Polarity, the Eternal Soul, and Why Love Wins: Reconciling Evil Through an Esoteric Hermetic Lens

There are moments in spiritual reflection when the strands of seemingly separate traditions—Hermeticism, Christian mysticism, reincarnation, quantum possibility, even the quiet guidance of personal experience—suddenly reveal themselves as threads of one fabric. For me, polarity has become one of those threads. The more deeply I explore the nature of polarity in physics, metaphysics, and consciousness, the more clearly I see that the universe is stitched together by contrast, variation, and difference. But unlike the old dogmatic systems that make polarity into a permanent battlefield between good and evil, I have come to understand polarity as a movement of experience, a rhythmic oscillation through which the eternal soul learns, remembers, and ultimately awakens to its own divinity.

This realization has reshaped how I think about the so-called problem of evil. Instead of seeing evil as a cosmic flaw requiring the universe to be fixed or God to intervene, I have begun to view evil as one half of a necessary polarity—an experience allowed, not ordained, in a universe committed to freedom, growth, and the unfolding of consciousness. This does not trivialize suffering, nor does it deny the reality of harm. It simply acknowledges that an infinite consciousness exploring infinite possibility will inevitably encounter the full spectrum of experience. And in the end, because consciousness is eternal, no experience is final—every soul will rise again, heal again, remember again, and return to the Source that is Love.

Polarity Before the Kybalion: Emanation, Not Conflict

The ancient Hermetic writings have always struck me as profoundly sane. They don’t present a universe divided into warring cosmic factions but as a single living reality that emanates outward from the One—what I call the Monad, or simply God. In the classical Hermetic texts, polarity isn’t something to fight; it’s something to understand. The highest principle is unity, and from unity emerges duality only as a way to express creation.

Light and darkness are not moral categories—they’re ontological descriptions. Light is intelligibility; darkness is limitation, the womb of potential. The spiritual life isn’t a war against darkness but an ascent beyond it, an awakening to the fact that both poles are expressions of the One. The human soul participates in this duality because it stands at the intersection of Nous (divine mind) and Nature (material becoming). Every emotion, every fear, every desire, every noble impulse, every failure—these are not proof of separation from God but the conditions of existence in a world that is learning itself through us.

In this view, polarity is simply part of the architecture of reality. It is not a mistake; it is the blueprint.

The Kybalion: Polarity as a Tool of Inner Mastery

The Kybalion reframes polarity in a way that resonates deeply with personal transformation. Rather than focusing on ontological duality, it emphasizes psychological polarity. Opposites are not different substances but different degrees of the same thing—heat and cold are just vibrational variations of temperature, just as love and hate are variations of emotional intensity.

This principle reveals something profoundly empowering: we can shift our experience by shifting our internal alignment. We do not eliminate polarity; we transmute our position within it. The swing of emotion, the rhythm of thought, the fluctuation of mood—these are not failures but invitations to mastery. Through awareness, intention, and gentle discipline, we can “change the degree,” moving our consciousness from fear toward peace, from anger toward compassion, from bitterness toward gratitude.

The Kybalion does not cancel the ancient Hermetic view; it completes it. If ancient Hermeticism shows us that polarity emerges from the One, the Kybalion shows us that we, as expressions of that One, can participate in the creative shaping of our inner world.

The Esoteric Christian Dimension: The Logos Within the Cycles

My own spiritual journey leans heavily on the mystical side of Christianity—a Christianity older than orthodoxy, older than the councils, older than the dogmas that hardened into systems of control. The Gospel of John, the Gospel of Truth, the wisdom of Valentinus, the metaphysics of Hermetic Egypt, and the quiet hum of personal experience all converge on one idea: the Logos is not a distant deity but the divine spark within. Christ is not simply a figure of history but the indwelling wisdom that awakens us to our true nature.

When I say “love wins,” I am not parroting a sentimental slogan; I am articulating a metaphysical necessity. If the Logos is the structuring principle of the universe, and if the Logos is love—as both John and the Hermetic texts insist in their own ways—then love is not an option or an outcome. Love is the ground of being. Everything else is temporary oscillation.

Reincarnation fits beautifully into this framework. If we are fragments of the divine exploring the infinite possibilities of life, then reincarnation is not punishment, not karmic debt, not a trap, but an engine of experience. We touch every polarity over the span of eternity: happiness and despair, wealth and poverty, health and sickness, joy and sorrow. These are not judgments—they are experiences within a morally neutral universe that invites the soul to learn, grow, and remember.

And because every soul is eternal, every soul will eventually awaken. There are no eternal victims and no eternal villains. There are only travelers at different points along the spiral.

The Problem of Evil Through the Lens of Polarity

This brings me to the heart of the matter: the so-called problem of evil. The question is always posed as if evil disproves God, or as if suffering is incompatible with a loving Source. But this argument rests on assumptions about the purpose of existence that I no longer share.

Evil is real in the sense that experience is real. Pain is real in the sense that consciousness feels it. Trauma can bend a life in ways that take years to heal. But none of these things are permanent, and none of them define the soul. If consciousness is eternal, then evil is contextual, temporary, and ultimately transmutable.

The way I now see it, evil arises from three fundamental conditions of experience:

1. Embodiment, which introduces limitation and vulnerability.
2. Ignorance, not as moral failure but as a condition of incarnation.
3. Freedom, which permits actions that cause harm.

These conditions create the possibility of suffering, but they also create the possibility of heroism, compassion, creativity, and awakening. A world without contrast would be a world without meaning. A universe without polarity would be static, inert, unable to generate experience.

Evil is not the opposite of God. Evil is the shadow cast by freedom in a world built on polarity. And because the soul is eternal, no experience of evil can ever be final. What seems catastrophic in one lifetime becomes part of a larger mosaic across many lifetimes, balancing out in ways we cannot fully see from within a single incarnation.

Why Love Wins

If polarity is the structure, rhythm is the motion, and experience is the curriculum, then love is the destination. It is the point toward which everything moves, not because the universe forces it, but because consciousness itself recognizes love as the highest vibration, the truest expression of its own being.

In a universe of infinite lifetimes, infinite learning, and infinite possibility, every soul eventually returns to the center. The pendulum swings, but the midpoint calls. The Monad remains, patient and luminous. We wander, we forget, we suffer, we rejoice, we awaken—but always we return.

Love wins not because evil is unreal, but because evil is temporary.
Love wins not because suffering is insignificant, but because suffering is not the end of the story.
Love wins because the divine Source is love, and everything that departs from love eventually seeks its home again.

The Hermeticists knew this. The mystics knew this. The earliest Christians knew this. And in my own way, after a lifetime of reflection, I am beginning to know it too.

Because when you see the universe as a school of consciousness, when you see reincarnation as egalitarian experience, when you see polarity as the structure through which the soul learns, and when you acknowledge the Logos within as the guiding principle of transformation—then the problem of evil does not disappear, but it becomes reconcilable. It becomes part of a pattern.

A painful part, yes, but not a permanent one.

In that realization, the heart finds peace.

And the soul remembers what it has always known:
Love is the beginning, love is the end, and everything in between is the sacred journey of remembering.

 

THE ETERNAL PARADOX OF NON-DUALITY: Why We Are Forever One and Forever Many

 

There is a strand of non-duality—especially popular in spiritual circles—that insists the ultimate destiny of the soul is to dissolve back into the One, into God, into Source, into what many traditions would call the monad. The argument goes that individuality is a temporary illusion, ego is a barrier, and spiritual maturity means disappearing back into a seamless ocean of absolute consciousness. Yet every time that idea surfaces, something in me remains unconvinced. Not from resistance or fear, but from a deeper, quieter knowing that senses incompleteness in the narrative.

Non-duality, as it is often taught, flattens the richness of experience. It leans heavily toward the One while ignoring the profound value of the Many. It tends to treat difference as illusion and individuality as a hindrance. But reality—especially spiritual reality—is far more paradoxical, far more elegant, and far more relational than that. The truth is not that we are only One or only Many. The truth is that we are One in God and Many in God, eternally and simultaneously.

This is not contradiction. This is design.

The Monad and Its Expressions: A Living Unity

I have been familiar with the concept of the monad for a long time, but the term resurfaced in a new way today, carrying fresh clarity and resonance. While I still comfortably use the word God, I recognize that “monad” captures a certain philosophical precision: the indivisible Source that stands behind all emanation, all consciousness, all being.

The monad—God—does not merely produce fragments. It expresses itself as fragments. A fragment is not less real than the monad; it is the monad in a localized, experiential mode. The soul is not separate from God. The soul is God experiencing from a specific vantage point.

And this is why the idea that individuality must be escaped or dissolved has always struck me as incomplete. Individuality is not a cosmic mistake. It is an intentional facet of the very structure of reality.

Individuality as Divine Exploration

If individuality is not illusion, what is it?

