Father vs Lover

This is a tricky subject, and can't say I've ever quite got to the bottom of it. Since letting go of religion and the obsession of assuming the bible is the answer to everything, I've come to some interesting conclusions that work for me - so far!

The concept of God as our father is well grounded in scripture, particularly by Jesus. There's no disputing the image of a perfect father who loves us unconditionally, and will bring every person to the knowledge of their completion in him.

But there is also the concept of God as a lover woven through scripture as well. It's more subtle but is intrinsic to the concept of the "bride of Christ".

These days I don't quote verses to prove a point. I might dig around to get a feel for a subject, but Christ in me is my guide. So here's the thing that has gurgled around the back of my brain for some time. A perfect father is awesome, can't argue with that so I'm not dissing that aspect of God at all. But I am taking it a step further.

I think the idea of the Bride hints at a level of union and oneness with God that goes way beyond any Father/child relationship. Our personal romantic relationships go way deeper than parental ones. There is a softness, romance, mutual adoration and intimacy that supersedes all other relationships. We leave our parental relationships to unite with another person in way that is impossible with our parents.

Even though Jesus talked about his father, and there are things like the prodigal son, which are beautiful metaphors, he hinted at something deeper many times as well - the father and I are one etc.

Paul and John talked a lot more about an intimacy that you would never describe as fatherly. In fact, father implies separation - sure, a loving father who is besotted with his children, but never the less, separate.

Now that we are one with God in every sense, that father/mother model has been outgrown. We are now old enough, as it were, to be lovers. To enter a whole new realm of love. A unity and oneness with all he is and all he has created (and expressed toward each other) that surpasses the need for the type self deprecation we associate with an authority figure (no matter how benign they may be).

The implications of this have been creeping up on me and creating a whole new sense of who God is and how I was created to relate to him. We are equals!! Of course, he is completely "omni" everything and I'm not like him in that sense, but he wants me as an equal, like a lover, no secrets, everything shared, neither lording it over the other. Just a beautiful oneness built on God's initiated passion that has drawn me into his arms.

Dare I also suggest that this surpasses all concepts of gender, God being completely female and completely male, thus completing us on every level no matter what our gender/sexuality is (although this is another huge topic!).

Perhaps the whole concept of lover is really what Jesus meant by "sending the Holy Spirit to live in us". There is a huge realm opening up for me that transcends culture/religion/scripture/tradition and all the bondage those things create, and frees me to to embrace Holy Spirit.

I've always thought that addressing God as Father just never really expressed it right. I'd try Jesus or Spirit or Lord or whatever, but nothing does the job. I'm tempted to call him Lover! No more "Father God I beseech you to pour out your blessings, blah, blah". Now its just "Hey Lover, what are you doing, can I help, or do you just want to hang out, maybe we could make love!!"

Old Testament theology made simple

Okay, this is my summary of years of diligent study, bible college, and countless sermons and books.

The Old Testament was the story of a particular ancient tribe and their impressions of God. It is completely irrelevant for us now except for any gems we can pull from it (sure you can make it about Jesus etc, but so what, means nothing now, and in fact completely distracts us from who we are now).

Jesus came from that tribe and actually spent most of his time telling them they had it completely wrong. He then sorted out the whole relationship to God thing, helped us to see how incredibly loving and personal God is, helped us to realise he is all in all and we have nothing to worry about.

Mankind has been trying to return to the mish mash of tribal Judaism in the name of Christ ever since - completely missing the point of everything Jesus did.

What a mess we have made of something so incredibly simple - God 100% in us and us 100% in God - complete freedom to live loved!

The Mechanics of Prayer

Absolutely fascinating - if you can get your head around it. I'm still swimming a bit, but its where my thoughts have been heading for some time. Now I just need to do a course in Quantum physics and I'll be fine!!


By Adam Lanka - Waking Times

Prayer means many different things to many different people. It is something that is so pervasive in our lives that it permeates fully through our societies and cultures. All cultures and religious traditions have their own practices when it comes to prayer, but let us acknowledge the similar theme. People all over the world right now are praying, to influence their world and the universe in myriad ways. But what factors determine the effectiveness of prayer, what is the fundamental basis of its function? How does it work to influence our daily lives and shape our world?

Prayer is our divine and innate connection with the fabric of reality, the way that we write our free will upon the world. To completely examine the nature of prayer we must look at it through various lenses and perspectives, involving spirituality and science, to find the common factors that describe this ancient tradition.

To better understand the mechanics of prayer, let us view it through the Quantum lens. A crucial part of Quantum physics, Warner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle dictates that we can only measure where a particle is, or how fast it is moving. The act of measuring one of these quantities actually increases uncertainty in the other. What this means is that energy exists as a wave when unobserved, and as a particle when we measure observe it in a location. Observation is the action that separates a particle into either state. But what is the particle when it is not being observed?

Waves in Quantum are actually waves of probability, where everything exists as a formless potentia throughout which any possible outcome can arise. Consciousness interacts with the infinite potentia to create and collapse the world around us into what we call our reality. But our true reality lies within the infinite, as parts of the all connected unitive consciousness of energy. Every particle and atom in the universe is born from the same infinite miasma, and as such, absolutely everything in the universe is one.

