BIBLE VERSE question: The language used in the Bible seems to encourage moralizing, perfectionism, and other distortions that humanity has been trapped in, especially with regards to sexuality and the non-acceptance of it. For example: “Do not fornicate,” in the Old Testament, or the passage on adultery that Christ preached on the Mount: “But I say unto you. That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Can you help us to understand this?

Answer from the Pathwork Guide, in Jill Loree’s words:

There are several factors to consider here. First, the word “fornication” had a different meaning before it was translated. It meant sexual contact in which there are no feelings of warmth, caring or tenderness.

Instead, sex is based on feelings of hate, contempt, domination and even cruelty.

This kind of sexuality is indeed an expression of immaturity, separateness and distortions that must end up creating frustration and unhappiness.

In the time of Christ, people were much less developed than today.

Even these teachings could not have been fully understood.

Human consciousness at that time could not parse fine differences. People ignored the various levels of consciousness and were therefore unaware of them.

Everything became reduced to a simple “do or don’t.”

One option at that time was to act out negativity, which created negative chain reactions. The other option was to refrain, which had the possibility of leading to thoughtfulness and seeing things in a deeper, truer light.

This guidance, then, helped prevent destructive actions, on both outer and inner levels.

This does not mean that today we should deny all sexual impulses because they are not yet fully merged with our hearts. For then no merging would happen at all, on any level.

At the same time, we should be aware that sexual impulses in which an intense driving force is not paired with positive feelings are a displacement of our real needs.

They make it impossible to ever feel truly fulfilled.

 

The word “lusting” has also changed from its original meaning. In the past, it didn’t only refer to desire.

It also meant an intent to steal.

So it carried an attitude of sly envy, as in, “Why do you get to have what I want? I’m entitled to it, not you.”

Lusting hides a deep rebellion against God and a doubt about God’s justice. It ignores the fairness of spiritual laws that give everyone exactly what they’ve earned—no more and no less.

It’s important to read the Bible with a willingness to understand these words in a deeper context. Instead, we tend to interpret them in a very literal, primitive way.

We use this to justify our resistance against this document.

In truth, the Bible contains many sentences that sound punitive. This was a product of the state of consciousness of the people who wrote the words in the Bible.

In that era, God was an external authority figure. God couldn’t have been anything else at that time. This was the case, despite Jesus’ many sayings to contrary, such as “the Kingdom of God is in you.”

So even though Jesus didn’t use this punitive approach, many of his sayings were interpreted that way, because they were misunderstood, misperceived and mistranslated.

This was further complicated by later church authorities who used Christ’s teachings to foster their own drives for power. They thwarted autonomy—not even conveying that that was a possibility—long before people became ready for it.

People were so primitive in those days that there was a genuine misunderstanding regarding cause and effect.

Today, it seems obvious that there are definite consequences to acting out or being destructive.

We can even see the consequences of our attitudes.

We know there are logical laws involved, such as the law of gravity. At that time, everything was seen as an act of an externalized, angry, punishing deity.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: Can you shed some light on the symbolism in the passage: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” How can we read and interpret this in the spirit of love?

Answer: The true meaning here is that we should cast out or deny anything that keeps us from our ultimate fulfillment—in any respect and on any level. This includes attitudes, thoughts, opinions and acts.

A physical organ could never, in itself, have such a dramatic effect on a personality.

The symbolism of the eye refers to distorted perception of basically everything—life, God, creation, the ways things really are.

The strong language underscores the severity of consequences for turning away from the truth of God’s laws.

We do this through our self-will, stubbornness and pride. We also lack faith and fear that God’s laws won’t treat us fairly.

The great damage we do to ourselves with this line of thinking outweighs, by far, even the pain of having an eye plucked out.

This particular symbolism stresses the relationship of these elements, which people have so much blurred vision about.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: In the Bible it says: “In the beginning there was the word and the word was God.” I have also heard the word is “Om.” Could you explain?

Answer: There are many different words, in our many different languages, that can be used to reference God or the creator.

Om is one of these words.

It doesn’t matter in the least which language or word we use, provided our mind is connecting with the source of all that is.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: What did Jesus mean in John 15:26 when he said, “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me.” Also in John 16:13-15 he speaks of the Counselor or the Spirit of Truth who will “answer you into all the truth.” Who or what is the Counselor, or the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit?

Answer: These are all one and the same, referring to the ever-present God who is always available to us—if we are open to hearing this voice.

