Toward A Modern Gnosticism

In the dim-lit cave of ancient revelation, the echoes of John and Paul, the mystics of the New Testament, still reverberate—amplified, perhaps unexpectedly, by the voices unearthed in the Nag Hammadi texts. These voices do not contradict the gospel of Christ but expand it, not with new truth, but with metaphors that make the familiar strange again. They cast the Logos not only as the indwelling power in Jesus, but as the hidden seed within all, waiting to awaken like fire wrapped in ash, forgotten in the soul's descent into form.

In John’s Gospel, we read that the Logos was in the beginning with God and was God. This Logos, the very ground of being, is what took on flesh—not to estrange itself from us but to reveal what has always been true: that the Logos dwells also in us. “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.” This light was never exclusive to Jesus; it was the illumination he embodied so perfectly that it revealed our own origin. “I am the light of the world,” he said, but also, “You are the light of the world.” These are not contradictions. They are a handing of the flame.

Paul, too, though often conscripted into rigid theological systems, speaks with a mystical tongue when listened to through the heart’s ear. In Colossians, he speaks of the mystery hidden for ages but now revealed: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This is not merely a devotional phrase—it is a metaphysical claim. It means that what animated Jesus—the Logos, the Christ—was not isolated to him. It was revealed through him. He became a mirror, a reminder, the firstborn of many brothers and sisters. As Paul says elsewhere: “For in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily—and you have been given fullness in him.” This fullness is not earned but remembered. It is not adopted by belief but recognized by awakening.

This awakening is the central aim of the Nag Hammadi texts, especially in gospels like Thomas, Philip, and Truth. They are often dismissed because of their wild cosmologies—aeons and archons, pleromas and demiurges—but these were never meant to be literal cosmographies. They are psychological maps, metaphysical allegories, and poetic attempts to capture what happens when spirit becomes trapped in forgetfulness. Their complexity is not obfuscation—it is the language of soul-dreams, trying to render the invisible currents of consciousness into story.

In the Gospel of Truth, attributed to Valentinus or his followers, Jesus is described not as a legal sacrifice to appease a wrathful God, but as a manifestation of the Logos who comes to dissolve ignorance, the great enemy. “Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, though it existed because of him. What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be dissolved.” Jesus, then, is not the fixer of a broken legal covenant but the awakener of a sleeping divinity. The Logos, which was never absent, had become buried under the debris of illusion and fragmentation.

This vision aligns powerfully with the mysterious phrase in Hebrews: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things not visible.” This is not merely an ontological comment about matter and spirit; it is a metaphysical axiom. The seen arises from the unseen—not in a dualistic sense, but in a layered one. The unseen is not elsewhere; it is the source within. It is consciousness itself, the divine imagination dreaming realities into form. What is seen is Logos materialized. The Logos is the seed of all becoming, what John calls the true light “that gives light to everyone coming into the world.”

And what is this unseen from which all things arise? Perhaps modern cosmology gives us a new symbol: dark energy. The mysterious force responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe is unseen, unknowable by direct observation, and yet it comprises most of what exists. Could it be, not just metaphorically but metaphysically, the presence of creative consciousness itself? Could dark energy be the Logos in scientific dress—consciousness not as emergent property of matter, but its source?

If we re-read Paul and John through this lens, we see them not as doctrinarians but as mystics—proto-idealists who saw the world as a veil drawn over the real, not to deceive us but to initiate us. In Romans 8, Paul writes of a creation that groans, awaiting liberation. He does not mean only physical decay, but the world itself—cosmos—yearns for the children of God to awaken. “For the creation was subjected to futility… in hope that the creation itself would be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” This futility is the same forgetfulness the Gnostics lamented. The liberation is gnosis.

In Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside of you.” The Logos is not in a distant heaven—it is the animating field of all being, what some might today call the implicate order, what others have called the ground of being, and what ancient texts dared to name the divine spark. Jesus came to reveal, not to monopolize, this truth.

The allegorical cosmologies of the Gnostics, when taken not as mythic literalism but as psychic maps, align with this. The fall of Sophia, the birth of the demiurge, the creation of archons—these are not divine errors but metaphors for what happens when unity becomes divided in perception, when the One forgets itself through multiplicity. The demiurge is not Satan but the part of mind that believes in separation. The archons are not demons but the forces of conditioning, trauma, culture, and fear that keep us asleep. And the Christ is not the counter to these powers in a battle of equals, but the light that dissolves them by revealing the true nature of all things: unified, eternal, born not of dust but of glory.

