Healing Our Inner Split: Releasing Original Sin & The Devil

Did you know that the "devil" in Christianity was a fabricated character over 2000 years ago? This is important to understand for our modern-day psyche because this idea has created a rift within each of us, preventing a true understanding of our wholeness. Similarly, let's examine how we can heal from the concept of original sin, also attributed to a specific person. By understanding where these deeply entrenched ideas come from, we can understand why we have deep guilt, shame, and struggles with self-love, confidence, and wholeness! But no more!

Transcript

So today we are talking about healing the inner split,

Releasing the teachings of original sin and the devil within the Christian church.

So this topic,

It's something I've been researching a lot lately as I research my new book,

Which isn't out yet,

It's still being written,

Healing from a Sociopathic World,

And it's interesting to sort of look at the foundational things that cause us so much pain.

In the land of healing from an entire world that we live in,

We can look at the surface things,

Look at the surface things,

But it's often better to go all the way in.

And some of the things that I believe that this is important for is healing our self-worth.

Original sin,

Being told that we're born sinful,

Born full of guilt,

That's pretty tough on our self-worth.

The devil creating this split of good and evil within ourselves,

Within us and others,

There's all these challenges.

And so the goal of today's talk is how do we heal from that?

And the idea here is understanding the history of where these ideas come from.

Because very often when we are raised within a paradigm,

It's one of those things that's just assumed to be true.

Okay,

We don't even question it,

It's so part of our world.

But if we can understand the history of where they came from,

Then we can actually go all the way back to the root and pull it out by the root,

And then allow us to heal from there.

So if you are a Christian,

Because I'm very sensitive about talking about this,

Because Christianity is still a huge part of our world.

So if you are a Christian,

My intention is to allow you or allow us to more return to the original teachings of Jesus and understand the difference between what Jesus taught and what the institution of the church created truly for power and control and domination.

And those are two incredibly different things.

And the institution actually created rules and laws and teachings that were directly opposite Jesus.

And so in that way,

I just I want you to understand this isn't a none of it exists the discussion.

This is a let's return to the source and understand some of the teachings that came much later,

That actually obscure the original teachings of Jesus.

If you are not a Christian,

Whether you belong to an entirely different faith,

Or none at all,

These teachings,

Especially if you live in the Western world,

But you know,

It and again,

I don't live in the Eastern world,

So I don't know.

But anyone that I might know,

Who really wasn't,

I wasn't really raised in a really religious background,

I,

You know,

It's not really my thing.

Because the church became married with the state,

You know,

Back in what happened was,

So Jesus,

I'm not debating whether Jesus lived in any,

That's a whole other discussion.

But let's say Jesus lived,

You know,

Around one,

Year one,

It actually was like four years before that.

But it's a whole other hilarious story,

How that happened.

But let's say,

In the time of Jesus's life,

He had his experience.

And then after he was killed,

His followers continued to gather in homes and stuff like that.

And they were persecuted and all this stuff.

And then in around the year,

Like 300 BC,

300 CE,

Like after AD,

Emperor Constantine had a vision.

And he was like,

That Jesus was helping him in a war.

And so he decided that he was going to make Christianity,

The official religion of the church of the state.

And that's when the Nicea council came together and all these things.

And we're not going to get into all that today.

But that's if you're familiar with the church,

This is when all this happened.

And then they started making new rules and new teachings,

Because they wanted to solidify the power of the church and state.

Now,

Suddenly,

The state would enforce these things.

And something very different happened at this point.

Because of the marriage of the church and state,

It became a requirement that you believed whether you were raised in or not.

And I know we're talking like,

You know,

Thousands of years ago.

But that paradigm persists.

You know,

When we were raised in a certain zeitgeist,

A certain perspective of the world,

Of the world and life and everything,

Even if we weren't raised in it,

These ideas that there's something inherently wrong with you,

Right inside.

Even though you might not have learned that directly in the church,

You might have heard it all around.

You might have heard it from your parents or your grandparents,

Or teachers or all kinds of things.

