MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

When I was young, I experienced the death of a five year old child from cancer. She suffered greatly, before passing away and leaving her parents, brothers and sisters, and friends devastated. This was the genesis of my spiritual journey. I wanted, no ... needed to know why a five year old child had to die. Her parents prayed unceasingly, as we had all been taught to do. Yet, this innocent young child still suffered and still died. Why?

We had been taught by the church "ask anything in His name and it shall be granted." We had been taught that Jesus, being God in the flesh, would answer all our prayers ... and could fix anything. All we had to do was believe, pray, and wait. I began to realize that millions of people had prayed for cures, better health, and 100% recovery from disease, yet many if not most did not receive their healing. They died anyway. They suffered extreme physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. Why?

I needed to know. There had to be a reason why an all powerful and all mighty God who could do anything at will, would choose to ignore the pleas of his creation, and allow immeasurable suffering amongst humanity. Children were starving from lack of food. People all over the world were dying from disease and unsafe drinking water. War was rampant, murder, rape, thievery, arson, vandalism, and an unlimited supply of worldwide evil and darkness. Who or what was running this circus?

Over the next few years, I bounced from church to church. I was born into Greek Orthodoxy, attended Catholic High School, and then over the years ventured my way through other denominations, and non-denominational Bible based churches. After hearing very little "Good News" from the Gospels, I gave up. I just stopped going anywhere. I began to watch some of the late-night preachers on TV. Not the Televangelist types, but the ones that offered something different. A perspective that had nothing to do with my upbringing but something I felt drawn to. I began to watch Dr. Gene Scott on a regular basis. Strange as he was in his presentation, his scriptural knowledge, subjects, and views drew me in. Here, was something more. Something "extra" that I had never experienced.

Then it all seemed to get really complicated. It became overpowering at times. I wanted to know more, but there was so much to know and it seemed so little time to dedicate to study, research, understanding and practice. I had been working 2 and 3 jobs with 2 children and plenty of bills at the end of the month. How could I possibly learn all this stuff in the little spare time that I actually had. There was a need for understanding Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and the symbolism involved with each. Modern English just wasn't enough to present the original intent of what the ancients had left us.

Busy-ness turned to more business and more time passed. I did a lot of thinking but not much research. Maria had turned to TV Televangelists and I would catch a bit here and there and it let me to a great level of frustration. All they preached from the pulpit was gloom and doom. Where was the Good News ... the Gospel? After all, the word Gospel means good news. Yet, it was all end of the world, famine, wars among the angels, the battle of God and Satan, seven years of tribulation, rapture of the saints, etc. I had reached a point where I knew these events to not possibly be true literal events. And if they were, I wanted nothing to do with this evil and power hungry God of the Bible.

So began my obsessive mission to uncover the True meanings of these scriptural doctrines and dogmas. Surely, the ancients were not as primitive as they had been presented. The pagan world of ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, the Far East, and so many other ancient civilizations knew more than just what we were being told. Something was wrong. Something was amiss. There must be something more to the story than just the dying and resurrecting Godman that had been adopted by Roman Christianity. And so began my quest. An obsession that involved sometimes hours per day. Certainly many hours per week.

During my quest, we found a small non-denominational church in Kissimmee, FL. who had a Pastor who was once a music and recording Artist. His messages were all about positive empowerment and changing the way we think. His music was very good and eventually I joined the Worship Team as the drummer. I learned a great deal from Pastor Rick Pinette. We became very good friends in the process. He was a great teacher and truly wanted to spread the message of "Good News" to the people that attended his church. He used biblical passages in a way that seemed to not question "if it happened," but "does it happen." He offered more inward enlightenment and personal empowerment than what I had been use to. I enjoyed it. But still kept up my deep research. The more I studied, the more I found myself connecting to ancient mysticism.

By studying the ancient teachings of Egypt, Greece, Persia ... the early Gnostics, Kabbalist's, Essenes, Theraputae, etc. I began to make sense of the allegorical and metaphorical nature of Biblical scripture and Eastern Mysticism. It was a very time consuming project. Searching and reading through so many writers, apologists, and theologians all the while cutting through what I knew was fabricated literalism rather than actual spiritual Truth. Every step of the way I gained a nugget of a lead. Then that took me to three nuggets, ten, fifty and eventually ... finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I began to be able to read between the lines. To understand the stories beneath the myths. The hidden gems ... the pearl of great price. I found the pre-Roman Christianity that was followed by Jewish and Gentile Gnostics. In the Greek, Gnosis means knowledge. The ancients wanted to have a knowingness of the Divine spark of God within each and every person. Not just faith in something that may or may not be true ... but actually knowing through initiation in the ancient mystery schools and through personal experience.

