The True Origins of Jesus: Myth, History & Christ Consciousness

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Episode 288 • 16th January 2023 • Spirit Sherpa ~ Spiritual Growth for Spiritual Entrepreneurs • Kelle Sparta | Spiritual Coach and Business Coach

Hey, y'all. I'm Jules. Welcome back to another episode of Spirit Sherpa, the show that helps and encourages you on your journey to unlock your magic mojo. With me, as always, is the spirit doctor, Kelle Sparta. Hey, Kelle. How's it going? Hey, Jules. I think you got my rain.

I did, and I appreciate it. The garden's loving it right now. We, we had, uh- Been a little on the dry side. Yeah. We, we've had 260 inches of rain here in Boquete, Panama this year. Wow. Uh, and, and the year's not even over yet. And so we're coming into the dry season, and I haven't seen rain in a few days, you know, which is unusual here.

So, uh, I was going, "Well, where'd it go?" And clearly it went to visit you. Yeah. It's, it's crazy because they're ev- they have already announced most of the schools in Louisiana are shut down tomorrow ahead of the severe weather coming in. Yeah. Yeah. So we're used to that during hurricane season, but now it's past hurricane season pretty much, and, you know, w- it should be- Climate change

okay now, but- ... you know, you know, just random storm coming through. What the heck? Keep, uh, keeping your toes- Little details. Little details. Yeah. Small, small detail. So, yeah. So. But we're, we've, we've got some cool stuff going on today, so I'm gonna sort of cut our chit-chat- Yes, we do ... a little short because we have not one, but two guests today, and one of them is one of my favorite people, uh, and that's Calum Holland.

And he wrote The Secret Behind The Alchemist, and y- we've, we've had him on the show a couple of times in the last few years. And, uh, you know, as always, we, we end up going long anytime he's on the show because he's just too interesting, and we have too much fun. And I haven't talked to him in freaking forever because I moved, so I'm like, "Brother, where have you been?"

And so yeah, Calum's back. He is an, an actual sorcerer and alchemist, and so he's got this amazing book that he is, uh, touting that's not even his. It's, it's an, somebody else's book, and, uh, it's, it's, it's really, really interesting, and I'm gonna let him tell you about it. Welcome, Calum. Hi, Kelle. Hi, Jules. Us

Thanks for having me back. It has been way too long. Yes. But then So tell us all about- People move ... Well, first off, introduce the, the person you've brought with you because I wanna make sure we, we get him in so he can talk, too. Yes. I'm, I'm, I'm thrilled to, to also introduce Dean Wilkinson, um, who's come, come in, um, on this book with me.

Um, Dean heads up a, a business called, um, Epoch Work, which I'll let him explain. But, um, De- Dean's a, a particularly, um, soul brother of mine, and you'll u- you'll understand as we begin to talk about the book because, um, what I discovered was that, um, there's a massive cultural divide called the Atlantic between The, the state of religion in, in Britain and the state of religion in certain parts of the USA.

And the reason I wanted this book to, to be republished, and I'll explain, uh, why it's being republished, is because I felt it was a very, very timely message for many people within the USA right now, where politics and religion and conspiracy theories and dogma and fundamentalism all kind of in this big pot together right now.

And yeah, yeah. Um, it's a bit scary. So we thought that we would like to come in and inform that to some degree, and particularly help inform those people who feel disenfranchised from the whole thing, anything to do with literalism of the Bible, and particularly the person of Jesus. In other words, what, what this book says is, is it possible to have a faith in the Christ, who is Jesus, um, without actually believing in the literal truth of the New Testament?

Is that possible? Can I still call myself a Christian? Can I have a relationship with the Christ? Um, can I still find him to be a transformative presence in my life and so on? And that-- this, this is what this book speaks to, um, directly. So I'm really, really thrilled to welcome Dean because Dean's lived this stuff firsthand and, and has his own story to tell, um, on this score.

Welcome, Dean. Thank you So- Very much. Good to be here. Yeah. So I, I have to say that the way that Colm just described this, uh, and can I still have a relationship with Christ if, uh, you know, it, it's not the literal Christ as described in the book. I'm, I'm sitting here going, "Well, of course you can." We talk about this all the time on the mythological series because we're, uh, we're having a conversation about the morphic field that is created out of the belief structure that is what is the god or goddess or, or myth that we're talking about, and that the belief itself creates the entity and therefore it exists, right?

And so we talk about this a lot in the, in the, um, the series here. And so, uh, I'm, I, I'm sure I've just like used terminology that you probably wouldn't have used, but that, that would be how we would approach it here. Tell us how you would approach it. Well, like, like that terminology in, let's say Christianity, it wouldn't be allowed, right?

It wouldn't-- Oh, you would be dismissed right away. Because, you know, it has to be so factual, and it has to be so provable, and the only provable place is in the Bible. So if it's not there, it's not anywhere. But if you know the Bible and the original languages, you could find, probably find that there, right?

So it's, it's the idea that, hey, when you- Are disenfranchised by the church, by religion, and you're out there without, without a friend. It's, it's, it's desert because no one really knows how to engage with you, and especially if you came out of that world. You're almost pariah. The-- And, and, and they'll avoid you in the, in the, in the store type of thing.

