Today’s post is the conclusion of my 4-part series. Hope you enjoy.

Commonly, people have a misunderstanding of what a psychic is and how they work. They think that psychics see the future, or talk to spirits just like they see the television in front of them and talk to their neighbor on the phone, and when the info is wrong, they accuse them of being frauds and charlatans.  And some are, but not all. Intuitive abilities vary widely and many are gifted with a handful of different ones. They are a skill, just like playing baseball. You are born with the talent, and practice makes you better. Some people are better at it than others and different people have different specialties. Not every psychic is precognitive – with precognition (predicting the future), all a psychic does is read the “energy” of a situation (and EVERYTHING is made of energy).

In other instances, a medium may predict the future if only by relying on information given by a spirit. In that case, the medium is not precognitive, they’re just doing what a medium does.  Psychics who aren’t mediums may still get information from a spirit, however it would not be their main mode of communication. Some people hear spirits, some people get feelings, some people see visions, other people just know things and most people have at least one of those abilities to a greater degree and then a couple to a lesser degree. Not everybody has all of them, and not everybody is good at any one of them. lol

When you get a reading from a psychic, they can’t tell you the future with 100% accuracy.  They can only tell you what is likely, given the energy at the current moment – you still have free will to change what happens in the future!

Psychics aren’t 100% accurate for a few other reasons, one being that we are all filters.  We receive and interpret information based on our frame of reference (going back to the squares on each side of the cube of Truth).   It becomes hard for a medium to interpret messages because spirits don’t always communicate like we do. Just because a psychic is precognitive, doesn’t necessarily mean they are a medium and vice versa. These are different types of gifts.  Just because someone is a really great outfielder, it doesn’t mean they can pitch well, but they both play baseball. Know what I mean?

So sometimes, it’s hard for a psychic giving a reading because they will get information that doesn’t necessarily come through loud and clear. You get abstract images, or feelings… and you’re supposed to piece it all together using your own words to tell this person sitting in front of you this deep and profound meaning and insight into their lives… that’s a lot of pressure! And sometimes we get the interpretation wrong or just slightly off. The clearest way to get information from a spirit, in my opinion, would be from a clairvoyant, clairaudient medium like Jamie.  That’s the closest to having an experience like talking to a live person as your going to get.  There really is no clear way to get general psychic information – all of it is exceptionally subjective to the person receiving the information and depends on their mood, their skills and abilities, their preferences and also the same things of the person they are reading for.

All of these factors are why science – as it currently stands – can’t conclusively prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that psychic phenomena exists. It’s a subjective experience that can sometimes be shared between two or more people, and it is neither measurable nor repeatable.

That is a factor you have to take into account when considering Biblical prophecy. A prophet is just a psychic, and psychics can be somewhat inaccurate – some more so than others. Not to mention, the future is a moving target. So even if they were right initially, humanity can change its course at any given point.  That being said- there are certain events that are in an individual’s life plan and within the overall plan for earth itself, and these events, as I understand it, will occur no matter what. These events are referred to as “nexus points.”

A while back, one of the CE blog members had a question regarding free will and destiny – how can we truly have free will if everything is already planned? This is a question often asked by Christians as well, as the debate over predestination (if God already knows what’s going to happen and who is going to Heaven, why bother with free will in the first place?) roars on in many churches. The committee spoke to this in their Sunday post, explaining that the events are known, but how you will react to them, is not. This is part of your free will, and it’s these reactions that you are here to use as tools to learn about yourself and existence. I have explained it as this in the past:

Your life plan is much like a road map. You’re planning to drive from New York to Los Angeles, and you must stop in Cincinnati, Memphis, Denver, and Phoenix on the way to pick up various friends who are coming with you.  It is up to you how you get from place to place, as there are many different routes and a plethora of small towns to pass through on each of them. Regardless, you will still pass through the bigger cities one way or another and pick up those people. The road you choose is your free will.  The destinations and the friends who are riding with you are all pre-planned – those are the Nexus points.

