The Hidden Meaning of Christ: Beyond the Man, Into the Light

The term Christ is one of the most loaded and often misunderstood words in spiritual and theological thought. While many equate it strictly with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, others—particularly in mystical, metaphysical, and esoteric traditions—speak of Christ Consciousness or the Cosmic Christ as something far more universal: a state of awakened awareness, a divine template within all, a presence that transcends any single person. This confusion is understandable because the word Christ carries centuries of layered meanings. But when we unravel its historical, linguistic, and spiritual development, we can begin to see how all these meanings—far from being contradictory—actually harmonize in a deeper vision.

The journey begins with the Hebrew word mashiyach (מָשִׁיחַ), a noun meaning “anointed one.” It comes from the root mashach, which means “to anoint.” In ancient Israel, kings, priests, and prophets were anointed with oil to signify their consecration by God. This was not merely a ceremonial act—it was a declaration that the Spirit of God had empowered a person to fulfill a sacred role. The word mashiyach referred to anyone so set apart, and the concept evolved into a longing for a future figure—the Messiah—who would bring justice, renewal, and peace.

When Jewish scriptures were translated into Greek, the term mashiyach became Christos (Χριστός), meaning “anointed one.” Christos, too, is a noun—not an adjective—and was used in the Septuagint to describe the same anointed individuals. In the New Testament, this title became associated with Jesus of Nazareth, believed by his followers to be the anointed one in whom God’s purpose had reached its fullness. Over time, however, Christos shifted from being a title to a name: Jesus Christ. This transition led to the gradual loss of the original significance of “anointed,” replacing it with a personal identification.

But to stop at this linguistic shift is to miss the deeper mystery. In the Gospel of John, we are introduced not simply to Jesus, but to the Logos—the Word, the divine Reason or Wisdom through whom all things were made. “In the beginning was the Logos,” John writes, “and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God… and the Logos became flesh.” This was not merely a theological formulation; it was a metaphysical insight. The Logos is the divine pattern or blueprint, the animating intelligence behind all reality. Jesus, then, is not merely a man who was anointed, but the embodiment of the Logos itself, anointed by the Spirit in time and space.

It is in this light that Christ becomes more than Jesus—it becomes the anointed Logos, the principle of divine intelligence present in all things. And John makes this universal dimension explicit when he says in his prologue: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every person coming into the world.” This means that the Logos—the Christ—illumines everyone. Not just believers. Not just Jews or Christians. Everyone. The light of Christ is woven into the very structure of being, of consciousness.

This theme continues when Jesus says, “I in them and you in me,” and prays “that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” This mystical union is not metaphor but metaphysical truth: the same divine presence that empowered Jesus is present in all, waiting to be awakened. In his first epistle, John deepens this thought, saying, “As he is, so are we in this world.” Not will be, not could be, but are. The Christ principle is not only present in Jesus—it is reflected in every human being. It is the divine template within each of us.

Paul echoes this universal message in his letters. He speaks of the “mystery hidden from ages and generations, but now revealed: Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Christ in you—not merely beside you or above you, but within you. He also declares, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation,” suggesting that awakening to this inner anointing is not merely a religious experience but a metaphysical transformation of being. The old self, bound by separation and fear, falls away; the new self, rooted in divine unity, emerges.

These insights lay the foundation for what many now call Christ Consciousness—an awakened state of awareness in which one recognizes the divine indwelling presence and lives in alignment with it. From a philosophical standpoint, this is not only consistent with Christian mystical tradition but is also logically coherent. If the Logos is the source of all creation, and if Christ is the embodied Logos, then Christ Consciousness is the human realization of that divine pattern. It is what happens when the individual ego yields to the divine mind, when we see with the eyes of the Logos.

Moreover, if the Logos is universal, then Christ is not limited to a first-century Galilean rabbi. Jesus uniquely manifested this consciousness, but the consciousness itself transcends time and person. This is the Cosmic Christ—the Christ who was in the beginning with God, who is in all and through all, and who continues to be born in awakened hearts.

