Here, I describe the fundamentals of the framework that’s used throughout OBA. This is just a summary and likely to evolve over time. Each topic will eventually be covered in greater detail in other blog entries. In the second half of this entry, I’ll explain the term I chose (“alēthinós“).
- Every person carries a spark of the Divine (i.e., our soul) and that is our true nature, which is light and love and which cannot be changed, damaged, or destroyed. Thus, we are intrinsically valuable, worthy, and perfect, eternally, no matter what.
This is true regardless of anything a person experiences, whether it’s something they do or something that is done to them. This is the “being” aspect of our nature as a human being.
- We all choose incarnation on Earth to learn lessons that enable our soul to become stronger and closer to that which is the one, true source of everything Divine in nature (aka, God) and we each choose the lessons we want to learn and the life that will require. Our experiences are of our own design, even though we don’t remember the process of choosing and planning.
A subset of this is that we experience many incarnations so that we have every opportunity to develop fully, but that belief is not necessary for embracing this framework. Even if you believe each person lives a single time, it’s important to understand that we co-create with the Divine to design life experiences that are most beneficial to our soul’s development. This understanding is what gives us an empowered perspective and sense of gratitude, as opposed to the belief that life is something that happens TO us or that we are the victims of others’ choices and actions.
- We always have free will, at all times, in every situation. We are experiencing a system of education, not of rules or punishment.
Rules, threats, and punishments are components of dogma rather than spirituality. We must have complete freedom to choose if we are to experience any sort of meaningful development or growth. A choice made under threat of punishment is not a choice that’s freely made. There would be no Divine purpose in a system that seeks to control rather than provide the opportunity for maturing spiritually. These components of dogma were incorporated by those whose purpose was to control people rather than by Spirit. There will likely be other blog entries about this, but a relevant point is made by Jesus when he tells the woman at the well that true worship is in the heart rather than a church (from John 4, quoted below). Although at times Jesus does reference the suffering of those who turn away from God, this can be considered the natural consequence of living in separation from the Divine/Spirit rather than an externally imposed punishment (again, I’ll write in greater detail about this in another entry).
- Because we have free will in a system designed for education, there are no wrong choices.
Although we do design a plan for our life in advance, it’s limited to intentions and opportunities. You can think of it as an elaborate if-then flow chart not unlike a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Whenever we have a choice to make in life, what we’re ultimately deciding is which lesson(s) we’re going to learn and how. There are choices that are more or less in alignment with our higher self but each one still brings education and ultimately serves our highest good. It’s like taking courses in college before choosing a major: we might end up learning which direction we don’t want to go, but there is still value in that lesson and it ultimately reorients us in the direction of our happiness.
- Life on Earth comes packaged with an “ego,” which is the human aspect of our nature as a human being.
This is the part of us that only sees the world through the lens of our experiences and what is seen with our eyes. Its goal is to protect us from being hurt but it operates out of fear. For this reason, it’s also referred to as our shadow side. The soul is love and light, whereas the ego is fear and shadow. In the simplest terms, the soul is like the angel on one shoulder and the ego is like the devil on the other. Only as a devil that represents earthly influences as opposed to spiritual; not as something evil. The ego is NOT bad nor something we’re meant to eradicate. It’s exactly what we came here for. Learning how to overcome the ego’s fear and live from our soul is what brings spiritual development and maturity. This is not done by attempting to repress, silence, or control the ego but rather by caring for its needs.
- We’re all basically actors in a training simulation and our egos are formed by the role we’re playing. We just also happen to have amnesia for the part where we signed up for a role and received a loose script (most of this play is improvised).
The amnesia is necessary in order for us to truly learn from the experience. That, and a human mind can’t really handle the full scope of everything our soul is and knows. Nevertheless, that soul does exist and that is the existence we always return to. Life here is a blip in our eternal existence. No one gets destroyed here. No one and nothing can ruin your life and you can’t ruin anyone else’s. Every single experience is valuable. The harder your life is and the more you learn from it, the bigger a rockstar you’ll be greeted as when you return to your real life. When you’re back in the fullness of everything your soul knows, you’ll marvel at how real and important everything seemed while you were here. What’s more, you’ll remember the true nature of all the people who agreed to help you by playing important roles in your life. The real kicker? When it comes to the people who hurt us most (and, therefore, teach us the most), the souls we ask to help us with that are usually the ones we trust the most. How much shame and resentment could you release by embracing this truth? Again, there will be much more on this topic in other entries.