But they don't know why, and it's because to go after the, their faith in a way that has them question what's going on inside of them and what's going on in the world, it upsets the apple cart. Right. As I'm sure everyone here has been upset with, you know, faith struggles or belief struggles. What am I gonna believe, and what makes sense to me?

And to go into another idea whose time has come, that Jesus, it could have not happened. He could have not really died on the cross. But the Christ figure, which Paul talked about all the time, that was i-in existence when Adam and Eve were there, right? So it's the, the spirit of Christ that is the transformative power of even the story of Jesus.

Okay. So to be clear- I'm- You're, you're, you're separating the man Jesus from the energy of the Christ, and you're referencing them separately because from your perspective, presumably through the, the research done in this book, that they are actually separate. Yes. Okay. That the Christ- Yeah ... that, that Jesus may have embodied the Christ from time to time, but that he was not, the man was not the Christ energy, that the Christ energy was its own thing.

Is that accurate? Uh, but, but we can go further Right? It's w- it is what, uh, exuded the Christ energy, or the stories have him doing that. But the Christ itself... You know, understand, like, I come from a position where Jesus still is my hero. It, it, that idea, that's the one I pursued, whether I was in church or even now today, you know, like 10, 12 years after, was the idea of that.

And while in the church, I didn't really meet Christ. Right. I didn't experience the power of that. It was after- And I think a lot of people have had that experience. Yeah. Excuse me? I think a lot of people have had that experience- I think so ... where they, they go looking for, for that Christ experience in the church, and the church does not deliver, right?

I mean, I know I went to church after church after church throughout my entire childhood and, and very rarely found the connection to the Christ, and it was not through the, the service itself so much as through m- whatever I was doing in, in the process, right? So, um, so I think that that's a pretty common experience in the church, uh, dynamic So, you know, let, I wanna back us up for a second because we talked about a lot of stuff before we got on here, and I feel like we're kind of assuming that other people heard that conversation, and they didn't.

So, uh, let's start with, uh, who wrote the book? What perspective did he write it from? And why are you guys talking about it instead of him? Let's start with that. Colin, you wanna take that? Okay. Yeah, yeah. So the book is called The True Origins of Jesus: The Myth Behind the Man. It wasn't called that originally.

So it was, it was-- the book was written by a guy called Geoff Roberts, and sadly Geoff Roberts has passed. Um, he wrote this book, uh, on his own in complete isolation at a time when there were very, very few people to talk about the fact that, um, he'd, he'd been to church, he'd been through Sunday school, he'd been through school, he'd been taught the whole Bible story, and yet he struggled to find any, if any whatsoever, historical evidence to say that there ever was a real person called Jesus.

And for him, um, he, his presumption was that actually there probably never was a, an actual person, Jesus, born in a manger, who died on a cross and was resurrected as per what he was taught. Um, in fact, the first-- on the first, very first page, the opening page of the book, he quotes a guy called, um, Earl Doherty, um, uh, who wrote a book called The Jesus Puzzle, and, and he quotes this.

He said, "Before the Gospels were adopted as history, there is no record anywhere, ig-- nothing exists to say that Jesus ever existed, either in Jerusalem or in Palestine or anywhere on Earth at all. And the only place where that is claimed is within the Gospels of the New Testament." And then as you begin, as Geoff Roberts, um, began to study the New Testament in the original language, in Greek, and, and the m-multiple of theologians who are explaining, um, what this is-- what's going on here, what he discovered was that the original writers of the early Christian story were probably people who we know as Gnostics.

And the Gnostics didn't ever claim or ever believe in a, in a physical Jesus. They said the power of Jesus, the power of the Christ lives in the myth. It lives in the story, not in the fact and history. In fact, in those days, the, the whole concept of fact and science and history, you know, that was a bit of a foreign thought for, for our ancestors during that time.

For them, um, something was true if we believed it was true. In other words, if-- and we, we wanted to believe it was true, so we created story around it, going way back, way back to the earliest Egyptians, even predate that. Um, so all our yearning for there to be a god and to make sense of the fact that the sun rose in the morning and it just seemed to disappear off the edge of the Earth at the end of the day, and then guess what?

It, you know, miraculously came back up again in the same place. But so, you know, the Egyptians had their god, Ra, who went, you know, into the underworld and do it. So that story of God Ra and the s-the sun and the dying of the sun and the rising, that's where rebirth came from. The whole notion of transformation and rebirth.

And those, the, those of you that have studied Egyptian mythology Which is fascinating. You know, know that this is where many of these stories originated, and this is where it came from. So what Jeff did was he said, "Is that it, or are there other stories around the world, and there are other story influences where, um, there are similarities between the story of Jesus in the Bible?

Uh, uh, have they got this story?" And of course, he discovered hundreds, um, all over the world, and so he's documented those. He's quoting major scholars in the book, um, and he, he's saving anybody who wants to get a really good background on the multiple original myths that bore within them the essence of this Jesus character who was born of a virgin maybe, um, who fled into Egypt maybe, and so on.

All of that is repeated and repeated through multiple myths over time, and he documents all of this, including the mystery religions, including the Essenes, including the, the Greek gods and the Roman gods. And he summarizes it by saying that in his-- from what he can study, what he's studied and what he's discovered as a layman, 'cause he wasn't a theologian.

