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The Path and the Way
With a little common sense and heart knowledge, we would have to agree that Jesus did not bring an easy ‘path’ or a ‘way’ of salvation. Everything that he was about, every teaching had to do with right action and sanctification. He taught that doing the right thing was more important than following rules and laws, that in some cases were out-dated, and in most cases only served the elite. Jesus emphasized walking a narrow and difficult path of love and forgiveness—of self and of others. It was a way of self-responsibility and the achievement of inner purity through spiritual ‘work.’
It is not generally known that “an early name for the Jesus’ movement was ‘Those of the Hodos,’ meaning ‘way’ or ‘road’…. Jesus developed the notion found earlier in his scriptures, of two contrasting paths: ‘Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the path is rough that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (1)
Walking a path that is as narrow as a swords edge, with valleys of the shadow of fear and doubt on either side of it, is seemingly never the most popular way to go or does it attract the most followers—“Jesus associated the pursuit of the most popular way with false prophets.” (2)
So I must ask you as the reader, why would Jesus bring a message that would bring him no popularity and riches as well as an accusation of sedition? And a message and path of salvation would be considered the easy road where a way of sanctification would indicate hard spiritual work and walking a path that would be tough.
His dedication to his message, his soul’s essence, would have to indicate that there was no separation between his work and his life. It was one and the same. Most people work to provide a living except of course for the materialistic elites where it is all about ego-gratification and power. But Jesus’ life and work were one and the same. He had a knowing about his destiny and dedicated his life to fulfilling it. His destiny, reflected in his life and work, was not about making money or achieving external power. It was about bringing a message of a new way of consciousness and being. It was not about ego-gratification and the accumulation of riches. This was one of the reasons for his indifference to money and why he saw the easy path of accumulating money, power and wealth as destructive.
Jesus also saw the flaws in his people’s religious laws, the Law of Moses and realized that these were not the original teachings of Moses; teachings that had been passed down to him in all likelihood by John the Baptist. Jesus’ teachings were primarily based on the ‘original way’ of Moses, the goddess tradition of King Solomon and the Egyptians and his own studies in Egypt. The original religion of the Hebrews was, like that of all other ancient cultures, polytheistic – venerating both gods and goddesses. (3)
These teachings of the ‘original way’ also viewed nature and the earth as divine. Many of these teachings could be traced all the way back to the Egyptian Mystery School tradition. Morton Smith, in his Jesus the Magician, states unequivocally that Jesus’ own beliefs and practices were those of Egypt – and, significantly, he based this assertion on material from certain Egyptian magical texts. (4)
It’s important to note that Jesus’ “contemporaries thought of him as being an adept of Egyptian magic, a view that is also expressed in the Jewish Talmud. (5) At this point I pose a question: was Jesus attempting to return Judaism back to its Egyptian roots? Was he also attempting to bring forth a vision of an egalitarian society that recognized the divine in all things—the reign of God, the divine that is within each of us and the divine that is outside us in all things of the earth and the heavens?
In Jesus’ eyes the ‘way of the Law of Moses,’ did not even approach the importance of the ‘original way’ or his own vision. Would this not partially explain Jesus’ emphasize on nature as well as his many female disciples and his teachings of equality.
All of this got Jesus in trouble with the Sanhedrin, who considered him a heretic. The priestly Sanhedrin was the keepers and the enforcers of the Law of Judaism. This patriarchal ruled the Law, which was totally focused on rules and regulations of secular and religious behavior. This was strictly about a person’s outward behavior with no consideration at all for a person’s inner consciousness or their relationship of self to self and self to others.
It was no wonder that the Sanhedrin had little patience for a rabble-rouser who preached against the Law while emphasizing a new consciousness based on egalitarian issues and the importance of a person’s ‘inner kingdom’ and their relationships with others.
Self and Other
The key to a peaceful and fulfilled life, one that will result in happiness, love and power, is to be found in the relationship of ‘self to self’ and ‘self to others’—others including the world at large; animals, etc. This was the true message of Jesus—a new ‘way,’ a new ‘path’ partially based on the ‘original way’ of Moses. This new path was a radical new view of consciousness—the relationship of self to other.
This new way was a difficult path to follow. There were no rules to follow only guidelines: do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. To teach this pathway, and to totally trust in it, required Jesus to believe in the inner divine spark and the way of natural law—the inherent natural altruistic spirit of God that lies dormant within human beings until awakened. This would explain his vehement opposition to the priestly cabal and their rules.
Rules are black and white—dualistic and are the standby of, and loved by, institutional paradigms. Jesus did not bring an institutional paradigm but a paradigm of consciousness that favored all humans and all the creatures of the earth over finite human-made institutions that favored only themselves; not the people, not the earth. How ironic it turns out to be that within a few hundred years after Jesus had passed over, the Roman Church, in an act of egotistical power, took his ground-breaking message and corrupted it and changed it into a dogma that recognized, not a relationship of ‘self’ to ‘others,’ but a relationship that was solely based on all ‘others’ to Jesus.
Of course, ‘others’ are only the Christian faithful. Jews and non-believers are not included in this category of ‘others’—nor is nature. Talk about a separation paradigm… any other design in today’s world would be hard pressed to cause more separation than this core belief of Christianity. This is the dogma of Christianity, which has caused and still causes, undue pain and suffering throughout the world.
It is easy to follow some type of dogmatic paradigm that requires no transformation of self—no ultimate self-responsibility. But on the other hand, if I teach to others my belief that each one of us is divine, as well as all other things in creation, and then go on to state that each thing has an unique intrinsic identity, how easy would it be, or how hard would it be to follow this and to also live this message? It puts the responsibility and the conducting of our lives on our own self—the responsibility is ours—no one else for us to look to or to blame for our life. It is up to each of us to do the right thing and conduct right action. This type of teaching and message is solely about self and others and not about rules and regulations.
This is what Jesus taught. His teachings emphasized love, which unites, over fear, which separates. Love and forgiveness begins with self and then expands out to others. This was, and still is, the mystery of transformed consciousness—the mysteries of our ‘kingdom within;’ the mystery of ‘self’ and ‘other.’ This was the message that Jesus brought and taught to all that had ‘ears to hear:’
(1) William E. Phipps, Muhammad and Jesus, pp. 231 – 232
(2) Ibid, p. 231
(3) Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation, p. 295
(4) Ibid, p. 363
(5) Ibid, p. 352
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