Beliefs Change
Started this blog entry ten years ago in 2015:
I'm sitting at Beaman Toyota for my 60,000 mile check up on our Prius. We waited eight months for our Prius. Beaman found one in Lexington, KY and brought it down to Nashville for us.
It occurred to me that I've got 65 years of milage on me. So I am writing down some things I believe—now. My faith has evolved over these many years, and my beliefs have shifted. I share my thoughts here not to convert anyone. If you don’t agree with me, that’s totally ok.
Some would say what I think, how I see things now— is radical—even heretical. I take comfort in the fact that when Jesus/God in the flesh was walking the earth he too was labeled a heretic. Over the last couple of decades I've found myself reading several 'heretics' and find considerable comfort in what they say. Someone has said that the heretics of one generation are the saints of the next. I’m not looking for sainthood very soon.
I've been an INFJ (Myers-Briggs) forever. We are the rarest of personality types--only 1% of the population. I’m not bragging, just warning you. INFJs tend to be complex and know things intuitively without being able to pinpoint why or even without any detailed knowledge of the subject at hand (which can make us look arrogant or cocky about what we 'know'). Admittedly, this is a strange way of knowing things. Of all personality types, an INFJ is most likely to understand psychic phenomenon or even ESP (I'm not claiming to be a psychic). We're not the easiest people to get to know due to the internal complexities that often puzzle us as well. We have vivid imaginations via both memory and intuition resulting at times being referred to as 'mystics'.
Listen to this description in part of an INFJ:
They often select liberal arts as a college major (I ended up in psychology as an undergraduate) and opt for occupations which involve interacting with people, but on a one-to-one basis. For example, the general practitioner in medicine might be an INFJ, or the psychiatrist or psychologist. As with all NFs, the ministry holds attraction, although the INFJ must develop an extraverted role here which requires a great deal of energy. INFJs may be attracted to writing as a profession, and often they use language which contains an unusual degree of imagery. They are masters of the metaphor, and both their verbal and written communications tend to be elegant and complex.
It's creepy when others can write a description of you without ever meeting you (are we all just playing out some cosmic script? Is there a set destiny?). So, my conclusion (and that term is too final) about life, God is often intuited in our gut, at least in mine. Even though I love to read, travel and spend time with all likes of people, that’s not how I sense God. Brenda, my primary therapist when I was a client at Psychological Counseling Services in Scottsdale in 1999 told me "Mike, you're never stronger than when you are living out of your own truth". But then, I don’t see that this personal truth is ‘mine’—I don't own it—I experienced or experience it, wherever it comes from—I ‘came to’, woke up. I didn’t learn it. Also, this truth has been consistent yet expanding.
At 65 (now 76), I think this 'truth' is more a ‘being’, it is a living ‘thing’, an alive truth. It is unlike any that I'd previously been taught about earlier in my life. To me, this 'truth' is equivalent to God but not the grandfatherly, sit on the throne version of God. More like Star Wars, ‘He’ is an energy, a force, a brightness that is omnipresent. This Force, this Being is over all and in all. Yet we are told the kingdom is within us. I'm not saying that God is a tree, a bird or anything else in creation yet the Creator's 'mark' is on everything that is created just like painters signs their work.
Although I was taught that you had to invite Jesus ‘in' I believe that there is an essence of divinity within every human soul at birth.
(Random thought: When I say divinity here I speak of God and not the delicious gooey, white candy my mom used to make. But then, some folks could do with a little more sweetness in their kingdom).
