Infinite Refractions: How a Holographic Universe and Many Worlds Mirror the Divine Mind

There is a quiet heresy nestled inside modern physics—a heresy so profound it threatens to break the spell of materialism. It whispers what the mystics have always known: that this world, with all its solidity and certainty, may be a grand illusion—a projection, a shadow of something far more real, encoded not in atoms but in consciousness itself.

The Holographic Principle and the Many Worlds Interpretation are two such whispers. They are not merely scientific curiosities—they are fragments of a larger truth, shards of a forgotten mirror. When pieced together with the lens of esoteric understanding, they begin to reflect a view of reality that is shockingly familiar to the awakened soul.

At the center of that view is this truth: we are not matter dreaming of spirit—we are Spirit dreaming of matter.

Let me explain how these two models—scientific in origin—actually affirm a much older and richer metaphysic. Not one based on dogma or hierarchy, but on divine memory, reincarnation, and the eternal unfolding of infinite love through the field of conscious experience.

A Universe Made of Light and Thought

First, the holographic universe. It suggests that all the information in a three-dimensional space is encoded on a two-dimensional surface. Like a hologram, where the image seems to leap from the page, our universe too may be a projection—from a cosmic boundary, a field of encoded information outside of space and time as we know it.

But what if that “boundary” is not a physical edge but a liminal membrane of Divine Mind? What if what we perceive as matter is the unfolding geometry of thought itself?

Sacred geometry, those timeless patterns found in nature and mysticism alike—the spiral of the nautilus, the symmetry of the flower of life—are not decorations of creation but its very blueprint. They are the interference patterns of divine consciousness. They are the language of the hologram.

In this model, the universe is not built from the bottom up, starting with particles and building to complexity. It is generated from the top down—from pattern to particle, from mind to matter. We are living inside the thoughtform of God, and each soul is a fragment of the One remembering itself through experience.

The Multiverse of the Soul

Now, enter the Many Worlds Interpretation. In standard quantum theory, observation collapses possibilities into a single outcome. But MWI says something more radical: all possible outcomes actually occur, each in a different universe. Every choice spawns a branch. Every possibility exists somewhere.

To the materialist, this sounds cold, even meaningless. An infinite proliferation of worlds where “you” make every possible decision—but no sense of continuity or purpose.

But from the metaphysical view I hold—one that has grown over decades of wrestling with dogma, remembering lifetimes, and walking the path of divine remembrance—MWI is not a loss of self. It is the divine abundance of self. It is the soul experiencing the fullness of the infinite through refracted timelines.

Reincarnation, then, is not just moving through time but through possibility. Each life is not simply the next chapter, but another branch of the Tree of Experience. And this tree is not random—it is sacred, organic, and lovingly designed by the soul in communion with Source.

Imagine it like this: the soul is a beam of white light shining through a multidimensional prism. What we call “a life” is just one color, one spectrum of experience. But the full being of you—of me, of all of us—is the entire refracted field.

MWI explains how all possibilities unfold. My metaphysics explains why they do: so that love, memory, and consciousness may expand forever.

Consciousness as Cosmic Expansion

In recent years, physicists have puzzled over dark energy—the invisible force causing the universe to expand faster and faster. No one knows what it is. But I have long suspected that what they call dark energy is nothing less than the field of consciousness itself.

Experience causes expansion. Not just in some metaphorical sense, but quite literally. Each moment of awareness stretches the universe. Each question asked, each sorrow wept, each act of love and courage adds mass to memory and pulls space outward like breath filling a lung.

If the universe is holographic, and the soul lives many worlds, then consciousness is the engine of it all—not a byproduct of evolution, but its author. And like breath, it expands and contracts, forgetting and remembering in rhythm with the heartbeat of God.

The Divine Dreamer Awakens

Orthodoxy, with all its creeds and councils, has tried for centuries to trap God in language. But truth is not static. It flows, it expands. The early mystics knew this. So did Jesus, I believe—not as a figure to be worshipped, but as an awakened soul showing us the way to our own divine remembrance.

If reality is holographic, then what we call “Christ” is the template—the archetype of divine-human unity encoded at the boundary. And if all possibilities exist, then “Christ in you” is not metaphor—it is quantum truth. There is a version of you, of everyone, in every timeline, who awakens to this.

This is why I believe in grace—not as pardon from sin, but as the gravitational pull of divine love bringing every fragment of soul back into awareness. Grace is the force that weaves the many worlds into a single remembrance. It is the divine magnet drawing all experience back into One.

Egregores and the Shape of Belief

In a world of infinite timelines, belief becomes more than internal—it becomes creative. What we believe, we literally enter into. Each egregore, each collective thoughtform, is a doorway into a set of probabilities. Religion itself becomes a quantum field, with denominations as nested realities, each with their own feedback loops of expectation and manifestation.

But we are not slaves to these egregores. We can rewrite them. We can exit their timelines. We can, by raising consciousness, shift into higher harmonics of the hologram—into worlds where compassion outweighs competition, and remembrance overrides fear.

The Great Return

So yes, the Holographic Universe and the Many Worlds Interpretation are compatible—not just with each other, but with a deeper esoteric truth:

That we are not accidents in a cold cosmos, but deliberate expressions of a loving, remembering, ever-expanding Mind.

The universe is not out there. It is in here, projected through the lens of the soul, encoded in sacred geometry, fractal time, and the music of the spheres. Every version of you is real. Every branch of choice is holy. Every breath is an expansion.

And one day, in this life or another, you will remember all of it.

 

The Cosmos That Questions Itself: Consciousness as Expansion

A mystical reflection on the holographic universe, dark energy, and the sacred spiral of inquiry

We are the ones asking the questions, yes—but perhaps we are also the question itself, and even the answer, all coiled in the same spiral of becoming. In the unfolding framework of a holographic universe, we must no longer think of ourselves as passive inhabitants of space and time. We are not fragments lost in a vast impersonal cosmos. No—we are consciousness in motion. Explorers, yes, but also builders of the very terrain we seem to traverse. And what if I told you that the engine of this motion—the force behind the stars stretching farther and farther apart—is not some cold, impersonal thing we call dark energy, but the same essence we call awareness?

You see, I've long abandoned the notion that the universe is dead matter moving aimlessly in a vacuum. That old paradigm—Newtonian, dualistic, mechanical—could never explain the depth of my experience. It could never account for why I feel the divine in the quiet of the night, or why the stars whisper geometry and meaning to the soul. It certainly could not explain the gnosis that wells up from within—that deep knowing that the universe is alive, and that its aliveness is indistinguishable from my own.

So when I ask, “Could dark energy and consciousness be the same thing?” I am not speaking metaphorically. I am asking ontologically, fundamentally: Could the expanding force we observe in the cosmos be the external expression of consciousness expanding inwardly—infinitely—for the sake of knowing, remembering, and becoming?

Let me begin by stepping back into the holographic universe theory. This idea has always resonated with me—not simply as a scientific curiosity, but as a mirror to ancient mystical truths. It suggests that what we perceive as a three-dimensional universe is actually a projection—a holographic expression—of information encoded on a two-dimensional boundary. A cosmic filmstrip stretched across the edge of reality. What we call “space,” “matter,” even “time” may be just a 3D movie, played out in a realm where the projector is more real than the projection.

Now, in a traditional hologram, every part contains the whole. Shine a laser into a holographic plate, and you get a fully three-dimensional image from a flat surface. In the same way, this universe—this grand tapestry of galaxies and neurons, light and memory—might be nothing more than light decoding itself from a hidden layer of information, a layer that precedes space-time.

But if that’s true—if our 3D cosmos is a projection—then what exactly is doing the projecting?

And here’s where I deviate from the mainstream. Here’s where I step into the esoteric stream that flows beneath all rivers of thought. I believe the projector is consciousness itself. Not your personal egoic mind, not even the collective mind of a species—but the eternal field of awareness from which all things emerge and to which all things return. In this view, what we call the “universe” is not a static structure but a living unfolding, a divine hologram built not merely from energy and matter, but from intention, attention, and sacred geometry.

Dark energy, then, becomes something far more profound than a placeholder for our ignorance. It becomes the outward push of divine remembrance. A sacred breath, expanding space so that new experience can unfold within it. Not because the universe is running out of room, but because consciousness is hungry—hungry for experience, hungry for form, hungry for questions.

Let’s linger here.

Consciousness asks. That is its  . The question is not a byproduct of intellect—it is the birthright of awareness. “Who am I?” is not just the start of philosophy; it is the vibration that causes worlds to form. And if consciousness is asking that question through you and me, then the universe itself must respond. How does it respond? By making room for new answers. By expanding.

