The Journey Home – Part 1

My own awakening began some twenty five hundred years ago, when something deep inside me looked around and said, I’ve done just about everything there is to do here on Earth.  There’s not much left to experience that’s truly new, and it’s time to find my way back to my source.

I wasn’t alone, for there have always been a small group of people on Earth who call themselves explorers, and who passionately push the boundaries anywhere there are boundaries to push and new experiences to discover.  Within that group there is an even smaller group of explorers who have focused on expanding the most difficult and challenging boundaries of all, the boundaries of consciousness and of our understanding of who we are and why we’re here.

We were the ones who first came to Earth, for like a laboratory experiment, Earth was created specifically to help us come to a new understanding of who and what we are.  We were the ones who first took the risky step of melding ourselves into biology, and who opened the way for others to follow.  On Earth we have often been explorers of new lands and new understanding, and often we were the spiritual leaders.  Not necessarily the mainstream religious leaders, for though we tried that at times, we couldn’t fit in those boxes.  We were the ones who thought differently, who rocked the boat and tore down the walls of the establishment.  We were often outcast as crazy and dangerous fools, but it was usually us who brought the greatest change and advancement to humanity.

Please note that none of this makes us any better than anyone else, for no explorer can succeed without the support and stability provided by all of those who stay behind and watch from a distance.  If anything, we were a bit more crazy than the rest, for we were driven by an insatiable need to discover the answer to that grand question:  Who am I?  Everyone has that same question somewhere inside their being, but some of us, perhaps, are less able to block it out than others, and so we are driven to take risks and create a level of intensity in our lives that others might not.

Whatever the case may be, a time came when a group of humans heard a new call from Source.  It was subtle, and heard at a level far deeper than the human mind could be aware of, but it was profound and unsettling: You’ve found the answer, and it’s time now to come home.

What answer? we asked each other between lifetimes, and at night while our bodies slept.  To what question?  What and where is “home,” and how do we get there? we asked, for by now we had become so engrossed in our human experience that we didn’t remember.  Deep inside we could feel a new and profound awareness growing, but it was still like a seed, full of life and potential but not yet sprouted, and not yet comprehensible to us.

As we discussed all this in our out-of-body states (for the human part of us could only feel a sudden new longing and had no way of comprehending what it was about) we hit upon a plan.  Each one of us reached deep within ourselves to that part where we felt the call from Source, that seed of new understanding, and we all combined those parts of ourselves into a new and special being.  This being was different from any other, for it did not come from Source as we did, but from the collective of our own combined consciousness.  Our hope was that by focusing the call that each one of us was hearing through this one being, a new understanding would emerge and one day we would each be able to reclaim that part of ourselves in full consciousness.

We made our plans carefully, for we felt this to be an incredibly important event that would change all of humanity and offer a new hope to everyone on Earth.  One of our group agreed to birth this being into human form, for we knew that only within the human experience could the seed sprout and the answer be fully understood, and when the time was right most of us embodied on Earth.

Some stayed in the other dimensions as guides and to hold the vision, and many scattered around the world to help hold a balance of energy.  Many more concentrated in the region of Palestine, for we had been preparing that area and its people for hundreds of years.  At last everything was in place and our child was born, in a manger, to a woman called Mary.  His name was Jeshua ben Joseph, and today we remember him as Jesus of Nazareth.

(If this is a shock to you, consider that even in the biblical record, which was mostly made up by the church hundreds of years later, Jesus is almost never quoted as claiming to be the son of God.  Rather, almost without exception he referred to himself as the son of man, for he understood who he was and why he was here.)

Jesus’ message was very simple, and it still shines through thousands of years of distortion.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, he said.  I and the Father are one, he said, and there he made it clear he was speaking for all of us.  We didn’t really understand it, but it rang a bell within us and it planted a seed in human consciousness that has been growing ever since.

