The gold calf in Dan and Bethel

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Christian and Spiritual message boards over the past three and a half years, I began to see some parallels between the two:

1. Those proclaiming to be Christians were professing themselves to be born again and saved, while those proclaiming to be more spiritually minded (having left behind the judgmental and condemning dogmas of religion) were professing themselves (in their present state) to be spirit and perfected.

2. The Christians were claiming to have the Holy Spirit, (big "H", big "S") which is to say you have the Power of God, while the other group was claiming they were God (big "G").

3. And for both of them, the Earth held little value... the one group waiting to be whisked away from the earth by way of "the rapture," while the other group viewed the earth as nothing more than an illusion.

It was these observations that begged the question:

Why the parallels between these two groups of people?

I received the answer early the next morning:

"It is the two gold calves the king of Israel set up in Dan and Bethel. It's the same image... an old religious belief in a new age wrapping. "

I understood the symbolism of this Biblical story immediately, and as time went on I began to fully understand why it had come about!

For over fifteen hundred years now, the children of God have been humiliated and browbeaten by religion, stripped of their self-worth and self-esteem, stripped of their authentic power, controlled by fear. Many of these children of God left the religious system in a very down-trodden emotional state, which made them overly susceptible to a belief that would make them feel good about themselves, their hearts eager to take on a belief that would tell them they were okay, that they we were not all the bad things they were told they were by the religious system.

It was the perfect time for the arrival of a new belief, which would tell them what they so desperately wanted to hear. This belief helped them change the way they thought about themselves by talking to them like children, gently patting them on the back, telling them that they were perfect just the way they were. This belief would also tell them that there was no such thing as evil, and that the world that had hurt them so badly was just an illusion, so they could set their mind at rest, they could be at peace in their mind. This childish belief, while serving in part to help the children regain their self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth, was causing the children of God to push the boundaries, as children do. They were taking it to far, impatiently proclaiming an ascended state of being that can only come through the laborious process of internal transformation... by changing the heart. They had replaced the false religious image with a false self-image, the evil (negative and destructive energy) remaining in the heart; in the beliefs held by the heart, which continues to contribute to the evil (negative and destructive energy) in the earth. Denying the evil only allows it to perpetuate, which is why Jesus said, "Resist not evil." We must allow it to come to the surface and deal with it!

When one walks away from a religious belief it is important to understand that the same energy that gave power to that old belief is carried over, transferred, empowering the new belief, which in this case was no different than the old belief. The doctrine remained the same, spoken in a new language. In both cases, the deeper spiritual works that transform the negative and destructive energy is not being performed.

There is no difference between saying we are " born again and saved" or saying we are (in our present state) "spirit and perfected." Both are proclaiming the same condition, both having omitted the spiritual works that bring one into this condition or perfected state of being. There is no difference between saying we have the Holy Spirit or saying we are God. And their attitude towards God's creation of Mother Earth, which Father Spirit gave life to, is also one and the same. To call our Great Earth an illusion is to take away from the Omnipotent Power of God... a Divine Energy that formed this marvelous Earth through billions of years of evolution. If we call evolution an illusion, we are removing the very process by which we evolve spiritually, throwing away the instruction or blueprints needed to build a new life through the creation of our new spiritual heaven and earth.

These two beliefs are one and the same, one existing at each end of a linear line. Bringing the two ends together (through their parallels) reveals that they are at the same point or place, in the same state of mind, deluded, their beliefs powered by what the Bible calls The energy of delusion," which provides the mind with a false sense of peace, acting as the wall, separating the follower of such a belief from his own heart, which symbolized by the temple, is where we offer up the spiritual sacrifices that results in the transformation of our heart!