A little bit about the book I am working on called, Escaping Chritianity - My Journey out of Fundamentalsim and into Christ"
If I can escape, anyone can. By “escape,” I mean to exit the trappings that define fundamentalist Christianity. This book will take the reader on my Spiritual journey out of religion and into Christ Consciousness, forsaking the history for the mystery.
Escaping Christianity is a non-fiction account of my journey out of Christian fundamentalism thought and into a much broader mystical understanding of scripture. I left dogmatic religion rather suddenly in late 1999. It began when I started to view scripture as metaphor; the whole Bible opened up, giving me a mystical view of the historical events found within the print. I was a speaker, teacher, writer and exorcist within the Charismatic movement and my fundamentalism was no longer making sense to me. I began to question many of the tenants of the faith that I had been raised with. Heaven, Hell, the Devil, Christ, even the word “saved” began to take on new meaning. I began seeing Bible events as internal and mystical, thereby providing me with a roadmap of sorts to our personal and collective evolution in consciousness. Along with this different view came rejection from my church brothers and sisters. However, something was blooming within my consciousness and there was no turning back. I was seeking and I was finding. This burgeoning awareness could not be constrained in a limited fundamentalist environment. The root was breaking the pot.
I don’t call myself a Christian per se, but I am a follower of Jesus. I also recognize that the term Christianity is a brand defined by a world power centuries ago, that now at best only represents a shadow of His teachings. Generally speaking, today’s Christianity might be compared to Judaism in the days that Jesus walked the earth. He was continually hard on the religious people for their rigid adherence to a system that was past its time of relevance, and for their inability to let go of it. Ultimately, they were threatened by His use of parables and breaking their laws. Might the religious system of that day be a mirror of the fundamentalist system today, intolerant, judgmental, full of fear and threatened when followers do not adhere to their traditions? Jesus was not a Christian. He was not even a good Jew. Jesus modeled a “way” for us out of religion. These are hard statements for most Christians to swallow indeed. I know it was for me. In fundamentalism, I was motivated by fear. I became more of a Pharisee, loving rules and rituals rather than loving mankind. My ego-centric self needed to be right rather than righteous.
As I began my departure from religion, I was disenfranchised not only from church systems, but from close friendships as well. It is my hope that the information within this book helps awaken those still trapped within fundamentalism, and displays the love that this savior of theirs so eloquently expressed. I know that this book will become a handbook of sorts to help those brave pioneers as they begin their migration “out.” This migration out of dogma and literalism is parallel to leaving left-brain interpretation of historical cannon into right-brain metaphorical conclusion. The scripture revealed metaphorically unveils this precious lover of God, the human mind, and its journey from seeing God externally to embracing the Divine within.
Escaping Christianity will dive deeply into the symbolic language of metaphor that will stimulate the intuitive part of the reader’s consciousness. Through embracing the mystical message found in scripture, we will awaken to our identity as Divinity and the arduous journey it has taken. We will see through the mystery of the parables that Divinity, having no material form, planned a willful decent into our material plane to find for itself a helpmate (the human body) from which to explore, create and inhabit physical worlds. I feel the interpretation of these texts has been reserved, specifically designed for today’s awakening masses, and that there is now more than ever before, a greater ability within our consciousness to contain such mysteries.
In reading Escaping Christianity, the reader will see that Christ is not a last name for Jesus, but rather a mode of being that Jesus patterned for us to follow. As such, it is more a verb than a noun. We will understand that all of human consciousness is metaphorically a corporate Virgin Mary that was impregnated by Divinity; Virgin, because never before in all of creation had there been an environment where Spirit was able to penetrate matter. Now, this divine essence has wrapped itself in the swaddling clothing of our beautiful biology, resting in the manger of our humanity. These and other metaphorical messages found in scripture embrace all of humanity. No one is exempt from the divine plan of Christ (a creation that is both God and man) being formed in and through us. There is a mystical voice speaking loudly and clearly in Escaping Christianity to those who would have ears to hear.
Fundamentalism embraces a lot of dogma which holds the human mind captive in fear. Dogma defined is “unquestioned belief.” As the centuries have passed, some of what fundamentalist Christians believe does not have a firm foundation within scripture. There seems to be a tendency to embrace cultural myths reinforced with fear and call it “sound doctrine.” Divinity slumbers while mankind is held captive in fear-based religious systems as the frequency of fear is incompatible with love. The time has come to see the difference between the Son of Man held captive in fear and the Son of God whose essence is love.
The Son of Man is humanity expressed through slumbering Divinity ~ The Son of God is Divinity expressed through awakened humanity.
Son of Man - Ego is dominant; the mind is at unease and the body is mortal and limited. Intuitive faculties are largely suppressed. Man sees scriptural text as literal, historical, and external.
Son of God - Spirit is dominant; the mind is at ease and the body is immortal and unlimited. Intellect becomes passive and subservient to Divinity. Man sees scriptural text as metaphor, mystical and as a guide to internal unfolding and awakening.
The overarching message of Jesus Christ is to free the mind from egoist domination and to bring the life of the ego/self to death. However, as in our pattern of the cross, the ego/self does not remain in the tomb - as Divinity awakens within man, from its immersion into mortality, it is likened to the butterfly that emerges from within its crypt to reveal a new creation. This liberation of the masses from egoist domination is what it really means to be “saved.”
My immersion into charismatic Christian fundamentalism includes vast experience as an exorcist within the church system. This experience has ultimately served me well in understanding the role of dualism or the knowledge of good and evil and the role it plays in our developing consciousness. I have come to see that the knowledge of good and evil yields to humanity a full spectrum of light and dark threads that provide the necessary contrast to form this beautiful tapestry called life. All things are made beautiful in their own time. It is from this place of non-judgment that forgiveness takes place, and all of our karmic cycles come to an end.
One such dark thread in the life of my family was the traumatic motorcycle accident my son Christian had, where he impacted head on with an F-250 Ford pickup truck at a combined speed in excess of one hundred and forty miles per hour. Christian was not wearing a helmet and lost his left arm and left leg. In the emergency waiting room I had an experience where I separated from my ego dominated mind to experience some of the most profound words of my life. As I floated somewhere up to the right of my body and hovering there I heard these words: “Barbara, Chris chose this, and so did you.” This understanding catapulted me from victim to participant, a fascinating concept we will explore in Escaping Christianity.
Moving consciously from victim to participant is a necessary component that will move us into a state of appreciating our life’s events. This viewpoint bridges the gap in consciousness, bringing us past ego domination as we see that things don’t happen to us; rather they happen for us. Appreciation will help us transition to a position that is poised for resurrection and ascension. There is now a conscious effort to stop weaving those dark threads of egoist domination into the tapestry through the cessation of judgment. The light will overtake the dark and this dimensional level will eventually dismantle itself as one age gives way to the next. What a splendid time to be alive on planet earth. We are not victims we are participants, creating the greatest story ever told.
We are the saviors that the world has been waiting for.