Sense of Soul - Jesus

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Happy Holidays, today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have Colm Holland he is a writer, mentor, speaker, alchemy trainer adventurer and the podcast host of Alchemy lab. Colm was the publisher of the global best-seller The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and the writer of the Amazon #1 bestseller The Secret of the Alchemist. Also joining us is Dean Wilkinson is a significant influencer and founder of Epoch Work, a non profit organization- to enable those who are aware of the freedom they desire to actually get it. Then to make the impact in the world that makes a difference so they can leave a legacy they are proud of that effects the lives of those who come after them.   Together they are joining us to share their experiences of how they came to be a part of this most extraordinary book, The True Origins of Jesus: The Myth behind the Man, by the late Geoff Roberts, edited by Colm.  Dean contributed by writing the beautiful foreword in this book where he speaks to the 1 million + Fundamentalist Christian exiles in the USA. His message is based on his personal experience: 'Don't abandon your faith because you think you need to take the bible literally. This book will reveal not only where the Jesus Story really came from - but why its true meaning is more important than ever.’  ORDER BOOK HERE! Learn more about Colm Holland: https://www.colmholland.com Learn more about Dean Wilkinson: https://www.epochwork.com Visit Sense of Soul website: www.mysenseofsoul.com Listen to Shanna personal mini series about Sophia, The Allegory of the Divine Goddess of Wisdom, on Sense of Soul Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul   Thank you to our Sponsor! KACHAVA: https://www.kachava.com/senseofsoul Use this link for 10% off

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Hey friends, if you're looking for ad-free Sense of Soul episodes, you can find them at Sense of Soul Patreon. Become a monthly member at any level. You will also have access to our monthly SOS Sacred Circles, our mini-series, merch, and much more. And it's a great way to help support our podcast so that we can continue to bring you inspiring episodes twice a week with our enlightened guests from all around the world.

Check out our Patreon. Happy holidays! Today on Sense of Soul, we have Colm Holland. He is a writer, mentor, speaker, alchemy trainer, adventurer, and the podcast host of Alchemy Lab. Colm was the publisher of the global bestseller, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. And he is the writer of an Amazon number one bestseller, The Secret of the Alchemist, which Colm has been on Sense of Soul to talk about before, a little over a year ago. Also joining Colm is Dean Wilkinson. He's a significant influencer and the founder of a nonprofit organization called Epic Work, where he helps

those discover the heartset and mindset that drive success, achieve high performance at work and in life, and connecting purpose and meaning to the work you do every day. Together, they are joining us to share their experience of how they came to be a part of this most extraordinary book called The True Origins of Jesus, The Myth Behind the Man by the late Jeff Roberts, who I'm sure is super proud of these two men for the release of his book. This should be a very exciting conversation. Thank you both for joining us today. Hey, ladies. You look like you're cozy like us. It's freezing and snowing here. Yeah, it is here too. Yeah. So Dean, where do you live? I am in a little town outside of Chicago called Sandwich. It's Illinois.

Sandwich? Yeah, Sandwich. Are they known for their sandwiches? Not at all. Not even a little bit. They're known for their state fair. It's crazy. Well, awesome.

We're here in Colorado and today's nice and Christmassy outside and snowing. It's one of my favorite places in the world. I've moved away many times and I keep coming back. Well, I remember the time that we had Kalamon and you showed us outside of your house and it was like a fairytale. Really? I want to see that one day. Yeah, old England. Okay. Literally like something out of like a fairy tale book.

It might put Colorado on the number two list for you. Thank you guys for joining us. It's such an honor and a pleasure. And I think I've read most of the book. I've been working on this mini series. I've been diving into Gnostic Gospels. I was on my episode about Jesus, actually. I got stuck. After reading the book, it kind of validated some of the things that I was saying. So because one of the very first books that I read along my journey was this one

by Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ. And it was very impactful to me. So, Colin, have you ever read any of Thich Nhat Hanh? No, I haven't. I've heard of him, but I haven't read him. Good book. He's on my list. Just put him on my list.

Yeah, it's a good one. Because he, you know what he said, I have lots of friends that are Christians. I want to know who this Jesus is. And he reads the Bible from his own perspective. And then in the end, he's like, oh, my God, he's a Buddha. Yeah. I would love to start with who Jeff Roberts is. If you guys could tell us a little bit about him.

You know, I picked up that he was a photographer, a columnist. He was in England, he worked in regional press for decades and studied Christianity for many, many years. What else can you add that you know about the author Jeff Roberts? Yeah, Jeff passed away, sadly, about 10 years ago. And what I'd like to do is introduce him by way of my connection, how I was connected and how I decided this book should be republished. He wrote this book over 10 years ago, 12 years ago, whatever, and he self-published it and it didn't really reach, very few people discovered it.