A more specific example: A drug addict who habitually relapses. His purpose in life is to learn the hardships of drug addiction, overcome them and help others who struggle with it. Being a drug addict and eventually coming to rehabilitation are part of his life plan. They are nexus points on the plan.  How many times he relapses before FINALLY accepting that he must go to rehabilitation is up to him (accept the lesson, accept the life plan).  There are exit points along the way -in the form of overdosing. He may choose to die before he reaches the nexus point.

So although he may, in his mind, say “I’m going to rehab” and head that way… he scrounges up some cash on the road and suddenly veers off course and goes to buy more drugs (free will). Or he goes into rehab but relapses when he gets out (free will).  It’s not a matter of “when” he goes to rehab, because as we know from the committee, time is merely the convergence of people and places.  When he finally does reach rehab for the last time, he’s made it to the nexus point and moves along to the next stage of his life plan.

There’s a plan for Earth overall that is much the same – it’s basically the convergence of all of the life plans that have ever existed, as Patrick mentioned on Sunday. There are events in the plan that WILL happen, they’re nexus points.  We can’t move on to the next stage until we reach them. The events that lead to Ascension are nexus points. Our choice to Ascend – to rise above them, is our free will. Our choice. Some will go, some will stay. I’m sure there were exit points in the plan as well. A world nuclear war that subsequently destroys us fits the bill – hit the reset button. Start the game over. The kids found the matches. Thankfully we’ve got some friends out there who have been keeping us in line.

So what the prophecies of Revelations depict exactly is hard to say. Some of it may have been world war – the images talked about in Revelations are probably not mystical things, necessarily – maybe just what modern technology would look like to an ancient hebrew sheep herder.  Helicopter? No my friend, that’s a giant locust!  Lake of fire? Try lake of molten lava or napalm, perhaps.  You also have to read the prophecies with the understanding that time is when people meet at places, not a measurable length. The events of Revelations itself may actually occur over a period of 1,000 years.

Some of them may have been exit points that have been avoided. And some of them may be nexus points that are still to come. That’s why some pieces of a prophecy may come true, while others don’t. Same goes for a psychic reading. A lot of visions are highly symbolic in nature and become very hard to interpret. Spirits never make it easy for us… the whole reason we’re here is to experience and remember.  Of course they’re not going to give us the answers to the test! I can attest – when spirit gives you information, it’s not always an exact dictation. It’s an abstract notion – a feeling, a concept and you have to express it in your own words. You use your own experiences – your filter – to express it.

I can’t believe that so many Christians really think that God spewed out everything he had to say 2,000 years ago, closed the book and has kept mum ever since.

I had a devout Christian suggest that I should maybe seek professional help for thinking that I’d ever seen or talked to a spirit. I said, “As I recall… Jesus is your favorite dead person to talk to.” And he said, “You’re wrong. He’s not dead. He lives.”  OK…. so you can have a “personal relationship” with a guy you’ve never seen in real life or met and only know of him what you read in a 2,000 year old book, and you can believe that this person came back from the dead, brought other people back from the dead, walked on water, healed people with a single touch, and now decides your place in eternity, and you can also believe that there’s an evil invisible fallen angel that runs around causing you and other people to do evil things in an attempt to steal your soul – and that’s perfectly normal….but I’m crazy, not for believing that people live on after they die just like you do,  but for having actually seen and talked to someone I knew and cared about in real life after they passed away? Crazy according to whom, exactly?  I love how Religion makes it ok to be a lunatic because everyone else believes it, too.

There are SO MANY variables at work when it comes to the Bible.  There’s numerous prophets – what was their filter? What were the cultural and political contexts in their minds upon receiving this information? How much of it is misinterpretation (whether by the prophet himself or by the person reading and preaching about it)? How good of a psychic were they?!  We have books of the Bible that were left out.  We have passages that were added in or added to in both the New Testament and the Old Testament throughout time (as Moses attested to). The thing is –  many people believe that the bible is the written word of God – as though God manifested a pen and wrote this stuff down and handed it to the prophets. But it doesn’t work like that. You can say it was “inspired” by God – and that would be accurate. But the Bible is not spirituality. Religion is not spirituality. The Bible is a book about people who taught and sought spirituality. You cannot find God within a book. You can find God within yourself.

