Dear Family,
I recorded this video some months ago sharing the story of my journey to Jesus Christ.
I’m happy to share it with you now.
I deeply recommend giving this a watch if you’d like to hear an approachable, relatable, human story of my wild, winding, psychedelic path…
And how it eventually led me home to Jesus Christ and the Catholicism of my ancestors.
Below I’d also like to share some more notes and writings of mine related to Christ and Christianity — many of them I wrote just in the past few days, some are older.
The twentieth note below also goes deeply into a written version of my story of coming to Christ.
I hope these are valuable for you in some way. Blessings.
Notes From a Christian
I.
The arrogance of many guru figures is to place their own experience as the only measuring stick of wisdom and truth
This is a major error and trap that I fell into for years during my neo-advaita days
Trust thousands of years of the testimony of saints and of Jesus Christ over your own very limited life experience as a moderner living in a dark age of immense deception
Don’t throw away your own experience but be humble enough to recognize that it isn’t the end-all-be-all
Let it bake in the Oven of the Great Tradition
Let it be in dialogue with the saints and martyrs who through Christ became capable of miracles and supernatural depths of self-emptying Love
II.
Lord Jesus is truly all-present
See him everywhere and in every person and being
Love All
Love is the Way, the Truth, and the Life
Amen.
❤️🔥🙏🏼❤️🔥
III.
‘No self’ is not the ultimate state
God is inexhaustible
God Is Love
Love Is God
IV.
My current view of interfaith / interpath approaches to Truth:
The Inmost Light Which Has No Opposite, the Loving Light of God, is all-pervading and has been discovered directly by sages, saints, monks, and mystics across all authentic wisdom traditions. Different wisdom-streams have discovered/illuminated different dimensions of this infinite-dimensional Jewel of God.
“God is inexhaustible,” as Christians say. “There are many rooms in my Father’s house,” as Jesus said. All authentic wisdom-streams can be seen as having received/illuminated their own unique (overlapping) revelations / dimensions / rooms within the infinite House of the Almighty.
As such, all authentic wisdom-streams enrich and deepen each other through interpath exchange. Many Christians could receive a great deal from Zen or Taoism, for instance. Interpath/interfaith exchange and dialogue can also help to illuminate the shadows, blindspots, and failure modes of (the current expressions of) any given tradition or stream.
One downside of an interpath approach is that many neo-spiritual people try to sort of ‘pick and choose’ from the smorgasbord of streams without really rooting deeply into any one tradition, or without healing their relationship to their ancestral tradition. In this way I feel many people are not discovering much of the deepest gold of wisdom traditions, which is discovered through being in the tradition — being sheltered within the (physical and non-physical) Cathedral(s) of the tradition, being rooted into an ancient Sequoia-like undergirding super-structure that provides ancestral continuity, deep stabilization, community, and many other boons.
For me personally, my return to Christianity was totally unexpected. Christ came to me through many weeping heart-revelations, revealing a dimension of personal relationship with God that had been missing in most of my explorations of the modern non-dual / neo-advaita landscape. For me this aspect of personal relationship with God, which shows up in Christianity and in other traditions, is precious to my heart.
I remain a deep lover of wisdom from all authentic streams and corners of the Earth. I personally feel a calling to be deeply rooted in my ancestral tradition while also helping (alongside many others doing this work in beautiful ways) to integrally bridge Christianity with all other authentic streams and traditions.
As for the question of whether some authentic streams or traditions have received a fuller revelation of Truth than others, I would say yes. Though I would also say that there is no end to the revelation of the fullness of Truth, and that its fullest revelation on Earth is discovered through being open to Truth and Wisdom wherever they may be found — not confining oneself to one tradition.
In Christianity there is a very old, largely-forgotten tradition of honoring and ‘baptizing’ wisdom that comes from sources outside of Christianity — essentially recognizing diverse gems of wisdom as part of the fullness of Truth, and integrating these jewels into the ever-unfolding Christian tradition. I am a Christian who is continuing this ancient practice.
Having said all this, I will state plainly that I believe Christianity to be the crown jewel of world wisdom traditions.
The True And Living Savior Jesus Christ Walked This Earth.
If you walk the path of Truth and Love sincerely, you will eventually meet the Lord Jesus Christ.
Go to old empty churches, pray sincerely on your knees, meet the Lord.
When your Heart begins to receive the revelation of His Supernatural Glory, you will know you are receiving by Grace the Fullness of Truth.
And thus ever-deepening Love, Communion, Sanctification, Theosis, and Participation will open before you.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
V.
To the forces of demonic evil present on this plane...
STOP.
BE GONE.
THE LORD COMMANDS YOU.
The Lord Jesus Christ Is Returning
We Feel Him With Us In Our Hearts
Your reign here is ending
Repent and ask for God’s Mercy
You cannot hide in the deepest dungeons forever, torturing your prisoners there
All chains shall be broken
All prisoners shall be set free
All dungeons shall be illuminated
Every knee shall voluntarily bow
For The Lord Is Love
He Is Our Home
And as He said He would do,
He Is Drawing All Unto Himself
Through Pure Love
You have no further power here, demons
You never had any true power
True power resides with God alone
Your reign ends now.
Stop.
BE GONE.
In the Name of Our Lord And Savior Jesus Christ
BE GONE.
Amen. Hallelujah. He Is Risen.
❤️🔥✝️❤️🔥
VI.
Prayer is more powerful than magic
One could also say prayer is the purest form of magic
Thy Will Be Done ❤️🔥🙏🏼✝️
VII.
My heart says: Do not kill the unborn.
Babies are a pure gift from God.
VIII.
Men, we are here to safeguard all that is sacred.
Protect all children and women.
We must become sworn protectors of children if we are to root out and imprison all abusers of innocence.
IX.
While packing some Christian books in my bag to head to the gym and sauna, I had a feeling like I was packing literal dynamite
Truly no spiritual authors hit as deep as the great Christians
The Bible, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers — these are books to build a life upon and to teach your children to understand as they come of age
X.
Demons are real.
There are literal devils feeding on people.
Cast them out in the name of Jesus Christ.
Safeguard the name of Christ within your heart. Pray his name in earnest.
His name holds sovereign power over these deeply sick, parasitic, demonic beings.
Pray for all demons and devils to be healed and transfigured through the Love of God.
They are the most lost and forlorn of all God’s children.
XI.
There are very sick people in this world.
It’s difficult to fathom how some people become so sick that they become akin to demonic monsters — committing such grave sins. I feel I could vomit from the horror of it.
Lord help us. It is terrifying to be a father in this world, knowing there are dark predators here.
Makes me feel an inspiration to go deeper in my martial arts training.
Lord Jesus Christ please help us. I know that only your Grace and Love can truly and fully heal this world and wash away these scourges and afflictions.
Lord, please hear our prayers.
XII.
Reading the Living Word of Jesus Christ is the opposite of ‘light reading.’
The Lord often spoke forth thunderbolts that shake us to the core and challenge us on the deepest levels. His words are seismic.
They’re also deeply layered with many levels of meaning that reveal themselves ongoingly for one’s whole life and beyond. It’s often wise to look up the original Greek or Hebrew to understand with much more nuance. Many of his statements and parables are like koans that are meant to be wrestled with. They work on you.
XIII.
The Truth incarnated on Earth in Jesus Christ
Christ came to reveal supernatural Grace
And personal Divine Love Beyond All Reckoning
As He stated He came not to overturn all prior prophets but to fulfill them
To reveal the Fullness of Wisdom
To unite all the nations through Love
XIV.
All modern people and especially spiritual seekers should know about the concept of ‘prelest’
Prelest is an old Christian notion referring to experiences of false enlightenment, spiritual inflation, grandiosity
There is a lot of this going on in the new age and psychedelic spaces
And there is a lot of damage and even deaths occurring as a result
There’s important work being done on these neo-spiritual frontiers but these seekers would all greatly benefit from being rooted within a Great Tradition such as Christianity
Many of these ‘modern psychedelic mystic free agents’ would benefit enormously from mentorship from true religious elders and from bringing their mystical experiences into the Great Cathedral of Christianity to allow them to be tested, baked, and refined by the wisdom of Christ and the saints
Random ‘gurus’ on the satsang circuit do hold wisdom but there are many shadows and subtle deceptions there too. The Moojis, Bentinhos, Jim Newmans, Tony Parsons, Jed McKennas, Leo Guras, etc — there is signal there but also sticky, murky shadow. And truly they just do not come anywhere close to the real depth of Personal Grace Heart Revelation that occurs through Christ
This is not about a competition or dogma or ‘needing to be right’
It just simply is the case — as revealed through Christ, countless saints, and mysteriously revealed to my own Heart through countless weeping intercessions of Grace — that Christianity is the Truth
I know this type of statement rubs plenty of people the wrong way and I personally recoiled massively for years from this kind of religious certitude
But once this revelation dawns, your eyes are cleansed and what is seen cannot be un-seen. You see the new age Wild West for what it is; you see the modern world’s nihilism for what it is
You realize the stakes are truly high and the kids need us. They need us here, incarnate, laboring for their salvation and freedom from all forms of abuse. They don’t need you drinking the ‘just transcend to the absolute it’s all perfect anyway’ Kool-Aid from the latest neo-advaita charlatan drunk on prelest
They need YOU. HERE. As a man. As a woman. As a father. As a mother. As a human being who truly cares. Any spirituality which denies or obscures this is garbage, plain and simple. There may be signal in it but there is also great poison. Earth needs you to INCARNATE now. Christianity understands this most deeply because Christianity is the Truth.