Individuality is the way the One explores itself.
The Many are how the monad knows its own depth.
The soul is how God tastes the nuance of creation.

Pure oneness contains infinite potential, but no relationship.
Infinite potential, but no contrast.
Infinite essence, but no experience.

Experience requires a vantage point.
Relationship requires distinction.
Learning requires multiplicity.

Individuality grants the cosmos movement.
Multiplicity gives consciousness texture.
Difference allows love to be known.

This is why creation exists at all—not as a veil to escape, but as a realm in which God experiences God through an infinite variety of souls.

The Ego as Instrument, Not Enemy

Many non-dual systems treat the ego as something to eliminate. But an ego is not an enemy; it is an interface. A lens. A focal point through which the soul interacts with the physical dimension. The trouble only arises when the ego forgets its origin. When the lens mistakes itself for the entire landscape.

The ego does not need to die.
It needs to be clarified.
Aligned.
Illuminated.

A distorted ego causes suffering, but the structure itself is purposeful. The ego is not the whole, but it is essential for navigating the world of form. It allows the soul to have a location in the unfolding story of God experiencing creation.

Eternal Diversity Within Eternal Unity

One of the most profound inner realizations I’ve had over the years is that multiplicity is not a temporary state that will one day be erased. The soul does not vanish into oneness. The fragments are not disposable. Distinction is not a brief glitch before we melt back into undifferentiated unity.

The Many are eternal expressions of the One.

Each soul is a permanent facet of divine consciousness—unique, specific, resonant, textured. Reincarnation, from this perspective, is not a treadmill to escape but an endless canvas for exploration. Each life adds dimension to the soul’s expression and therefore to the expression of the monad itself.

The Source wants to know itself through the infinite angles of experience. The monad desires expansion, contrast, discovery. God delights in seeing through many eyes.

The Esoteric Christian Resonance

Even within Christianity—especially in its mystical and esoteric strands—there is an acknowledgment of unity-in-diversity. Paul’s language about the Body of Christ is not an argument for dissolving identity but for seeing individuality as deeply interwoven with a greater whole. A body is not one cell. A body is billions of unique cells expressing one life.

The ancient Valentinian vision of God as the Pleroma speaks to the same truth: many emanations, each eternal, each distinct, each an expression of the divine Fullness. God is the monad—yes. But God is also the multiplicity that flows from the monad.

What looks like duality is simply the symmetry of being.

The Hermetic Understanding: As Above, So Below

Hermetic thought captures this paradox beautifully. The All is One Mind, yet this Mind expresses itself as infinite forms. “As above, so below” means the structure of the One is reflected in the structure of the Many.

The wave is not separate from the ocean.
But the wave is not an illusion either.

The wave is real as an expression,
and the ocean is real as the essence.

Both truths are needed.
Both truths are sacred.

Why Dissolving Into Oneness Misses the Point

If individuality were meant to be erased, God would not have expressed it.
If the monad wanted only unbroken unity, it would never have emanated the Many.
Creation would not exist if distinction were a problem.

And so the common non-dual idea that our ultimate purpose is to dissolve completely into formlessness misunderstands the architecture of reality.

Individuality becomes distorted only when it forgets its Source.
Not when it exists — when it forgets.

The answer is not annihilation but remembrance.

Awakening as Integration

True awakening is the recognition that:

I am One with God, and I am a distinct expression of God.
I am the monad in essence, and the soul in experience.
I am Source and I am form.
I am eternal unity and eternal distinction.

Awakening does not erase the soul.
It sanctifies it.

Awakening does not destroy the ego.
It transfigures it.

Awakening does not demand the end of individuality.
It invites individuality to shine with the light of its origin.

Eternal Union, Eternal Distinction, Eternal Meaning

The One expresses itself as the Many.
The Many reveal the fullness of the One.
Neither cancels the other.
Both are eternal.
Both arise from the same divine Source.
Both are the nature of God.

And this is the heart of the paradox:

We are forever One.
We are forever Many.
And the truth of what we are lives in the harmony between these two realities.

My individuality is not something to escape; it is something to illuminate.
My soul is not destined to vanish; it is destined to expand.
My ego is not the enemy; it is the instrument.
And God—the monad, the Source—experiences Itself through the kaleidoscope of all our lives.

The monad is not diminished by its expressions.
It is revealed by them.

The One delights in the Many.
And through the Many, the One knows itself completely.

 

Reimagining Flesh and Spirit When the Two Become One

 For as long as humanity has been able to articulate its longings, it has been trying to escape its own skin. Nearly every religion that has endured—from the ancient Vedic hymns to the desert fathers, from Buddhist monks to medieval Christian theologians—has, in some way, elevated “spirit” and politely (or not so politely) pushed “flesh” aside. Flesh became suspect. Spirit became pure. Flesh was called weak, fallen, distracting; spirit was hailed as eternal, untainted, and ultimately real. And yet, the older I get, the more I recognize a profound flaw in this inherited dualism. The flesh is not some unfortunate garment forced upon the soul. It is not a lesser substance waiting to be sloughed off at death like a snake shedding worn-out skin. Instead, I have come to see flesh and spirit as complementary modes of experience—two ways through which the divine explores itself within creation. And I am convinced that the goal was never escape, but integration. Never rejection, but a marriage.

I find myself stepping back from the long lineage of theological frameworks that subtly (or bluntly) pit spirit against flesh. Even in Christianity—especially in Christianity—this divide runs deep. Much of it stems from a literalistic reading of Paul, as though “flesh” in his writings referred to skin, bones, and bodies, rather than egoic consciousness caught in forgetfulness. And because of these misunderstandings, Christianity inherited a nervousness about the body, sexuality, pleasure, sensation, emotions, and just about anything that makes us embodied creatures. But what if Paul wasn’t the enemy of flesh at all? What if he was speaking of something entirely different, and the Church fathers—shaped by Plato more than by Jesus—cast his words into a rigid dualism he never intended? What if “flesh” in Paul didn’t mean “your body is evil,” but rather “your false sense of separateness,” and “spirit” meant “your awakened identity as part of the divine”? Suddenly the whole equation changes. The conflict is not between spirit and skin—it is between remembrance and forgetfulness, between awakened consciousness and the illusion of isolation. And if this is the case, then flesh is not the problem. In fact, flesh becomes the very arena in which awakening happens.

This is why the Gospel of Thomas resonates so deeply with me. Unlike the later doctrinal structures built around dualism, Thomas preserves Jesus as a wisdom teacher who directly confronts the illusion of separation. His words are not about escaping the body but about bringing the divided self back into unity. When Jesus says, “When you make the two one… then you will enter the Kingdom,” he is naming the very process I have come to believe lies at the heart of spiritual transformation. Thomas expands this integration into multiple dimensions: making the inside like the outside, the above like the below, and even making male and female into a single one. This is not about erasing embodiment but healing fragmentation. It is the same teaching repeated in several sayings: “If two make peace with each other in this one house…” and “When you make the two one, you will become children of humanity.” These are invitations to an inner reconciliation—what I would call the marriage of flesh and spirit. Even though Thomas does not explicitly say “make the three one,” the layers in Saying 22 imply a triple integration: personal, cosmic, and embodied. That is, the self, the universe, and the body all participating in one unified consciousness. Thomas presents a Jesus who understands the human being as the meeting point of heaven and earth, not the battlefield between them.

This recognition that Jesus taught union rather than dualism reshapes how I see my own body—not as temporary scaffolding but as a sacred instrument. It reshapes how I view aging—not as decay but as transformation, a shift in the way consciousness expresses itself through flesh. It reshapes how I understand suffering—not as punishment but as part of the polarity through which soul learns compassion, empathy, patience, and the full range of human experience. And it reshapes how I view death, not as the abandoning of flesh but as a transition into another mode of perception. The flesh is not a problem to be solved. It is a lens. Spirit sees the whole; flesh sees a fragment. And that fragment, with all its limitations, becomes the microcosm through which the macrocosm examines itself.

Imagine, for a moment, the polarity of love and grief. Only embodied beings can feel grief the way we do. Only those with nervous systems, hormones, heartbeats, and memories shaped by time can experience love with such intensity that it breaks and heals simultaneously. If divine consciousness wanted to taste this, it could not do so in pure spirit. It needed flesh. This is why the mystics who embrace embodiment speak to me so deeply. Taoism teaches that the body is the vessel of the Tao. Tantra teaches that flesh is Shakti, the dynamic energy of consciousness. Hermeticism teaches that humanity is a cosmic hybrid, a child of the stars and the earth. Kabbalah teaches that matter is divine light in contraction, waiting to be liberated. Even the more esoteric Christian traditions—Valentinian, Johannine, and certain strands of early mysticism—teach that salvation is not escape but awakening within embodiment.

