There is no religious belief that, once you know it or say you believe it, will magically unlock the door to God. So, I would advise you to remember this: the impulse you feel to know God…that impulse IS God.  But, having said that, don’t get too attached even to the impulse because, the truth is, God is more than any impulse you feel.  I realize it sounds like I’m speaking from both sides of the mouth and I suppose I am.  It’s a great paradox, but I know of no other way to put it.

Start with the impulse because that’s closer to the truth of who God is than anything else.  By giving your attention to the impulse, it’ll grow and expand.  There is nothing more you need to do in order to know God.  God’s presence is not the reward you get for believing the “right” things.  If you will follow the inner longing you feel to know the living God, you will become conscious of God.  Just try this and see what happens.

Albert Einstein once said, “I want to know the mind of God; everthing else are details.” I have often wondered whether he recognized the significance of his own words. The desire to know the mind of God is to know God. There is no need to make a problem of this. Yet, most religions do. God wants to be known. Why would she make it difficult? It is religion that complicates knowing God, saddling it with a carload of beliefs as onerous as the proverbial Sears catalogue. The prophet Jeremiah put it this way: “I (meaning, God) will put my law within them—write it on their hearts…they’ll know me firsthand.”[1]  It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

The prophet Isaiah once said, “Seek the Lord while he may be found…”[2] On the surface, that sounds like good advice to give a spiritual seeker. But, upon closer examination, it’s not so wise either. To seek God implies effort, even struggle and neither is necessary in God’s Kingdom.

It is true Jesus said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”[3]  But, these words have been greatly misunderstood by Christians, as have most of the other words attributed to him. Even very devoted followers of the Christian path assume Jesus meant we are to ask, seek, and knock, and continue doing so, as if there’s some kind of Divine resistance which can only be overcome by our persistence.

To the contrary. God desires that you know her, which is precisely why you feel the inner impulse to pursue him. So, again, start with the inner impulse. Know that, as you do, you have met with Mystery already. St. Francis of Assisi put it this way, “What you are looking for is what is looking!” Jesus provides his own clarification, too:

“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct…This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate?…You wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think that God who conceived you in love will be even better?[4]

There’s a line in A Course in Miracles that goes, “When we are ready, God will take the final step in our return to him.” When you ask, seek, and knock, it is not to overcome God’s resistance. You ask to know God, and keep asking, you seek to know God, and keep seeking only because, as you do, the result is an ever-expanding awareness of this Presence you know already. That is to say, the asking, seeking, and knocking are the spiritual practices necessary to grow in God-consciousness…to live a God-realized life.

You can make knowing God a struggle, if you’d like.  I did for most of my early adult life.  What’s more, most religions, including Christianity, have succeeded in making a personal relationship with God into a problem. Know, however, that it takes no effort to know God. Yet, if you ask many religious people about their faith experience, they will say things like, “I’m trying to be a good follower.” This is so unnecessary, as I gratefully learned on the Sunday afternoon of my own awakening.

Being Christian is simply the recognition of and response to the inclination you feel to know God.  That’s it.  Everything else are details.  Take a step today toward what you feel, and you will likely discover that what you feel is the God you wish to know.  Add anything else and you’ve made it into a religion and not a relationship.  Responding to the inclination brings you face-to-face with Inspiration.  To be inspired is to be “in-Spirit,” a word made up of two others, the prefix in and the root word spirare meaning “to breathe.” Hence, to know God is as simple, indeed as natural, as “breathing in.” Whether you are conscious of it or not, with every inhalation, you are literally breathing in the presence of God.  Remind yourself of this today and celebrate.

This is the Mystery that is God, the miracle of God’s grace: the desire you feel to know God can only mean one thing:  a spiritual awakening has occurred in you already

It is your beliefs that need defending. Faith needs no defense. So, be not content with an inherited faith. To do so is like a person holding their breath underwater. It can be done but only for so long. Life will bring you to the surface of truth, sooner or later. It is there, and only there, where you can breathe freely, be yourself, dance to your own tune, not another’s. It is there you know the joy of authentic living, the power of a living, breathing faith. You will have “beliefs,” too. The difference, however, is that they are your beliefs, forged in the crucible of your honest questions and doubts.

Don’t let anyone tell you that questions are compromise or that doubts are disbelief. Your questions and doubts are the stuff of faith. Happy doubting!

The former, on the other hand, is all about how you live — the conduct of your life; your trust in and reliance upon your capacity to enjoy “the wisdom of uncertainty,” as easterners call it; your freedom from the need for certainty and absoluteness, both of which are mere illusions.

The fact is, you can be certain of nothing, except I suppose the reality of death. Yet, when your religion is all about what you believe, know that the ego in you has taken over already. The ego is obsessed with beliefs, attaches itself to them, and so fashions an identity around them. This gives it a sense of self and feeds its desire for certainty, security. Beliefs are then more than a way of explaining or making sense of your religious experience. Instead, they take on a kind of absoluteness, and when that occurs (and it almost always does), it isn’t long before you are driven to defend those beliefs against anyone who would question them or subscribe to a different set of beliefs. The ego in you will defend, debate and disagree almost incessantly. It is the cause of most conflicts between religions and between religious people within the same religion. The word “religion” itself is synonymous with exclusivity, divisiveness, even violence and bloodshed. One could almost say that the study of history is the study of religious madness.

