Why People hate Christians

Why do people hate Christians?

Because they aren't Christian.

Most of the people who are so-called Christians are busy turning people off to Christianity by being exactly as Jesus preached against:

Rule bound hypocrites, much more interesting in telling other people where they are wrong and what rule they are breaking than helping people achieve what everyone wants to achieve: happiness, love, content, fun and harmony.

And usefulness.

They have the "my way or the highway" rule, which blasts people for not believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven, or God, or even happiness.

Minor detail: Jesus said I am the way. And Follow me.

He didn't say He was the only way.

And never said to worship him.

What did He say.

Love your God with all your heart,

and love your neighbor as thyself.

Which is sadly true, except most people's god is either money or status, or their ego, or their image of themselves, and this is what they are in love with.

And most people love themselves hardly a whit, and so a busy not loving others.

Which comes to the core of why people hate Christians.

Jesus said to love your enemy.

The so-called Christians don't love unless you buy into their way of thinking.

These so-called Christians set up conditions, which is the opposite of love: follow these rules, jump through this creed, sign on to hating gays and maybe even working class, and you, too, can get my approval.

And what did Thomas Aquinas say, or St Thomas Aquinas as he is called:

One may have never heard the

sacred word "Christ"

and be closer to God

than a nun

or 

a priest.

And what was Jesus' mission?

To wake up people to their ability to find, right now, the kingdom of heaven within, and to love God ( call it Life) and to love other people and to love yourself.

This is big work.

Scary work.

And frightened people always like rules more than freedom, liberation, real love, happiness.

Rules seem to protect.

Except they make to so-called Christians content only in their heads with their righteous bubble, and they turn off people to what could be ONE of the many beautiful paths of liberation on this earth,

An earth where suffering is the main path of most lives.

What causes that suffering?

Ask and ye shall receive an answer.

But not in your head.

Cheers,
Chris

Resurrection: What Dies, What Lives

There's a dramatic story going down each year on a pagan day.

The day is set like this:
The first Sunday
After the first full moon ( we just had it)
After the equinox ( March 20-22, depending on the year)

So this coming Sunday is that Sunday.
It's called Easter

Does Easter have something to do with the East
with the sun rising in the East
and the day breaking in the East
and the stars and moon rising in the East

I don't know,
but I'd guess so

And it has a lot to do with a man we call Jesus,
but who
was a Jew
and was perhaps called Yeshua back in his day,

maybe

And he taught revolution:

turn within
find the Kingdom of Heaven

turn without
turn outside yourself:
Love your neighbor ( no small job by the complaints so many have about their real life neighbors)
Love your enemy

Love your enemy:
That isn't theory

That's the divorced mate you feel justified in hating because:
they had an affair
they go boring
they watched porn
they trash talked you
they drank
they hit
they neglected
they controlled

they always did something wrong, correct?

The enemy can be horrible.
I've been reading a book about Nigeria.
Half of a Yellow Sun

It's about the slaughter of the Ibbo people in Nigeria

one tribe committing genocide
ugly awful stuff
at least in part,
if not mostly set in motion by the British rulers brilliant use of divide and conquer

( Moshe Feldenkrais talks of how Jews and Arabs
co existed for centuries in Palestine until the British set them
against each other....

and the ease with which one tribe/ nationality/ religion
can be set against each other brings us back to the point

)

LOVING YOUR ENEMY IS A BIG DEAL

and Jesus preached this

and they killed him

This was just too rebellious
loving your enemy

how could divide and conquer work?
how could people stay miserable and easy to oppress?
how could people feel weak and powerless if they could forgive?

ah,
better kill this dude

so they did



and what's the resurrection:
letting go of whatever you haven't forgiven

seeing it's the other person's problem
letting it go

now is now

the kingdom of heaven
is
now

or never

dive in

now

ciao

Jesus died so you could have beginner's mind

 Jesus died so you could have beginners mind
Which sounds like some improper mix

and who knows?

the straight line is that He died to redeem our sins

okay
what are sins?

failure to love others
failure to love ourselves
failure to love God/ nature/ the big picture/ Life

and with beginner's mind can you be
angry at so and so,
without a prior story about how they should have been different?

And with the beginner's mind :
you can be curious about their behavior
or attentive
but basically not at all stuck in any idea they should be
any differnet

it takes an fixed and gathered mind
a sure of itself and its opinion mind
to judge and not love another

and ourselves:
same deal

like I could judge this poem
as not enough leaves
and sunsets
and wild geese,
but the beginner's mind doesn't know
how a poem is supposed to be

and judging ourselves,
only can be
with some pre judgements, so prior pattern of
belief

from the beginner's mind again,
about ourselves,
curious,
open,
wondering
waiting,
receptive

a nice way to live
a nice way to love God/ nature/ Life,
too

and from beginner's mind
we are trapped,
not able not to love

and what's left?

find out,
it's Easter

have a resurrection of your
beginner's mind 

(even about this poem,
perhaps)

Seek until you find: Gospel of Thomas on all and everything

Yeshua:

Whoever discovers what these sayings mean
Will not taste death

Seek and do not stop seeking until you find.
When you find, you will be troubled.
When you are troubled,
You will marvel and rule over all.