So the idea here is that maybe there's something that we discuss that helps you find some peace from something inside that's been gnawing at you maybe for decades.

So the two big things we're going to talk about,

One is original sin.

And the other was the creation of the devil character.

So what happened is original sin was created by St.

Augustine.

Now St.

Augustine was a great philosopher,

Theologian,

Lived around the year he was born in 354 AD or CE,

So after Jesus.

And his job,

Among others,

Was to actually take all of these random teachings of Jesus and solidify them into a philosophy.

So he took a lot of the neo-Platonism and the ideas that the Roman Empire had,

Because the Romans were in charge then,

The Roman Empire had,

And he kind of wove them all together into a philosophy.

So that Christianity was suddenly not just all these crazy people running around,

You know.

This was a serious philosophy that was due respect and power,

Right.

And that was really St.

Augustine's job.

So he actually created many,

Many doctrines.

One of them was original sin.

Now original sin,

If you're not of the Christian upbringing,

The original story of Genesis,

The Garden of Eden,

Adam and Eve,

And as the story goes,

Adam and Eve are there,

First humans on earth,

The serpent comes up to Eve and says you should eat this apple of the tree that God told you you shouldn't.

And Eve goes and tempts Adam with the apple.

Adam eats the apple and they fall from grace.

And so of course,

Again,

We could go on long rabbit holes as to how this justified the treatment of women and all these crazy things,

But today we're just going to focus on Adam's fall from grace because he denied God.

Original sin says that because every one of us born after that was part of Adam,

In the moment that he sinned,

In the moment he fell,

We all have his inherent sin.

We all carry the guilt of what Adam did.

And what that means is we are essentially damned in that moment at birth.

And this is a huge discussion,

Right?

And what this did for the church,

Because again,

To remember that the church's goal at this point was power.

They wanted to have supreme power,

Nothing to do with Jesus,

But the institution of the church wanted supreme power.

And what this did is it said that the only way for you to be saved because you were born into sin is through baptism,

Is through the sacraments of communion,

Marriage,

Baptism,

Things like that.

And the only people that were allowed to do these sacraments were ordained priests,

Ministers,

Bishops,

You know.

So now all of a sudden your very salvation was dependent on the institution of the church.

And to understand this is absolutely opposite what Jesus taught.

Jesus said that you have full connection to God,

You have full connection to your own salvation.

It had nothing to do with that.

This was absolutely something the church created.

Before St.

Augustine,

This idea of original sin did exist,

But it was more that humans were born with a tendency to sin.

It was just like,

You know,

Given the option we might have the chocolate,

Or we might commit adultery,

Or we might not go to work,

Or whatever.

Like it's a possibility.

Like,

You know,

We're not all like walking angels.

Like it's a possibility.

And what's interesting is this is what St.

Augustine declared,

This is what the institution accepted,

But not everybody bought into it.

For example,

The Eastern Orthodox Church,

And when I'm I am speaking in huge generalities here,

Because there are thousands of denominations of Christian churches.

So just I'm really just sort of speaking from the original core.

So I don't want to,

You know,

If someone was raised Eastern Orthodox,

And you're like,

Well,

That's not really what our church says,

I know,

There's thousands of permutations and combinations of this.

But essentially,

In the beginning,

When Augustine said this,

The Eastern Orthodox religion,

The Eastern Orthodox Christians were like,

We don't really see it like that.

And they saw it as ancestral sin.

That when we were born,

We inherited Adam's mortality.

That the fact that he could live,

Become sick,

Become frail,

And die.

That's what we inherited from Adam.

It was more like the weakness of being human versus the guilt of Adam.

And so just just to be clear that not everybody bought in.

So what did this teaching do to our psyche?

The belief that you were a born sinner,

You were born with the guilt.

This is an incredibly oppressive thing to believe about ourselves.

Right?

You know that that we're not worthy,

A lack of self worth,

Shame.

Shame is the most that the most debilitating emotion that we can carry.

If we feel shame,

Everyone can control us.

We have zero power when we feel shame.

