What if the spiritual texts we grew up with only told part of the story?

In this episode, Jeff and Michael explore the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library—a collection of ancient, long-buried texts that include radically different teachings attributed to Jesus, including the enigmatic Gospel of Thomas. These writings challenge many assumptions of mainstream Christianity and open a doorway into a spirituality centered on inner knowing, direct experience, and the integration of what is within and what is without. Then Jeff shares a recent dream that unexpectedly mirrors the themes of the Gospel of Thomas, leading into a conversation about what it means to know yourself—and how that knowing might be the very key to transformation.

Episode Highlights [00:02:45] Discovering the Nag Hammadi Library

• Michael introduces the strange and mysterious discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945 Egypt—and how they ended up in Carl Jung's hands.

[00:16:48] The Inner and the Outer

• Jeff and Michael begin unpacking a core theme of the Gospel of Thomas: that the Kingdom is both within and beyond us. They explore how this insight contrasts with—and deepens—mainstream Christianity.

[00:28:45] Suppression, Not Survival

• A historical dive into how the Gnostic tradition wasn't forgotten or lost—it was actively suppressed. What might Christianity have become if these texts had remained in circulation?

[00:33:35] Spooky Timing & the Modern World

• The Nag Hammadi texts reemerge into history just months after Hiroshima, alongside the rise of quantum physics and the first reported UFOs. Coincidence—or synchronicity?

[00:43:33] A Dream of Inner Revelation

• Jeff shares a powerful dream that surfaced personal and symbolic dimensions of integration, identity, and coming to know oneself.

[00:50:10] Interpreting the Dream & Returning to the Gospel

• The conversation turns toward Jung, MBTI types, and the deep need for balance between the inner world and the outer persona. Sayings from Thomas come alive as personal spiritual instruction.

[01:07:01] Final Reflections

• Michael brings the episode to a close by linking the Nag Hammadi Library's reappearance to a deeper cultural and spiritual reckoning still unfolding today.

Two Special Events—Join Us!

Event #1: Live AMA (Ask Me Anything)

Thursday, June 12th at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET

Join us live on Zoom for a laid-back Q&A session. Ask Michael, me, or both of us anything—about the podcast, spirituality, your own journey, or whatever's on your heart.

RSVP by emailing us at [email protected].

Can't make it? Email us your question by Wednesday, June 11th, and we might include it when we release the AMA as an episode later in June.

Event #2: Gnostic Town Hall

Thursday, July 10th at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET

This is your time to share. We want to hear your stories, experiences, and spiritual desires. What are you seeking? What does authentic spiritual practice mean to you?

RSVP the same way: [email protected].

This is just the beginning—we hope to see you soon.

— Jeff & Michael

Continue the Conversation

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What if a long-dead painter could reach across time to guide your spiritual awakening? In this episode, Jeff shares the astonishing true story of how George Inness—a 19th-century landscape artist and mystic—emerged as a living spirit guide in his life. From a chance encounter at a museum to a series of visionary dreams filled with barns, handprints, and transfigured light-beings, Jeff and Michael explore how spirit invites us to see beyond appearances, surrender our over-love of knowledge, and walk the ancient, living path of direct experience. This is an episode about listening deeply, following the signs, and allowing Spirit to lead the way.

Episode Highlights [00:00:47] Introduction: Bringing Gnostic Texts into Real Life

• Jeff reflects on the show's evolution toward the personal and devotional, emphasizing the need to live these spiritual insights rather than just study them.

[00:03:05] A Spirit Encounter at the Montclair Art Museum

• Jeff shares the powerful experience of being arrested by George Inness' words—"Knowledge must bow to spirit"—and the unfolding realization that Inness had something vital to teach him.

[00:08:11] Bypassing the Theopoetic Middlemen

• Jeff critiques the academic appropriation of theopoetics and makes the case for going straight to the poets and artists themselves—those who embody mystery, not just define it.

[00:14:31] Direct Experience and the Mission of Art

• Jeff reads Inness's reflections on memory, beauty, and art's mission to reveal the unseen—sparking connections to spiritual practice and preaching.

[00:19:43] Dream One: Entering the Haunted Barn

• Jeff recounts a vivid dream where a mysterious three-fingered hand points to a dark doorway and an optical device, leading to a transformation.

[00:27:18] Dream Analysis: The Role of Vision and Witnessing

• Jeff and Michael explore the symbolism of the optical device, the three-fingered hand, and the barn owner's transfiguration—uncovering profound insights about spiritual sight and bearing witness to change.

[00:39:59] Deeper Symbolism: The Barn, the Handprints, and the Call to Ministry

• Jeff recalls that the summer he first heard his call to ministry, he was living in a barn—and left his handprint on its wall. The dream becomes a bridge across time, connecting his present awakening with his spiritual origins.

[00:43:53] Confirming the Connection: Finding George Inness' Barn

• Jeff shares the culmination of his search for George Inness' physical traces—finding the land where Inness's farmhouse and barn once stood, affirming the deep personal connection to his spirit guide.