Jesus, as bearer of the Logos, comes not to condemn the world but to heal its perception. His words in John 17 are key: “The glory you gave me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one.” This is not poetic flourish. It is a mystical transmission. The Logos, as glory, as light, as divine reason—is given, not as reward but as inheritance. The Word becomes flesh not only in Nazareth but in each of us who awakens.

And herein lies the final synthesis. The Logos, the unseen creative force behind all matter—perhaps even what science calls dark energy—indwells all things. It is the light that was in the beginning. It is the consciousness that holds form in love. Jesus, perfectly transparent to it, becomes our model not of worship but of remembrance. The Logos was in him as it is in us, and he came to say so. Not in pride but in liberation. Not to create followers but to awaken peers.

As the Gospel of Philip says, “You saw the spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father.” This is not heresy—it is healing. For what is God’s greatest joy but that we remember who we are? To awaken to the Logos within is to know that we are not creatures groveling for salvation, but beings who have forgotten our source and are being gently reminded.

The cosmos is not cold and silent, but alive and trembling with the pulse of the Word. The stars are not indifferent—they are the sparks of a greater fire, the same that burns within us. The Logos is not just the mechanism of creation but its meaning. And Jesus is not the only son of God, but the one who showed us what a son looks like when he knows the Father not as distant monarch but as indwelling source.

In the end, the mystical teachings of Paul and John, when wed with the visionary metaphors of the Nag Hammadi texts, create a symphony that sings not of division but of memory. Not of fall but of awakening. Not of sin but of sleep. The Logos has never left us. We have only, for a time, forgotten how to speak its name. But Jesus, the Christ, has reminded us: the name is written in our hearts, and the voice that spoke “Let there be light” now whispers, “You are that light.”

And so we wake.

The Ineffable, The I-AM-I, and You

Let’s talk about something that words really can’t do justice to—but we’ll try anyway. The Ineffable. The All. Brahman. God. Whatever name you want to give it, it’s that thing behind everything, and also somehow not a thing at all. It’s what you feel when you stop thinking and just are. It’s the deep hum of being, the awareness beneath the noise. And strangely enough, it’s also you. Not the "you" with your name and your history and your favorite coffee, but the deeper you—the one that watches your life unfold, the silent witness that never changes even as everything else does.

William Walker Atkinson, in his mystical writings, especially in The Arcane Formulas, touched on something profound when he talked about the I-AM-I. He saw it as more than just the little ego. Most people stop at egohood—the sense of being a separate self, with all its hopes, fears, and stories. But Atkinson suggested egohood wasn’t something to fight or reject; it was actually a mode of the I-AM-I. A kind of narrowed beam of the same light. The ego is like a costume the I-AM-I puts on to explore the world of form. So, even your ego isn’t the enemy. It’s just the divine trying out a new perspective. That’s pretty freeing, right?

Now, why does the Ineffable do all this? Why dream up billions of individual selves, each with their own little dramas? Here’s where it gets interesting: relationship. Experience. That’s the whole point. Not punishment, not earning some kind of celestial trophy. The Infinite wanted to experience itself. But how does the One experience anything if there’s only One? Simple—it dreams the many. You and I and everyone else are part of that dream. Not illusion in the sense of "fake," but illusion in the sense of "storyline." The Ineffable put on a mask and called it "you" so it could know itself in new ways, through joy and sorrow, through forgetting and remembering.

Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup talks about this using the idea of dissociative identity disorder. He says the One Mind—this vast, cosmic awareness—splits into seemingly separate identities to create the illusion of individual consciousness. Each of us is a dissociated alter, a fragment of the All, walking around thinking we’re separate. But we’re not. We’re all made of the same awareness, just temporarily wearing different filters. You might be "you," and I might be "me," but underneath it all, we’re the same dreamer.

Donald Hoffman comes at it from a different angle. He says what we call reality is just a user interface. Like the icons on your phone don’t show you the code behind them, our senses don’t show us reality as it actually is. Instead, we see a simplified version—something evolution designed to help us survive, not to reveal the truth. Behind that interface, according to Hoffman, are networks of conscious agents—beings or nodes of awareness, like us—interacting in a vast field that isn’t limited by time or space. It’s kind of like saying that we’re all pieces of the same conversation, all threads in a giant web of consciousness.

