Epinoia Zoe Ekklesia

The Aramaic term for G-d is Alaha (The Unity) which in Arabic becomes Allah hu.

In The Gospel of Thomas - the "Fifth Gospel" - Jesu says:

"Split wood and I am there, lift a stone and you will find me." 

O' thou my teacher,
I have sought thee through ages long,
but to realize thy face was always before me.

 

One evening long ago, my spiritual guide took me to a bar and said in effect; I am not teaching you to be a monk, you were that before you joined the Order. I am not teaching you to be of service to other monks, to do as I do. Look here, this is your congregation, they surround us. What would you teach them? Thus was born ...

Epinoia Zoe Ekklesia

(Loose translation from the Greek : A higher thought of collective life.)

It was a "mystery school" with an actual historical life span of a year. I return to this memory now and then. Its vision grows as I grow... 

Joseph Campbell said that "A myth is real event that never happened." In other words it is a story about an intangible reality. This sentiment was not unique to him. The Greeks understood their mystery religions in this light. The idea of the virgin born savior god goes back at least to the Egyptians. Such archetypes exist because they are real "Powers" (imho). To insist on the historicity of the archetypes is to miss the point completely and deny oneself access to the Power. History it is said is written by the victors. I could care less about history... other than through my own victorious experience. Nor do I proselytize my view as mystery is my foundation.
 

I tell you a story now in brief. The full story I told no one for nearly 15 years for I would fill up iwith tears and no words would come.... Having found in myself no interest in the world - undergoing a spontaneous renunciation of its values - I quit the job I had trained so hard to acquire, put all my things in a storage shed, gave up my apartment and turned pleading to the Jesus of my understanding; the healer of myth that had so captured my imagination as a youth. "What now?" I asked, and the glow of a presence formed before me, and taught me how to meditate and bid me do so always. I walked, the streets for nearly 3 months, mind fixed moment to moment on my meditation and with each step a fiery glow made sensible to my minds eye, erupted from the locus of my heart, where my attention was bidden to rest. Shortly there was but one word my lips could easily speak and that word was Joy. I became run down, sick, and in great pain if I consulted my senses, but inwardly my attention was rapt in ever unfolding nuances of Bliss without reason. A friend found me and took me home where in time I learned to integrate this bliss with conventional life and navigate the ladder of its heights. I have tried to understand this and other things revealed for all these 30 years past. It has nothing to do with any religion I am sure. I have no theology I need to superimpose upon my experience. I have only the desire that somehow others might share in this mystery and find the unconditioned happiness I know to be the font from which we as loves image spring.


To this end I have become a student of the sayings of Jesu and His myth. I have become a fixture in the UU Christian Study Group of my church and proclaim myself no Christian. Yet I am proud that the piece bellow is sometimes read to close our meetings (sans parenthesis) as it is a sentiment I hold now as when I fist penned it.

Forget not that Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. He was a Rabbi, not a minister. He taught a praxis not a theology. He initiated a new covenant not a new religion. He proclaimed mercy and grace, forgiveness and love above the written law, and in so doing he revealed the true law (YHVH) of relationship rather than objective rules.
 

Jesus did not teach a new LAW but an ancient One - The Way. He showed us how to live it, and in so doing, release its hidden power for the healing of community.  

There is One G-d, one family of mankind, and one bond of friendship between all creatures and their source which has never depended on having the right doctrine, only the righteousness of the heart.

In The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead by Frank J. Tipler a cosmological Physicist, the idea is presented that if Jesus never existed, he must never the less, someday become. I like that idea and think that fits with such ideas as Sheldrakes morphic fields.