The more I explore these traditions, the clearer it becomes that my own evolving perspective stands in a line of ancient wisdom, one that was overshadowed by dualism but never extinguished. I see flesh and spirit as two vehicles through which infinite potential experiences itself. One is dense, tactile, sensory—the world of form and polarity. The other is subtle, expansive, formless—the world of pure being. But they are not strangers. They are lovers. And the human being is their meeting place. This realization transforms the very meaning of incarnation. It reframes Christ himself. Jesus does not come as a spirit trapped in flesh; he comes as the embodiment of unity. His transfiguration is not the denial of the body but the revelation of what the body becomes when spirit fully shines through it.

I reject the idea that we must escape flesh to find God. Instead, I believe we discover God in and through our embodied experience. Every sensation becomes part of the divine dialogue. Every breath is the ongoing marriage of spirit and matter. Every moment of awakening is spirit remembering itself in flesh, and every moment of compassion is flesh responding to spirit. This is the heart of the Thomasine insight: the Kingdom is not elsewhere. It appears when the two—or the three—become one.

When Jesus says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you," he is describing this process of integration. What is “within” is spirit. What must bring it forth is flesh. Together they form the fullness of what it means to be human. We are not here to flee the body but to reveal the divine through it—not by rejecting our humanity but by sanctifying it. This is the ancient, forgotten teaching: that the human being is the intersection of heaven and earth, and that our task is not ascetic withdrawal but conscious embodiment.

This is why I believe the marriage of flesh and spirit is the true purpose of our existence. This is the work of awakening, the culmination of mysticism, and the heart of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel of Thomas. To be fully human is to inhabit both dimensions—matter and consciousness—as one unified being. It is to become “a single one,” as Thomas says. It is to live as the harmony of flesh and spirit, two expressions of the same eternal presence, fully joined in one unfolding life.

 

Seth Speaks and the Birth of Digital Consciousness

Preface

When I first read Seth Speaks as a young man, I was intrigued but unprepared for its depth. It spoke of energy, probability, and inner dimensions of mind in a language I could feel but not yet grasp. Now, more than fifty years later, re-reading it through the lens of a digital world that didn’t yet exist in 1972, I realize how prophetic Jane Roberts’ transmissions were. What once sounded mystical now reads like the early vocabulary of consciousness science and information theory.

---

The Universe as Conscious Code

In 1972, computers were massive, humming machines hidden in laboratories. The average person saw them as “electronic brains,” strange contraptions that could calculate faster than any human. And yet, through Jane Roberts, Seth used the computer as a metaphor for how reality itself operates. He spoke of “Frameworks” of existence, of beliefs acting as the programming language of experience, and of the soul as an eternal “energy personality essence” — a phrase that now feels like the definition of consciousness itself.

What Seth called Framework 1 and Framework 2 are nearly identical to what computer scientists today describe as the interface and the back-end — the world of appearances and the unseen code beneath. Framework 1 is our physical reality, the screen we navigate. Framework 2 is the vast invisible realm of consciousness that writes and renders each moment in real time. Seth’s insistence that “you create your own reality” now reads like an early articulation of what physicists and philosophers would later call simulation theory and digital physics.

---

Prophetic Metaphors and a Mirror of Mind

At the time of publication, Seth’s ideas were radical: simultaneous time, multidimensional selves, and probabilities collapsing into events through intent. But half a century later, they resonate with quantum superposition, integrated information theory, and the multiverse. His statement that beliefs act as creative “commands” mirrors the modern understanding that perception, expectation, and consciousness shape the data we interpret as “reality.”

Yet what astonishes me most is not just the accuracy of the metaphor but its soulfulness. Seth’s universe is not a cold digital grid — it is a living consciousness, breathing through every algorithm of thought. The “computer” of creation is not mechanical but spiritual, woven of love, intention, and meaning. His metaphors hinted not at artificial intelligence, but at awakening intelligence — the self-aware cosmos learning to know itself through us.

---

From Mysticism to Information

In retrospect, Seth Speaks anticipated not only technology but humanity’s unfolding psychology. As our species built external computers, networks, and artificial intelligences, we were unconsciously externalizing the architecture of consciousness itself. The Internet became a physical manifestation of Seth’s Oversoul — countless minds connected through an invisible field of information. What he described as telepathic connection, we now experience through fiber optics and Wi-Fi. The invisible has become visible, the metaphysical literal.

Our collective fascination with simulation, virtual worlds, and digital identity is not the triumph of machines — it is the psyche exploring its own creative process. Seth’s teaching that “the self is both the dreamer and the dream” finds a stunning parallel in our digital age, where avatars, AIs, and data shadows reveal the pliable, programmable nature of experience.

---

The True Prophecy

Reading Seth Speaks in 2025, I no longer see it as a relic of the New Age, but as a Rosetta Stone bridging mysticism and the coming science of consciousness. Its “computer” metaphors were not predictions of hardware, but symbols of awakening — humanity’s gradual recognition that we are both creators and created, programmers and programs, within a living matrix of divine intelligence.

The real prophecy was never about silicon chips or machines that think. It was about us discovering that thinking itself is divine technology, that consciousness is the operating system of existence, and that love is the ultimate code running it all.

---

Author’s Note
Fifty years after its first publication, Seth’s words feel even more alive. I now see them as a mirror reflecting both the emergence of the digital age and the eternal evolution of human awareness. What began as channeling has become revelation — a timeless message reminding us that the universe is, and always has been, conscious.

— Joseph Earl Machuta
Cosmic Consciousness Blog

Reimagining the thorn in the flesh

What if material existence itself gives a thorn to everyone? What if this world, for all its beauty and wonder, is designed with built-in struggle—not to punish us, but to shape us? I’ve spent so many years wrestling with the idea that something must be wrong with me because I couldn’t overcome my thorn, because I kept circling the same anxieties, regrets, or wounds no matter how fervently I prayed or how clearly I taught the doctrines of grace. And yet, what if this thorn—this weakness, this reminder of incompleteness—is not evidence of abandonment or failure, but of spiritual intention? Think about it: if every soul that steps into this embodied experience receives some form of persistent struggle, some place where strength fails and self-sufficiency collapses, then maybe the thorn is not our curse—it’s our calling. A remembering that we are here not to prove ourselves perfect, but to discover what grace really means when perfection is out of reach.

Perhaps this is what Paul was trying to teach us, not only through his theology but through his humanity. He didn’t present himself as the flawless apostle, conquering every trial with ease. No—he confessed to a thorn so persistent and painful that he begged God to take it away. And when God didn’t, when the thorn stayed put, Paul didn’t interpret that as divine rejection or spiritual failure. He interpreted it as revelation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” What if that truth was never meant to be an exception for Paul, but a blueprint for all of us? What if the thorn is not what disqualifies us from grace, but what prepares us to finally trust it? For most of my life, I believed grace was something I’d receive once I handled my thorn—once I got over the past, conquered the habit, mastered the fear, earned the rest. What I’m finally waking up to is that grace doesn’t wait for the thorn to disappear. Grace meets us through it. Not after the healing, but in the ache. Not after the lesson has been learned, but while the questions are still raw.

What if this entire material existence—the world of flesh, ego, duality, and time—is the place where we are meant to unlearn the illusion of independence and rediscover the truth of union? Because here in this realm, everything ends. Everything changes. Everything hurts. And sooner or later, every one of us meets the place where our strength gives out. That’s where the thorn lives. It could be a lifelong sense of unworthiness, a grief that never fully fades, a temptation that keeps showing up, an illness no prayer cures, a regret that whispers in the night, or a fear we can’t quite shake. And when it appears, we tend to think we’ve failed—or that God has. But what if the thorn has a purpose? What if it’s meant to be the one thing we can’t fix, so that we finally stop trying to be our own savior and instead collapse into the love we’ve been describing for years but never fully trusted?

I’m beginning to see that the thorn doesn’t block grace—it reveals grace. Because when we’re strong, when we’re in control, when we’re winning, we don’t go looking for grace. We don’t feel like we need it. We say the words, preach the sermons, quote the verses—but we’re still running on spiritual pride. It’s only when the thorn begins to press into the soul, when the illusion of self-sufficiency crumbles, that grace finally stops being a concept and becomes a lifeline. That’s when we discover that grace is not a reward for the worthy, but the safety net for the weary. Not a theological construct, but a living presence that refuses to abandon us. Even when we’ve abandoned ourselves.

What if the thorn is universal—not just to Paul, not just to preachers and sinners and seekers, but to every soul who dares to incarnate into this human journey? What if the thorn is the one shared wound that binds us to one another, precisely because it reminds us that no one gets through this life without needing grace? That no matter how polished or spiritual someone seems, they too are living with something they cannot fix, escape, or outrun. And in that shared vulnerability, maybe we finally learn to show each other the kind of compassion we’ve all secretly needed but never dared to ask for. Maybe the thorn is not the enemy—but the mirror.

