Blog entry by Lars Muhl from 4 December 2015
This article has been under way for a long time. In reality, it is the result of an entire life’s quest for a higher purpose in life. Since the first tentative step on my spiritual path, I have learned that it’s the unconscious or conscious choice that determines where you end up in life. Knowing that you actually have a choice is not obvious to all. Many let themselves be controlled by an immediate impulse towards one thing or the other. The impulse may become a habit, a pure operational management, most of the time linked to the basic human fear of not being able to survive, of not being loved, and to the fear of loneliness and rejection. Hence the creation of many human disorders, for example the inferiority complex, whose partner always is an ubiquitous megalomania; or the greed which does not mean that there is enough of anything for anyone, and therefore feels it is within its rights to gather a lot of material goods around itself, disproportionately, in an attempt to satisfy the need for permanent material security. The problem is that such security does not exist. The old adage: that no one is able to take their possessions with them when you leave here appears to have been forgotten by most. But since no one believes in anything any longer, it’s the money, material goods and social status, which is worshipped as a God. However, this is a God not able to satisfy his worshippers, in the long run. Because no matter how many kitchens, cars, travels, partners or money you realize, at some point a large and desert-like emptiness inevitably occurs, and you see that life is without real substance.
This also applies to man’s insatiable need for contemporary confirmation and aspiration for fame, which is also derived from the above mentioned existential anxiety. Just like Caesar, who in the Forum in the ancient city of Rome decided life and death with a single motion of the hand, the facebook-thumbs upturned likes and ditto dislikes have become contemporary primitive measurements of whether we are alive or dead, if we are good enough or not. Such confirmation is required only for those who are not well-balanced, or for those who have lost faith in a higher spiritual intelligence behind all creation. For how can you believe in a God that allows a world of hunger, war and evil?
And then we are back to square one: we have forgotten that it is through our choices that we create life, forgotten that every word we say, every action we take results in consequences, here and there, appropriate or not; consequences that always lead back to ourselves.
It is therefore imperative that we individually realize this fact and take responsibility for our actions. Until we understand this, we are just kindergarten kids, who may well be charming and irresistible, but basically unable to solve the problems that we produce in an ongoing steady stream.
In order to combat the stress that a life in the modern ratrace causes, mental meditation techniques from the East have been adopted, including mindfulness, which has released a veritable wave of coaches and lifestyle experts. This has finally provoked a counter-wave, initiated by professor of psychology, Svend Brinkmann, who rightly points out the value of one being able to take root and to take responsibility for oneself, based on the problems you are facing. Unfortunately, Svend Brinkmann also says that all the talk about you having to find the answers to your problems within is wrong, and suddenly we’re back to the status quo – where we were before all the mindfulness-talk. Yeshua’s words: ‘Remember, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you!’, have been completely forgotten and disregarded.
This is the problem, as I see it: there is a big difference between talking about mindfulness and contemplation, and actually becoming absorbed in it. There is a superficial, mental meditation whose sole purpose is to calm the mind for a while, though without reaching the soul essence that mystics have worked with and described for centuries. Words are grateful in that context. Anyone can proclaim whatever; you can throw around empty words and phrases about love and light, be standing upside down and eat healthily, but it brings nothing but temporary redemption, particularly because one believes that everything can be bought and sold and that one is not required to exert oneself very much in order to reach the inner depths – which is in fact the answer to EVERYTHING in a person’s life. A superficial attitude can only give a superficial result. The inner life is an investment, requiring the whole human being. It cannot be a quick fix, at a weekend course, no matter how expensive it is, or how many clichés having been used to sell it.
Is the answer to our troubles, however, really spirituality and religion? Isn’t religion something about one’s faith that pleads to one’s God, while other beliefs swear to other gods, and in the process are in a constant battle with each other about which god is the greatest?
Many people in the Western world swagger about, not believing in anything at all, being atheists. They consider themselves to be educated people who are above any kind of religious superstition. It’s cleverly being forgotten, that instead of the intangible God that religions argue about, faith has been thrown onto the so-called exact sciences, on the material, the dream of infinite richness, the FC Barcelona, on a political party, a new car or partner, or whatever you crave, and which the world is so full of.
