ultimately became the Roman Catholic Church. By adhering more closely to his simple message, we elevate Jesus to a much more powerful role as a prophet of Truth than as an excuse to abandon a compassionate life lived in the present moment.
Jesus’ original message and identity were co-opted by the human false self and the Gospel, the good news, became a version of P-B, the “bad news” that we continue to experience today. Creating stories is what we humans do and in telling our individual story we create our own experience of “reality.” The sad outcome of the growth of Christianity involved frightened people creating a delusional story while in an unconscious state. This is what we have always done, and it has so far always had led to an unsustainable human community characterized by suffering.
The stories we tell reveal our identity and if the focus of our stories is ever going to be on what is true as opposed to what we want to hear, that identity will have to change. Jesus was a prophet, nothing more, but he had a message that was all about Self transformation, a radical change of identity. He was in all fundamental aspects exactly like you and me. He was no one “special” beyond being a unique individual the way that we all are.
The Jesus that the Church fabricated over time to promote the growth of the Church and to give the Church hierarchy more power and control over the laity was not Jesus the prophet. On top of that, the fears, hopes, dreams, and prophecies found in the Old Testament and the human false self were “projected” onto Jesus by hundreds, then thousands and ultimately millions of people over time. He has been “imprisoned” by these projections which obscure his true identity. We will bring the true Jesus back into focus. We can do this because we know him as well as we know ourselves because he was and is us.
How did Jesus’ “good news,” which was virtually synonymous with the paradigm of Simple Reality, become twisted into the doctrine of a hierarchical and otherworldly Church that made living life in the present moment virtually impossible? Perhaps it was because the inaccessible and frightening Old Testament God could be made more appealing by a new image. Creating two gods in one, with a gentler alter ego expressing unconditional love and with a promise of eternal life for Jew and Gentile alike was a brilliant marketing gambit. The target demographic of the Universal Church, as the name implies, became all of humanity. The Church grew into an ambitious and appropriately ruthless institution. The Church grew into a full-blown expression of the human false self.
The two most significant prophets in human history, Buddha and Jesus both warned against giving more significance to the messenger rather than the message. Both prophets emphasized the importance of not making the doctrine of future rewards the focus of our faith but to realize the already existing perfection of the life that we had all been given.
It is the Apostle Simon who personifies the classic mistake of taking the person of the messenger as the message. He did not “hear” Jesus’ message that the “kingdom of heaven is spread among you but you do not see it,” or “the kingdom of heaven is here and now.” When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane there was nothing that Simon could do or needed to do. But mistaking Jesus for the kingdom, Simon “followed at a distance,” proving that he had not understood Jesus’ warning: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9: 62)
Simon had heard Jesus’ message but didn’t internalize it, and then he did what most people do when they are presented with a choice to respond or react—they cling to their false-self conditioning—and go into denial. Loyola University professor of philosophy, Thomas Sheehan, describes Simon’s self-destructive decision: “In his desperate effort not to lose Jesus, Simon lost himself and his grip on the presence of God.”
Simon can be seen as having made the mistake that all Christians have made regarding Jesus the prophet. Not wanting to let go of Jesus who so vividly embodied present-moment consciousness Simon missed the point Jesus so painstakingly labored to make, namely, “Heaven is within each of you and can be your experience no matter what happens to me.” Clinging to Jesus the man as the “good news” rather than Jesus as the bringer of the “good news” made for Simon, “Jesus as the obstacle” to receiving the “good news.” Simon needed to let that Jesus go and so do all Christians.
Simple Reality and the Gospels merge in the two messages found in Mark 1: 15. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” and “Repent.” Repent means to change the way we live. What Jesus was in effect advocating was a paradigm shift from P-B to P-A effecting an identity change and in turn causing a radical change in behavior. “Love they neighbor as thyself” or, in other words, expressing compassion was the heart of Jesus’ teaching. The kingdom is “at hand” or already present for those who wake up, for those who consistently choose response over reaction.
It’s time for all Christians and indeed all people in the global village to let go of all shadow projections onto supernatural beings and future places and embrace the heaven that is Now. For example, Sheehan advises Christians to live life without Jesus, to set him free. “‘Without Jesus’ means without attributing to him any powers beyond the natural, human power everyone has: that of being a culturally determined, historically relative interpreter of one’s world and one’s own life. This means that for all the natural gifts and talents he once displayed, and regardless of whether one chooses to take him as a model for enacting the kingdom, Jesus is ultimately dispensable. He is not irreplaceable—in fact, he demands to be displaced so that one can get to what he is about. Jesus is not the object of the message he preached. The proclaimer of the kingdom gives way to the reality he proclaimed.”
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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Who Am I? The Second Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Where Am I? The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival
