faith – Rev. Joan M. Kistler

In my last post, I wrote that the Anti-Christ is the ego. When I use the term “ego,” I’m not referring to “ego” as Sigmund Freud defined it but as defined metaphysically. Metaphysically, the ego is defined as the idea of “I” as a separate being. It is the sum of all of the beliefs we carry about ourselves. From the time we are born, we begin to collect ideas about ourselves in the form of labels, beginning with the very first label with which we are assigned: our gender.

There are many more labels to come – labels related to our race, religion, socioeconomic class as well as the labels we are given by people in authority and our peers. The more labels we take on, the smaller we become because there are behavioral expectations associated with each label. For example, if we are labeled “male,” there are societal norms around “maleness” that we must obey in order to be accepted. The same is true with race, religion, and socioeconomic class. Societal pressure to conform to the behavioral norms associated with these labels restrict our behavior and keep us in line through the fear of rejection.

As we grow up, we are offered many more labels both by people in authority and our peers. Some of the labels are positive, and some are negative. Either way, labels are burdensome because they place expectations on us. Each label is a box inside a box inside another box, and our space to be keeps getting smaller and smaller. By the time we reach adolescence, we may feel as if we are suffocating inside a very small box, especially if we have been forced to conform to many labels that just don’t fit.

Our eternal nature is carefree and limitless – full of peace, love, and joy. When we are born, we walk into a theater called “Earth” and get assigned a role (our name). Throughout the acts and scenes of our life, there are many directors working hard to mold and shape us into what they think our character should be. After many years of playing this character, we forget who we really are. This is what happens to us on micro-level as individuals and on the macro-level over the history of humankind.

We think we are only this earthly character, and we are filled with fear. Why? Because it is a work of fiction. It exists only as long as we are in this theater called Earth. The moment we exit the theater, the character ceases to exist. When we forget our true eternal identity, we have no choice but to cling to this earthly identity, a house built on sand (Matthew 7:26-27). We try to fortify the house through the accumulation of wealth and power, but no amount of wealth or power can change the truth that this “personal self” is ephemeral.

Our earthly character isn’t evil in and of itself. We are meant to live this life as a particular expression of Being, and we are born with the traits, tendencies, and talents we need to play our role gloriously. We need the ego in order for Being to experience each individual expression (or “character”). And just an author fondly remembers every character he or she created, every “character” we ever played on this stage called “Earth” is lovingly held in the memory of Being.

We are filled with joy when we are allowed “to be” – when we are playing our proper role, not the one assigned to us by humans. Labels help us to conceptualize and experience this unreal world of duality. However, since labels belong to this unreal world, they are also illusions. Male and female, white and black, Christian and Muslim, straight and gay, American and Russian – none of these labels exist in Reality. How can they when in Reality, there is only one Being?

When we are lost in our earthly identity, we forget this. We treat our labels as if they are real, and we create a hierarchy of worth based on our own judgments. Male is more worthy than female; white is more worthy than black; Christian is more worthy than Muslim, etc. At that point, we have made a god of the human ego and have broken the First Commandment: You shall have no other gods before me.

This “other god” is the anti-Christ, and it has been fortifying itself by accumulating wealth and power through its make-believe “caste system” for ages. This has created an extremely unbalanced distribution of wealth in our world, causing suffering for the majority.

The truth that Jesus was a peaceful, universalist is inconvenient for many people today just as it was in Jesus’ time. Like the Zealots 2000 years ago, there are those who want to believe in Jesus as a military leader with nationalistic values. Certainly, Jesus was loyal to his people, offering his message of salvation to the Jews first, but he didn’t exclude others because he knew that every living being is part of Life, part of the Christ, whether they know it or not.

There are also those who have created exclusive Christian religions based on rules that have no basis in what Jesus taught while they ignore his fundamental teachings, such as “Do not judge others” (Matthew 7:1-3) and “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Mark 12:31). In Matthew chapter 15, Jesus condemned the Pharisees for this hypocrisy. They complained to Jesus that his’ followers didn’t follow the proper handwashing traditions. Jesus responded by calling them out for breaking the fifth commandment. Instead of honoring their father and mother, the Pharisees followed their own tradition whereby they declared their possessions as “Corban” (dedicated to God). This gave them an excuse to avoid financially supporting their parents.

We are at a crossroads. We all have free will. We must each make our choice: the Christ or the anti-Christ? Unity or division? Love or hatred? Peace or war? Joy or suffering? Reality or illusion? Bonds between family and friends will be broken, for the light cannot abide the darkness, and the darkness cannot withstand the light.