Jesus Christ told us to bring the Gospel to all corners of the Earth. You either believe He was the Lord, or you believe he was insane or a liar. There is not really room for in-between positions because He plainly stated He is the Messiah who came to fulfill all streams and clarify all confusions.
Emmanuel. God is with us.
I have held immense resistance within myself to this level of plainly spoken honesty and conviction about Christianity. But I increasingly feel like it is a matter of the life and death of souls for the Truth to be spoken. Christ is the Way and I cannot censor this knowing any longer.
This does not mean you have to abandon your ancestry or all other wisdom traditions. There are ways to baptize and include that which is truly wise from your own tradition. Yet I recommend to also begin reading the Gospels and to go pray in old empty churches and open your Heart and see what happens
The True King of Kings is returning through many of our Hearts. It is not random that a man like Jordan Hall has come to Christ after an immensely deep journey of seeking truth. Many others are coming to Christ at this time because He speaks directly to our Hearts through Spirit in a way that is undeniable once it is heard
I love you
Thank you for considering
May all children of God be free
May we end all wars within and without
May He Come Again In Glory
May His Kingdom Have No End
Love,Jordan
XV.
Perhaps no one in the world cares for my advice, but if you want my advice…
Pray earnestly to Jesus Christ.
Repent of your past transgressions.
Lay down your life at His feet.
Ask for Mercy.
His Love is boundless.
He brought New Life to this world, and all that is Good comes from Him.
There is a Way, Truth, and Life.
That Way is the Way of Love.
Christ demonstrated this self-emptying Love with perfect Grace, altering the course of history.
The more you deviate from this Love, the more your life will become a lonely desert of despair.
The more you accept this Love into your heart and live from it by Grace, the more you will know the Peace and Joy of God.
XVI.
On the beauty of a Personal Savior:
“I recently met an Orthodox monk who told me the key to the spiritual life is to simply relax and humbly accept the fact that we are sinners and always will be. But this does not mean we should quit struggling towards perfection.It means we surrender to the mystery of God’s seemingly paradoxical ways. We take action, gently. We use force, peacefully. God makes us strong when we admit we are weak. God makes us spiritual when we admit we are worldly. Blessed are the poor in the spirit! Blessed are the meek, the merciful, and the mournful!”
— Nick Hinton
There is deep wisdom in Christianity.
Many of us have complicated relationships with the church due to its shadows as an institution, yet if you can allow yourself to freshly re-open to it through prayer, visiting churches, or the writings of saints, its treasures know no bounds.
Many of us recoil from the idea that we are sinful. Yet any clear-eyed onlooker can easily see that mankind is deeply sinful. We murdered 100,000,000 of our own brothers and sisters in the 20th century alone. We miss the mark in massive ways. This is a sober view.
Noticing one’s own sinfulness (missing-the-mark-ness) does not have to be a shame-filled exercise. It can be done in a spirit of loving discernment, though it is helpful to feel genuine contrition, and to ask God for mercy and healing. Grace is available.
Many don’t like the idea of needing a Savior, yet I’d suggest that we simply do. Whatever power we have, comes from beyond us. On our own we cannot exist. We rely on the Beyond for all things. And true inner transformation is not self-willed but is given as a gift of Grace.
And the good news is that there truly is a universal Savior. Miracle of miracles, help is available. None are forgotten. All that is required is the humility to pray earnestly for Grace in acknowledgement of your own powerlessness to effect foundational change upon yourself.
