God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way;
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.
– Annie Johnson Flint (1866-1932), from “What God Hath Promised” (1919)
Our most confounding human trait is our ability to keep on fooling ourselves. The plain fact is that so many of the basic attributes of the cosmos have been so precisely tuned to foster intelligent life that if the values of any of those parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles, the various electromagnetic and gravitational forces, or the color and mass of the sun were tweaked even slightly, just small differences in any of those details could have prevented the formation of the components necessary for life in the universe, or in other ways could have made life as we know it impossible. Which prompts scientists to conclude that there must be a multiverse! Of course! And in that infinite number of universes, this one just happens to be perfect for life. Since scientists insist that life must be random. They refuse to allow for a Creator. But all of that absurd atheistic nonsense has gotten really old at this point, so Occam’s Razor wins, for heaven’s sake, in the scientific sweepstakes of common sense. The simplest explanation is the best explanation. It is long past time for physicists to accept the fact that Max Planck was right a hundred years ago when he said that Consciousness is primary.
And no, the universe could not have started in a single big bang. Even if there had been a bang at some point, we still would be left to ask what existed before the big bang happened, since it is a primary scientific tenet that something cannot come from nothing. The fossil record demonstrates that modern humans first came into existence in the area of modern-day Botswana only two hundred thousand years ago, together with more than ninety percent of all the other species of animals and plants. And the rest of history which preceded that event came into existence, together with a heck of a lot of “punctuated equilibrium,” as humans have become more curious about our past. A bigger and ever bigger illusory universe was created, too, as humans have needed it, so we never would find an edge. And, oh yes, it turns out that the attribute of life is a property inherent in Consciousness itself. All of these practical conclusions are inescapable.
Scientists still refuse to even cope with the fact that some of the most important “cosmological constants” are continuously and minutely adjusting! And if you watch for them, you can sometimes see other little ways in which a loving Creator is tweaking this habitat that is meant for our spiritual growth. That fanciful scientific notion of a multiverse in which this is just one of an infinite number of universes is, and it always has been, ridiculous. And in their saner moments, physicists on some level likely always have known this was true. But the problem is that, as happens with any human-made belief-system, by now mainstream science has more than a century of effort invested in its string of dogmas, and its primary dogma is atheism. It cannot find any honorable way to pull back from all of that nonsense now.
This singular illusory reality that we think we see around us has been lovingly created as a place for us to have experiences that can help us to grow spiritually. That is the reason why this universe exists. And these life-experiences are supposed to be hard! If they are not hard for us to deal with, then we won’t be able to grow very much. But this universe is designed around us and for us, just as a zoo’s habitats are designed for its animals. As tiny as it may make us feel, you and I are the reason why this universe exists.
And once you have swallowed the first part of this post, you will need to add to it the realization that this universe and everything in it, including your material body, are not as solid as they seem. All of it is in fact something like 99.99% empty space. Or to put it another way, this universe is actually, as our brilliant friend Albert Einstein pointed out, something like a pure illusion. Einstein said, “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” And he added, “It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing—a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind.”
So in reality, as Einstein knew, matter is almost entirely empty space. Everything that we see around us is just another channel to which our minds can be tuned. In the room around you now, there are hundreds of different levels of reality existing at once. Your mind just happens to be tuned to this one.
The first discarnate being to make this analogy for us used radio signals, because television had not yet been invented. And discovering that insight when I was doing my earliest afterlife research was a real “Aha!” moment for me! Accustomed as we are to living with what we think is solid matter around us, our minds have become severely limited by the constraints of all of this illusory solidity. But all of us are astral travelers. The astral plane is a great many realities that vibrate higher than this one, and they are our true eternal home. In fact, although they also are illusory, all of those higher vibratory levels are far more real-seeming than is this reality. As your mother or your grandmother will happily tell you, whenever you visit with them through a medium.