Far from being a distortion, Christ Consciousness and the idea of a Cosmic Christ are logical developments of the biblical witness. They fulfill the vision of John and Paul, who both saw the Christ not as a tribal savior or denominational figure, but as the universal presence of God within creation, now made visible in Jesus and awakening in us. The term Christ, then, should not confuse us. When rightly understood, it points not only to Jesus but to the divine essence he revealed—an essence that is also in us, as light, as wisdom, and as love.

 

Leaving the Dance with the One I Came With

 

I’ve come to believe that our life path isn’t some random accident—it’s something we chose. Not just individually, but as part of a soul committee before we ever arrived on this planet. Each life has a purpose, and that too was chosen in advance. We picked our birth time, where we’d be born, the name we’d carry, the family we’d grow up in, and even the belief system we’d be steeped in. All of it carried a built-in lesson and a goal we were meant to reach. So yes, I’m someone who believes there are no accidents.

For me, that meant choosing to be born in rural Michigan in the late 1940s, into a family with a devoutly fundamentalist Baptist mother and a father who quietly supported her faith but rarely went to church. I, on the other hand, was there constantly. If the doors were open, I was inside them. From early on, I had a deep belief that Jesus was real, and I was thoroughly immersed in the doctrines of evangelical fundamentalism. My pastor leaned toward “once saved, always saved,” and that belief was etched into my spiritual framework.

But as I entered adolescence and early adulthood, the world grew bigger. Education expanded my horizons, and the teachings I had absorbed began to unravel in light of science and a broader understanding of humanity. I struggled to believe that people were doomed to hell just for believing differently. It broke my heart to think that kind, loving people—especially Catholics, whom I was told were “lost”—were supposedly beyond salvation. At the time, I didn’t even know other world religions existed. That’s how narrow my upbringing was.

Eventually, I walked away from it all. I threw out Christianity, the whole thing—baby and bathwater. College opened my mind. Quantum theory fascinated me, especially books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. I devoured Carlos Castaneda’s works and met people exploring metaphysics, clairvoyance, automatic writing. I experienced enough to become convinced that a spiritual realm transcended the material world. Mysticism became my compass, even though I didn’t yet have that word for it. And in the process, I discarded Jesus as part of a system I thought I had outgrown. I was “spiritual but not religious” before that was even a cultural thing.

During those years, I embraced numerology, conducted readings in Phoenix, and attended meditation groups. We’d do visual walks and sink deep into inner consciousness. I’d always been intuitive, empathic—I could read people and feel what they carried. That sensitivity only sharpened. I didn’t know it then, but I was moving toward what the Gospel of Truth calls a “waking from forgetfulness.” I was beginning to remember.

Then came the 1990s. Everything fell apart. Life unraveled, stress piled up, and I found myself praying again—really praying—on the back porch in Hayward, California. That night became my “Back Porch Prayer,” and it marked the beginning of my return to Jesus.

But the Jesus I was coming back to wasn’t the one from my childhood church. It took decades to untangle the voices of guilt, fear, and judgment. But gradually, new glasses were placed over my spiritual eyes. I started to realize that what we’ve called “orthodoxy” is often a distortion. Evangelicalism had taught me to view the Bible as a set of rules to avoid punishment. But what I began to see was something else: Jesus came not to found a religion, but to awaken us from our forgetfulness of who we truly are.

That’s the message of The Gospel of Truth—that forgetfulness is the root of all error, and Jesus came to bring remembrance. The Valentinian vision of the Christ story is not about appeasing a wrathful deity but about awakening to our divine origin. In that light, I began to understand Paul differently too. The emphasis on justification by faith wasn’t meant to create a legalistic system—it was an answer to a specific cultural and spiritual crisis of the first-century world, where sin-consciousness and guilt dominated. Paul’s deeper mystical message—Christ in you, the hope of glory—resonated far more powerfully.

Eventually, I began receiving impressions from Jesus. Not voices, but streams of inner knowing, especially when I typed in a meditative state. Sometimes it felt like automatic writing. Always peaceful, always loving. His voice reminded me not to fret—just like Psalm 37 says—and he revealed how divine love subtly influences outcomes, especially within systems, without ever violating anyone’s freedom.