We have God knows how many different translations from multiple languages. And to top it off, each of us has our own filter of reality so we all see the same thing but interpret different meanings. So you have to take each segment and analyze in those terms, taking into account all of those factors. You can’t interpret the whole thing literally, and you can’t interpret the whole thing under any singular guise. People don’t get that. Separate the wheat from the chaff.  Take what resonates with you and leave the rest.  Come back for more understanding when you’re ready.

You also have to understand that all interpretations of the Bible and any religious text are “True” according to the person doing the reading. It’s their accepted version of reality.  It is truth, from one angle – one side of the cube. Each religion, together, creates the whole. Some of them overlap, some of them expand more on certain areas where others focus mostly on another – Christianity and Islam focus on Dualism and the linear perception, Buddhism focuses on the present, Chinese philosophy on the balance of yin-yang, Hinduism focuses alot on consciousness – but each of them have elements of all of it. If you take the time to really try and figure out what they mean and how they got to be the way they are – you’ll find out that they actually complement one another quite nicely and go right along with the secret society and occult information you can find on freemasons, etc.  But most people only focus only on one and completely ignore the rest or miss the deeper meaning, thus missing the totality of the Truth. Be a student of all religions, and subscribe to none.

We are all looking at the same thing – Truth – and figuring out what it means to us on an individual basis. What I’ve presented to you in this series of blog posts is just another point of view. A way to see the spiritual meanings behind some of religion’s teachings – many religions, not just Christianity. Can you relate every single biblical story to spirituality – or every story from any other religion? Probably not to your own life but someone else may be able to. If it doesn’t relate, if it doesn’t “resonate” then the message isn’t for you.  What I’ve talked about here is just a very basic level – obviously the meanings go far deeper and far beyond what I can cover in a four-part blog series. So just because someone is a part of a religion, it doesn’t mean they can’t find spiritual truth within it.

And even as such, you will not come to the same understanding of these writing as I have. And I don’t mean that you won’t understand it as much, or that my understanding is better, what I mean by that is you’re going to run this blog post and these religious scriptures through YOUR filter, relating them back to events in YOUR life, relative to YOUR understanding – which are not the same events, meanings, and experiences as I’ve had in MY life. Our understandings of what is written here will never be exactly the same. Like I said in my very first post – we can only understand what a thing means to us in relation to something else.

And you know what’s funny? I often passively listen to my cd player in my car on the way to work in the mornings while I “think.” I was formulating the words in that previous paragraph on just such an occasion, and the moment I finished it in my head, my attention was drawn back to the song playing on my radio – “Stare at the Sun” by Thrice – and the lyrics said, “I see the parts but not the whole, I’ve studied saints and scholars both, no perfect plan unfurls. Do I trust my heart or just my mind? Why is Truth so hard to find in this world? I’m due for a miracle. I’m waiting for a sign. I’ll stare straight into the sun and I won’t close my eyes until I understand or go blind.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about in these four posts – how we see the parts but not the whole, saints and scholars both, and even enlightenment (understanding) and the sun!

Erik: When are we going to start thinking as a whole and not as slices of an apple?

We have to see the whole to understand the Truth.

Many Christians think they’re in the “end times.”  We had that Harold Camping guy last year claiming that he’d figured out when Jesus was a comin’ back! Revelations is full of predictions of false prophets running around, trying to lead the flock astray. How ironic would it be if the very people who believe their fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible are correct and are leading their congregations to persecute gays, people of other faiths, the downtrodden and the hopeless, are in fact, the false prophets themselves…and they don’t even know it. It would be poetic justice. But… let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

We’ve all stumbled and fallen to the will of the ego from time to time. That makes us all sinners. And what is sin, anyway? The Hebrew bible uses nine different words – NINE – The Greek Bible uses THIRTEEN! And the English translation?  It uses one word. Sin.  How have we come to lump all of these different words, with their slightly different nuances and cultural meanings into one big fat no no?  That’s like saying that murder is just as bad as mixing lenin with wool because both are sin (yes, the Hebrews had their own version of the fashion police – it’s all in Deuteronomy. Swear!) and “abominations” in the eyes of the lord! WTF?