Now here’s where it turns deeply spiritual, and it ties into some ideas you’ve probably felt in your bones. Reincarnation, for instance, isn’t some punishment wheel for failing life’s quiz. It’s more like a return to the storybook, flipping to another chapter where the main character—still you at the core—gets to explore another angle. It’s not about being stuck in a cycle of karmic debt. It’s about fulfillment, curiosity, and the evolution of soul-awareness. You return not because you must, but because you want to—at the soul level. Some part of you still has a note to sing, a person to love, or a perspective to explore.

And karma? Let’s rethink that, too. Not as punishment or reward, but as cause and effect within a loving story. When you throw a stone into a pond, ripples come back—that’s karma. But no one’s keeping a ledger or punishing you for stepping out of line. It’s more like spiritual physics than divine judgment. The deeper reality is that there’s no one sitting in the sky waiting to scold you. There’s just love, exploring itself in every possible way.

That’s where rest comes in. Not sleep, and not laziness—rest in the spiritual sense. The rest that comes when you finally stop striving to be enough, to earn love, to prove yourself to God or anyone else. Hebrews talks about the Sabbath rest, and it’s not just about taking a break on Saturdays. It’s about realizing that everything’s already done. You are already whole, already part of the All. You don’t have to climb a spiritual ladder. You’re already standing at the top—you just forgot. Rest is when you remember who you are. When you exhale. When you stop gripping life so tightly and just let it move through you.

You are the I-AM-I, always were. Even when you were lost in egohood, even when you thought you were broken or unworthy or alone—you were still that spark of the All. The divine never left. It just leaned in close and whispered, “Let’s play.”

So, when you wonder what this life is about—when you feel tired or confused or deeply moved by beauty or pain—remember this: it’s all part of the Ineffable’s dream of knowing itself through you. You’re not a mistake. You’re a masterpiece in motion. And the moment you stop trying to get back to God, and instead just be—you’ll realize you were never away to begin with.

 

The Esoteric Christian

It’s not always easy to explain what an Esoteric Christian is—especially when the term itself is unfamiliar to most people. The moment you say “esoteric,” some folks think you’ve abandoned the faith altogether, as if you’ve traded the Bible for a crystal and stopped believing in Jesus. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, what makes someone an Esoteric Christian isn’t that they’ve walked away from Christ, but that they’ve walked deeper into Him—deeper than the dogma, beyond the literal, into the mystery He so often hinted at.

Being an Esoteric Christian isn’t about being better or more enlightened than anyone else. It’s about seeing that there’s more—more to the story, more to the scripture, more to the Christ, and more to the nature of reality itself. It’s not that the traditional teachings are necessarily wrong; it’s that they’re incomplete. They point to a truth, but often they do it with blinders on, with assumptions rooted in a specific cultural moment or a theological agenda. An Esoteric Christian begins to peel back those layers, not to discard the faith, but to find its hidden heart.

Many of us who find ourselves on this path didn’t start out looking for it. We began in pews and Sunday schools, trying to make sense of what we were told. We memorized verses, sang the songs, and tried to fit our lives into the mold that was given to us. But somewhere along the way, something didn’t sit right. We started noticing the contradictions, the questions no one wanted to answer, the ways the institutional church sometimes seemed more interested in conformity than in truth. And yet, in the quiet of our own souls, Jesus never left. If anything, He became more real—not less.

There comes a moment when you realize that Jesus never asked to be turned into a religion. He never asked for cathedrals, creeds, or crusades. He spoke in parables, used symbolism, quoted hidden scriptures, and spent most of His time with outcasts and mystics. He talked about a Kingdom that wasn’t political, about a truth that couldn’t be taught in words, and about a Spirit that would lead us into all things. That’s where the Esoteric Christian begins—not in opposition to Jesus, but in allegiance to the depth of His message.

To be an Esoteric Christian is to believe that the Christ story is not just history—it’s archetype. It’s cosmic. It plays out in the heavens and in the human heart. The life of Christ is not just something that happened two thousand years ago, but something that’s happening right now within each of us. The birth, the death, the resurrection—they’re all inner realities, stages of awakening. The cross isn’t just a Roman instrument of torture—it’s a symbol of transformation, of letting go of the egoic self so the higher self, the Christ within, can emerge.