From time to time, I get emails from other Christians who are feeling highly threatened by my writings or the topics on which I speak, precisely because they perceive my perspectives to be a threat to their own belief system.

Such was the case with the most recent exchange of emails I had with a Christian woman from the Carolinas. In several emails, she catalogued her objections with me with precision, mixed with anger, fear and even a few veiled threats of God’s punishment for the things I had written. At one point, she asked me pointedly, “Are YOU even a Christian?” To which I responded, “Passionately.”

“You lie,” she retorted. “You’re nothing but a phony.” And with that, she trailed off on another tirade of charges, all proof to the frightened little ego in her that no one could believe as I believe and actually be a Christian.

In a way, I suppose she IS right. If, for example, you are reared to believe (as I was and many Christians still are) there is only one way to think of Jesus and that is as God’s “only begotten son” (John 3:16) — meaning “one-and-only-son” and not simply as “a unique son” (which is an equally valid interpretation of the text as any text critic knows) and so “uniquely like God” — then the ego in you would feel justified in asking, “Are you really a Christian?”

When you know, however, it is only ever the ego that attaches itself to a belief (as one of its many attachments Eckhart Tolle has rightly characterized as “ego-enhancers”) to strengthen its sense of self — and so the illusion of “rightness,” security and certainty — then you’re free to see from where this inner compulsion to cling comes. This awareness alone creates a space of acceptance in you where you are free of ego-attachments and so more capable of tolerating the viewpoints, perspectives and faith beliefs of another without the feeling you are compromising your own.

People who have given up on religion entirely, or who disdain religion as “the opiate of the people,” may be aware of the ego in themselves or are just as unaware as intolerant, fundamentalist Christians or Muslims. When they are unaware, then their disgust with religion, as well as their disdain for religious people, is just an ego-reaction in them. They may be very intelligent people. But they are also very unaware that the ego in them has managed to fashion a sense of identity for itself, too — one just as intolerant and narrow-minded, defensive and arrogant, as the collective ego observed and experienced among fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. The difference is only in the position and manner of their reaction or attack. Some react with words. Others use weapons. Both methods are mad.

The key to liberation from ego is “awareness.” The key to growth in faith beyond belief is detachment. Know that it is always easier to see the ego in others than it is to see it in yourself. When, for example, you meet a notorious critic, you are really meeting a notoriously unaware person. You criticize in others what you overlook in yourself. So, to overcome ego, develop that capacity in yourself that Easterners describe as “the watcher” or “the witnessing presence.” Christians would call this the “indwelling Holy Spirit.” I suspect this capacity goes by many names. But my point is this: Train yourself to know when the ego in you lifts its ugly head. You can be sure whenever it does — and it does so frequently — it will strike with a venom that makes victims of everyone.

This witnessing presence or “the deeper self,” about which I’ve written extensively in “The Enoch Factor,” needs no crutch upon which to lean for a sense of self or worth or distinction. It is that part of you in oneness with Life itself. Because it is, there is no feeling of separateness from others and certainly no “us” and “them” mentality — a common characteristic of a collective ego attached to a set of beliefs. As a matter of fact, this part of you knows only union with others, indeed all things. Gone is the need for permanency, rightness, security or absolutes. This part of you dances on a stage of paradox. Unlike the crippled ego-self, it is healthy — solid, yet soft; strong, yet weak; on a cross today, beyond a tomb tomorrow. And it is always at peace with differing perspectives.

Why? Because it thrives in an environment of detached awareness. It has beliefs or, as I prefer, perspectives, but it isn’t attached to them. As a consequence, there is an evolution of the self, what Christians would call “growth in Christ.” There is an expansion of human consciousness, not a narrowing of it, which is what you often see with Christians. Instead of being in the world but not of it (John 17:16), as their forerunner advised, they are neither of the world nor in it, opting instead to remain in church 24/7, as if to hide from the world.

An environment of ego-detachment is the fertile soil for the growth of faith–a faith that is transformational; a faith that naturally springs from a fountain of spontaneity, knowing not when it’s giving another a cup of cold water or feeding a hungry soul (Matthew 25). It is beneath and beyond ego attachments and so has no enemies. It is a faith that flourishes in a garden of contradiction, with an appreciation for the variety in perspectives and tastes.

This is why, for me, being a Christian is less about content and more about conduct. It is true I have perspectives and much passion around them. So I write with conviction. I speak with authority. But I also seek to know when the ego in me gets too attached to my perspectives and so tries to make “beliefs” out of them. I know where that road leads and I want no part of it — not anymore.

I am a follower of Jesus but it isn’t because he answers all my questions or has given me something to believe in — something the little ego in me can attach to and so feel secure. I follow Jesus because his path makes sense. It’s a way to know God, to live at peace with myself, with others and the world. But Jesus’ pathway isn’t easy. It is not paved with a cement of “certainty” or “absolutes.” If that’s what the ego in you needs, there are plenty of religions around — Jesus called them “the broad roads” — that are crowded and so presumed to be “correct.” But in the end, those roads, no matter how right they may seem, are roads that “lead to destruction.”

