Spiritual Sunshine: A Swedenborgian Community Online

09/28/2025

Although we don’t actively post on (or monitor) Facebook, that doesn’t mean that we don’t love that you connected with us on here! Honestly, we love to connect with all of you! But to further our community, we have to ask that you find our presence on YouTube, our website, or even our Insta/Podcast!

Yes, I’m just a lonely half-time staff member 😉 Thanks for being awesome and understanding that.

Cory Coberforward

09/26/2025

09/11/2025

What is peace? Is it something we only find after our goals are met — or is it the very life and awareness we already carry within?

In this talk, we explore peace as the Garden of Eden inside us, the presence of God within consciousness. Drawing on the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, and Swedenborg, we reflect on how peace is not tied to possessions or status but to the Spirit at the center of our being.

Together we consider:
How sages across history described peace
The many names and aspects of God — male and female
Why Christ called us to perfection and to heaven within
How breathing and awareness return us to peace
A prayer to open ourselves to God’s presence in all things

May this reflection help you return to your own natural peace, the peace of God that has been here all along.

08/14/2025

Watch the end on our YouTube channel (there’s a 15 minute video maximum on Instagram).

09/17/2023

The Divinity of Our Oneness

John 10:22-39
Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will sn**ch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can sn**ch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”
“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

Responsive Reading - Psalm 82:6-8
I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.
Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.

Song: The One – Shakira
https://youtu.be/0mOH2-6TRT4?si=icO1lbKJWMsSO4GL
It’s surprising to see how many times it says that people in Jesus’ community sought to “unalive” him (the new, TikTok-friendly term for murder). This was typically because Christ would speak about his perceived oneness with Divinity, the “Father.” In today’s reading alone it comes up twice and we’re only in John 10! What I find most captivating though is that when Christ quotes the Psalm where David (quoting God) calls those receiving God’s words “gods” multiple times, we see no immediate reaction, it is only when Jesus says outright, “I and the Father are one,” and “understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father,” that they immediately try to kill him. There’s something about distorted religiosity in every religion that seeks to distance our unity with God, indeed it often carries an unaliving anger at the very idea. We might call God “the Compassionate,” as does Islam, but say that God shines as our compassion and be careful! Moreover, most of us tend to centre from an idea that we are distant from God, whether we think that actively or not, but this is a lie that we subtly carry that effectively blinds us to the reality of who we are and the life all around us (which can only truly shine in our shared consciousness, or so says quantum physics!).

Take a moment to look within. What lies do you carry that paint your lived experience? Take your time, what are some of the core ideas that paint how you look at yourself and the world? Also, what questions about the world do you carry forward? Looking at our lies and our questions is a tactic that I picked up from an interview I saw with Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith, and although I’m not too familiar with his ministry at Agape, I found this reflection to be quite illuminating! When we look, we can notice the subtle lies about ourselves that have become our modus operandi, and seeing them, we can compare them to our intentionally held beliefs about ourselves. This allows us to shine a light on some things that don’t serve us, but that have continued to operate within because we haven’t yet challenged them and exposed them with the healing power of our God-given light.

When Christ quoted the Psalm that called people “gods” he was speaking to a crowd that knew the scripture well. But often, when it comes to scriptures that live close to us in our traditions, we become complacent about their meaning, carrying in our heads the ideas that have been added to a tradition and not the ones that come from the source! This is why some Christians today will use Paul’s letters (selectively), but not as much Christ’s direct quotations. Our religiosities can become, as Christ called the Pharisees, “whited sepulchers,” outside presenting as healthy and beautiful, but inside full of unalivement.

It's only when Christ goes as far as to say that he is one with the Father that they take offense. They hadn’t taken the scriptures to their obvious conclusion and subtext: we have life, goodness, gifts, form, breath, love, wisdom, compassion, and perception from the God known by many names, so we must ultimately be (or become) one with them! As Swedenborg wrote, God is beyond gender or form since it is infinite form, goodness, and truth, but it does present itself as all things. And it is a One.

Calling God “One” can be confusing for some, because it implies that there are others that are not part of this “One.” Perhaps this is why Hindu scholars and teachers often will say that they are neither monotheistic nor polytheistic because all is the I Am. Even Christ’s works and words seem to imply that there are some who are not part of God but should “become children of God” as he is. You could say that this is a teaching tool because teachers must use terms and concepts that will be received by their students. Look at it this way, the scriptures make it clear that evil does not exist, but is like a passing dream, a delusion that we carry both in our understanding AND IN ACT, which is also passing. The only “thing” that truly exists is God, today, yesterday, and forever. Thus, to “become one with” God we must allow our selfish tendencies to pass.