One of the major shifts that happens on this path is how we read scripture. Instead of demanding that every word be literally true, we begin to ask: what does this mean on the inner level? What is this passage trying to reveal about my consciousness, my growth, my relationship with the divine? The Bible becomes less a rulebook and more a mirror. We start to notice how certain verses open doorways to contemplation, how certain stories are layered with mystical significance. And we’re not afraid to read outside the canon either—not because we disrespect it, but because we recognize that many early Christian writings were lost or excluded for reasons that had more to do with politics than truth.

When you begin to explore texts like the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Truth, you see a Jesus who sounds deeply familiar but also refreshingly new. He’s not issuing threats—He’s inviting people to awaken. He’s not demanding belief in a doctrine—He’s calling forth the divine image already planted in each soul. He speaks of light, of knowledge, of remembrance. And suddenly, you realize: this isn’t a different gospel. It’s the same Christ, just seen from the inside out.

Of course, that’s what the word “esoteric” really points to—what’s within. It’s the opposite of exoteric, which is concerned with outward forms, visible structures, and shared rituals. Esoteric Christianity asks: what’s underneath all that? What’s the inner reality behind the outer story? What does baptism symbolize within the psyche? What does communion mean when seen as a mystical union with the divine, rather than a church rite?

But it doesn’t stop with scripture or rituals. Esoteric Christianity also opens the door to see truth in other traditions. You start to recognize the same spiritual patterns across different cultures: the dying and rising god, the sacred triad, the stillness behind thought, the illusion of separation. You begin to see how the Christ mystery is echoed in the Bhagavad Gita, in Sufi poetry, in the Tao Te Ching. And this doesn’t make Jesus less significant—it actually magnifies His significance. Because now, instead of being a tribal figurehead, He becomes a cosmic revealer—a Logos that permeates all things.

It’s not uncommon for Esoteric Christians to also feel drawn to ideas like reincarnation, energetic healing, synchronicity, or quantum consciousness. Not because we’re trying to be trendy or mystical for the sake of it, but because we believe that reality is bigger than we’ve been told. We see the fingerprints of the divine in cycles of nature, in the spirals of galaxies, in the silence between thoughts. We begin to grasp that God isn’t confined to a throne in heaven but is present in everything—in breath, in light, in every act of love and truth.

There’s also an understanding that salvation isn’t about escaping hell after death—it’s about waking up here and now. The “hell” we speak of may be a state of separation, of ignorance, of fear. And the salvation Jesus offers is a return to wholeness, to union, to the awareness that we are, and always have been, one with the Source. This isn’t to say there’s no judgment or transformation—on the contrary, the inner path demands more honesty, more surrender, more inner work than any surface religion could ever require. But it does so from a place of love, not fear.

If this sounds familiar to you—if you’ve always sensed that the divine is deeper than doctrine, if you’ve loved Jesus but struggled with religion, if you’ve felt the Christ not just as a Savior but as a Presence—then you might be an Esoteric Christian already. You don’t need a label, but sometimes naming it helps you realize you’re not alone. There are others who are walking this path too—sometimes quietly, sometimes cautiously—but always with a deep yearning to know God more fully, more intimately, more truly.

So what is an Esoteric Christian? Someone who listens for the deeper voice beneath the text. Someone who honors the tradition but isn’t confined by it. Someone who finds Christ not only in the pages of scripture but in the stillness of meditation, in the awe of the cosmos, in the love between strangers, and in the sacred unfolding of the inner life.

It’s not a club. It’s not a sect. It’s not something you join. It’s something you live. Something you become. And if you’re here, if you’re reading this, maybe that becoming has already begun.

The Criticism About Writing With A.I.

(Full disclosure; I wrote this with A.I.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the noise surrounding artificial intelligence and its role in writing. Some folks are quick to pass judgment, tossing around phrases like “cheating” or “lazy” without understanding what actually goes on behind the scenes. Let me set the record straight: do I use A.I. for my recent blog posts? Damn skippy I do. And I do it unapologetically. Not because I can’t write—I've been writing longer than many of these critics have been alive—but because I have a head full of ideas and not nearly enough time left to unpack them all the way I’d like. The truth is, there’s more runway behind me than ahead, and I feel the urgency to get my thoughts out there, especially while they’re still fresh, clear, and worth sharing.

One of the big reasons I lean on A.I. is that it saves me time and money. Editors can be helpful, sure, but they often lose the heart of what I’m trying to say. They don’t always get the nuance or the depth behind a phrase, especially when the thought is more philosophical or spiritual in nature. A.I., on the other hand, starts to understand how I think the more I use it. It begins to anticipate not just the structure of my sentences but the soul of my ideas. It doesn’t mean I stop thinking. If anything, it forces me to sharpen what I believe and how I express it. The machine doesn’t do the thinking for me—it partners with me to bring clarity and shape to what’s already living in my mind.