Why? Because, instead of forming you, you’re con-formed; instead of freeing you, you’re enslaved; instead of pointing you in the way to go, they prescribe to you the way you must go; instead of creating a more unified world, the world becomes more divided and conflicted. And in the end, the road leads nowhere, except to a world of those “like” us and those who aren’t — a world of believers and unbelievers, which really just means a world of those who believe like us and those who don’t.

I wish, instead, to walk “the narrow road,” as Jesus described it. Few travel this road because it can be lonely and unclear. Yet, it is the pathway of God. It is the pathway of faith.

There are few markers. Much insecurity. Little to believe in. But there’s lots of compassion. Much to enjoy. No judgments. No arrogance. No presumptions. None of the “Our path is right; your path is wrong” nonsense.

No, this path is just one path to knowing God. But it is the path I have chosen. And it has brought me great joy.

1.  What do you believe?

Personally, I prefer to use the word “perspectives” instead of “beliefs.”  It feels to me as if the word is more fluid and open to change while the word “belief” feels rigid, superior, and resistant to change.  I make it my practice to be open to everything and attached to nothing.  A belief is an assumption you make about life. It’s an idea, a doctrine, or a structure of thought that helps you articulate your human experience. But, this is all that a belief is. Therefore, no belief is infallible or superior to the beliefs of others. This is why I prefer to call my beliefs, perspectives.  A perspective is dynamic, ever-expanding, respective of others, and open to all.

2.  Do you believe in God?

Yes. But, can I prove he exists? No. Can anyone prove she does not? No, again.  While I call God, God, I hesitate to say much more than this. Anything more I might say, no matter how accurate it is, seems too definitive and limiting, as if to place boundaries around the Divine or to squeeze God into some conceptual box.  How do you define what is indefinable, limit what is limitless, or explain what is inexplicable?

3.  What do you believe about Jesus?

Jesus was a human being and just as much flesh and blood, mind and emotions as anyone else.  What distinguished Jesus from virtually everyone else is that he lived at perhaps the highest possible level of Divine consciousness.  That is to say, he lived most fully a God-realized life, a life of oneness with the Divine. In fact, he did so to such an amazing degree that many people regarded him as Divine, even God-Incarnate.  I do as well, but not in any sense that Jesus—and only Jesus—was capable of divinity, oneness with, or inseparability from God. I am too. So are you.  Why else would Jesus say, “The things you have seen me do, greater things you will do…” (John 14:12).  For years, I mistakenly believed that, when Saint John said, “…God gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16) that he meant that Jesus was God’s one-and-only Son.  Now, my perspective is slightly different.  Instead of translating the Greek word “begotten” as “one and only,” which, of course, many Christians have, I understand John to mean “unique.”  Jesus was indeed unique.  Given his impact on human history, no intelligent person would argue that. But, does that mean he was some kind of “Superman” in human flesh? I think not.  I regard Jesus as God’s Son, indeed unique in how he lived, the way he died, the example he left for his followers, and the intimacy he enjoyed with the Creator herself.  But I regard myself, just as I do you, to be children of God, too.  By following Jesus, and so living as he lived, I, and you, too, may know the same intimacy with God and so live and die in the joyful Presence of knowing, as Saint Paul so eloquently put it, “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:31).  When you know this truth, instead of trying to explain it or defend a position, belief, or idea taught you by your religious tradition, then, and only then, are you truly free to enjoy the indecipherable richness that being one of God’s sons or daughters implies.

4.  Do you believe everyone can know God as Jesus knew God?

Yes. Why else would Jesus say over and over again, “Follow me?” It is in following Jesus you make the wonderful discovery of God’s indescribable Presence in your life.  You become God-aware.  As you practice following the sacred path of Jesus, you grow in Divine awareness.  It is important to remember that following Jesus is infinitely more than simply believing in Jesus.  When Saint John said, “…whoever believes in him (Jesus)…shall have eternal life” (John 3:16), what does he mean by “believe”?  What is there to believe?  That Jesus lived and died? No one denies this.  That Jesus is the Divine Savior?  Many believe this but they continue to live in darkness and do not pattern their lives after Jesus.  In truth, real faith in Jesus is actually the opposite of belief in Jesus.  Faith is a way of life. Since we have no verb in the English language for “faith,” we are forced to substitute in our translations of the Bible the word, “believe.”  This oddity in our language has been the source of much confusion.  People have confused “faithing” or “believing” with beliefs, but believing has little do to with content. It has infinitely more to do with conduct, though not in some morally superior way.  It’s not what you know that produces an inner transformation.  It’s Who you know and, as a consequence, how you go about living your life and patterning it after that of Jesus himself that produces inner change in your thoughts and attitudes and outer change in your conduct in the world.  Again, the real followers of Jesus are those who pattern their life after his. When you make it your daily spiritual practice to think as he may have thought, to live as he lived, and to practice showing compassion to yourself, to others, and toward God, then you ARE a follower of Jesus.

5.  Do you believe Jesus is the only way to God?

Jesus is my way to God. To be a “disciple” of Jesus means to be a learner of his way of thinking, living, and behaving.  It is to follow his path, one that inevitably leads those who do into a life-changing awareness of the Divine presence.  There may be other pathways of knowing Universal Intelligence, however. Practitioners of the Baha’i faith, for example, speak of “One Light, Many Lamps.”  God is the Light of all and gives light to all. It seems most probable, as well as logical, that God may be seen and known through the light of many different lamps.  It would be arrogant of me to either presume or to assert that God can only be known in one way.  Besides, how could I ever be sure of such a presumptuous assumption?