There were so many documents that I had found and studied online and in books that I had ordered. I had over 5,000 documents saved, and hundreds of books. Every imaginable explanation and concept of ancient scripture. The more I kept digging, the more I kept connecting with the "untainted" true history of worlds faith systems. Imagine, in Christianity alone, over 38,000 known denominations each featuring their own set of dogmas, doctrines, rituals, and beliefs. It was literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Everyone claimed to be "right" ... yet there could only be one Truth.

I studied the history of the people, the civilizations that had come and gone. I studied the languages and symbolisms. I studied the limited means of communication in those days. I had to come to the understanding that there was no Internet, no video games, no movies, no radio or TV, no books, and no mass communication. They had to deal with mouth to ear ... person to person. These beliefs were passed down from their Shamans, Hierophants, Priests, Holy Men, and Mystics. The common man was uneducated. They listened to stories and what those stories revealed in their heart and minds. Myth and parables were the common way of explaining the deeper meanings. People are more apt to remember a story, than they are to memorize facts. And as long as the stories carried the deeper lesson, the intended meaning, they could be changed, revised, translated, and spread among neighboring peoples and still retain their deeper lessons.

The ancient Hebrews mixed and mingled with the Egyptians, the Persians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians among many other groups that traveled and settled along the trade routes and the geographic regions that they shared. Although they had their own beliefs through Yahweh (YHWH/Jehovah), they co-mingled the Ancient Wisdom of many other belief systems with their own. They changed the names, geographic locations, and points of origin to build an identity for their own people. For example, the story of Noah and the flood was taken from an older story called "The Epic of Gilgamesh." Same story, different names, different geography. What was important was the story it told at a deeper level than a literal event. Everything was symbolic ... even the names and places.

The Hebrew language had symbolism attached to each letter. Each of the letters had meaning. They weren't just letters in a language as we have in English. They had meanings. For example, the ineffable name of G-d for them was Yod Hey Vav Hey (YHWH) ... what was called the "Tetragrammaton" meaning "four letters" in Greek. Gods name was no to be spoken and was symbolized by the letters which actually meant God ... or I AM THAT I AM. When the letter SHINN is added, you will have "Yod Hey Shinn Vav Hey" ... meaning "God is Saviour." This is important to know because it leads us to the word YHSWH, or transliterated into a word as "Yehoshua/Yeshua" or in English modern translation Joshua. In the Greek, the name Joshua was "Iesous" and in Latin "Iesus." Neither the Greek or Hebrew have a letter "J" and it wasn't added to English until the 1500's. Then word we arrive at from all of this is "Jesus." And the meaning of this transliteration simply means "God is Saviour." This is called the Pentagrammaton - five letter word, among the ancients.

Soon, I found myself faced with an incredible challenge. Was there a real Jesus - the man who walked the hills of Galilee, performed miracles, was crucified and rose from the dead - or was this Myth with an inner meaning? Was it both? What was it that was hidden from the masses and reserved for the initiates who wanted to know more? What I found was that the Jesus story of the New Testament Bible was a conglomerate of multiple people, myths, and principles, all merged into one central character given flesh at the First Council of Nicea in 325CE by Constantine and a host of spiritual leaders gathered for the sole purpose of creating a Roman Universal Church system. Remember, the very word "Catholic" in the Greek means "universal." It was Constantine's last ditch attempt to save the fledgling Roman Empire and unite the commoners under direct religious rule by the Emperor ... who was considered to be God on Earth and expected to be worshipped as such.

This conglomeration involved ancient pagan mysteries, Mythology, Astrotheology, Astrology and the Zodiac, planets, stars, seasons ... just about everything we could come up with to try and explain who we are and why we are here. There were 12 Apostles. There are 12 signs in the Zodiac. The Apostles and the Houses of the Zodiac revolved around the Son/Sun of God. There earlier civilizations with the same stories and myths that were based on the same mysteries. From the Ancients, to the Pyramids, to the Temples. Everyone had their concepts of God or Gods, and did their best to explain it. We have learned much from the discovery of the Clay Tablets, The Nag Hammadi Library, and The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Ten Commandments came from King Hammurabi and the great stone on display in the British Museum called Hammurabi's Laws. One of Napoleons soldiers stumbled upon what is known as the Rosetta Stone which unlocked the symbolism and languages of ancient eras including hieroglyphics and scrolls.