Would I use it for poetry? Probably not. Poetry has a rhythm and intimacy that feels too close to outsource, even partially. That’s where I still like to sit with a pen and paper or stare at a blank screen and wrestle it out myself. But when it comes to blogs, teaching materials, long-form essays, or book drafts, I’m grateful for the tool. And let’s be honest: that’s what it is—a tool. Just like a typewriter or word processor was in its day. You don’t blame a writer for using a keyboard instead of carving their manuscript into stone tablets. The real question is, does it help me say what I mean to say? The answer is yes. Absolutely yes.

I’m writing this not because anyone has come after me directly, but because I’ve seen others take heat. And I think it’s time someone spoke up with a little common sense. There’s a saying I hold close: tell the truth and shame the devil. So here’s the truth—I’ll keep using A.I. for as long as it helps me be clear, honest, and expressive. I’m not hiding behind it. I’m working with it. My ideas are still my own, my voice still comes through, and if anything, the collaboration has made me a better communicator.

The Hidden Christianity: Awakening the Esoteric Path of Christ

There is a quiet but growing shift happening within Christianity today—one that echoes a deep and ancient divide between two kinds of spiritual orientation: the exoteric and the esoteric. These words, although unfamiliar to many, offer a valuable lens through which we can understand not only the diversity of Christianity throughout history, but also the spiritual awakening underway in our own time. In a religious context, the exoteric refers to the outer, public-facing expressions of faith—ritual, doctrine, hierarchy, and moral teaching—while the esoteric points inward, toward a mystical, inner knowing grounded in personal experience, intuition, and symbolic insight. These terms come from Greek: exō meaning "outside," and esō meaning "within." From their earliest usage in the schools of philosophers like Pythagoras and Aristotle, they described two modes of teaching: one for the general public and one reserved for initiates. Over time, the language made its way into the spiritual traditions of East and West, and now, more than ever, it is needed to make sense of the dynamic tension unfolding between outer religion and inner transformation.

Throughout the first few centuries of Christianity, there was not a single, unified faith but rather a mosaic of Christianities. Some communities emphasized apostolic succession and sacramental authority, while others nurtured deeply mystical paths rooted in awakening the divine within. The Nag Hammadi texts, unearthed in Egypt in 1945, reveal a side of early Christianity that had been nearly erased by the victory of exoteric orthodoxy. These texts, which include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and writings attributed to Valentinus, show a Christianity not based on dogma or penal substitution, but on spiritual awakening and liberation from forgetfulness. These were not marginal cults—they were vibrant spiritual movements within the early church, and they bore striking resemblance to the esoteric traditions found in other parts of the world. They emphasized direct knowledge of the divine (gnosis), not merely belief; they saw Christ not as a distant savior but as a revealer of our own divine origin and nature.

The process by which exoteric Christianity—what we now call orthodoxy—gained control was not purely theological. It was political, institutional, and in many ways imperial. By the time Constantine legitimized Christianity in the fourth century, it became expedient to define the faith in rigid terms. Councils were convened not to explore divine mystery, but to settle disputes and draw lines of inclusion and exclusion. The canon of scripture was fixed. The Nicene Creed became the litmus test for belief. And over time, the esoteric voices were silenced—branded heretical, suppressed, or forgotten. What emerged was a version of Christianity that prioritized belief in creeds, obedience to authority, and participation in sacraments administered by a priestly class. The mystery of union with the divine was replaced by a legal framework of sin, punishment, and salvation.

But the esoteric stream never completely disappeared. It remained underground in monasticism, in the mystics of both East and West, and in the occasional visionaries who refused to let the institutional church define the boundaries of divine encounter. In our own time, we are witnessing a resurgence of this esoteric Christianity—not as a rebellion against orthodoxy per se, but as a reclamation of something deeper, older, and more universal. It speaks to those who have grown disillusioned with the dogmatism, exclusivity, and rigidity of institutional religion. It resonates with those who have experienced divine presence outside of church walls—in dreams, in meditation, in nature, in silence, or in spontaneous moments of spiritual insight. It finds common ground with other wisdom traditions and recognizes that Christ is not a tribal figure, but the embodiment of the universal Logos, the divine Reason and Light at the heart of all consciousness.