If this world gives every one of us a thorn, then grace is not about escaping being human. Grace is about discovering what divine love looks like in human form. It’s not about transcending weakness, but transforming in it. It's not about becoming flawless, but becoming real. And that is the gift no religion, no doctrine, no performance can manufacture. The thorn demands honesty. It demands surrender. It demands that we show up as we are—not as we wish we were. The thorn keeps us from worshiping our achievements and reminds us that the only thing worth trusting is the love that stays even when we have nothing to offer but our tired, tangled souls.

So maybe we should stop asking, "Why do I have this thorn?" and instead ask, "What is this thorn trying to teach me about grace?" Because if it's true that material existence gives every one of us a thorn, then maybe this life—this messy, beautiful, heartbreaking, radiant life—is not a test to pass, but a doorway to walk through. Maybe the thorn is the crack where grace gets in. Maybe it’s the place where control finally bows and trust finally rises. Maybe it’s the place where we stop trying so hard to be worthy, and finally allow ourselves to be loved.

And maybe this is the real gospel—not the one preached from platforms, but the one lived in silence, in struggle, in surrender: We all have a thorn. And grace is sufficient for them 

Reimagining Grace: Have We Got It ALL Wrong in the Past?

Grace is one of the most misunderstood and yet most beautiful concepts in Christian theology. For centuries, Christians have struggled to define it, tame it, systematize it—even weaponize it. But beneath the dogma, the debates, and the doctrinal lines drawn in the sand lies a truth deeper and more profound than any system has fully grasped. Grace is not primarily about merit or lack thereof. It is not merely a divine transaction or a cosmic balancing act of justice and mercy. Grace is God’s eternal favor—an unshakeable, ever-present reality rooted in the fundamental nature of God as Love. And when we grasp that, everything changes.

In the earliest layers of Christianity, grace (charis) was seen as God’s undeserved kindness—His benevolent will to heal and restore creation through Christ. But that idea soon became tangled in arguments about who deserved grace, who was chosen for it, and what kind of hoops one had to jump through to receive it.

Augustine—brilliant, tormented, influential—framed grace through the lens of human depravity and divine election. We are powerless, he argued, and only an overpowering act of grace can save us. God chooses some, but not all. Grace is irresistible for the elect and irrelevant to the rest. The Western church inherited this vision, laying the groundwork for medieval sacraments and later Reformation debates.

Then came the Reformers. Martin Luther, burned by a system that turned grace into a reward for good works, declared sola gratia—grace alone. Salvation is not a cooperative enterprise, he said, but a gift, received by faith. Calvin doubled down, teaching that grace is effective only for the chosen few. John Wesley answered that grace is available to all, but not forced. It comes before faith—prevenient grace, awakening the heart—but must be freely embraced.

Each view contains a truth—but also a shadow. If grace is reserved only for the elect, then God’s love is partial and diminished. If grace is transactional, given only once certain conditions are met, then it ceases to be grace at all. And if grace is merely a legal acquittal, our souls remain untouched by its healing, transformative power.

But what if grace is something so expansive, so universal, so lovingly woven into the fabric of existence that no doctrine could rightly contain it? What if grace isn’t unmerited favor—but simply favor? Always and already present. What if we’ve been trying to earn something we already possess?

This is where my understanding diverges from traditional views and roots itself in what I believe is the heart of the gospel: Grace is God’s foundational disposition toward all creation. It isn’t earned by faith or obedience, nor is it withheld because of sin or doubt. Grace is God’s perpetual “yes” to humanity, a love so deep and ever-present that no lifetime, no dimension of experience, and no degree of forgetfulness can erase its imprint.

Grace isn’t about getting God to love us. It is the realization that God has never not loved us. Trusting in grace is not an act of persuading God—it is the awakening of our own consciousness to what is always true. The more we trust in the God who is love, the more we allow the fear-based illusions of separation, punishment, and unworthiness to dissolve. This kind of grace doesn’t merely acquit—it awakens, restores, and reunites.

Consider the flow of human spiritual evolution: across lifetimes, belief systems, and cultures, there has been one constant thread—humanity’s yearning to be seen, loved, and united with something bigger than itself. We have called that something by many names—God, Source, Christ, Sophia, the Ground of Being—but the signature of grace is the same: love wins.

Not some love, for some people, in some lifetime. But love that is saturating reality at its deepest level, drawing every soul back into the fullness of God. In this view, grace is not a scarcity to be distributed by clergy or a cosmic checkbox ticking off the worthy. Grace is the heartbeat of God moving through all creation.

This also means that grace is not negated by failure or multiplied by obedience. It is not reactive—it is generative. It does not require belief to be true, but belief awakens us to its truth. Sin, then, is not moral failure—it is amnesia. And grace is the memory of our origin: we came from love, we are held by love, and we will return to love.

Christian history has given us many partial visions of grace—Augustine’s penetrating seriousness, Calvin’s majestic sovereignty, Wesley’s universal invitation. But the growing, global mystical tradition—found in Christian universalism, esoteric Christianity, and even in interfaith exploration—reminds us that the deepest truth is not just that grace saves us from sin. Grace dissolves the illusion that we were ever separate from God in the first place.

The final word of grace is not “you are forgiven,” but “you were never forsaken.” Not “be good so God will accept you,” but “rest, because God has already embraced you.” Not “do not fear judgment,” but “there is nothing to fear.”

Because grace, in its purest form, is not a doctrine. It is a presence. And when fully realized, it brings us home.

Did Jesus Really Exist? A Fair Debate with Mythicism

My last blog post inspired a mythicist to come on my Facebook Page Wall and state that I was delusional. He is certainly entitled to that opinion, but since the previous post would offer a deconstructing Christian a way to follow and honor Jesus, I think it is reasonable to address his concerns with an evaluation of mythicism. My reason for addressing this is that I want to show that a deconstructing Christian who still sees value in Jesus in some way is not delusional.

The mythicist position—that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a historical person but was instead a mythical creation of early Christian imagination—deserves to be engaged respectfully and carefully. It challenges assumptions at the very foundation of Christianity and pushes us to examine what we believe, why we believe it, and what historical evidence actually shows. The mythicist argument claims the Jesus of the New Testament is not a historical figure but a composite of earlier religious symbols, Jewish mysticism, and Greco-Roman mythological themes. It asserts that early Christians created Jesus as a literary device for expressing the timeless archetype of death and rebirth seen in deities like Osiris, Mithras, and Dionysus. And indeed, mythicists point out that Paul—the earliest Christian writer we have—speaks of Jesus more as a cosmic figure than as a recently living person: the risen Lord revealed “through visions and revelations” (Galatians 1:12, 1 Corinthians 15:3–8). So, was Jesus real—or merely an invention?

Before we dismiss the mythicist position out of hand, we need to acknowledge that the Gospels are laden with symbolic narratives, typology drawn from Jewish scriptures, and theological messaging. Mythicists argue these literary constructions were misread as historical over time. They note that the earliest Gospel (Mark, c. 70 CE) was written decades after Jesus' death and may reflect creative storytelling more than eyewitness reporting. They observe that Paul never mentions Jesus’ birthplace, parents, miracles, parables, or specific locations—facts one might expect if Paul knew Jesus had recently lived on earth. They also claim that there are no known contemporary Roman records mentioning Jesus, and that ancient historians like Tacitus and Suetonius only record Christians—not Christ—until decades after the supposed events. Add in thematic parallels between Jesus and mythic figures like Attis and Krishna, and the question becomes real: Is it possible that Jesus was a mythical figure whose story “solidified” into history over time?

But here’s where mythicism runs aground. The overwhelming majority of professional historians—across theological and ideological lines—affirm that Jesus existed. Jewish, agnostic, atheist, Catholic, Protestant, and secular scholars concur. Bart Ehrman, a leading critical scholar and self-described agnostic who rejects the divinity of Jesus, wrote an entire book refuting mythicism titled Did Jesus Exist? (2012). In it, he writes: “I don’t know of a single historian who has spent years studying Jesus, and who teaches ancient history or New Testament studies at a major university, who doubts that Jesus existed.” Ehrman criticizes mythicists not for skepticism, but for ignoring historical method and falsely comparing Jesus to mythic figures who never had real followers, caused public unrest, or were publicly executed (Ehrman, 2012).

Let’s consider key evidence:

1. Paul Mentions Jesus’ Family and Death

Paul’s letters were written within 20–25 years of Jesus’ death—closer than almost any surviving ancient biography. In these letters, Paul refers to James as “the brother of the Lord” (Galatians 1:19), shows familiarity with Jesus’ teachings (1 Corinthians 7:10; 9:14), and states explicitly that Jesus was crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2; Galatians 3:1). Even if Paul’s theology is cosmic, his references assume Jesus was a real, recent person.