Jeff was a, was a newspaper reporter. So he approached the whole subject of Jesus in the Bible as an investigative journalist. In other words, where are your facts? You know, where are you getting this from? You know, where is this story originating? Who started this story? How many different stories are there?

How many versions of this story are there? Um, how-- why is it that even the stories that are in the Bible all contradict each other historically? Now, some have got him born of a virgin, some don't even mention his birth. Some of them, you know, have got him walking on water, some of them have him never walking on water.

You know? So, hey, guys, you know, um, let, let's, let's get down to the bare bones. And he, he came away by saying that it's obvious that to, to say, to be dictated to by the church over the centuries, that you have to believe in a Jesus that looks like this, that existed like this, and to become a-- to even identify as a Christian or as a believer in Christ, you have to believe it in this way using this dogma is complete nonsense.

Because the-- even the original writers of these stories didn't believe that and didn't insist on that. So this is something that has evolved over time. Um, and the power according to, you know, this is what Jeff felt, the power of Jesus and, and of Christ lies in the myth Not in the fact, and that so many...

But Chri- you know, he was, he didn't say, you know, "Don't, don't go to church. Don't be a Christian." He said he wasn't knocking that at all. He said, "But go deeper. Ask the questions." Is it, is the story of Jesus a transforming influence in your life? Is it going to help you find wholeness? Is it going to help you find real purpose?

Or is it just going to encourage you to believe blindly in, in something which if you really sit down hard and question it, you're probably going to doubt through and through? The interesting thing, those pe- th- there's nothing to doubt if you believe in a myth. Right. Well, and, and on top of it that, um, or is it being used as a way to control you, right?

Um, which a lot of the religion, uh, that's, you know, especially the hard line religion is often used as a way to control their constituents, their, their parishioners, right? It's like, "We're gonna control your behavior. We're gonna control how well you do. We're gonna control what you believe," because that's, that's how you stay in power.

And s- the power was a very big thing in, in the churches of old and still is today. I mean, if you don't believe that, look at all the churches getting involved in politics today, right? Um, you know, the, i- in both directions, to be fair. But, um, the, the thing is, is that the key to any belief structure is your connection to the belief- Mm-hmm

and your ability to transform through that belief, right? Yeah. And that's what I think you're talking about with this, right? Yeah. I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let Gene jump in here 'cause- I will. ... uh, he, he, uh, he, he was actually one of those church leaders, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna let him- That explains the look on his face when I said power.

Well, th- th- it is that, right? I don't think that they, anyone that's in church is looking for power. I know that the story and the doctrine and the dogma causes, uh, a state of where you are exalted, and you have that power. So it's, it's, you know, w- could it have started with wanting power? I think, I think it did.

I think that, you know- I was gonna say- ... there's some evidence around that- ... if we look at the- ... to say- ... look at the Inquisition, baby. We're talking power mo- mongering there. Yeah. Well, it was, it was about control and power, you know- Absolutely ... of, of the Roman, you know, by the Roman Empire, right? So it was, it w- it was that to control this, any- anything that separates the, you from their control.

So but in the churches today- And I had a lot of pastor friends. No one did it in power. They did it out of a heart that was wanting to serve people. But what they are, you know, what they've been experiencing for the last, let's just call it decade, but a little bit longer than that, is this idea of a revolving door.

People come in and then they're out after they-- there's no delivery of transformation or very little of it. And so th- they're confused about what's happening, and they're too, s- let's just call it invested in the story. They're invested in this being Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins so that we would have eternal life.

Right. And there's so much- Because that's their belief structure ... in the English language to, to explain this and from a certain context, and I, I don't think there's any- anything there for most churches and most pastors and most church leaders. But there is a refusal to, to question. You know, the, the idea of apologetics.

Have you-- y- you guys heard that? They taught that in most of the churches, right? So here-- when people tell you that the stories don't align and there's this difference and that difference, and w- here's the proof that Jesus was alive, it's actually the of anything about him except for one letter written by somebody.

They said, "Hey, th- you know, this, this, these Christians are causing problems." So it, it's, it, it's really, uh... It's a, uh, I don't know if I can say this here, but, but it's a mind F. You know, it's, it's like, you don't even know you're in it. You can say anything you want. Huh? You can say it's a pile of shit if you want.

It's a pile of shit because they don't even know they're in it, and they don't... They, they, they have no space to question. They're getting paid. This is their life and their... This is, this is it. Yeah. Well, and- And it's their community And this is what I was talking about. I've been doing some TikToks recently about, um, the- about how- when you're considered to be, uh, the drama provider versus when you're actually calling something out that is a problem, and it's about whether or not you're violating the culture, right?

Mm-hmm. And in the church, the culture says, "This is the belief." And so the only way to change the culture is to call out the predominant culture, which makes you a drama person, which makes you not a- persona non grata, right? It's, it's, it's all of that, and this is where people are coming out with religious trauma because they're coming in and saying, "You know, this doesn't make sense."

They're calling out the culture, and the culture is, is rejecting them, and the culture itself is claiming to be unconditionally loving and supportive, and therefore, that creates trauma when the unconditionally loving and supportive culture rejects you, right? Right. And so this... And, and this is where that revolving door is coming from, is that the culture itself is unwilling to shift, and it's defending itself, and it is its own worst enemy in this moment because it won't step into the, the mythology of it as opposed to the factuality of it.