The divinity is installed 'at the factory’ and is not optional equipment. Its’ presence within us is like a homing device or the GPS in our cars giving direction that is always ‘true’—unlike Google maps that has led me astray more than once. So there is an invitation to stop ignoring the homing device—this presence— and begin to let it lead us to a deeper (higher?) reality—that is God. Even with my intuition, it's taken decades to let the light shine (yes I sang the same song—‘Hide it under a bushel, NO! I'm gonna let it shine' Great intent—in actuality, much tougher.) People will think you are radical—they will think you're weird. Maybe the INFJ-ness simply helped me to be more comfortable with the sci-fi nature of the spirit world. Stop and think about what we Christians have asked others to believe. Things like immaculate conception, incarnation, resurrection—not far from Star Trek or Wars. But because God IS a spirit getting outside of your head is a benefit. We need to get out of our minds and into our souls. Some have described it as moving from our left brain to the right—the left brain always analyzing, always ‘thinking’ toward a solution, seeking answers. Some say suffering and hardship open spiritual portals—in great measure, I agree. But then I've met my share of bitter people who rehearse their pain and trauma over and over with no breakthroughs. On the other hand, I've met beautiful souls whose lives radiate love and light even in the midst of horrific circumstances. So forget the formulas.
One formula though I have stuck with is Albert Enstein’s. He believed that energy, light and matter are the same thing in different forms. I totally buy it. Right now I am flesh and blood—‘matter’. At death, I will make a realm shift converting to either energy, or fading into, becoming a part of the brightness of light so many see at that point in time.
The divinity has always been there but I ignored it for years. The part of all of us often referred to as ego (not the better kind)is alway pressing to 'know' via study and learning making our way to success and happiness. This ego fights for control consistently—at least the first half if not two-thirds of our lives. Going with ego makes for very self-centered people who think life is all about them. We come to see (or can come to see) that there is much more going on and surprise—we are not the center of the universe.
As for the God I know these days, He is way more benevolent than the God I kept my distance from early on. So am I a universalist? Probably closer to that than still believing in a God that damns those he purports to love to an eternal, fiery hell. Millard Reed, my former boss, mentor, friend and pastor leaned over to me during one of our Longhorn Steakhouse lunches and said, "You know Mike, I think in the end, everyone will probably be saved. Does that scare you?" I told him not in the least. I was already right there myself. Another mentor of mine, Richard Rohr says, "We become the God we serve" and my almost forty years as a social worker has taught me that what you believe about the character of God will dictate everything else in your life.
When you hear stories of people who've had near death or 'life after death' experiences tell about who they meet, they never meet an angry God—never. How much credence does one put in those stories? Probably a bit more when you're an INFJ. After reading Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven and Jill Bolty-Taylor's Stroke of Insight a couple of years ago, I believe death is only a 'phase change' as one of my clients put it. Scientists say they've discovered at least eleven dimensions which probably means there are at least another 20-30 out there (in there?). We live in three. I've got a hunch that we may be in all of them simultaneously yet don't have the sensors (or sense?) to realize it. So, we may already be in 'heaven' as well—it’s just from these three dimensions heaven doesn't show up so well. So death is a move to another or to additional dimension(s). Told you it would get weird.
Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire, lightning, wind and volcanoes.
I'll go even further. Because this God that I've come to experience is so overwhelmingly lovely and I mean FULL OF IT—LOVE that is—that shifts understanding Him/her to another plane. It is my belief now that God coming as a sacrifice into our world was NOT his requirement for our being bad. Punishment was our sick requirement for being bad. Check your history books. Humans (and not so human) were tossing virgins and first-borns off cliffs and into volcanoes on every continent (as a first born, ugh). We said it was to appease the gods but really it was to make us feel better about ourselves. Hawaiians saw Pele burping up lava thinking as a result the gods were angry and needed to be satisfied with sacrifice of some sort. Even after the apple story, God did not come stomping through the garden screaming at Adam and Eve. “Who told you that you were naked?” Somehow nakedness became a bad thing when before the fruit, it had always been and was no problem. No, God's been trying to say from the beginning that he loves us and is on our side. It is we who have been painfully slow in understanding. Jesus told us "you are like sheep". Go talk to a sheep herder about the wisdom of sheep—they have none.
The mati, a Greek amulet the help ward off ‘the evil eye’.