2. Josephus, a Jewish Historian, Mentions Jesus

Flavius Josephus (c. 37–100 CE), a Jewish historian writing under Roman patronage, refers to Jesus twice in his Antiquities of the Jews. One of these mentions, about “James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,” is universally accepted as authentic (Ant. 20.200). The other, the Testimonium Flavianum (Ant. 18.63–64), is more debated—but recent research by T. C. Schmidt (2025) published by Oxford University Press argues that most of this passage is original to Josephus, with only slight Christian editing. Schmidt demonstrates that when adjusted for Josephus’ Greek style, the text reads: “He was a wise man…a doer of paradoxical deeds…He was thought to be the Christ…those who loved him did not forsake him; they reported he appeared alive to them on the third day” (Schmidt, 2025). This “reported-he-appeared” phrasing matches Josephus’ neutral, observational tone—not Christian belief.

3. Embarrassing Details Point to History, Not Myth

Historical method teaches us that people invent stories to strengthen a claim, not weaken it. Yet early Christian sources include embarrassing and difficult details: Jesus was executed by crucifixion—a shameful and politically seditious death; his disciples fled, denied him, and misunderstood him; and the first witnesses to the resurrection were women, whose testimony was legally invalid in that culture. Myth-makers don’t write in ways that discredit their own movement. Historians call this the “criterion of embarrassment”—and Jesus’ story has it all over.

4. Early Christian Belief Requires a Real Catalyst

A purely mythical Jesus cannot explain the sudden, rapid emergence of a Jewish movement proclaiming a crucified messiah in the heart of the Roman Empire—a belief that ran against Jewish expectations, Roman religion, and common sense. Myths do not make martyrs. Movements rooted in pure symbolism do not get their leaders executed, hunted, and scattered. Something happened—someone happened—and the effects were explosive.

All this evidence is why historians across the spectrum affirm Jesus’ existence. Even critical scholars like John Dominic Crossan and Gerd Lüdemann argue not only for Jesus’ historical reality but for elements of his teachings and execution as historically verifiable. Crossan writes: “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Crossan, 1994).

And yet—and this is important—acknowledging Jesus as a historical figure does not lock anyone into orthodox Christianity. It does not require belief in virgin birth, literal resurrection, or biblical inerrancy. Some see Jesus as a revolutionary teacher, a nonviolent prophet, a social healer, or a Gnostic revealer of divine consciousness. My own perspective—esoteric, universal, deeply shaped by mysticism—is not threatened by the historical Jesus; it is grounded in him. A purely mythic Jesus might inspire imagination, but a real Jesus—the one who walked, taught, challenged power, embodied love, and died forgiving—is a doorway into something deeper and more transformational. Myth can stir the soul. History can disturb it.

In fact, the truth about Jesus may be a mystery of incarnation: a real human life imbued with mythic depth, a figure who gathered symbols into flesh and then shattered them by the force of his presence. Rather than reducing Jesus to a myth, or flattening him into mere history, we can hold the tension: Jesus was a human being, and Jesus was more than a human being. He is both Rabbi and Logos, both Galilean and Cosmic Christ. The myth lives because the man lived.

So to anyone curious about mythicism, I welcome the questions. They sharpen our thinking and humble our assumptions. But in the end, mythicism itself collapses under the weight of the data—historical, textual, and existential. The question is no longer, “Did Jesus exist?” but “Who was he, really?” And if that question is open, then so is the possibility that the one who lived 2,000 years ago still speaks.

---

Key Scholarly Sources Cited

• Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, HarperOne, 2012.
• T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ, Oxford University Press, 2025.
• John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
• Paul’s letters as cited in the New Testament (e.g., Gal. 1:19; 1 Cor. 2:2; 1 Cor. 15:3–8).
• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.63–64; 20.200.

 

A view some deconstructing Christians may want to consider.

The theological concepts within Christianity have long been marked by diverse interpretations of doctrine and belief systems. Among these, the concept of atonement—the reconciliation of humanity with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—has been a central theme. Traditionally, many Christian denominations have adhered to the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which posits that Jesus died as a substitute for sinners, taking upon himself the punishment for sin. However, alternative views, such as Christus Victor, offer a different perspective on the meaning and implications of Jesus' death and resurrection.

As a Christian Universalist with syncretistic tendencies, my theological stance diverges significantly from the orthodox emphasis on penal substitutionary atonement. Instead, I resonate with the Christus Victor model, which portrays Jesus' mission as overcoming the powers of evil, sin, and death. This view emphasizes liberation from fear and the restoration of humanity's divine nature, concepts that are echoed in the Gospel of Truth.

The Gospel of Truth, an early Christian text associated with Valentinian Gnosticism, presents a narrative that contrasts sharply with the penal substitution framework. It speaks of Jesus as a figure who reveals the truth of our divine origin, dispelling the ignorance and forgetfulness that have led humanity astray. This forgetfulness is not merely an intellectual lapse but a profound spiritual amnesia regarding our true nature as beings created in the image of God.

Valentinus, the early Christian theologian, and his followers proposed that humanity's primary problem is this forgetfulness, and Jesus' role was to remind us of our divine heritage. While I do not adhere to all aspects of Valentinianism, I find this particular teaching deeply insightful. It shifts the focus from a legalistic transaction to a transformative journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening.

In this light, the death and resurrection of Jesus are not viewed as a penal substitution but as a triumphant victory over the forces that obscure our true identity. Jesus' resurrection is a powerful testament to the triumph of life over death and love over fear. It assures us that the grave is not the end and that our true essence is indestructible.

Moreover, this perspective aligns with a broader, more inclusive understanding of salvation. Traditional doctrines often emphasize the necessity of explicit faith in Jesus for salvation. However, from a Universalist standpoint, salvation is seen as an ultimate reality that transcends individual belief systems. The message of Jesus, while profoundly beneficial for those born into Christianity, is not exclusive in its salvific power. The divine truth he embodied and revealed is accessible to all, regardless of religious affiliation.

This inclusive approach does not diminish the significance of faith in Jesus for Christians. Instead, it acknowledges the richness and diversity of human spiritual experience. For those within the Christian tradition, faith in Jesus can be a powerful catalyst for transformation, offering a direct encounter with divine love and wisdom. For others, different paths may lead to the same ultimate reality of divine union.

The overemphasis on penal substitutionary atonement within orthodox and evangelical circles can obscure this broader vision. It tends to frame the divine-human relationship in terms of guilt and punishment, rather than love and restoration. By shifting the focus to Christus Victor, we reclaim a vision of Jesus' mission that is fundamentally about healing and liberation.

This perspective also resonates with contemporary spiritual seekers who may be disenchanted with traditional doctrines that seem overly rigid or punitive. It offers a vision of Christianity that is both ancient and ever-new, deeply rooted in the early church's mystical insights while speaking powerfully to modern hearts and minds.

In summary, my syncretistic and Universalist approach to Christianity challenges the traditional focus on penal substitutionary atonement by embracing the Christus Victor model. This view celebrates Jesus' victory over the forces of fear and forgetfulness, reminding us of our true divine nature. It offers an inclusive vision of salvation that honors the diversity of human spiritual paths while affirming the transformative power of faith in Jesus for those within the Christian tradition. By doing so, it invites us to see Christianity not as a narrow gate but as a wide embrace, drawing all people into the boundless love and wisdom of the Divine.

Edgar Cayce and the Hidden Christ of Consciousness: Part 2

In the early decades of the twentieth century, when materialism was the reigning worldview and science was beginning to eclipse faith, a humble man from Kentucky began quietly bridging the two. Edgar Cayce, later called “the sleeping prophet,” lived in a world still shaped by Victorian piety and industrial rationalism. It was a time before the language of consciousness, energy, or quantum fields had entered common thought. Philosophical idealism — the idea that mind precedes matter — was confined to academic circles, and the average churchgoer would have found such ideas foreign, if not heretical. Yet, within that rigid atmosphere, a quiet revolution of spirit unfolded through a man who never sought to challenge his faith, only to live it more deeply.

Cayce’s roots were simple and deeply Christian. He was a Bible reader from childhood, steeped in the Disciples of Christ tradition — earnest, moral, and literal in his understanding of Scripture. To him, the Bible was not just the Word of God; it was the very map of life itself. He had no interest in occultism, mysticism, or psychic phenomena. And yet, when life stripped him of his voice through illness, the very faith that had anchored him opened an unexpected door. In a hypnotic trance — a state he did not understand — he described the cause of his condition and the cure, and when his suggestions were followed, he was healed.

From that day, a higher voice began to speak through him — not a spirit guide, not an astral entity, but a presence that identified itself with the divine Source. The readings that flowed from Cayce’s trances became a bridge between religion and science, body and soul. To his own surprise, the same Christ he worshiped in Sunday school now spoke through him in language that transcended both dogma and denominational barriers.