So what’s the point of this story? It’s this: we’re here to remember. To work through our life circumstances, not as punishment, but as part of awakening. Our spiritual and mystical growth is as vital as our intellectual or physical development. And for me, Jesus became central again—not the dogmatic Jesus of fear and wrath, but the Logos, the divine consciousness, who reveals the truth that has always been true: we are eternal.

Jesus didn’t come to start a religion. He came to show us that death is a lie, that fear is a veil, and that our origin is divine. He entered a world trapped in false ideas about a violent God and turned it upside down, revealing the loving Father—the true source who sees no separation, no condemnation.

The New Covenant isn’t about earning love. It’s about living from it. Paul, in his best moments, knew this. John the Beloved did too. They saw Jesus not as an exception to humanity, but as the revelation of what is true of all of us. We are not broken wretches to be justified—we are divine children to be awakened.

The old orthodoxy is fading. A more inclusive consciousness is dawning. You don’t have to be Christian to see it, but understanding the Jesus story certainly helps. I’ve found as much light in the Tao Te Ching as in the Gospel of John, and both have pointed me toward the same mystery: the divine within.

So where does that leave me?

Still dancing—with the One I came with.

Shout it from the rooftops Unveiling the Silenced Truth of Early Christianity

There’s something liberating about reading those words from Jesus in Matthew 10:26–27. “So have no fear of them,” he says—not a suggestion but a command. And then he offers this strange assurance: “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.” That statement has haunted me in the best way. For me, it’s not just about personal transparency or being honest in a general sense. It’s a cosmic promise. It’s a spiritual unveiling. It’s Jesus looking straight through the centuries and whispering to us that the darkness draped over history, especially over what became of his message, will not last. It’s temporary. And the light will break in. It always does.

When I read, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops,” I don’t think of it as a call to shout modern evangelical slogans. I hear it as a revolutionary instruction. The kind that unsettles empires. It’s a call to remember and recover. To pull back the veil on the machinery of religious control and name what has long been silenced.

What became orthodoxy—what we call Christianity today—didn’t descend pristine from heaven. It wasn’t handed down untouched through the generations like a sacred relic. It was forged, argued over, stamped out, and finally enforced with blood and fire. I’m convinced that if Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee with a message of awakening, love, and divine union, that message was hijacked. Maybe not all at once. But beginning somewhere around the middle of the second century, a narrowing began. The streams of belief, once so diverse and free-flowing, were redirected. And many were damned as heretical—simply for not echoing the voice of the rising institution.

I think often about the burning of books. Not metaphorically—literally. The words and insights of countless thinkers, mystics, philosophers, and seekers turned to ash because they threatened a theological monopoly. The Church didn’t merely disagree with people like Valentinus, Basilides, or Marcion. It anathematized them. It labeled them enemies of truth, while crafting a version of truth that had more to do with uniformity than illumination. Heretics weren’t just mistaken; they were hunted. Banished. Killed. The term “heretic” became a curse, a death sentence. And the irony of it all is that the early so-called “orthodox” fathers themselves couldn’t agree on everything. Their letters, arguments, and councils reveal a web of disagreement and disunity. And yet, a final voice was chosen—an approved reading of Jesus—and dissent was declared demonic.

The tragedy that still echoes through time is the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. It's hard to comprehend the magnitude of knowledge, insight, and history that was lost in those flames. That library was a symbol of human curiosity and divine wonder. Its burning wasn’t just an act of war or carelessness—it was part of a larger trend. A purge. A dismantling of ancient wisdom in favor of controlled narratives. A kind of sacred censorship that dared not allow people to think beyond the prescribed limits. We’re not just talking about different doctrines here—we’re talking about different ways of perceiving reality, of encountering the Divine, of understanding who we are. And so much of that was erased. Or at least, they tried.

But history has a strange way of resurrecting what we try to bury.