And if you can shift that, then that becomes a very different animal, right? It does. It does. Yeah. And, you know, the foundations of that are, uh, you know, they're crumbling. I, I forget how many... I, uh, a, a couple years ago, I knew the number. The, it... You know, like, 100 churches a day were closing at the time, and it's- Yeah, I've known several, uh, ministers who have left their churches recently.

Yeah, totally. In fact, um, Pastor G, who was on here doing the Seven Deadly Sins and Virtues series with us, was a pastor when we started and was no longer a pastor when we finished because he- Really? ... he, he let go of his, his, uh, um- Uh, ordination because he just- Right ... didn't agree with the belief structures of the, the organization that he was a part of.

And so, you know, this is happening. I've s- I'm, I'm seeing it firsthand. Yeah. Yeah, and I... And it's, and, and it's a shame, right? Because there, there is a lot of good that churches have done and still do, but it's that controlling nature, the trauma that is caused by, you know, if you disagree or you question, then you're, you're, you know, silently rejected.

And most, in most of them. I mean, there's, you know, there's some that publicly shame you and do that. Um, I don't know how powerful they are today. But people are out there. You're not gonna stop searching because, you know, just like, you know, the myth behind the man, we've always searched for where, why are we here and what are we doing?

What's the purpose? What's, what's my purpose? And the churches are crumbling enough where they might start opening their minds. At least that's my hope. Yeah, let's cross our fingers- Yeah ... because, you know, I've been in both, both of those scenarios in my life and, uh, and I've been actively shunned, and I have been passively shunned, and I have been, you know, um, uh, demonized is probably the best way to put it.

Yeah. Um, and you know, I didn't... You're right, I didn't stop looking, but I finally found my answers outside of the church, right? Yeah. So, and that's despite having been through probably eight or 10 different denomi- denominations. Wow. So, um, you know, it, it's, it's real, you know? And religious trauma is real.

And- I- i- it's, it's one of the hardest things for the Christian Church to overcome, is the previous religious trauma. And because for a lot of, in a lot of cases, they don't even acknowledge it, right? I mean, it's like the Catholic Church 20 years ago was like, "Oh, no, we don't have any pedophiles in the, in the Catholic Church."

Yeah. And now it's like, "Oh, well, yeah, we, we have a lot of them." Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Mm. So, you know, over time, hopefully it, it evolves, right? Well, there is a new story, right? There is a, there is a... And it's not even a new story, it's sitting right in scripture, right in the gospels. But you have to come at it from a different angle to see it, and that's what I'm hoping this book opens their mind to do, to say, "Hold on a minute.

If this was a myth, Jesus was a myth, but Christ is real. Well, how does that change what's printed in the Bible on those words?" And of course, you gotta do some digging, but we wanna help with that. Like, w- we've done the digging. Jeff did the digging. And you see the Greek words, and you, and you compare that to the culture and what was happening in the times, and you can see a very transformative message, but not one about saving you from hell.

Right. It's, you know, the eternal life is about full life, about abundance. And, you know, the church couldn't have people being abundant, especially as it got started, 'cause you needed to make the church abundant. Right. Well, and, and, you know, there's the other piece of it's easier to keep people in line if they have a common belief structure that says, "Sacrifice for today so that you'll be rewarded in the afterlife."

ole bunch of the books in, in: 1000

Yeah There is a fantastic TikTok from a guy who is a scholar in the original, uh... Oh, what, what was it? I wanna say it-- Was it Sumerian? It, it might have been, or it might have been Essene. I don't know. Uh, it-- Hebrew. It might have been ancient Hebrew. I think maybe he's a ancient Hebrew sch- I'll, I'll post it on the show notes here.

But there is a TikTok where he translates direct from the original text of the Lord's Prayer to English. Mm. And it is an entirely different thing. Yes. And so every time it gets translated, the words that are chosen, the framing, the belief structure of the person who's doing the translating, all of it gets built into this new model, which we then treat as sacrosanct, and never was.

Right. 'Cause it doesn't actually come from the original. Mm-hmm. So even if you think the original is the word of God, i-it's not the original because- Right ... it's been translated and bastardized multiple times. And, you know- Well, just the word, um, virgin, for example, as we're coming up-- Well, we're, we're around the Chris- you know, the holiday season, and people are thinking about Christmas or just having had Christmas when-whenever this goes out to, to the public.

But, um, uh, in the original, um, it's-- and it's quite-- uh, it's acknowledged actually in the footnotes of many modern Bibles, um, that the word virgin meant young lady or young woman. So a young woman will have a child, and his name shall be called Jesus, for example. Um, but that didn't fit the... I-ironically, that didn't fit the need for the myth.

So there's, there's multiple, um, elements going on here. Um, it's pretty obvious for anybody who's spent any time studying the New Testament that most of the so-called historical The chronology and narrative of the New Testament is built around the need to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. So there was-- there's no question that there's a retrospective looking back at, okay, so who is this Messiah guy gonna be?

Oh, he's gonna have this. He's gonna, you know, the lion is gonna lie down with the lamb. Um, he's going to, you know, be the savior. He's, uh, he's gonna enable people to turn their swords into plowshares, and so on. So constantly, constantly, constantly, and I used to teach religious education, so trust me, um, you know, this was several lessons that I used to teach that, you know, look, the, the New Testament must be true.

