Another beautiful fall day around Moab.
In a previous blog entry, I wrote of my friends, Gordon & Kay, coming to visit at the end of last May. What I didn't mention is that Gordon came to make a short docu-film on living moneyless. He finished the film, & has an webpage intro & teaser for it, which I finally was able to get into. It's at www.moneylessinmoab.com. The music it starts with is some jamming I did on the "Freenotes", which are pentatonic-scale xylophones installed in a park in Moab that anybody can bang on - thanks to Moab's very own Richard Cook, who installed them years ago. Of course, free music on free instruments on public land is right down my alley.
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FOR EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS:
Okay, now, this is written for Evangelical Christians, and has a lot of Bible-quoting. It's my "95 Theses" I'm tacking to the Evangelical church door, challenging the very foundations of this institution:
The Word
It's been a quiet & exhilerating last few days in the canyon. You know, when you become still, and all thoughts & words leave your mind, this is when you find that the same Indescribable Calm that is within you is the same Indescribable Calm that upholds all of Nature. Your mind cannot see reality until all words, all thoughts cease, and your mind becomes like a child's - a blank slate. You don't see things through the filter of judgement, of words, but just as it is. You see that words do not reveal Reality, but veil it. With words you believe in God. But without them you know God. "Be still and know that I am God," the Psalms say. And you see that this Indescribable Calm is the Source, like a Seed, from which all forms of Nature sprout, and to which all forms return again. And these forms of Nature are no different than the thoughts & imaginations that arise spontaneously in your mind. It's an exhilerating realization. Yet words & imagination can never, ever grasp it. You can never, ever grasp God, Reality, with thoughts, with words, with imagination.
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."
(1 Corinthians 2:9)
Now, looking within to this Law written on your heart, this is where you see that the very Heart of Christianity is the very Heart of Buddhism is the very Heart of Hinduism is the very Heart of Islam.
Because this Calm is beyond time & beyond possession, it cannot be contained in human memory. All we have are words, messengers, that tell us about it, but the words, messengers are not it.
Yet, how can I tell you about this No-thought if there isn't one point of contact between No-thought and thoughts, between No-word and words? There must be one Single Word that mediates between words and no-words, between Heaven & Earth, God & Human, Reality & Illusion, no? It's like the very infinitesimally sharp tip of a pyramid that goes from stone to no-stone, into the sky. It is the very Chief Capstone. It is the One Word that mediates between Reality and Thought (Illusion), that is both Reality and Thought - both Reality and Illusion. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Reality, and the Word was Reality. . . . And the Word became illusion and dwelt among us illusions. When you discover the Infinite Calm of No-Thought, something drives you back to the world of thoughts. It is a desire to take the message to others. Perfect No Thought becomes imperfect thought, that it may gather up all of us who are lost in thoughts and bring us back to No-Thought. Our minds are lost in thoughts, and all we like sheep are gone astray from the Eternal Present (YHWH). So the Eternal Present (YHWH) becomes illusion in search of us, to draw us back. Buddhist masters know exactly what I am talking about. The Buddha, from the sense of Eternal Compassion, relinquishes Nirvana to go back as the Bodhisattva to gather up all of us souls lost in thought.
This is the One Word, One Mediator, between Eternity and Time (Kosmos, illusion). If you look within, you will know what I am saying.
"Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?"
(2 Corinthians 13:5)
Professed Christians look in the past and in the future and up in heaven for Christ & the Kingdom of God and the End of Time, but never within, never Here & Now. Having been raised Evangelical Christian, I know that most Evangelicals are obsessed with Jesus in the past and Jesus in the future; and they are obsessed with proving past creation of the world and future end of the world. They love everything but the Present.
"Then He also said to the multitudes, "Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming'; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, 'There will be hot weather'; and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this present moment? Yes, and why, even of yourselves, do you not judge what is right?" (Luke 12:54-57)
"Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you."
Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. (Luke 17:20-24)
The Love of Money, the Worship of the Letter, the Idolatry of Evangelical Christianity
Now we come back to the subject of Money. Money represents things past, things future, but never the Present. Images represent things past, things future, but never the Present. Words represent things past, things future, but never the Present. These words you are reading right now are illusions, unless you can't read. Covetousness (Greed) and Idolatry are one and the same, according to the Bible (Colossians 3:5, Ephesians 5:5). Idolatry is clinging to illusion, image. Idolatry is the mind lost from the Present, and is the root of all evil.
