The resurrection of spirit

Traditional, orthodox and institutional religion is coming to the end of a 2,000-year cycle. There is a resurrection taking place: a resurrection of spirit (spirituality) from the tomb of this monopolistic and monomaniacal structure.

It is important to note here that Christianity, when compared to the historical lineage of religious beliefs, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Anthropologists and religious historians estimate that in the last 150,000 years, since Neanderthal times, there have been at least 100,000 distinctly different religious traditions. Religions do not just pop into existence, but are a spin-off from preceding cultures and they borrow, steal and plagiarize from the preceding cultures and reuse the material to suit their own purposes. Scholars know today that nothing in modern Christianity is historical or biographical, but is legend and folklore based on religions that were here 1,000 years or more before Jesus.

For 2,000 years, the authoritative and dogmatic Christian church has supported conquest, materialism, exploitation, the rape of the Earth, hierarchy, political tyrannies, the demeaning of the sacred rituals and beliefs of primal peoples and our Native Americans, and the degradation of women. This “phallic imperialism” of the past 2,000 years is coming to an end. The institutional church has been, and is, a human political construction that is now in the throes of its own Ghost Dance. The resurrection of the “spirit” from this dying monolith will turn out to be one of the most significant events in the history of civilization. Millions are moving away from the dead forms and defunct symbols of the dogmas and doctrines of orthodoxy to the beauty of direct experience.

Leading this resurrection of spirituality out of the tombs of this establishment are the women and men who are rediscovering their orientation to the divine principle of the Goddess, this divine Goddess that we call Earth. This resurrection movement begins with a reaffirmation of the Earth as a living, breathing entity: Gaia, mother Earth, the Sacred Goddess, as the Greeks called her; Maka Wakan, the Sacred Earth, as the Native American Sioux thought of her. From the soil of this basic premise will flower the birth of spirit, a new consciousness, that includes, combines and makes whole as ONE, everything that is a part of this sacred Goddess; every four-legged and two-legged animal; every winged one of the sky and fish of the sea; every grass of a showery summer and flower of a rainy spring; every grain of sand and drop of water, every rock, mineral and crystal; every leaf, bud and snowflake. All is ONE and all is divine and all offer thanksgiving to our great Mother Goddess, Earth, for her support and sustenance. A new consciousness, not any theological “belief,” is at the heart of this resurrection of spirituality.

A most remarkable conference was held in the late 1970s with Nobel Prize-winning physicists. The title was: “New Dimensions of Consciousness.” Their press release said this: “We are on the brink of a new synthesis, pioneered by visionary men and women, leading to a new consciousness.”

Pictures of this great Goddess, Earth, as taken from the moon, triggered a shift in the collective psyche of millions. It was the spectacular view of Earth rising: a symbol of wholeness, a symbol of the mandala. Apollo 10 astronauts photographed the magnificent and awesome splendor of Earth…rising…above the horizon of the moon. EARTHRISE! What a breathtaking symbol of this new spiritual consciousness. There are no horizons in space, even as there must not be any horizons in our own spiritual experiences. After seeing Earthrise above the horizon of the moon in those glorious photographs, we have seen with our own eyes that there is only one reality. We are in the stars and we are in the heavens. We are the stars. We are the heavens…now. We are being sustained by one source…call it “Spirit.”

We are one with our Great Goddess, the Sacred Earth, and we are one with the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. We sense, we feel, that somehow in some way, we all together are “dancing to a whispered voice overheard by the soul.” Take that joy with you as you remember that the Great Goddess of nature creates and makes all things new.