When the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945, and the Dead Sea Scrolls just a couple of years later, it was as though the desert itself was crying out. These texts, sealed away for centuries, became like voices shouting from the housetops. The secrets hidden away by the sands were now spilling into the public square. And what did they reveal? Not scandal, as the gatekeepers feared—but depth. Layers of thought. Rich theology. A Christianity that was not singular but plural. Diverse. Deeply mystical. Some of it poetic and philosophical, some of it raw and bold. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, isn’t interested in dogma—it’s interested in awakening. “The kingdom is within you and all around you,” it says. That’s not a creed. That’s a call to remember who we are.

The discovery of those texts wasn’t just archaeological—it was spiritual. For me, it confirmed what I had long suspected: that much had been hidden, suppressed, and forgotten—not by accident, but by design. The early Christian movement wasn’t monolithic. It was bursting with spiritual experimentation, with different interpretations of Jesus, with wildly different views of sin, salvation, and the soul. And many of those views were deliberately erased to make room for one imperial religion. When Constantine aligned the church with the empire, the cross was transformed. No longer a symbol of death-defying love, it became a sword. It became a throne. The religion of the persecuted became the religion of the powerful, and history was rewritten by those who won.

Still, I don’t think truth can stay buried forever.

That’s why I resonate so deeply with those words from Matthew. They remind me that revelation is often inconvenient. It doesn’t ask permission. It crashes through our theological comfort zones and dares us to see things as they are. And Jesus wasn’t afraid of that. He wasn’t in love with institutions. He didn’t seek out creeds. He called people into light—real light. The kind that exposes and heals, that dismantles and rebuilds.

I believe the gnostics weren’t evil mystics as we’ve been told. They were seekers. Explorers of the inner life. They saw salvation not as a legal transaction but as an awakening from forgetfulness. They believed in a divine spark within, buried beneath layers of ignorance and illusion. And yes, that terrified the orthodox leaders. Because if people found God within, they might no longer need priests or popes. If awakening was the goal, not obedience, then control would slip through their fingers. So they called it heresy. And they buried it. Or at least, they tried.

But the whisper still rises. From the caves of Qumran. From the jars in Nag Hammadi. From the pages of Thomas, Philip, Mary. Even from the margins of canonical scripture, if we’re willing to look again with new eyes. It all seems to echo that original call: “Do not be afraid.” Speak the truth. Tell what’s been hidden. Let the secret be shouted from the rooftops.

For me, this isn’t just about history—it’s about spiritual recovery. It’s about honoring the voices that were silenced, the truths that were buried, and the dreams of a Christianity that could have been—and still can be. Jesus didn’t come to start an institution. He came to awaken sons and daughters of the Divine. He came to liberate—not to dominate. To remind us who we are. And I believe that reminder is breaking through again. This time not through councils or crusades, but through rediscovered texts, through open minds, and through hearts that are done with fear.

The real gospel—the good news—isn’t about who’s in and who’s out. It’s about the unveiling. The light. And the courageous ones who dare to proclaim it. From the rooftops. Just like he said.

 

The Logos the Light and the Lost Wisdom of Hermes

Let me walk you through something I’ve been reflecting on—a convergence of ancient wisdom, early Christian mysticism, and today’s rediscovery that consciousness might be the very foundation of reality. It’s a thread that stretches from the pyramids of Egypt to the Gospel of John, through the minds of ancient philosophers and modern physicists.

You may have heard of the Hermetica, also known as the Corpus Hermeticum. These are a collection of writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus—a legendary figure said to be a synthesis of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes. The lore says that these teachings were carried into the Greek world by none other than Pythagoras, who traveled through Egypt and Sumer to study the ancient mysteries. What he found there would later seed the philosophical systems of Plato and, indirectly, much of Christian mysticism.

At the heart of the Hermetic teachings lies the concept of the Logos—not just as an abstract ordering principle, but as the very consciousness behind creation itself. In the Hermetic worldview, the Logos and consciousness are one and the same. Everything that exists is the unfolding of divine mind, spoken into form through the Word.

Now, this may sound a lot like the beginning of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That’s not coincidence. These ideas were part of the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of the ancient Mediterranean world, and they didn’t belong to just one tradition.

But somewhere along the way, the origins of these teachings were called into question.

