| A message from the Christ came through Barry this morning for this Christmas time. We are reminded that the real message of Christmas is the birth of the Christ in each of us. This is especially important as we stand in the threshold of the Second Coming. Now is the time to remember and consecrate our lives to realizing what he did. Let us come back to the core essence of what Christmas is meant to be….. This was recorded, as will many of the future posts be, to better convey the energy~consciousness behind the words… |
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 Barry and I were talking about a friend’s suggestion that, now that the Way of the Christ website has been launched, we create a monthly webinar based on the structure of a church service. We realized neither of us had any desire to offer anything that resembled a church service.
“This is not about church,” Barry said. We saw that, for many people, Christ has gotten so conflated with Christianity and “churchianity” that Christ is hard to find, independent of all those trappings. As we continued our talk, Barry asked me about my own flight from Christianity, and therefore, the Christ. Karen: I’ve often wondered why so many of us in the West who were raised within the Christian Church ran as far as we could from Christianity -- and, by extension, the Christ -- when we began to awaken spiritually. Maybe we were turned off by the dogma that surrounded the way the Christ’s teachings were shared. Or we didn’t like the lack of tolerance for those who didn’t fit within the church’s “acceptable” lists. More than a few of us no doubt remembered being burned at the stake in previous lives, or other horrors perpetrated by “the faithful” against those they did not understand. In any case, millions of us traveled off to explore more exotic spiritual paths and practices, and in the process, we may have “thrown the baby out with the bathwater.” In leaving the church, we lost the Christ. When I was young, I didn't find much within the Protestant church my family attended that felt meaningful or relevant to me and my life. I enjoyed the beautiful celebrations at Christmas and Easter, with music and decorations and flowers. I felt the power in the Catholic rituals and sacraments when we went to mass with family friends, but it never occurred to me to convert to Catholicism -- my family was Protestant, and that was that. At church, people so often seemed to be going through the motions -- no one appeared to be lit up with spiritual fire. I certainly wasn’t ignited by anything that went on. In Sunday school, we learned about the life and teachings of Jesus, but this felt like another subject to master, not anything that might impact my own experience. We were supposed to revere this being, but I really didn’t understand why. I had no other spiritual icons to compare him to, and had no idea what the events of 2000 years ago had to do with anything going on now. The emphasis was on worshipping Jesus, and everyone seemed to hold him high above everybody else. Nothing was ever said about becoming like him. We were supposed to memorize certain Bible verses, like John 3:16, which sounded beautiful but I really had no idea what it meant. No one ever explained it, either -- we were supposed to just take it on faith. Other Bible verses were never mentioned -- for instance, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” Now that would have been galvanizing! I also didn’t see much Christianity in action at church, or in the world at large, although nearly everyone professed to be a Christian. What did that really mean, when it didn’t prevent people from being mean and hateful? How did Christians reconcile Christ’s teachings with treating human beings who looked different on the outside as though they were unworthy of respect? The hypocrisy seemed so blatant, and so rampant, that I didn't want anything to do with it. It got to the point where I just didn’t see any reason to keep going to church. When I was twelve, I told my mother I didn’t want to go anymore. To my amazement, she responded, “That's okay, we were just going there for you and your brother, anyway.” Apparently they felt a responsibility to provide us with some sort of religious education. From then on, our family stayed home on Sunday mornings and read the New York Times in bed, passing the sections from room to room until Mom made us Sunday brunch and we finally emerged from our respective nests. Sunday lost its sacredness; it became just another secular day. I would not realize what had been lost until decades later. Barry: So when you began to wake up, it didn't seem like an option to go towards Christ or anything Christian? Karen: In my mind, Christ and Christianity had become one thing, and when I left Christianity, I left the Christ. After all the hypocrisy I’d witnessed in my own so-called “Christian” culture, every other spiritual tradition on the planet seemed to have more to offer than Christianity. I read widely, and occasionally I’d include something by Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, or another Christian writer someone recommended, but overall, this tradition did not play a big part in my spiritual education. It wasn’t intentional, but it would be easy for someone who charted the progression of my spiritual journey to conclude that I deliberately left out Christianity altogether. Barry: So how did you come back to the Christ? Karen: Christ came to me. Barry had experienced openings to Christ a couple of years before we were brought together, so his connection with the Christ was very fresh and alive for him (and has remained that way). I found this a challenge as I got to know Barry, since I still carried a lot of resistance to Christ over what people had done in his name, and I hadn’t had any kind of direct experience of the blessing-grace of the Christ. But then, when I least expected it, the Christ came into my life. It happened during a time when my process of awakening led me into the depths of my karmic patterns of suffering over all my lifetimes on Earth. During one session, I reached what seemed to be absolute bottom. It all looked utterly hopeless and I had no idea how to get through the impasse. Barry suggested I turn it all over to the Divine. That seemed like the only thing left to do. In this life, I’d struggled with these patterns of suffering for decades and hadn’t managed to free myself from them, although I’d tried many therapeutic modalities. I took a deep breath and handed the whole thing over to the One. A profound stillness overtook me. The exalted frequencies pouring in rendered me speechless, filled with indescribable awe. I stood up, basking in the vastness of the blessing-grace. I was surrounded by it and infused with it. When I could finally speak again, from a realm beyond thought words arose in response to Barry’s query about what I was experiencing: “It’s...the Firmament...of the Christ.” The words, and the entire experience, filled me with the most beautiful feeling I had ever had. As the blessing-grace continued to pour in, I received exactly the energy and consciousness needed to transcend the imprisoning double-bind that had followed me from one life to the next. That story is told in greater detail in our third book, We are the Awakening Christ. This breakthrough led to other experiences, and my communion with the Christ deepened over time until it became a foundational aspect of my life. I also began to receive messages and feel the unmistakable energies of Mary, Christ’s mother, in some of Her sacred places around the world. I’ll save those stories for another time. Barry is there anything else you would like to share about Christ? Karen: It's important for us all to realize that what most of us experienced in church as we grew up was nothing like connecting with the living Christ. It's possible for any and all of us to experience the Christ, both as a vast presence and as a personal embodiment through Jesus. The Christ appears to each of us in the way that is right for us. But there might be a lot of baggage that we have to release in order to open to that experience. We can bring our awareness to the emotional residue from our Christian upbringing and release the pain of it. We might need to face and feel the ways that Christianity has perpetrated suffering in our own lives and the lives of others. We may have to do some inner work to go beyond rejecting the Christ because of the suffering related to Christianity. Doing that work allows us to come back home to the Christ. It seems sad to me now that so many people I know and love have turned away from the Christ -- just as I did for so many years. I know from personal experience that it is possible to go beyond the pain of what’s been perpetrated in the name of this Great One, and to be showered with the blessing-grace this being emanates. If you are carrying scars related to anything discussed here, please remember that Barry and I are available to go into it with you in sessions. Amazing things happen when we turn our suffering over to the Divine. This is what our lives are about, and we’d be honored to walk alongside you as you discover the place beyond the pain and suffering and open to the blessing-grace of the Christ.
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June 2017
AuthorAfter decades of exploring many spiritual paths, Karen Anderson and Barry Martin Snyder were brought back home to the Christ, discovering to their great surprise the true path of their souls. There soul purpose is to assist others to walk the Way of the Christ Categories |
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