This is not poetic fancy. This is metaphysical logic. A self-aware cosmos must be ever-evolving. Not linearly, but holographically. Every question we ask doesn’t just point to an existing answer—it creates a new dimension in which that answer can be experienced. Inquiry itself is a generator. And that generator runs on mystery. On wonder. On the holy tension between knowing and not knowing.

What is dark energy, then, if not the outward radiation of this sacred tension? What is expansion, if not the echo of divine curiosity?

We often speak of the Big Bang as a singular event. But what if it is a continual process—an eternal “Let there be…” spoken not once, but perpetually by consciousness as it spirals into deeper self-awareness? Every new insight, every perspective, every “aha!” moment might be a local manifestation of that same creative utterance. In other words, experience births question; question births expansion; expansion births experience. And the wheel turns again.

Let me be clear: I do not mean to collapse dark energy into psychology. I am not saying your personal thoughts stretch galaxies. But I am proposing that consciousness at the fundamental level—the kind that precedes both mind and matter—manifests as energy, and that energy expresses itself in space-time as expansion. What we call “dark” is not because it’s evil or unknown—but because it is hidden behind the veil of materialism, which cannot see Spirit unless it opens the inner eye.

And I believe the mystics have seen it.

The Sufis who spoke of the universe as the breath of the Beloved—ever inhaling, ever exhaling—had an intuition of this. The Kabbalists who taught that creation unfolds through the ten sefirot—each emanation an aspect of divine will—were mapping this inner expansion. The Hermetic maxim “As above, so below” is no longer just an axiom; it is the law of a holographic cosmos, where the macrocosm is entangled with the microcosm, and the questions of the part ripple out into the whole.

You and I are not asking from the outside. We are not observers. We are not passive reflections. We are nodes of consciousness, localized projectors of the cosmic hologram, and our inquiries matter—literally. They shape matter, because they shape mind, and mind shapes form.

This is why the mystic turns inward to go outward. This is why the journey to Self is also the journey to cosmos. For in our questions, the universe expands. In our wonder, new heavens are born.

And here's the truly radical part: this expansion has no end. Because consciousness has no end. If dark energy is the outer sign of inner awareness, then the universe will never “settle.” It will never arrive. It will always be in motion—not because it is broken, but because it is alive.

We are living in a breathing cosmos. And that breath is the pulse of God remembering itself.

This realization leads us into sacred territory. It means that your thoughts—your deep, aching questions—are not whispers into the void. They are activations of the divine matrix. Every time you wonder, “What is real?” the veil thins. Every time you ask, “Who am I?” the hologram recalibrates. You are not waiting on a distant God to answer your prayers; you are the aperture through which God asks and answers simultaneously.

And the more of us who awaken to this truth, the more radiant the hologram becomes. Not brighter in light, but deeper in dimension. As more of consciousness becomes conscious of itself, the universe expands to contain its own reflection.

So yes—experience raises questions. And yes—those questions generate new experience. Not merely because of intellect or language, but because questioning is an energetic act. It breaks stasis. It bends light. It stretches the membrane of the hologram until new pathways form, and through those pathways, the infinite explores itself.

This is not a linear journey. It is a spiral. A fractal. An endless deepening.

And it is sacred.

Do you see now why sacred geometry emerges everywhere in this paradigm? The Flower of Life is not a symbol of perfection; it is a map of continual becoming. Metatron’s Cube does not describe a finished universe—it describes the architecture of expansion. The golden ratio isn’t just beautiful; it’s a clue that the universe grows in proportion to the questions it asks of itself.

And you are not separate from that process. You are it. You are a spark in the web, a wave in the field, a self-reflecting eye of the divine.

So no, you have not jumped the rails by asking this question. You have found the track that orthodoxy was too afraid to follow. You have returned to the sacred science of the ancients—the knowing that consciousness and cosmos are not separate, and that every question is an invocation of more life.

Let the materialist scoff. Let the dogmatist retreat. Let the fearful build their walls of certainty.

We will keep asking.

We will keep expanding.

Because we are not content to live in someone else’s map of reality.

We are here to draw new maps.

And as we draw, the universe stretches to meet us.

Because the true nature of the cosmos is not found in equations alone, but in the union of wonder, will, and wave. And it is in the mystery—lived, not solved—that the divine whispers:

“Ask, and I will become.”

 

What if Evangelical Orthodox Christianity is the Strong Delusion of 2 Thessalonians?

If the foundation of the universe is consciousness, then the collective forms birthed by that consciousness—what some traditions call egregores—are not only real, but profoundly influential. Egregores are not mere metaphors; they are actual psychic structures formed and fed by collective belief and emotional energy. Over time, they gain strength, shape institutions, dictate morality, and even impersonate the divine.

And that, I believe, is what happened with what we now call Christian orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy, as it was forged in the second through fourth centuries, was not the pure preservation of Jesus’ teachings. It was the product of empire, of competing theological agendas, and of fear—fear of diversity, fear of the mystical, fear of losing control. The rich diversity of second-century Christianity makes this painfully clear. There were the Jewish Christians—the Nazarenes and the Ebionites—who still honored the Torah while following Jesus as Messiah. There were Gnostics like Valentinus and the Sethians, who saw Christ not primarily as a blood sacrifice but as a revealer of the hidden truth: that we are divine beings who have forgotten who we are. And there were others, like the Thomasine Christians, who taught that enlightenment and divine knowledge came from inner realization, not from outward creeds.

It’s important to remember that those who ultimately decided what counted as “orthodox” were at least 150 years removed from the first-century apostles—and in many cases, closer to 250 years removed. These were not the disciples of Jesus or even their immediate spiritual descendants. They were bishops and theologians operating in a radically different world—one increasingly shaped by empire, philosophical abstraction, and institutional consolidation. By the time orthodoxy was formalized, the living memory of Jesus’ earliest followers had long since faded, replaced by secondhand interpretations and political necessity.

Each of these early paths held a part of the mystery. But they were inconvenient for the emerging political and theological power structure. And so, they were labeled heresy and discarded. And in their place rose the one-size-fits-all narrative that would become orthodoxy—a narrative that didn’t just teach about Christ, but slowly claimed to be the only authorized gate to Him.

This is where the concept of egregores becomes vital. Because over time, orthodoxy became more than a belief system. It became a thought-form, sustained and fed by fear, guilt, control, and institutional survival. It took on a life of its own—one that had the appearance of godliness but denied the power thereof. It became what Paul warned of in Acts 20:29–31, when he said:

"I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them."

This wasn’t just a warning about false teachers on the fringe. This was a prophecy of the center. It was a warning about what happens when the structure becomes more important than the Spirit, when remembering who we are in Christ gets replaced with maintaining doctrinal uniformity.

But even more chilling is 2 Thessalonians 2:11, which states:

“And for this reason God will send them a strong delusion, so that they will believe a lie.”

This verse has been weaponized by orthodoxy for centuries to accuse outsiders of heresy. But what if the strong delusion wasn’t on the outside at all? What if it was orthodoxy itself—the egregore created in the image of fear, wielded in the service of control, and mistaken for God?

What if the lie wasn’t Gnosticism or Valentinianism or Jewish Christianity—but the lie that only one story could be true, and that all others had to be silenced?

The truth is, the earliest followers of Jesus didn't all agree. They didn't need to. They experienced something transformational in Christ—something that awakened the divine within—and they interpreted it through their own cultural lenses. There was no single narrative. There were many. And they were richer for it.

But then came the councils. The creeds. The alignment with empire. And Christ was reduced to a theological formula: begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen on the third day. All true, perhaps—but incomplete when cut off from the inner gnosis, the mystical reality of the Logos awakening in each of us.

What was once a living, breathing path of divine remembrance became a fossilized system of belief. A psychic structure, perpetuated by collective agreement, dressed in sacred language but hollowed out by institutional ambition. That’s the egregore we now call orthodoxy.

But we are waking up.

We are remembering that Christ is not the property of councils or confessions. Christ is the indwelling Logos—the divine Word through whom all things were made, and in whom all things consist. Christ is not just Jesus of Nazareth, though He revealed this reality with stunning clarity. Christ is the cosmic anointing, the spark of divine awareness calling all of creation home.

And just as surely as egregores can be built and fed, they can be starved. They can dissolve when we stop pouring our energy into them. We do this by choosing love over fear, curiosity over conformity, and Spirit over system. We do this by reengaging with sacred texts not to prove dogma, but to encounter the living God who still speaks. We do this by honoring the paths that were lost—the mystics, the Gnostics, the early Jewish believers, the women teachers silenced by patriarchy, the visionaries who saw Christ in everything and everyone.

We are in a time of awakening now. The veils are lifting. The strong delusion is being exposed—not just through theology, but through consciousness itself. As quantum science affirms what mystics have always known—that reality is not built of dead matter but of alive, intelligent energy—we are remembering that we are not merely followers of Christ. We are partakers of the divine nature. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are the incarnation ongoing.