Eckhart Tolle points out that one of the Greek words for sin is hemartia, which is also an archer’s term that means “to miss the mark.”  Yes, it also means “offensive,” but who are we to say what the original writers of the bible meant? This is why we say that language is such a poor way of communication, and why spirits prefer to interact with thoughts and emotions rather than words.

My pal Randy is a Christian author and graduate of the American Bible Academy. He has some more thoughts as to the nature of sin and what it means to repent:

“Christians have been taught to “Repent” from their sins. This is the way to Salvation. To repent means to turn from your sin. Thus, the church teaches us to no longer do such things as lie, cheat, steal, murder, etc. But the church is slightly off cue about sin. Metanoia is the Greek word we translate into English as “repent.” It is very similar in sound and meaning to the English word “Metamorphosis.” Both are rooted in the Latin, i.e. “Meta” meaning change, “morph” meaning form, “sis”- a process. And; “Meta” meaning change, “noia” meaning character. To repent is to change your very character; or to say “who you are inside of yourself.” Once this change has occurred, you will no longer do such things as lie, cheat, steal, murder – and you will not do them due to your very nature; your new nature which “morphed.”

This is why Paul wrote in Romans that “it does not depend, therefore, on our efforts.” Lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, etc are acts we commit due to something stemming from within ourselves – we do not do these things for no reason at all. Paul wrote in Galatians 5 and said that these things are “acts of the sinful nature.” In short, such things are the result of your sin. The true sin, or the root of such sinful acts, are found within a person. THAT, is what we are to repent from; not to simply no longer commit the actions.”

In essence, salvation is much more than just going through the motions and following some laws written down in a book. Its more than asking God above to forgive you for your transgressions. It is becoming – being – the change… and as the Power Rangers would say, “It’s Morphin’ time!” lol Sorry… couldn’t resist.

So when we sin, are we just “missing the mark”? Not doing the right thing because we’re confused? Possibly. But there is no absolute right and wrong.  There is only what is good for the whole of humanity and what is good for the self.  They are not always the same, and they are not always static. So.. right and wrong are a moving target. What is sinful is a moving target.  As I mentioned earlier, what is moral today is not the same as what was moral 2,000 years ago. You cannot apply every piece of morality from a 2,000-year-old text to modern times. Yet some Christians and Muslims would like to do that – because the book is the “Word of God” and we must follow it to a “T”. Words are only as good as the meaning we place on them. And everyone’s meaning is not the same.

This is why every person’s journey is their own. Why every person must figure this out for themselves. It becomes detrimental when you just blindly follow what another says without first asking yourself, “Does this resonate with me?”

Moses: When accepting any story, when believing any part of the story, please do not accept it from the source where it came from. Please do not choose to accept it from that one person’s mouth. I am not asking you to be distrustful. I’m asking you to find the root where what you believe in comes from. If you understand the root, then you will understand how the tree grows.

Always be seeking, and searching.  In the immortal words of Kansas, “If I claim to be a wise man – it surely means that I don’t know.” (PS – LOADS of spiritual lyrics in Kansas songs, Boston, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and lots of newer bands. I like getting messages through music).

That applies to this blog post!  Ask yourself, “Does this resonate with me?”  If it doesn’t – then let it go. Don’t lash out, don’t get offended… just accept the feeling and release it. Too many times I see people judging one another for the path they have chosen. I have been as guilty of it as anyone, but I’ve come to realize that we all chose our own path for a reason. What I believe is “best” for me may not be what is “best” for someone else. Good, better, and best are merely opinions. We must do our “best” to have understanding for our fellow man – not judgement.  We can never move forward if we are still projecting our own beliefs onto others – that makes us no better than the person telling us that we are going to spend eternity in Hell for talking to the spirits of our deceased loved ones.