I’d suggest that this is not a defeatist position; it is a sober view. Mankind does hold many great and wondrous capacities yet the power to foundationally heal his soul and absolve him of his error-prone condition resides beyond him.
And that is okay. Why would we need to be all-powerful? That would be a great burden. We are not able to responsibly wield the power that we do have. We are cubs on our hands and knees. It is relieving and healing to acknowledge this.
As Lao Tzu said, “He who loves the Earth as his own body is fit to rule the empire.” And He does. This is the good news. It is not in your hands. It is in the hands of He who is pure Love. It is in the hands of God.
Submitting to your rightful heavenly Father may feel deeply confronting, yet on the other side of that, there is ever-deepening peace. A peace the world cannot give you. The peace of resting with Christ.
If I had read this 10 years ago I would’ve likely found it highly dogmatic and dismissed it. That’s understandable. I am not trying to put this forth as a finality. It is a great Mystery that I myself can scarcely believe, yet which unfurls itself through my heart.
I do not claim to comprehend this Mystery. I can only faithfully report what I witness. Astonishingly, it increasingly and inexplicably dawns upon my soul that the Word was indeed made flesh, suffered, died, was buried, and on the third day rose again, victorious over death.
From where I stand—and as many Christian fathers and saints have expressed—Christ does not negate other wisdom-streams, but is their deepest fulfillment. Wherever the true Light has been received, Christ has been there. This book so far is a great testament to this:
I love you. You are loved beyond all imagining. All shall be well. Nurture the flame of faith as your dearest ally. All is well, and all shall be well. None are forgotten.
XVII.
Reality is architected as a dance that teaches Love.
Life guides us home to Love.This, at least, is a deep feeling and experience I receive ongoingly. Living apart from Love burns, bringing one into a lonely desert of despair. The more cut off we are—the more separate we feel—the more we suffer.Whereas the more we return to the Love and Wholeness we truly are, the more we feel a sense of Home, Peace, and Rightness in our Heart. This is how Life shows us that Wholeness, Non-Separation, and Love are our deeper nature. This is not to say that there won’t be pain when we live in/as Love. “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional,” as they say. From Wholeness, pain still arises, yet it has a different quality: It is more fully welcomed and bathed in Loving Presence. It cracks us open and initiates us more deeply into Love. It connects us to the pain of all beings, opening tender compassion.The deepest Love is not reserved for only a few beings in our lives. It is a felt experience of Oneness and Interbeing with all of Life. It is the knowing that we are all One Body—and that what I do to another, I do to my own self. “What ye have done for the least among you, this you have also done for me,” as Christ put it.When we begin returning to this Love, our Heart knows we’re returning Home. We feel a deepening sense of Wholeness, Flow, Thanksgiving, and Miraculousness all around us. Every being is revealed as a living poem—a living sculpture crafted by hand unseen. This is how Life guides us Home: The further we live outside this Love, the more tormented we feel. Whereas the more we become transparent to this All-Present Love, the more we know we are Home. We discover Peace.May all beings know Love. May we end all war. May all children dance freely without fear. We are One. Amen.Love,Jordan
XVIII.
True direction comes from God. All else is vanity.
True greatness is virtue, not recognition. Be good to all creatures and do the right thing, especially when no one is watching. This echoes for eternity.
Live with Love and Honor in the presence of God. This is our true purpose.
XIX.
The Desert Fathers are unbelievable, wow.
In recent times somehow my heart is receiving a deeper understanding that the Word truly was made flesh and dwelt among us, suffered, died, and was buried, rose on the third day and ascended into Heaven, victorious over death. And Earth was never the same again.
Prior to this my focus was more on direct mystical experiences of the living Christ—experiences which have been unspeakable gifts causing me to weep so many tears. And yet the Incarnation brings a deeper sense of earthly completion. This Mystery feels so intimate and human and comforting—to feel the reality of the Incarnation. It’s unbelievable. He is here with us and seems to be making Himself known to more people…
“He will come again in Glory to set all things right among the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end…”
As time goes on, my heart feels an unexplainable deepening clarity or revelation: Other paths hold great beauty and wisdom and portions of the true Logos, yet their deepest fulfillment is in Christ. Christ does not negate other wisdom-streams but fulfills them. Wherever the true Light has been received, Christ has been there. He was always there with us but His coming to Earth brought forth the fullness of His revelation.
