The Esoteric Christian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Criticism About Writing With A.I.

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

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

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

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

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

The Hidden Christianity: Awakening the Esoteric Path of Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Tongues of Humans and Angels: Reimagining Speaking in Tongues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links Part 1 & Part 2

When Christ Was Enough: The Living Gospel Before Creeds and Councils Part 2

Here is Part 2 of a three part series. The link for Part 1 will be at the end of the text.

As the centuries rolled forward like waves upon the shore, the early fluidity of the Gospel narrowed into structure, and structure hardened into dogma. What had once been an awakening experience of Christ within slowly shifted into belief about Christ external to oneself. The canon, finalized through the deliberations of bishops and councils, became the definitive measure of truth. And yet beneath the triumph of orthodoxy, something tender and essential was forgotten—not destroyed entirely, but buried like treasure hidden in a field, awaiting a generation that would search again with eyes to see.

The great councils, earnest in their intentions, did not merely sift the genuine from the false; they also fenced the mystical from the historical, the experiential from the propositional. They privileged the narrative of sin, guilt, blood, and atonement as the primary framework through which to understand Jesus, burying the more luminous vision of divine memory and spiritual resurrection that had lived in the early currents. The cross became the emblem of a necessary sacrifice to satisfy divine wrath, rather than the transcendent portal through which fear, separation, and death itself were overcome. Penal substitutionary atonement rose not because it was the fullness of truth, but because it served the growing anxiety of the institutional church to explain suffering and to enforce conformity.

And so it happened that the Christ who had whispered in the lilies of the field and called each soul to awaken to its divine sonship was cloaked under layers of guilt and fear. The memory of humanity’s inherent divinity, the original blessing that Paul glimpsed when he proclaimed there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, became overshadowed by the heavy weight of original sin. Where once the Gospel was the announcement that the forgotten light within had been rekindled, it became a courtroom drama where humanity stood condemned, saved only by the tortured death of its judge. Love was not erased, but it became tethered to conditions it had never known.

Yet even in this Great Forgetting, the seeds of awakening remained. They lived quietly in the scriptures, visible to those who could read not only with the mind but with the heart. They lived in the secret teachings passed down in hidden monasteries, in the solitary prayers of mystics who felt the fire of the Spirit burning deeper than doctrine. They lived in the forbidden gospels, the lost sayings, the half-remembered dreams of a people who sensed that God was closer than the officials proclaimed, more intimate than even the holiest of sacraments could contain.

The Gospel of Thomas, once declared heretical, carried in its verses the profound simplicity that the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it. The Gospel of Mary dared to place spiritual authority not in the hands of Peter but in the wisdom of a woman who had seen the Lord not with the eyes of flesh but with the vision of the soul. The Gospel of Truth proclaimed not judgment but joyful awakening, as if humanity, long trapped in amnesia, were being called home by a voice it had forgotten it knew.

The early Gnostics, often caricatured and misunderstood, did not in their truest forms seek to destroy the body or despise creation; rather, they sought to transcend the illusion that the material alone was real. They dared to teach that within the heart of every human being was a seed of light, a fragment of the divine Pleroma, waiting to awaken. They spoke in parables and myths, not because they were lost in fantasy, but because they understood that truth was too vast, too luminous, to be captured in mere propositions.

In the Age of Pisces, dominated by hierarchy, structure, and the slow building of empire, these voices were silenced, marginalized, or buried. Yet even as the great cathedrals rose and the creeds were etched in stone, there were always undercurrents of remembrance. In the writings of John the Evangelist, who dared to call humanity not merely servants but friends of God. In Paul’s insistence that Christ is in us, the hope of glory. In Peter’s declaration that we are partakers of the divine nature. In the fruits of the Spirit, which even the most rigid dogma could not uproot, blooming in acts of kindness, patience, and unselfish joy across the centuries.

It is these seeds, these quiet notes of memory, that the Age of Aquarius now invites us to recover. An age that is less about tearing down what was, and more about unveiling what has always been. An age not of rebellion, but of revelation. An age in which the rigid exteriors crumble, and the living Gospel rises again, not merely as a set of doctrines to believe, but as a living reality to embody.

