Like many people I grew up in a fundamental Christian household and was forced to go to Church from a very young age. Ideas like Sin, Hell, Redemption and Salvation were firmly ingrained in my psyche. I went through the whole guilt trip and never questioned any of it. The theme of Jesus Christ as Saviour of the mankind, the only source of divinity and God in the form of man was firmly placed into my belief system. All other religions were of the devil, the bible is the only word of God and the only way to heaven was through Jesus Christ. Reject him and you go to hell forever, so they said.

In my 20s something started to pull me away from Christianity, it was a dissatisfaction with the bible, which to me appeared to have missing parts, bad information and behaviour on the part of "God" that I considered to be ridiculous. I somehow knew there was "more than this". In fact so much more. I studied books that disproved the existence of Jesus, claimed the Crucifixion never occurred, talked about the pagan mythologies on which Christmas and Christianity was based and the many "Christ like" figures in the past before Jesus. Also I looked at the astrological interpretation of the bible. This was a process of deprogramming and I convinced myself at some point that Jesus Christ never existed(although later I realized that he did indeed exist).

Then began the stage of my studying the eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism and many things about those religions appealed to me, and I knew were true. For example reincarnation and karma. I realised there were deep truths in other religions that Christianity did not even hint at. After this I entered into the mysteries and a vast spiritual universe opened up to me, full of wonder and splendour. The profound mysteries of the spiritual world were presented to me in all their glory. It was something I never imagined existed and went far beyond Christianity and everything else I had heard of in all religions. The inner knowledge I had that there was "more than this", was upgraded to "so profoundly infinitely more than this.". At this point I was ready to see the value and usefulness of Christianity.

Christianity is like being on a beach and having a small part of the beach cordoned off. In the area that is cordoned off a few paces out into the sea are some men standing in the water their heads just above the water. These are the Church fathers. They say to you: "this is as far as you are allowed into the sea, go any further and you will drown. Stay in this area and you will survive.". The true reality of spirituality is like the rest of the vast ocean in comparison. Not only that ocean but all the oceans on the planet. To sail those seas requires that you pass beyond the boundaries that are within religion, culture, history and society. For they are outside of those things and their vast depths would dissolve such attachments into nothingness.

The Church fathers have a point. If you are to venture out into the vast oceans of the spiritual worlds you might drown. The test of Christianity is that if you cannot enter the spiritual worlds with purity of spirit and a divine will then you need a saviour who can do all the work for you. Otherwise they assume you will be destroyed by the monsters that lurk out there in the depths.

What they miss is that the divine has given the gift of itself to all human beings to realise and attain the highest divinity, to become creators as it is a creator, without limitations and to open the door to all the infinite treasures and wonders of the universe. It is the nature of our spirit to express our divinity, and that divinity cannot be contained by any religion any more than a bottle can contain infinity.

The mystery of the Christ is wonderful. Jesus does exist and he is a wonderful being. Yet humans once worshipped the Sun as all powerful, and from their perspective it was. Then they found out that there are billions upon billions of suns throughout the vast reaches of the cosmos, suns far greater than our own, far brighter. Our sun was just one star among billions. So it is with the Christ. May all become aware of the infinite variety and wonder of the Universe. May the human race mature to inherit the treasures in the heart of the divine.