6.  Do not the perspectives you hold undermine the uniqueness of Jesus and the authority of the Bible?

They do not for me.  Do they for you?  If so, then you will likely disagree with my perspective(s), cling to some other perspective, and perhaps feel the need to vigorously defend it.  But, this is not necessary unless your sense of self is attached to your beliefs or perspectives. In that case, you will react to not only my perspectives but to any different perspective as if it were a personal attack against you.  Attachment to anything, including a belief system, will cause you to suffer, or so instructed the Buddha.  For me, I have found it much more liberating to “be open to everything and attached to nothing.”  Only when you feel the need to insist your perspective is “right” and other perspectives are wrong that you create an “us” and “them” world, which is the principle cause of virtually all conflicts.  This may be a small planet but it is large enough to sustain a variety of perspectives, provided humans are mature enough to tolerate polarity, ambiguity, even contradiction.  Branches on a tree don’t have to all look alike to draw nourishment from the same vine.  Native Americans say, “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.”  My perspective is to stay open, be reflective, and keep seeking.  Or, as the philosopher Andre’ Gide put it, “Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who have found it.”  Jesus said, “Seek and you will find…” (Matt. 7:7) and, in another place, he said, “You will know the truth and it will make you free” (John 8:32).

7.  What do you believe about the Bible?

The Bible is my primary source of Divine inspiration, spiritual insight, and practical wisdom.  It is not a book of magic, however.  It didn’t fall out of the sky bound in leather and in the language of King James.  Instead, it is a collection of sacred stories and spiritual teachings that span several hundred centuries of Jewish and Christian history.  As a consequence, no passage could possibly contain absolute truth.  Rather, each must be read and understood in its cultural context and social milieu.  For example, Leviticus says that adulterers should be stoned to death.  It’s a good thing that’s no longer practiced or about half of any congregation would have to kill the other half (probably an exaggeration, but you get the point).  The psalmist spoke of the four corners of the earth (Psalm 78:5).  Until well after the Middle Ages, most people mistakenly believed the world was flat with four corners. Of course, we know better today.  The Bible is the story of the Jewish/Christian quest to know God. It isn’t the only sacred record of the human quest for the Divine. Other peoples and cultures have their own sacred writings.  All of these sacred texts, however, point toward the same spiritual quest. Virtually every branch of the Christian church has debated, disagreed, and eventually divided over what it was going to “say” about the Bible.  Most conflicts have swirled around such words and concepts as “authoritative,” “inerrant,” “infallible,” and so forth.  But, my own perspective is this: the Bible is infinitely more than anything I, or anyone else, could ever say about it? In fact, if what I “say” about the Bible is more important than what the Bible says to me, what could be more insane than this?

8.  What denomination are you?

I grew up a Baptist and, more specifically, a Southern Baptist.  I didn’t know it at the time but there are as many Baptists as there are flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream.  Today, I regard myself as the product of many Christian traditions, as well as many non-Christian ones, too.  For example, I recently joined the Roman Catholic Church. I did not, however, abandon my Baptist faith or my membership in a local Baptist church. So, today, I hold membership in two churches. Someone said to me, “But, you can’t?” Says who?  I have.  Who knows, perhaps before I leave this planet, I may just join the Methodists, too, as well as the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the Unity Church, and the Snake-Handling Pentecostals in the hills of eastern Kentucky.  I’m drawn to the Buddhist teachings, too, as well as the meditative practices within Hinduism.  Having consulted with virtually every branch of the Christian church, I have come to find much affinity in all of them.  What’s infinitely more important is that I am a follower of Christ. But, I have no interest in debating the supremacy of my faith tradition over another.  My choice to be a Christ-follower has been shaped by my background, as well as my ever-expanding perspectives. So, when I am asked, I tell people I’m a Christ-follower by choice, a multi-denominationalist with ties even to Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, as well as Sufism within the Muslim tradition. As a Christ-follower, I’m a Baptist by heritage and a Roman Catholic by choice. But, I also love the Methodist for their emphasis on the sacredness of our religious traditions, the Episcopalians for their emphasis on the equality of all persons and for the few Episcopalians who actually practice acceptance of alternative lifestyles, the Presbyterians for their emphasis on Divine providence, the Pentecostals for their emphasis on joy in the Spirit, and the Evangelicals for having broken out of the box and who practice “doing” church and worship in alternative ways.  Frankly, however, labels mean little to me.  My desire is to simply walk with God…to master this sacred art that was once described by the ancient Catholic mystic, Brother Lawrence, as “the practice of the presence of God.”  In the final analysis, isn’t walking with God, like Enoch did in the Old Testament, really all that matters?  What could be more important than this?

9.  Then, what do you believe?

Not much, I suppose.  For example, when someone says, “I believe in God,” I wonder what they mean by that.  Does it mean they believe in the existence of God?  Well, so do I and, if surveys are accurate, so do most Americans.  But, I feel no need to try to “prove” God exists.  It can’t be done anyway.  I find it far more fulfilling to spend my time getting to know this God whom I to exist.   I have long suspected that the real reason religious people try to “prove” God exists is because they’re secretly afraid she doesn’t.  You only ever “believe” or “defend” those things about which you are uncertain.  If you knew God, what would there be to either prove or defend?  I wish only to cultivate God’s ineffable presence within my consciousness and so remain in that Presence continually.  It is there I am at peace.  It is there I experience the joy that is, as Saint Paul put it, “unspeakable.” It is there I find my thinking changes, my living takes on meaning, and my fear of death dissolves.  If this is not what the New Testament mean by “salvation,” and what the Easterners mean “enlightenment,” then what is it?