The canon, understood rightly, is not an idol to be worshiped, nor a prison to be escaped, but a portal through which light can flow — provided the heart remains open. The error was never the canon itself, but the forgetting that the Spirit who inspired the canon was never contained within it. That same Spirit continues to speak, continues to reveal, continues to call each soul beyond fear, beyond shame, into the endless embrace of Love.

The Age of Aquarius whispers what Jesus whispered so long ago: that the Father’s house has many rooms; that the kingdom is within; that to be born again is to awaken, not to a dogma, but to the living Christ within. The structures that were necessary for one era have become the husks from which a greater flowering must now emerge. The Gospel of the Age of Aquarius is not a new gospel but the oldest of all, the one that lived before canons and creeds, in the eternal song of Spirit calling Spirit back to itself.

To embrace this Gospel is not to reject the canon, but to fulfill it — to find within its pages the living Word, and to hear once again the words that have echoed across centuries, awaiting a generation willing to remember: "You are the light of the world." Not because of merit or blood, but because you have always been, and will always be, of the Light.

Link to Part 1

When Christ Was Enough: The Living Gospel Before Creeds and Councils Part 1

In the earliest breath of Christianity, before creeds and councils, before the sharp walls were built between belief and heresy, there lived a story — fluid, living, vibrant. The story was not yet chiseled into stone tablets or declared beneath the banners of empire. It was the story of a man who carried the infinite into the finite, who spoke of fields blooming with lilies, of the divine that we already are, if only we would awaken. This story did not need a canon, not yet. It needed only hearts open enough to see themselves mirrored in the life, death, and transcendence of the one they called Jesus.

In those first generations, there was no neat, leather-bound book called the New Testament. Letters traveled by hand, worn at the folds by the touch of living hands, Gospels emerged as living memories, stitched from moments etched in the soul. Communities gathered, and where two or three were drawn together by love, the Christ was made present among them. They did not argue about canonicity; they listened for the pulse of the Spirit in words shared, in bread broken, in lives transformed. In this way, the teachings of Paul, of John, of Peter and James found homes in the hearts of seekers long before they found places in a bound canon.

But alongside these emerging traditions, other streams flowed. The Gospel of Thomas whispered that the kingdom was not coming with signs to be observed, but was already spread upon the earth for those with eyes to see. The Gospel of Mary sang that liberation was not found in the structures of men but in the knowledge of one's own unity with the All. The Gospel of Truth unfolded not a gospel of sin and punishment, but of forgetfulness and awakening, where humanity’s true tragedy was amnesia, and its redemption was remembrance. These voices, too, were part of the living story, cherished in pockets of the early world, resonating with those who felt within them the ancient memory of divinity.

Yet history turned, as it always does, from fluidity toward structure, from breath toward stone. Pressures mounted: political pressures, theological pressures, the need for unity under threat. Bishops began gathering to declare what was true and what was false, to guard the sheep against the wolves of perceived error. A canon began to take shape — not simply as an organic flowering, but as a strategy, a defense, a solidification of identity. In this process, the living pulse of the Spirit became increasingly tied to a fixed set of writings, a defined body through which legitimacy was conferred.

The writings that aligned most comfortably with this vision — the fourfold Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Jude — were slowly raised above the others. They were not wrong in themselves; they contained profound beauty, deep truth, and life-changing power. But something subtle shifted: a boundary was drawn around the sacred, and all that lay outside it was slowly exiled. The Gospel of Thomas, too mystical. The Gospel of Mary, too empowering to women and to the individual soul. The Gospel of Truth, too abstract, too free from the frameworks of sin, guilt, and redemption in blood. These were pushed to the margins, their scrolls hidden, buried, sometimes burned.

Yet the Spirit is not so easily confined. Even within the canonical writings, the spark of this original mystical vision continued to burn. Paul’s soaring hymn to love in Corinth still testifies that the greatest of all is love, not doctrine. John’s portrait of God as Love Himself — a love in which we abide as branches in the vine — breathes through the pages. Peter’s astonishing declaration that we are partakers in the divine nature stands quietly in the New Testament, overlooked by many but burning with revolutionary fire. The fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness — remains the true evidence of the Christ in us, shining through even when institutional religion obscures the source.

For the Age of Aquarius, an age whispering already into the hearts of many that we are called not to rigid systems but to conscious, collective awakening, it is this Spirit that must be re-heard. The canon, beautiful as it is, was shaped as much by survival, politics, and theological necessity as by pure inspiration. To honor it is wise; to worship it is dangerous. The canon must be seen for what it is: a snapshot of one moment in the evolving story of humanity’s encounter with the Divine. It captured much truth but left even more unspoken, waiting like seeds beneath winter soil.