If your leaders tell you, "Look the kingdom is in heaven,"
then the birds of heaven will precede you.
If they tell you, "It is in the sea,"
Then fish will beat you there.

But the kingdom of heaven is in you and outside of you.
When you know yourselves, you will be known.
And will understand that you are children of the living father.
If you don't know yourselves,
You will dwell in poverty and be poverty.

You who are old in days will not hesitate
to ask a child of seven days old about
The place of Life, and you will live.
Many who are first will be last and be solitary.

Know what is in front of your face
And what is hidden from you will be disclosed.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

From the Restored New Testament,
Willis Barnstone,





an amazing book, that clues one way into the strangeness of the traditional
new testament's anti-Semitism,
and reveals all sorts of information that isn't commonly known
(letters of Paul before the Mathew, Mark, Luke, John ones written)

Feldenkrais' Contribution to Humanity: Gurdjieff, Jesus, Buddha, Moshe and more !!!!

What was the Buddha's contribution to humanity?

That we live, as it were, behind a glass darkly,
hidden from our real lives,
in a slumbering existence,
disconnected from the Present,
and that from that,
ta da
we can Wake Up.

What was Jesus' contribution?

Well, that gets messy:
it could be the lesson that beautiful words
can lead to ugly Inquisitions,

or it could be the idea
that this is possible:
Love your neighbor,
Love your enemy,
Let go of all your possessions,
come into the Kingdom of Heaven,
which is within us right now.

Okay,
that's sort of spiritual stuff, isn't it?

Why am I setting up Moshe,
a great skeptic in these matters
in such a way?

Because

one: various places it has been said that he mentioned
in an unpublished Playboy interview (wouldn't he have been
great there?) that Gurdjieff was his foremost influence.

And what was Gurdjieff about?

We are asleep,
wandering along with no real center
at the mercy of every tide that sways
first one personality one way
and then some other personality the other.

solution: remember ourselves and wake up

and Gurdjieff also said,
to the staid St Petersburg crowd to whom
he taught in the early part of the 20th Century:
what we are after
is to be real Christians,

by which I'd say he meant,
really able to love

And what's that go to do with rolling around on the floor?
And being touched very gently and with great intelligence
and listening?
Or touching others with gentle intelligent listening?

Lots.

Say you clarify rolling your head to the right,
and lifting it just slightly.

And you stand your feet,
and clarify tipping your knees to the right, so that
your right knee falls almost to the floor,
or to the floor.

And say you get this idea of the , of your, left arm coming across you
to the right,
as you lift your left shoulder and bring it forward and down

and you begin to do
legs to the right
and left arm to the right
and head to the right and toward your right knee as if to
kiss it

and your right elbow kicks in as something like a hand,
and you
go slowly
and roll your head so it is near and then above your
right knee
and
you are something like sitting
and then you are sitting

You have changed.

You were a lying down person.

Now you are a sitting up person.

You know and love and like
and understand your arms better,
your head better
your knees and legs and pelvis better
and they
with your awareness and knowing
all come together
and you are sitting from lying down.

That's change.

That's practical being present.

That's loving yourself in this way of a child:
not,
oh yeah, let's just lie in the sun
and all is groovy,
but let's learn to jump across a pond,
let's learn to climb a tree,
let's learn to fingerpaint with a new color,

it's the love of life
that comes from expanding out into more
of living

And is that like Buddha?

yes. Waking up in perhaps its easiest form,
with aware movement.

And is it like Jesus loving the enemy?
No.
But it does take you away from all thought
of enemy
and help you make friends with all sorts
of parts of your body
and when you body feels sweet and friendly to
you,
is it easier to love anyone
and everyone.

I'd say so.
You say what you want to say.

But if we are all a genius inside
and were that genius when we were children
learning to roll over
and come to sit
and crawl
and walk
and talk

surely recovering that genius
(and didn't Jesus say, become like the little children)
again, is
to my mind
Moshe's gift to humanity:

You are never to old
to re activate
awareness
and the genius of learning that we had
as children

This is our birthright:
to be awake
to be in the joy and thrill and fun
of learning
and waking to now
and loving ourselves more
not as vague "self esteem"
but as happily more potent people
able to do something we couldn't do
an hour ago.

Good.