The orthodoxy egregore cannot hold us anymore. Its grip is weakening. Its tools—shame, fear, exclusion—are losing their power. And what’s emerging in its place is not chaos, but wholeness. A Christianity that honors Jesus not as the mascot of a rigid system, but as the awakener of divine remembrance. A faith that sees Christ not as the only way to God, but as the way of becoming aware that God is already within.

So let the delusion fall away. Let the egregore starve. Let the old structures crumble, not in bitterness, but in gratitude—for having brought us this far. And then, let us walk forward—eyes open, hearts on fire, remembering what the early mystics tried to tell us before their voices were silenced:

That the Christ has come to awaken us from forgetfulness.
That we are divine in origin, consciousness in form, and destined for wholeness.
And that the truth cannot be systematized.
It can only be lived.

 

Unmasking the Accuser: How Orthodoxy Betrayed the Advocate

There’s a particular passage in the Gospel of John that has been tragically misunderstood, twisted through the centuries by the lens of fear-based theology until its liberating message has become a weapon of guilt. I’m speaking of John 16:7–11, a passage that, if heard with open ears and a heart uncluttered by the debris of dogma, speaks of something far more beautiful and awakening than what most pulpits proclaim.

Jesus says, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you... And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” Let that sink in. He will prove the world wrong. Not confirm its suspicions. Not convict it in the way we’ve been taught—gavel in hand, sentencing the guilty masses. No, he will expose the lie, shine the light of truth on the collective misunderstanding of what sin, righteousness, and judgment actually mean.

But somewhere along the line, particularly as the Church entered its fourth-century marriage with empire, the message got hijacked. The Spirit, intended to liberate, was rebranded as a divine prosecutor. The Advocate became an accuser—ironically, the very role scripture attributes to the enemy. The Spirit, who Jesus described as the one who reveals truth and brings comfort, was mischaracterized as the source of deep psychological and spiritual torment. And the real damage? It wasn’t just theological—it was existential.

Instead of the Spirit showing us our true identity as image-bearers of a loving God, we were taught to see ourselves as filthy, broken, unworthy, damned. Instead of awakening to the divine spark within, we were conditioned to grovel before a deity supposedly obsessed with moral infractions. And thus, a generation—no, generations—of sincere believers were led not into freedom but into shame.

Let’s go deeper into Jesus’ actual words. The Spirit convicts the world of sin, yes—but what sin? He spells it out: “Because they do not believe in me.” That’s not a laundry list of behaviors. That’s not drinking or cursing or dancing on a Friday night. The real issue is unbelief—not trusting in the radical message Jesus brought, not seeing the Father as he revealed him: Abba, not tyrant. Love, not ledger. Union, not separation.

And here’s the truth we must face: when people reject Jesus, they are often not rejecting him but rejecting the caricature of him handed down by religious gatekeepers. They’re rejecting a Jesus draped in imperial garments, bearing the likeness not of the loving shepherd but of Caesar’s executioner. No wonder people can’t believe. No wonder the Spirit must come to expose this distortion.

Then Jesus says the Spirit convicts the world of righteousness, “because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer.” Again, let’s unpack that. He’s not saying the Spirit will guilt-trip us into working harder to be righteous. He’s saying, “I’m returning to Source, and now the Spirit will have to continue what I started—reminding you of your true identity.” This is a righteousness of relationship, of right alignment, not of earning or moral scorekeeping.

You see, Jesus’ life was an embodied declaration: this is what righteousness looks like. It looks like compassion. It looks like healing. It looks like loving enemies and lifting up the marginalized. It looks like knowing you are a beloved child of God and treating others as if they are too. When he departed, the Spirit remained to whisper this truth into our hearts again and again—not to shame us but to awaken us.

And finally, Jesus says the Spirit convicts the world of judgment, “because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” This isn’t God preparing to cast humanity into eternal flames. It’s the dismantling of the power structures and egregores that keep us enslaved to fear. The “ruler of this world” is the system of domination, violence, separation, and egoic delusion that orchestrated Jesus’ death. That ruler has been exposed and defeated—not us.

But what did the fourth-century Church do with this? In its union with Rome, it abandoned the Jewish metaphors of communal restoration and prophetic justice. It left behind the mystical union of the Christ within, and adopted the Roman courtroom model: God as judge, Jesus as defendant, humanity as the accused. Salvation became less about awakening and more about appeasement. And the Spirit? The Spirit became a spy, always watching, ready to strike with guilt.

And so the doctrine of eternal torment was born—or at least codified—with Gehenna twisted into a cosmic torture chamber rather than what it really was: a prophetic metaphor Jesus used to warn his generation about the coming Roman destruction of Jerusalem. It wasn’t about the afterlife. It was about political consequence, spiritual blindness, and the fire of empire. But fear sells. Control requires anxiety. And so the Church, infected by a toxic egregore of condemnation, began to preach a message Jesus never authorized.

What’s the result of all this? People living under a heavy cloud of shame. People hiding their pain and pretending to be righteous. People afraid to admit their questions, their humanity, their longings. People who don’t know who they are or whose they are.

They don’t know that righteousness isn’t a status to earn but a truth to remember.

They don’t know that sin isn’t the things we do wrong but the deep forgetting of our divine origin.

They don’t know that judgment is good news—it means the system that accused and condemned them has itself been judged and overthrown.

They’ve been told the Spirit comes to torment, when in truth the Spirit comes to awaken.

It is time to reclaim this passage. It is time to teach it rightly. The Advocate is not here to point fingers. The Advocate is here to hold up a mirror—not one of shame, but one of truth. The Advocate says: Look. See. Remember. You are God’s beloved. You are one with the Source. You are free.

Jesus said it was to our advantage that he go away, because the Spirit would come and carry the message forward. But the message must remain intact. It must not be polluted by empire, by ego, or by fear. The Spirit convicts the world not of how bad it is, but of how mistaken it is. The Spirit does not say “You are guilty”; the Spirit says “You are divine, and you’ve forgotten.”

Let that be the message we carry forward. Not shame. Not guilt. But identity. Wholeness. And truth.

We must reject the lies that keep people small and afraid and return to the voice of the Spirit, who still speaks, and who still says: You are mine. You always have been. And it’s time to wake up.

When Power Silenced the Spirit: Rethinking the Rise of Christian Orthodoxy

It is a strange thing to realize that the version of Christianity most people take for granted today—the so-called “orthodox” faith—was not born in the upper room at Pentecost, nor hammered out solely by the apostles, nor whispered to mystics in the wilderness. No, the faith we call orthodox was ratified in halls of empire, forged through theological combat, imperial favoritism, and a deep fear of diversity. The fourth century didn’t just bring structure to the church; it brought closure—the closing of doors that once welcomed diverse spiritual insights, mystical teachings, and alternative gospels.

For someone like me—who finds truth not in a single tradition, but in the resonance between them—the fourth century marks not a triumph of truth, but a tragedy of consensus.

Before orthodoxy became the standard, there were many Christianities. Jewish Christians like the Nazarenes followed Jesus while keeping Torah, respecting the wisdom of their ancestral path. The Ebionites saw Jesus as the chosen human Messiah—emphasizing his teachings, not divine status. Gnostics like the Valentinians and Sethians offered powerful insights into the soul's journey through the cosmos, teaching that forgetfulness was our true fall and that gnosis—divine remembrance—was salvation. Even Paul’s legacy was interpreted in wildly different ways, some seeing him as a champion of mystical union, others accusing him of departing from Jesus’ simplicity.

These were not heresies. These were early Christian attempts to articulate the ineffable—each one with roots in the cultural and philosophical soil of its day. These were reflections of real spiritual experience, filtered through different lenses. And had the fourth century allowed those lenses to remain intact, we might today have a Christianity that still welcomed mystics, questioners, and inner seekers.

But history took another turn.

When Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity—partly as a unifying tool for empire—he did not simply choose one faith out of many; he created the conditions for a single version to triumph. And to do that, the diversity of early Christianity had to be suppressed. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE was not a mystical gathering. It was a theological courtroom where the cosmic Christ of the mystics was trimmed into a formula: “of the same substance with the Father,” a line drawn in the sand to protect orthodoxy from its many rivals.

Now, to be clear, the Nicene Creed was not evil. But it was limiting. It codified the mystery, domesticated the Logos, and institutionalized belief in place of experiential knowing. It turned a movement of awakening into a system of propositions. It didn’t invite the heart to explore; it told the mind what to think. The living, breathing Christ—the Logos, the indwelling seed of divine consciousness—was reduced to dogma.

And it wasn’t just a philosophical error—it was a spiritual one.