10.  What do you mean by the words “post-Christian world?”

When I was young, all of my neighbors were Christian. Even those who were not regular churchgoers regarded themselves as Christian nonetheless.  Furthermore, virtually everyone thought of America as a “Christian” nation.  Today, however, the little world in which I grew up has changed.  Your neighbor now might just as likely be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or even an atheist.  Near our house in Louisville, Kentucky, for example, there is a service station where I regularly fill my car with gasoline.  Recently, I made a stop there and discovered there were new owners, an Indian man and his daughter.  As we got acquainted, I observed the tilaka on his forehead, the round, red dot that symbolizes the “third eye,” associated with meditation and enlightenment. I asked if they were Hindu.  “He is,” answered his daughter, as she gestured toward him.  “But, I’m a Muslim.” I remember thinking to myself, “This is the world in which we live.”  If humanity is to survive, religious people must actually start practicing the very things their faith professes – love, peace, and acceptance of all, those like you, those different from you, and even your enemies.  While virtually every conflict throughout history, down to and including the present, has been religiously inspired, this insanity must end if humanity is to survive.  In this regard, the Dalai Lama was right when he said, “When there’s peace among the religions, there will be peace in the world.”

11.  What do you believe is wrong with Christianity?

G. K. Chesterton purportedly said, “There’s nothing wrong with Christianity; there’s everything wrong with Christians.”  It is the Christians within Christianity who have been the source of much human division, destruction, and human and planetary suffering. Throughout history, for example, Christians have repeatedly labeled, judged, and sought to destroy their perceived enemies.  Furthermore, they have even acted this way toward those within their own faith tradition.  It is insanity and it must end.  There is room enough for everyone on this planet.  But, until Christians actually live as Jesus lived, treat others, but especially their enemies with openness and respect, and make room even for those who choose to have no religious affiliation, the conflict will not only continue, it will escalate.  All labeling and judging must stop. All this nonsense of believing, “We’re right, others are wrong!” “We’re God’s chosen, others are not!” must cease.  There will always be many different religions, even many subsets within the same religion.  Or, to put it another way, there will never be just one way of understanding or knowing Eternal Truth I call God. If the present divisions within Christianity alone have not made it abundantly clear to you that humans are incapable of subscribing to the same religion, even to the same beliefs within the same religion, then there isn’t much I, or anyone else, could teach you.  So, there’s nothing wrong with Christianity.  There’s everything wrong with those of us who call ourselves Christians.  We must change but change can only occur within.  And no inner change will ever take place until each Christian makes the decision to “follow” Christ—really follow Christ.  Make this your ambition.  Not only will you change, but your world will change, too.

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” In spite of this rather clear clue as to where to look to find God, many mistake their inner feelings of discontent, restlessness, or desire for happiness and fulfillment as an indicator they need to do something.  Our culture’s answer to this inner dilemma is to find the right career. Or, to find and fall in love with the right partner.  But even these events – as meaningful as they may be – fail to grant anything more than a temporary, impermanent peace.

Now, what happens in most religions, Christianity notwithstanding, is that people go to church looking for God, thinking she might be found there.  And, the church perpetrates, as well as perpetuates, the illusion that God can be.  How so?  By suggesting to people, “We have the answer. We alone have the answer. What we believe is right or, at the least, a little more right than anyone else believes.  So, attend our church, believe as we believe, think as we think, do as we do, live as we live and, of course, give us your money, and all will be well with your soul.”

But it isn’t so. Over time, this nonsense has created in people the expectation that, if they’ll do all these things, they’ll find God.  Instead of helping to know God, however, these expectations, rules, dogmas, doctrines, and beliefs have sucked the spiritual life right out of their souls.  The church too frequently confuses beliefs for faith and, in fundamentalist churches, the beliefs are then imposed on believing and unbelieving people alike. In fact, that would be a pretty accurate definition of religious fundamentalism – the confusion of beliefs for faith and imposing those beliefs on others.  That’s what’s happening today in both Islam and in Christianity – the difference is only the degree with which the imposition occurs.

The American Religious Survey tells us that as many as 34 million Americans today have left organized reIigion.  For the majority of these, it is the Christian religion they’re leaving or, more accurately, the church’s dysfunctional version of Christianity that they are leaving.

And, that’s the point.  People can leave the church—they have, they are, and more will, as long as the dysfunction and insanity I’m describing goes on. What people cannot leave, however, is their inner feeling of discontent, emptiness, or the longing to cultivate a deep spiritual union with the Divine.  So, in recent years, as westerners have had greater exposure to eastern religions, many have turned to other religions. What many of these seekers do not know is this:  the dysfunction they met and left in the western church is the same sort of madness they will likely find in many other religions as well.