So how can there be a heaven, an afterlife, reincarnation, or whatever, if only God exists? How can we all go on forever? It is because the things of heaven, the forms of use and goodness and truth, are all mirrors of the Infinite, the Goddess that shines through all life and being. These things will last forever in infinite forms with infinite life. The evil acts and false understandings, on the other hand, have a very limited shelf life. This is why it says that “the evil” will be ground to dust, cast out into utter darkness, and will be viewed as if they were a passing illusion and dream. We ourselves experience just this when we undergo trials that separate us from our more selfish and destructive leanings; the felt-pressure in our lives is always meant to make a better diamond. But when we reach true Buddhahood or Christ-consciousness, the same tough situations can happen, but they will hardly bother us. Or so those two ruffians would have us believe! Further, the sages tell us that the tough things are much less likely to happen to us then because there is no idea of a “separate person” to get caught by them.

What a trip, so you mean to tell me that Jesus wanted us to believe that we are one with God as well? Yes! I believe this is why he tasked us with finding our unity with him and the Father (which he says in various ways), and also why he called us children of God and quoted the Psalm in today’s reading. He said that he was one with the Father, which he also said made him “God’s son.” He also said that we should be one with the Father, which he further said would make us Children of God. Tell me if I’m missing something here.

But like the Christ’s audience in John 10, our minds not only tend to immediately reject this idea, but they also like to reject this idea. It seems to get us off the hook. It keeps us in the safe cage of fitting in. I mean, does anyone like to be crucified in one way or another? Our minds sure don’t, which is why they try to prolong their addiction to selfish thinking and hurtful modalities of separation. But, and I hate to tell you this, these lines of thought are a sinking ship, a flooding nation, a drowning Egyptian army (shall I continue with the Biblical analogies here?).

You can reassure your mind, however, because despite what your mind thinks spiritual reformation might entail, the crucifix that Christ asks us to carry does not involve the needless torture that he himself went through. Instead, it tells us that his burden is actually quite light. Indeed, to separate from our mind’s false perception of life (that we are separate from God, that we are unworthy, etc.) actually takes us letting go of our need to fight our minds. It involves coming to see that the heart of our perception and will actually observes our actively thinking mind and empowers it by taking it seriously!

“Be still and know that I am God.” As the good book says, instead of centering from our mind’s endless worries and judgments, let’s start to settle in God’s providence in all things. Come to see and accept that the Buddha, Krishna, Anandamayi Ma, Jesus, Swedenborg, and so many others are right when they say that all is governed by the I Am, by Divinity, and perhaps all is even one with God. Swedenborg wrote, “God is the substance of all things,” and we ourselves have an intuitive knowledge that all things are interconnected even if just by being a part of the same interacting “universe.” The quantum physicists have even proven that nothing takes shape without entering consciousness, how can this be? How can consciousness be the key to even making the material universe material? There must be something fundamental about it, about life, something that allows our universe’s reality to depend on life’s light, this light must be part and parcel with something whole, unified, and centre to all life and being, something Divine, something One.

Song: Running with the Wolves – Aurora
https://youtu.be/06ht9MyJLT4?si=Om5l9mJ1fk_b8sgt

Blessings,
Rev. Cory

09/10/2023

The Good Shepherd Raises Us Up

John 10:14-18
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

Responsive Reading - Psalm 33:1-5
Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Praise the LORD with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
For the word of the LORD is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.
The LORD loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.

Song: Modern Man – Arcade Fire
https://youtu.be/EJcwMhNUo6Y?si=KWYlR35nVacu2J6Y

We all can feel lost at times. Not knowing what’s true or what to do. Even when things are going relatively well in our lives, we can feel despair and a sense of failure, inadequacy. We suffer from what we might call “modernitus,” or, more accurately, “separatitus,” because these challenges arise when we have not come to settle into the peace at our core, the unity we share within, what some call “Buddha,” “Goddess,” “Jesus.” The core beliefs of the modern world do not serve our spirit, beliefs about individual achievement, materialism, and what it means to be a civilized society. But the Divine Life that encircles us and is the light of our very consciousness beckons us back into the fold, back into harmony with nature and the earth, back into our rightful place led by our innate wisdom and divine love, sometimes called the Good Shepherd.

The modern world pretends as though it is the supremacy of wisdom and culture, with its capitalistic drive and so-called scientific viewpoints. But it largely ignores the facets of other cultures that have served people better, from a more village-like approach to economics to a view of nature and humanity that centres on our unified ecology and the quantum nature of this earth. We see around us today what capitalistic, profit-centric economies give us: rampant homelessness and a workforce enslaved by the wealthiest 1%, where all the wealth flows down to them. We wouldn’t be wrong to start comparing modern humanity’s plight to that of the enslaved Israelites under Egypt, and like them, we must start to listen to our inner Moses, our inner burning bush, to transform our earth’s hardships into the promised land.

