The Tao of Christ

One reason why Christians do not pursue the spiritual goal of what is called enlightenment, spiritual awakening or liberation is the lack of role models in the Bible. Buddhists pursue Enlightenment because that was the Buddha’s experience, and he is an example for others. That is the main focus of the early Buddhist scriptures. The same is true of Hindus, with the example of sannyasi, sadhus and yogis who practiced the disciplines of asceticism and meditation. The Hindu scriptures, especially the Upanishads, echo this focus of Hinduism. But when we come to the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, commonly referred to as the Old and New Testaments, there appears to be a lack of such spiritual examples of enlightenment and spiritual awakening. But they are there, hiding in plain sight. It is just that they have been interpreted in the light of later Jewish and Christian tradition. Nondual awareness is the root of all spiritual traditions, as Aldous Huxley made clear in his book The Perennial Philosophy. In a previous episode I talked about the awakening experience of Jesus, which happened at his baptism in the Jordan River. But there are many more examples in the Bible. It occurred to me that I should talk about a few of those. In this episode I am going to talk about the spiritual liberation of Moses. It is found in the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

This episode is going to be very practical. I am going to point directly to what you really are. There are three steps I am going to take you through. In reality there is only one step – just seeing. The first two are preliminary steps to the third step, which is the only one that counts. Kind of like when a long jumper runs up to the approach. Only the final takeoff counts. The first step is to look carefully at our physical nature. The second is to look at our psychological nature. The third is to look at our spiritual nature.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Christ is within you. Christ is not sitting on a golden throne next to his Heavenly Father in some distant heaven where he rules over the world. This traditional language of Christian theology is true in a spiritual sense but not literally. Heaven is not in the sky or outer space. The ancient geography of the heavens describes the inner landscape of the soul.Christ is within. That idea is regularly voiced in popular Christianity, especially the evangelical variety. Evangelicals talk about inviting Christ into our hearts, and it is assumed that Christ accepts the invitation. We find this idea of an inner Christ confirmed in the New Testament. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit points to the same reality. It is commonly understood by Christians that the Spirit of God dwells within us. It is a well-established doctrine of Christianity that God – as Christ or the Holy Spirit or both – dwells within us. So I am not proposing something foreign to Christianity when I refer to the Christ Within. But my awareness of Christ within is certainly very different than what I hear in popular Christianity. The Christ I hear commonly preached sounds like an imaginary Friend. That would fit right into the traditional theistic conception of God, who is likewise an imaginary character. Freud correctly observed that the traditional theistic deity is an illusory Father figure projected unto the backdrop of the universe. We create this God in our own image to fulfill our need for a Divine Parent, who will protect us, tell us what to do and love us. That pop God is make-believe. Nothing more than an oversized mascot for our manmade religion. That type of Christ is nothing more than a glorified BFF whom we invite into your hearts for a sleepover. The Christ I know is not anyone’s buddy. That is a theological fabrication that has nothing to do with Reality.These words - like Christ and the Holy Spirit and God and a thousand others - are pointers that direct us to the inner Reality of our lives that is very real, which more real than we are. The Christ Within is our Innermost Reality. Buddhists talk about the Buddha Nature. We Christians could similarly talk about the Christ Nature, but it is easier just to talk about the Christ. They are the same thing, just using the vocabulary of different religious traditions.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Jesus could not stomach religious people who self-righteously judged others. He called them hypocrites. The word used in the Gospels is the Greek word hypokrites, which is transliterated directly into the English language as hypocrite. The word refers to “an actor” or “a stage player” in Greek theatre. The Greek word is a compound noun made up of two smaller Greek words, which literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.” That is a reference to actors in ancient Greek theater who wore large masks to portray the character they were playing. They interpreted the story from underneath their masks. The Latin equivalent is persona, which means literally to “sound through” also referring to an actor speaking through a mask used on the Roman stage. Jesus’ condemnation of hypocrisy is much more fundamental to his message then just exposing religious people for being two-faced. Hypocrisy is what we might call the original sin, which is why Jesus stressed it so much. The original sin of the human race is not being our real selves. Covering ourselves up and hiding from God, which is exactly what Adam and Eve did in the Genesis story after eating of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – the Tree of Duality. All of us are actors. We are actors unaware that we are actors, which makes the deception doubly hard to uncover. We play a role and hide our true identity from others and ourselves. We call it the ego or a personality, which comes from that Latin word persona, meaning actor. In spiritual lingo what I am describing is usually described as the difference between our two selves – our false self, often called the ego, or in my example today “the actor,” and our True Self, which is what we really are underneath all the masks and roles we play. The spiritual life is about recognizing that we are not the roles we play. It is to turn our attention 180 degrees and lift the mask to glimpse our True Selves. When we do we are troubled at the emptiness and yet amazed at the fullness. As Jesus says in the opening verse of the Gospel of Thomas, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."It is indeed troubling to see that we are not who we thought we were. To see that what we thought we were is nothing more than a mask, a role that we have written for ourselves, or have allowed the world to write for us and which we play unwittingly. What we really are astonishes us. We see that beneath all the masks that all of us play we are nothing – literally no thing. We are the one Player playing all the roles. The World Soul. The one we call God who rules over all. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Sin is duality. Nonduality is salvation. Forgiveness is nondual awareness. That in ten words is what I talk about in this episode. The only sin is not looking at who we really are – and who God really is - and not believing what we see. It is being too blind to see, as Jesus told the Pharisees. That is the original sin. The only solution to this sin is to open our eyes. It is so easy. Even a child can see it. In fact only when we see like a little child can we do it. Jesus said that children were of the kingdom and we have to become like children to enter the Kingdom. Then we see reality, we experience complete forgiveness. Nonduality solves the problem of sin and forgiveness. Sin is failing to see the unconditional acceptance of all that is. And when we see this, the burden of sin and guilt falls away. All is forgiven because that is who God is and who we are. We can forgive as we are forgiven – as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer - because forgiveness is what we are. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Nonduality is Reality. That was the insight of Jesus and the earliest Christian message of the Kingdom of God. Nonduality is the truth at the core of all great spiritual traditions of the world. But if nonduality is reality, then where did duality come from? If all is One, how did two come about. How did we find ourselves in this seemingly dualistic world? Every religious tradition has its own origin myths to explain this. The Tao Te Ching says simply, “The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three. And three begot the ten thousand things.” That fits into nondualism very well. But what about the Judeo-Christian scriptures? Is there anything in the Genesis creation stories which explains the origin of this dualistic world that we seem to find ourselves in?Yes, indeed! When we read the biblical creation accounts we find the origin of duality explained very well, for those with eyes to see. In this episode I explore the biblical stories of creation, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. I explain how they tell of story of the origin of duality. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