So again,

To understand the intention of the institution of the church and the state at the time,

They wanted full compliance,

Full obedience,

There was no other option.

You know,

That was it,

You either complied,

Or you were a heretic,

And they could kill you,

Imprison you,

Do whatever they wanted to.

So full compliance was necessary.

If you could get people to live in a state of shame and guilt,

You had them,

Because they were utterly disempowered.

When we believe this in any way,

We always think there's something wrong with us.

We never think we're good enough.

You know,

That feeling inside,

That's like,

I've just got to keep trying.

And I've got to do better.

And I could always do better.

Because you know,

I know,

I know,

I maybe that was okay,

I did a good job,

But I could always do better.

And you always have to prove yourself to an authority.

Because with original sin came the idea that you now had to receive God's grace for salvation,

You had to receive salvation from an authority figure bigger than you,

Who was judging you,

Who is saying,

You'd better do this,

You'd better do that.

So now all of a sudden,

Our sense of self worth 100% lies in everyone else.

Anyone you imagine in any kind of sense of authority.

And it doesn't even mean like they're in charge of you.

It could be a peer who you want to impress,

It could be a partner you want to impress,

It could be your children that you want to impress that you're the greatest parent that ever,

You know,

They could have ever had.

But that idea that I require to I have to do things,

The sacraments,

I have to do things,

Witnessed by important people,

The priests,

The ministers,

The bishops,

In order for me to hopefully maybe be considered an okay person.

This is so hugely damaging.

And it's something that like when you think of in spiritual communities,

How much we talk about self worth,

How much we talk about,

It doesn't matter how hard we work,

It doesn't matter how much digging we do,

It doesn't matter what we do,

It's never enough.

Right?

When do we get to rest?

When do we get to just stop?

And love life.

And it doesn't matter what we accomplished,

What we didn't accomplished,

That by birth,

We're wonderful.

Imagine,

Imagine this,

That this concept of original sin had never taken hold.

That we kind of accepted that,

Yeah,

Sometimes,

Sometimes I go left,

Sometimes I go right,

You know,

Each one has its benefits.

It's a very interesting thing to kind of just look inside and ask ourselves,

What would I feel like if this teaching had never become so popular?

So now we're going to move on to this idea of the devil.

So again,

For anyone who isn't really savvy with the Christian ideologies,

The devil,

Satan,

Is this kind of this tempter,

You know,

And,

And whatever goes wrong in the world,

The devil made me do it.

Or maybe those people over there,

They're bad,

Because they believe in something else.

And you know,

They're just the devil's all over them,

Or kind of thing.

And even if we don't use this language,

We might use language similar to this.

What's really interesting about this,

And one of the problems with the creation of the devil character,

Is that,

Like,

For example,

When we believe that there is sort of good in the world,

Which is God,

And bad in the world,

Which is the devil,

Suddenly,

Anything that we consider bad within ourselves,

Right,

We talked about this a lot in spiritual communities,

Our shadow,

Carl Jung believed that the devil character was actually all of us projecting our shadow out into the world,

Into this sort of collective mythological character.

So then all of a sudden,

We go around wanting to escape the devil.

And we don't want to,

We don't want to be tempted.

And we don't want to,

Oh,

You know,

Keep,

You know,

Keep me from temptation kind of idea.

But what if the more we hate that thing over there that we consider bad?

What about the parts of us that are our shadow?

Does it mean we hate parts of ourselves?

Because we're not all walking around with happy thoughts all the time.

We have dark thoughts.

We have all kinds of things.

We're all the things.

We're all the good,

The bad,

The ugly,

The dark,

The light,

The everything.

That's actually the human experience.

And this is the massive inner split,

That there is good in the world and bad in the world.

There is good inside of me and bad inside of me.

And I hate the bad and it tempts me.

And it's evil.

Again,

Original sin gives us shame.

And then the devil creates a direct split.

And now I can name it.

And if I do anything wrong,

Maybe a God inside of me.

And now we self police and beat ourselves up.

So let's go back into the history of this.

