Continuity of Consciousness

“As once the winged energy of delight
Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses
Now beyond you own life build a great arch of unimagined bridges”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Bridges take us from here to there. Throughout the last 2000 years much of the western world has rested on the recorded understandings of the life and teaching of Jesus and the religion rooted in that has provided a map for the spiritual journeys of so many seeking to live a life of meaning and purpose .They have found assurance from the institutional churches but  in  the fast moving world of today we are hearing the call to build bridges from our roots to our future.

Bridges take us from here to there. Across the river, across a social divide, across from a world of getting and spending to one based on love, on trust, on sharing, on giving. Whatever bridges we travel over as life’s journey takes us forward, each crossing involves a change in some way. In the past, shifts and changes have been slow enough to be absorbed without much distress. Today the pace of change is accelerating rapidly. The parallel tracks of our technological evolution and the inner evolution of our consciousness are both increasing at a rapid rate. If the pace of the first trend exceeds that of our shift towards new horizons of understanding and new ways of being, then it seems a crisis may occur to show us that something new is being called for.

Certainties are the of the past and we now realise that the future can no longer be fully known so it is being true to the present, noting what is arising from deep with ourselves together with learning from others through books and conversations that will enable us to live authentically and observe the advice given by Shakespeare in Hamlet “ To thine own self be true and thou shall be false to no man.”

As we reflect on the Christian story and are inspired by the essential message of Primal Christianity, free from the distortions of later generations keen to establish doctrines that anyone not wishing to be labelled a heretic needed to profess, we can begin to perceive with new eyes.

Life is a journey, and the evolutionary impulse is moving us on at a rapid rate bringing huge shifts in understanding which are requiring us to be open to the call of the future. Our role today is to be a bridge builder to the new and follow the advice of the poet T.S.Eliot:

“And at the end of all our searching
We return to where we starte
And know the place for the first time”

This return is underway today as we look with new eyes and shift our understanding in a way that makes sense to a world where science and an esoteric understanding are coming together to realise that set beliefs need to be viewed as “a tent in which to rest a summer’s night” and that, as Earl Balfour went on to suggest we can respond to the call to” take up your bed and walk.”

“As we do this our view of God shifts from the old man in the sky image to the supreme source and sustainer of all life, omnipresent in every leaf and every being, human and other than human. We no longer see Christ as the surname of Jesus but a term that reflects his embodiment of the Christ consciousness which is seeking a place in our own souls and which we are called to” go and do likewise”.

It must have been hard for Jesus the Christ who could perceive the vibrating energy of love permeating all creation offering benevolence of beauty to describe it in terms that the unscientific folk of the time could understand. However, today our evolutionary scientists are telling us that “Consciousness is not something that we have but what we and the whole world are “(Dr.Jude Currivan) and that there are many dimensions of being. Our lives are firmly rooted in the third dimension of materiality and our daily concerns can sometimes prevent us from taking time to connect with an inner or fourth dimension to find the truth lies deep within us from where the voice of limitless love and truth can always guide us forward. This was made clear in the gnostic versions of the story of Jesus which were based on deeper perceptions at the time but buried in earthenware jars at Nag Hammadi when it became apparent to the people of the time who saw that the rulers of the day were taking over the growing religion in the fourth century and developing doctrines based on an exoteric or outer understanding and were establishing creeds that had to be believed. These documents were discovered in 1945 and the fragmented remains pieced together painstakingly have deepened understanding ever since. From this a more universal path can open ahead so0 that these essential messages can become relevant and available for a world beyond Christianity.

Inspirations such these can lift our minds to the vast cosmos and reconnect us with our role as stewards of its beauty and co-creators of  communities of faith that can lead the world forward towards a church of love to which ‘all who belong, belong.’  Then beyond our own lives and streams of understanding we will be able to ‘build a great arc of unimagined bridges’ and engage in a collective imagining of what the future could be if we worked together in trust that it will be so. May the vision and hope offered by ‘primal Christianity’ which has been God’s gift to us become a world transformed and renewed as our gift back to God?

Janice Dolley, 2024,
Gloucestershire, U. K.