It comes from both within us and from outside us, possibly reaching us through another person.

The Holy Spirit is there in all voices that utter the truth of God.

It’s there in the form of angels and highly developed spirits who come to us and help us, telling us what we need to hear.

It arises from our own conscience.

The Counselor always follows the deepest and highest truths in advising us.

The Holy Spirit is also the Comforter who brings us hope, peace and light. It ushers bright new visions into places that previously were hopeless.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: In Chapter 24, Verse 52 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Jesus says to one of his disciples who defended him against the servant of the high priest as he was captured: “Put up again thy sword into its place, for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Is this to be our response in the struggle against evil?

Answer:

There is a common mistake humans make. We take a statement or spiritual law that applies in one particular area and apply it broadly across every situation in life.

We do this over and over.

We fail to understand that different laws exist for different situations.

That unity is made up of opposites.

And that one way of behaving cannot possibly apply to all situations.

Pay attention to the word “appropriate.” What’s appropriate in one situation may be highly inappropriate in another.

There is a time to yield peacefully and a time to fight back.

The forces of evil work very hard to confuse us.

So then we apply a yielding attitude where we ought to fight, and a fighting spirit when yielding would be the better option. The same applies to many other apparent opposites.

We must become more aware of the temptation to use one attitude when another would be more appropriate.

This is one of the finest weapons used by dark forces.

And they use it all the time.

It creates thick clouds of confusion that shroud us in fear and pain.

BIBLE VERSE question: Can you explain what is being said in the book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, John’s vision: the beast with ten horns and seven heads, ten crowns and a blasphemous name on each head; the mark of the beast, 666, which is man’s number; the 144,000 sealed on the forehead with God’s name who are untouched by the doom at the end of the world; the pregnant woman, the dragon and the woman’s fleeing to the desert for 1260 days; the thousand years of Satan’s imprisonment.

Answer:

How can we believe that a loving God could punish people with such a vicious vengeance—with vindictive cruelty—as these threats would imply?

It is true that our Lower Self creates situations that are painful to us. It creates a climate of terror and senseless violence that can kill the physical body. It is precisely because of our belief in such darkness that it exists.

But if we look around at all of creation, we will see unchanging goodness, mercy, kindness, beauty and grace. It is senseless to believe we are victims of an overall fate that will befall us, regardless of our own state of consciousness.

Such fear is both universal and deeply personal.

It is the ultimate outcome of our lack of faith.

Fear is what causes religious leaders to propagate fear, hoping to remove—from their flock as well as in themselves—this ultimate threat of a cruel universe and God.

Even Jesus’ apostles and disciples—regardless of how enlightened they may have been—lived in such times. So they were not aware of our deeper levels of consciousness.

At that time, everything was projected outward—nothing was seen as being self-created.

Jesus’ supporters were as influenced as anyone by the manifestations of their inner fears and the splits inside themselves, which separated cause from effect. So they lost sight of their own regard for Jesus’ glory and the courage they displayed in standing up for him.

Consider the authors of these testimonies with the understanding of the time period in which they lived. They could only operate within the framework of their era, the culture they lived in and their own personal level of development.

When an otherwise enlightened spiritual leader had visions of horrors, they were usually interpreted as being factual events that will occur.

Rather, they should be viewed as expressions of an inner terror that simmered in the visionary’s soul—that part still isolated from the truth of God.

This fragment of the soul is unaware that it doubts the reality of God.

Today, we have enough perspective to know that a nightmare does not herald a real-world event. It just signals a person’s private inner landscape and conditions.

Jesus always tried to convey this in his teachings. But these references were either misunderstood or deleted altogether.

He often tried to show how our inner fears have the power to show up in our lives, creating our outer reality. Yet it is not possible to draw people into such creations if they themselves have not also created them.

All such references in the Bible then, are describing inner states of consciousness, whether or not the narrator knew this. Also remember, the Bible has been translated numerous times and rewritten at least as many.

In those days, even regular dreams were interpreted to be accounts of factual events. To build doctrine on such subjects is both foolish and destructive. For it hinders real growth and the expansion of our consciousness.

 

 

The cosmic language is always symbolic. Therefore, it cannot easily be squeezed into our human words. Even these teachings from Pathwork Guide are often symbolic.

Just as human consciousness changes, symbolic language changes with the times. What seems real to us now can only be a fumbling symbolic description of cosmic events.

It is the same now as it was back then.