I discovered an immeasurable amount of history, alternative history, and Secret Societies. I studied them all. From the Masons, to the Illuminati, to the Empire of The City, The Vatican, The Black Pope and the Jesuits. So much to learn ... so little time to find it all. Thousands of years of hidden mysticism and ancient Wisdom and trying to connect the dots. It became a cone of information. The cone got smaller and smaller the closer I got to the right sources and the ancient texts. Immeasurable surprises and shock. For example, at the Vatican; St. Peter's Cathedral ... the actual statue of Peter that faithful Catholics kiss the feet of, was once a statue of Neptune (hence the ring around his head) that came from the Pantheon ... a pagan temple that had been destroyed by the perpetrators of modern literal Christianity.

Rome needed a God, and a faithful religion, similar to so many of the current beliefs of its people, and they gave us Christianity. Some pieces of Osiris, Horus, Isis, Dionysus, Attis, Apollonius, Heracles, Chronus, Zoroaster, and Zeus ... to fabricate the Jew-Zeus ... Jesus. The principle of the Divine spark of God within every person, now having been wrapped in human flesh, given a name, and released upon the Roman Empire as the new authorized religion. Every other religion was outlawed, its followers forced to convert, or face death and suffering in unimaginable ways. Study for yourself the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Dark Ages, and the millions who were murdered and tortured all in the name of God and Jesus by the Roman Universal (Catholic) Church.

Unfathomable atrocities were carried out under the orders of the church. Libraries were destroyed, temples were leveled, entire groups of peoples were executed, and every effort was made to eradicate any evidence of the original true teachings of the Christ, Chrestos, Karest, and the many other names of the Christ Consciousness or spark of God within each and every person. This deep esoteric Truth was converted into an exoteric historical figure under the label of Jesus Christ, complete with genealogy and geographic history. If they could erase all other evidence of anything other than one man as God in the flesh ... then they would achieve their goal of dominance and control of the people, not only in this life ... but in the after life ... through fear, guilt, and labeling them as "sinners" who were not deserving of the love of God.

They created what they called "original sin" and blamed it on Adam (Adamah in Hebrew meaning red clay) and Eve (Hawwah in Hebrew meaning life-giving, source of life). Then they furthered the concept of punishment to be inclusive of all humanity. Truth being, that Adam was not a real person, but a concept ... the masculine, and Eve was the feminine. These two elements are necessary for creation. They are also polarity of oneness. Just as white and black, cold and hot, smooth and rough, day and night. They also represent mental aspects of mankind (mind). Our conscious mind is the masculine, that impregnates the feminine with ideas and thoughts, and then those thoughts are manifest in form. Just as a child is born of a Father and Mother. There is much to this which I will cover later, but suffice it to say, every civilization had their Adam and Eve. This version, belonged to the Hebrews and was adopted by early literal Christianity.

From the First Council of Nicea in 325CE forward, the concept of Jesus and the details of this new literal form of Christianity went through countless changes and adaptations. The Hebrew idea of a Messiah and the Gnostic and Pagan idea of a Christ (anointed one) were entirely different and therefore this new literal Jesus Christ religion was rejected by the true Gnostics, Kabbalists, and Hebrew and Gentile Christians. Their concept of Jesus The Christ was entirely esoteric and spiritual, allegorical and metaphorical. This Roman Christ was not the Messiah that the Hebrews were expecting, nor was he the Christ that had been learned in the ancient mystery schools of Egypt and that entire region for as much as 10,000 years before the Roman Jesus/Joshua. You can also see a huge parallel to the Old Testament Joshua (meaning Jesus) vs. the New Testament Jesus. It is virtually the same allegorical teaching that lies beneath the names and places. Moses was also a Saviour type. Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years, Noah had rain for 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus walked the wilderness for 40 days. The number (Gematria) 40 is very important. For one things, 40 weeks (9 months) is the average gestation period of human life - from conception to birth - thereby representing a "new birth" ... to be born again spiritually.

What we have to continue to ask ourselves is not "did it happen," but "does it happen?" I wasn't there to witness any of the supposed events, but I can apply the teachings in my life and test them to see if they actually work. To experience and bring about change in my life and others. The ancient teaching of the Karest (Christ) goes back thousands of years before the advent of Christianity as we know it today. This was the Divine spark of God, the Descent of The Soul into the matter or body of man. The historical name of "Jesus Christ" was decided upon at Constantine's Council of Nicea from among many, many other options. The Truth of the matter, pun intended, is that we all have the Christ within us. We all are the begotten sons and daughters of God. We are all the "body of Christ" as Paul proclaimed. Like a bubble of air beneath the ocean floor, the Truth will rise to the surface eventually for all to see.

~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.