Jesus, Buddha, and a Medium — Between Two Worlds
How often have you straddled two worlds in your search for truth?
Once, my practice was often about using so-called objective measures, e.g., psychological tests and behavioral observations, to understand inner motivations, change behavior, and point a person towards hope and meaning in their lives.
I now rely on direct knowing or intuition to discern whether a person is being truthful , to discern the validity of psychic experiences, and generally to distinguish shit from Shinola.
For me, it’s not a case of either/or but both/and. I value objective measures as well as the subjective use of direct knowing.
However, claims of direct knowledge have gotten me into hot water. One reader chided me.
“You should give back your Ph.D. and listen to your scientist-informed wife because your writings about direct experience are pure nonsense.”
(What he does not realize is that my agnostic wife has become a seeker and someone who has further explored earlier mystical experiences).
What he does not realize is that my agnostic wife has become a seeker and someone who has further explored earlier mystical experiences.
Unfortunately, his scientism (excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques) arises when he restricts his quest for truth to the five senses.
Like many he has elevated human thought to royalty status (Descartes — cogito ergo sum).
Direct experience has been demoted to the role of the court jester and coined as “woo-woo” or speculation.
Unfortunately there were times when I devalued intuition, doubted stories of close encounters of a heavenly kind (visions, angel encounters, healing), and feared writings like A Course in Miracles.
That was until two decades ago when I started to dabble in meditation.
And then, recently, I began to embrace the possibility of a soul-to-soul connection with those beyond the veil as well as my higher self deep within.
I am currently in a worldwide seminar with 700 students discussing ways to access expanded forms of consciousness, aka dead people. As a result
I started to commune directly with Jesus.
Talk with my deceased mother
And appreciate the contribution of Buddha to my life.
In each case, I had direct or mystical encounters with a world beyond my skin and the grave. These experiences have impacted my ability to love deeply and experience the oneness of the whole spectrum of consciousness.
Jesus
I learned about Jesus at my mother’s knee.
She prayed to him every day. She firmly believed that her prayers did not bounce off the clouds.
Prayers were answered, and we heard all about it.
When I was eight years old and in the throes of a critical bout of cerebral malaria, the doctors said that I would die if I had one more seizure.
She asked the church folks to pray for my healing.
They did.
I lived.
Another part of the Johnson family oral tradition was when my younger brother and his wife asked my mother to pray for them to have another child.
Their second child had miscarried.
My mother told the family that this was now a regular prayer request on her part.
Then, suddenly, she stopped praying about the topic. When my father inquired why, she responded
“I stopped praying because God told me that she was now pregnant.”
Nobody on this planet had informed her of the pregnancy.
I believe it was a direct communication from ‘heaven.’
No wonder then that my childhood prayer was
Jesus, a friend of little children
Be a friend to me
Take my hand and ever keep me
Close to thee
So it was no coincidence that in my twenties, I went to seminary and studied to become a minister.
However, my one big problem with Jesus was that I knew about Jesus (at least the way my Evangelical church pitched him to us).
But I did not know him directly.
Then, in my thirties, I became a psychologist.
During these years, I left the church and doubted its dogma (Was Jesus really beamed up in the clouds after his death?) and controlling practices (Were Gays born that way, or did they choose their sexual orientation?).
Thus, I began to view Jesus in a new, skeptical light.
But I threw the baby out with the bath water.
Despite with all my graduate theological degrees
I realized that he was in my head and not my heart.
And so began the search for a direct encounter with Jesus.
That experience had to wait a few decades until I was exposed to mystical teachers who directly contacted Jesus and others beyond the grave.
But first, I had to meet a teacher who walked this earth long before the advent of Jesus.
Buddha
I’m not a Buddhist, nor am I skilled in meditation.
However, I’m deeply indebted to contemplative practices that continue to lead to my awakening (to my true nature) and mindfulness (life in the present).
The enlightenment experience of Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (meaning one who is awake), has been instructive to my spiritual journey.
What I love about the Buddha is that he did not try to indoctrinate his disciples with Buddhism.
He realized his awakening under the Bodi tree could not be duplicated through intellectual assimilation. He quickly realized that he could not explain something so far out of the range of human experience.
Aligned with so many Christian thinkers (and psychologist William James) Buddha appreciated the world beyond the mind and how to wake up to his essential person.
Instead of teaching people what to believe (as did my religious tradition),
Buddha taught that everyone must now enter the gate of eternity for themselves.
My path to Jesus, partially informed by my direct experience/mystical experiences, is recounted in my memoir “Hearts Wide Open, Leaving Religion Finding Faith.”
And that journey has been influenced by teachers once scorned by the church and science who communicate soul to soul with the world of Spirit.
The Medium
Communing with loved ones beyond the veil is not just an extension of the imaginary friend of childhood or the witch doctor throwing bones to comprehend a message from the beyond.
Direct evidence-based experience with those who have passed physically has become a reality.
The barrier between this life and the next has always been thin and porous.
I now regularly commune with my mother, who died nearly three decades ago. I have conversations with Jesus that enhance his imminence in ways that quoting Scripture never did for me before.
I can honestly say in the words of the hymn
He walks with me and talks with me
Along life’s narrow way
He lives in my heart
The whole world of soul-to-soul communication is no longer the exception.
Stellar examples of credible soul to soul communication on both sides of the grave are:
Near-death experiences (NDEs) of a neurosurgeon like Eben Alexander M.D. in his groundbreaking book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife )
Evidence-based mediums like former Navy Commander Suzanne Giesemann, who writes, teaches, and practices afterlife connections with tons of evidence.
University Departments that are devoted to credible research on paranormal phenomena like reincarnation (University of Virginia).
Professor Paul Mills’ book Science, Being, & Becoming: The Spiritual Lives of Scientists
We have come a long way from the stereotype of the wild-eyed fortune teller crouched over a crystal ball, the magician bending spoons with his mind, and the spooky appearances of dead people that gave us the creeps.
Our feet are now being planted solidly in the world of direct experience with higher consciousness.
And the beauty is that they are right by our side and longing to communicate with us.
Conclusions
Jesus told a group of his followers who were skeptical about their ability to heal his disturbed son.
“Everything is possible for those who believe.”
Why do we have problems believing in soul-to-soul and beyond-the-veil communication?
Why does mystery have to be coined as nonsense?
Why do we avoid the life’s poetry in the quest for rationality?
I guess Henry Ford had it right when he said
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not,
You are right.”
So seek out evidence for direct soul to soul experience and decide for yourself.