Now, in this new unfolding, we are invited to recover the lost gospels not to rebel against tradition for its own sake, but to weave the fuller tapestry that was always waiting. We are called to remember that the Gospel of Christ is not only the story of a cross and an empty tomb, but the story of a light placed within each soul, a kingdom spread within and around us, a divine remembering. We are called to live the Gospel not as a historical doctrine but as a living reality — Christ in you, the hope of glory, awakening now.

In this vision, canonicity bends to a higher authority: the authority of fruit. That which awakens love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is canon in the truest sense, whether it comes from Paul’s pen, from Thomas’s sayings, from Mary’s visions, or from the living Christ speaking in the depths of your soul. What was once divided can be reunited, not by force but by resonance. In the Age of Aquarius, the Church will no longer be defined by what it fences out, but by what it births from within: a flowering of Spirit, a rising of the true Gospel again — not in words bound by ink, but in lives transfigured by light

The Gospel of Jesus for the Aquarian Age

In the beginning was the Logos—not merely a word but the living pattern of divine intelligence, the vibration of love encoded into the substance of all that is. This Logos, eternal and radiant, became flesh not to satisfy divine wrath but to awaken human remembrance. The Christ presence entered the world not to condemn it, but to mirror its hidden divinity, to show us what we had forgotten. Humanity had not fallen into a moral crime but into a spiritual amnesia, a slumbering of the soul that led to identification with fear, shame, and the illusion of separation.

The metaphysical Gospel does not begin with guilt but with divine origin. The so-called fall was not the introduction of sin as legal offense, but the descent into egoic misidentification—a forgetting of our shared source. Jesus, as the embodiment of the Christ, did not come as a substitute for punishment, but as a revealer of the truth that liberates. His mission was not to die so that we could be forgiven, but to live and rise so that we could remember. The cross was not a transaction, but a transfiguration—the absorption of human violence and fear into the unconditional embrace of divine love.

Christ’s message was not "You are damned," but "You are asleep." The Gospel of Truth affirms that ignorance, not wickedness, was the root of error, and that the Word entered the world to dissolve that ignorance. Salvation, then, is awakening, not acquittal. The resurrection is not the reversal of judgment, but the vindication of eternal life already within. It is the validation of our shared origin in the divine, the overturning of death’s illusion.

This mystical knowing runs like a golden thread through the words of Paul, John, and Peter, though often obscured by later doctrinal overlays. When Paul writes, "Christ in you, the hope of glory," he is not constructing a creed but illuminating a mystery—the indwelling divine presence that awaits recognition. He tells us that we are not merely saved from wrath, but adopted into the very inheritance of God, not as outsiders invited in, but as offspring finally awakened. He speaks of being transformed by the renewing of the mind—not reformed through moral rigor, but transfigured through the remembrance of grace. This is not religion; it is revelation.

John tells us with luminous clarity that God is love. Not metaphorically, not symbolically—is. And whoever abides in love abides in God, for love is the fabric of being. This love casts out fear, for fear is foreign to the nature of divine awareness. In love, we are not striving, not earning, not appeasing—but abiding. The Spirit testifies within that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs. The fruit of that Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—emerge not as effort but as essence. These are not imposed from outside but rise like sap through the tree of life rooted in divine union.

Jesus himself framed this mystical reality in his prayer: "That they may be one, even as we are one." This is not poetic metaphor but ontological truth. Union, not merely moral proximity, is the final revelation. The Kingdom is not somewhere else, nor is it sometime later. "The Kingdom of God is within you," he said. "Split the wood; I am there. Lift the stone, and you will find me." In the Gospel of Thomas, these sayings are keys to inward discovery. When we truly know ourselves, we realize that we are children of the Living One.

This message—the Gospel without penal substitution, without wrath, without archons and demiurges—points us toward the inner temple where Christ abides. The Gospel of Mary affirms this, telling us that the Savior encouraged liberation from rule-bound religion and called us to live according to our true nature. The struggle is not against sin in the legal sense, but against the forgetfulness of our origin. It is in knowing, not believing, that we are made whole.