In the 17th century, a philosopher named Isaac Casaubon argued that the Hermetica wasn’t ancient at all. He claimed it was a product of the early Christian era—maybe the 2nd or 3rd century CE—written by Neoplatonists rather than ancient Egyptians. Casaubon’s view carried weight, especially since he was advising King James of England, who had little patience for the more esoteric ideas that had flourished under Queen Elizabeth’s rule.

The damage was done. Hermetic teachings were labeled as fringe, even fraudulent.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Modern scholars like Tim Freke and Peter Gandy have argued that Casaubon got it wrong. When the Rosetta Stone was discovered and Egyptian hieroglyphs were finally translated, it turned out that ideas closely aligned with Hermetic thought were ancient. In fact, inscriptions found in the Pyramid of Saqqara—dating as far back as 3,000 BCE—echoed the same themes and language as the Hermetica. These weren’t late inventions; they were echoes from a deep past.

And then came 1945.

That year, in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, a farmer unearthed a sealed jar containing a library of Gnostic Christian texts. Among them was a document titled The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth—and it was unmistakably Hermetic. Here was proof that early Coptic Christians, particularly Gnostic communities from the third and fourth centuries, were reading and valuing Hermetic wisdom. These weren’t marginal texts. They were part of the early Christian landscape.

The translators of this document—James Brashler, Peter Dirkse, and Douglas Parrott—describe it as “a previously unknown and crucially important Hermetic document.” It appears to be a ritual of initiation into visionary consciousness, complete with vowel-based mantras like IAO, meant to be chanted and intoned, just like sacred names.

And within the text itself, the spiritual intimacy is striking. The disciple says to Hermes:

“I understand Mind, Hermes, who cannot be interpreted, because he keeps within himself… And the universe rejoices. There is no creature that will lack your life… Trismegistus, let not my soul be deprived of the great divine vision.”

This isn’t just metaphysics—it’s mystical union.

Even more revealing is the account of Hermes’ own initiation, found in The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs by Freke and Gandy:

“Suddenly everything changed before me. Reality was opened out in a moment. I saw the boundless view. All became dissolved in Light—united within one joyous Love… And I heard an unspeakable lament… The Light then uttered a Word, which calmed the chaotic waters…”

The vision goes on to describe a trinitarian process—Mind (the Father), Word (the Son), and the creative harmony between them—long before church councils ever formalized such doctrine. The Logos emerges from the Light, brings order to chaos, and then returns to unite with Mind. Creation, it turns out, is not a one-time act, but a continual unfolding of divine consciousness.

As Hermes' guide explains:

“I am that Light—the Mind of God, which exists before the chaotic dark waters of potentiality. My calming Word is the Son of God—the idea of beautiful order… Just as, in your own experience, your human mind gives birth to speech, so too does divine Mind give birth to the Logos.”

This isn’t doctrine. It’s poetry. It’s a visionary framework describing reality not as mechanical, but as conscious, alive, and intimate.

Now, bring that forward into today’s world, and what do you see?

Modern science is starting to catch up. Physics is beginning to suggest that matter may not be fundamental—that behind particles and waves lies something deeper. Some call it a quantum field. Others call it information. And still others, like certain physicists and philosophers of mind, are starting to say the quiet part out loud: Consciousness might be the foundation of everything.

And if that’s true, the Hermetica wasn’t fantasy. It was foresight.

These texts teach us that what is seen comes from what is not seen. That the Word of creation is not a voice booming from the clouds, but the quiet utterance of divine intelligence forming reality itself. The Logos isn’t just a theological term—it’s a description of how consciousness shapes form, how divine Mind becomes the world we live in.

And that changes everything.

We are not strangers in a cold, dead universe. We are expressions of it. Sparks of that same Light. As John wrote, the Logos is the true Light that enlightens everyone coming into the world—not just one person in one time, but all.

The Hermetica reminds us that we’ve always known this, somewhere deep down. The Logos, the Light, the Word—it lives in us. Jesus came to show us that. So did Hermes, in his own way. And now it’s up to us to awaken to that same vision.

To remember what we’ve forgotten.

If this resonates with you, feel free to share, reflect, or ask questions below. The Light we remember together shines brighter for all.

 

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.