The sooner you can back off from seeing this illusory material reality as important, the happier you are going to be. I know how counterintuitive that probably seems to you. We are so used to thinking of this little blue marble as all that we’ve got, and these eighty-odd years as our whole allotted time, when in fact our home is in the astral plane and we live there through eternity. We accept amnesia when we come here so we will take our earth-lessons seriously, but that makes these facts no less certainly true. I am going to say this again:
- Each of us is an individual and eternal aspect of Consciousness. Even though we think we are not always aware, in fact we are always aware somewhere. Your material body and its brain need occasional sleep, but the same is not true of your mind.
- The astral plane is our gigantic and indestructible true home. Insofar as we are able to determine, the astral plane consists of at least dozens of solid-seeming energy levels, each of which may be as large as this entire material universe, to the extent that size means anything. The afterlife area is the gigantic foyer through which we leave the astral to enter these brief earth-lives, and then we return home again through the afterlife area to process what we have learned on earth before we resume our real eternal lives in the many levels of the astral plane.
- This universe – and more specifically, this little blue marble – is an illusory reality to which we come briefly to experience the kind of negativity that we cannot experience at home. This is all just a pure illusion. As Einstein joked, it is one heck of an illusion. But it is an illusion all the same.
Just think of what this really means! There is nothing that ever can harm you. A nuclear bomb can land slap on your head right now, and you will only laugh. Once you understand what actually is going on, you will develop a sense of peace and security and pure joy so profound that it will defy every possible fear. Once you really get this, it is going to amaze and delight you! Look around you now. Nothing that you see is real. But you are real, and you are eternal, and you are infinitely loved. There is nothing in all of reality that is more precious and more beloved of God than you are.
But in order for you to claim the peace of God, you are going to have to give up the illusions.
If you have been reading these posts for a while, then you know that the very idea of religions is something that people invented in the first place as our bulwark against a howling void. But now we know that God is real! And we can safely blow out that little candle of religion, now that the sun of God shines bright. I know that. But still, I gave up Roman Christianity only with extreme reluctance. The religion was so much a part of my marriage that no longer going to church with my husband made me feel as if I was betraying him. I had already long since separated the religion from Jesus in my mind. That wasn’t hard to do, since it was clear from His own words that He had come to move humankind beyond needing religions. He certainly hadn’t come to start another one!
A Course in Miracles puts it this way: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” If you like, you might try an experiment. Just go back and read to this point again, and then read those three ACIM summary sentences and sit with it all for a bit. See if you can make your awareness of God dawn in you at a deeper level.
I can recall when, perhaps twenty years ago now, it first hit me hard that God is real, I am eternal, and all is love and peace and joy. I was deeply alone with God in that moment. And coming to know Jesus as an aspect of the Godhead, and planning His website out of love for Him, is making me think all of this through again. His pure and immense and overwhelming love for all of humankind simply defies imagination!
The upper levels of the astral plane are glorious. They are beautiful beyond description, the colors and sounds and scents, the flowers, and the incredible intensity of love in the atmosphere. Of course, the energy there is so intense that we cannot bear to be so high until we have personally achieved those exalted levels, but we can be taken to visit the highest realms if someone who is vibrating at those levels will escort and shield us. When Thomas Jefferson spoke through Leslie Flint in the sixties, Jefferson described having been escorted on such a jaunt, and how amazing it was. It is no wonder that nearly all of those who ever have been close to Jesus have chosen to advance, rather than staying with Him. And yet Jesus continues to live on the lowly entry level, lovingly welcoming and healing damaged people, helping to rear the aborted children, constantly teaching and ministering and serving. My Thomas tells me that Jesus has visited the highest astral realms, but He never has stayed for long. Once, before I was born, Thomas went there with Jesus, shielded by Him, and He tells me that, yes, it was all so pleasurable that he would have been happy to stay, but Jesus couldn’t wait to leave. Thomas thought that was because there was no one there who needed Him. I said, “Wow. Does He need to be needed that much?” Thomas said, “No. It’s not that. But He knows there still is not enough love to match the need that there is for love. And until there is enough love, Jesus wants always to be where He can offer His.”
God has not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;
He has not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden, many a care.
But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way;
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.
– Annie Johnson Flint (1866-1932), from “What God Hath Promised” (1919)