This happened to me more than thirty years ago. I had left Christianity as a child, finding the church lifeless, empty, and devoid of spirit. My relatives who went to church every Sunday seemed hypocritical, not living anything like what Jesus Christ taught. I walked away from Christianity, never to return.
As I began to awaken in my early 20s, I turned to the East, drawn primarily to the path of the Hindu saints and gurus. This led me to India in my 30s, where I met my guru, Hairakhan Baba, who was a manifestation of the immortal Yogi Christ of India, Mahavatar Babaji. Through the grace of Babaji and the teachings and practices of Adi Da Samraj (who was known as heart master Bubba Free John at the time), I experienced a kundalini awakening and conscious union with God within.
All the while, another being was standing in the background, overlighting all that I was experiencing. He entered my life through an image of Christ painted from the Shroud of Turin, which was given me by a fellow Babaji devotee who had previously been a Swedish minister. The image had so much energy around it that I found myself carrying it with me while I moved and traveled around the world. The picture of Christ was one of the very few things that made all the stops on that journey. Gradually I found myself meditating on the face of Christ from the Shroud, and the stirrings of Christ-communion began. Little did I know that this was the beginning of the relationship that would unfold into my true spiritual path and destiny.
At first I felt conflicted about my emerging relationship with Christ Jesus because of all that I had experienced as a child with Christianity. But through my relationship with Babaji, I began to realize that the being Jesus had very little, if anything, to do with Christianity. Jesus was a fully-realized, divine being, like many others from the world’s faiths and religions. Christianity is what developed in his wake — it did not exist while Jesus walked the earth. This awareness began to end the conflation, in my mind, of Christ and Christianity, opening my mind and heart to a deeper relationship with Christ Jesus.
As Christ Jesus begins to make his presence known to more people on this planet, many experience the same kind of confusion I did. Many people left Christianity for the same reasons Karen and I did. Christianity has a very long and painful shadow, involving bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, and war. No wonder so many have turned away from Christianity! A review of Christ’s words in the New Testament quickly reveals that he embodied infinite love, was free of all judgment, and embraced all beings. None of the shadow of Christianity was ever cast by the being in whose name it was created. I write this in the spirit of helping those who are drawn to this article and are being called by Christ. Hopefully they will avoid some of the conflict and resistance that we went through.
Christ Jesus and the universal Christ Presence are coming to so many beings on this planet now to assist them to rapidly awaken and realize their true eternal, divine nature, just as Jesus did. Jesus does not present himself as a religious figure, but as a spiritual master, similar to the sat guru. A Sat guru is a soul who is fully Self Realized, living in Oneness with the God/The Absolute. They have reached the pinnacle of spiritual realization and thus are capable of directly transmitting that state to others through grace. There goal is to assist others to realize that they too are divine beings.