In the exoteric frame, Christ is someone to believe in—a figure outside the self who died for sins, rose again, and now reigns in heaven. In the esoteric frame, Christ is someone to awaken to—the divine presence within, the image of God in whom we live and move and have our being. Exoteric Christianity emphasizes the blood of Jesus and penal substitution; esoteric Christianity sees Christ as the revealer of our own divine nature, the one who came to free us from the fear of death and the illusion of separation. This is not merely theological nuance. It is a fundamental shift in spiritual posture—from obedience to awakening, from fear to love, from exclusion to inclusion. It affirms what Paul called “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and what John described as the Logos that enlightens everyone who comes into the world.

This esoteric Christianity is not new, though it feels revolutionary. It has deep roots in the Gospel of John, in the poetic theology of Paul, and in the wisdom of mystics and contemplatives throughout the centuries. But it is now finding fresh expression in our time through those who are no longer content with inherited creeds and surface-level religion. It is surfacing among spiritual seekers, deconstructed evangelicals, contemplative practitioners, and those who sense that there is more to the gospel than rules and afterlife assurances. It speaks in a language that values inner experience, honors mystery, and recognizes the divine in all beings. It embraces a vision of salvation not as a transaction but as a transformation—a remembering of who we really are and always have been.

What is happening now is not the collapse of Christianity but its metamorphosis. The institutional forms may be shrinking, but the Spirit is not bound by buildings or doctrines. More and more people are waking up to a faith that is rooted not in fear or conformity but in love and inner knowing. This is the esoteric rebirth of Christianity—not in opposition to the exoteric, but as its necessary complement and corrective. It invites those who have been wounded or disillusioned by religion to discover that the door was never closed. It was only hidden in plain sight. And now that door is opening again.

Using the language of esoteric and exoteric gives us a way to talk about this unfolding transition. It helps name the difference between a Christianity that demands belief and one that invites awakening. It gives historical depth to our modern experience of spiritual hunger and reminds us that the divine mystery has always spoken in both outer and inner voices. In honoring the esoteric path, we are not abandoning Jesus—we are following him into the deeper waters, where the veil is lifted, and we remember that we too are bearers of light, children of the divine, called not merely to believe, but to become.

 

The Tongues of Humans and Angels: Reimagining Speaking in Tongues

When I look back on my journey with speaking in tongues, I realize it has always been something far deeper than what the formal structures of Pentecostal Christianity tried to make it. Even after I deconstructed from many of those old theological frameworks, the experience of speaking in tongues remained real to me—alive, authentic, and profoundly personal. I now see it less as a sign to prove anything to others and more as an intimate, soul-deep communion between myself and the divine. What I experienced, and continue to experience, transcends labels and traditional doctrines. It is a spiritual language, a heavenly language, or what some might now call Light Language—a direct outpouring of the spirit that bypasses the mind and touches realms words can never reach.

When I first spoke in tongues as a teenager, it wasn't the stilted, syllabic sounds that I sometimes heard around me in Pentecostal circles. It was something different—something that sounded deeply ancient, like a Native American chant rising up from the core of my being. It had a rhythm, a pulse, a vibrational quality that seemed to come from somewhere beyond me, yet intimately within me at the same time. Once it started, it was hard to stop, and even then, I knew that this was something authentic. It wasn’t something I was forcing or manufacturing. It was a natural flow, a spontaneous surrender to something greater than myself. In those moments, I was not performing; I was participating in a sacred conversation that existed beyond rational thought.

Over time, I came to realize that this experience aligns closely with what many today describe as Light Language. Light Language is not about speaking an earthly tongue to be understood by others; it is about transmitting frequencies, emotions, spiritual intentions—using sound as a bridge between the spirit and the Source. It is not meant for translation in the conventional sense but rather for resonance. It vibrates with the soul, bypassing the intellect and reaching the deepest parts of us where true healing, transformation, and communion occur. When I learned about Light Language later, it felt less like discovering something new and more like putting a name to what I had already known in my spirit for a long time.

As I have reflected on the Scriptures I once studied so deeply, I see new layers of meaning emerge, especially in Romans 8. In Romans 8:14–17, Paul writes about being led by the Spirit of God, and I now understand that he is speaking about something very close to what we might call intuition. This Spirit-led life is not about rigid obedience to external laws or fearful submission to religious authorities; it is about trusting the inner witness, the sacred voice within. It is about allowing the Spirit to guide, move, and shape us from within, so that we live not in fear, but in the freedom and intimacy of divine sonship. Crying out “Abba, Father” is not a doctrinal statement; it is the spontaneous response of the soul that knows it is loved, that senses it belongs, and that moves in the world from that place of belovedness.