I was there.  Not as anyone recorded in history, but as a Jewish judge and businessman who often sat at Jesus’ feet and listened in wonder as he spoke directly to my own soul.  Little did I know, as a human, that it was in fact my own soul speaking to me, but the message went in like none other ever had in all my times on Earth.  And though I didn’t understand what it meant, I made it my own as best I could.

After Jesus’ death I turned with passion to the churches that were springing up in his name, for I wanted desperately to understand what I had heard, and in subsequent lifetimes I studied in the monasteries and more than once served as a priest or bishop.  We didn’t understand what Jesus had said, and so we tried hard to fit it into our old ideas about God.  We called it the Gospel, or Good News, for as distorted as it was, it truly was good news.

For the first time in our long journey we thought we could see a way home.  We still believed that home was where God lived, somewhere off in the sky, and that God was a jealous and vengeful being that required the death penalty for the smallest infraction.  But now, not understanding what Jesus had said but knowing in our hearts that he had come to show us the way home, we made up a grand theory.  We decided that Jesus was God’s own son, and that through his death he had paid the penalty for all of our sins and made it possible for us, if we believed strongly enough, to one day find favor with God and go home.

It was a huge and hopeful step for humanity, but as so often happens, we soon lost sight of the personal and immediate nature of Jesus’ message and became engrossed in arguing about who had the correct version of our theory.  Soon it was no longer a theory, but became for us a factual concept who’s most insignificant details were matters of life and death.  A person could not be saved unless they believed in just the right way we decided, and once again we fought battles over who was right and who was wrong.

Then politics came in and the organization became more important than the message, and soon the church was transformed into a way to gain power instead of a place to discover the heaven within that Jesus had spoken of.  Then people came to power who cared little for the message, and most of the historical words of Jesus were lost as they changed them to suite their need for power and control of the people.

At first I went along, for I thought it was God’s plan and I didn’t see what was happening.  I sought my own power, and rose within the hierarchy of the church.  I became an enforcer of “God’s law,” until I started to see the inhumanity of it all and recoiled in horror.  Then I spent lifetimes in the fringe churches, hiding from the very persecution I had participated in, and searching desperately for understanding.

By this time a very few of our group of consciousness explorers were beginning to understand the message we had brought forth through Jesus.  Quietly, always in danger from the church, they formed schools to delve into the mysteries of life and specifically to explore that inner heaven.  I soon sought them out and spent lifetimes with them, and there at last I began to understand.

Humanity had always been outwardly focused, believing that life was happening to us and always looking outside of ourselves for salvation.  In the mystery schools we were taught to turn inward, and to seek within our own being that kingdom that Jesus had taught us about.  It was a difficult and often painful journey, for when we looked inside ourselves we discovered our own demons.  We had thought those were outside of us too, controlled by the grand super-demon Satan, but now we saw that they were in fact parts of our own selves, and we recoiled in horror.

More than once I ran away in terror, but lifetime after lifetime something drew me back, and gradually I learned to face those demons.  Over time I learned that they were nothing more than parts of me that I had become ashamed of, or afraid of, and had tried to banish away.  Now, as I saw them for what they were, I discovered also what they had learned and how they had served me, and filled with gratitude and compassion, at last I learned to invite them home instead of trying to destroy them.

Then my life changed, for with every demon I brought home I discovered a new part of myself, and new memories that had been lost long ago.  At last I began to catch glimpses of who I really am and of the grandness of the journey we have all been on, and finally I began to discover that I am the creator I was seeking, and that home is inside of me and always has been.  At last I was at peace, and with one exception I could finally relax and begin to truly enjoy life.

But I had a passionate love for the church, despite how far astray it had gone, and more than anything I wanted to find a way to bring it back to the real Gospel that Jesus had taught: that home is within, that you and I are divine and immortal already, and that we’ve never really been lost at all.  So I went back, in a lifetime some five hundred years ago, and became a brother named John in a church in Southern Europe.  There was a new peace within me now, and an ease borne of the deep knowing I carried within, and I became skilled as a leader and orator and especially at speaking to the hearts of the people.  I was well loved and highly respected, and the people listened when I had something to say.