Why? Because, oh, by chance, by some, you know, amazing divine thing, look, it fulfills all these Old Testament prophecies. Sure. Um, and anything that fulfills a prophecy must be true, and it's gotta be divine, and it's gotta be inspired by God. Um, and then- Well, ignoring the circular logic entirely. Yeah. What I didn't teach and what I regret, and if I-- you know, they wouldn't probably let me back in now, but- ...if I were to go back, I would say, "You know what?

There was these guys called the Egyptians." And these Egyptian guys had gods born of virgins, for example. And these Egyptians guys had gods who died and were reborn again. Uh, yeah, have you heard that before, you know? And there are th- there's even one particular story of a god who was, uh, you know, died on a tree, for example, and so on.

And, and the Romans had similar things, and the Greeks, and, uh- In the North ... and the Buddhists, and, um, and so on and so on, all over the world. So what the, what this book that, you know, the, The True Origins of Jesus tries to do is to say, "You can't even really begin to think, well, you know, what is true here?

What is... You know, what is fact? Until you've got all the evidence in front of you." And one of the things that stands out by a country mile is the fact that there is no historical, um, evidence whatsoever, um, to support the existence of a, of a physical Jesus. Now, one of, one of the... 100 years ago, for those who know a bit about recent Christian history, it was really popular to think, "Well, you know what?

We accept that the New Testament, it doesn't add up, and things contradict themselves, so what are we really talking about here?" So what they say is, "Well, there actually was a g- a guy, a, a real guy." And this is sort of the Godspell, anybody who remembers that musical, Jesus Christ super. "There was a guy, and he was a, like a really superhero guy, and he l- you know, he, he didn't do any wrong, anything wrong to anybody, and he had these ama- he spouted this amazing wisdom, and he talked about, you know, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' and, and, you know, 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,' and all that sort of stuff.

And he was a real guy. It's just that the people who wrote it down got it wrong. You know, they got it... Th- they kind of misrepresented him." So there was a real person who was misrepresented. Now, that was a whole form of Christianity. Um, I'm trying to, uh, I'm trying to think of the- Well, when you give-- W- when you assume that it, it's a, it's a, it was a verbal tradition for three or four hundred years before it ever got written down in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah, so generally- And so, you know, if you've ever heard somebody tell a story that they heard 20 years ago- Exactly ... and y- you know, you gotta know that that's gonna morph and change and, you know, be, be... It's a, it's virtual thing of telephone for 300 years, 400 years. Nobody- Yeah. Yeah. They fix that with this, with this.

It's the w- it's in the Word of God, so it's there, and, and, and God doesn't make mistakes. So it's-- That, that's how they fix it. But the, the really weird thing is that- It's, that's nowhere in the Bible. The Bible doesn't call itself a word of God in any of the letters, right? Right. Or, or any of the books.

Yeah. Nowhere. You know, the closest thing is scripture, right? The word scripture. So, it... But you... That, that Bible is ha- held as sacrosanct. Right. And, and it's where whenever I said, "Well, since that's the foundation, how did this get made? What happened here?" And that's when I first started finding out, you know, about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Council of Nicaea, how these letters were never meant...

You know, most of Paul's letters were never meant for public consumption. Right. It... All that, and it's, but this is the, this is the Bible, and it just so happens the way that we interpret it is the right way. You know, the- Yeah, and- ... 5,000 different religions around it is the way- Yeah. Well, and, and, and that's the thing too, is that you've got all these religions that all interpret it differently, but it's all right.

Mm-hmm. And you've got all of these different translations, but they're all the word of God, but they all mean different things. And so it's like, well, okay. And as a shaman, I love this- Mm-hmm ... because as a shaman, I'm like, yes, all experience is good experience because we, we learn, and we gain something from it, right?

Yeah. And so, you know, the, the, the coyote shaman in me loves the, the, the, uh, aspects of, of both positive and negative. The, the, you know, the, the transcendence of being connected to the Christ consciousness and the debasement of the religious trauma which causes us to see our pain and gr- and grow as people, right?

So to a certain extent, I can see the wisdom in saying it is all the word of God because it all provides a different experience, right? But to the person who doesn't have that perspective, it becomes problematic, right? Right. Yeah. And it becomes problematic on both sides too- Yeah ... because there's so much a- anger about this.

There's- Yeah ... the public discourse is, is one side or the other. It's almost, it's... Well, it's like politics. Yeah. And instead of, hold it, what is, what are we all really searching for? What is every human being here for? And searching for that is where- Things start to open up. And you can do that from a place on a pew in a Christian church or a Buddhist church or a shaman ritual or you, you...

It, it could be anywhere. But that's what everyone's gonna do at some point. I don't know when, but, you know, I know when my when was. So Kelle, you, you know that I'm studying Carl Jung in some, some depth. Yes. Professor Carl Gustav Jung, who was a mate of Sigmund Freud, even though they had a big fallout. And one of the things they fell out about was religion.

