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My Personal Encounter with the Christ

My Personal Encounter with the Christ

Last updated on: July 17, 2013 at 8:00 am by Andrew Harvey

My Personal Encounter with the Christ 2013-07-15T18:34:56-04:00 Andrew Harvey

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So we’ve looked at some personal experiences of walking the Christ Path…but what might it involve for you to step onto this path

Andrew Harvey speaks of experiencing the presence of the Christ.

I’m not going to unfold it for you now—I’ll do that later. But what I’m going to do is to tell you a story, because if I can communicate this to you, I will have done much, much more work than unfolding the mystical path for you. If you want to read it, I wrote a book, Son of Man, in which everything that I know about the path is there, so you can study it.

But I want to give you the essence, and I want to share with you a dream-vision that I had of him. I have met him twice in my life—I’ve seen him twice. And I’m not unique and I’m not special. There are hundreds of thousands of people, Christians and non-Christians, who have seen him and who know that he’s real.

The second time I saw him was in a dream-vision. I was taken into a large room by Father Bede after his death—because Bede isn’t dead either, let me tell you. And Bede said, “Well,” in his beautiful English accent he said, “Well, I have something very interesting to show you.” And he always used to say things like that very playfully when he was about to blow my brains out with some astounding revelation of the meaning of the universe.

So he took me to this room, and there was a fresco around the room of human evolution. And you saw the origins and the big bang, you saw the whole animal evolution, you saw the beginnings of human consciousness, you saw the tremendous achievement of shamanic consciousness and immersion in the Mother field that the shamanic indigenous people have. And then there was this lightning, cutting and entering. And he said, “That’s where Jesus came in.” And the whole path of possibility then changes, not because he’s the son of God but because of this evolutionary break. I was so amazed, because I could see it visually represented in this room.

And then he took me outside into a courtyard, and he showed me this immense vat of excrement. It was filled with the most stinking, dark shit—speak about the shadow! And he said, “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid you have to dive in.” So I thought, well, he’s my beloved teacher—what can I do? So I took a very deep breath and thought of England and the Queen, and I dived in.

And at the bottom of it all there was a trap door, and I opened it, and I was miraculously clean, and there was a corridor. And there was a door open, and the light coming through, and I went into the room, and there he was, sitting. And I wish I could tell you we had a very dramatic conversation—actually we talked about Francis of Assisi. But what he was was so much more important than what he said.

And I want to evoke that for you before I close this series of posts. He was very beautiful, but not with a film-star beauty. He was a man, and his entire being—his mind, his heart, and his body—radiated the most extraordinary tender love that I could ever describe. No words can describe that love. It wasn’t a transcendent, I-am-above-it-all, I-live-in-the-divine, you-poor-human-being kind of love. It was the love of a lover multiplied a million times. It was the love of a friend multiplied a million times. It was the love of brother multiplied a million times. And he was absolutely present in total kindness to me—totally turned to me, and not scary at all, just totally beautiful…

And what I tasted in his presence is what has sustained me through all the rigors of the path since. I tasted my own human divinity, because in being with him, the being in me that is him woke up. And I found that I could love him with some small part of the enormous fire of divine love that he was loving me.

And that what he’s giving each one of us, whether we’re drunk or sober or crazy or broken or in despair or have lost hope. What he’s offering each one of us, in the unique terms of our own self, is that unbelievable intimacy; that unbelievable, far-beyond-judgment tenderness; that unbelievable respect as a fellow traveler of this great epoch of evolution.

I beg you to get over the false versions of him and the wounding that they have caused. I beg you to deconstruct the whole vision of him as the remote, glorious, unique son of God, and discover him as your inmost secret heart and the deep presence within and without—as your friend, as your brother; above all, as your Beloved.

Because if you do, or rather when you do, you will understand that through Jesus, the Divine who wears the face of Jesus in time is accompanying you in a mystery of intimacy that will transform your experience of life and give you courage to go through all the rigors of the path. This is the great secret hidden at the core of the Christ path.

And I’m going to share with you, in culmination, a poem by Mechtild of Magdeburg about the Jesus I know and you can know. To deprive yourself of this relationship when it is the most beautiful and holy of all relationships would be such a tragedy at a time when everything depends upon us having the courage to go through this great transformation.

And this poem is so beautiful and expresses all the different aspects of this relationship, and they’ll all be revealed to you by grace if you only dare to love enough. It will come real to you, every word will come real. Jesus is speaking, and then the soul replies.

I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected

And the soul replies:

Lord, you are my lover,
[You are] my longing,
You are] my flowing stream,
[You are] my sun,
And I am your reflection.

And then Jesus speaks:

It is my nature that makes me love you often,
For I am love itself.
It is my longing that makes me love you intensely,
For I yearn to be loved from the heart.
It is my eternity that makes me love you long,
For I have no end.

The Beloved is waiting for you. Have the courage to open, humbly, and you will discover the mystery of mysteries, and be led stage by stage to consummations you cannot and I cannot imagine, by the one who has gone through it all and is only waiting for you to open, to give you everything you will need.

___________________________________________________________

To register for the “Cosmic Christ and Youth: The Occupy Generation,” the Christ Path Seminar weekend taking place online and on-site in Burlingame, CA, 10/11-13, see http://www.christpathseminar.org/ai1ec_event/cosmic-christ-and-youth-the-occupy-generation/?instance_id=99

To order the complete 12-DVD set of recordings from the first Christ Path Seminar weekend, “Cosmic Christ and the New Humanity”– including Dr. Fox’s delivery of the Saturday afternoon lecture from which this post is clipped, see http://www.christpathseminar.org/participate-by-dvd/

Be sure to sign up on the Christ Path Seminar mailing list to receive word when the DVDs from the second weekend, “Cosmic Christ and the Historical Jesus,” are released!

Father Bede Griffiths

Mechtild of Magdeburg

son of man

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