I have been seeking answers in clear-edged concepts to many of my burning issues. I have been agonizing over my personal experiences of God that run counter against what was “indoctrinated” in school, and in church till the 90s when I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression.

Lately, I reviewed Bro. Ebner’s FSC book written in the 70s and first read when I was pregnant with our one and only daughter. Like Bro Ebner I have been searching for better explanations to questions about life. Like him I feel that : “Until church spokesmen and theological experts offer us more immediate helpful things, I feel that there is a place for me to tell my story.”

Our only daughter who has been living away from us since her college years was home from London lately. In spite of my serious work on expanding my consciousness for the past 3 years I feel humbled by her maturity and her global experience: Singapore, Australia, London, USA, Dubai, Spain, Vienna, Paris, Morocco, Prague etc

Between Bro. Ebner’s book and conversations with our daughter, I feel short-changed. My fearful clinging to traditional Catholic teachings has robbed me of the exuberance which our daughter exudes. She has unwittingly made me realize the truth in what Bro Ebner wrote:
“It arrives as something new in the Catholic church, where “objective faith” has been stressed officially for the past four centuries.”
“Whatever we can say and do about God that will be real for us has to grow out of this person’s experience.”
“We can expect to experience the true God only when we get in touch with ourselves. ”

I am still dealing with what Bro Ebner calls “layman’s frustration and perplexities.” He may be speaking of me as he wrote:
“We may be so conditioned by our past, we may perceive through so many filters, that we may scarcely know what actually we ourselves really think and feel. So that when contemporary writers urge us to explore the religious side of our experience, we may not be reading our depths but mainly remembering words we were told and which we only take as ours. However, to be sensitive to this problem is already to be solving it.”

I like Dr Page, Martha Beck, Lilou Mace, Barbara Hubbard, Laura Bushnell and of course Gill Edwards. Thy are all “bringers” of hope. I also like Aunty Mahealani and Kahu S. Ka’imiloa.

According to Gill Edwards : “The wisdom of the ancients …sees life from a much larger perspective. It has access to the unseen realities. It knows that life is a chosen adventure in consciousness. We are conscious beings who have freely chosen to become physical. (Consciousness did not emerge from matter; matter emerged from consciousness!).

“We are not victims. We were not sent here – much less banished here. The earth is not a penal colony for wayward souls who (if we’re very, very good and stoically endure a great  deal of suffering) might be allowed to come home eventually.”

To me this sounds like a repudiation of a formula pryer which my cousin refused to recite because she could not stomach “the valley of tears” phrase in that prayer.

Gill Edwards continues: “For thousands of years, mystics have insisted that we are all ONE – that we are all sparks of a creative Source, and our separateness is an illusion.”

“In the greater reality, all probable pasts, and probable futures co-exist, all causes and effects co-exist – evrything that ever was and ever will be simply “is”. We are multidimensional beings .”

Ms Edwards ventures to apply the Oneness belief: …”we can communicate with anything and anyone at will – from a tree to a typewriter, from a great grandmother in Spirit to a far-flung friend. since all consciousness is interconnected, we can send or receive messages, give or receive healing, or ask information – all at a distance. It just requires a little practice, and trust.”

“Another immensely practical consequence of our Oneness is that, since everything is interconnected, nothing happens by chance. Our thoughts and beliefs create our reality. Our thoughts are energy and that energy attracts people, events and opportunities which match that energy which resonate with it. Every thought is a prayer.”

“Our views of reality are forever changing, as we learn and grow – and thousands of people, including well-known scientists and philosophers, are now challenging common sense…”