Peter echoes this in his letter when he writes that we are partakers of the divine nature. This is not blasphemy—it is the very fulfillment of the Christ revelation. We are not called merely to follow Jesus, but to awaken to the same Spirit that animated him, to let the same mind be in us. Paul writes, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." And the faith by which he lives is not belief in Christ, but the faith of Christ—a consciousness that dwells in divine knowing.

This is the Gospel for the Aquarian Age. As the Piscean era, defined by hierarchy, dogma, and substitution, fades, the Christ of inner revelation rises again—not in doctrine but in consciousness. The Aquarian message is not "believe or perish," but "awaken and shine." It is the return of the cosmic Christ, the universal Logos, manifesting in each person who dares to look inward. In this age, water is not the flood of judgment, but the flow of spiritual insight. The water-bearer pours out wisdom, not wrath, and the Christ pours out Spirit upon all flesh.

The metaphysical Christian understands that the Gospel is not external history, but internal awakening. Christ is not a transaction but a transformation. The Spirit does not ask us to perform, but to remember. The church of the Aquarian Age is not built with stone, but with awareness. It is the body of the awakened, the communion of the radiant. We no longer seek salvation outside ourselves. We remember that the Kingdom is within, that the veil is torn, and that the divine has never been far.

There is no condemnation in this Gospel, for there is no fear in love. There is only light, and the invitation to walk in it. The call of Christ is not to climb the ladder of piety, but to rest in the truth that we are already home. As Jesus said, "Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest." This is the rest of knowing, the peace of remembering, the stillness of abiding.

The Aquarian Christ is not a ruler demanding allegiance, but a mirror reflecting the divine nature in us all. This Christ is not confined to one tradition, one creed, or one people. The living Christ appears wherever love is practiced, wherever truth is spoken, wherever a soul turns inward and finds light. The Gospel is not exclusive; it is expansive. It breaks chains, it burns away shame, it speaks in every language and sings in every heart. It is not something to be argued over, but something to be lived.

And so, in this new age of spirit, the Gospel comes again—not to divide, but to unify. Not to judge, but to reveal. Not to condemn, but to awaken. Christ in you—the hope of glory.

Liberating the Father and Jesus From Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism

To speak of “liberating” God may sound strange to some ears, even presumptuous. But what we are really talking about is liberating our understanding of God—particularly the Father and Jesus—from the confines of institutionalized religion, especially the rigid frameworks of orthodoxy and modern evangelicalism. These systems, while intending to preserve truth, have often distorted it through the lens of power, fear, and binary thinking. The result is a spiritual landscape where mystery is suppressed, questions are taboo, and God is presented more as a cosmic bureaucrat than a loving Parent.

Orthodoxy, by definition, means “right belief.” But who gets to decide what is right? Throughout Christian history, “heresy” has been nothing more than the name orthodoxy gives to its losing arguments. Jesus himself would have been labeled a heretic by the very standards later enshrined in the institutional church. In fact, he was.

Consider how Jesus was received in his own day. He broke Sabbath laws, consorted with the marginalized, reinterpreted Torah, and directly challenged the religious elite. He said outrageous things like “You have heard it said... but I say unto you...” which undermined legalistic interpretations of Scripture. He claimed unity with the Father in a way that scandalized the religious authorities. These weren’t polite theological differences. They were confrontations with the theological gatekeepers of his time—gatekeepers who believed they were defending orthodoxy. From their perspective, Jesus was the heretic. And for this, they saw him crucified.

Paul, too, was called a heretic. Once a persecutor of Christians in the name of Jewish orthodoxy, Paul underwent a radical transformation and began preaching a gospel of grace that tore down walls between Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider. His letters often pushed against early church expectations and Jewish norms alike. His emphasis on the spirit over the letter of the law—and his claim that faith in the risen Christ abolished the old distinctions—put him in direct tension with the very religious world he once upheld.

And let’s not forget the Reformers. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli—all were considered heretics by the Catholic Church of their time. Each, in their own way, sought to liberate Christianity from what they saw as distortions and legalism. And yet, within a generation, many of their followers turned those new insights into dogmas of their own, excommunicating and persecuting those who dared to diverge. The same spirit that condemned Luther was alive in Luther when he condemned the Anabaptists.