Right. Um, for those of you who, who, who don't know, but Freud was an atheist. He was a Jew, Jewish background. He was an atheist. He said that, um, it's just a way of control, you know, religion is a way of controlling the human psyche, um, and it's mismanaged and it's misused, and it's just a way of, um, the psyche's way of answering a problem that it can't answer, which is, you know, who is God and why are we here sort of thing.

Uh, Carl Jung said, "Well, I beg to disagree." He said, "I actually think Christianity has got some use." And Freud said, "Well, how can it have any use?" You know. And he said, "Well, it has a use in that if it really is a myth- Then it's got real purpose. If we prepared to, to move away from it needing to be factual, and there never was a guy called Jesus, and that he, he originated out of other myths, so he's a mythological figure that was borrowed from previous myths, then that-- what does that tell us about the human psyche?

What does it tell us about mythology? So, uh, you probably covered this already, but I just a quick, quick summary. Carl Jung said that mythology, the human need to create story and legend, is the psyche's way of making some sense out of this chaos called the unconscious. So, you know, when we dream, when we have weird, you know, weird dreams about God, when we're, we're trying to understand the universe and how it all works, and it's all sort of a bit of a chaos, it's all a bit of a mess.

Um, one of the things that saves us from complete despair in that is story. And over the, over a period of eons, millennia of human existence, starting with when we needed to grow vegetables so we could eat, and the understanding that, you know, in winter things die, and then in spring they come back to life again.

All of this turned into mythology, into story, which eventually turned into religion. And if you look at all of the world's major religions, they all contain the same, um, basic elements which Carl Jung called archetypes. In other words, the need for the hero, the need to understand rebirth, the need to understand the purpose of death, the need to under-- uh, to understand, uh, the essence of life in everything, the spirit of life, what makes things be alive, all of that stuff.

He said that all comes from deep within the, uh, individual unconscious, but not just within our own individual unconscious or subconscious. It comes from a collective unconscious. And that's where Freud said, "You've gone crazy. You're a religious maniac. I don't want anything more to do with you." You know, "See you later," sort of thing.

And Carl Jung said, "Yeah, but I think I've got the answer here, and the answer is this." That mythology And this manufacturing of story to enable us to understand what's going on in our own psyche and what's going on in the universe is not a bad thing. This is a good thing. This is the way we discover the most important thing, which is what he called the self.

In other words, he said, "I spent my entire life trying to enable my conscious to, to rediscover my unconscious self. And if I can work on that so that the two things eventually come-- collide and come together," then, uh, then I've discovered what he called the self. And he said, "I've got something else to tell you, that the two strongest elements of human nature that meet at that point are the archetype of the child, the divine child, that sense that we're special, that we're loved, that we, that we, you know, that we have been brought into this world, and we are cherished."

He called that the archetype of the divine child. And the other is the existence of the need for, for a God image. And those two things are what drive all the myths that are the basis of religion. But he also said, "If you can find in the myth that you live or the religion that you believe in, if you can find that transformative power of the self, that meeting of the conscious and the unconscious," complete opposites it seems, but if you can bring them together, then you have found the divine within.

And in the end of the day, he said, "For my money," he said, "You don't have to believe me. This is just what I believe." He said, "But I believe that that's the meaning of the whole purpose of religion and mythology in the first place." The psyche, the psyche's on a journey, and the psyche's on a permanent journey to try and find that sweet spot And as a shaman, I would argue that no mythology is ever actually truly made up.

That we are in fact channeling some greater truth that we know on a higher level that we are trying to express through symbology, because symbology itself is a far more complex and rich language than any language on the planet. Sure. And it, it encompasses so much, and yet is still so limited compared to what is true on a universal scale.

And so in, in any given mythology that we're expressing, we are in fact channeling through the world of symbology a greater truth that is unspeakable, unknowable within the limited confines of our human brains. And so, you know, we have this, uh... So, so, you know, let's take what we've been talking about and talk about how do we move it forward, right?

How do we... If we assume that Jesus is a myth, and that the Christ consciousness is what everyone actually wants and is, is ascribing all of these ahas to, and that Jesus, the myth, the man, whether he existed or not, is embodying the Christ consciousness along the way, right? How do we then tap into said Christ consciousness in order to have that transcendent transformational experience that we are all seeking as part of our working towards our personal purpose in the world, right?

And because obviously if we're gonna walk down this path, that's really what the goal of, of embracing this new ideology would be. So I'm gonna throw this one back to Dean. Well, I was really getting ready to say, "Well, you answer that for me." It's just like, "Well, now it's you answering my question." But I'll tell you something that's coming at me right now, and, you know, at the...

You know, I, I often say I, I, I play at the intersection of spirituality, science, and entrepreneurship. Mm-hmm. So in entrepreneurship, this idea of high performance, human high performance. And what we're finding out today is, to me, it's showing some truths about that c- the power of that Christ consciousness, that mythical power, that the, the capabilities of human beings once they align and integrate the The belief system, the conscious and subconscious, and can visualize and start creating.

It's a, it, so- And so to define it for you, the Christ consciousness is what? To... Because pe- I can hear people asking that question. They're like, "What is it, the Christ consciousness? What does it mean?" I would say it is w- the power that this universe was created by embodied inside Of human beings. Okay. And would that be coming from a place of unconditional love in your lexicon?