This is the sensing occurring for me at least. I do not claim to comprehend these Mysteries! This Christmas season feels charged with Grace and Possibility.
“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
XX.
You shall know the Truth when you weep before it.
Christ is born.
Christ is risen.
Jesus Christ is King.
Jesus Christ is Lord of All.
I do not speak this lightly.
Deep parts of me have resisted this for decades — and still do.
Deep parts of me do not want to come across as ‘dogmatic,’ or alienate anyone.
I have spoken so much about the liberation of non-knowing…
And there is indeed immense wisdom there.
Yet when all human knowledge is relinquished…
In that apophatic space, there is a possibility of one’s Heart receiving Divine Revelation.
I can no longer pretend that I have not wept countless tears at the feet of the Lord.
I can no longer pretend that I do not know my True Master, The Lord Our God.
All Glory And Honor Due Unto Him.
For The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory Are Yours, Now And Forever.
I do not claim to comprehend this Mystery.
It is indeed a Mystery beyond all fathoming. As the Orthodox Christians note, God’s Wellspring is inexhaustible. There is no final attainment, for God’s Revelation is unending. By pure Grace and Mercy, when we become truly willing to repent—to ‘turn over a new leaf’—God meets us there. And therein we are invited into the Everlasting Covenant that has always been waiting for us. We are invited to open to ever-deepening Communion and Participation with the Immaculate One.
Jesus Christ visited Earth, suffered, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day, victorious over death. I do not know how I know this, yet I can no longer pretend that my Heart has not received unspeakable confirmation of the Incarnation and Resurrection.
Jesus Christ was not ‘one among many’ prophets, sages, or even avatars. He is the only begotten Son of the Father — “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. Begotten, not made. One in Being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, He came down from Heaven. By the Power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary, and became a man. For our sake He was crucified, suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose again, in fulfillment of the scriptures. He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in Glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.”
I still remember these words of the Nicene Creed, etched onto my Heart at a young age by the Grace of my Catholic upbringing.
I am not special. This is not about me. This is about the True Nature of Grace and Eternal Salvation. I do not claim to comprehend these Mysteries, yet they speak through my Heart and I cannot deny them. I cannot deny Him.
Jesus Christ is not the negation of other earthly traditions, religions, and wisdom-streams. He is their deepest fulfillment. Wherever the True Light, True Wisdom, and True Love have been seen, Christ has been present there. He is Lord.
Other wisdom-streams carry immense treasure and I celebrate that treasure. I sing of that treasure!
The primary thing they have not fully understood is this Mystery of Mysteries: The One God is a Person. While also being beyond all categories, the One Absolute Creator, on the deepest levels, is also a Person who holds Immeasurable Love for each one of us and for all of Creation. Through Jesus Christ the One God literally incarnated on Earth. This was an event of Eternal Significance that has not occurred at any other time in Earth’s history. It opened vast new horizons of Love, Grace, Revelation, Participation, Theosis, and Communion for all of mankind and for all beings in all worlds. I believe we all know this to be True in our Heart of Hearts. It is the deepest longing of our Hearts: To meet God face to face, remembering that He Loves Us Personally, Forever and Ever, no matter what, beyond all fathoming. And remembering that we are Home with Him Now, through our Heart of Hearts, while also being invited through Grace to discover Inexhaustible Depths of Communion with Our True Home, Mother, and Father of Love, for all of Eternity.
Yes, I am basically saying that I am a Catholic, I am a Christian, and Christianity is literally True. This ongoing discovery—which again I have resisted enormously on tectonic levels—has baffled me as much as it may be baffling you in this moment.
Yet in hindsight it also makes perfect sense: I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school. I attended Church ~weekly for my entire childhood and adolescence. I was an altar server. I was part of the choir. I was a lector. I was a cantor who sang solo hymns in front of the whole congregation. The songs always touched me most deeply. Even during the long years when I separated myself from the Church, in my darkest moments, I would still pray to God in the way my beloved father and mother taught me; my heart’s truest hope and allegiance never fully departed from God. Around age 17, a local priest predicted that I would one day become a priest. I thought he had completely missed the mark.
