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…”

I wonder…….
According to Rabbi Darfour: “Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species threatened a religious community that up to that point in history had only its own faith to shape it. The tools of biblical criticism, archeology, and modern day cosmology were not yet available to biblical scholars, theologians, and religious historians”

“Now they are, and because they are, science and religion no longer need to repudiate each other to justify themselves”
“Indeed, they can complement each other. The science of the cosmos can indeed strengthen, if not confirm the faith of the believer.”
“For such a person, the heavens do show the glory of God. Cosmology need not destroy that belief.”

According to Dr Christine Page: “It was not until the Lemurian Age …some 100,000 years ago, that separation occurred into two genders and the principle of duality began.” I would think that the Adam and Eve story of the Bible occurred not earlier than the :separation into two genders” There could not have been a male and a female earlier.

In the context of human evolution according to Dr Page: “the physical body would have looked almost transparent as its energy was still of a high frequency allowing easy exchange of light consciousness and thought between people, the Nature Kingdoms and those of the spirit world.”

Reading Dr Page, Neale Walsch and listening to the spiritual leaders of Hawaii as interviewed by Lilou Mace in Juicy Living Tours as well as listening to the interviews of Wayne Dyer and Barbara Marx Hubbard make me wonder how my church till now has not come up with an updated interpretation of Original Sin.In a previous essay I wrote that Original Sin could very well be the programmed memories as explained in Joe Vitale’s “Zero Limits”. I can only wonder because not even my 24 units of Theology in college, a long time ago, have adequately equipped me to give a substantial discussion of such a sacred teaching.

Lilou Mace”s productions “Juicy Living Tours” are dedicated to awakening. she uses freely the term “co-creators”. She reminds me of Rabbi Darfour’s:
“The Bible is telling us that God needed human help so that the entire life/growth process might move forward.”
“…. Man must be a co-maker with God in making this earth a garden.”

“One of Judaism’s more audacious theological principles is that God and humanity need each other to complete the creative process.”
“We may not be equal partners with God ,but we are definitely part of the equation.”

More picturesque are the statement in “Stepping into the Magic” :
“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. Whatever we believe or desire or fear or expect we magnetize towards us”

“There is no such thing as luck, chance, coincidence or fate. There are no accidents. Nothing is predestined other than our chosen destiny (and that we can change)”

The message of hope is:
“…that growth through struggle is fast becoming a dusty old relic, the history of which will make future generations shake their heads in disbelief; we are the mapmakers, the dream-weavers, the co-creators.”

“We are in the forefront of a whole new way of being-in-the-world, shining a light into the future of our dreams, learning to create a world of peace and harmony”

Here are some observations, not necessarily endorsements from Rabbi Darfour: “A successful religion is one that explains life effectively for its members. In an age of alienation, with people living anonymously, in compacted areas of high population density, a place where anonymity and loneliness can be overcome under the mantle of a commonly shared experience is bound to hold a strong attraction…”

I don’t particularly resonate with what the rabbi said about loneliness but I believe that works for many. In fact, my husband keeps reminding me that we go to Mass for the social dimension of worship; I hope I see the benefits of this soon enough.

One of my complaints against my church is: “In failing to supply people with solutions to overwhelming social problems and in failing to supply society with a sense of lasting meaning.” The quotation is still from Rabbi Darfour

My search for meaning is similar to what the Jews have been impatient with: “Congregants come to the synagogue to be sang to and preached at.” Maybe my responsibility is to go to another church as suggested many times by a friend happy in her parish in my hometown.

“It’s true that religion may be enjoyed and expressed through the highly emotive, but I (Rabbi Darfour) do not think it can really grow that way. Faith must be shaped by more than emotional moments”

“Instantaneous salvation, faith in a flash, throwing oneself into God’s hands and hoping for the best, is neither right or wrong. It just strikes me as being insufficient as a building block for a mature religious life”

Rabbi Darfour in “Finding God in the Garden” continues:”I see faith as a commitment to the sum total of beliefs, sentiments, and practices, individual and social that has as its object a power we recognize as supreme on which we depend for guidance and inspiration and with which through prayer and ethical conduct, we can enter into a relationship.”

“My experience with my church hs to be dealt with accordingly: such a faith is arrived at only after much effort, struggle, thought and behavior refined by social experience. It requires patience and experimentation.”

I do like experimentation. I like personal experience

“Faith is a process in becoming. Working to achieve it never ends.”