Would be coming from a place-- Well, I believe that power is- Seeded in ... is love, right? So- Okay. So yes ... I would say. Okay. I just wanted to confirm that because, you know, there's, there's, there, there are people who believe in uncon-- you know, unconditional love is the foundation of the universe, and others who are like undifferentiated chi, you know?

Right. And it's, you know, so, so just to define what we're talking about, right? Um, I think the Christ consciousness is pretty universally e-established as foundationed in unconditional love, in my experience of researching it. Do you have any other argument on that one? No, I don't. I don't. Okay. All right.

How about, how about Colin? I would like to hear your answer on that because the way you describe that force in the universe is unconditional love. Yeah. Um, i-I'm obsessed with unconditional love. Um, as an alchemist, I don't know any greater power than unconditional love. The, the breakthrough for me was, um, being ident...

able to identify unconditional love as an, as an essence in and of itself. In other words, unconditional love is not dependent on anything else, that it is the beginning and it is the end. It's the-- So in, in terms of, um, Christ consciousness, unconditional love is the alpha and the omega of, of being, period.

And that's where we come from, and that's where we go back to. And you talk to anybody, the thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who've had a near-death experience, you ask them to name one thing- Mm-hmm ... and they all say the same thing. What was your-- the predominant thing coming back into this world that you brought back with you?

And they will all say, "Unconditional love." I experienced, um, being loved beyond anything I've ever... My problem was, when I was eighteen years of age, I actually encountered that unconditional love in a spiritual kundalini-type moment in a, in a evangelical church. S-so I had an experience that I couldn't make any sense of in the context in which I'd had that experience, and I spent many wasted years.

Well, not-- They weren't wasted years. I've, I've got some dear, dear friends from that time. But the point was that the, the Christology that, that I was then trying to conform into didn't match this experience which I still whole have today. So I'm able to reproduce that same moment of unconditional. So- When I, when I, um, when I meditate, when I go seeking for the self within, the, the place I find is that m- that Kundalini moment, if you like.

Those of you who, who know Kundalini yoga is, is where... But all, all that I can experience and all I can know i- in, in totality is that I am loved unconditionally. I am surrounded and immersed in love. And, and I... Uh, my heart goes out to anybody out there listening right now who has never known that, has never felt that.

Uh, my, my message in my book, The Secret of the Alchemist, is that you can know it. You, you... It might take a while. There may be some things... You know, talk to Kelle. She'll help you. She'll help you through the things, the hurdles, and a lot of the blocks that are gonna get in the way, but that's our birthright.

That's, that's one thing. Of all the things that we have a right to in this existence on earth is to know that, the power of that love, and if we don't know that, the power of that love, then we are, we're missing out on something. Now, if you can find the power of that love in a Bible-believing church, go for it.

Absolutely. No, no, not mocking anything. If you can find it in Buddhism, go for it. If you can find it in shamanism, go for it. If you can find it in the mystery religions, and so on, and so on. It doesn't actually matter which myth or which religion or which process that you put your faith in to find that love.

The, the key is you won't know who you truly are until you know that love in, in your life. And so when I used to preach Jesus, you need to be born again, I thought that's... I was preaching you need to know unconditional love. What I then soon discovered was that wasn't what most of the people I was standing up with, uh, were saying.

They were saying something completely different. It was a big shock to me when I realized that, yeah, we were on a different, different page. So I actually excommunicated myself. Kelle, how would you answer that question? I took you along, didn't I? I'm really sorry. I'm, I'm really not doing you guys any good whatsoever.

I should, I should leave now before I do any more damage. So, so, um, I too had a, a, a, um, experience of unconditional love, uh, uh, actually at a, uh, Southern Baptist, uh- Oh ... uh, summer camp. That's awesome. And, you know, it was, "Will you accept Christ as your savior?" And I had that Christ moment of stepping into that experience of unconditional love, and I walked up and accepted Christ as my savior.

And, you know, it, it lasted for a little bit. Um, but then I had the same experience you did, which is, you know, it wasn't the same thing that other people were saying. And so I, I wandered off from there eventually. But, um, for me, if I talk about... And, and I'm gonna talk very personally about this, because everybody has their own path.

That's right. And each person's path is going to be unique to them. So I'm just gonna talk about my pathway to walking as closely in Christ consciousness as is, you know, as I am capable of in any given moment. Um, and for me, it has been, uh, truly just learning to understand and accept people for who they are, uh, because then I'm not in judgment, because the more you're not in judgment, the, the closer to Christ consciousness you are The closer to unconditional love you are is to get out of judgment, right?

Uh, and for me, it has also been about learning to love myself because if you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. Mm-hmm. Um, you can care about them, you can obsess about them, you can be codependent with them, but you cannot love them unless you learn how to love yourself. And finally, the last piece has been to accept, and this is the right word, accept that I am ultimately and incredibly powerful, and not from an ego place- Mm-mm

but from simply a place of acknowledging what is true and seeing what I have wrought in the world, right? As, as, you know, step back and see what you have wrought, and to, to truly acknowledge, without hubris but without false humility, what is true. Mm. And I keep telling people, but they're like, "Oh, well, you know, that's awfully arrogant."

