Crossing the
Cherokee prophecy and Genesis 3
In 1994, a Cherokee spiritual leader addressed a group of
people of which I was a part. This person spoke about the nature of the time in
which we live today and said that an old Cherokee prophecy would be realized in
this time. The prophecy, as I remembered it, went like this: Sometime after the
turn of the century, either in 2002 or 2012, a spiritual bridge would open for
those who had intended the spiritual path by 1992. The bridge would never be
closed to anyone but the longer one waited before intending the spiritual path,
the harder it would be to find the bridge. This person described the bridge as
a bridge in time that would take a person ahead the equivalent of 400 years.
This person went on to say that it was as if time had a
wave function and over this past century the frequency and amplitude of the
wave had been increasing geometrically. It would reach a point where the
equivalent of a wave-function collapse would take place… two adjacent peaks in
time would come together over a trough representing the equivalent of 400 years
of linear time. The bridge would last for ten years before falling apart. At
that point, the presentation ended... and no one asked, "And what happens
next?" We all simply went our own merry ways.
I, for one, liked what I had heard. After all, I had
become fully aware of the nature of my spiritual path in 1987 so I was
certainly destined for salvation! (Who says? Read on.) However, the question of
what lay at the end of the bridge began to dog my thoughts. Was there going to
be a separation of worlds somewhat similar to what Philip Wylie described in
his book, The Disappearance (Lightyear;
December 1993. ISBN: 0899684157)? Would those who crossed the bridge acquire a
higher energetic vibration that made them invisible to those who did not cross
the bridge, much like the ninth prophecy in Jim Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy (Warner
Books; January 1995. ISBN: 044651862X)? Every answer I arrived at seemed
inadequate. However, I have learned to be patient and to state the intention to
receive the answer at the right time—a time not of my own choosing.
I meditated on the question. I ruminated on the question.
I dialogued on the question. I waited. I wondered. It seemed that crossing the
bridge was a form of realization—awakening—Christ/Buddha-becoming. Then I
considered that these Beings might return—as Jesus/Bodhisattvas—to stand at the
edge of the pool of human suffering to lend a hand to those who reached the
surface and called for help… more wondering…more meditating.
I was talking about this prophecy and its questions and
implications in a H.O.P.E. Group meeting in February 2003, and the answer
came... I remembered that crossing the bridge was the "equivalent" of
moving forward 400 years in time. I saw that crossing the bridge would get the
spiritually minded individual a picture of the spiritually developed world in
2403, and that person would return to the twenty-first century and set in
motion a ripple that would direct the course of history over the next 400
years.... The Christ/Buddhas did, indeed, return as Jesus/Bodhisattvas!
I had previously held an image of myself as a
"doorman" to the bridge for as long as I had had known about the
bridge. I had a sense that when the time was right, I, too, would cross the
bridge into the future and join the others. With this new image of visiting the
future and returning, but without destroying the image of "doorman,"
I wondered if I had already crossed the bridge and returned with an image. Over
the next two or three days, it became clear that I had…. I had developed a point of childhood knowledge into a field of adult understanding when I
wrote Soul Circling: The Journey to the
Who ©2002! Let me explain….
At this time in our history, a significant number of
adults are aware that children often seem to have some wisdom-knowledge that all
too often confuses adults who then make significant efforts to belittle it. These
children want to talk about the things they know but when they get belittled
for their efforts, they find it simpler to avoid the adults who do not want to listen but want to teach.
My family of origin was no exception; there was
significant spirituality that was all too often colored by religion. My mother
was the Episcopal daughter of an allopathic general practitioner, and she had
healing hands that were every bit as powerful as the prayers of my father's
Christian Scientist family. However, she was ruled by her physical senses,
confused by intuition, and unwilling to accept the healing power in her large,
graceful, artist-musician's hands.
My father's mother was a great teacher of biblical lore in
my very early childhood, but she took the Bible literally. As a Christian
Scientist, my grandmother said repeatedly that love was synonymous with God.
