New Story

A New Story

Following from an understanding of the oneness of life is emerging a new narrative.  This is a story of the deep interconnectedness that underpins our lives.  The old paradigm of separation, competition and conflict is giving way to a new one in which we recognise our interdependence with all forms of life human and the-other-than-human.  Hence our shock at how we have treated the natural world, and today there is a plethora of environmental and ecological groups seeking to remedy this and rejuvenate the natural world, so that we are now being designated as ecological humans who love and care for all life.

Universality

There is a growing sense of our universality and at the same time that this vast whole has been birthed and now sustained by love and that love is the glue that holds us all together.  So materialism is on the decline and processes of recycling and rejuvenating are underway. It seems that the basic principle for our life is that love is the way and is this what Jesus taught: ”Love one another even as I have loved you.”

A Shift from the Head to the Heart

Slowly the emphasis on beliefs is giving way to a greater openness to our hearts as an instrument of intelligence and receptivity, which helps us to discover that God is no longer ‘up there’ in the blue sky but within each atom and within each of us, just as Jesus taught: “the Kingdom of heaven is within you”

Withinness

This emphasis on our inner lives has led to much more direct experience of the spiritual worlds and a trusting in our own direct experience.

We live in a three-dimensional world of matter but a fourth, less visible dimension of withinness is bringing greater connection with all life and increased compassion for all.

Parallel Streams

Since the early days of Christianity when those seeking political control of the emerging new religion based on the teachings of Jesus, the stream that was taken forward by those with power and control was the exoteric stream.  Exoteric belief in the teachings was turned into doctrines and creeds, and those not willing to go along with that would termed heretics at best and at worst burnt at the stake or fought in religious wars.

A deeper understanding of the universality of these teachings was then maintained in an esoteric stream which has been carried through different centuries by such as the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians and more recently in new consciousness movements which link across the world. We can understand why they run underground, literally, because these were the gnostic teachings which were discovered in an earthen jar in 1945, presumably hidden because it was thought that those seeking to control the religion would have destroyed them.  Much mainstream religion is based on these exoteric teachings even today.

Authenticity

Today people are seeking to honour the understanding that is emerging within them and trust their direct experience of love and of the invisible worlds.  We are finding the God in all of us as a daily reality and connect in meditation, contemplation and prayer.  This is leading us to live in more authentic ways because we can be truly as Shakespeare advised in Hamlet: “to the own self be true and thou shall be false to no man.”

This authenticity can be described as consciousness, an awareness that is deeply held and today science and religion are coming together to affirm this.  In a recent book by Dr Jude Currivan, ‘The Cosmic Hologram’ she says:  “Consciousness is not something that we have, it is what we and the whole world are.”

The Continuity of Consciousness after Death

Once we grasp that we are more than our material bodies, that we have come from somewhere and we will go somewhere after we die, then the idea of ourselves is that we are conscious souls on a journey in the world and will surely continue when we pass over towards other dimensions of being.

Love Continues Forever

Those who have experienced a near death experience (an NDE) say that all is love.  One person that I met and was able to ask how it was for him on the other side said: “it was like walking into my mother’s kitchen so warm and welcoming”.  In more recent times, instead of near death experiences being a hidden secret that people did not like to talk about in case they were thought mad, they have been accepted and have been a subject of academic research and many books have been written, notably perhaps “The Proof of Heaven” by Dr Eben Alexander and “Dying to be Me” by Anita Moorjani.  People who have had experience of after death communication are also beginning to speak out.  This is something that I can personally attest to because I had an unexpected communication with my best friend Ursula Burton which started three hours after she had died, and I have written these conversations in a book published in 2020 called “Awakening to a New Reality: Conscious Conversations across the Horizon of Death.”

Two Great Commandments

We can now see why Jesus stressed the two great commandments. The first is to’ love God with all our hearts’.  Ideas of God have changed and we now realise that he/she/it/the All in All is the essence of all life itself, then this chimes in well with the instruction to live in love.  The second ‘to love our neighbour as ourselves’ becomes obvious once we understand the oneness of all life.  All neighbours, wonderful and not so wonderful, are all part of the one great family whether they realise it or not and this family is universal.  Hence the importance of the golden rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” which is enshrined in all the great faith traditions.

As we progress through these shifts, whether conscious of them or not, we will begin to fulfil our own prayer of “Thy  Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”. We are all co-creators of the future and waking up to the need to play our part as ’sons and daughters of the most high’. These shifts are combining to move us towards a golden era which has been predicted by the seers and prophets of many generations, and this hope will carry us through difficult times knowing that each of us is light, each of us is love and each of us is one with the Infinite One.