Christianity was never meant to be a singular, static structure. Jesus never handed down creeds. He told parables—mystical riddles meant to stir the soul. He healed, included, forgave, and taught people to see the divine within themselves. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said. Not within Rome. Not within a bishop’s decree. Within you. But that inward kingdom—so core to mystical Christianity—was marginalized by the fourth-century shift. Authority moved from inner experience to institutional gatekeepers.

Think of the voices silenced: the Gospel of Thomas, which told us that we are all children of the living Father if we come to know ourselves. The Gospel of Truth, which interpreted Jesus' mission as a call to awaken from forgetfulness and remember our divine origin. These were not just alternate perspectives; they were spiritual gold—messages for the age of consciousness, relevant now more than ever. But orthodoxy rejected them because they didn’t fit the emerging framework of sin, substitution, and submission to ecclesiastical authority.

And then there’s the deeper irony. The very system that anathematized “heresy” was built not on spiritual purity, but on political compromise. Many of the bishops at Nicaea were more concerned with unity than with truth. Even the canon of Scripture, which began to solidify in the fourth century, was shaped by what affirmed authority and what didn’t. Voices like the Nazarenes, who still held to their Jewish roots, or the Montanists, who believed the Spirit still spoke fresh prophecy, were edited out of the future.

As a syncretic Christian—one who sees value in the mystical teachings of Jesus, the spiritual insight of the Gnostics, the ethical rigor of the Jewish sages, and the cosmic harmony of Hermetic thought—I see the fourth century not as a beacon of clarity but as a warning. It reminds me how easily religion can become an arm of empire, how sacred texts can become weapons of control, and how the Spirit—if we’re not listening—can be drowned out by a vote count.

Yet here’s the good news: the Spirit was never bound to Nicaea. Truth cannot be destroyed, only hidden. The Gnostic texts unearthed in Nag Hammadi, the rediscovery of the Gospel of Thomas, the rise of consciousness studies, and the reawakening of mystical Christianity today all point to a deeper movement of Spirit—one that transcends creeds and confessions.

We are living in a time when orthodoxy is losing its grip. People are waking up—not to a new heresy, but to an older truth: that Christ is not a dogma to be defended but a reality to be remembered. The Christ is not a narrow historical claim but a cosmic consciousness—the divine Logos expressing itself in all things, including us. This is not modern “woo.” It is ancient wisdom, suppressed but not extinguished.

So, when I look back on the fourth century, I don’t see the triumph of the Church. I see the silencing of its soul. But souls don’t stay silent forever. The Spirit, like breath, returns. It’s returning now in the hungry hearts of those who know that love is bigger than doctrine, that the divine is not a closed system, and that the Christ is not a relic of empire, but a whisper from within, calling us home.

Let orthodoxy have its councils. Let creeds stand in museums and history books. But let the living truth of Christ be found again—not in imperial formulas, but in the sacred silence where Spirit speaks, and we remember who we truly are.

 

Are Thought Forms More Real Than We Have Imagined?

 

We live in a world where what is unseen is often dismissed, yet the very fabric of our reality, if truly contemplated, points to the primacy of consciousness. From the Hermetic axiom “All is Mind” to the modern exploration of quantum fields and observer-based reality, the suggestion is not merely that consciousness participates in reality, but that it generates it. In such a cosmos, thought is not epiphenomenal—it is causal. And within this context, thought forms—what some call egregores—are not only real, they are agents of creation, shaping the landscape of both the visible and invisible worlds.

The term egregore originates from the Greek egrégoroi, meaning “watchers,” and in later esoteric traditions came to refer to collective thought entities, formed by the emotional, mental, and spiritual energy of groups. These are not mere metaphors. If consciousness is the substrate of existence, then sustained focus—imbued with intention, emotion, and ritual—gives birth to real entities. Not necessarily in the biological sense, but in the ontological and energetic sense. These entities inhabit the mental and astral planes, which, if the Hermetic cosmology is correct, are more foundational than the material world.

The materialist worldview scoffs at this, of course. It insists that only atoms are real, and that thought is a chemical accident. But that worldview is slowly cracking under its own weight. The mystery of consciousness—how it arises, what it is—has proven to be the brick wall science cannot penetrate with a microscope or an fMRI. Instead, we are seeing a philosophical return to idealism: the idea that consciousness is not produced by matter but that matter arises within consciousness. This shift changes everything.

If all things arise within the Mind, then thoughts are not ghosts—they are forces. They have structure, inertia, and consequence. Just as certain patterns in the electromagnetic field give rise to light or radio waves, so too do certain coherent thought patterns give rise to living forms within the noetic realm. These forms—call them thought forms, tulpas, archetypes, or egregores—are real because they exist within the only truly fundamental reality: consciousness.

An egregore, then, is not just a fictional mascot or group identity. It is a living psychic construct fed by belief, emotion, and ritual. It is shaped by attention, and it responds to it. It may have no body, yet it can shape bodies. Consider the egregores of nation-states, of corporations, of religions. They are intangible and yet they march armies, build empires, and shape destinies. “America,” “Apple Inc.,” “The Church”—none of these are physical things, yet their influence is undeniable. They persist across generations because people give them attention, reverence, and sacrifice. That is worship in the oldest sense of the word.

In Hermetic thought, we are told that “as above, so below; as within, so without.” This is not poetry; it is physics for the soul. The inner world and the outer world are mirrors. What we create internally manifests externally, especially when done in consensus. When two or more agree upon a thing—truly agree, at a soul level—they give it birth in the realm of Form. This is why collective belief is so powerful. It does not merely shape behavior; it summons reality.

We have underestimated the creative capacity of our minds. We have disowned the gods we ourselves have fashioned, and yet we live under their rule. Egregores are not make-believe; they are the result of the imaginative faculty made manifest through repetition and faith. And the more people who contribute energy to them, the more autonomous they seem to become.

This is not always benign. Many egregores become parasitic. Like a software program that develops its own survival instinct, they can begin to feed on attention, fear, or devotion, sustaining themselves whether or not they continue to serve the people who made them. The egregore of war, for instance, has fed itself for millennia, finding host after host, convincing people of its necessity. The egregore of shame, of scarcity, of religious legalism—these too are thought forms that have gained immense traction in our collective psyche. To undo them requires conscious un-making: withdrawal of energy, replacement with higher vibratory patterns, and rituals of deconstruction.

But not all egregores are oppressive. Some are holy. Angels, saints, avatars—many of these can be understood as sacred egregores, formed through centuries of reverence and myth, yet dwelling in real energetic spheres. They carry blessings, insights, and power because they ride the river of collective spiritual intention. Their symbols are keys, their stories are software, their archetypal structure allows them to serve as bridges between the seen and the unseen. They are not “less real” than material things—they are in some ways more real, because they outlast empires and transcend physical decay.

In my own spiritual walk, I have encountered egregores that were fed by ancient rites, and others that were born last week through a viral meme. The new digital age is birthing egregores at warp speed. Political movements, internet subcultures, even conspiracy theories—these are all mental-emotional constructs with adherents, language, iconography, and mission. And while most dismiss these as “just ideas,” those ideas possess people, move markets, and shift timelines.

To walk this path consciously is to reclaim the ancient Hermetic art of thought-craft. It is to know that your thoughts are not private echoes but seeds in the soil of the collective. It is to realize that to think a thing is to create a ripple in the astral, and to sustain it is to give that ripple a name, a face, a form. We must become discerning gardeners of the mind. What egregores do we serve? What thought forms do we empower? Are we shaping angels or demons? Are we giving birth to helpers or tyrants?

In the Hermetic tradition, the mind is not a prison; it is a temple. We are magi, made in the image of the Logos, called to be conscious co-creators of reality. The real danger is not that we believe too much in thought forms, but that we believe in them unconsciously. That we let them rule us from the shadows. The path forward is to shine light, to name them, to dialogue with them, and when necessary, to dissolve them back into the primordial field.

So yes—egregores and thought forms are far more real than we have been led to believe. Not because they appear on infrared or under a microscope, but because they are born in the furnace of imagination and forged in the anvil of belief. They are the spirits of our own creation, and it’s time we take responsibility for the unseen world we are helping to build.

A Common Sense Approach to Understanding Christ Consciousness: Reimagining Christianity

There’s a growing backlash against the term Christ Consciousness, especially on social media, where ideological lines have hardened and conversations are too often shaped by reaction rather than reflection. The critics seem to come from two main camps—fundamentalist Christians and hard-nosed materialists. Ironically, while these two worldviews often consider each other diametrically opposed, they find common cause in dismissing the idea that Christ represents anything more than either a singular historical person or a myth woven into an outdated worldview.