Connect

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What if waking up isn't a single breakthrough moment—but a layered, looping journey through insight, fear, wonder, and mystery? In this episode, we explore the complex terrain of spiritual awakening through dreams, false awakenings, mystical encounters, and moments of terrifying clarity. From Michael's lucid Spirit Train dream to Jeff's powerful visitation from a fierce divine feminine presence, we ask: What does it really mean to wake up—is it a one time affair or is it a journey, a process?

We dig into the paradoxes of awakening: how it can feel ecstatic or annihilating, grounding or destabilizing—and how most of us live in the space between. Along the way, we talk about Kundalini energy, inflation, ontological shock, the fear of God, and the danger of mistaking glimpses of the Real for the whole story.

This episode is about learning to live with grace and curiosity in the middle ground—where waking up is not an arrival, but a way of being.

Episode Highlights

[00:00:49] Waking Up on the Spirit Train

• To get us going, we review Michael's "Spirit Train" dream and the multiple instances of "waking up" within it? The lines between dreaming, waking, illusion, and reality are appropriately blurred. Is waking up a one-time affair or does it transition us between states?

[00:06:57] Red Goddess Kundalini

• Jeff recounts a dream in which he met a goddess who tried to awaken and/or annihilate him and he had to run like hell to save himself. Do we really want the awakening we think we want? Do we really know what it will cost us?

[00:15:49] Terror and Illumination

• Is waking up always "good?" When it's "bad," is that always bad? Once again we trace the line that runs at once both through terror and illumination.

[00:27:08] Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God Docuseries Discussion

• Can waking up lead to trouble in your life? We discuss the docuseries Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God which you can watch on Max.

[00:42:02] The Profound Middle Ground

• Can we both awake and embedded in the dream at the same time? In that in-between what might be possible?

[00:52:07] The Sea of Consciousness

• Endeavoring to treat everything with dignity, respect, and love in late-stage matter deconstruction.

[01:01:07] The Perception of the Heart and Loving the Middle Ground

• Do we wake up in the head? Or in the heart?

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Episode Artwork: Asleep, Awake by Helen Armstrong

What happens when the walls of traditional religion crumble, and all that's left is raw, unfiltered awe? In this episode we sit down with John Hamilton—UCC minister, musician, and author of the excellent theological memoir Honest to God. Guided by the book, the three of us dive into the chaos and beauty of spiritual awakening in an era of collapsing institutions.

John Hamilton was born into a spirited Irish-American family of singers and storytellers. Breaking with his strict Catholic upbringing, he embarked on a career in music that immersed him in the colorful but dangerous world of drugs, alcohol, and rock clubs. A debilitating onset of panic disorder abruptly halted his musical pursuits, propelling him into the business world where he thrived as a creative director in advertising. Despite professional success, Hamilton's persistent quest for the transcendent led him to seminary and, eventually, to two decades of parish work as a pastor. His most recent book, Honest To God, chronicles the collapse of mainstream Christianity, his loss of connection to the transcendent and his walk into the wilderness to search for it again. He maintains an active presence on Substack, has 25,000 followers on Spotify, and another book, "The Weight of Snow" in the works for 2026.

If you've ever felt the holy ground shake beneath your feet or wondered how to find meaning when the old gods fall, this conversation is for you.

Episode Highlights [00:04:50] Rock & Roll—The Hot Wire to God

• A conversation on music and spirit. If you're a rock musician, why be a minister at all?

[00:12:35] Awe

• A reading from the book gets into one of the major themes of the book—awe, the relationship of one's seminary training to a one's experience of awe, John's experience of staring into the abyss during his wife's medial emergency, and the negative or apophatic approach to God.

[00:26:15] Nontheism

• Another reading from the book gets us into a discussion of John's identity as a nontheist (as opposed to an atheist), God's identity and nature, prayer, miracles, and direct spiritual experience.

[00:41:56] The Collapse of Mainstream Christianity

• We talk about John's experience closing churches, the worldview collapse the accompanies the collapse of the Church, a reading from the book about John's earliest memory (of a church burning down), and what could or should replace the loss of churches.

[01:02:20] Searching for a God We Will Never Find

• A final, triumphant reading captures the heart of the book and leads us into a concluding discussion of why Jeff left his last church position in September 2024.

Get the Book

Continue the Conversation

What did you think about this conversation? Tell us at [email protected] or reach out at: https://www.gospelofdirectexperience.com/#contact.

What happens when you call on Jesus in an ancient Vedic fire ritual? Will he show up? How? In this episode, Michael shares his experience with Homa, a Vedic fire ceremony, and what happened when he decided to dedicate it to Jesus. The result was an unfolding series of synchronicities—stretching across years, continents, and eventually even into the Spirit Train dream—culminating in a moment of undeniable presence. Meanwhile, we explore the Chapel Perilous, the threshold between belief and madness, where meaning breaks through in ways that can't be ignored.

We briefly summarize the Spirit Train dream at the top of the episode, but if you haven't listened to it yet, you might want to start two episodes back: All Aboard the Spirit Train

This is one of the most powerful stories we've told yet. Join us as we wrestle with what it means to see, to trust, and to step into the fire.

