Reflections
Kristina writes a weekly reflection which places the esoteric teachings into daily life. They are thought provoking and pertinent to 21st Century living. They focus on how we can express our I AM, our True Self, more fully in daily situations.
Introduction to The Seven Letters
“Towards the end of the Bible, between the Book of Hebrews and The Revelation, are Seven Letters. They are written by James, John, Peter and Jude. These letters are short and they are written to us, the people who are endeavoring to integrate a radically new consciousness, not just on the earth but in the whole Universe. Since the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ on the earth this Universe was so radically changed that not even the Gods were able to participate as they used to, and so they withdrew.
These were the Gods that guided the human race down the centuries until the time Jesus was born. Humanity depended on them for everything. Now, with the deed of Christ, humanity was left to their own resources. This is a great responsibility and it is up to each individual to discover their path. No longer led and guided by others, but, with an understanding of what lies ahead, stepping out with self-confidence.”
The Seven Letters 20
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor? James 4:8-12
James knows about the difficulties of navigating between earthly and spiritual life, especially the difficulty of living in both worlds at the same time. He continues to give advice about how we might do this and focusses on the soul life where we can be of double mind. What is this double mindedness? We experience it every day through sympathy and antipathy. These are critical human activities that assist us to navigate life in the physical world, and we have to be aware of them, and we have to overcome them. On one level they have their place and on another level they cause bias. In the physical world they keep our body safe, on the soul level they can prevent us from connecting with our spirit.
We are told to cleanse our hands, where cleanse is katharizo meaning to free ourselves from admixture. Admixture is the state of impairing the quality or reducing the value of something. If we apply this to our hands, that part of our body which expresses our will, we become aware of the power of our decisions. We can think of our hands as the means to grasp things or fold in reverence. If we don’t make the right decision we miss the mark, which is what sin, hamartia, means.
We are also told to purify our hearts of double mind (“you men” is not in the Greek). The word purify here is hagnizo which comes from hagnos, which means reverence, sacred. If we can do this we will not be double minded. Double mind is dipsychos from dis, meaning twice and psyche, meaning soul. This is our sympathy and antipathy, our likes and dislikes which rise up in our soul automatically. It is in our hearts that we can direct our likes and dislikes purposefully.
Then, strangely, we are told to “be wretched” which is talaiporeo and comes from the base word talanton which means the scale of balance, that which is weighed. This confirms the activity in our soul of sympathy and antipathy being weighed and balanced. When this happens we will mourn pentheo, from grief, as we put aside some of life’s pleasures. We will also weep, klaio, lament, which is a sign of pain caused by the loss of physical satisfaction.
At this point it is good to re-read the text and compare our original understanding with a more detailed understanding of the meaning of the Greek words. What seems quite negative in the text becomes more positive as we see how we can actively participate in the process.
Then we read some more strange advice. “Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection.” We laugh when we do not want to understand something. We expand out of ourselves as a way of dismissing the opportunity to see the spiritual aspects. This means that we are disconnecting with our soul and spirit. The mourning process draws us into ourselves allowing us to experience the reality of our being in the physical world without any experience of the spiritual world. Dejection is katepheia meaning downcast. It is an interesting word because it also has a positive meaning. It comes from kara, meaning down from, thought out, according to, and phaino, meaning to bring into the light, cause to shine. This suggests that joy, chara, from chairo, meaning rejoice, can be expressed in a physical way or a spiritual way. The choice is ours.
“Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.” Being humble is a misunderstood process. The Greek word for humble is tapeinoo, and means to level, to make low, not rising far from the ground. If we take it to mean ‘to level’ we come back to the balancing of sympathy and antipathy rather than a submissive state of being.
We do this “before the Lord”, where ‘before’ enopion, means in the presence, and it is a derivative of behold, to allow one’s self to be seen, to appear. The Lord, kurios, can be our I Am, our Higher Self. As we connect with our High Self we allow who we really are to be seen. Our true self begins to show itself, it will be exalted.
The rest of this text speaks about the way we conduct our lives when we live life on this earth through an awareness of our Higher Self. We need to be strong and committed while at the same time accepting of others regardless of the way they approach life. This speaks to us of the third and highest level of our spirit which we call Intuition. At this level we can enter into others and experience them. If we can do this would we judge them? Probably not because we can see why they act the way they do.
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The Seven Letters 21
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain”; whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:13-17
When reading the Bible we should always keep in mind that it is a deep treasure chest of secrets about human development. It preserves spiritual truth in ingenious ways and we can discover this truth if we remain open to various meanings of its words. The first verse speaks of going into a town and spending a year there. Does this mean moving to a new town or city, or does it mean moving to another consciousness?