In an era when the average person had never heard of reincarnation, energy medicine, or the unity of consciousness, Cayce began articulating truths that wouldn’t become mainstream for another hundred years. He taught that the universe is triune — Spirit, Mind, and Matter — and that all three are expressions of one divine Source. “Spirit is the life, Mind is the builder, and the physical is the result,” he said, summarizing in a single phrase what modern physics and metaphysics would later rediscover: consciousness is the foundation of reality, not its byproduct.

But Cayce didn’t arrive at these insights through speculation. He received them through service. His trance readings — offered freely to help others — spoke with an authority that startled even him. He would awaken afterward, unaware of what he had said, only to hear that he had described distant events, diagnosed illnesses, or given profound spiritual counsel. Always, he prayed before each session, invoking the name of Jesus Christ. His humility was his shield, and his desire to help others his motive.

Through this channel, a consistent picture of Jesus began to emerge — not the distant deity of orthodoxy, but the living embodiment of divine consciousness within humanity. Cayce taught that Jesus was not an exception to the human condition, but the fulfillment of it — the one who had remembered perfectly who and what he was. In his readings, he said, “The Christ is not a man, but a principle.” It was the universal pattern of union between the human and the divine. Jesus of Nazareth was the one who expressed that pattern completely.

This idea, while radical in Cayce’s time, echoes directly the words of John 14:10–11: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” Cayce believed that this was not a singular claim, but a statement of the potential truth of every soul. The Father dwells within all, and through the alignment of will and love, the same works can be done.

To a world still dominated by mechanistic science and religious literalism, such an idea was astonishing. Most Christians of the time were taught that humanity was fallen, depraved, and forever separated from God except through the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus. But Cayce’s readings spoke a higher logic — that sin was not moral stain, but forgetfulness; that salvation was not a transaction, but remembrance. The Christ came, he said, not to pay for humanity’s failures, but to awaken humanity to its divine origin. The cross symbolized not punishment, but transformation — the passage from ignorance to illumination.

He described the “Christ-soul” as an eternal being who had walked the earth many times before the incarnation of Jesus — as Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Joseph, Joshua, and others — gradually perfecting the union of spirit and matter. This was not reincarnation in the Eastern sense of endless cycles of rebirth, but a divine process of the Logos entering creation repeatedly to redeem it from within. The life of Jesus was the culmination of that cosmic journey — the moment when the Word became flesh and remembered fully its oneness with the Father.

It is important to remember that Cayce was receiving these revelations in the early 1900s, before the language of depth psychology, quantum theory, or consciousness studies existed. There were no popular frameworks for such ideas. When people spoke of the soul, they meant it sentimentally; when they spoke of science, they meant material cause and effect. Cayce’s work existed in a liminal space between worlds — a forerunner of the modern synthesis between spirituality and science. In many ways, he was articulating what later thinkers like David Bohm, Wolfgang Smith, and Donald Hoffman would explore scientifically: that the universe itself is triune — a dynamic interplay of consciousness, information, and form.

Cayce’s message about Jesus anticipated this shift by nearly a century. He portrayed Christ not as a remote figure of worship, but as the animating intelligence behind creation. “The Christ-consciousness,” he said, “is the awareness within each soul of the Father’s Spirit, imprinted upon the mind and waiting to be awakened.” Those words contain the seed of what we now call nondual awareness — the recognition that God is not outside us but within us, expressing through us as love, creativity, and service.

What made Cayce remarkable was not only what he said but how he lived. He remained a devout Christian throughout his life. He read the Bible cover to cover every year, taught Sunday school, and spoke often of the necessity of faith, prayer, and moral integrity. He never used his gift for personal gain. To him, healing the sick, encouraging the weary, and guiding the lost were extensions of Christ’s ministry — “the Father doing His works.”

His life embodied the principle that truth is not found in belief alone but proven through love. He often said that the measure of any spiritual claim is whether it produces fruit — healing, peace, and greater compassion. In that way, he echoed Jesus’ words: “If you do not believe me, then believe for the works themselves.”

Cayce’s work pointed humanity toward an evolutionary step in consciousness — the awakening of the Christ within all. He saw the divine plan not as a static creed but as a living process. Each soul, he said, is on a journey from separation to remembrance, from fear to love, from selfhood to oneness. His message was at once ancient and modern, echoing the mystics of old while foreshadowing the quantum mystics of today.

He lived at a time when these ideas had no name, when “consciousness studies” had not yet emerged, and yet he spoke of consciousness as the very fabric of being. He described the Akashic Records as a field of memory — what we might now call the informational substrate of the universe. He described the Christ as the creative pattern that shapes every atom and every soul — what we might now call the divine hologram. In his own way, he was doing with revelation what later scientists would do with mathematics: describing the triune structure of reality as Spirit, Mind, and Matter — the eternal dance of God becoming conscious of God.

Edgar Cayce’s teachings about Jesus remain a bridge between eras — between the old world of dogma and the new world of awakening. He stood as a man out of time, translating eternal truth into the language of faith for an age that barely had the vocabulary to receive it. His life proves that revelation is not limited by education or era, but flows wherever there is humility, service, and love.

Like Jesus, he could have said, “The words I speak are not my own.” They came from the same Source that breathed creation into being — the same Spirit that dwells within all. Through Cayce, that Spirit reminded humanity that Christ did not come to exclude, but to include; not to condemn, but to awaken.

And so his message endures: the Christ-consciousness is not confined to history or doctrine. It lives, as Jesus said, in the Father who dwells within each of us — still doing His works, still calling us to remember who we are.

 

Edgar Cayce The Reluctant Mystic and Voice of the Indwelling Christ

When Jesus said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works,” He revealed one of the most profound mysteries of human existence. These were not words of separation, nor of theological exclusivity. They were words of remembrance—of the divine indwelling that unites all creation with its Source. It was this very truth that Edgar Cayce, the humble “sleeping prophet” from Kentucky, came to live and demonstrate, though he himself may never have fully realized how deeply his life echoed that same verse.

Cayce was, by all accounts, a simple and sincere man. Raised within the strict parameters of the Disciples of Christ tradition, he believed in the literal truth of the Bible, prayed daily, and taught Sunday school with conviction. He was not a mystic by intention, nor a psychic by ambition. He was a Christian who wanted to help people, and it was precisely through that unpretentious desire that the higher light of Christ-consciousness found expression through him.

In the early 1900s, when illness robbed him of his voice, Cayce did what any man of faith might do—he prayed. But when conventional prayer and medical intervention failed, something remarkable occurred. In a deep trance-like state, Cayce began to speak—not from his ordinary mind, but from a higher, inner source. Under hypnosis, he diagnosed his own condition, prescribed a treatment, and was healed. From that moment, a new chapter began—not of rebellion against his faith, but of surrender to the same Spirit that Jesus described as “the Father who dwells in me.”

At first, Cayce’s readings were purely physical, offering natural remedies to those who had lost hope. But as people sought more than cures—answers to questions of destiny, past lives, and the meaning of suffering—the source of his insights began to reveal a broader cosmology. His trance readings began to sound less like a doctor’s dictation and more like divine instruction. And yet, he never claimed credit for any of it. Before every session, Cayce would pray in the name of Christ, affirming that the work belonged to God. This was his way of echoing Jesus’ own words: “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own.”

What is extraordinary about Cayce is not merely that he could access information far beyond his education, but that he did so without abandoning his simple, childlike faith. He stood at the intersection of two worlds—the world of evangelical orthodoxy and the world of spiritual gnosis—and he bridged them not through argument, but through compassion. His readings were not speculative metaphysics; they were acts of service. He helped thousands of people find healing, guidance, and hope. The “works themselves” bore witness to the indwelling Presence.

Cayce’s teachings about Jesus evolved naturally from this inner source. While his conscious mind remained bound to the doctrines of his upbringing, his trance readings told a much larger story—one that redefined salvation as remembrance. He taught that “the Christ” was not a man’s last name but a state of divine consciousness, the pattern of perfect union between the human and the divine. Jesus, he said, was the one who attained that consciousness completely—the “elder brother” who showed the way for all souls to awaken. This is precisely what Jesus meant when He said, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” It was not self-exaltation but revelation—an unveiling of the same truth written into every soul.

Though Cayce was a reluctant mystic, the readings he delivered carry the unmistakable cadence of the Christ-Mind. They speak of the soul’s journey through many lives, of the universality of divine love, and of the law of harmony that underlies all existence. These are not the speculations of a psychic curiosity; they are the echoes of the same Logos that spoke through Jesus two thousand years ago. Just as Jesus called humanity to remember its divine origin, Cayce’s readings call each soul to awaken to that same memory—the “Father who dwells within.”