Everything that cannot be measured and weighed simply does not exist. And even atheists try to harness physicist Albert Einstein to their views, forgetting that Einstein himself believed: that the only thing science is able to prove is that it cannot prove anything at all. On another occasion he said: ‘The whole world bows before me; but I bow before the Master Peter Deunov’.
Peter Deunov?
Yes, not many people know of him, but if Einstein acknowledged him, one should think that he was something very special? So he was, that Peter Deunov!
Peter Deunov was a Bulgarian mystic, musician and prophet who lived from 1864 to 1944. His entire life is a shining example of how we as humans have the ability to develop and unfold a spiritual potential, with which we are all equipped, but which in most people, lies dormant. Peter Deunov was not a Christian in the traditional sense, but he referred to the esoteric Yeshua, again and again, as an example to follow. He knew that all of us, exactly as Yeshua says in the New Testament, bear God’s forces in us, and that the goal of our spiritual endeavours, is that, sooner or later, this power needs to be unfolded. Countless are the reports of the miraculous cures he provoked, and the clairvoyance he demonstrated. It is not clear whether Einstein actually met Peter Deunov, but he did know the mystic’s philosophy, and was inspired by his spiritual work. (You can find out more about his work in the recent book Prophet for our Times, edited by David Lorimer.
Peter Deunov compared man to a gemstone, who, through the trials of life and tribulations, is slowly but surely worked on until it emerges as a sparkling diamond, reflecting God’s light and perfectly pure. It may be comforting to know that, when you set out for the spiritual path. If one believes that one’s hardship thereby will cease, one must think again. In many ways, it is only then that one’s problems really set in. Without challenges and adversity, man will stagnate.
I witnessed that when, after many years of searching and studying spiritual traditions, I was struck down, from one day to the next by an illness that no one was able to diagnose. Specifically, this meant that for three years I was bedridden for longer and longer periods of time.
While I was ill on the island of Samsø, I immersed myself as deeply as possible in the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions. This involved a sustained practice of the heart prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ combined with a consciously generated depth of breathing. At one point, however, I was so desperate in my despair of not being able to rise from my sickbed that I played with the idea of becoming a monk at Mount Athos in Greece. There for the last thousand years monks have led a monastic life whose primary purpose is, through sustained Heart Prayer to the world, to lift humanity up and out of the material morass it has lost itself in. I had read an article in a book about the tradition concerning a hermit monk Father Paisos, who reportedly performed the most incredible healings and miracles. I was sure he could help me.
But that was not how it was going to be. Besides, Father Paisos had died some years before I had read about him.
Instead, I became connected with the seer Calle de Montségur, who brought me back to life, miraculously, as described in my book The O Manuscript. But this breakthrough was also the subject of a choice.
During my time in the sickbed, I struggled not only with the undiagnosable disease, but also with myself and God. I cannot put a figure on how many times I’ve invoked God, hoping to get answers as to exactly why I was going through this suffering; I earnestly tried to reach agreements with God, in which I solemnly promised to be the best boy, on Earth, ever, if only I could be let off my troubles. But no matter how much I promised and cried, no answer came to my prayers.
Nothing happened until the day that a completely new and unexpected attitude kind of slid down on me, from above. I remember it, feeling as if a voice inside me, said, ‘If you have to lie here anyway, feeling more pain than it’s possible to put into words, then you might as well take on the pain of all the people, all the suffering in the world’. And exactly at that moment, I understood that it wasn’t just one option among many, but an ultimatum, and that if I didn’t accept the offer I wouldn’t get any more opportunities. Also, I was inexplicably aware that my yes was not only a word or a sound, but a change in attitude that demanded my whole being and that had to be carried by a completely true and devoted belief and consciousness. It was all-in, or nothing at all. After my yes, the pain left me, instantly. The seemingly, senseless suffering suddenly made sense. The following week, I got in touch with the seer Calle de Montségur. It felt like an option that was exclusively determined by my change of attitude. Then, things really got moving.
