I underwent over four decades of programming according to fundamentalist doctrine and dogma. It has taken the past twelve years to deprogram and come out from the belief systems reinforced through fear. Quite a journey. Ultimately, it is a birth out from the structure in which Christ consciousness incubates. There is a divine purpose for such a structure sort of like the Israelites being forced to migrate to Egypt because of the drought. Four hundred years later Moses emerges and helps them migrate out from the oppression of the Egyptian regime. Metaphor for our journey in consciousness to leave egoist domination and enter into life guided by the Divine within.
The ritual of baptism is amazing imagery. Water is symbolic of dense, human, egoist consciousness. The eternal core of our essence is immersed into such “waters” temporarily, holding our divine breath until the day of resurrection out from the waters of being human and mortal.
Jesus walked above these waters and bid us, “Come!” He is the savior of mankind, you see. He has patterned for us the way out of the dense waters of limitation by teaching us through metaphor how to rise above our mortality. If we can just begin to glimpse the messages within his parabolic teachings we will see our eternal existence unfold before us like a blossoming rose. Literalism keeps us trapped in linear time.
Recently a friend said: “You cannot say that these things don’t exist literally, like heaven, hell and Satan.”
I replied and said, “These things will appear externally and literally as long as you need them to.”
In reality, our nature is not based in linear time. Time is here to serve us so that through it we can learn, we see these externalizations of what is really our internal and unfolding spiritual landscape.