It doesn’t make sense that the world is producing more than ever, GDP is at an all-time high, and yet wages are stagnant for anyone but the ultra-wealthy while inflation is destroying our purchasing power. Our system often means that we have to make hard decisions based on dollars, the working class must squabble amongst itself, while corporate greed bleeds our community institutions and our families dry.

You can call it death by a thousand cuts, most things in the system are set to drain the lower classes of wealth. But perhaps this is just what we need in a way, the pressure and strife that’s necessary to finally drive us to give up on our own false “American” or “Canadian Dream” and to turn the page back to the spirituality and the peace found in our Indigenous traditions, found in our holy scriptures, albeit often twisted by modernity for its own aims. We must lay this false way of living down in order to pick up true life again.

This is what Christ in our reading says that he is able to do, lay his life down in order to pick it up again. And it is only through finding our own unity with what Christ knows himself to be, what the Buddha, the angels, Krishna, and others know themselves to be, that we can find the power and the presence necessary to lay down our false modernity for a true one. The Great Goddess Kundalini Shakti is at our core, known as Jehovah, Elohim, Allah, Shiva, and on and on, these are one and so are we as the light of life and consciousness. Great transformation is available to us as well as great joy and peace, but we have to turn to the Good Shepherd within.

It’s funny that so many religions in their scriptures say the same things, and yet we think and talk about these spiritual disciplines and sources of wisdom as if they aren’t ultimately talking about the same thing. Jesus said he is “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” in much the same way that the sages and incarnations of Divinity tell us throughout other traditions, he was not saying that we must always turn to the past to find the Way in the historical idea of himself, but that he is the very thing that is closes to us, our true heart, beyond historical personality or divisions of dogma. He knew himself to be trans-personal, and he invited us to know our unity with God as well, which he said many times in the scriptures. He wasn’t gatekeeping as the “only begotten son,” but invited us too to “become children of God.” We as a whole are God’s only begotten because we are one.

In our reading today Christ talked about this, how there are other followers “not of this sheep pen.” He was acknowledging that there are other ways to know God, and yet they all follow him because he knows himself to be one with God. From a modern mindset, we may get confused about this sort of thing because we can’t help but think divisionally, but we have to see things from Christ’s perspective, he was not identified with just the “historical Christ” but with the very Way, Truth, and Life that flows through all of us. God is the Good Shepherd of the sheep, but to the extent that we haven’t turned to the Divinity that shines through our consciousness, we will continue to feel loss and anxious, downtrodden and disempowered.

The Good Shepherd teaches us to shirk modernity throughout their teachings, from Christianity to Islam. To instead look toward our source using helpful practices such as contemplative prayer and meditation, “Be still and know that I Am God.” God points us back to our own sense of “I Am” when the Lord tells us to become still to know God, to become still to know that I Am that Jehovah spoke of when he called himself “I Am that I Am.” God is indeed THAT I am: your I am, my I am. God is Being itself, our own never-ending sense of presence, the only thing that never changes in our lives, the shining Divinity that we have only just begun to know.

Song: Liberation – Muse
https://youtu.be/ZN8a8WmQ-vI?si=_7fEflWqpgTGRbcs

Peace to you,
Rev. Cory

08/13/2023

Raise Up the Snake

John 8:27-30
They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Even as he spoke, many believed in him.

Responsive Reading – Psalm 25:6-10a
Remember, Lord,
your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you, Lord, are good.
Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way.
All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful

Song: River – Leon Bridges
https://youtu.be/0Hegd4xNfRo

So, Jesus says that we must “lift up the Son of Man” and then we will know that Christ is he, serving the Lord. Cryptic, wouldn’t you say? How do we lift up the Son of Man before knowing that it’s Christ? The beauty of this statement is that it’s so obvious, and yet it can seem quite off-the-wall at the same time. Christ often talked about the Son of Man, but in negative terms, saying that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and that he must undergo many trials. Typically, we would lay this term at Jesus’ feet, thinking that it has nothing to do with our own experience of trials and having no place to truly rest. And yet, here I believe we have Christ saying that we must lift up ourselves as the “Son of Man” before we can see what Christ truly is, a son of man raised up to be a Son of God.