Read the time-stamped Episod Highlights, get recomendations on where to stay in Italy, and read the Works Cited in the full show notes on the website. While you're there:

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• Read the latest blog post: Waking Up in the Coffin: A Calvinist Childhood and the Imagination for Evil

What if everything we've been taught to believe about reality is wrong? What if we're not just living in the world, but dreaming it—and the dream is sick? In this episode of the Gospel of Direct Experience, we welcome Paul Levy, a writer, mystic, and self-described "wounded healer," who has spent decades exposing the insidious mind-virus known as Watiko and more recently has been describing the spiritual side of the revelations of quantum physics. We dive into his own initiation—his ecstatic spiritual awakening that landed him in a psychiatric hospital—before unpacking the terrifying and liberating realization that reality itself is more fluid, responsive, and alive than we've been led to believe.

Where to find Paul:

https://www.awakeninthedream.com/

Read Paul's full bio and the time-stamped episode highlights in the show notes on the website. While you're there:

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• Read the latest blog post: 5 Essential Resources for Exploring the Dreamworld

What if your anxieties weren't obstacles but doorways? What if your dreams aren't nonsense, but portals to deeper wisdom, hidden truths, and paths yet unseen? What if the very fears that keep you up at night are the same forces trying to wake you up? In this episode Michael recounts a dream of cosmic proportions—one that begins in the disorienting corridors of an ever-shifting church and ends aboard a song-filled dragon train soaring into the multiverse. Along the way, we wrestle with discernment, anxiety, and the unsettling realization that reality itself may be more dreamlike than we assume.

Time-stamped Episode Highlights and a Works Cited in the show notes on the website. While you're there:

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• Read the latest blog post: Star Wars: Your First Step into a Larger World

Why do Star Wars, Harry Potter, and other sci-fi/fantasy stories resonate so deeply with us? What do they reveal about power, identity, and spirituality? In this episode of we sit down with historian and educator AJ Musewe to explore the power of myth, the narratives we inherit, and how reclaiming lost stories shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world.

From the parallels between Anakin Skywalker and Harry Potter to the hidden histories of the Civil Rights movement, this conversation dives into how fantasy, sci-fi, and real-life struggles intersect in our search for meaning.

Time-stamped Episode Highlights in the show notes on the website. While you're there:

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• Read the latest blog post: A Poem for Theosis: We Awaken in Christ's Body

About Our Guest:

AJ Musewe is a passionate community educator deeply dedicated to preserving unvarnished Black history and culture. Specializing in designing and managing interactive educational programs, AJ has a profound knack for creating immersive experiences that connect the dots between the past and present. Her role as the founder of With Reverence Co-op exemplifies her innovative approach, offering dynamic educational sessions that delve into sustainable actions and foster community connections through storytelling and historical tours. These sessions often focus on Black culture and heritage, underscoring AJ's commitment to celebrating and understanding the profound contributions of Black communities.

AJ honed her educational strategies by focusing on education training programs and curricula to support neurodiverse and neurotypical learners, making history accessible and relevant. AJ's extensive background also includes roles in equity consulting and community building, where she has facilitated critical discussions and engagements that bridge gaps in understanding and foster a collective commitment to justice and inclusivity. With her engaging manner and deep expertise, AJ continues to inspire and educate communities, guiding them toward a more enlightened and empathetic understanding of historical contexts and their impact on contemporary society, especially within Black communities.

Where to find AJ:

Papers For My Acres—a narrative podcast about history, culture, and the shared human experiences of the Black diaspora.

IG: @Ajandthebeanies

Website: withreverence.org

Is the self an illusion—or something real and necessary? If we must die before we die, what is it that actually dies? In this follow-up to Dying Before You Die, hosts Michael Ellick and Jeff Mansfield wrestle with the paradox of selfhood, consciousness, and crucifixion. Does awakening mean dissolving the ego, or is there something essential about our individuality? How did Jesus navigate this mystery, and what does it mean for us? From childhood mystical experiences to the Church's to the potentially heretical path of theosis, we explore what it means to let go—and what remains when we do.

Time-stamped Episode Highlights and Works Cited in the show notes on the website. While you're there:

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  • Ten Movies like The Wicker Man: Ego Death, Conflict, and the Transformation of Identity
  • John Muir in the Wind Storm: How Science, Nature, Mysticism, Storytelling, and the Self Intertwined in Yosemite

Have you ever felt like every path you turn down leads to hell? In this episode, we explore the idea of dying before you die, a concept central to many of the world's religions and mystery traditions. Is it possible to face the terror of our own fragility and emerge transformed? What if the self you cling to is the very thing keeping you from true life? Join us as we face down Death with stories, poetry, and a dream about battling a creature that refuses to die.

Time-stamped Episode Highlights and Works Cited in the show notes on the website. While you're there:

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• Read the latest blog post: 6 Must-Watch Documentaries About UFOs, Paranormal Encounters, and Non-Human Intelligences