However, when she first read me the third chapter of the book of Genesis, I
"knew" it was "wrong" because God showed no love for His
children—angrily and hatefully banishing them for their childish, immature
disobedience. That was anything but loving! I brought it up to her and, later,
to others, but no one was open to a discussion; they looked at my knowledge as
"a figment of (my) imagination." The outstanding exception was the
only self-professed atheist in the bunch—she knew how to listen!
When I was eleven years old, I was having a discussion
with my mother that turned into an argument. At one point I said something that
I “knew” with an enthusiasm appropriate for my age and my mother looked at me
with a thunder-struck expression and said, "Dear, how can you say that if
you love me?" That hurt! I did a right face, stuffed my hands in my
pockets, and slouched out of the living room saying to myself, "Gosh, I
don't think Mom knows what love is, and maybe I don't either, but someday I'll
find out!"
Well, it would be many years before I could say with any
degree of surety that I was coming close to realizing that intention. As I look
back over my life, I see how I have been graced with a gift of loving
relationships that I had to work with
and equally graced with a gift of anger that I had to work through. I have not finished the work on either the love or the anger,
but both projects are well developed. In 1987 I started a support group for
people who had cancer in my surgical practice that they called H.O.P.E. Love was
an essential component of the process. The following year, I studied A Course in Miracles (Foundation for
Inner Peace; 2nd edition [1975], ISBN: 0960638881) for the first time, and accepted the principal of the course that
was to teach love without trying to define it.
The Course
emphasized how dangerous the ego could be and I could see that in my life. I
set out to try to erase my ego, but it would not put up with my efforts. I then
decided to accept my ego lovingly and show my appreciation for the hard work it
had done for my whole life. As it accepted love, my ego softened its grasp on
things it held dear. As I began this revolutionary approach to my fearful,
judgmental self, I began learning about the soul, and I could begin to see that
I had two inner directors: one secular and one spiritual. About this time, I
heard Matthew Fox say in public that he had observed that Roman Catholicism
seemed to pay less attention to the soul than it appeared to merit, so he had
explored his Roman Catholic traditions to see if the soul had ever been a more
prominent part of the church's teachings. He found that it had been an
important way of thinking about ourselves until the beginning of the Age of
Reason, 300 years ago. At that time, the thinkers of the day put the soul in
the mind because its existence could not be scientifically proven. Fox got my attention,
and the nature of soul fascinated me. Its eternal, spiritual nature became
clear to me as I read the growing wealth of literature about near-death
out-of-body experiences. Coincidentally, I was directly exposed to some of
these experiences in my surgical practice and in the H.O.P.E. support groups
that I had started in 1987.
I took a past life regression training course with Brian
Weiss, MD, and he told us that the past life experiences of one of his patients
caused him to study his Jewish traditions to see if they had once held a belief
in reincarnation—necessitating a belief in the existence of the soul. He found
that they did—until 300 years ago. He then looked at Christian history and
found that Christians, too, had believed in reincarnation until 300 years ago.
He then examined Islam and found the same thing for that third and youngest of
the Faith Family religions!
As I, a soul, was coming to terms with my body's ego, I
heard a tape by Wayne Dyer in which he said that the Garden of Eden legend in
the third chapter of the book of Genesis was the story of the ego. It made
perfect sense! The legend was written some 2700 years ago, having likely been a
part of our oral tradition for many hundreds of years before that. It was clear
to me that the legend was an attempt to explain why we had perpetuated so much
egregious harm on each other for so many thousands of years. To the mind-set of
that day, it was inconceivable that God could have given us knowledge because
we had done so much harm with it. We still believe to this day that we had to
have obtained it by some other means than as a divine gift. So we created the
serpent to blame for stealing God's knowledge and giving it to us. Furthermore,
men blamed women for being suckered by this snake! In short, “somebody's wrong
and it sure as hell ain't me!” This shame-blame-guilt thinking is pure
ego-work.