The focus of prayer does not need to be directed outward to an external source, it needs to be directed inwards, into our own personal connection with the source. By actively focusing our consciousness, we collapse the wave function of energies, and we consciously create the universe around us. We have stumbled through Quantum theory to finally come to the conclusion that its fundamental function works exactly as prayer does. But with this new foundation in mind, let us examine prayer in its current state.

But to focus our energy is more than just naming the new reality or possibility, it requires complementing it with thought, feeling, and belief. To influence the fabric of existence, we must consciously create with our intent. Prayers are more than just reciting words and chants, it is to be done with feeling, with purpose, and with intent. The combination and arrangement of words isn’t what makes prayer powerful, but what comes from our hearts. By feeling and making a vibration, we send that wave out to influence the infinite probabilities and possibilities in the universe.

Intent and strong feeling are the ways that we create our vibration, and manage the frequency of our wave. Every feeling, mindset, emotion, and thought has a corresponding coherent wave pattern that propagates outward into the fabric of the universe. As it moves through the infinite potential energy, it creates further waves and ripples, and influences all of the energy it comes into contact with. When praying, our intent and pure emotion are the catalysts that actually shape the universe around us, that collapse all of the waves into existence, into reality. We create and shape the world around us with simple, natural, human feelings.

But the caveat from Heisenberg again is that we can influence the wave with our energy, but when we observe it collapses. In prayer, if we are so tied up and entangled with our intent, trying to observe our reality and call it into existence at the same time, we make the energy collapse. Intent fails if we are attached to the outcome of our prayers, for the energy cannot occupy both states; we can know it as wave/vibration or as particle/location due to uncertainty. The most important part of effective prayer and manifesting is to be free of attachment to the outcomes, so that your vibration and intent are not interfered with by observation.

The ego mind plays the biggest role in attaching to the outcomes, as it is focused upon controlling the ‘how’ of the universe, or the particular way and pattern the energy expresses itself. But we cannot bend the universe to our will; we can work with it to influence and shape the expression of its energy. Instead of wishing, hoping for something to come to pass, we must instead be and feel the vibration that we wish to experience, that we wish to send out and influence the rest of the universe. One must feel, completely and wholly, that an intent or outcome already exists in the universe, is already happening. By surrounding ourselves with our new reality, our present reality grows to encompass the new vibration.

With this new glimpse at the mechanics of prayer, we see people all around the world, whether knowingly or unknowingly, constantly shape their daily existence. The universe is made of energy, and to better understand and interact with it, we need to only speak in its language; emotion. Prayer molds the medium, and paints the picture of the world around us. We simply need to be the vibration, be the wave, and be the change in the world that we want to see. We aren’t waiting for the world to change, it is already happening, right now, in each moment. As we all consciously focus our awareness, intent, and emotion to call forth the vibrations and the energy we wish to experience in our universe.

Who was Jesus talking to?

Matt 15:24 says "...I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Oh, OK, that's interesting! 

So Jesus apparently, was just on earth for the Jews. Hmmm...

That means that every thing he did and spoke was just for the Jews and doesn't apply to us!! That really is heresy! I mean, to think that all the stuff recorded in the gospels was only relevant to the Jews is kind of disturbing - especially if we've been living by the "what would Jesus do?" mindset.

But the implications are even more disturbing if we really think it through. Jesus only spoke to Jews in relation to the old covenant setup (his odd interaction with gentiles was only in terms of their faith in God). He talked about the law, its bondage, the death it brings etc, in relation to the Jews. The gentiles had no idea about any of that stuff, so his words would have been meaningless to them anyway.

Paul was a Jew, who brought a different revelation than Jesus did. Sure, there's some commonality, but Paul was trying to communicate to gentiles through his Jewish paradigm. He struggled! He knew in his heart the extravagant inclusiveness of God's love and acceptance of ALL mankind, but he constantly had to wrestle with the Jews and his own cultural mindset. You can clearly see the battles he fought with himself and the original Jewish followers of Jesus.

Soooo, I'm a gentile. And most of us probably are as well. In fact, even if you are of Jewish heritage, the old covenant is long gone, so you may as well be a gentile! That means that the words of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John aren't relevant to me - I can ignore them?? Well, yes, I guess that's true. I can ignore them, in the sense that they have no bearing on my relationship with God.

I can, however, get a lot better sense of God's nature and relationship with us from Paul. But even then, he struggled with the full implications of the gospel because of his Jewish heritage.

This only leaves us with one reliable option - the only option that Jesus gave us all just before he was killed. He said the Holy Spirit was going to come for everyone and he was going to be the source of all comfort and truth.

That's rather unnerving really, because it means we don't have a book of instructions to follow, only some intangible wafty spirit thing. Unless that spirit is far more real, and far more intrinsically part of us than we ever imagined!

Just imagine if we really are ONE with God right now! Just imagine if God really IS love and that love is already intrinsically part of who we are. Imagine if all we have to do is act on that reality! 

We would do well to remember that what Jesus did was established "before the foundations of the world", which implies a heck of a lot more than what he presented to the Jews.

Scary stuff indeed!!