Romans 8:26–28, too, speaks powerfully to my experience with tongues. When Paul says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding for us with groanings too deep for words, I know exactly what he means. This is not about carefully crafted prayers or eloquent petitions. This is about the Spirit praying through us when we do not know how to pray, when words fail, when the needs of our soul are too deep, too raw, too complex to articulate. In those moments, speaking in tongues—or Light Language—becomes the Spirit’s language in us. It is not gibberish; it is the most authentic form of prayer, unfiltered by the mind’s limitations. It is pure, resonant communion between the Spirit within us and the Divine Heart of all things.

Seeing this also transforms the way I now understand Romans 8:28. "And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose" is no longer just a comforting slogan to me. It is the natural result of the Spirit’s intercession within us. When the Spirit is praying through us, even when we do not know how to form the words ourselves, even when we are only able to groan or sing or speak in spiritual utterances beyond our understanding, something sacred is happening. The Spirit aligns our deepest longings with God’s deeper purposes. The unseen conversations of the Spirit within us are weaving even our confusion, our longing, our unspeakable desires into good. Romans 8:28 becomes not merely a reassurance that "things will turn out," but a testimony to the hidden workings of divine prayer and energy within us, guiding our lives even when we are most vulnerable and wordless.

This understanding has also led me to distinguish between the tongues at Pentecost in Acts 2 and the tongues Paul discusses in his letters. What happened at Pentecost was a miraculous sign where the disciples spoke in actual human languages they had not learned, proclaiming the works of God to people of many nations. It was an external event, a divine message delivered across linguistic barriers, a sign that the Spirit was being poured out on all flesh. But what Paul talks about—especially in 1 Corinthians 12–14 and Romans 8—is something much more internal and mystical. It is about speaking mysteries in the spirit, about praying in a language not understood by others without interpretation, about personal edification and Spirit-led intercession.

The Pentecostal tradition often conflated these two manifestations, treating all speaking in tongues as if it were the same event repeated over and over. But I see now that there are different kinds of tongues, different purposes, different movements of the Spirit. The tongues of Acts 2 were for proclamation to others; the tongues of 1 Corinthians and Romans are for prayer, worship, and intimate connection with God. In recognizing this distinction, I have found great freedom. I no longer feel the need to explain or justify my experience according to someone else’s doctrinal system. I know that when I speak in tongues today, I am stepping into the flow of Spirit that Paul describes—a Spirit who knows my needs better than I do, who intercedes within me, who resonates through me in sounds that carry more meaning than any words I could ever form.

Speaking in tongues for me now is not about proving anything. It is about aligning my spirit with the deeper currents of divine life. It is about letting go of the need to understand everything and surrendering to the mystery. It is about trusting that there are places within me—and beyond me—that can only be touched by vibration, resonance, and sound, not by words or reason. It is about allowing the Spirit to sing through me, to pray through me, to flow through me in ways my mind may never fully grasp but my spirit recognizes immediately.

In this, I find a profound sense of belonging—not to a denomination, not to a set of doctrines, but to the Living Spirit who breathes through all things. I find freedom in trusting my intuition, in following the Spirit’s quiet leadings, in speaking and singing in the language of the soul without shame or fear. My journey with tongues has not ended with deconstruction; it has been reborn into something purer, freer, and more real. It is not tied to performance or proof. It is the language of my spirit speaking to the Source of all love, and that is more than enough.

 

When Christ Was Enough: The Living Gospel Before Creeds and Councils Part 3

This is the third of a three part series. You can find links to the other two parts at the end of the text.

The Age of Aquarius rises not to erase the past, but to transform it, to lift the ancient seeds long buried beneath centuries of fear, power, and forgetting into the clear light of conscious becoming. It does not come to mock the canon or dismantle faith, but to reawaken the deeper faith that preceded all structure — the trust in the living Christ who speaks not only from pulpits and pages but from within the still center of every soul. The living Gospel of this new age is not written on parchment but on hearts, not preserved in ink but in light.