In 12-step recovery circles, "ego" is an acronym
for "ease God out". As Genesis 3 can be seen as the story of the ego,
God's admonition to His children about not eating of the fruit of His tree of
knowledge of good and evil has every hallmark of the behavior of a drunk and his
stash of booze! Every good drunk tells his children that they had better not
touch his whiskey! When they do, which is almost inevitable, he brutalizes
them. So God, as the alcoholic angry parent, banishes His own children from His
household and tells them never to come back. Once they are out of the gate, He fixes
it so that they can never get back in. Please be aware… knowledge can be just
as addictively dangerous as whiskey!
No! God is not a drunk! We, His children, are not
disobedient—just immature—with a perfect parent. God gave us knowledge, knowing
that all the time we were using it
beautifully we were misusing it
egregiously—and judge ourselves horribly for that misuse. The God that is
synonymous with love has no fear-based hatred and It looks at Its children with
soft, kind eyes, knowing that every misuse of knowledge contains a lesson in its
right use.
The world of 2403 is a world in which we have recognized
and acknowledged the ego for its resourceful skills, all of which are written
in our genetic code. In this new time, we have taught it to devote its strength
and energy to the service of the soul's intent. The soul is a manifest
holographic fragment of the Spirit that comes with a core passion to create a
one-of-a-kind work of art that is a single volume in a marvelous, wondrous
encyclopedia of the universal experience of Being. The world of 2403 is a
beautiful world of Being devoted to its experience of God. It is a world in
which almost all communication is telepathic, including travel. It is a world
that knows that mind-travel is virtually instantaneous. It knows how to star-travel.
The
I am not alone in this awareness. Last year I received an
e-mail from a dear friend that contained the following message:
To my fellow swimmers:
There is a river flowing
now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be
afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore, they will feel they are being
torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The
elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open and our heads above the water.
And I say: see who is
there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing
personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment that we do, our spiritual
growth and journey come to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves. Banish
the word "struggle" from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do
now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have
been waiting for.
(The person responsible
for this beautiful message does not wish to be identified with any other name
than Human.)
In the week of
…. I urge you, ask you,
gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult
times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is–we
were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing,
been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of
engagement...
I grew up on the
We have been in training
for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth. For
many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead
in so many ways over and over brought down by naiveté, by lack of love, by
being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the
extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially–we
have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over
again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or
foundered can be restored to life again….
The good words we say and
the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who
brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When
a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But
that is not what great ships are built for.
This comes with much love
and prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this
beautiful, needful Earth, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. ©2003
http://www.mavenproductions.com/esteswindow4.html
There is a field beyond all polarities that we reach when
we suspend judgment. It is equally and vitally important that we look at our
egos and our souls with the soft eyes of compassion. Our egos are born in our DNA. Our souls come here borne by our DNA. Our egos can wonder
far afield and create all sorts of havoc if they have no spiritual home. Our
souls are adrift if they have no physical home. They need each other and God
made it so. Each of us is a ship of life of which the ego is the navigator, and
the soul is the captain that came here with "earth orders".
The true story of the Garden of Eden is that we left God’s
Garden in our own shame for all the harm we had done. We went far afield and
survived incredible insults. We have begun to wonder if there is not a better
way. Some of us have begun to look up in the sky instead of down at the ground
in front of our tired and shameful feet. A regular flicker of light comes from
the horizon behind us, and those of us who have already begun to follow its
call are standing on the horizon calling and beckoning us to turn and go to
them. Their messages tell us that there is a beautiful arch on their horizon
with a shining beacon on it that we thought when we left was a spinning sword
to kill us if we ever came back. They tell us that there are a couple of
outposts at the arch calling them
back home. They tell us that there is a beautiful city on the other side of the
arch, with stairs arching up from every rooftop. Our ears pick up the distant,
clear call, “Come home!”
As we come home over the next 400 years, keep in mind that
everything is divine, and time is only a metaphor for the Life of Being. Give yourself permission to be aware that out beyond
all old ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. There we shall
meet and discover why God made us. We will know that that field has been
promised us since the beginning of Time.
Kind, blessing, and loving thoughts come.
Posted by Stephen D. Thompson
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