There is ample evidence that Jesus travelled and learned from the Essenes during his lifetime.  This makes perfect sense since the Essenes were the most likely to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.  There were the three groups of religious people at that time:  The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes.  The Pharisees were middleclass businessmen and tradesmen. The Sadducees were the high priests and nobility. The Essenes were the mystics.  I believe that the spiritual practices of the Essenes were most aligned to The Way of Chirst Jesus. 

I was talking with a friend​ who is struggling to understand the Bible and fighting with her faith.  It was my pleasure to have a text conversation with her.  She is extremely bright and has a brilliant mind.  But you can't discover spiritual truth through the intellect.  

Friend:  I don't know if I believe in Jesus or Chirstianity in general but I'll at least read the whole book, before I decide for sure.  At least the whole new Testaent.  That's another new years resolution.  Read the entire New Testament.

Me:  Just allow yourself to explore all things spiritual.  Understand yourself and how your energy and emotions impact your world.  Jesus was the world's greatest energy worker, healer and spiritual teacher. But he is obviously not around today to clarify the things the church wrongly interprets.

Friend:  Yeah, I am trying...
(next morning)  Dude, so I read all of Luke and John last night... and it is just cofusing and depressing.  Whoe kenw actually reading more than a small amount of the Bible would make you depressed. I just want to believe waht everyone else does, and that it seems made up is so depressing to me.  I wanted at least some of what I grew up being told was true to be right...I want to be able to go to church and want it to be sincere, but I just don't think Christians got it right...ugh

Me: Spirituality is felt, the mind and intellect can be a barrier.  Like when a song comes through your, this is how divine truth will be revealed to you.  But you need to clear your field from all that blocks that divine love.  Why it is so important to clear away the negative thoughts and beliefs.  

Friend:  So I've read 152 pages of the Bible combined today and last night.  I wish it wasn't impossible to believe.

Me:  Rumi is a spiritual poet.  Read his work.

Friend:  How are unmarried women suppoed to learn anything?  I don't put a lot of stock in Paul's letters to the churches, lot of it seems to be his personal opinion.

Me: Jesus walked with the Essenes.  Learn about their principles.  They allowed women to participate.  They were spiritual mystics.
Jesus didn't write the Bible and the Bible are selected texts, not every spiritual truth.  As you surrender trying to prove whether the Bible is real, an acknowledge the reality of ignorance, God can enter and show you directly.  A personal relationship doesn't come through believing the Bible, it comes through listening to God.  Silence the inner critic and listen.

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youtu.be/A500L6MkYp0?si=LmTQeVAHFd8_O-vu

The more I continue on this journey of spiritual awakening, I realize that it all comes down to connecting to the authenic self.  

A big part of my journey has been the healing of my codependency.

What is codependency?

I am still struggling as I work to be in truth.  That is a life-long goal, but has been increasingly brought to bear in my journey into Christianity.  There is definitely a battle in this world today around the truth.  The way reality is warped and distorted, the increase in the attitude of moral relativism, and the perversion of those things that were once held as undeniable are all evidence of the way we have moved away from Truth, and therefore have also moved away from God. Because, God is Truth.

The one message that I can hold as the essence of Christianity that is beyond any dogma, is that Jesus is Love.  

I am a big fan of experiential knowledge and the wisdom of experience.  This is more significant in my own assessment of reality than theoretical or philosophical truths. 

Phenomenon is data.  I can take a large sample of these shared phenomenon and come to a deeper awareness than if I just adopt someone else's already digested truth.  I guess this is where I am having my biggest issues with Christianity.  Not all, but some of my experienc so far has demanded that I give up any quesitoning.  That I adopt in pure faith the messages I am being told by the pastors. 

Personally, I have a problem with this because I feel as though these teachings are also interpretations.  If someone has interpreted something it is already a perversion of truth.  I need to experience and to know the truth for myself.

Call me a doubting Thomas.  But how can you know love from someone telling you about it?  You have to experience love yourself to know it.

So ultimately, what I am working towards is this perfect love.  That is enough to work on.  It is a lifetime's work to attain perfect love.  I probably won't come close, but I know that if I am trying to achieve this love of my brother and of God I will be walking the path of goodness and be closer to God than if I am touting hatred and fear in the world.

I have been opening up to the Christian path, a beautiful heart centered path of healing and deliverance from sin.  In the ministry of Jesus, he taught, healed and cast out demons. His healing ministry is the reason I reconnected to the Christian path.  My training in energy healing works both to remove negative energies and entities, as well as to heal and fill-up those who are being healed with divine light.  