So originally,

There was no such thing as the devil or Satan or anything like that.

If you go back into the Old Testament,

If you go back like 600 BCE,

You know,

It's the early,

Early fathers of the church.

The Old Testament was written in a way that there was a character or a,

It wasn't even,

It was a character,

I guess.

And it was called HaSatan.

And it was spelled,

Spelled,

It was anglified,

H-A-S-A-T-A-N.

Pronounced HaSatan.

And HaSatan was essentially the adversary.

Whatever,

And it wasn't a person,

It was kind of like anyone could be a HaSatan.

Anyone that was an adversary in your life,

Anyone who was an opposition in your life was a HaSatan.

And HaSatan sat on the divine council and worked for God.

So now imagine this,

Imagine if this idea,

And because one of my recommendations or one recommendation is,

We should return to this idea.

This was the original idea.

Because imagine how we would interpret the world if that's what we believed.

So all of a sudden,

Something comes into our path that's difficult.

And we go,

Aha,

I have come upon an adversary that was sent by God.

And whether you believe it like that,

It doesn't matter.

But imagine the empowerment you now have.

Because you're like,

All right,

Obviously,

This has come to me for a reason.

And I need to gather my stuff together and deal with this,

Learn from it,

Expand through it,

And become stronger through this.

Right?

This was the original idea of HaSatan.

And then around 550 BCE to 300 BCE,

The Jewish people were under the power,

The control of the Persian Empire.

And the Persian Empire,

They were really into Zoroastrianism.

And in Zoroastrianism,

The mythology or the story is that there was a great war between the light and the dark,

The good and the evil,

Almost opposing rivals of God's.

And this was really interesting to the Jewish people,

They thought,

Well,

What if God isn't making all these calamities happen and the plagues?

Because historically,

God was all things.

God was the good,

The bad,

The rain,

The sun,

The drought,

The harvest,

God was all the things.

But then they were like,

What if there's a power of evil that's actually causing all the bad things in the world?

That's cool.

Somewhere around this time,

They started translating the Hebrew Bible,

Because HaSatan is a Hebrew word,

Into Greek.

And they needed a Greek word that was sort of equivalent of HaSatan.

And so they chose Diabolos,

Or you might say like D-I-A-B-O-L-O-S,

But it's pronounced Diabolos.

And it means the devil.

And Diabolos is more like,

It means the one who throws things in front of you to mess you up or the false accuser.

And so this is sort of where they started shifting from the HaSatan into the Diabolos.

And then with language and everything,

One day it became the devil.

So that happened.

That was where sort of the idea of the devil came from the HaSatan.

So then there was a time,

So they've gone through the Zoroastrianism,

And they start to believe,

Huh,

That's really interesting.

But,

You know,

So maybe there is another evil entity out there.

So then there was a time in between the Old Testament and the New Testament,

About 300 BCE to the first century,

You know,

CE.

And in this time,

There was so many people writing.

The Jewish writing,

Like,

Was just amazing.

It was like all these people writing.

And one of the books that was really,

Really central was the Book of Enoch.

And in the Book of Enoch,

He went in and he talked about fallen angels,

That there were these 200 angels that were looking down at Earth,

Honestly,

And were like,

Wow,

Those human women,

Those human women are hot.

So they made a deal that they could come down and they could marry the women and,

You know,

The offspring with the Nephilim and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Again,

A huge rabbit hole down that way.

But this was the first idea of a fallen angel.

And the Jewish theologians at the time were like,

Well,

This actually works better than the Zoroastrianism,

Because we don't want to have two gods.

We want to have one god.

But maybe Diavolos is a fallen angel.

Like,

That works better,

Right?

Because he's not equal,

Just a fallen angel.

Yeah,

I like that.

And then the Dead Sea Scrolls were written.

And in the Dead Sea Scrolls,

They talked about this perpetual battle between the sons of darkness and the sons of light.

And this is where this all sort of,

You can feel it all kind of forming into the scripture and the doctrine that we were eventually raised in.

And so,

Somewhere in that same time,

Some writers,

Some theologians,

I don't know why I can't say theologian,

Theologian today,

Decided,

Started thinking,

Well,

What if the snake in the Garden of Eden was the devil?

Maybe that's who tempted Eve,

Who tempted Adam.

It all makes sense.

Original sin was created by the devil.

And this slowly got worked into all the writings.

It's not in the Bible or anything.

And but it became law that the serpent was this created being of Hasatan,

The Avalos.

But this really works for us.

So some of the problems with this,

This creation of this devil character.

One,

It's super oversimplified the world.

Suddenly,

A very confusing world became very black and white,

Which we can imagine why this was so appealing to so many people.

Right?

When you're constantly wondering,

You know,

Why did my crops fail?

Why did my child die?

Why did this happen?

Why?

Like,

It's so confusing for someone to come in and say,

Aha,

Well,

This was the devil.

Or this is because you sinned.

There's like something weirdly comforting about simplicity,

Even if it's wrong.

You know,

And so that oversimplification really became a challenge because it also oversimplified our morality,

That we started looking at things going,

Well,

I just have to fight for the good.

And I just have to fight against the darkness.

That's all that I need to do.

So what exactly is the darkness?

The darkness within?

The darkness that I perceive in that person?

And again,

This is where,

This is a directly opposite teaching of Jesus,

Where Jesus taught zero judgment.

You know that when people brought a woman to him at one point who was charged with adultery,

And they said,

What are you going to do with her?

You know,

We have to judge her.

And at the time the answer was stoning her,

You know.

And Jesus just looked at them and said,

You know,

You look at her with,

You know,

Hold on.

He said,

You look at her and you call out the speck of dust of sin in her,

And yet you have a log in your own eye.

How can you possibly judge her?

This is the teaching of Jesus.

This is a long way from,

Aha,

Double worshiper.

These are opposite teachings.

So it's just interesting to note.

Again,

Huge issue when we externalize our own shadow,

And we say,

All things that are evil,

Out there,

Out there.

It's not me.

It's not me.

And what this does is it kind of slows down,

Like in the land of how this has affected us today,

It slowed down our maturity.

You know,

Working with the shadow is a huge part of the spiritual path these days.

And part of it is we have to integrate all parts of who we are.

We have to integrate the parts of us that don't have nice thoughts all the time,

And the parts of us that really love helping others,

And the parts of us that maybe have actually done things that we regret.

And then there's things that we don't regret that we're really happy about.

But if we are always pushing down the things that we've done that we regret,

A monster is created.

And we can make it pretend that it's outside,

But it's not.

It's inside of us,

And it chews at us,

And it makes us a little mean sometimes.

And all of a sudden,

Where that monster we've created and pushed into the basement suddenly flares up in a moment of fatigue or fear,

And it attacks the very people we love.

It's very dangerous to separate the parts of us that,

It's dangerous to judge any aspect of ourselves.

Like to imagine,

What if you could look inside your psyche and just watch and say,

Wow,

Today I'm having a lot of dark thoughts.

And that's it.

And you can ask,

You know,

I wonder why?

Isn't that interesting?

But there's no judgment.

There's no,

Uh-oh,

I'm obviously on the wrong path.

I'm having all these dark thoughts.

You know,

Like I remember talking to a young mum once,

And she was going into a huge depression.

And it was sort of,

You could call it postpartum depression,

But she was really,

Really suffering.

And I remember going and sitting with her,

And she was starting to become like catatonic.

Like she was just really,

Really struggling.

And I'm very prayerful.

Like I never know what to say.

So I just,

I was sitting with her and I asked what I should say.

And suddenly I started telling her the story of,

I remember when my son was born.

And my son was,

He colic'd for 11 months.

He cried night and day for 11 months.

I didn't sleep.

I was not okay.

And he's a very healthy 30-year-old man now,

But those were long months.

And I had a lot of dark thoughts.

And I shared those dark thoughts with her.

And I said,

This is normal.

It doesn't mean you have to do anything about it.

It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.

It doesn't mean you're a bad mom.

But it's normal for this to flow through your mind,

Whether they're even your thoughts.

But as soon as we have this heavy judgment on it,

We're kind of dead in the water because it doesn't integrate.

You know,

We forget that I'm also a very,

The reason I'm so frustrated is because I love this child so much.

And I really want to do well by them.

You know,

We forget all the good because we're so busy fighting the evil.

You know,

So it's a bit dangerous.

One of the biggest problems with this creation of the devil was it creates an us versus them mentality.

And this was one of the most powerful aspects of this teaching for the church and state is because now they could say,

Anyone who believes what we believe,

We are the saved ones.

We are the righteous.

We are closest to God.

Anyone outside of this,

Anyone who dares question what we're saying,

Possessed by the devil,

They're being tempted.

And we can't let the devil win.

So now we can go and attack them.

We can persecute them.

We can imprison them.

We can kill them.

And hence the inquisitions,

The witch hunts,

The all the things.

Did you know that heresy?

I always say it wrong.

Heresy simply is a Greek word that means choice.

A heretic is someone who made a different choice.

In the church,

This was a huge deal.

You could persecute heretics all day long.

And everybody was like,

Yeah,

Down with the heretics.

And this teaching gave the church the right sanctified hostility that you are allowed to do this in the name of God.

I don't know that I have to expand too much about how bad that is.

But the problem is that we too have internalized this us versus them mentality,

That we believe this and they believe that.

And therefore,

Because they believe something different than me,

I can attack them with words,

With this,

With that.

It doesn't matter.

And it's all not even true.

It's all based in a lie.

It's all based in a faulty created system.

There's no such thing.

The reality is,

Is that everyone's different.

Even if you were to take,

Let's imagine for a minute,

You have this in crowd of those who follow the Christian orthodoxy.

Then you have the out crowd,

Everybody who doesn't.

Like,

For example,

Did you know that during when when when Emperor Constantine was putting all this together,

He was a Roman Empire,

A Roman Emperor.

And,

Of course,

The Romans had all kinds of other belief systems and ideas and gods that they they prayed to.

And there's all kinds of interesting little religions all over the place,

You know.

So essentially,

They coined the phrase paganism.

Do you know that pagan simply means those who live in the country.

And so anybody who didn't believe in Christianity was simply labeled a pagan.

It isn't that there was a pagan religion at the time.

It was just a word that meant people who live out in the country who haven't been converted to Christianity yet.

And so this whole idea,

So anyway,

So let's imagine here we have all the orthodox Christians and here we have everybody else,

The heretics,

The pagans,

Whatever.

Within each group,

There's so many differences.

That's just one thing that may separate them.

If you take all the people in this group,

Do you know how many people think completely differently about everything?

And how many people over here think completely different about everything?

There's no,

It's not like some monoculture.

It's just the same,

Some arbitrary split that says,

Well,

This is what we believe and that's what you believe.

You know,

And again,

We live in this weird world of separation and this is a huge part of it.

So what do we do?

What do we do with all of this?

One thing is that we can sort of reclaim that original Hasatan idea that says,

When things come across my path,

I will deal with it and I will become stronger because of it.

You know,

Another thing we can do is to really work to expand our consciousness into understanding that this world is a cosmic mystery filled with paradoxes.

You know,

There is great beauty and there is great suffering.

There are all kinds of intentions here and all kinds of there.

And the truth is,

It isn't about simplifying it into something that isn't real.

It's about going inside and finding an inner strength,

Listen within,

Go from that inner guidance and just walk through it.

We don't have to judge the world we live in.

It is a mystery.

And this isn't always the easiest path.

Sometimes it's easier to believe in something super simple.

But what if we didn't?

And what if we just said,

You know what,

I really don't get this world,

But I don't have to,

To be happy,

To do the things I want to do.

You know,

Another thing we can do is understand that we aren't born wrong.

We're just human.

And we have all kinds of,

You know,

Who knows,

Maybe we believe in reincarnation and we come in with all kinds of interesting patterns from past lives.