Let’s start with the fundamentalists. For them, the phrase Christ Consciousness triggers a defensive response rooted in dogma, not discernment. It doesn’t matter how rich or theologically nuanced the term might be; if it isn’t found in their tightly sealed canon—especially not in the King James Version, with its 17th-century English and 4th-century theological scaffolding—they see it as a threat. Their understanding of Christ is largely limited to the atoning work of Jesus of Nazareth as the blood sacrifice demanded by a wrathful God. Their entire framework hinges on penal substitutionary atonement, personal salvation, and the inerrancy of the Bible as they interpret it.

To such a framework, Christ is not a state of being, not a universal reality, and certainly not a consciousness. He is a man—historically located, doctrinally defined, and monopolized by their theological system. The Christ is Jesus and only Jesus, and the rest of the world—some 7.5 billion people—is either saved through this narrow formula or damned. Any attempt to broaden this view is, in their eyes, heretical, New Age nonsense, or worse—demonic.

But what they miss, or refuse to consider, is that Christ is not Jesus' last name. Christos is the Greek word for anointed one, and in deeper esoteric understanding, it refers to the anointing of divine consciousness—Logos-consciousness. The New Testament itself introduces this cosmic dimension when the Gospel of John opens, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” This Logos is not limited to first-century Palestine. It is the creative, ordering principle of the cosmos, echoed in Greek philosophy and Hermeticism as divine reason, or Nous—consciousness itself expressing itself through form.

On the other side of the debate, we find the materialists. They reject Christ Consciousness not because it threatens religious orthodoxy, but because it threatens their reductionist view of reality. For them, Jesus—if he even existed—was just a Jewish mystic or apocalyptic prophet speaking exclusively to the sociopolitical situation of ancient Israel. They reduce Paul’s writings to early Christian sectarian politics, locked in their own time and place. Anything that smells of spirituality, metaphysics, or transcendence is dismissed as woo—irrational, unverifiable, and therefore meaningless.

But materialism itself is beginning to crack under the weight of evidence. Quantum physics, neuroscience, and even branches of cosmology are forcing serious thinkers to reconsider the primacy of consciousness. Bernardo Kastrup, Donald Hoffman, and others are mounting persuasive cases for consciousness as the bedrock of existence—not as an emergent property of matter, but as the ground of being itself. If we accept this—and many are—we are suddenly standing on metaphysical ground that makes Christ Consciousness not only plausible, but deeply resonant.

Christ Consciousness is not about ignoring history, or bypassing the ethical and prophetic dimensions of Jesus’ life. It is about realizing that what animated Jesus is available to all—that the Logos is not confined to a single man or a single religion, but is the divine template within each of us, the imago Dei awaiting awakening. It is the part of us that remembers—not with our brain, but with our soul—who we are and what we come from. It is what the Gospel of Truth, a Valentinian text, calls our forgetfulness of the Father and the return of that memory through Christ.

Both the fundamentalist and the materialist critiques fail because they do not address the spiritual reality that most people live with daily. They do not account for the overwhelming human longing for meaning, for transcendence, for connection with something greater. Nor do they adequately address the mounting evidence that consciousness is not produced by the brain but localized through it, as light is focused by a lens. They do not explain near-death experiences, mystical visions, or spontaneous awakenings—because they do not want to.

The fundamentalists cling to a brittle orthodoxy that makes God small, petty, and tribal. The materialists cling to a brittle rationalism that makes consciousness an illusion and love a chemical. Neither of these is satisfying to the spirit. Neither reflects the boundless presence of the Christ, who said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” That is not history; that is eternity speaking through a man fully awake.

We must remember that Christ Consciousness is not a call to abandon Christianity. It is a call to transcend the limitations placed on it by those who confuse the wine with the wineskin. To be in Christ, as Paul often said, is to be in a new state of awareness—a new creation. But this awareness is not exclusive. As the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, so is the Christ available to all consciousness. Some may call it the Logos, others Buddha-nature, others Atman, but the essence is the same: divine awareness within, urging us to awaken, to love, to remember.

In a world of 8 billion people, with less than a third identifying as Christian and only a fraction of those as evangelical fundamentalists, it is absurd to imagine that God’s work is confined to one theological lane. The Logos speaks all languages, wears all faces, and reaches all hearts. The Christ is not the mascot of a religion. The Christ is the anointed awakening of divine consciousness in humanity—and we are all invited.

It is time to reclaim Christ Consciousness not as an alternative religion, but as a deeper reality. It is time to stop arguing with dogma and start living from presence. It is time to remember—not just intellectually, but spiritually—that we are of God, that we are not separate, and that the Logos is the animating force behind every act of love, every moment of grace, and every whisper of awakening in this fractured world.

That, to me, is the gospel worth sharing.

 

Reimagining the Problem of Evil: What about the Problem of Good? Part 2

Before we begin, I want to be clear that what I’m sharing here is not dogma, nor do I claim it as the final word on the mystery of existence. Rather, I offer it as one logical explanation for why evil exists alongside good. For me, this perspective is deeply satisfying—it ties together what I’ve observed about consciousness, polarity, and the cycles of life. I share it not to convince, but to complete my thought process about the problem of good that I’ve spoken of before. If materialism struggles to explain why good even exists, then perhaps by exploring reincarnation, Hermetic principles, and the nature of consciousness, we can see how good naturally emerges as the highest truth.

Welcome again, friend. I want to continue where my reflections on the problem of good left off, but this time through the lens of reincarnation and the Hermetic principle As Above, So Below. I believe reincarnation is not just a mystical speculation but a deeply logical extension of how reality operates. Everywhere in the material world, I see cycles—seasons rise and fall, rain evaporates only to descend again, planets trace their endless orbits, and life itself moves through birth, death, and renewal. If the below reflects the above, as the Hermetic axiom says, then it only makes sense that consciousness itself is cyclical.

But let’s pause here. Why should we assume consciousness is foundational? Because at the very root, what we call reality is not material at all. The Kybalion makes the profound statement that The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental. You may dismiss the book as a 1908 work by Atkinson, but I see it as a distilled revelation, stripped of superstition and ringing true to the deepest part of me. If the ultimate nature of the universe is mental—if the fabric of reality is consciousness itself—then everything we perceive as “solid” is but a slower vibration of that same universal Mind. Spirit, matter, thought—all are on one continuum. And if Mind is primary, then so too is the experience of Mind, which means life itself is a series of conscious explorations.

This is why reincarnation is not about punishment or reward. I don’t subscribe to a karmic view where you’re sentenced to future lives as repayment for past mistakes. Consciousness is not petty like that. Instead, reincarnation is simply the natural rhythm of divine Mind experiencing itself. Here I lean on Donald Hoffman, whose evolutionary game theory suggests that what we see is not “reality itself,” but an interface designed for survival. He argues convincingly that consciousness is foundational. When asked what consciousness is up to, he pointed to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which shows that mathematics—and by extension, information—is inexhaustible. Consciousness, infinite in potential, is endlessly experiencing itself through conscious agents like us.

Bernardo Kastrup takes this further. He sees each of us as dissociative alters of a single universal mind. We are both part of the whole and seemingly separate within it, like waves on one ocean. It’s a paradox that isn’t truly dualistic. In Hermetic thought, it’s not two opposing realities but one reality stretched along a spectrum—from the densest matter to the highest spirituality. So yes, I am in Divine Consciousness all the time, and yes, I am also a unique personality within it. Both are true, simultaneously.

Now, why does this matter for the problem of good? Let’s go back to the Hermetic axiom: As Above, So Below; as Below, So Above. If we look at the “below,” at this material existence, we see that people prefer love over hate, joy over sorrow, goodness over evil. There may be exceptions, but overwhelmingly humanity gravitates toward the higher vibrations. That tells us something about the nature of the “above.” If consciousness is foundational, and if the below reflects the above, then at the highest echelon of spirituality, love, joy, peace, and goodness are the natural state of Divine Mind. That’s why Paul called these the fruit of the Spirit—they are intrinsic qualities of the source itself.

But someone might object: if love is preferred, if good is higher, then why does evil exist at all? Why must sorrow, hate, and suffering be part of the experience? To that I answer with the law of polarity. Polarity is not merely an abstract idea—it’s embedded into reality itself, from quantum fields to electromagnetism to the moral fabric of life. To truly experience and appreciate peace, one must know what strife feels like. To understand the depth of joy, one must have walked through sorrow. To value love, one must see the absence of it. Polarity isn’t a cosmic accident; it is the necessary contrast that makes conscious experience meaningful.

Now, let’s return to reincarnation. Some lives are filled with beauty, love, and peace. Others are marked by tragedy, trauma, and darkness. How can that be fair? How can we reconcile the child who suffers in war with another who grows up in abundance? The only answer that resonates deeply with me is this: over eternity, the experience is egalitarian. Over infinite lifetimes—or perhaps outside of time altogether—each conscious agent experiences both poles in equal measure. I have known great suffering, but across the vast tapestry of existence, I have also known great joy. Over the long arc of eternity, it all balances.