Passionately I restudied the roots of Christianity, for at a deep level I now knew what life was really about, and I was driven to find a way to bring the church back to the real message of Jesus.  As I studied I began to see things in a new way.  Once again I saw the divinity and perfection of every single person, and soon I found that I could no longer enforce many of the rules and restrictions the church had imposed.

The church leadership began to take notice, but I was popular enough that there wasn’t much they could do at first.  Their resistance drove me to search the very depths my soul though, for the church was my life and my greatest love, and I didn’t want to be at odds with it.  I studied even harder, and stayed quiet for a time as I sought a way to show the people what Jesus’ message, and therefore by extension the church, were really about.  But the pressure to conform and to enforce the rules of the church increased, and at last I could stay silent no longer.

I spent weeks working on my speech, getting the words just right and all my references in order, and rechecking my logic to be sure that even a child could understand.  I poured all my passion and love for the church into my words, for I wanted to lift it up to a new place, not tear it down.  It was a masterpiece of a speech when I finished, and I knew I could speak it directly to the hearts of the people.  Then, seeking to avoid conflict with the church, I put out the word that I would be giving a very special talk in the town square.

In the past when I had something important to say the whole town would turn out, for they loved me and respected my views, and so it was that I was completely unprepared when I arrived at the square on the designated day and found only a handful present.  Unbeknownst to me the church had secretly spread word that I was no longer to be trusted and that the people were not to attend my talk, and so nearly all of them stayed home.  The few who came were afraid, and though I attempted to give my speech anyway, the feeling was gone and my words fell mostly on deaf ears.

After that I was the laughingstock of town, with people whispering constantly behind my back, and in shock and despair I went into seclusion in the country.  I died a short time later, and the lifetimes since then have generally been solitary and simple:  The sea captain exploring uncharted territory; the woman, lost in the throngs of Paris and surviving as a prostitute; the explorer in the frontier of the American West, and the lawman there, and even a lifetime or two as a Native American; the settler with a young family in the Smokey Mountains, all killed in an Indian raid;  the American bomber pilot in World War 2, shot down somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

The common thing about all those lifetimes is their near solitude, secluded away from society and from any chance of notoriety and potential rejection.  Even in this lifetime I grew up in the woods, miles from the nearest town and far away from any city, and in my younger years I longed to live in the remote reaches of Alaska.  For most of this lifetime I’ve lived in terror of words, for they would vanish under the slightest pressure or when I needed them most, and so often what people heard was so different from what I meant to say.  For much of my life I did everything in my power to avoid the disapproval of others, and to this day the sound of whispering drives me almost insane, like fingernails on a chalkboard inside my very heart.

I didn’t know what all that was about until recently, when I was reminded of that lifetime as Brother John and the memories came flooding back in.  Now at last I understand, and now I can also see the value of all that happened.  Those quiet lifetimes, focused on the mundane and human, gave me a chance to begin a process of deep integration.  It gave me time, at the deep levels of my being, to pull together all that I’ve learned, and to prepare myself for this lifetime.  I also see now that it didn’t have to be so intense.  But then, what semi-sane explorer ever did anything that wasn’t intense?

Now here I am, in this lifetime of final and full integration of all that I am.  It’s been an intense and wild journey, but at last I see the big picture, and I know what it was all about.  Now at last I’m rising above the despair of Brother John, and of all the parts of me that have been hurt throughout my long journey.  Now my voice is returning, but now I know that I do not need to save the church, the people, or even myself, for now I see how grand and wondrous an adventure we’ve shared, and how we’ve already succeeded beyond anything we ever imagined.  Now at last I know, in all of my being, that all is truly well in all of creation.

Now at last, I am home.