This historical pattern reveals a troubling truth: orthodoxy is not a static container for divine truth. It is a moving target shaped by power dynamics, cultural assumptions, and the psychological need for certainty. It’s not that truth doesn’t exist—it does—but our formulations of it are always partial, always filtered through human lenses.

Which brings us to the tyranny of binary thinking. The theological tradition, especially in the West, has been plagued by either/or categories: saved or damned, in or out, true or false, believer or heretic. This black-and-white framework flattens nuance, ignores mystery, and leaves no room for growth or evolving understanding. When God is confined to the binaries of systematic theology, we lose the relational, dynamic, and often paradoxical nature of the divine.

Jesus did not speak in systematic theology. He spoke in parables, riddles, and paradoxes. He emphasized fruit over doctrine, love over law, and mercy over sacrifice. He rarely answered questions directly, often responding with another question. He challenged the very idea that being “right” was what mattered, shifting the focus instead to being righteous, meaning aligned with the heart of God.

Yet evangelicalism today often reverses this emphasis. Rooted in a post-Reformation desire for doctrinal clarity and a modern need for certainty, it treats the Bible as a rulebook and God as a distant judge. Jesus becomes less a living presence and more a theological formula: a sinless substitute paying a legal penalty to appease an offended deity. In this framework, God the Father is often portrayed as angry and exacting, with Jesus acting as a buffer. But this is not the God Jesus revealed.

Jesus called God Abba—Father, even “Papa.” He spoke of a Father who runs to meet prodigals, who gives good gifts, who knows our needs before we ask. He modeled intimacy, not fear; union, not separation. The Father Jesus reveals is not a divine accountant tallying sins but a lover longing for relationship. To distort this Father into the image of a wrathful judge who demands blood to forgive is to miss the heart of the gospel.

When we liberate Jesus and the Father from the scaffolding of rigid theology, what emerges is something far more compelling than orthodoxy’s caricatures. We see Jesus as an elder brother, showing us what it means to live in union with the divine. We see the Father not as a monarch demanding allegiance but as a Parent drawing all creation into the dance of love. We recognize that truth is not found in perfect propositions but in the transformation of the heart.

And we reclaim the right to think, to question, and to doubt without fear of hellfire. In fact, the very fear of hell—so central to evangelical urgency—is itself a product of later theology and cultural conditioning. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, a real place outside Jerusalem, in the context of prophetic warnings. His use of it was not a cosmic threat but a metaphor for the consequences of choosing death over life, ego over spirit. We were never meant to live in fear of a vindictive afterlife but to awaken here and now to the indwelling Christ.

To call this heresy is, ironically, to repeat the very mistake made by those who called Jesus a blasphemer. It is to privilege the letter over the spirit, the map over the territory. But when we follow Jesus in spirit and truth, we are freed from the need to conform to any doctrinal box. We are invited into a living relationship with the divine—one that transcends dogma, embraces paradox, and leads to radical love.

In the end, the only orthodoxy that matters is love. Not the kind of love that fits neatly into creeds, but the wild, boundary-crossing, life-giving love that Jesus embodied. A love that heals, includes, and liberates. And if that is heresy, may we all be heretics—walking in the way of Christ, not the constructs of religion.

Jesus as Elder Brother: Awakening to Our Divine Family and True Nature

In the total of spiritual history, no figure has stirred the soul and challenged the world’s understanding of divinity quite like Jesus of Nazareth. Though often portrayed through layers of dogma and doctrine, at the heart of Jesus’ life and message was something deeply personal and relational: the introduction of the Divine as a loving Parent and humanity as one spiritual family. In this light, Jesus is not only the Savior or Son of God, but more intimately, our Elder Brother—the one who awakened first, to show us who we truly are.

Before Jesus, the Hebrew tradition revered God as Creator, King, and Judge. Though God was sometimes called “Father,” it was primarily in the collective sense, referring to Israel as a nation. The personal, intimate, and relational aspect was largely missing. Jesus changed this. He spoke of God not with fearful reverence or theological abstraction, but with loving familiarity. His consistent use of the word “Abba”—an Aramaic term meaning “Dad” or “Papa”—was revolutionary. It unveiled a Divine Parent who longs not for sacrifice but for connection, not for legal compliance but for heartfelt trust.