It was a spring day in 1998, immediately after The Seer had got me out of the bed I had more or less been tied to for three years. I was in Copenhagen to attend a board meeting of the composer and songwriter association DJBFA, and stayed at Hotel Guldsmeden, in Vesterbrogade. That morning, I woke up with a longing that I can only explain as being, a longing for God. So I decided to attend the morning Mass in the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus Church (Jesu Hjerte Kirke), located in Stenogade, only a few minutes walk from the hotel.
When I entered the church, I saw a Vietnamese woman taking a wafer from the dish laid out for those wishing to participate in the sacrament – she put it in the bowl for the priest to see how many participants of the sacrament there were needing service. I walked past it and sat in the back row, sliding into a meditative state.
A quarter of an hour later, the priest came in and began the service. There were about 30 to 40 of us that morning, and I remember sitting there feeling annoyed over the sound of the priest’s chanting voice, possibly because the loudspeakers sounded too sharp and importunate.
For how long this was going on, exactly, I do not know, but suddenly I felt a heavy hand, laying on my right shoulder. For a split second, I sat there, as if paralyzed. It is impossible to explain with words, but there was no doubt that this was the most important moment of my life. It was like a blazing fire, or lightning that pierced my heart, and in a moment it set me outside time and space. When I was finally able to turn, I found only an empty church behind me. Still, I was surrounded by an indescribable immediate presence. It was Him. Of this there was no doubt:
Yeshua.
And then they came. Tears. As blood dripping from an exposed, torn heart. As a flood, pulverizing the last dike of stubborn limitation of a whole life. I sobbed loudly, though, leaning forward with my face hidden in my hands, I tried in to prevent interrupting the service.
The next thing I remember was that I was in a line of people about to receive the sacrament. But I had not taken a wafer from the dish and put it in the bowl of the chosen. In the same instant, I made eye contact with the priest who, almost as if in slow motion, took a wafer, lifted it up, while he divided it into two, as if to show me that now, there was also one for me.
I left the church in a glorified, translated state with a feeling of being cleansed at a deeper level. For a long time I felt the after-effects of Yeshua’s hand on my right shoulder. With time, I understood that he had put a burden on me, an obligation to act upon the principles of the Holy Spirit, and through performing the sacrament that morning, I had agreed and vowed to take the burden and obligation on me.
On another occasion, a few years later, another event occurred which is in some way connected to my meeting with Yeshua.
It was an afternoon in the summer, July 22, 2002, to be precise, while I was in the process of writing my Book The Magdalene. Outside, the weather was mild and nice and I decided to take a break from writing and went for a walk. I found myself on Ryesgade outside the Catholic Church at St. Canute’s Square, in Aarhus. It was open and I got the encouragement to go inside. The chairs in the church were arranged in a circle, and there an elderly couple and a young woman sat to one side, as the evening Mass was soon to be held. I decided to join them and sat myself, in the opposite side of the circle, as the only person.
Then the priest came in, turned directly towards me, proclaiming: ‘Today it is Mary Magdalene’s day’, after which, he turned to the other participants and continued the service, unnoticed.
For me this event was a confirmation that my Studies of Mary Magdalene, which had been going on since 1988, had reached a conclusion for the present, so I went home and completed the manuscript, which I didn’t know head or tail of at the time.
Seen in a wider perspective, the two events relate to what had my full attention since my return to life in 1998: Jesus and Mary Magdalene, also called Yeshua the Nazarene (Nazari = The Initiated) and Mariam Magdalene (Magdal = Exalted). These two archetypes both, and especially together, symbolize the first new man and the first new woman. This is something we cannot find in Christianity, which over a period of seventeen hundred years, has almost systematically attempted to make Yeshua’s love message into a purely intellectual mental project. This is solely because no one from the theological party wanted to recognize Yeshua’s partner, Maria Magdalene’s right and equal place at his side, and refused to recognize Yeshua’s right origin and true purpose. The result is a complete alienation from a Christian tradition, called our own, but which most cultural-Christians out of pure fear of contact choose to rather ignore or completely turn the back on; along with a theological faculty which purely practical, it has trained a large number of non-believers, atheist priests, to serve the ever-shrinking congregation. And there precisely is the problem of time and humanity: it has cut itself off from its spiritual superstructure.
All this and much more I have tried to compensate for in my books The O Manuscript and The Law of Light.