Jdee:
The is from my book A Night in Heaven. Perhaps you will find it helpful:
Developing an understanding of who Jesus Christ was as a person and who he is today as a spirit has been a process for me. When I was into guru-based teachings I believed Jesus was a guru. When I found out that many gurus are fake, I figured the same was probably true for Jesus. After making contact with my spirit guidance I found that despite what I for the most part believed, I still had thought patterns that made me wonder if certain fundamentalist Christian ideas are true. Is God an angry, wrathful, vengeful and jealous being who eternally punishes people who act in a manner he considers inappropriate? Is it true that Satan gets to people who don’t have the right sort of faith and don’t live their life in the right way? These concerns were quite contrary to my overall way of thinking, yet they still persisted, because I hadn’t examined them enough to come to a definite conclusion.
The main thing that helped me get over the idea that God‘s nature includes the negative traits some people attribute to him, is when I chose to listen to my heart and common sense. My heart told me that whatever divine truth is, it has to feel good. I felt this was true for various reasons. One, my spiritual experiences always felt good with a really nice feeling of peace, and the idea of an angry, wrathful, vengeful and jealous God just didn’t fit in with what I felt. Two, because of what other people have come to know through their spiritual experiences (e.g., near-death experiences). When they meet a being of light, whether this being is God, Christ or another light being, this being always radiates perfect unconditional love in a very noticeable way, with no trace of judgment. The concept of a God who sentences his children to a hellish realm for all eternity because of mistakes they made in a comparatively brief incarnation doesn’t fit in with what people experience when they meet a being of light.
Three, there is also the factor of what love-based common sense says. If a loving parent has a child who goes astray, he (or she) wouldn’t sentence this child to a hellish realm for all eternity because his loving way of being would make it impossible for him to do so. A judgmental vengeance-based approach does nothing except satisfy the mind of someone who tries to feel good about things by seeing another being suffer for all eternity (not true satisfaction). When a vengeful soul reaches the point where it has existed for just one minute and immeasurable fraction of the eternity it is destined to exist for, it will realize that it doesn’t want to spend the rest of eternity with vengeful thoughts. Instead, such a soul will want to become joyful in the knowledge that all souls eventually can find their way back to the love that God and souls who live according to love have to offer. I believe Jesus’ Prodigal Son story supports what I say.
My common sense and heart told me that if I’m wise and loving enough to not want to see any soul suffer in a hell-like realm for all eternity, then certainly God, Christ and other light beings are wise and loving enough to think and feel the same. When it comes right down to it, it was rather insulting of me to think that they don’t understand about love at least as much as I do. Below is Jesus’ Prodigal Son story. (Luke 15:11-32)
"A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, I want to share my estate now before you die. So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.
A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.
When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, at home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”
But his father said to the servants, “Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.” So the party began.
Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on. “Your brother is back,” he was told, “and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.”
The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, “All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!”
His father said to him, “Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!”
When it comes to a Biblical perspective, people are quite mistaken if they believe it supports the eternal damnation concept. Original versions of the Bible state that souls end up in a hell-like realm for an aeon, not eternity. Aeon means age and is related to its adjective aionios, which means age long, and therefore an indefinite long period. Indefinite isn’t the same as eternal.
In the case of abiding in a lower realm, it is a matter of how long a spirit clings to its negative ways before it chooses to move towards the light. I’ve had spiritual experiences and received spiritual messages that made the point that once a spirit in a lower realm decides to change its ways and move towards the light, nothing can stop it from doing so. In fact, many loving and wise spirits become overjoyed when a lost soul decides to change its negative ways, and they do whatever they can to help such a soul. There is so much love in heavenly realms; all a person needs to do in order to avail himself of such love is let go of the thought patterns that prevent him from doing so. For example, thought patterns that influence him to commit negative acts, or thought patterns that influence him to have an unforgiving attitude towards people who have made mistakes.
jdee190 wrote on Sep 8th, 2011 at 1:01pm:But what about the Christ stigmata of Padre Pio?
It makes me fear that everyone will go to Hell apart from Christians
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