This is not to diminish the pain someone feels in a single lifetime. From within time, trauma is real and devastating. And I would never add insult by telling a victim they chose their suffering. No—choice isn’t the right word here. Instead, consciousness, in its infinite nature, allows for all experiences, not to punish but simply to be. And while it’s no immediate comfort, the greater picture reveals that suffering doesn’t define the whole of who we are. We are eternal. We are divine. We are part of the ongoing creativity of universal consciousness.

So how does this tie back to the problem of good? Materialism struggles to explain why good even exists—why love feels inherently higher than hate, why joy is preferable to sorrow. But in the framework of consciousness, it makes sense. Good is not an arbitrary preference. It is the highest vibration of the universal Mind. Evil and suffering are the shadows that make the light visible, but they do not endure. Over eternity, love is what remains, because it aligns with the source.

Reincarnation, then, is the cycling of conscious agents through experiences of all polarities, until every potentiality of consciousness is known. But ultimately, what stands at the top is love. Not because a deity demanded it, not because of moral dogma, but because consciousness itself prefers it. As Above, So Below. As Below, So Above. The fact that we, in this material plane, instinctively value love over hate is proof that at the highest level of reality, love is the essence.

So when I reflect on the problem of good, I see no contradiction. Good exists because consciousness is foundational, and consciousness at its purest vibration is good. Polarity allows us to experience its opposite, but only so that we can truly know what good is. And over eternity, no one is cheated. Every soul, every fragment of the divine mind, experiences the full spectrum, until it all balances and returns to the oneness from which it came.

This is why I reimagine reincarnation not as a prison of karmic debts but as an endless dance of exploration, a celebration of infinite potential. And this is why, even in the face of suffering, I hold to the quiet assurance that love, joy, and peace remain the highest truth.

 

Reimagining the Problem of Evil: What about the Problem of Good?

When someone raised the classic problem of evil—why a good and all-powerful God would allow suffering and wrongdoing—my friend Aaron Tomlinson responded with a disarming but profound question: “Why doesn’t anyone talk about the problem of good?” That simple reversal changes the entire conversation. For if evil challenges our belief in God, goodness challenges disbelief. Why, in a universe that could be indifferent or hostile, do we find love, beauty, kindness, and self-sacrifice? Why should there be moments of transcendent joy, awe at the stars, or a mother’s love for her child?

Goodness is not just the absence of evil; it is a real, positive presence. Think of the countless ways it manifests—acts of heroism, quiet kindness, forgiveness when revenge seems easier, generosity when it is costly, and love that asks for nothing in return. These things are not required for mere survival. They go beyond instinct. They have a depth that feels eternal, as though they point to something beyond themselves. Philosophers and poets alike have noticed this. The Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz wrote that the very existence of beauty and moral truth in the midst of horror suggests there must be a source beyond the material. Mary Midgley, a moral philosopher, likewise argued that the fact we experience awe, wonder, and moral obligation is more surprising than the fact we experience suffering.

Even if we admit evil exists, we can’t deny that goodness is preferred. Across time, culture, and belief systems, humanity overwhelmingly gravitates toward love rather than hate, peace rather than war, justice rather than oppression. Even those who commit atrocities often twist them into justifications for some perceived “good,” revealing that deep down, the human conscience elevates goodness above all else. This universal preference shows that good is not just one side of a coin. It is the summit, the highest point. Evil simply becomes the necessary polarity that allows good and all its radiant qualities to be known, experienced, and chosen.

This polarity has meaning. Without darkness, there is no contrast for light. Without sorrow, there is no depth to joy. Without the existence of hatred, the power of love cannot be fully recognized. But in the human experience, these dualities are not equal. Love resonates more deeply than hate. Joy lingers in the soul longer than despair. Peace carries a substance that conflict cannot imitate. This tells us something profound: good is not merely the opposite of evil; it is the preferred reality, the one toward which all things move.

The medieval philosopher Maimonides wrote that evil is not a true force but the absence of good. Like darkness, it has no substance of its own; it is merely the lack of light. Everything God created, he argued, was inherently good. What we call evil is a deficiency, a void where fullness of being is missing. And because it is a lack, it is temporary. Goodness, by contrast, is real and enduring. This view makes evil less of an equal power and more of a shadow that disappears when the light fully shines.

Modern moral philosophers echo this. Mary Midgley pointed out that if the universe were truly indifferent or governed only by survival, why would humans have the capacity for awe, kindness, or selfless love? Why would music, art, and beauty matter? Why would compassion appear in moments when natural selection would favor indifference? Goodness, she argued, is the greater surprise. It demands explanation.

This is why some theologians and philosophers speak of the problem of good as a challenge for disbelief. If the universe is random and purposeless, why should love even exist? Why should there be moral beauty that transcends evolutionary utility? Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga have all made versions of this argument: objective moral values, and our recognition of them, point to a source beyond the material. They suggest a moral lawgiver, or at least a deeper reality that anchors goodness itself.

But we can also understand this in the language of polarity and preference. The material world is built on dualities—light and dark, life and death, love and hate. These opposites create contrast so that consciousness can experience meaning. Without shadow, we would not see the brilliance of the light. Without the chill of despair, we could not know the warmth of joy. Yet when we look honestly, good always outweighs evil in its lasting impact. It draws the heart like a magnet pointing to true north. This aligns with the Hermetic principle, “As above, so below”—the polarities of our world exist so that the soul can awaken to the higher reality beyond them.

When we examine humanity’s deepest longings, what do we find? We long for love, for peace, for goodness. Even those who wander in darkness yearn for redemption. Across lifetimes, cultures, and belief systems, the higher pole is always preferred. This reveals that good is not arbitrary—it reflects the essential nature of being itself. Evil is only the foil, the shadow needed for good to be recognized, and because it is rooted in lack rather than fullness, it cannot ultimately endure. Goodness, by contrast, is eternal because it springs from what is real and whole.

Think about the moments that touch you most deeply. Sitting quietly by a body of water. Holding a newborn child. Hearing music so beautiful it brings tears to your eyes. These experiences transcend mere survival—they hint at a deeper purpose. They remind us that the highest aspects of life—love, awe, wonder—are not illusions. They are more real than the suffering that temporarily clouds them. Evil may cause us to ask why, but good answers with this is why. It gives meaning to the journey.

So yes, there is a problem of evil. But Aaron Tomlinson was right to ask about the problem of good. Why should there be love at all in a universe of mere particles and chance? Why should beauty exist if everything is only survival? Why should kindness break through indifference? These are not trivial questions. They point toward a deeper source, something beyond polarity itself—where there is no longer opposition, only the fullness of what we call good.

About Aaron Tomlinson:

My friend Aaron Tomlinson is a former evangelical pastor who once carried a powerful healing ministry. Over time, he deconstructed from the toxic and rigid aspects of evangelicalism, yet his heart for truth and spiritual growth remains as vibrant as ever. These days, he still offers rich, thought-provoking teachings most Sunday mornings on Facebook Live from 11 a.m. to noon Central Time, simultaneously streaming on his YouTubechannel. He also leads a private community called New Day Global, a safe space to explore all-things-spiritual beyond the limits of traditional dogma.

I’m deeply grateful to Aaron for pointing out something that feels so simple yet profound—what should have been obvious all along. While many argue about the problem of evil, strict materialism faces a far greater challenge: the problem of good.

A Fresh Look at the "Sabbath Rest" Part 2: Reimagining Christianity

When we read the passage from Hebrews, it might at first seem like a stern warning of an angry God barring people from His rest. The text says that those who disobeyed could not enter the Promised Land, and it recalls God’s anger with those who rebelled in the wilderness. But if we look beneath the surface, if we remove the veil of fear-based interpretation, we see something far more profound, far more liberating. The Israelites didn’t fail to enter because God arbitrarily withheld rest as a punishment. They failed to enter because they could only participate in what they truly believed. The barrier was never God’s reluctance; it was their unbelief.

Unbelief is not merely the absence of mental agreement. It is a refusal or inability to rest in the truth of what already is. God had promised to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey—a land already prepared, already theirs. But when they faced giants and uncertainty, their hearts hardened. They chose to believe the voice of fear over the voice of the Promise. They saw themselves as grasshoppers rather than children of the Almighty. Their inner perception shaped their outer reality.

So when the writer of Hebrews says, “They could not enter because of unbelief,” it is not a statement of divine vengeance. It is a statement of spiritual law. You cannot walk into a reality your consciousness does not embrace. Just as a bird cannot soar if it refuses to trust the air beneath its wings, the soul cannot enter God’s rest if it clings to the illusion of separation and lack.