Always remember that there are many ways, not just your way or my way. What is written here was written by me – that makes it my way. It may resonate with some of you totally, it may resonate with some of you partially, it may not resonate with some of you at all.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that what is said here is wrong (though I admit that is a possibility) , after all – what is ‘wrong’ is in the eyes of the beholder – it may simply mean that you are not yet ready to receive this lesson.

When I initially began my journey into spirituality, some of you may remember my post on the facebook forum, simply asking how some people could retain their title as a “Christian” and yet explore this new route. It didn’t make sense to me. At the time, I could not see how the two could possibly be compatible. They seemed to be in such opposition!  As evident from my writings here, as I have progressed further down my chosen path, the deeper my understanding has become. I now find spiritual meaning where there once was none.

When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.  Perhaps our Christian fundamentalist and non spiritual friends are simply not ready.  Perhaps a person only disagrees with your view because they’re not ready to see the next step in their own journey. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t show them love and kindness anyway, and perhaps when they ARE ready… you can show them another way.

Being a Christian – or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Mystic or a spiritualist or whatEVER –  is just a label. It just means you follow the teachings of Jesus, rather than Buddha. If you’re following Buddha you’d be a Buddhist.  Maybe we should come up for a name for all of us Disciples of Erik’s teachings? Does that make us Eriksonians? Lol It doesn’t matter who the teacher is – they’re all teaching the same subject. Many would say Jesus WAS a Buddhist – he said himself when Jamie channeled him that he studied all paths to God before he began his teaching.  Much of what he says is the same as Buddha. He just uses different words. Jesus just uses stories to illustrate the concepts of Buddhism. You could say that Buddhism is the cliff notes for Jesus’ storybook. Erik’s version is a little more…colo(u)rful?

Christianity delves into the spirit and uses the analogies formed there to teach about the present. Buddha just focuses on the present. He does not deny the existence of God, or the soul – but rather, focuses on the here and now because that is where you are. Your soul and God are inconsequential to this incarnation – even though Christians will misinterpret that it is. Hinduism, rather than relating everything in the world in a linear, dual perspective, teach from a slightly different angle – Dharma – duty – that we are here to help our fellow man and our fellow beings.  Jesus taught that, too.  New Age focuses on consciousness and what the Hindus called Karma – the idea that you get back the energy that you put out, which is yet another aspect, another facet, another side of the square, another part of the whole.

Their God is our God, our God is their God – we are God, God is us, Nature is God, we are a part of God and Nature, a part of the whole and the whole is the sum of its parts- it’s ALL GOD and that’s why Buddha says it doesn’t matter who is God!

“You think you can choose a God like you choose a pair of shoes? …You choose the right one and you go straight to heaven, you choose the wrong one and you go straight to hell? …There is no choosing. Nobody has God. No religion, no country, no race, no man has God. God has all of us, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus and even the ones that don’t believe in God at all.We don’t make God, God made us. We don’t choose God, God chose us.”- (http://www.zenmoments.org/the-thirst-for-spirituality/) Do you believe in yourself? Then you believe in God! “God” is just a word, like anything else. It’s only as good as the meaning you place on it.

Why are we fighting amongst one another over who is God? When Elisa, Erik and Jamie interviewed Jesus, he said that the idea that has been attached to the word “God” has become fragmented. Jesus also says “ I was here to teach that there were many paths to God. I repeated to others that I am not the only way, though this was rewoven by other people to state that I am the only way.  I would never take the time to feed my ego this way. This is worthless effort. There are many ways to reach God. I was also here to teach that the many ways that find God is to start with self—to go in, then outward. It was not to place the responsibility of belief and spiritual security on another person. It’s only to be done within the temple, and the body is the temple. The church is not the temple.”

Jesus says that the Christian notion (and probably that of many other religions) of who and what God is has become fragmented. So just who is this God?

