Regardless of being like sheep, Christ affirms that He cares for us as a Good Shepherd. However, does Jesus expect us to remain like a sheep so that His caring continues?
Our conformity to Christianity as it is made known to us is very much consistent with the idea of us being and remaining sheep-like. Which is fine, but what is Jesus alluding to as he called us sheep?
Jesus has proclaimed the commandment to love God. This commandment requires us to free ourselves from being sheep-like. Loving God, necessitates developing inner-freedom and furthering our knowledge about God. Without freedom and knowledge being integral components, our love of God cannot sustain itself. He also gave the Holy Spirit to abide in us so that we could develop inner-freedom and necessary knowledge. In short, we must develop an awareness of His in-abiding presence and learn to live a life in the Holy Spirit. How do we do this?
All the body-centric doctrines of the Churches do not lead us to an awareness of the Holy Spirit. He is inconceivable when we try to relate to Him as with Jesus. The Holy Spirit is not a person-God, as Jesus Christ is. The Holy Spirit is Conscious Energy. How do we relate and form a relationship with Conscious Energy?
One of my cousins was afflicted with the corona virus and recently recovered. He is 67 years old and has many medical complications: poor lungs, a heart condition, diabetes, high blood pressure, and a host of others. He is frequently admitted to the hospital to receive treatment for a lung condition caused by a stabbing injury that penetrated his lungs. While in the hospital, this time for the corona virus, the doctors had given up hope for his recovery. With prayers, he recovered on his own and is currently quarantined in his home.
I had extensive conversations with him about his spiritual experiences while he was in the hospital. In an opportunity a few days ago, he testified, “Oxygen is God.”
If we contemplate on this, there are two incidences in the Bible which readily come to mind and require reflection. The first is, Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit'” (John 20:22). The second is, God “breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). In other words, God is passing on life and the Holy Spirit in us, by way of His breath.
Let us remain in this mystery a little longer. In a literal sense, breathing into our nostrils, as we know, is an enchanting experience during intimate and passionate moments of making love. This demonstrates how God loved us as He created us.
We are normally not consciously aware that we are breathing oxygen every minute. Even if we breathe, we are not aware if the air we breathe contains oxygen or not. When we reflect on this and the condition of being alive, we will come to realize the mystery that God continues to breathe into our nostrils. Invariably, this breath is the Holy Spirit. Nurturing a conceivable knowledge of the presence of the in-abiding Holy Spirit begins with our awareness of our breath as it arrives with unimaginable love and compassion from God, and as we exhale, leaves us departing peace and the joy of gratefulness. Feeling that divine love of God and being constantly aware of His love as it infiltrates every cell of our body, is the beginning of a relationship with the Holy Spirit.
This relationship will reveal all the written and unwritten words in the Bible and unravel all the mysteries contained in these words. He will also develop in us inner-freedom to delve deeper and deeper into the knowledge of God. With this love and knowledge of God, we become emancipated in inner-freedom as children of God, as opposed to being sheep-like humans.
“When God is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
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In his book, SUPREME REALIZATION, A Journey into the Depths of Conscious Energy, Anthony Nayagan has written extensively about Consciousness, and how to develop a relationship with Consciousness. This book is currently available in Amazon and your book stores.
You can also order this book in his website, https://supremerealization.org/buy/