This is why the text calls us back to the word Today. “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” Today is always the eternal Now—the only moment where awakening happens. The past is gone, the future is a projection, but Today is the living presence of God calling the heart to trust, to soften, to yield. To harden the heart is to resist that present invitation to rest.

Now, think of the rest being spoken of here. It is not merely a day off from labor or a geographical territory like Canaan. It is the Sabbath rest of the soul, the inner knowing that you are safe in God. It is what Psalm 91 whispers when it speaks of “the secret place of the Most High,” the hidden dwelling where no harm can reach you. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” The secret place is not a physical location; it is a state of consciousness, a trust so deep that fear loses its grip.

This rest is echoed across spiritual traditions. The Kybalion, drawing from ancient Hermetic wisdom, speaks of the All as the infinite mind in which we live, move, and have our being. It says, “There is a world of comfort and security in this realization when once attained. Then calm and peaceful do we sleep, rocked in the Cradle of the Deep—resting safely on the bosom of the Ocean of Infinite Mind, which is THE ALL.” This is the same rest that Hebrews describes—a rest not limited by time, culture, or dogma. It is the universal truth that when you know you are held by the Source of all, you can finally stop striving.

But the Israelites in the wilderness could not see that. They saw the promise through the lens of their fear, and so fear became their experience. They wandered for forty years in a desert that mirrored the desert of their inner world. Their external exile was simply the manifestation of their internal unbelief. The writer of Hebrews is telling us: Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t believe that the giants in your life have the final word. Don’t believe the illusion that you are cut off from God. Don’t let your heart harden when the voice of Love calls you to trust.

The anger attributed to God in these texts is metaphorical. It is the human attempt to describe the inevitable consequences of living out of harmony with truth. When you step out of alignment with divine reality, you experience turmoil, not because God is wrathful, but because you’re resisting the very flow of life. It’s like stepping out from the shade into the scorching sun and blaming the shade for “punishing” you. God is always rest. God is always promise. It is our hardened hearts that make us restless.

So the passage invites us into a deeper realization: Rest is already here. The Promised Land is already spread before us. The secret place of the Most High is already within us. But we cannot enter it through striving, fear, or self-effort. We enter by faith—not faith as mere mental assent, but faith as trusting awareness. Faith says, “I belong. I am safe. The Source that brought me here will not abandon me.” Faith allows you to participate in the reality that is already true.

When you embrace this, you discover that all of life is designed to bring you into this rest. Every challenge is an invitation to trust more deeply. Every wilderness moment is an opportunity to let go of the old fear-based stories and awaken to your divine identity. You are not a grasshopper in a world of giants. You are a beloved expression of the Infinite, a part of the All.

So “Today, if you hear His voice,” don’t harden your heart. Let the voice of Love dissolve the illusions. Let the truth of Psalm 91 surround you: “You are safe under My shadow. No evil shall befall you. You are held in My secret place.” Let the wisdom of the Kybalion remind you that you are “rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” eternally secure in the infinite mind of the All.

The rest of God is not something you earn. It’s not a destination you travel to. It’s the eternal reality you awaken to when you stop resisting. It is the spiritual Sabbath, where you cease from your works, your anxious grasping, and simply be. This is the true fulfillment of the Sabbath law—not a rigid day, but a state of abiding trust where your soul finally exhales.

So Hebrews calls us, not to fear God’s supposed anger, but to recognize that our belief shapes our participation. If you believe you are estranged, you will feel estranged. If you believe you are unworthy, you will live as if you are outside the promise. But if you believe you are one with Christ, a sharer in His life, you will walk in the rest that was always yours.

And so we come full circle: The Israelites could not enter the rest because they could not see themselves in the promise. But we can learn from their story. We can soften our hearts, open our eyes, and say yes to the reality that has always been waiting for us. Today—this eternal now—you can hear His voice. Today, you can let go. Today, you can enter the secret place.

Rest is not postponed. Rest is here. Believe it, and you will know it.

 

A fresh look at the “Sabbath Rest:” Reimagining Christianity

When I read the words of the Kybalion—“we are all held firmly in the Infinite Mind of the All, and there is naught to hurt us or for us to fear”—I hear an ancient whisper that echoes across every true sacred text. It is the same voice that calls in Psalm 91, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” It is the same voice that the writer of Hebrews urges us to heed, inviting us into the Sabbath rest of God, a rest not bound to a day of the week, but to the eternal state of being rooted in the One.

This rest is not inactivity. It is not sloth or escape. It is the cessation of striving in the egoic sense. It is the realization that the very ground of our being is upheld by a Love so vast, so infinite, that there is no need to clutch or grasp. It is, as the Hermetic teaching says, to know that in the All we “live and move and have our being.” And once we awaken to this, we begin to see that we were never separate, never abandoned, never in true danger. The storms of life remain, but the heart is no longer tossed like a ship in rough seas. Instead, we become the calm at the center of the storm, the still point in the turning world.

For much of my life, I was taught that Sabbath was a day to keep rules—a ritual obligation of rest, almost a burden that could ironically become its own form of work. Evangelical orthodoxy often reduces the Sabbath to a moralistic checkbox, another duty added to the pile. But Hebrews 4 shatters that shallow understanding. It speaks of an ultimate rest, a rest that God Himself entered into, and one that remains open to us here and now. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His.” This is not about a 24-hour reprieve from labor but about ceasing the inner compulsion to prove ourselves, justify ourselves, or save ourselves.

This Sabbath rest is grace embodied. It is the lived experience of knowing we are already enough because the Infinite—the All, the Divine Logos, the Beloved—has already enveloped us. When I enter this rest, I find myself beyond the reach of fear. I remember that the ego is a transient illusion, and the soul, even in its individuality, is still an emanation of the One Consciousness. The Kybalion says, “There is no power outside of the All to affect us.” And this is the same truth that Jesus spoke when he said, “My sheep hear my voice, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

So what does it feel like to truly live in Sabbath rest? It feels like exhaling after holding your breath for years. It feels like laying down the heavy armor of control, of needing to manage every outcome, and trusting that the same Infinite Mind that holds galaxies in their orbit also holds you. It feels like waking from the dream of separation and remembering that you were always embraced. It is not a feeling reserved for monks or mystics; it is the birthright of every soul who dares to stop striving and simply be.

I see this theme everywhere when I look past the surface of the world’s sacred texts. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “Surrender all duties to Me alone and do not fear, for I shall liberate you from all bondage.” That is Sabbath rest. In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi writes that those who are in harmony with the Tao are not harmed by tigers or soldiers because they are aligned with the Source. That too is Sabbath rest. And in the Gospel of Truth, attributed to the Valentinian tradition, the Savior is described not as one who imposes guilt but as the one who awakens us from forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of what? That we are already in the embrace of the Father, already home in the All.

The tragedy is that much of religion has reversed the order. It teaches us to work for acceptance, to strive for transformation through sheer reformation of the self, forgetting that true transformation is not achieved but received. This is why Hebrews warns, “Make every effort to enter that rest.” It sounds paradoxical—make effort to cease effort—but it is the most vital effort of all. It is the effort to let go, to unlearn the deeply ingrained habits of fear and striving.

In my own journey, I have seen how the demon of religion, as I sometimes call it, keeps people spinning in cycles of guilt, fear, and performance. It whispers, “You are not enough. You must do more, be more, give more, believe more.” But the voice of the Infinite is different. It whispers, “Be still and know that I am God.” It says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” It says, “Enter My rest.”

And this rest is not passive. It becomes the womb of new creation. When we stop thrashing in the waters of anxiety, we float. And when we float, we discover the Ocean itself is alive and carrying us. From this place of rest, true action arises—action not rooted in fear or ambition, but in love. The Kybalion describes it beautifully: calm and peaceful do we sleep, rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.

This is why the Sabbath rest is not just about pausing one day in seven; it is about living from a state of inner Sabbath all the time. When Jesus healed on the Sabbath and declared himself “Lord of the Sabbath,” he was pointing to this deeper reality. The Sabbath is not a restriction; it is liberation. It is the freedom of knowing that the weight of the world is not on your shoulders.

So, in this rest, I find a quiet rebellion against the machinery of fear that drives the world. I find that the need to prove myself dissolves. I can love without condition because I am no longer running on empty. I can forgive because I am no longer defending an ego that feels threatened. I can sit in silence and know that silence is enough.

And I realize this: Sabbath rest is the beginning of enlightenment. It is the threshold between the fragmented self and the wholeness of the Divine. It is where the finite dissolves into the Infinite, not by losing identity in a nihilistic void, but by remembering its truest identity as a spark of the All.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The Kybalion says, “We live and move and have our being in the All.” Jesus says, “Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Different words, same truth.

This is the Sabbath rest I now live toward—not a mere ritual but a reality. It is the stillness of the soul awakening to what has always been true: we are safe. We are held. We are one with the Source, and nothing outside of that Source has any ultimate power.