That same priest once told me that dogs would not go to Heaven. Statements like this—as well as other parishioners who claimed that all non-Christians would burn in Hell for Eternity—were what catalyzed me to become disillusioned with the faith. Internally I separated myself from the Church for many years, flirting with atheism before becoming a kind of entheogenic mystic around age 19 when I first met the Sacred Mushroom. I then went on a long and winding search for Truth that led me to ~36 countries and the far reaches of inner space, experiencing ~150 entheogenic journeys (thousands if you include Cannabis), many with Ayahuasca and Bufo. ~Seven major romantic heartbreaks and breakups (and many more romantic ruptures or experiences of unrequited love) also served as tremendously painful—yet in hindsight Grace-filled—catalysts on my path.
At various times I felt I had become ‘enlightened’; little did I know I was just getting started. “Pride cometh before a fall,” and I was led through many initiations and ‘crash landings’ that by Grace gradually began to erode my indefatigably self-reinflating, self-satisfied ego. This is absolutely ongoing! I am a cub on his hands and knees. I miss the mark all the time. I am a sinner. I no longer hesitate to say that I absolutely need the help of the Good Lord, my Savior and King. I cannot do it alone.
A few years ago this whole wild arc unexpectedly began to lead me back to Jesus Christ. To my great surprise my Heart was repeatedly punctured by a Love Beyond All Understanding. I saw visions of Christ and felt His Presence clearly as He performed repeated surgeries upon my Heart and Soul, through which I wept countless tears of Pure Love. My mind began to be crucified as I was invited to allow the Lord’s Wisdom to replace my endlessly vain fascination with my own insights. All of this is absolutely ongoing. I am only beginning! And this is a great gift! I know I am Home Now and this is an unutterable Joy! Yet fathomless vistas of ever-deepening Communion lie ahead, if I may be so fortunate as to receive by Grace that which none can truly deserve — for it is a Jewel of Light-Filled Love beyond all price or reckoning.
When I use terms like ‘Master’ or ‘Savior’ to refer to Jesus Christ, I can imagine this may be activating for some. To be clear, I am *not* saying that Jesus Christ dominates us, exerts ‘power over’ us, or demands our allegiance. Rather, He is the True Lord precisely because He *does not* do these things. As He demonstrated in His Coming to Earth, He is willing to place Himself *lower* than all others — willing to be impoverished, humiliated, crucified, and spat upon in the name of Love, Mercy, and Truth — and *this* is why he is simply the Rightful Lord of All.
It is not that He has ‘claimed a throne’ over us, but that He is willing to *relinquish all power in the name of Love*, placing Himself beneath us, washing our feet, healing our wounded bodies — *this* is why He is the Logos, the Axis Mundi, the Deepest Pattern around which all of Creation revolves. “True power is to let everything around you grow taller than you,” as Remi Delaune of Kumankaya once said to me. “He who loves the Earth as his own body is fit to rule the empire,” as Lao Tzu prophesied. Lao Tzu spoke of water being most alike to the Tao, as it is content with the lowest places, and its softness gradually erodes even the hardest hearts of stone.
Christ is the Tao’s True Face. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Logos, that rightful ruler of the empire — who rules not with power or retribution, but with Pure Unconditional Love And Mercy For All. Like Aragorn, He does not ‘claim a throne’ and that is why He is the One truly deserving of the Throne of Thrones. The lamb who willingly received the Crown of Thorns, is the Innocent One “in whom we live, move, and have our being.” He who would “turn the other cheek.” He is the Secret Fire that alights our Hearts.
Jesus Christ is our True Master and Savior — not because He grasps for power, but because He does not. This is not a reality that is forced upon anyone. It is not an inherently upsetting or destabilizing reality. As emotional reactions dissipate, it may be seen that It Is Simply So. It is simply the case. And then it may be seen that this is truly The Good News.
The News That Is Better Than Anything We Could Imagine Or Hope For.
My heart deeply senses that this Good News implies the Redemption Of All Things. Apokatastasis. Yet beautifully, we have to choose this Redemption ourselves. The Good Shepherd honors our free will and waits patiently for us to return Home. Many great Christians and Church Fathers have intuited, hoped, and prayed that no being—not even Satan—can resist God’s Love forever.