Surely, the work with addicts has shown me that people can be possessed by these lower entities and energies.  I believe these exist both outside of ourselves (such as living within spaces and within the drugs themselves, and I beleive that we ourselves can create them through our own constant negative emotions and thoughts. 

In Christianity they are referred to as demons and unclean spirits.  Jesus frequently cast these out, and told his disciples they also had the authority in his name to cast out demons (Mark 16:17)(Acts 16:18). I always was attracted the the story of Jesus casting out the demons into pigs that then went and drown themselves in the water.  It fascinated me because the consciousness of the demons needed to go somewhere...if not in the pigs what would have happened to them?  

Most certainly, people can be released from the bondage of these unclean spirits and healed. 

Yesterday, I had an encounter with a visiting pastor at our local church.  He will be hosting a deliverance ministry next Saturday, and after our conversation he insisted I come.  Not as an observer, but out of his perceived need for my deliverance.  We had started talking about yoga and Wim Hof, which he let me know were both demonic.  He showed me a list of things that were demonic three pages long.  Yoga, meditation, Reiki and other spiritual practices were on the list.  I even noticed sage and incense were on the list.  (Didn't the wise men bring Jesus incense?)  I told him I wasn't in a place to completely change my own beliefs.  He became rather aggressive and said God had brought me to him so this could be revealed.  

I left the meeting angry and uninspired.  I have only just started this journey on the Christian path and I am immediately being confronted with the reason I left this path in the first place.  Here is how I see it, God is Good.  Those things in alignment with goodness are of God.  God is Truth, anything that is not true is not of God.  When we start to demonize those who are good, we will be diverting all of the energy we need to address the true evil in the world.  When we start creating divisiveness, we are moving away from God and Love.  

I have also spent the past 10 years working a powerful program of Codependency Anonymous.  The teaching of CoDA are focused on how to connect to your inner truth.  Developing a deep relationship with your higher self, and the God of your own understanding.  I have a good sense of who I am today.  I know that I can be used by God to do good in this world.  I have learned to trust my inner self, and the guidance I receive from my higher power through prayer, meditation and yes breath-work.  Did I mention there is a demon associated with breathwork?

I have been struggling, because I know there is a beautiful truth in the Christian path, but this superstitious beliefs about the evil of yoga, meditation and breathwork I cannot abide by, at least not in this moment.  I believe those who are Good in this world, lightworkers here to help uplift those who are suffering through love and healing, need all the help they can get against the truly demonic forces running the show.  I also believe, that perhaps part of this new opening into the path of Christianity is to shine light on the real teaching of Love and Healing of Christ Jesus and to break the superstitions.  If this is the case, I accept it fully.  I ask God to show me the truth.  How can one follow the teaching of Jesus without being demonized for the health giving and life affirming practice that have been and are being revealed through science and spiritual revelation?

This has been a particularly stressful end of the old, and beginning of the new year.  Major changes in my life are taking place and it hasn't been the beautiful graceful transition that one would hope for.  It has been more of a total upheaval of everything I hoped for and a disorientation of the turning my plans on their head.

This type of experience can cause the spiralling into despair.  The lessons from these moments are deep and meaningful and with time these dark days will become the most significant moments, but the days before that clarity arises, must be handled with grace.  It is so necessary to get through this time with kindness and gentleness towards oneself.  If you have the chance to retreat from some of life's responsibilities, then do so.  But if you don't, be absolutely sure you are taking time to engage in activities that bring you joy.

There is an exercise developed by Jennifer McClean that is simple and effective.

Make two columns on a paper.  On one side write the things that are causing you stress.  Then give each item a number from 1 to 10 to quantify the degree of stress it is causing.  
In the second column, write down things that bring you joy.  What do you enjoy doing?  Take your time with this side of the list.  This is important.  Then quantify the joy each activity brings from 1-10.

Finally, make sure you are balancing the equation each day.  If you have a number 10 stressor, make sure you include some level 10 joyful activities in your day.  Don't let yourself be consumed by stress.  These dark days will turn to bright faster when you stay in the sunlight of the spirit.  

I love to play music, and so that is what I have been doing these past few weeks.  Some new and amazing songs even came through the darkness.  Some of our most creative impulses can be found there.  

Be patient with the process, know that things are working out for your betterments.  Love yourself.