If it is another consciousness it says that we will do this during the day, semeron, not at night. During the day we live on the earth, at night, we lose consciousness of this earth because our astral and I-being leave our physical and etheric bodies in the bed. The text doesn’t say, “we will go into such and such a town” it says ‘we will go into that city’. The word ‘go’ is poreuomai, means to lead over, transfer, depart from life. We can therefore take this to mean to that we go into another consciousness and we do it during the day. This means that while we go about our daily life on this earth, we can go or transfer into our spiritual consciousness of which we are not always aware.
We spend a year there. Spend, poieo, means to produce, to prepare, which we do for a year, eniautos, which means some fixed or definite period, not necessarily twelve months. During this time we trade, emporeuomai, which means to use a person or thing for gain. We also “get gain”, kerdaino, meaning we acquire, to our advantage. We might wonder why both these words were necessary, perhaps there is an even deeper meaning.
James is saying that it is to our advantage to develop this consciousness if we are to meet tomorrow which we do not know about. Then he asks an important question: “What is your life?” the word life is zoe which means eternal life and more. There are three words for life: bios, psuche, and zoe. Bios is physical life, psuche is soul life, and zoe is spiritual life. Zoe is a living force not bound to the physical. If we think about these three expressions of life we know that our physical life, bios, has a limited lifespan, our soul life can be semiconscious unless we work on it, and for the most part we are unconscious of our spiritual life. James is asking us to become more conscious of it so that we can answer the question: “What is your life?”
Then he says, “For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Isn’t this a direct reference to reincarnation? Mist, poios, means vapor and comes from aer, the air, particularly the lower and denser air as distinguished from the higher and rarer air, the atmospheric region. We appear in this region “for a little time”. The word appear is not in the Greek but the word translated as ‘for’ is phaino, which means to bring forth into the light, cause to shine. So we bring forth our light for a little time and then vanish, aphanizo, which means to snatch out of sight, from aphanes, meaning not manifest, hidden. Again, we get a sense of the idea of reincarnation.
How do we shine light? We do this through our astral (starry) body, which is part of our soul. As we connect with our I Am, we transform our astral body into a higher soul expression. The more we can do this, the brighter it shines. This involves working consciously with our soul faculties of thinking, feeling, and will.
The next verse says, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that.” It doesn’t make much sense unless we revert back to the Greek. The Lord, as previously mentioned, usually refers to our Higher Self, our I Am. Live, zao, speaks of our spiritual life not our physical life. The words “do this or that” do not reveal what is really being said. “Do” is poieo, the same word translated as ‘spend’ above. It means to produce, prepare, act, or cause. This gives us a sense of the highest intention, the highest use of our will. The word ‘this’ is houtos and speaks of something near to us. ‘That’, ekeinos from ekei, means there, or to that place, and is frequently used as euphemism for ‘in another world’. Again we get a sense of engaging in a higher consciousness.
“As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” The word arrogance is not in the Greek. Boasting, alazoneia, means to be an empty pretender. This Greek verse says: you rejoice in your pretence, such rejoicing is evil. This gives us a sense of thinking that we understand everything as we live in the physical world without any connection to the spiritual world.
The warning about evil and sin are nothing to feel guilty about. Evil, poneros, means worthless, of no value; sin means missing the mark indicating that we can always become a better shot.
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Reflections on the Seven I AM sayings in the Gospel of St John January – September 2003 – Always free
I AM the Good Shepherd 5 – 24 June 2003
For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father.” John 10:17f
These words speak about the ultimate sacrifice. To sacrifice our life … and to be able to sacrifice requires that you actually have something to sacrifice. This sacrifice is not that of a soldier fighting for his country, or a quasi-martyr suicide bomber. This is the shepherd giving his life for his sheep. This is about the gentle and good shepherd and the pure and innocent sheep.
John 20, Food for the I AM 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Mag’dalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. 4 They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; 5 and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, 7 and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes. John 20:1-10 RSV
We know that Christ had to die, but in many of the events surrounding his death choices were made. All through John 18 and 19 we see these choices, especially by Pilate and certainly by the Jews. When an event occurs without choice John writes “this was to fulfil the word”. With this in mind let’s have a look at the morning-after story when Mary and the two disciples visit the tomb. They make many choices.
Let’s say that Christ represents the I AM that must die. The Bible also tells us that a seed must die. A thoughtful person knows that a seed carries within it forces for the future. It is formed by a plant, it actually causes the plant’s death, then it rises again as a totally new plant (not cloned from the old one).
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Reflections of the Seven Christian Initiations in the Gospel of St John, September 2003 – May 2004
The Mystical Death 2 – 9 May 2004 – We die to live
Read John 19:23- 42 After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. 19:28-30
When a person or a thing dies we are told that it no longer exists except as ashes or refuse. Close scrutiny reveals that the opposite is true.