And I'm like, "No, no. Arrogance by definition is puffing." Mm. Arrogance is claiming something that is not true. If it is true, it is by definition not arrogance. Hmm. And so look it up in the, in the dictionary. My husband and I had this argument. And so, um, and so it's simply a matter... And, and the older I get and the, uh, the more adept I become at this, the less energy is attached to this knowingness.

It is simply a knowing at the core of my being that this is true, much like I know that I can get up and walk across the room. In fact, I know this more than I know that I can walk across the room because I'm getting old and sometimes my knees don't like me. So but, but that's, that's the thing, but so much of the work I've done has been unwinding my belief that it's not true and unwinding my, my belief that, quote-unquote, "reality has control over me."

Right? Yeah. That's beautiful. So you asked my, my, my answer. Yeah, very much. It's beautiful because it is, you know, that the love of self, which is so anti-Christian. Yeah. But it's so essential to stop judging. When you, when you fall in love unconditionally with who you are, you are falling in love with unconditional love.

Yes. And there is no space for the judgment 'cause, I mean, there's no use for it. It's n- it doesn't do any, any good. But when you're in a place of right or wrong, which religion puts you there if you're in it- Right ... one has to be right, one has to be wrong. Yeah. And it's at foundational core, heart, and mind level that it goes awa- uh, it goes astray.

But it's amazing. What's amazing is the story. You know, both you and Colin have that in a, in a church setting and, and like me, you went and said, "Where is this? Oh, it's just... Okay, I get it. You don't believe that, but it's gotta be here 'cause I felt it. I know it. I experienced it. It's real. You can't ta- you...

It, it doesn't matter if you say it was." And it's, it's those moments of unconditional love. Mine happened in a car. You know, it's just so happens, and it's like, "Okay, I know it's weird, but it happened." Right. Well, and, and you bring something up, which is duality. When you are engaged in duality thinking, good, bad, you know, um, good and evil- Mm

right and wrong, right? All of these things. When you are engaged in duality thinking, you are in judgment. Yes. And judgment is by definition the separation of self from unconditional love. Mm. And so when you are in duality thinking and, and not in e- e- existential thinking. So existential thinking is this is an experience that I can learn from, and the experience may be a pleasant one, it may not be a pleasant one.

I, I can enjoy it or not, right? I, I can engage it or not, right? I can be present for it or not. I can, you know, l- leave my body if I choose, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and but it's an experience, and I'm not... If I don't judge it as a good or bad experience, but I just say, "Okay, this is what happened. What does it mean?"

Right? That's a different thing than saying, "This is a good or a bad experience." Like, I had a migraine forming earlier today as I was having a conversation with another shaman, and I was like, "I'm, I'm very interested because I'm very excited to talk to you, but somehow I have a migraine forming. I'm wondering what that means."

Mm. Because there's something here. Because when I got on this call with you guys my migraine went away, right? So something about that call, that conversation with that person, that was causing the migraine, and it's probably an internal block in- within me that I'm going, "Okay, there's something I've gotta get out of the way of in order for this to, to work because I wanna work with this person, and we're gonna figure this out, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'm too attached. Maybe I'm too stressed. Maybe there's something I need to let go of." I will be sitting with that later, right? But I could have just gone, "Ah, crap, I've got a migraine. This sucks." Right? But, but I lose the gift of it then. Right. Right? And so, you know, when you can stay in the experience instead of the judgment of it, then you stay in connection with that unconditional love and with, with the, with the energy of the universe which then brings you your wisdom.

Mm. Right? Yeah. Okay. Mm. And I think, I think that'll call it good for the day. What do we think? Sure. Anybody have anything else you absolutely have to get out the door or? No, I think, I think we've nailed it actually. Uh, I will just say that, that Geoff Roberts' book, um, The True Origins of Jesus, um, he doesn't explore a lot of what we just said, by the way, just FYI.

I don't wanna misrepresent the book. What the book does is lay the factual historical foundations for the origins of what we've just been talking about. In other words, we didn't make this up. Christianity didn't make it up. This is part of human existence, and it's been around, and it had multiple expressions over many, many centuries.

And, um, if you wanna know how that grew and how it evolved and how it developed, then, then the book really does do that in a really easy, progressive way, and I can't recommend it too much. To the point that I put my money on it and we've re- we've republished it, so it must be, it must be good. There we go.

And the, the link for that book is in the show notes today. Uh, and you can find it on Amazon. It is called The True Origins of Jesus: The Myth Behind the Man, and by Geoff Roberts, spelled G-E-O-F-F Roberts, like the dread pirate. And, uh, you can find it on Amazon, or you can, uh, click through on the link in the show notes.

And so thank you guys for coming. This was a great conversation. We're super excited to have had you. And Colm, as always, I love you. So great to have met you, Deane. Kelle, thank you so much. It was, it was a joy. Yeah. And, and we'll include a link to your, your work as well as Colm's work on the show notes as well, so that everybody can find you guys and learn more about you.

All right. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yes. Thanks. Well, guys, that is all the time that we have for this week. Uh, Kelle, do you have a Kelleism for today? Oh, I think I delivered that one. Yeah, I think. Yes. All right. Well, y'all tune in next time when Kelle adds another chapter into your guide to energy, magic, and the spirit world.

I'm Jules, here with Kelle Sparta and Colm Holland and Deane Wilkinson, and you have been listening to Spirit Sherpa. So long, everyone. Bye.

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