The oldest Christian message is Christ Consciousness. One of the oldest sayings in the New Testament is found in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, but Paul did not write it. It is much older. It is from an early Christian hymns which Paul was quoting in Philippians 2. It reads: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.But emptied Himself, and took the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.Wherefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name. In another of his letters Paul comes right out and says that we already have the mind of Christ. It is just a matter of recognizing it. He writes: “The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”We have the mind of Christ, and Christian spiritual practice is recognizing this mind and allowing it to come to the forefront. Getting out of the way and allowing the Mind of Christ reign. To do this Jesus emptied himself of himself to be full of God, which was his true self. This awareness is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. This is the heart of Jesus’ gospel and the earliest Christian message. It is Christ consciousness or God Consciousness. It could be called Kingdom Consciousness. It is unitive awareness or nondual awareness. It is abiding in the mind of Christ, which is the mind of God. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

The original gospel was the one that Jesus proclaimed, which was the Kingdom of God. Today it is alternatively called Christ Consciousness, Kingdom Consciousness, Unitive Awareness, or Nondual Awareness. Then there was the gospel about Jesus created by the apostle Paul and other Christians of the early decades and centuries after Christ. In this episode I explore how the Church came to abandon Jesus’ original message and the differences between the two gospels.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I explore the historical development, mythology and meaning of Satan from a nondual perspective. For traditional Christians the devil is real – a fallen angel. He is epitome of evil, who oversees a vast hoard of demons or evil spirits who are just waiting to possess the hapless person who is careless with his soul.When viewed from a nondual perspective the figure of Satan points to something much closer to home. He is the human ego. As Walt Kelly famously said in his Pogo comic strip: We have met the enemy and he is us. The devil is our self. So we say with Jesus, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” When the ego/self/devil is pushed to the background then what we truly are comes to the foreground. What comes to the foreground is a vast and limitless Eternal. This Spacious Presence is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Christ in us, as the apostle Paul said. God is not out there somewhere. The Kingdom of Heaven is not up there. It is here. As Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is within you.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I explore the symbol of the river as a description of nondual awareness as seen from a human perspective. Jesus used this metaphor to point to what he called the Kingdom of God or Eternal Life. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU