What is the deeper meaning of baptism?

It is easy to see the symbolic meaning of baptism by water and spirit. Water represents eternally changing truth that yet remains essentially unaltered over time, and the ever-flowing nature of our feelings. Spirit symbolizes the active principle of our thoughts and our will. We must give these human faculties over to Christ who symbolized what love means through his life and his death.

Before a spirit can be reborn, it must repent. If we can’t recognize our own Lower Self, how can be know the harmful effects we are having on others. How would we be motivated to change the error of our ways. When we decide to do this, our feelings will change, our thoughts and will direction will shift, and we shall truly be reborn of water and spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ.

When we use the expression “in the spirit of Jesus Christ,” or “in the name of Jesus Christ,” we are saying that we take this action the way Jesus would: with the same attitude, thoughts, loving nature, willingness to forgive, abiding positive intention, devotion to God, and sacrificing of the little me-me-me ego—all for the greater good. We’re not just saying we have a simplistic belief in this historical person named Jesus Christ who gives us salvation—although this is actually often just what’s meant.

It really doesn’t matter whether an actual dunking in water took place. If it did, it was a ritual and the purpose of doing so would have been to express the inner meaning. Later such a ritual, as is often the case, may become an empty gesture. Then people blindly believe that the act creates the transformation. But that, of course, can never be the deal, no matter how much lip service is given to praising the Lord and pronouncing undying devotion to him.

Inner transformation takes hard work. And it takes time. We can’t do this without the help of the Lord. But with his help, all things are possible. When an inner baptism takes place—meaning an inner transformation and a total commitment to aligning with the will of God—a magnificent light springs up in the Spirit World. This light adds to the great reservoir of all-things-good-and-wonderful, rejoining the glory of eternal life.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 8: Baptism

The truth of reincarnation was on Jesus’ mind when he spoke of how we need to be reborn. It’s not hard to see that we will stagnate if we’re not constantly rediscovering and rebirthing aspects of our true selves as we do this work to know ourselves better. Physical rebirth is an unalterable component of this same process. It would be pure folly to assume that we could complete all of the development we need to do in one short life. This defies any logic and all common sense.

So Holy Scripture hints at the truth of reincarnation in the concept of being reborn. But it’s stated as a boldface fact in the clear expression that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah. In the early years after the life and death of Jesus Christ, in fact, teaching reincarnation was a normal part of the Christian religion. So early Christians knew perfectly well that reincarnation was a true reality.

It was later on that church fathers saw how the knowledge of the truth of reincarnation was misused in Eastern traditions. So they took action to remove this danger; they took it out of the Bible. The misuse they witnessed in Eastern cultures was that of a fatalistic attitude toward life: “It doesn’t matter what I do—it’s karma. I have to go through this and there’s not a thing I can do about it.” It’s not hard to imagine how this set people back.

But the opposite extreme is no winner either. Denying this truth brought about a different damaging attitude. We placed an overemphasis of free will on ourselves, but did so with a superficial finger-wagging attitude of “I’d better behave or I’m going straight to you-know-where.” So then the fear of just about everything—fear of God, fear of not being good enough, fear of not fulfilling “the law”—caused just as much harm.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 7: Reincarnation in the Bible

The Guide offers insight for deeper understanding through the following commandments explained:

2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

4) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5) Honor thy father and thy mother.

6) Thou shalt not kill.

We can apply all of the commandments on all levels of our personalities. So this commandment, number six, is not just about the act of physically killing someone. The terms “life” and “death” apply to more than just the body. Thoughts and emotions, too, can snuff another out.

There is also a way that we deaden ourselves by darkening our own life force. All of our destructive aspects, including our images and unresolved problems, have a negative impact on us and everyone around us, essentially killing life. The more we advance, the more we’ll see this.

Here’s an example of how “emotional killing” looks. When we feel rejected and insecure, we tend to try to please the very ones whose acceptance we crave but don’t have. We often do this by despising anyone we think is also despised by the one whose attention we want so badly. This might be subtle, but it’s not uncommon. Such a betrayal hurts and rejects others while bringing us the opposite of what we originally wanted. This may not manifest through our word or deeds, but rather lays hidden in a well-camouflaged attitude. We might even bend over backwards to hide it. Nevertheless, it’s in there, causing damage.

Our entire being can’t be filled with love and truth unless we uncover all these areas where we aren’t really being loving and aren’t so much in truth either. That’s the doorway that leads to real salvation, and the only way to get there is through this work of fully understanding ourselves. There are no shortcuts, no magic formulas, no mantras, no miracles, and no easy ways to do this.

Only utter self-honesty in everything we do—major, minor and seemingly insignificant—will get us there. But if we persevere in this goal, our whole beings will become more and more healthy and of benefit to ourselves, to others and to this entire amazing universe.

Listen and hear commandments explained by the Pathwork Guide.

Bible Me This, Chapter 6: Commandments Explained

In this collection of bible passages explained by the Pathwork Guide, we uncover hidden meanings and unravel many of the riddles of the Bible.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 5c: Bible Passages Explained, Part Three

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Bible Me This, Chapter 5b: Biblical Passages Explained, Part Two

Here are biblical passages explained by the Pathwork Guide. In this collection we uncover hidden meanings and unravel many of the riddles of the Bible.

Listen and hear the Pathwork Guide's answers.

Bible Me This, Chapter 5a: Biblical Passages Explained, Part One

The analogies and symbolism found in the Bible should not be considered as one-time historical events. They are being constantly recreated in our souls. If we think of Adam and Eve and what they represent, separating them from the distortions that human minds and human religions overlaid onto them, we can find the truth as it exists in them as well as in ourselves, right now.

As we said, all our difficulties, hardships and feelings of enslavement that accrue from Adam and Eve leaving paradise are related to our fear of pleasure, our fear of being naked—of being real. The myth of Adam and Eve also includes persuasion by a serpent. While the serpent has been given many symbols, in this case, it mainly connotes what we consider to be the animalistic life force. This is the pleasure force as it moves in man. And just as the snake is not really low, it is not low. It is only our vision that makes it seem so.

In addition to being a symbol of fertility, the serpent is also a symbol of wisdom. This life force that is said to be animalistic, low and blind has a tremendous wisdom of its own. It’s only the distorted life force that is blind and destructive. But in its original beauty, it has its own wisdom. Fertility here goes beyond reproduction. It’s also fertile in the deepest sense—in its creativity—representing the abundance of life with its multi-faceted possibilities.

The tree symbolizes the wrong kind of knowledge. It is intellectualization that separates us from the immediate experience of the moment, which can only happen when the mind, body and real divine spirit are integrated. When these aspects get fragmented, then knowledge gets separated from experience. In that case, the mind and the experience can be very different, as we all know. That mind is a Tree of Knowledge split off from the feelings and experience of the person.

It’s not that Adam and Eve were supposed to eat the fruit and be driven out. There’s no “supposed to” here. Each created being has free will—totally and completely. This isn’t really a reality that we can know in our heads. We have to have experienced, at least at times, what it feels like to be in the flow of this being-force to understand this. That’s what it means to be free, with no fences and no authority who expects anything of anyone.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 4: Myth | Adam & Eve

We could write entire books just to explain this passage about the Tower of Babel, that’s how much it contains. For now, we’ll consider just one aspect of it, starting with the reference to “of one language". Long, long ago, human beings were whole beings that were fully whole and harmonious. We were living in harmony within ourselves—no conflicts and no contradictions. Our spirits weren’t these fragmented, scattered beings, like we are now. To say our current version of ourselves lacks single-pointed focus is an understatement, given the abundance of contradictory forces inside each of us.

These contradictions can be thought of as “different languages,” a symbol that represents how we don’t understand ourselves. Since this is what exists inside our souls, this Tower of Babel, it’s going to also exist outwardly in the world. It has to. Enter chaos, stage left. World conditions are the sum total of what’s going on under the hood, and our engines are a jumble of confusion, blindness, wrong conclusions and contradictory aims.

Then the outer confusions and problems confound us, because we ignore how they are being conditioned by our inner ones. As a result, we can’t link up cause and effect, so we can’t make sense of all this “Babel.” The way to clear all this up is to explore the meaning of our emotions, which up until now we have largely not understood.

Further, if we can’t comprehend our own selves, how can we possibly understand others? Our confusions contribute to our poor ability to communicate, so we can’t make them understand us, to boot. So difficulty communicating, that too is the Tower of Babel.

The movement of evolution is one of perpetually closing circles. It applies equally to the whole evolution of the cosmos as it does to our individual spiritual paths. We start out with an outward movement and then move in, in a return to perfection.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 3: Myth | Tower of Babel

People are often mistaken about understanding myths. Over half of us think of them as inventions, fantasies, fairy tales or lies. The real meaning of myth is quite different from this. But even if everyone could agree about this, religions would still be on different pages. Solve this and something else would get in the way.

People are often afraid of letting go of their allegiances to things like religion and politics. The fear is that if we give up what we believe in, our personal safety somehow crumbles. And we just can’t afford to face that kind of threat.

So the problem isn’t that we don’t get the idea of understanding myths as symbols. No, the root problem here is the way we behave in an effort to keep ourselves safe. Then we resist looking at whether our false safeguards make any sense. We don’t want to find out that perhaps we were wrong.

In short, a myth is a way to represent a truth, conveying it in a way that we can accept and understand. Similar to a symbol, they are concisely constructed—like a vast truth in picture form. This is not unlike the picture language used in the Spirit World or the picture language we experience when we dream.

While the principle is the same, there is a difference though between understanding myths and symbols. We can have a symbol for anything, whether its important or not. In dreams, we have symbols but they are personal to us, with our own unique little idiosyncrasies. By contrast, myths deal with general, universal truths, presented so that we can grasp them. Unlike many symbols, myths are actually true.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 2: Understanding Myths

When it comes to understanding of the Bible, including the Old as well as the New Testament, it can be interpreted on many levels. The lowest level is the historical level. From this perspective, there are many errors and omissions, which one would expect. Next there is the spiritual and symbolic level, or what we might call the metaphysical level. And lastly is the psychological level, which may be the most useful for people today in our current state of development.

This last level is present regarding everything mentioned in Holy Scriptures. And reading meaning on one level doesn’t cancel the others out. So people, for example, many of whom really lived on Earth—not all, but many—also then represent psychological aspects. It is the simultaneous existence of the many different levels that makes the Bible such a magnificently unique and outstanding document. But it also makes understanding the Bible a challenge

So we can search for meaning on each of these planes. That’s when we will discover how inconceivably artful Holy Scripture is in the way it has been constructed. We can’t fully comprehend how strongly and resourcefully the Spirit World of God worked on this. They helped create this marvel, even as they could foresee how human errors would inevitably slip in over time.

Even with its flubs, the Bible has no equal. There are few people indeed who really get this and who get the meaning that exists on all these levels. Many perceive one level and perhaps even two. But there’s hardly a soul on Earth who can grasp them all.

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Bible Me This, Chapter 1: Understanding the Bible