So, it is important to understand, I did not write this book as a disgruntled former minister looking to attack either Christianity or the church. I wrote this book to tell people what took me half a lifetime to figure out.  There has only ever been one place you will go to find the deepest desires of your heart fulfilled – and that is within yourself.  That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “The kingdom is within you.”   The Buddha said this, too.  Even the Jewish rabbis have a saying that goes, “God has but one synagogue – the human heart.”  I wrote this book, The Enoch Factor to show people where to look—the human heart—to find what they’re looking for.

“An infinite God…does not distribute himself that each may have a part, but to each one he gives all of himself as fully as if there were no others.”
– A. W. Tozer

A God-awakened life is a transformational shift in human consciousness that brings the sacred Presence into immediate awareness. In this awakened state, there is a ubiquitous awareness that Intelligence suffuses all living things. This awareness is not hypothetical or speculative, but real. Awareness of Intelligence or Presence makes you conscious of the fact that, what seems real-the material world around you-is really a passing illusion and what seems unreal-the spiritual world-is actually what’s real and eternal. That is, it’s not what’s seen, but what’s unseen that is most real. Saint Paul expressed it beautifully: “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.”

If you are waking up, a shift is taking place in your consciousness even now. You are becoming more and more aware of yourself-that is, your own feelings, hopes and dreams, as well as disappointents and failures, and there is an acceptance of all of it. You feel no need to argue with what is. Rather, you are at peace with yourself and your reason for being in this world.

You’ve ended the madness of looking for yourself outside yourself-in things, relationships, a career or calling, roles, functions, a belief system, and so on. You know that any of these has the capacity of adding richness to your life, but none of these could ever be your life. Furthermore, instead of just one or a few other persons, you sense a deep connectedness to all sentient beings. The prejudices, stereotypes, opinions, and beliefs about others, part of your conditioned upbringing, are coming into the light of your consciousness. You are more aware of your conditioned responses to people and circumstances and, therefore, capable of changing what needs changing. What should disappear fades away. What should expand does so, too. None of it happens overnight but, on the awakened, spiritual path, you are yourself amazed at how much more at peace you are with life itself. You are living what Jesus described as “the abundant life.”

The abundant, God-aware life is perfectly illustrated in the life of Enoch, an enlightened spiritual master who perhaps lived thousands of years ago. Early Jewish and Christian saints, including many of the early Church Fathers, regarded Enoch as an enlightened soul whose writings were sacred. In spite of this widespread acknowledgment, however, by the fourth century, his works had been excluded from the Canon of Scripture, or what we know today as the Bible. This is most regrettable as Enoch’s example of the enlightened life holds the secret to life and death. Enoch lived as God desires all to live. He died as God desires all to die. But, because his writings have not been widely accessible, his example has been virtually hidden from countless generations.

Enoch has much to share with us. Our Jewish ancestors knew this, which is why, long before Jesus, and for many years after him, Jewish and Christian saints venerated Enoch. This is accentuated by the fact that there are only two persons in the Bible credited with having “walked with God,” a phrase which is the Biblical way of referring to an awakened, enlightened, or God-aware life. They are Noah and Enoch. That alone is puzzling enough to warrant an investigation. To walk with God. What does that mean? Is this simply an anthropomorphic way of describing a spiritual life? In part, but it is patently more than this, too. The inference is, between Enoch and God, a depth of intimacy existed unknown to almost everyone else, either before or after him.

There was a time when intimacy prevailed between God and humans and between humans and all other sentient beings. But, in Jewish mythology, something was lost in creation. When the Serpent, whom legend has called Satan but we now know as the dysfunctional ego, lifted its noxious head, its toxic venum contaminated human consciousness of the Divine. What was once a magnificent, effortless attachment to God was severed by the ego. God was successfully edged out of human consciousness.

The story of Enoch is, therefore, a story of recovery. What was forfeited by Adam and Eve in the creation narratives was reclaimed in Enoch. This is the point the writer of Genesis is making by the words, “Enoch walked with God.” The previous reference to “walking” in the Book of Genesis tells us God walked alone. While God once walked in harmony with Adam and Eve, separation became the order of the day.

Enoch broke that cycle, however. What his predecessors and contemporaries could not do, and most of his successors have not done since, Enoch did. He lived in spiritual union with Eternal Presence. And, the good news is this: If he did, others may too. Enoch is a universal archetype of the sacred art of knowing God. If anyone was ever awake, it was Enoch. The remarkable way he lived, and the equally remarkable way in which he died, holds the secret to living and dying today. Though relegated to place of obscurity for centuries, his legacy is instructive to the spiritually discerning. Your interest in him is the next step you’re destined to take in your journey of your own awakening.

• Enoch lived as God would have you live—in unity consciousness with Being itself.
• Enoch died as God would have you die—with satisfaction, contentment, and no fear.

Enoch was born, lived, and died the way God had originally planned for everyone—that is, until the ego contaminated the human condition, making birth painful, life problematic, and death what the New Testament calls “the last enemy.”[1]

So, how might you wake up?

Go within.  That’s the real tabernacle, temple, or worship center.  Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.”[2] You will not find this kingdom anywhere else.  Channel the desire you feel to know God into a journey into the inner shrine of stillness, meditation, and peace.  “You are the temple of God,” said Saint Paul, “and God himself is present in you.”[3] Words do not get much clearer than this.  It is this unseen temple of the heart where you touch Source and tame your ego-self.  All outer temples, shrines, churches, and altars are mere reminders that the pathway to Life is the pathway within.  It is there you enter the real sanctuary, experience real Sabbath, and enjoy Source itself.