- None of us has ever been alone or abandoned.
We have always been surrounded with incredible amounts of unconditional love and support from a spiritual team. You can describe them in whatever way feels meaningful to you. For instance, a lot of people find the idea of angels comforting and reassuring. Having studied the Bible a great deal, I find them to be awe-inspiring but not very approachable. I tend to ask angels for help when I feel like I need an army fighting next to me, not when I need a hug. It’s different for everyone and the terms you use truly don’t matter. Whatever inspires in you a sense of connection with Spirit at any given time is what’s important, so the terminology that strengthens your connection is what you should use.
- Living in alignment with our higher self (i.e., letting our Soul drive the car instead of our ego) is the only thing that will ever bring us genuine satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness.
This doesn’t have anything to do with living an ascetic lifestyle or even religious practices. Most of us didn’t come here with a life purpose to devote ourselves entirely to religion. Most of us came with a plan to live here, in this context, and to work hard to bring our soul to that life. The goal is to shine our light from within whatever personal or professional context we pursue here; this is the example set by the way Christ lived life, among others, and we’re meant to emulate it. We do that by learning to recognize and listen to the voice of our higher self, to recognize and follow guidance from Spirit, and to care for our ego in a way that keeps our soul in control of our choices and all aspects of our self in harmony. We then become examples to help others toward that goal. We’re all on the same team and share the same goal. We have varying degrees of awareness and engagement with that goal because we also happen to be at varying developmental stages, which is no more a reflection of inherent value or quality than a child’s grade in school.
Each of these factors is important because they are all interdependent.
Alēthinós: what it means and why I chose it
I was raised Christian and as far back as I can remember, I felt very close to Christ and God. I was aware of a deep knowing that this world wasn’t my home. I also experienced a great deal of confusion as I watched people behave completely counter to what I could see in them. It took a lot of accidentally freaking people out to learn that I was seeing something that wasn’t apparent to everyone and that most people didn’t want to be seen. This was written off as “seeing the best in everyone” and “poor judge of character.” It wasn’t until my spontaneous awakening occurred that I realized I’d been seeing people’s souls all along.
In other words, I was always very much aware of the spiritual nature of existence. Since I was taught a Christian framework to describe what I already knew to be true, that’s what I used. By the time I left home, I was already struggling with calling myself a Christian. Although I very much believed in Christ and following His teaching, it seemed like that wasn’t the goal of most people who called themselves Christians. I think of this as the period of “Christian, but” because I always felt the need to include caveats when telling someone my religious affiliation.
In my early 30s, I experienced a complete crisis of faith because so much of the story in Christian dogma just made no sense to me. It didn’t feel right or true to me and I could no longer ignore that lack of congruity. I did still believe in the teachings of Christ; that never stopped feeling true. This was my agnostic period, and it involved a great deal of exploration, which was a good thing. There was also a lot of sadness due to the greater sense of separation because I no longer had a sense of someone to talk to. I just wasn’t sure anymore that anyone was listening. After decades of constant dialogue with Spirit, this was a very lonely sensation. At the same time, I felt like I had developed a codependent relationship with God (if there was one) and regardless of what was true spiritually, I needed to live life from a place that focused more on personal responsibility and figuring out how to have a healthy relationship of any kind.
My exploration was almost entirely internal, a process of thinking through various spiritual topics in a logical way to determine what made sense to me. I still knew the teachings of Christ to be true, but I didn’t trust the egos involved in creating religion to have faithfully passed along His teaching completely and accurately. I was trying to piece together a bigger picture that would form a pattern that made sense. I hoped I’d find a religion that provided this and once again belong to a community of like-minded people. Toward the end of my agnostic period, I began studying Buddhism and was startled to find the tradition was built on “thought experiments” similar to mine and had reached most of the same conclusions in the same way. Still, like every tradition I’d evaluated at one point or another, some tenets just didn’t feel right to me. On some level, I knew there was a truth I was seeking but I couldn’t find anything that fit it exactly. It was like trying to remember something important: I knew that I’d know it when I found it. Additionally, the need to find it – to remember – weighed on me. In between the distractions of life, there was a sense of something missing and a melancholy that came with it, and these feelings always led me back to my search.