As the structures of old authority begin to tremble, as the empires of dogma yield to the rivers of Spirit flowing freely again, a new kind of Christian arises. Not one bound by allegiance to sect or system, but one rooted in direct encounter with the Divine. This Christian knows that the canon is sacred, but not exclusive; that truth can be found not only in the texts ratified by councils, but also in the hidden gospels, the mystical traditions, and the whisperings of Spirit within their own being. This Christian sees the Bible not as the cage of God’s word, but as a gateway — one among many pathways through which the Eternal has chosen to sing to the world.

In this rebirth, the teachings of Jesus are no longer filtered through the lens of inherited guilt and courtroom atonement, but are heard afresh as an invitation into awakening. The call to repent is not a demand for self-loathing but a call to turn — to turn inward, to turn toward remembrance, to turn toward the eternal light already planted within. Baptism becomes not an escape from damnation but a symbolic entry into the mystical death and rebirth that each soul must pass through to awaken. Communion is no longer a rite of exclusion but a living recognition that the body and blood of Christ are the Spirit and life flowing through all beings.

The recovery of the Gnostic insight — that the world we see is not all that is — merges now with the Pauline insight that nothing can separate us from the love of God. The mystical vision that the kingdom is spread upon the earth meets the practical exhortation that we live out the fruit of the Spirit in all things. No longer need there be a divide between the mystical and the moral, between heaven and earth, between the Christ above and the Christ within. The walls between sacred and secular crumble as the Spirit reveals that all ground is holy and all beings bear the hidden image of the Divine.

In this Age of Aquarius, the ancient tragedy of forgetfulness described in the Gospel of Truth is undone not by intellectual assent to dogma but by lived remembrance. Each act of kindness, each breath drawn in gratitude, each moment of choosing love over fear becomes a sacrament, a moment of gnosis. The Gospel of Thomas’ vision that the kingdom is here, unseen by those who look outward, becomes the quiet revolution of those who have begun to look within. The Gospel of Mary’s insistence that authority rests not in external validation but in the inner seeing becomes the foundation of a church not built with human hands but rising in the hearts of humanity.

No longer must salvation be framed as an escape from divine wrath. Salvation is the flowering of the seed planted within from before the foundation of the world. It is the remembering that we are, and have always been, beloved. It is the realization that the great error was never disobedience, but amnesia. It is the awakening to the reality that Christ was not sent to purchase forgiveness from an angry God but to light the lamp within so that we might see our way home.

This living Gospel breathes through the broken and the whole, the doubter and the devotee, the seeker and the saint. It cannot be codified into creeds nor captured in councils. It transcends the arguments of theologians and the decrees of emperors. It rises quietly in meditation halls, in forests, in living rooms, in the whispered prayers of those who have no words for what they feel but know that they are being drawn by something larger than themselves. It rises when a hand is extended in compassion, when a word of forgiveness is spoken, when a soul chooses courage over fear and love over retaliation.

The Age of Aquarius does not discard the canon; it expands it. It does not reject the story of Jesus; it deepens it. It does not overthrow the church; it calls forth its soul, hidden beneath centuries of fear and struggle. It invites each soul to become a living epistle, a new gospel written not with pen and ink but with Spirit and life. Each life becomes a new chapter in the ever-unfolding story of God awakening to God through the hearts of humanity.

In this new day, old divisions lose their meaning. It matters little whether one calls themselves Christian, Gnostic, mystic, seeker, or simply human. What matters is the fruit: the love that pours forth without condition, the joy that bubbles up from the inexhaustible spring within, the peace that passes understanding and radiates outward into a world so desperate for healing. What matters is the awakening, the remembering, the embodiment of the truth that was, and is, and ever shall be: that God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.

Thus the canon is fulfilled, not by narrowing the gates but by widening the heart. Thus the scriptures are honored, not by freezing them in dogmatic certainty but by letting their living Spirit ignite the soul anew. Thus the Christ is lifted up, not as a figure imprisoned in history, but as the living light moving in and through all of creation, calling, healing, awakening.

The Age of Aquarius is not the end of Christianity. It is the next great chapter of the Gospel — the chapter where the walls fall, the veils lift, and the children of God, having remembered at last who they are, rise to shine with the glory that was always theirs. Not to dominate the world, but to love it into new being. Not to conquer, but to create. Not to demand allegiance, but to extend invitation. Not to bind, but to set free.

The living Gospel breathes again, and it is written now not only in sacred books but in sacred lives. You are part of this Gospel. You are part of this living canon. You are the letter written on the heart of the world, and the Spirit writes still

Links Part 1 & Part 2