Consider this text in John 12 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:23-24
Reflections on the Eightfold Path of Buddha in the Gospel of St John, June 2004 – December 2004
Read John 5:22-30 The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5:22-24
As the Father is about the will, the Son is about thinking. Judging is no longer cosmically impelled; our judging now arises through our personal thinking. This thinking must be rigorous. A reason for errors of judgement is that thinking is not carried through to the end. It is so easy to jump off the train of thought prematurely. Early conclusions are so tempting, not to mention the time that they save. Lucifer always encourages us to take the easy way out.
Reflections on the Twelve Disciples using the Gospel of St John, January – December 2005
Nathanael – Two – Imagining
Philip found Nathan’a-el, and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathan’a-el said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathan’a-el coming to him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Nathan’a-el said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathan’a-el answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” John 1:45-51
Nathanael represents one of the most misunderstood human abilities, our Imagination. In reality, Imagination extends our consciousness into another dimension. It is a spiritual faculty which does not rely on our physical brain nor does it have a mystical element. Through it we penetrate the veil which separates the physical and spiritual worlds. At this point our abstract thinking dissolves and we see into outer forms to the spiritual truth that sustains them. This can begin simply by looking at a plant or tree that droops towards the ground in a sad way, or a flower that lifts its head to smile at the sun. This imagining connects us in new ways with the outer world.
Reflections on the Signs in the Gospel of St John, January – July 2006
Water to Wine – One – Changing Feeling into Thinking
On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it. When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him. John 2:1-11
This series of Reflections will explore the so called signs in the Gospel of St John. These signs are also associated with miracles performed by Jesus after he was baptised by John the Baptist. If we take the life of Jesus as a blue print for our own spiritual development, we can use events such as these signs and miracles as a barometer of our progress.
Reflections on the Nine Beatitudes using the Gospel of St John, August 2006 – March 2007
1.4 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
We can look at each of the nine beatitudes in terms of the Christ-ening of the nine parts of our being; physical, etheric, astral and then the three soul and three spiritual regions. If we apply the first beatitude to our physical body we will find clues about how our I AM is enlivened in our body.
Our physical body is the most fully developed part of us. The physiology of the human being is a marvel. The way our skeleton, muscles and skin hold and protect our organs in a life giving way is truly wondrous.
Reflections on the Book of Revelation, April 2007 – April 2010
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near. Rev 1:1-3
We can read and contemplate the bible in many ways. We should certainly take notice of the literal meaning of its stories. This becomes a most difficult task when we read the Revelation to John. The imagery is shocking, mystifying and bizarre, especially when we place it outside ourselves. It more closely resembles our dream life rather than our waking life.
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Reflections on Who is Jesus, What is Christ? May 2010 – October 2016
The Bible can only be fully understood when we have a detailed knowledge of the makeup of the human being. We can only have this understanding through our own personal experience of ourselves which we have applied and tested in our own lives throughout the day. When we are able to experience that we are beings of body, soul and spirit we then come to the point of experiencing ourselves as beings of soul and spirit which occupy our body much like we would occupy a car to transport us here and there.
If we can grasp this truth and actually have a personal experience of it, we can then approach the possibility of our soul and spirit entering repeatedly into different bodies at different times in history. This could be compared to upgrading the model of our car from time to time. There is a passage in the Bible that could support this idea of reincarnation. When the Jews heard that John the Baptist was baptising they sent their representatives to question him about who he was; Christ, Elijah, or the prophet?
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” And he answered, “No.” They said to him then, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” Jn 1:19-22
Why would they choose Elijah from all the possibilities? Furthermore, they knew that Elijah was long dead? It is possible that they recognised traits of Elijah’s in the Baptist or perhaps they had the spiritual vision to see who had been in the past. So if he was Elijah in a past life why didn’t he affirm this? To answer this question fully we need to consider in some detail how and why we enter into different bodies at different times throughout history.
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To Journey Back November 2016 ongoing
This is the story about a man who has just died. In the afterlife he is tracing the life he has just lived backwards. It is a life review, step by step, from the moment of the last breath back to the moment of the first breath, to re-experience every thought, feeling, and action and interaction he had through his life.
He remains connected with his close friends and, as he sees what they are doing in the days after his death, he understands more deeply the relationship he had with them. He also sees all the activity surrounding his death, which he was not aware of when he was alive.
More and more people who have had a near death experience are reporting that this is the experience we all have when we die. At some point in their after-life experience they decided to come back and continue living their current life. We have much to learn from them, not only for when we die, but for how we can live our lives on this earth more meaningfully.
If we can have a real experience of what happens when we die it will assist us to meet the end of our own life with more awareness. Our journey forward will then be a great contribution to human evolution. I hope you enjoy this journey.
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