Just as you cannot know God in a collection of beliefs or doctrines, no matter how “right” your religious tradition insists they are, so you cannot know God in a church, temple, or mosque, no matter how emotionally-uplifting it may be.  It is true that God may visit, surprise, or awaken within you in any of a million different ways—in a worship service, through the reading of sacred scripture, during a confession, or while pondering a religious doctrine or belief.  But, it is also true that God may awaken in you while on a golf course, in the midst of a crisis, or while doing nothing at all, except reclining on a couch watching television.

[2] Luke 17:21

[3] 1 Corinthians 3:16

[2] Genesis 3:8

[3] 1 Corinthians 15:26, KJV

[4] See Genesis 5:18-24; Jude 14-15; and Hebrews 11:5

[5] The books attributed to Enoch are known as 1 Enoch (or, Book of Enoch), 2 Enoch (or, Secrets of Enoch) and 3 Enoch (or, Mystical Enoch). Early Christians of the second century were familiar with these writings and many consider them sacred, including Church Fathers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian. By the fourth century, however, the Book of Enoch was excluded from all Christian lists of those books which would comprise what is commonly known as the Bible today. In no way, however, does this discount the significance of Enoch’s life or his death. In fact, regarding his death, his experience of it was so rare and different, virtually everyone since then has mistakenly concluded he did not experience death at all. He did die, however, just as everyone dies. But, the way he lived and the way he died were preserved for a reason. It is in the story of Enoch that you find the secrets that can transform the quality of your life and solve the quandary of your death.

I even had a few questions I wanted to ask Dad, too. Like, “Where are you?” “Are you dead or alive?” “If you’re alive, where are you?” “Will I ever see you again?” “I tried all my life to talk to you, to feel you were listening to me and, on the day you join my church, you up and die? What the hell is that?” “Is this whole thing a cosmic joke, or just an illusion?” “What was it like to die?” “Painful?” “Fearful?” “What will death be like for me?” “Will I be afraid?”

I lived in a kind of spiritual limbo for several years following his death. It was not until the afternoon of my awakening that I began to see how his death, indeed how everything in my life, had been a portal into Presence. The words of Jesus would finally make sense: “I am the door.”

Though at first we typically resist them, a crisis, any crisis, is a doorway Life opens to us. Given the nature of our conditioning, however, it often takes a crisis to awaken us. For some who are deeply entrenched in conditioned religious thought and expectation, or whose egos are fixed and strong, it may take a series of crises to wake them up. You have perhaps known someone who experienced a crisis, only to have it followed by a series of additional crises of equal or greater severity. Who knows but what they needed them. Yet, even with crises, some people never get it.
Pam, my wife now of several years, insists on setting her alarm clock to wake her up at 6 A.M. She seldom plans to get up, however, until 7 A.M.

I have often asked her, “Why not set the clock for 7 A.M., instead of being awakened several times, only to hit the snooze again and again?”

Her typical response is, “Because it takes four alarms to fully awaken me.”

Next time you hear of a four-alarm fire, you will know that the severity of fire is so great that more than one truck and one team of firefighters is needed. You will also know it took both the death and the resurrection of Jesus for those closest to him to wake up to his spiritual identity and to that of their own. Although he had said, perhaps over and over again, “I am the light of the world,” and “You are the light of the world,” none of this began to dawn until the darkness of his death.

As my own eyes began to open, I noticed a profound difference in how I responded to every event in my life, no matter how inconsequential. For example, I used to resist anything I interpreted as an obstacle upsetting my happiness or interfering with the pursuit of my goals. Shortly after the awakening, however, I boarded a commercial airline destined for Atlanta. It was 7:45 A.M and we were behind schedule by thirty minutes already. Presently, the pilot informed us, due to an electrical problem, the plane would be delayed even longer and could possibly be grounded altogether.

Before the awakening, I would have been frustrated by this kind of minor disruption, even inclined to take it personal, as if airline officials were plotting a way to complicate my life. The resistance would have manifested itself as complaints to myself and to passengers seated around me. If none of that was sufficient, I would call someone on my cell and complain.

This time, however, I didn’t resist. Nor did I complain. I was noticeably surprised at myself. I saw it as an opportunity, almost as if it was supposed to happen, the reason for which was mine to discover. So, I watched and listened. I became present, so to speak, and looked for the message from beyond, or a stranger I was supposed to meet. I reached for my notepad and began writing of my experience. You are reading its results. Perhaps this happened to me for no other reason than you might read about it now. If you watch, you are likely to see what you’re destined to see. Who knows? If you are awake, you will know.

Where could you possibly go to find a healthier, happier, and more stress-free way to live than this? If you have not yet awakened, it is understandable why many of my words seem odd to you. You perhaps feel inner resistance to some of them, too. But, as you awaken, you will know for yourself the truth in these words. You will cease to resist what is given to assist you in knowing God.