Orthodox Christianity suggests to us that Heaven and Hell are simply two different experiences of God’s Love: We experience Heaven when we open to His Love, and we experience Hell when we close ourselves to that Love, resisting it and refusing to acknowledge our errors and the pains we have caused through our deviations from Love. Orthodoxy suggests that we may pray with all our hearts for the Redemption of All, yet we cannot simply assume this to be the case, for that would dishonor the free will of each being, disallowing the possibility that beings might choose in their stubbornness to forsake God for eternal aeons. I deeply pray and intuit that this is not the case. Again, the Waters of Life flow to the lowest, darkest places and overcome even the most hardened hearts of stone. I believe and pray that all Children of God, all beings in all worlds, will eventually Return Home to Love.
I fully and completely understand that some of you will forcefully reject much of what I have written here. That is okay and very relatable. I would have almost certainly done the same thing if I had read this message even a few short years ago. You are entirely welcome to cease to read my writings.
I understand that what I am putting forth may raise many questions. Feel welcome to ask them and I can try to answer as best I can, if I feel I have something to say that resonates with the Good News of the Gospels. One of the most common responses to these types of messages—and one that I myself put forth for many years—is to immediately point to the most controversial Biblical passages, or the most violent sins of Christians, in order to try to refute Christianity in one fell swoop. I gently invite you to resist the urge to do this.
Understand that the sinfulness of mankind—and the corruptibility of ~all manmade institutions since time immemorial—does not necessitate the conviction that Christianity is untrue. Within Christianity’s own understanding of mankind’s Love-forgetting nature, it is entirely to be expected that Christendom will be imperfect and will not always be able to flawlessly enact the Love of Christ. And, even within Christianity, there is a very long history of honoring the Revelation of Scripture while also acknowledging that Scripture is many-layered, mysterious, enigmatic, not always literal, and not to be treated as a ‘normal book’ that must ‘make sense’ in accordance with the measuring sticks of modernity. It is to be read *within tradition* — tempered and illumined by other guardrails and sources of Heavenly Incandescence within the tradition. There is also a longstanding understanding that the Bible documents a progressive Revelation that was epitomized in the coming of Christ; verses are not meant to be read in isolation, and Christ’s Universal Love is the ultimate standard by which all stories and statements of the Old and New Testament are to be measured.
Holy Scripture is not intended to be a feel-good spiritual lullaby that gives you the warm fuzzies. It is rather a cataclysmic story of a humanity that has completely lost its way due to its own free-will choice. It is a story of the True God of Love and Mercy who gradually makes Himself known through the events of history—in ways that are palatable and intelligible to the people of the time; in ways those people are ready for—culminating in Him incarnating on Earth as a man, out of Pure Love, bridging Heaven and Earth to bring forth the Full And True Revelation of the Nature of God. It is a story of Christ bringing forth this Revelation, despite His knowing that it would create a massive stir as mankind slowly and painfully began re-ordering itself in accordance with the Love that was revealed. It is a story of the Holy Spirit coming in the wake of Christ to continue this Revelation, bestowing further nuances of Truth upon “those with ears to hear,” leading up to our present day.
At present mankind is still existing in a deeply ‘fallen,’ sinful, and non-sane condition. In the 20th century alone, we murdered 100,000,000 of our own brothers and sisters. We regularly inflict brutal torture and death upon ~trillions of innocent animals. Though countless people have ‘turned over a new leaf’ through Christ’s Love and begun to imperfectly learn the Way of Heaven, it is no small task to undo and overturn aeons of karmic momentum. It is a seismic process of fathomless enormity. Despite our now-pervasive ‘high technology,’ we yet remain in a dark age, as an infantile species that largely does not notice how barbaric and foolish it truly is. “You shall know them by their fruits,” and mankind continues to produce disturbing quantities of war, rape, torture, dismemberment, enslavement, child abuse, trafficking, and other unthinkably wicked depravities.
I am not trying to be pessimistic. This simply seems to me to be a sober and clear-eyed view of our collectively stained condition. The blood of millions of innocent children is on our hands. We do everything we can to avoid the crushing sorrow and grief of truly reckoning with these infernal realities we have sewn through our own hardened, hateful hearts. Yet it is only through fully facing and feeling this grief—little by little, with the help of our kin and brethren—that we can even begin to reckon with our true situation, and move toward collective healing. Grief is what Love feels like when our Hearts finally witness what we have done to ourselves and our own children. We shall know the Truth when we weep before it.