God first broke in with Abraham long ago saying no more sacrificing sons. (It took a while before those on other continents got the word). We then began sacrificing animals—goats and bulls, sheep and birds turning the temple into a slaughterhouse bloodbath. Still yet never getting the love message God's ‘Team Trinity’ sends 'his Son' but this being wasn't JUST his son—‘all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled therein', it was God himself walking the earth via his son! (I'm no theologian and will not make any attempts to explain the Trinity—or the reality that God reveals himself in many more ways than just those three). So God finally says, "OK, I’ve told you I do not want more sacrifices. Your sacrifices are a stench in my nostrils! YOU are the ones who demand a sacrifice! I'll give you one that hopefully will end all sacrifices. I'll be your sacrifice!" What an act of unfathomable love. The giving of himself to end our crazy ill conceived scheme—but even THAT did not end it. (recall--dumb as sheep). But it did demonstrate in a most dramatic way the power of love—a transformational love that delivers from fear and anxiety which is the central emotional themes of hellfire and damnation theology.
Touching or kissing the toe of St. Peter at the Vatican our of reverence and for a blessing and protection.
Living my life as a social worker I have heard others label us 'bleeding hearts'. INFJs are also very sensitive to the pain of others so I can hear the comments now that I've just let my Meyers-Briggs personality run amok—maybe so. As a social worker I have been exposed to a wealth of human pain and misfortune—some of my own doing but more so in the lives of others. All of it could have easily made me a supreme cynic and pessimist—not that I'm not cynical or can be seriously pessimistic at times. But this bleeding heart of mine has come to see and experience all the bloodshed—blood being the essence of life itself. I still believe in the crucifixion, death and resurrection—yet I believe it was totally motivated not by a need for atonement but by a loving God that saw yet another way to try and get his message through to us. We still are 'repackaging it' and missing the kernel of the message, His reach for us. Even so, we do see love change the world at times. We certainly see love change people. It was love that redeemed me, coaxing me from the old god I'd pictured—the constantly angry god casting lightning bolts from the heaven just to see me dance.
There is now a comfort, a sweetness of relationship with God. Will I revert? Will the last years of my life bring experiences that totally negate what I've experience to date? Maybe, yet I doubt it. Because that divinity that has always been there confirms what someone said in a book I read many years ago. The only thing we ever do in life is to let go—all else is done—it is taken care of. Let go of your early understanding of God—your small ideas of Him—the box you had ‘her' in. (Hope I didn’t lose a few there) Let go of all your thoughts you'd studied so hard to know of this Creator. Then eventually the last thing we do is to let go of the breath of this life trusting that all we've come to experience of this God—this God we ‘know’ in part, is true. So when that time comes, let the transition begin. Make the phase change into what has got to be a greater and more expansive experience of what little we've come to know while here in these three dimensions.
This knowing that I speak of did not happen because of my degrees, or the result of all my reading and study. I used to scoff at Shirley McClain believing in reincarnation. I don’t so much now. (Hang on). I believe now I may have a ‘used soul’. What is now within me has been the soul of several women and men who’ve lived before—so that the things I’ve come to see were not my discover but had been imprinted on this soul. I am in essence standing on the shoulders of these people who lived before me. Wild huh? The beauty of it is that I can in no way take credit, just like God’s love and mercy, this understanding was a gift. Whether or not you want to call it reincarnation you probably have met those rare folks among us we have referred to as ‘old souls’. They seem to be born with a foreknowledge—a knowing well beyond chronological years. I know it sounds bazaar but I said earlier, we INFJs are a complicated lot.
In the mean time I hope for more revelation and even a few glitches between the realms (glitches do happen) so that I might experience even more of all that is out there—in there—wherever.
In the mean time I need to pay for a new water pump and a drive belt for the Prius. No divine healing there.
Postscript: My thinking has not changed since I originally started writing ten years ago. What I would add though, I could be wrong. For now, I think not.
7/15/2025