Evangelicals believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and that to question this is sin. And we were told that there is no salvation apart from the Bible, just as fundamentalist Muslims believe about the Koran. From a child, I was quoted this verse, to show that faith comes by the Bible:
"Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Romans 10:17)
But then one day I actually looked up the context and it blew me away:
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed:
"Their sound has gone out to all the earth,
And their words to the ends of the world."
(Romans 10:17-18, quoting Psalm 19:4)
Then I looked up the quoted Psalm 19 to get a clearer picture of what this "Word of God" really is:
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world."
(Psalm 19:1-4)
Whoa! I thought, all my life I've been taught that this "Word of God" is the Bible, when the Bible itself says that this "Word of God" is not a book, but is the Utterance of Nature, beyond speech, language, and voice, and this Word is spoken to all the world!
All Evangelicals are also taught these words of Jesus:
"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." (Matthew 24:14)
This is why Evangelicals want to get the Gospel out to the ends of the earth, so that this world will end. And Jesus also states:
"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature". (Mark 16:5)
But then we have this verse:
"This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven" (Colossians 1:23)
The Gospel already has been preached to every creature? And Jesus said the end would come when this happened? Then I looked up the original Greek word for creature. It is ktisis, which means every created thing! How on earth can a human preach human words to every created thing, every rock, every clod of dirt, every robin, every atom??? And how is it that the Psalms keep speaking of the heavens & earth and everything in them hearing the word of God? And how is it that the Psalms speak of the heavens & earth & everything in them singing praises to God? Hello... somebody look up the word animism.
According to the very Bible, this is the Gospel According to Nature, not a book.
The New Testament
When I say New Testament, don't you think of a book written with ink on paper? But this is not what the Bible says the New Testament is. Look up all occurences of New Testament (New Covenant) in the Bible, and see what I mean.
"You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all persons; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the *Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Corinthians 3: 1-6)
The first mention of the word New Testament is in "The Old Testament" book of Jeremiah (31:31-34). And this passage is quoted in the "New Testament" book of Hebrews (8:7-8). It says that this New Testament is not written with letters, but on the heart. It is the Law of the Heart. And this, Hebrews states, is the goal of Christ, to bring to obsolete the imperfect Old Testament, the letter written with human hands, and bring us the New Testament, the Law written on the heart.
Now what is strange, is that the Bible talks about the Law already written on the hearts of the Gentiles (non-Jews, non-Christians).
"For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the Day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus." (Romans 2:13-16)
Now we see that the non-religious (Gentiles) already have the law written on their hearts! They already have the New Testament, the Now Testament, which is already preached to every creature and is the end goal of Judaism and Christianity! And in the very end sentence of the above passage, we see that this is happening in the Day of Judgement, the Now, the End of Time!
Yes, New means Now. Both words are of the same root. This is the Now Testament. These words I am writing are Old Testament. As soon as I write, my words are past, they are old. As soon as a word enters my memory, it is a thought, out of the Present, old. All thoughts, all words, all letters, are Old Testament. And all words are illusions which fool us. No words are Reality, except the One Word that cannot be spoken, the One Name that is hallowed. The opening verse of the Tao Te Ching says,
"The way that can be described is not the Eternal Way.
The word that can be spoken is not the Eternal Word."
To say any written words, anywhere, any time, are inerrant and eternal is idolatry. The very core doctrines of Evangelical Christianity are idolatrous, as are the very core doctrines of fundamentalist Islam and Mormonism. And idolatry can produce no truth. Idolatry can only produce destruction. It causes war, environmental degradation, pollution, poverty, and self-righteous bigotry. See for yourselves. Am I wrong? "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
Jesus' message was aimed at the fundamentalist Jews of his day, the Pharisees, who clung to the Bible as their source of salvation, believing it the literal, inerrant Word of God, and who also were "lovers of money". Idolatry & covetousness always go together, for they are one and the same ("Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him." {Luke 16:14}). Now, with new understanding, read what Christ says to these fundamentalists:
"You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life." (John 5:38-40)
Now, if you want to know truth, not just believe truth, you need to turn this computer off and put away these and all words of illusion and find the Stillness within, the Now, the Reality, "the Peace that passes all understanding." It's not enough to believe in God, "Be still and know that I am God."
