postcard pandemonium

Recently, in a bundle of advertisements rubberbanded to our front door knob, I noticed a postcard from a local church with the headline “God’s Free Plan of Salvation.” Intrigued, I perused further. As I read the five bullet points, with Bible references, I could almost hear Morgan Freeman’s booming godly voice (from “Bruce Almighty”) adding emphasis to each statement:

All have sinned.

There is a penalty for sin.

You cannot save yourself.

Salvation has been provided.

The conditions are simple.

Frustration and a little anger surfaced. I admit that I was bummed at the limiting and fear-based views expressed by this church, but I was also bummed with myself for allowing them to trigger judgmental emotions in me. I shared the postcard with Trey. At least we had a good chuckle at the realization of how far our belief system has evolved from the “hell and damnation”  ideology.

I cannot (and will not) argue the Bible. What I do have to share though is that my connection and experiences with Spirit testify to the reality that God is love and so are we. Since my awakening, I have also read many books on spirituality and the soul’s evolution, and I have discovered that my learnings from Spirit are always consistent with the teachings of these books. For me, my connection with Source/Spirit has profoundly broadened my way of thinking, and my way of being, to the extent that the ideas of “sin” and of penalty/punishment and of being “saved” no longer are relevant.

So how is it that many people believe that we are sinners, that as sinners we are condemned to hell and that we are powerless beings, and then for others like myself, none of these viewpoints hold any truth? 

Deepak Chopra in his book, How to Know God, shares that there are seven levels of consciousness. Belief in a punishing God is the lowest level of spiritual evolution. Chopra speaks to the concepts that we are co-creators with God in our lives and that God will meet you where you are. I come back to these concepts often because they straightforwardly explain how humankind’s experience of God is so vastly divergent. They help me to release judgment of others and to allow others to be exactly where they are. If you believe in sin and punishment, and in a vengeful God, then your life experiences will validate those beliefs. God will meet you where you are.

I also found the Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsch immensely helpful in explaining broader spiritual principles. I remember reading a passage about Hitler, and God informing Walsch that Hitler did not go to hell. Even though my guides had spoken to me about the idea that sin is not a real concept in the infinite light realm, I still found it difficult to grasp that a soul as menacing as Hitler was not being punished by God. That passage was a slap-me-in-the-face type of “aha” moment.  Even though I heard and understood the teachings from Jesus, my guides and my angels, it was clear that some of my beliefs were/are still so ingrained that I it would take work and willingness and openness on my part to truly shift them and embrace a different possibility and reality.

We have free will to be whomever and whatever we choose to be. Our journey through the many lifetimes we experience on this planet - the Earth school - is to evolve to greater love. As my guides and angels instructed, sin is not an offense or transgression or evil, but simply a choice away from love. In each of the many lives we live, we will make choices away from love and towards love. That is how we learn and grow and define ourselves. That is how we evolve. We always have the opportunity for a higher choice. If we believe in hell, if we believe we are powerless, if we deny our essence as love and as Divine, then we will create and manifest those experiences here and when we return home to the light realm. Thank God though that unconditional love - God, Source, Creator, I Am  - is incapable of judging that choice or any other of our choices as we journey through the different stages of evolution.