I am god and so are you. He is made of men. Humanity is god. The universe and all that is in it is god (pantheism). Everything is a manifestation of the supreme soul (Hindusim). God is omnipresent, he is everywhere and in everything. Not even Heaven can contain him (Christianity). God is nature (paganism). He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye (Buddhism). God is all these things. God is “all there is.”

Who shapes the course history? God. Humans. Nature. The three are one and the same.

Have no other Gods before me – value nothing above the well being of your fellow man, fellow animals, and your fellow planet and universe.

Why do we have such a fragmented understanding of who and what God is? We lost the meaning of “God” and have relied on others to tell us.

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings [the welfare of God, since God is all there is...God's welfare...God's will] — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. – Buddha

Like Vishnu, we are unsure of our true identity. We ate the apple, we passed through the veil and we forgot who we were, where we came from and what all of this means. We spend our whole lives trying to remember that which we already know and we sure do destroy a lot of things in the process – but it’s all part of the plan. Some fear that we will choose that exit point and destroy one another or we’ll destroy ourselves. Perhaps we already have – Atlantis ring a bell? Or perhaps it was just another nexus point in the plan. A lot of people think that this year is the ominous end of the world – whether it’s due to the Christian revelations or the end of the Mayan calendar (which, actually doesn’t really end..), or some yet unknown apocalypse.

Is 2012 really the end? Is Revelations another analogy? Will the “saved” really be called up into Heaven while the sinners go to hell?

In his channeling session,Jesus said, “[the state of humanity] is what it is suppose to be. When you remove yourself from the human life, you’re able to see the possibilities. The possibilities that we see are not yet exposed to the masses on Earth. I know that there is an opportunity for the people for a great exponential growth.”

You hear people talk about ascension – moving into the 4th and 5th dimensions. What if the Rapture, Jesus’ people being called up into the sky to be with him in Revelations, is just another analogy for ascension?  If that be the case, that old coot who was predicting the rapture was RIGHT! It just wasn’t what he thought it would look like, so he couldn’t see it.

That’s the end game of Revelations – the very word “reveals” the truth for us all to see. That earth was Heaven all along, and now it’s time make it happen. Getting rid of all the “wickedness” and bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. A golden age.

Why yes, that would be the coming Golden Age of Aquarius that starts on December 22, 2012. One day after the end of the current Mayan Baktun. The day every planet in our solar system lines up perfectly with the heart of the Milky Way forming a galactic crucifixion of our “Sun.” Do notice the “Son vs. Sun” intended there. Every religious text, every secret society,every great thinker and mystic throughout history have dropped hints about this ALL ALONG for thousands of years. Hidden in plain sight for anyone who was searching to find. 2012 -the year where humanity has a “shift” in consciousness, repents form its sinful nature, is saved and resurrected, .. starts living like Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and all the other great teachers…and begins to create Heaven within ourselves – being the change we want to see. We change our thoughts and we change our world.  What does Revelations mean but “to Reveal” and apocalypse but “the lifting of the veil?”  Get excited people! This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, for a very very very long time. We all chose to be here, now, and it is finally upon us.

Thanks for entertaining what I’m sure some “sane” people would consider the ravings of a crazy cat lady. But like Hinduism tells us, we’re all born into delusion. And when only a small number begin to wake up and see things as they truly are, the majority labels US as the crazy ones. I learned as much while writing this for you as you have learned reading it. And for that, I thank you.

In keeping with my music theme, I’m going to leave you guys with this song – Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. Take note of the symbolic meaning in the band’s name (Dragons = enlightenment), coupled with the lyrics:

“This is it, the apocalypse, Whoa, I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones, Enough to make my system blow, Welcome to the new age, to the new age….All systems go, sun hasn’t died

Deep in my bones, straight from inside, I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones, Enough to make my system blow, Welcome to the new age, to the new age”

It gives me goosebumps from head to toe.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Ashley for the wonderful wisdom you’ve graced us with. We’ll continue, as always, to look forward to your wonderful comments!