In calling God “Father,” Jesus invited his followers into a familial relationship with the Divine. He urged them to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” not “My Father,” but our—signifying that we all share the same Divine source. This was a spiritual democratization of the highest order. It implied that no priest, prophet, or ruler held exclusive access to God. Rather, every human being stood as a child of the same Divine Parent, and therefore, as brothers and sisters.

Jesus took this idea further. When told that his mother and brothers were looking for him, he gestured to the crowd and declared, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). In this redefinition, Jesus moved beyond biology and established a new kind of kinship—one based on spiritual awakening and alignment with divine love.

This familial framework finds a profound echo in the writings of Paul, particularly in Romans 8:29, where he describes Jesus as “the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” For Paul, Jesus was not only the uniquely anointed one but also the prototype, the forerunner of a great awakening. Jesus embodied the Christ—the divine Logos, the light that was in the beginning with God and that illuminates every person. But Paul dared to say that what was in Jesus could be in all. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” he wrote in Colossians 1:27. This was no distant salvation plan—it was an invitation to recognize the indwelling Christ in ourselves.

Jesus, therefore, was the first to consciously acknowledge the Christ within himself. He lived out of this realization, not merely as a messenger but as a manifestation of Divine Love in human form. His awareness of being the Son of God was not an egoic claim but a deep spiritual knowing of his origin and essence. In recognizing the Christ within himself, he opened the door for all humanity to discover that same light within. As John’s Gospel begins, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity” (John 1:4).

Yet, this light was not always recognized. Jesus’ ministry took place within a very specific context—first-century Judaism under Roman occupation. His people were burdened by centuries of religious law and the crushing weight of sin-consciousness. The Law of Moses, while once liberating, had become a source of spiritual oppression for many. Guilt and fear had taken root, and the joy of intimacy with God had been buried under rule-keeping and ritual purity.

The angel’s announcement that “He will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) must be read in this historical context. The sins were not simply moral failings, but the entire system of guilt, shame, and alienation perpetuated by the Law and the temple economy. Jesus came to bring freedom from sin-consciousness, not by ignoring sin, but by transcending it through grace, forgiveness, and divine embrace.

In this sense, Jesus' mission was not merely juridical (paying a penalty), but restorative and awakening. He came to reveal the truth of who we are: not broken, condemned beings, but children of God who had forgotten our origin. This theme finds its deepest resonance in the Gospel of Truth, a second-century text associated with the Valentinian Christian tradition. It states that people suffer not because they are sinful by nature, but because they live in “forgetfulness”—they have forgotten who they are and where they come from. Jesus, in this gospel, is the one who comes to “reveal the Father” and to awaken humanity from ignorance into remembrance and joy.

In this light, Jesus is Savior because he restores awareness, not because he satisfies wrath. He is the light that shows us our own inner light. He is the Son who reveals that we too are sons and daughters. He is the elder brother who returns from awakening to guide his siblings home.

It is also worth noting how Jesus' references to hell (Gehenna) fit within this context. Many of Jesus' strongest warnings—often framed with dramatic language about fire and worms—were not threats of eternal punishment, but hyperbolic critiques of the Pharisaic teaching that some people would be consigned to Gehenna, a metaphor derived from the Valley of Hinnom, for a year of post-death purification. This bears some resemblance to later Catholic ideas of purgatory. Jesus turned this imagery on its head, using it to forewarn of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple—a cataclysm that would occur within a generation, as he predicted. His reference to "where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48) draws directly from Isaiah 66, which describes the aftermath of divine judgment upon the nation. These were not abstract descriptions of eternal torment, but urgent calls to repent and awaken before societal collapse.

The implications are staggering. If the Christ—the divine nature—dwells in all people, then salvation is not exclusionary but universal. It’s not about being chosen or unchosen, but about becoming aware of what has always been true: that we are one with God and with one another. This doesn't negate Jesus' uniqueness—it amplifies it. He becomes the first to fully live what is potentially true of all humanity.

To walk the path of Jesus, then, is not to worship him, but to follow him into that same awakening. It is to say, as he did, “I and the Father are one”—not in arrogance, but in awe. It is to recognize the Christ not only in ourselves but in each other. It is to live as siblings, with God as our shared source, and love as our common bond.

This is the spiritual family Jesus initiated. This is the good news that transcends religion and time. The Christ is not an external figure to be appeased but an inner reality to be realized. Jesus, our elder brother, awakened to it—and showed us how to awaken too.