When my spontaneous awakening happened, it felt like finally remembering. Not in the way of vague recollections, however. It was more like when there’s a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite think of, then later it pops into your head with a “That’s it!!” sensation. The truth came to me in that way, along with the messages, “It’s ALL true,” and, “NOW you can help people.” Ever since, I’ve felt the very strong conviction that I’m meant to carry the message, which includes the need to return to the core of Christ’s message: a Spirit-filled heart and choices motivated by love. I don’t know that I’ll have anything particularly profound or truly unique to say, just that I need to do it. Maybe it’ll remain in obscurity until 100 years from now, one person finds it and some random bit I wrote opens their eyes to something much bigger than anything I delivered and that person goes on to save the world. I don’t know the ultimate purpose. I’m just doing what I’m asked to do, delivering the messages I’m given, leaving the rest in the hands of the Divine and Spirit, and feeling more fulfilled and joyful about life than I ever have before.
So then the question became, what do I call this spiritual practice I’m receiving and sharing messages about? If I’m going to try to explain it to people and give them ways to use it, then it should probably have a name, preferably one that isn’t already heavy with the burden of preconceptions for most people, which nearly every spiritual or religious term is.
Since I had spent three decades studying the bible and then used “agnostic” for a time, which comes from the Greek word gnosia (“lack of knowledge”), I decided to look for a Greek term that best fit with everything I now understood to be true. The one that I feel expresses everything best is aléthinos. Its simplest definition is “true” but like all Greek words, it’s a great deal more nuanced than that. Here’s additional information from Bible Hub:
Alēthinós – properly, true (real), emphasizing the organic connection (authentic unity) between what is true and its source or origin. Alēthinós (“substantially true”) refers to what is essentially true – connecting (visible) fact to its underlying reality. Alēthinós then emphasizes the integrity of what is true, down to its inner make-up (reality, “true inside and out”). “The Johannine use of alēthinós sometimes carries something of the Greek meaning of ‘real,’ but it is the real because it is the full revelation of God’s faithfulness” (G. E. Ladd, The Pattern of New Testament Truth, 81).
Examples of this word used in the Bible:
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” – John 1:9
“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – spoken by Jesus in John 4:23-24
“Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, ‘Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but He who sent me is true. You do not know Him, but I know Him because I am from Him and He sent me.’” – John 7:28-29
“The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.” – John 19:35
“For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.” – Hebrews 9:24
“…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” – Hebrews 10:22 [This one really gets me, because it’s so fitting and 10/22 is my birthday]
“Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” – I John 2:8
The term alēthinós encompasses the truth of our nature – the divine soul made of light and love that we all carry – as well as the importance of living in congruence with that true nature – the state of authenticity. In that state, our heart is filled with Divine love and that becomes the lens through which we view our experiences and the other souls around us. We become the true testimony, the true sanctuary, the true light, and the full revelation of God’s faithfulness. We are then able to live in alignment with our individual life purpose, at which point our lives naturally become a lighthouse guiding others to do the same. I think this is the essence of Christ’s teachings and this same truth is at the core of every religion, including Buddhism (another topic I’ll cover at some point).
Thus, I now think of myself as primarily alethinostic. With Divine help, I seek to live authentically by letting my inner light shine without fear. Like Christ, I believe that God is Love, that Love is God, and that every single one of us is carrying that within us. Like the Dalai Lama, my religion is kindness. Like John the Baptist, I’m just a messenger (who has resolute faith in the messages I’ve received and where they come from, although I may well be considered a blasphemous heretic and/or lunatic by many).
At one time or another, I’ve been just as foolish, hurtful, petty, spiteful, cruel, resentful, entitled, deceitful, anxious, suspicious, cold, callous, heartless, punishing, judgmental, bitter, greedy, ruthless, miserly, selfish, and crazy as anyone else. I’ve received inordinate grace that set my inner light free from fear, and the gratitude I feel compels me to pay it forward by sharing that grace with anyone who wants it. I have no plan or anticipated outcome. I’m just following directions from Those who know far better than I do. I don’t know the recipe, only ever the next step.
Although I wish for every person to receive the healing and happiness they seek, not everyone will find something useful in these messages. We’re all on individual journeys and we need different things at different times. Any message found here is intended for those who are looking for it and no one else. Take what resonates and ignore the rest. After all, the primary message on this site is that no one knows better than you what is right for you…as long as you’re listening to your soul rather than your ego! 😉