Are you ready to choose? Time is running out.

Stay tuned for my next post: The End Times: The Choice

In these turbulent times, many people are wondering whether we are experiencing the End Times as prophesized. I believe we are, but in the words of the song by R E.M, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

It’s the end of the world as we know it. In other words, the world isn’t going to end, but something major is going to change everything. You might think it’s Artificial Intelligence. Certainly, AI has the potential to change a lot, as did the computer microchip. But I believe something is coming far bigger than that.

What’s coming is a fundamental change in how we see ourselves. We think of ourselves as only human, but we are far more than that. This is what the enlightened masters have been trying to teach us for a very long time, but many have refused to accept it.

The truth is that we are Life Itself – Pure Life. The Life that animates our human body is who we really are. Life is the active, experiencing part of Being, or existence. Being has no beginning and no end. Just as Being can never cease to be, Life can never cease to live. It can never die. This same Life is in everyone and in everything that is alive.

Life can’t be separate from Being any more than the sun’s rays can be separated from the sun. As Life, we are eternally connected to Being, our Source. Therefore, in Reality, there is only one Being. There is no “other.” This is what Jesus meant when he said in John 14:11, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”

Jesus was able to do the works that he did because he didn’t deny who he is. He knew that the man called “Jesus of Nazareth” was just a container for his true identity: Life (a.k.a. the Christ). He also tried to teach his disciples that this same Life is also who they are. The same Life is in every living thing just as the same light glows out of a variety of light bulbs. The container doesn’t change the nature or quality of the light at all.

Our bodies are merely temporary containers for the Life that we are. This is what Jesus tried to teach Peter when he refused to let Jesus wash his feet. He said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have not part with me” (John 13:8). As long as Peter viewed his fundamental nature as different from Jesus’, he wasn’t accepting his true identity. He wasn’t “joining with him in Christ.” This is what it truly means to be saved. It doesn’t mean to become part of an exclusive club. This club is all-inclusive. Anyone who sees himself or herself as either inferior or superior to others cannot join with Christ.

What does that mean? It means the absolute equality of every living thing – that every living thing is eternally part of the One Being (a.k.a. God) and equally beloved. Now, there have always been people strongly opposed to this idea. Even Jesus’ disciples struggled to accept that the Samaritans were equally beloved of God. But the Bible says, “God saw ALL that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Each human expression of Life has an individual body and a mind which provides Being with the ability to experience its infinite nature in all of its wonderful diversity. In Reality, however, this individuality doesn’t exist. How can it when there is only one Being? However, over time, human beings became lost in the illusion of individuality. We forgot about our true identity, and began to think of ourselves as only human.

This is what we call “original sin,” but it didn’t really happen. We didn’t really separate from God; we only “thought” we did. We only thought of ourselves as only human, but that thought didn’t have the power to change who we really are. This mistaken thought eventually pushed our original mind, the “Mind of Christ” into the background and allowed a different kind of mind to take over: the egoic mind.

This “takeover” is represented in the Bible as Adam and Eve taking a bite out of the apple from the forbidden “tree of knowledge.” They suddenly realized they were naked, and they were filled with fear. Fear is the base emotion of the egoic mind. When fear took over, their perspective changed. God became a harsh judge, life became a struggle, and “others” became a threat. Heaven turned into hell.

The development of the egoic mind is part of the design. It’s necessary in order for Life to become self-aware. Nothing can be experienced without its opposite. Since in Reality, all is One, an unreal world of duality was needed. Just as we can’t know hot without cold, we can’t know ourselves as Life without death. We can’t know ourselves as the Light without the darkness. We can’t know ourselves as love without fear. We can’t know ourselves as the Truth without the lie. The egoic mind contains all of the ideas about who we are not. It is the anti-Christ.

The second coming of Christ is about humanity “waking up” and remembering our true identity. Through this, we will be released from the fear of the egoic mind and return to the love and peace of the Mind of Christ. Our perspective will shift back to the Unity Consciousness of Eden, but with the added bonus of Self-Awareness.

It will change everything.

We still have free will. Each individual can choose to wake up or remain asleep, but in order to make an informed decision, we need a clear picture of each choice. Two-thousand years ago, Jesus gave us a clear picture of the Christ. Today, we are being given a clear picture of the anti-Christ.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series: “The End Times: Who is the Anti-Christ?”

Tag: faith

The End Times: Who is the Anti-Christ?

The End Times: Are They Here?