We’ve spent a good part of this year exploring how Christ was so often telling us that no matter our religion, we can look and turn within to find unity in God. And so, it stands to reason that when he spoke about “the Son of Man,” often couched in negative terms, he may also be speaking about our own personal journeys as well. As some say, scripture is a living thing that lives among and within the people, about the people.

There’s a trope in scripture that uses some of Christ’s particular imagery from the reading today, and that is the raising up of something low into something more whole and holy. We see it when Moses picks up the snake and it turns into his holy, miracle-working staff, and in other stories about snakes and staffs in the Hebrew scriptures. As well as more broadly in the story of the Israelites who God “picks up” into his holy people. We also see it in Christ’s story, where it is said that he was not yet finished being “glorified” until he was lifted up not only onto the cross but out of the grave.

It's understandable then that we might read Christ’s words in John 8 from today as only an homage to his own later death and resurrection. And yet, we each know from experience that even after Christ’s raising from the dead there were and are many who don’t believe or are not sure if they believe. So, what does he mean when he says, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own”?

I believe he means that we must raise up ourselves, we must allow God to raise us up, and then we will see that Jesus is one with us in this. In fact, this intuitively means realizing that there isn’t many “Son of Men” but one, the entirety of the Lord’s church throughout the cosmos, Christian or not. We must not only raise up our estimation of Christ, which alone would make this phrase mean something like “you must believe more in Jesus, then you will believe in Jesus,” but also believe in ourselves and allow ourselves to be lifted into our higher nature. The snake must be raised into a miracle-working staff.

There’s a reason that many healthcare-related organizations use a snake rising up around a staff as their logo, as it’s a symbol for healing. It’s no secret that in our ignorant state, we are often characterized as a snake, not because snakes are inherently evil, but because a human slithering across the ground seeking someone to swallow whole brings up connotations of too much earthliness, shallowness, cold-bloodedness, lack of humanity, etc. And, of course, it’s a call back to the book of Genesis! And so, a snake being raised, as we see in scripture, denotes spiritual growth, healing, freedom from bo***ge, and an escape from the clutches of ignorance and its resulting evils.

This means that even the imagery of Christ up on the cross was no accident. It brings to mind these very images of something low being raise up (like a snake rising up a staff), and as it says, it was through his death and resurrection that he was glorified. But how do we reconcile this with our own lives? How is it all connected?

Often, we can feel quite oppressed ourselves. Either by our predicaments, our habits, or the world itself. Life can feel stifling at times, like a snake that finds it hard to lift up off the ground, or one even under the boot of God.

The teachings of Christ, the Buddha, Krishna, and many others are designed to help us allow ourselves to be picked up. It’s a tricky balance, because on one hand, it often feels like it takes miraculous coincidences around us to help us find a higher place, and it also will sometimes feel like we have to do all the lifting ourselves. However, these teachings can serve as guidance and support along the way, all of which work through our consciousness to help us see the light at the end of the tunnel leading us heavenward.

As Christ said of himself, we have to lay down our own lives so that we can pick them back up again. We have to be willing to allow our lower natures to fall away for the glory of our true hearts and our true wisdom, sourced from Divinity. This means letting go of the inner habits that are weighing us down, such as beating ourselves up or giving into some other bad or unconscious habit. And more so, letting go of the heaviness of our worries and habitual thoughts and urges. We can hold these things in our lives with less investment, knowing that they are not us and are meant to pass away as our higher selves are revealed.

So, yes, we are called to lift up our “Son of Man” so that we can become a Child of God and know other Children of God, just as Christ asked us to become. But even when it feels like a struggle to do this, we must realize that our strength and glory come from something greater than what we often call ourselves, so it is less a working upward than it is a letting go and letting God (although this can feel like quite the work). Our limited idea of ourselves and the world, our mind’s habits, is what you might call the “Son of Man,” the offspring of our current situation as people on this planet. Our limitation-oriented minds are what have to struggle when we are called to endure all the things that Christ said that the Son of Man must endure, as yes, we too can feel persecuted, hurt, restless, and rejected as it says the Son of Man will feel. This aspect of ourselves must eventually be laid down and humbled of its false idea of itself if we are to allow God to shine through us in accordance with God’s destiny and hope for us, and only then can we actually see Jesus Christ for what he truly was. We have to eventually take a step back from our habitual modes of thinking and see that only something fresh will do, only a risen mind will serve, only a resurrected Lord will lead, and only what already fully is will ever truly be.

Song: The Dark Side – Muse
https://youtu.be/e0UWT0dFSQE

Blessings,
Cory

08/06/2023

God’s Light is You

John 8:12-20
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.” Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

Responsive Reading - Psalm 24:3-7
Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.
They will receive blessing from the LORD
and vindication from God their Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, God of Jacob.
Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Song: Spirit + Bigger – Beyoncé
https://youtu.be/hiqLtqMDrXQ

How do you define yourself? This is often the question at the root of many spiritual teachings as well as many mental health issues. We tend to think that our issues are our own, whereas in fact the roots of all our problems tend to stem from our histories with other people, genetics, family systems, social systems, economic systems, and many other things that only exist in a continuum with the universe itself. Tell me, could you have had that defining moment if gravity never existed, or the solar system, or a billion other things? The same goes for our good qualities, we think we are our intelligence and prowess when in fact it isn’t really something we had control over. Even if we feel like we worked for something, what were the root causes of being able and willing to work for it? In this way our idea of ourselves is just that, an idea, often confined by our social norms; “I am my body and what its done,” “I am my mind.” To find peace within ourselves, we have to come to identify with more of what we truly are.

We’ve reflected quite a bit on how Jesus calls us the light of the world, and here he is in our reading from John 8 calling himself the same. What’s key here is remembering that when Christ talks about following him and never seeing darkness he is talking from a trans-personal light, as “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He isn’t saying, “Be Christian or else!” When he talks personally, he says things like “I don’t talk of myself,” and “Not my will but yours, Father.” On the other hand, when he speaks as “the Way” he says things like, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also,” and “Now you have seen the Father.”

The mystic Swedenborg wrote that as people in heaven (who he called angels) came to know that all their gifts were from and of God, they felt like they were more themselves. Christ knew that on a personal level he was nothing, not from a sense of misplaced humility but by realizing that the personal is a passing illusion - we are actually one with God and the universe. Our minds tell us all kinds of things, and often we don’t take them too seriously, but when it comes to questions of who we are we often feel like we have a good idea because we have a name, a body, a diploma, a zip code. But what are we truly? The light of the world.

It’s no coincidence that Jesus so often uses light when talking about himself and us and our society so often uses it when talking about consciousness and wisdom. There is even an aspect of light that we can relate to love, which is its heat. What we fail to realize is that when we look at our own experience of who we are it is the light of consciousness itself that fits the bill the best, not our bodies (which change throughout life and in dreams), nor or our minds which flit to and fro as we observe them. All experiences rise in consciousness, as consciousness, to consciousness, and there is a type of love that underlies that.

This idea levels the playing field between us and the creatures of the field and clarifies why it is our responsibility as the light of the world shining from an evolved human mind and body to take care of our earth. In doing so we are taking care of ourselves as one with our neighbours, letting our light shine. When we turn to this light within and within Christ (and others), we are turning to our unity, to our very essence as being, to Love. They say God never changes and that God is close to us, well, what never changes in our experience but the very spacious peace of our consciousness, our light?

This is why Christ’s teachings so often involve letting go of our addictions and even our habitual living to “follow” him. He even said that we will have to give up our families, which means we must let go of our hard and fast definitions and boxed-in thinking. He said these things centered in love, but, as he also said, he “came to bring a sword.” Our minds may find this kind of talk from Jesus scary, but what sees that fear? It’s funny, the Bible says that God shines on both the good and the evil, and so does our light within our minds!

The Pharisees in the Bible had a problem with Jesus’ line of teachings because it empowered the people and himself. “How dare he say that he’s a son of God?” He also said that we too should become children of God. When we take personal ownership of both our positive and our negative attributes, we fall into addictive thinking, fear, judgment, and arrogance. We all know what it’s like with someone who identifies very strongly with their thinking, sometimes they become narcissistic and defensive (outwardly judgmental), or they can become too humble and self-deprecating (inwardly judgmental). What’s our own tendency? And what is it that sees that? Jesus said in our reading that he himself passes no judgment.

Overcoming the darkness of identifying with our mind is part of what Jesus was saying when he said that he had overcome the world. The world arises within the mind and is structured by people’s thinking and the resulting doing. Christ came to know himself to be that which transcends the world and mind and invited us in countless ways to join him. He shed a light on our light so that we could be empowered to see ourselves for what we truly are. All too often we get caught in the darkness and ignorance of the mind, missing that life is easier than we make it out to be in our heads. We are already one with what we’ve been looking for. Beyond vulnerability and fear, we are one with Life and Being. To truly get to know ourselves and Christ we have to let our light, God’s likeness, shine, seeing it in the things around us and knowing it in the silence within, instead of confining it to our well-worn inner dialogues and judgmental trenches.

Song: ALREADY - Beyoncé, Shatta Wale, Major Lazer
https://youtu.be/agCgvFTJeRs

Peace to you,
Cory