As we grow and expand our consciousness, our ability to think abstractly grows and the symbolism must continue to change. We can see this in the way myths change for each unfolding era.

There is no point in deeply analyzing the fearful images mentioned. But we can interpret them as we would a dream, using our understanding of cosmic symbolism.

For example, “the beast with ten horns and seven heads” refers to the ability of the dark forces to confuse people with contradictions that aren’t really contradictions.

Evil can speak with many minds—with seven heads—always splitting off aspects of consciousness from the truth and the simplicity of divinity.

The horns are their weapons—and they have many weapons. Just as there are many heads, or contradictory messages.

Numbers hold a particularly symbolic significance. They hold some miracle keys that can be unlocked by studying old mysteries and myths, and allowing our deeper minds to inspire our interpretations.

But numerologists often make the common mistake of interpreting all numbers uniformly for all situations.

As humans, we will never understand all that is held in these numerical keys that link cosmic and personal forces.

But we can become aware that these mysteries exist.

In this way, we will encourage ourselves to open our minds to greater inspiration and ever-deeper enlightenment.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: In the first Beatitude, which Jesus Christ gives in his sermon on the mount, it says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What is the meaning of this?

Answer: Being “poor in spirit” is about being empty—without preconceived ideas.

Our minds are often “rich,” but in the wrong way. We think we know all the answers.

Our knowledge, however, often stems from incorrect associations lodged deep in our souls. Our images are examples of such fixed, faulty ideas mixed with emotional associations.

If we can make ourselves empty—become “poor in spirit,” or in mind—true riches can flow into us.

Riches can come from the outside as well as from within.

For example, regarding Jesus Christ, many people “know” that he was not the Messiah. That he caused the Jews to suffer.

Some people may think he was a fairy tale. Or that he never even existed. That he is a stern, forbidding master who demands we deprive ourselves.

He prevents us from being happy and self-fulfilled.

The atheist “knows” there is no God. The scientist “knows” their most recent discoveries. Beyond that, though, other truths are ridiculed.

These are all examples of a full mind—a “rich spirit”—that prevents the true treasure from coming in.

This does not mean we should give up all common sense, genuine learning or knowledge to become “poor in spirit.”

What the Bible is trying to say in this passage is that we should learn to discriminate where our knowledge is limited.

Where are our concepts distorted?

There, we would do well to adopt an empty mind—an unprejudiced clean slate—that is receptive to real wisdom.

Material wealth does not need to be a hindrance to having spiritual wealth.

But it often is. Just as other kinds of power can be.

If we use knowledge to deny the Holy Spirit, it can obstruct us as much as money can, or any other kind of wealth.

 

BIBLE VERSE question: In Matthew 5:32, it says, “But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” Matthew 6:25 goes on to say, “Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?” What is happening here?

Answer: Both fornication and adultery in the Bible refer to loveless sex. This is sexual activity that uses one’s partner without regard for who they are as a person.

As for divorce, these teachings must be considered within the context of that time.

What was right and important then is no longer valid in the world today.

People at that time were more internally divided than we are today. This made it much more difficult to combine heartfelt feelings with sexuality—to be in a committed relationship and painstakingly work on it.

People tended toward promiscuity, which seemed natural and instinctual on the outer level. In order for these instinctual levels to mature, outer rules were needed so that people would at least make an attempt to stay together and work out their difficulties.

But then those rules became overpowering and stifling. People’s spirits were more thwarted by them than served.

Over time, development proceeded sufficiently for people to comprehend on their own that they needed to develop partnerships using their own free will.

As such, new social mores could come into existence.

The Bible brings together eternal truths—veiled as they were—with sayings that were appropriate only for that specific period of time. It takes significant spiritual growth to distinguish which is which.

The second passage calls us to see that Jesus was saying something for the people of that period. At that time, people were inclined toward being superficial—to putting their focus exclusively on the outer layers of life.

Therefore, all religions of that time needed to stress the inner life.

As often happens, the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. This too served a purpose and had its meaning.

Now things can be set right, as people are able to hold a truthful, unifying position.

But to arrive here, outer life had to be negated for a time. Then humanity could become ready to unify this duality and express our inner life into our outer life.

Before we could do this, though, we had to become aware that our inner life existed. For that to happen, focus on the outer life was temporarily removed.  

Jesus, then, was speaking to the people of the time, and also to all of us, for all of eternity. If he were here today, he would say many of the same things he said then, but probably in a different way.

So it is important that we understand the teachings in the Bible, yet not take it literally.

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