Much of modern spirituality attempts to bypass this grief altogether. Understandably, given its gargantuan weight and burden, much of neo-spirituality and neo-advaita tries to find the ‘shortcut to Heaven’—a ‘quantum leap’ into endless bliss with no need for responsibility. The world is often written off as ‘an illusion’ that can be safely ignored while we dissolve into self-satisfied ‘enlightenment.’ This is a draconian farce. That’s not to say that there is no wisdom found in these streams—or that the Joy of God is not available now—but many of these streams put forth cunning half-truths, which are often more insidious than outright lies. At the end of the day, any spirituality which bypasses the world, the children, and the collective grief of humanity, is at best an incomplete partialization, and at worst a demonic hypnosis. “The Truth will set you free,” but first it will shatter your weeping heart. Many people understandably want the former without the latter, but this is a consumerist parody. And I am not at all ‘above’ this! Lord knows I’ve done my fair share of chasing Instant McLightenment®.
Similarly, much of mainstream (secular) culture pursues endless hedonism, seeking a never-ending sequence of ‘highs,’ comforts, distractions, and intoxications that enable one to remain numb to mankind’s true collective condition—and what Love asks of us in light of this condition. Again, this is all very understandable, as it is utterly devastating to stand naked before the terrible truth of what we have done and continue to do to ourselves, our children, our Earth, and the creatures of this world. It is heinous and unconscionable, so we feverishly search for any means of relief, of walling ourselves off, of looking the other way. We are highly skilled at this, yet these strategies never resolve our foundational pain or fill the Christ-shaped void in our hearts. And again, I am not above any of this. Lord knows how many times I have been a weak addict, a hedonist, and a frenetic chaser of cheap highs. Lord knows that while I’ve come a long way and often feel largely free of addictions, I still struggle ongoingly with vices such as the internet, poker, alcohol, meat, gluttony, cannabis, coffee, tobacco, pornography, over-thinking, lust, impure thoughts, anger, and stimulating distractions of all kinds. I am oh-so-human.
Despite all these dark and heavy realities, despite this labyrinth of vices and traps we are all navigating, there is hope.
More than hope, I daresay the Flame Of Faith burns fiercely in my Heart. So many people in our present time are (re-)discovering Christ. And many more are being guided Home to a Divine Love Beyond All Understanding, though they may not currently call this Love by the name of Christ. Countless people are courageously facing, feeling, and alchemizing the immense weight of our collective grief and pain. In some deeply personal moments I wonder if the Mystery of the Second Coming is already upon us, in ways we cannot comprehend. Certainly He is with us, and He seems to be revealing Himself to more and more people in our bizarre epoch.
Who knows what all this portends, or where it is headed. I do not know if this world is meant to be transfigured in its totality, “on Earth as it is in Heaven,” though I sense and pray that this is the case. Whether now or in the hereafter, a Great Transubstantiation is occurring.
“He will come again in Glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory are Yours, now and forever. Amen.”
In Closing
I hope these words have been valuable or reassuring for someone out there.
Truly for me this is the Good News.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
He is Risen.
He has conquered death.
He is Love.
He is the purest Love within your Heart of Hearts.
It is deeply humbling to begin to repent of our sins and acknowledge humanity’s condition of being substantially lost in darkness.
It is heart-shattering to feel the gap between our world and what a world of Love would truly be like.
Yet it is in the honest reckoning with that gap—and in the sincere prayer for the Lord to sanctify and transfigure our being on the deepest levels through His Truth—that we begin to truly bring forth the Heavenly Kingdom of Love.
Yesterday I decided to make a lifelong commitment to restrict the number of alcoholic drinks I can have in any given day to a maximum of five. To be clear, most days I don’t drink at all. It’s not too often that I even have five drinks, but I’ve noticed that if I do have that many, I can easily get swept away into an old binge drinking pattern from my college days. This happened a couple nights ago, and in the pain of the hangover, I decided, “Never again.”
So I made a deep prayerful lifelong commitment to God and Christ, and I felt a deep energetic re-patterning of my being take place over the past day or so. Almost like I could feel my whole future rearranging itself around this one choice. I also experienced visions of demons and devils in subtle realms, as well as a vision of Jesus and an ultra-luminous white Cross shining forth and dispelling demons.
There is a real spiritual war taking place on this plane of existence, and our very bodies, hearts, and minds are the battleground. The prayerfully spoken name of Jesus Christ confers deep protection. I wear a cross from Vatican City around my neck almost continuously.
Be well out there, my friends.
As Remi Delaune of Kumankaya once told me…
“Freedom is the fruit of Love.”
Amen.
Love,Jordan
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