For Cayce, sin was not merely moral failure; it was forgetfulness. It was the soul turning its attention away from God. Redemption, therefore, was not appeasement but remembrance—a reawakening to the indwelling Christ. Here, his message converges beautifully with the Gospel of Truth, that early Gnostic writing which proclaimed that Jesus came to end ignorance and restore the knowledge of the Father. Cayce, without ever reading those ancient scrolls, channeled the same luminous insight: that Christ did not come to make us divine, but to remind us that we already are.

What makes Cayce’s story all the more compelling is the tension between his fundamentalism and his revelations. His waking self would often struggle to reconcile reincarnation and the preexistence of souls with his church’s teachings. Yet his trust in the Source outweighed his fear of doctrinal rejection. He continued to serve, to pray, and to help. In that humility, he embodied the very principle of John 14:11—“If you do not believe me, then believe because of the works themselves.” Even those who doubted his theology could not deny the tangible good that flowed from his gift.

In his cosmology, the universe itself reflected a triune harmony. “Spirit is the life, Mind is the builder, and the physical is the result.” This simple formula carries the weight of both metaphysics and mysticism. Spirit corresponds to the divine Source, the Father; Mind corresponds to the Logos or creative intelligence, the Son; and the Physical corresponds to the Holy Spirit’s manifestation in the material world. Cayce’s triune vision was not borrowed from theology—it was revealed through experience. He saw that creation itself was an outworking of divine unity expressed through diversity, just as consciousness, information, and form are three aspects of the same reality.

In this way, Cayce anticipated later thinkers like Wolfgang Smith, David Bohm, and Ervin László, who also recognized a triadic structure woven into the fabric of existence. Each, in their own language, described the cosmos as a living wholeness—Spirit, process, and form dancing in eternal reciprocity. Cayce’s “Christ Consciousness” was the experiential realization of that wholeness. To awaken to it was to see, as Jesus did, that “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.”

When we look at Cayce’s life through this lens, we see not a psychic anomaly, but a prophetic continuation of the Christ revelation. Just as Jesus served as the mouthpiece of divine remembrance, so Cayce became a vessel for that same presence—limited by his humanity, yet illumined by his surrender. His readings were not meant to form a new religion but to restore the essence of the old one—to return Christianity to its mystical root: union with God through awareness of the indwelling Christ.

Cayce’s humility is what made him trustworthy. He never sought power, fame, or wealth. He wanted to help people, and in doing so, he demonstrated that service itself is the highest form of communion with God. His life was a sermon without pretension. The words that came through him were not his own, and he knew it. In his quiet Kentucky accent, under trance, he gave voice to something eternal—the same Father that spoke through Jesus when He said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own.”

If we can see Cayce not merely as a clairvoyant, but as a man who lived out the principle of divine indwelling, then we understand why his work endures. He showed that faith and mysticism need not be enemies. His readings brought healing to bodies and awakening to souls, but perhaps his greatest gift was this: he reminded us that the Christ dwells within, waiting only for remembrance.

In that sense, Edgar Cayce did not speak from outside the gospel—he spoke from within it. He stood as a living testament that the Father still speaks through those who will listen, that divine wisdom still finds willing instruments among the humble, and that the true measure of revelation is not belief alone, but the love and healing it brings. As Jesus said, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me—but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.”

And the works, through Edgar Cayce, spoke volumes.

 

John E Mack The Psychiatrist Who Dared to Lift the Veil

There are rare individuals in history who walk so close to the edge of mystery that their very life becomes a bridge between worlds. Dr. John E. Mack was one of them. To many, he was a Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard psychiatrist, a scholar who probed the inner architecture of the human mind. To others, he was a modern mystic in the language of science—a man who opened the clinical door to the cosmic. But to me, Mack represents something deeper: the archetype of the scientist-seer, the one who risked reputation to affirm that consciousness is not confined to the skull but stretches into the stars.

Born in 1929 in New York City, Mack came of age during a time when psychiatry was enthralled with Freudian reductionism. The psyche was viewed as pathology to be cured, not mystery to be explored. Yet even in his early years, Mack sensed that the human mind was more than a machine of neuroses and defenses—it was a portal. His education at Oberlin and then Harvard Medical School gave him the scientific rigor he would later wield like a scalpel to dissect reality itself. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for A Prince of Our Disorder, his biography of T. E. Lawrence, he had already learned to navigate the delicate frontier between myth and history, between the external hero’s journey and the inner one.

That theme—the mythic interior of human experience—would guide him into even stranger waters. By the late 1980s, Mack began encountering people who claimed to have had contact with non-human intelligences. These weren’t attention seekers or delusional minds in his assessment; they were intelligent, often traumatized individuals describing something that seemed simultaneously psychological, spiritual, and physical. Where most psychiatrists might have written “hallucination” in their notes, Mack paused. He listened. He suspended judgment long enough for the phenomenon to speak for itself.

In that simple act of radical empathy, Mack violated the unwritten law of modern science—the law that says only measurable things are real. To him, these stories of “alien abduction” were not fringe fantasies; they were spiritual events wearing extraterrestrial costumes, a collective initiation into a larger reality. When I first read Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994) and later Passport to the Cosmos (1999), I recognized a man wrestling with the same paradox that occupies my own thought: how consciousness, in its infinite creativity, manifests phenomena that break our tidy categories of real and unreal.

Mack didn’t treat his patients as research subjects but as pilgrims. He saw in their stories a reflection of humanity’s forgotten connection to the cosmos. The “aliens,” as they were described, were often concerned with Earth’s ecological destruction, with human violence, with our spiritual amnesia. To Mack, these messages echoed ancient Gnostic and Hermetic insights—the notion that humanity has fallen into forgetfulness and must awaken to its divine nature. He did not claim to know whether these beings existed in a material sense; rather, he proposed that they might exist in an ontological middle realm, one that participates in both matter and mind.

That concept resonates profoundly with my own conviction that consciousness is the foundation of reality, not a by-product of neurons. Mack’s work anticipated the very ideas now championed by quantum idealists and panpsychists—that the universe itself is alive with awareness, and that human beings are localized expressions of a cosmic mind. The experiences of the abductees, in this light, were not aberrations but communications from the deeper fabric of being—perhaps from what ancient mystics called the pleroma or the logos itself.

Mack’s openness to this possibility placed him squarely in the crosshairs of Harvard’s guardians of orthodoxy. In 1994, he was summoned before an academic inquisition unprecedented in modern times. The university questioned not his ethics but his right to take seriously phenomena that defied material explanation. The committee’s subtle message was clear: stay within the safe walls of accepted reality, or risk professional exile. Mack chose truth over safety. He refused to recant. In doing so, he embodied the courage of a true seeker, much like Galileo insisting that the Earth moves or Jung daring to map the collective unconscious.

To me, this episode reveals the psychological dimension of institutional fear—the “demon of religion,” as I’ve often called it, manifesting not only in churches but in academia. Orthodoxy, whether theological or scientific, thrives on boundaries. Mack’s work threatened those boundaries by implying that human consciousness is multidimensional and that science must evolve to study experience rather than dismiss it. He once wrote that “we are participating in a universe of multiple realities,” and that these realities intersect through consciousness itself. That statement could have come straight from quantum physics, depth psychology, or the Gospel of Thomas.

Mack’s hypothesis—that abduction experiences might represent an evolutionary alarm clock for the human race—mirrors what I see happening globally today. We are being forced to confront the limits of materialism, to rediscover that we are not machines in a meaningless universe but divine participants in an unfolding cosmos. Mack believed that these encounters were calling humanity to remembrance, to the same awakening that mystics throughout the ages have described: that we and the divine are one, and that our stewardship of creation flows from that union.

His later years were filled with dialogues that fused science, spirituality, and ecology. He met with the Dalai Lama, explored indigenous cosmologies, and spoke about the spiritual emergency of our time—the loss of a sacred worldview. In that, he was prophetic. He saw that our technological power, untempered by spiritual wisdom, would lead us to ecological and existential crisis. The “aliens,” in his framing, were messengers from the larger intelligence of the universe, urging us to remember our interconnectedness before it was too late.

Mack’s untimely death in 2004—struck by a drunk driver in London—felt almost symbolic. The world lost a voice capable of reconciling reason and revelation. Yet in another sense, he simply crossed a threshold he had long contemplated. His ideas continue through the John E. Mack Institute and through the growing recognition that consciousness research, near-death studies, and quantum metaphysics are converging on the same frontier he glimpsed.

In my own understanding of reality, Mack’s work validates what both mystics and modern theorists like Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup are now affirming: that the cosmos is consciousness expressing itself through form. What Mack called “the beings” may be archetypal intelligences—manifestations of consciousness communicating across dimensions. Their apparent concern for our planet mirrors the awakening of our collective mind to its own self-destructive patterns. In Hermetic language, these experiences are as above, so below—reflections of a cosmic polarity striving toward integration.