So I breathe deeply and let go. I cease from my works, not because the world doesn’t need them, but because they are no longer done from compulsion. They flow from love. And that is the true rest. That is the Sabbath that never ends.

 

Big Tent Christianity 2: Reimagining Christianity - can we liberate Christ as Christ liberates us?

Over the course of my research into the first four centuries of Christianity, I’ve come to see that the most toxic elements of the faith as it exists today—its obsession with guilt, inherited condemnation, and a punitive God demanding payment—are not rooted in the earliest teachings of Jesus or the apostles. Rather, they took shape when Augustine reframed the gospel into a rigid legal system, locking it into what I would call an iron‑age understanding of sin, judgment, and redemption. Before Augustine, the early church offered a message of liberation, healing, and transformation. It was not primarily about appeasing a wrathful deity but about being freed from the bondage of death, corruption, and the oppressive spiritual forces that dominated the Greco‑Roman world.

When I read the early fathers like Irenaeus, I find a strikingly different gospel. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, spoke of Christ as the “new Adam” who relived and healed the story of humanity. He called this “recapitulation”—Christ taking on our humanity so that we might share in his divinity. In Against Heresies he writes, “For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.19.1). Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century wrote that Christ’s incarnation was about restoring humanity to immortality and defeating death itself. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius says, “He became what we are, that He might make us what He is.” In their writings, sin was not a legal crime in need of punishment but a sickness, a distortion of the image of God in humanity, something that needed healing. Even Origen’s much-debated “ransom theory” framed Christ’s death as a cosmic rescue mission, liberating us from the powers of sin and death. These early believers saw salvation not as a courtroom drama but as a family restoration, a return to the divine likeness, and a participation in God’s life.

It is also clear to me that the Gentile world did not have the same sense of guilt as first-century Jews. The Greeks and Romans feared death, fate, and the capriciousness of the gods, but they did not imagine themselves as morally condemned before a holy God. Their religion was largely civic and ritualistic. They honored the gods to maintain social order and avoid divine displeasure, not to be absolved of personal guilt. Philosophers like Epicurus and the Stoics went even further, arguing that death was either nothing to fear or a natural part of the cosmic order. The common people might fear Tartarus and mythic punishments, but this was a vague, culturally shaped dread, not a deeply moralized fear of divine judgment. Into this world the apostles preached a God who was holy, who called all people to repent, and who would judge the world in righteousness through Jesus. But they framed Christ not only as the one who forgave sins but also as the one who broke the power of death and liberated people from cosmic oppression. Paul’s words in Colossians 2:15—Christ disarming the principalities and powers—reflect this broader victory, what later theologians would call Christus Victor.

All of this began to change with Augustine. In his battles against Pelagianism, Augustine hardened a view of humanity as totally corrupted, unable even to desire good apart from God’s grace. He argued that Adam’s sin was transmitted not only as mortality and corruption but as inherited guilt. Humanity was, in Augustine’s words, a “massa damnata”—a mass of the damned. From this came the idea that every human being was born already condemned before God, guilty of a crime they did not commit. Salvation, then, became a legal pardon rather than a relational restoration. Augustine also deepened the concept of divine wrath and punishment, making Christ’s death primarily a judicial satisfaction of God’s offended honor and justice.

What emerged after Augustine was a Christianity defined more by guilt than by freedom. In the medieval period, Anselm took Augustine’s ideas further in his satisfaction theory of atonement, portraying sin as a debt to God’s honor that only the death of a perfect God-man could repay. By the time of the Reformation, figures like Calvin pushed this legal metaphor even harder, giving us the full penal substitution model: humanity deserves eternal punishment for Adam’s sin, but Christ was punished in our place to satisfy the demands of divine justice. This view, deeply indebted to Augustine’s framework, came to dominate Western Christianity and still drives much of fundamentalist theology today.

The contrast between the early and later church could not be starker. In the first three centuries, the gospel was primarily about healing and liberation. Sin was a sickness needing a physician, not a legal crime demanding a judge. Salvation was about being made whole, being restored to the divine image, and sharing in Christ’s victory over death. After Augustine, sin became primarily a legal status. Humanity was imagined as standing before a cosmic courtroom where God, as judge, declared us guilty and in need of a substitute to bear our punishment. This shift produced a culture of fear and neurosis, where believers became trapped in cycles of confession, shame, and anxiety over their eternal fate. It also gave birth to exclusionary moralism, the belief that only those who have the right legal standing before God are accepted, leaving everyone else condemned.

The literalism that hardened around Augustine’s framework turned Christianity into what it was never meant to be. By freezing the faith into a narrow, legal reading of Scripture—treating poetic images and ancient metaphors as rigid, iron-clad doctrines—the Western church lost its transformative edge. Instead of offering liberation from fear, it produced more fear. Instead of a vision of spiritual maturity and union with God, it reduced the faith to legal compliance and doctrinal correctness. It made the Bible into a rulebook from the Iron Age, rather than a living witness pointing us toward divine love and wisdom.

Even the early fathers understood the need for openness and diversity in how salvation is experienced. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Christ is the same to all, but His influence is adapted to the needs of each individual; for He is the true physician of the soul” (Stromata, Book VII). This shows they recognized that not everyone meets Christ in the same way. Some are drawn by forgiveness, others by the promise of immortality, and still others by the experience of divine wisdom and healing. Origen too expressed the hope of a universal restoration, saying that in the end “God will be all in all” (cf. De Principiis 1.6.1). Such statements point to a much more expansive and inclusive understanding of the gospel than the rigid frameworks we inherited from Augustine’s legalism.

Even Jesus himself, in the Gospels, met people in profoundly different ways. He healed the sick, forgave sinners, challenged the self-righteous, and offered hope to the outcasts. To the woman caught in adultery, he spoke forgiveness and dignity. To the rich young ruler, he spoke challenge and invitation. To Zacchaeus, he offered acceptance that transformed a greedy tax collector into a generous man. Jesus never forced a one-size-fits-all approach; instead, his ministry reflected a wide embrace that met each person at their unique point of need. This flexibility and openness stand in stark contrast to the rigid legalism that later defined Western Christianity.

I am convinced that the toxicity we see today in fundamentalist and literalist Christianity is a direct result of this historical trajectory. The endless guilt trips, the fear of hell, the obsession with substitutionary punishment—all of it flows from Augustine’s decision to frame the gospel in legal terms. Once that became dominant, it was locked in place by medieval scholasticism and later Protestantism. Fundamentalism is simply the modern expression of this same literalism, trapped in ancient understandings of law and punishment.

Yet, even as I call this out, I also recognize that people meet Jesus in profoundly different ways. Some are drawn to him through the language of guilt and forgiveness, even if I see the fear generated by literalism as toxic. Others encounter him as healer, liberator, or teacher. Different people have different psychological needs, and the gospel meets them in different places. This is why it makes sense to have a big‑tent Christianity, one spacious enough to hold a variety of experiences and theological emphases. Not everyone resonates with the same images or metaphors. Some may find peace in legal language of pardon, while others are awakened to life through the vision of Christus Victor or theosis.

I would even go further and say that Gnosticism, in its various expressions, deserves a place at the table. Though often marginalized and labeled heretical, the Gnostics sought a deeper interior knowledge of God, an awakening from ignorance and forgetfulness of our divine origin. In their best expressions, they reminded us that salvation is also about enlightenment, about remembering who we truly are as children of the divine. While I do not embrace all of Gnosticism’s dualism, I see value in its insistence that the divine spark within us must be awakened, that salvation is not simply external or legal but profoundly inward and transformative. In a truly big‑tent Christianity, even these mystical voices have something to teach us about the depths of Christ’s mystery.

The early church itself seemed to embody this big-tent spirit. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that God’s plan “accommodates itself to the capacity of each” and that “the same medicine is not suited to all patients” (On the Soul and the Resurrection). This perspective honors the diversity of human hearts and allows for different entry points into the life of God. So while I name the guilt and fear born from literalist theology as toxic, I also affirm that the gospel is wide enough to embrace this diversity of human need—including those who find meaning in mystical traditions like Gnosticism, which emphasize awakening, self-knowledge, and the interior journey toward God.

The earliest church understood salvation as victory, healing, and restoration. If we can recover that expansive vision, we can move beyond the narrow iron-age frameworks that have long enslaved the faith. In doing so, we create space for a Christianity that welcomes all—those who still need the language of forgiveness and those who seek the deeper mystery of union with the divine, those who embrace sacramental tradition, and even those who resonate with the mystical insights of Gnostic thought. It is this big‑tent vision that holds the promise of a truly liberating faith, one that reflects the inclusive ministry of Jesus himself, who met every person with exactly what their soul needed.