By resistance, I am not suggesting that you lie down and let life step on you. Nor am I saying you pretend to be happy about everything that shows up, although the New Testament does say, “In everything give thanks.” Some things are difficult to accept and a few things are very difficult. But, on the spiritual path, you will begin to instinctively know, since nothing is ever accidental, anything may serve as a portal into Presence. Your destiny could not unfold without the appearance of these things. In other words, everything serves a higher purpose. There is a beautiful way Eckhart

Tolle makes this same point in A New Earth. He writes: “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”

More profound words have seldom been spoken. When you remember them, as well as apply them to your life, they have the power to transform both how you receive and how you respond to everything. No less equal in beauty, and more familiar to Christians, are the words of Saint Paul, “All things work together for good to those who love God.” If this is true, why resist anything?

The sudden and unexpected end of my father’s life was the surprising and unanticipated beginning of my own. How could I resent something as amazing and perfect as this? The self-confusion, as well as the questions and doubts, have disappeared. Sure, I still question things, but there’s none of the background cynicism, the latent resentment, or existential fear like before. There is only a profound awareness of Presence and, with it, gratitude and joy. These remain to this day.

The Law of Attraction has its roots in quantum physics. Simply put, the law states that your thoughts dictate your reality. Like everything else, thoughts are made up energy waves that attract like energies in return. Positive thoughts, for example, operate at higher energy or vibrational frequencies. So, when you think positive thoughts, you both broadcast and receive, or attract, positive results. Conversely, negative thoughts vibrate at lower energy frequencies. When your thoughts are charged with negativity, you get negative results.

Essentially, Saint Paul pointed to the same spiritual law in his Letter to the Philippians. Although he knew nothing of either quantum physics or the Law of Attraction per se, he wrote:

“I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”[1]

In other words, today’s thoughts manifest tomorrow’s realities. The Buddha himself said, “All that we are is the result of all that we have thought.”

The Law of Attraction operates in this world with as much reliability as the Law of Gravity. The former is a spiritual law, the latter a physical. While neither can be seen with the naked eye, their effects are witnessed and even somewhat predictable.  For example, the Law of Gravity makes it possible to predict with uncanny certainty what will happen if you leap from the fifty-fourth floor of high-rise in Manhattan. The Law of Attraction makes it possible to predict the kind of life you will live by the kind of thoughts you think.

If you think angry thoughts, for example, it shouldn’t surprise you to frequently find yourself in volatile, even hostile situations.  You’ve heard of “road rage?” Angry motorists triggering or, you might say, attracting a similar rage in other drivers.

Take another example. If you think your life is not going to work out for you, why would you be surprised when it doesn’t? What you expect, you experience.  When you begin to realize that this is how life works, you’ll get real cautious about the kinds of thoughts you think. Why? Because, as Wayne Dyer puts it, “You’ll get what you think about whether you want it or not.”

The Law of Gravity makes possible life on this planet. But, it’s also the law that brings down a plane whenever there’s a loss of power. There’s an equally unattractive side to the Law of Attraction, at least where the ego is involved. Some practitioners of this law, for example, make the mistake of believing it guarantees that, whatever they want and are willing to give their undivided attention, they will get.  They believe, if they hold the thought of what they want in their minds with resoluteness and have no doubt whatsoever, what they want is on its way.

Just as no Christian can use Jesus’ name to get anything he or she wants, you cannot use the Law of Attraction to land a career, the house of your dreams, the career position, the income you desire, and so on. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your life or your life situation, whenever ambition is driven by ego, then the desires usually become self-serving, self-centered and self-obsessed. Neither God nor God’s laws can be so manipulated.

“What is ego?” you ask.

The ego is a little monster who resides within the psyche of every person. No one is without one.  It is problematic and dysfunctional—problematic because it is the principal cause of human unhappiness and discontent; and, it is dysfunctional because it is only interested in its-self.  In its more extreme forms, ego manifests as insanity.

It was not that many years ago when religious people were prone to label persons who had very dysfunctional egos as either insane, even demon-possessed.  Since they had no other way of explaining strange and aberrant behavior, they assumed these people were under the control of an evil power they called Satan, or the Devil.  We know now, however, that Satan is really a kind of alter ego or the dark side of one’s personality.

This alter-ego, or the Devil, has many other names, too.  In Islam, for example, it is called Iblis.  It was Mara over whom Siddhârtha Gautama finally prevailed at his spiritual awakening under the Bodhi Tree.   Because he successfully triumphed over his own alter-ego, The Buddha, which means Enlightened One, has been the source of spiritual inspiration to millions of people.  What many believing people in my own religious tradition do not know is that they, too, have an alter-ego, a little demon inside each of them, and it is dysfunctional, too, even insane. The difference is only in the degree of insanity.

So, here’s the bottom line.  Whether it’s something you “wish to attract” as a pseudo-religious person or “pray to receive” as a person of faith, whenever your ego is present, and it is present more often than it is not, the Law of Attraction is interrupted.  That is, it is corrupted and the law ceases to operate as you might desire.  The same happens to the efficacy of prayer when those who pray do so in an attempt to manipulate reality.

James, author of a New Testament book that bears his name, understood this. While he did not know to use the words ego or Law of Attraction, he was well acquainted with the realities beneath and beyond those terms. He wrote, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives.[2] He might have put it this way: “When you want something and believe you’ll get it, either through prayer or focused thinking, but you do not receive it, there’s a simple reason why: it is because your wanting and craving is only for yourself.”

“Then, how can I know when ego is present?” you ask.

This and a host of other questions related to the ego, I’ll answer very soon.

[2] James 4:3, NIV