Maybe,

Maybe we inherit ancestral gifts,

Traumas,

Stories,

Whatever.

So that's what we're going to look at.

But there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

It's simply how we were born.

Maybe that's why we came to earth,

To sort all this stuff out.

There's nothing wrong with it.

And if we,

If we have bigger challenges than others,

Then it's like,

Huh,

Okay,

Then I guess this is my assignment.

But it isn't due to some original sin or temptation from the devil or anything like that.

It's just,

Oh,

Is that where I'm at?

And another really lovely thing to do is,

Is to go back to those original teachings of Jesus.

And again,

Whether you consider yourself Christian or not,

Jesus taught radical love.

That you love yourself,

Love God,

Love your enemy.

That was one of his most radical teachings,

That love them.

Like don't,

Like,

And to realize that it's us that benefits from that.

To have hatred or judgment of someone else.

It's our thoughts about them that cycle like poison inside of us,

Ruining our days,

Ruining years of our lives,

As we let this cycling of anger inside of us.

And so this teaching of loving our enemies is interesting.

And I think part of loving our enemies comes from healing that inner split inside.

When we truly connect and integrate the fact that I have all kinds of dark thoughts.

I have all kinds of things that I have regret for.

Maybe they're not much different.

Maybe it's just a different topic.

Maybe it's just a different scope.

But maybe I'm no better.

And not in a bad way.

In a,

Maybe we're all in this together somehow.

You know?

Jesus also taught,

Now I feel like a minister,

But he also taught that this idea of the adversary,

Because by the time he was born,

The idea of the devil and Satan,

That was pretty well entrenched.

So if he was going to speak to the Jewish community,

He had to use this language,

You know?

And so when he would talk about the devil,

He would always say,

You know,

The devil can't actually make you do anything.

And that's like a universal law.

They just suggest stuff.

And that's interesting.

Like,

Again,

Forgetting about the heavy religious tone,

But when we go through life,

How often,

We don't actually have to do some of the things that we don't want to do.

We don't have to react in anger.

We don't have to react in,

Anyway,

It's just a suggestion.

We choose.

And that's one of the big teachings,

When we go back to the original teachings,

Was free will.

That,

You know,

Free will doesn't mean much if you don't get tempted once in a while.

You know,

So it's like,

So exercise your free will,

Make choices,

But there's no big judgment around it.

It's your experience.

It's your life.

It's your journey.

And the last thing I want to mention was when,

So Jesus spoke Aramaic.

And when he did his teachings about God,

He used the word Abba.

And Abba is like a familiar authority figure or a familiar father figure.

It means like Daddy or Papa.

It's very close.

It's very intimate.

And so it's a very interesting thing to imagine,

Whatever you understand God to be,

As this intimate energy that loves you,

That wants to care for you,

That cares about your needs.

There's something about that.

And that's actually what he taught.

And again,

When it got translated into Greek,

It was just turned into Father.

And then it was expanded for the church to be like Almighty,

As you can imagine.

Why?

So it's an interesting thing to kind of forgetting all the judgment,

And all the separation,

And all the shame,

And just know that we were born in great love,

You know,

And in great,

You know,

That that closeness is always within us,

That nobody has to go between us,

Nothing.

There's none of that.

And I often love to think about,

You know,

Imagine how different it would be if these teachings were never created.

You know,

If Original Sin had never been created,

Would we have started to really trust ourselves right from the get-go?

Right?

Would we have lived lives where we cultivated the ability to trust ourselves?

Because we didn't think we were inherently broken.

We thought we were inherently light and love.

So where else would I get good ideas from?

You know,

It's a very interesting meditation.

Where would my life be if these teachings had never taken hold?

So thank you for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

This was a most profound and truthful talk, Katrina. I think you hit the nail on the head on so many resonate topics. Please keep these up as I do believe in the uncovering of old myths that you are doing. ♥️

Excellent insights. Thanks for sharing this message. Hope this reaches many more people
Namaste 🙏❤️💕