Questions

I found nothing in the ministry of the protestant denomination I was raised in to be of comfort. There were too many inconsistencies and contradictions. Too many questions answered by the need for blind faith. Why would Jesus present a message no one could grasp or only partially understand? Neither could I buy the idea of everyone except Jesus being a hopeless sinner. If this was the case, what was the point of any saint coming to Earth and wasting their time trying to save us? So what if He could forgive our sins by opening your heart to Him or at confession? As soon as you walk out into the sinful world again you are consumed once more.

And exactly what is sin anyway? Is it my body that sins or my soul? How can I prepare myself for heaven when I don’t know what part of me is going there? How could anyone “Love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, soul and mind” if they don’t know what Love, the soul and the mind are? How does Love the Lord, compute with sermons about fearing God? How do you Love a God you are supposed to be scared to death of? Was this the real message of Jesus? I wanted a belief that made sense; with a message that was consistent not a faith where there was nothing but questions.

When I was around 23 years old I became confined to bed by a rather debilitating disease. To fill the time, I decided to read the Bible all the way through. After completing this reading I was more confused as ever. I hadn’t received any inspirations that would clarify the basic questions that haunted me. So, I said a very firm prayer to Jesus. It appeared to me that the only way I was going to understand the message was to ask Him to come to me directly and explain it. So, I demanded that He do this and gave up pretty much completely on the Christian faith while waiting for His reply.

In the mean time I began a quest for the truth that would end up immersing me in the traditions of the east. After first reading numerous books on various faiths I decided to seek out masters who could perform the same kind of miracles Jesus did. In my travels I witnessed numerous amazing demonstrations of personal power which confirmed my belief that at least some of the things Jesus did were an example of what each of us has the capacity to do at some level as well.

Another revelation was that even though these masters were all affiliated with a different religious base, for the most part they had absolutely no prejudice against those who pursued any other faith. I believe this was because they had all come to the realization that there was only one Father and all paths eventually lead to Him. Perhaps the most powerful yogi I met was Sai Baba who would continually say that the only difference between him and anyone else was his ability to “see” the divine.

Through all of these experiences and even in the process of finding my own personal power there was again something lacking. It seemed as though all of these masters had fallen victim to the use of personal power. By this I mean that although acknowledging a higher power, there was no demonstration of that higher power. For instance, the Hindus speak of the ultimate forms of god as being Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. The current Messiah is Krishna. Yet none of these masters seemed to be able to summon these forms for me to “see”.

My first teacher was a follower of Shiva. He was also very powerful in that form. It is said that this path which is tantric based is the fastest way to God. Once again however, I found it peculiar that although chanting to Shiva a lot, I never saw Shiva while I was with him. In fact, he seemed to believe that all forms of God were actually a creation of man. That these forms were originally generated by masters who could manifest something that they called “God” but in reality, these forms were manifested by their personal power.