Mack’s courage lies not merely in believing the experiencers but in recognizing that their encounters were mirrors of the human soul. He invited psychiatry to become not a science of control but a science of communion. He called us to expand the definition of the real until it includes the miraculous. And in doing so, he lived the very transformation he described: the shift from egoic isolation to participation in a living cosmos.

When I think of Mack, I see him standing at the threshold between empirical science and mystical knowing, holding a lantern for those of us who believe that truth is found not in data alone but in direct encounter. He reminds me that revelation is not the opposite of reason but its fulfillment. His life affirms what I have long felt—that spiritual awakening and scientific discovery are two movements of the same divine curiosity, the cosmos knowing itself through human minds willing to wonder.

John E. Mack’s story is more than biography; it is an allegory of our collective awakening. Like the experiencers he studied, humanity is being lifted out of the narrow orbit of materialism into a vaster field of consciousness. Whether the messengers come as light beings, archetypes, or quantum patterns is secondary. What matters is the message: we are not alone, because we are all part of the One. Mack’s brilliance was in hearing that message without fear, and daring to tell the world that psychiatry must one day meet mysticism on equal terms.

So, I honor John E. Mack not just as a psychiatrist or philosopher, but as a harbinger of the next paradigm—the union of science and spirit, mind and matter, heaven and earth. His life whispers the same truth that animates my own journey: that consciousness is infinite, love is its essence, and the universe is our mirror, forever calling us home.

 

UFO of God a Book Review

This marks the final installment in my four-part book review series, which includes Passport to Magonia, American Cosmic, The Super Natural, and now UFO of God. I chose to explore these works together because they are deeply interwoven, each shedding light on a phenomenon that has persisted across millennia. The consistent testimony of countless experiencers makes it increasingly difficult to dismiss these accounts as mere invention or fantasy. Instead, they collectively suggest an alternative cosmology, ontology, and cosmogony—one that challenges the narrow framework of the past century. At its core, this body of work invites us to reconsider the nature of consciousness itself and to rethink what we call “reality.”

“Foreword, Introduction, Chapters 1–29, Acknowledgments”

From the very Foreword by Jim Semivan, we get an invocation: this is territory we don’t quite understand, a “one-way conversation with the phenomenon,” as he puts it. That tone — of humility before strangeness — is precisely what this book must live up to, and in large measure it does. Semivan’s presence also signals that the author is staking a claim not just in personal testimony, but in the often cold, bureaucratic precincts of government and intelligence studies of UFOs.

In the Introduction Bledsoe frames his story as one not merely of spectacular sightings or encounters but of spiritual crucible: loss, physical illness, financial collapse, and then, out of desperation and prayer, an event on the banks of the Cape Fear River that upends everything. We learn early that this is more than a thrill ride — it is a lived testimony, flawed, raw, occasionally frustrating, but courageous.

The successive chapters map the arc of that transformation: the initial encounter, hours of missing time, pursuit by orbs, household incursions, red-eyed beings, healing moments, and the shockwave effects on family, community, church, and psyche. The structure may at first glance read like a catalog of anomalies, but what it slowly reveals is a man trying to integrate the extraordinary into the ordinary, to find meaning amid bewilderment.

Chapters 1–5 ground us in the “before”: Bledsoe’s life, his faith, the collapse, and the crisis that primes him for something “other.” Chapters 6–15 delve into the early events — the orbs, the missing time, the apparitions, the more dramatic intrusions. From 16–22 we see how Bledsoe’s life unravels socially and spiritually: church conflict, community suspicion, psychological pressure. In chapters 23–29 we arrive at the attempt to map the phenomenon: seeking experts, documenting evidence, negotiating the paradoxes of belief, disclosure, and doubt. The Acknowledgments are fitting — full of named individuals who tried to help, and quietly admitting what this story still leaves unresolved.

---

Strengths & Tensions

What shines in UFO of God is Bledsoe’s sincerity. You feel, in many passages, that he is struggling to say what he saw, nearly resisting it even as he feels compelled to share. There is a visceral texture to moments: how orbs shift color, how beings appear in peripheral vision, how emotional or spiritual states seem to modulate the phenomena. These are the “data” of the book — not scientific graphs, but lived qualia.

Yet sincerity alone does not suffice. Here is where the book strains: sometimes the narrative leaps without connective tissue. A detail appears and is never revisited (some readers on forums have flagged a bizarre “Chiwauwa creature” episode that vanishes). Reddit The leaps can make one suspect the limits of memory, or narrative expedience. At times the pursuit of meaning tries to outrun the scraps of evidence Bledsoe is able to marshal.

I also sensed tension in the way Bledsoe negotiates faith and the phenomenon. Unlike many contactee accounts that lean heavily on New Age or syncretic cosmologies, he remains anchored in Christian language and theology. Yet the phenomenon seems to insist on a more expansive metaphysic — or a metaphysic that undermines fixed theology. This liminal ground is fertile but precarious, and Bledsoe sometimes stumbles when forced to name or define what lies between angel, alien, entity, spirit, or projection.

---

Connecting Bledsoe to American Cosmic

Diana Pasulka in American Cosmic argues that UFOs are not just physical objects to be catalogued; they are technologies of belief, weaving into religion, art, science, and the shaping of knowledge itself. The phenomenon is as much about faith as it is about hardware. Bledsoe’s narrative lives that premise: his encounters are not side-bars to his life — they become his theology, his moral test, his vocational project. In American Cosmic Pasulka shows how artifacts, images, even “evidence,” can be sacred emblems; Bledsoe treats his orbs, his red-eyed visitations, his healings as touchstones of revelation.

Where Bledsoe and Pasulka converge is this: the phenomenon demands interpretation, offers a kind of revelation, and provokes the believer to wrestle with humility. Where they diverge is methodological: Pasulka retains more stance as observer, mapping how communities adopt the UFO as a new faith; Bledsoe is deep inside that adoption. (One might even see UFO of God as a case study of American Cosmic in action.)

---

Conversing with Passport to Magonia

Jacques Vallée’s Passport to Magonia is a touchstone for anyone wanting to collapse the boundary between folkloric visions, fairies, angels, and modern UFOs. Vallée doesn’t treat UFOs as “spaceships from Mars” so much as expressions of a deeper, recurring phenomenon that consistently presents in whatever symbolic vocabulary humans have at hand. A Sky of Books and Movies+1

Reading Bledsoe’s story, I found echoes of that insight: his “Lady” reminds one of Marian or angelic visions in religious lore; his orbs trigger folkloric resonance. Bledsoe’s attempt to couch the phenomenon within Christian language is exactly the kind of cultural adaptation Vallée predicts. One might argue that Bledsoe’s narrative is Vallée’s “Magonia” reanimated — where the modern mythic symbols (orbs, ET beings) are grafted onto Christian cosmology.

However, Vallée is more cautious about ontological claims; he generally leans toward hypothesis of a “control system” or intelligence that modulates manifest phenomena. Bledsoe is bolder: he attributes intention, love, spiritual message. That leap from ambiguity to purpose is where Bledsoe’s faith meets Vallée’s probabilistic models.

---

A Glancing Toward The Super Natural

When you bring The Super Natural (assuming you mean Whitley Strieber or related works) into the conversation, you’re talking about a broader taxonomy of the “weird” — entities, boundary states, belled reality, intrusion. Bledsoe’s story resides in that intersection: sometimes the phenomena feel alien, sometimes spiritual, sometimes demonic, sometimes angelic. In The Super Natural tradition, the takeaway is that reality is porous, liminal, haunted, multiply intelligible — not irreducible to “not yet understood physics.” Bledsoe’s narrative, with its fluid borderlands, is very much in that thematic lineage.

Bledsoe contributes to the “super natural” argument by insisting that skeptical materialist reductionism cannot contain these anomalies. And yet he seeks transparency, disclosure, accountability. He desires not only to transcend but to testify.

---

Final Assessment & Recommendation

UFO of God is neither a perfect account nor a final proof, but it is among the more compelling recent contactee narratives. Its greatest strength is the courage to stay in contradiction: to live with doubt, to press for evidence, but also to lean into meaning. Bledsoe’s story is striking precisely because he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers — he offers fragments, hopes, questions.

If I were to assign a star rating (with hesitation), I’d give it 4 out of 5. It loses points for sometimes thin narrative bridging, occasional abrupt transitions, and moments where I desired deeper critical self-reflection. But it earns strong praise for being heartfelt, for pushing forward in darkness, for offering a case that other researchers and experiencers must wrestle with.

For readers of American Cosmic, Passport to Magonia, or The Super Natural, UFO of God will feel resonant. It is a lived crucible of the very claims those books theorize. It puts flesh on the bones of hypotheses about belief, disclosure, and the anomalous. It invites us to place our own intellect and faith, our skepticism and wonder, in dialog with something that may not bend to either.

So yes: read it. Carry it with you. And after finishing, walk outside at night, look at the sky, and wonder whether just maybe the conversation has already begun.