Today, we begin reading NTI Mark. If you haven’t read NTI before, you may notice a change of tone in NTI Mark. NTI Mark is a story, a fictional story. It is not meant to be the factual correction regarding the life of Jesus. Some people have told me that they think this story “is what really happened.” They are making that up and believing their own imaginations.

This story was written because it provides symbols that are more helpful than some of the confusing symbols in the Bible. Our role as reader is to derive the meaning of symbols that are helpful to us, and then live from the example provided by those symbols. In this way, the Jesus of NTI is our role model.

NTI Mark, Chapter 1 is the beginning of the story. Like any beginning, it lays out the details needed to begin the story. Some of the details regarding our role model, Jesus, are:

• Jesus has decided on the purpose for his mortal existence. It is truth realization. This purpose is the leading factor in his life.

• Jesus knows that God is found within, so his focus is within, which includes focus on spontaneous guidance. Jesus lives a surrendered life. He is led. He does not make decisions for himself.

• Jesus went through a purification process during the 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. This left him with a lot of clarity, inner confidence and a sense of peace, but his journey is not over. In NTI Mark, we will observe Jesus as he walks the path from the initial purification to final awakening.

• Jesus lives from kindness and love. He is the servant of everyone he meets and the servant of Spirit within. Through service, which is not self-will, Jesus of NTI will follow spontaneous guidance to the end of the sense of self.

NTI Mark, Chapter 1 opens with this statement:

Before truth can dawn, there is work that must be done. This work must be done in faith and out of a desire for truth.

That opening statement is our guidance as we begin reading the story of Jesus of NTI. Jesus of NTI is our role model. Watch him, and you will know what to do. Model yourself after him, and you are doing the “work that must be done.”

Note: You will also learn from the apostles and other characters in the story.

Thoughts of Awakening #29

NTI Matthew closes with a discussion about doubt. We have doubt, because we have memory. Our brain stores perceptions from this lifetime as memory. With each memory stored, this lifetime seems more and more to be reality.

Doubt comes from the belief that this lifetime as this body-mind-personality is reality. However, this lifetime as this body-mind-personality is not reality. There is so much more to reality than this! If we had even an inkling of an idea how much more there is than our limited experience, we would put no value in our perceptions or memory at all.

Recently, in a teaching from I Am That, I shared about an experience I had. That experience is only one example of something that is beyond our perception and completely denied by our memory. To hear that story, advance this audio to 53:45, and begin listening there. The audio from that point to the end is only a little over 6 minutes long.

In order to progress on the spiritual path, we need faith. Faith is the antidote to doubt. With faith that there is more than the lifetime of perceptions that our memory points to, we apply ourselves to truth realization. Without faith, there is nothing to pull us forward. Without faith, we believe the limited, biased, self-centered memory, and we think it is omniscience.

Thoughts of Awakening #28

Yesterday we saw that the false self is not a being. It is an activity. Today’s reading looks at one activity that upholds the false self, the activity of guilt.

Here is a summary of the cycle of guilt:

A baby is born. The baby is pure unconditioned awareness. As the baby grows older, it begins to crawl. Typically, once a baby becomes mobile, it begins to reach for things or do things that the caretaker does not approve of. Although a caretaker may sometimes say “no” to the baby with a kind voice, invariably the caretaker has days when she is caught up in her own mental concerns, and her tone of voice is not kind. The baby feels the vibration of the caretaker’s voice, and begins to develop the idea, “I am bad.”

As the baby grows into a child and then into an adult, this idea, “I am bad,” is reinforced by other caretakers, by teachers and by other children. The child’s religious training may even reinforce this idea. Soon the idea is fully developed in the brain, and it replays in the mind over and over, continually reinforcing itself again and again. However, this idea is unbearable. One cannot exist with any sense of peace, happiness or well being if he fully experiences the self-hatred that is caused by the “I am bad” thought. So, the child learns to see the “I am bad” thought outside of himself. He sees other children as bad. He may see the family pet as bad. By the time he’s reached adulthood, he has learned to see guilt and sin in many others, whom he perceives as separate from him. This alleviates his own feeling of guilt and self-hatred, and he is able to bear the belief, “I am bad.”

This is a sad story, because the “I am bad” belief is learned mental activity only. The original caretaker, suffering from the belief, passed it on to the baby. Others who believed it, reinforced it. Yet, there was never any truth to it at all.

If you can’t see that guilt is merely mental activity and not fact, practice the awareness-watching-awareness exercise from yesterday’s tip again. It doesn’t matter what the body does or how strong the feeling of guilt is, the fact remains that we are pure awareness itself, and pure awareness is completely unaffected, always only itself.

We cannot let go of awareness, because it is what we are, but we can let go of mental activity, because it isn’t what we are. That means you can let go of the “I am bad” belief. The “I am bad” belief is the root of many other false ideas. Let go of that one idea, and you will feel significantly freer than you did before.

I would also like to comment on another teaching from today’s reading. The last paragraph of the reading says:

You who feel safe within the illusion of form fear death. But there is a fear that is greater than your fear of death. It is your fear of Life. It is your fear of Self. It is your fear of truth. It is this fear that you protect, hidden beneath your fear of death, by accepting death as your final reward.

How do we live out our fear of truth? We do not give all of our time and effort to truth realization. We may give some time and effort to truth realization, but we don’t give all. Even though we know this body-personality-mind is mortal, we prefer to ignore that fact, waste time and die than dedicate ourselves to truth realization.

Please read Matthew 27, verse 38 to the end from the Bible before reading its interpretation in NTI.

Thoughts of Awakening #27

Come join and be with us for an inspiring hour of sharing where the recent participants from the Letting Go of Fear retreat will share about their experience, insights, breakthroughs, and how being at the Letting Go of Fear retreat has enhanced their Awakening to Truth. Join us at 7 pm ET/5 pm MT for this  discussion facilitated by Anne Blanchard.