And then one of the people in the book who, one of the experts, one of the scholars in the book I knew. And he introduced me to the book and said, if you want to know more about what I do, and his name is Professor Christian Lindner, he translates Sanskrit into, well, he was translating into Danish, but he also translates into English. And Jeff Roberts discovered Christian Lindner and they became really good friends. And it was when Jeff contacted Christian and said, look, he said, there's plenty of theological books. There's plenty of really heavy, dense stuff that, you know, you need to go to university and study ancient theology to really understand this stuff. He said, I'm writing a book that anybody can read and say the same thing, only in a way that can be digested by anybody. And he said, I'd like to

include your stuff about the Sanskrit. The Sanskrit that Christian Lindner discovered was that there were passages in the ancient Sanskrit that he was translating, which predated the Gospels and the New Testament by at least two or three hundred years. But when he translated them, he recognized them. He recognized the pentameter of the verse. He recognized some of the names. And he wasn't a Christian theologian by any means. He was an Indian Sanskrit translator. And he went away and studied Greek and came back. So this piece in the New Testament is identical, not just the story's identical, but the rhythm and the names of Martha and Lazarus and Peter and Galilee and so on. It's all the same. And he said, because I wasn't a New Testament New Testament scholar he said I spent three four years trying to compare and see how many comparisons there were so Jeff said

look I can I put this in my book and that's how I got to know the book so with Jeff's family's permission where we published this again and I did some editorial work on it and Dean wrote a fabulous forward, which really shows the relevance of the book for anyone, really. But Jeff was an ordinary guy who believed that whether you like it or not, if you live in Western civilization, which we all do, then you've encountered Christianity, whether you like it or not. It's infiltrated and it's permeated every aspect of the way we think, not just our culture, whether we're an atheist, whether we're an agnostic, whether we're a Buddhist, whatever. It makes no difference. We've absorbed it.

And one of those things that we've absorbed is that Jesus was a real person. That somehow, you know, until you start questioning, he assumes that you assume that Jesus was a real guy. In other words, once upon a time, 2000 years ago in Israel, and because thousands and thousands and thousands of people go there on pilgrimage. I'm sure people listening to this have been some of them have been on pilgrimage there. And you go to the tomb of Jesus and you go to Bethlehem. Well, if you can't actually get to Bethlehem at the moment, but if you could get to Bethlehem, you know, this is the stable where he was born and so on. And that was historical fact. And Jess said, I want to question that. I really want to find out if that's true, because if it's not true, then how did this whole thing called Christianity come about? What was the original,

not just the one origin, but what were the various origins that led to this whole concept of Jesus and Christianity? So that's really what his book does. And take your hat off to Jeff, for a non-theologian, non-academic, but a really great journalist, not only does he say somebody could write really well he's it's a fabulous read I don't know about you Shana but most people you know people can read it in a single sitting if you if you so want to a friend of mine rang me today and said I'm sat outside my boy's school in my car in the freezing cold and I'm reading the true origins of Jesus she said I can't put it down I do think that it can be ingested by anybody and that's what i liked

about it and that's what i was trying to do with my mini series because of course if you pick up the pistis sophia you might rack your brain against the wall like what the heck but one of the things that i discovered right away and i called mandy was like my God, I didn't know Jesus was like this. He's so wise. This is like some Zen master shit. And that was the feeling I was getting from the Gnostic Jesus. It was very poetic. The allegories were very deep, deep for anybody's inner journey, which is not something that you found in the New Testament. So I found like there was a different Jesus. Yeah, well, the Jesus of the New Testament is a good place to start. I mean, let's not beat about the bush here. If it wasn't for Christianity, the chances of us being sat here talking about Jesus, had that not happened, even though there were aspects of Jesus that predated

Christianity, which is one of the great revelations of Jeff's book, is that guess what? The Christians didn't invent Jesus. Even if he wasn't a real person who was born in Bethlehem, even if he's mythical, they didn't invent him. There were these other guys who did never really call themselves Christians, but they had a Jesus too. And Sean, as you said, these were the Gnostics.

I'm not sure how many of your listeners will know who who the Gnostics are but we'll let them google that we will let you we'll let you do your own reading like that because we haven't got time to go into that but in other words there were multiple not just one group but there were multiple groups predating the time the gospels were written and around the time the Gospels were written, who had a Jesus in their mythology, in their belief system. But it was a very different Jesus to the one that we read about in the Gospels. And it wasn't until nearly 200 years after the supposed birth of Jesus in the common era,

that the church leaders of Christianity said, you know, we've really got to decide on a single version of this. So let's have a big meeting. Let's have a council meeting and let's get rid of, let's throw out the bits that don't suit us. And let's invent the, you know, let's stick to the bits that we think do suit us. And let's call those divine inspired writings. In other words, we're going to keep as the New Testament,

even though there were twice, three times as many more, many of which have been discovered in recent times, the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on. Let's throw those out. Let's just keep this stuff. And then we'll decide that this the reason we're keeping this is because we think god inspired the writing of this but he didn't really well he was half asleep when he inspired the other stuff because he didn't it didn't quite fit but i

think the reason that that dean and i if i may just lead this for a moment in a slight direction for your listeners, is that Dean and I were both moved by this book because Dean and I share something in common. We've both come from a relatively Bible-believing Christian background. Me in my very, very much younger days, it's too many years to even remember, recall now. And one of the things that Dean and I felt why this book was so important to be republished under this title was that it's so easy to feel completely disenfranchised from a reality of Jesus that is a spiritual, personal, transformative reality, it's very difficult to still hold on to that when the church is saying, well, if you want to be Christian,

and you want to be part of the church, then we need you to believe that there really was a virgin birth, and there really was a death on the cross, and there really was a resurrection, and there really is a hell, and there really was a resurrection and there really is a hell and there really is a heaven and so on you know these are all prerequisites before that you can experience Jesus not necessarily so in my experience Dean I don't know if you want to speak to that as well well it's the idea there's a simple idea that that Christ has been around before even the story of Jesus, before they decided to match that up. And I think it was at the Council of Nicaea. The fact that Jesus literally has to be believed in is sort of what the demigration away from the church,

the millions that have left every year as information has become more and more accessible is part of it. But most of those guys are confused. And so they drop any hope of a Christ-like power, a transformative power to impact their lives, to get them free. I went after this in a practical aspect because of coming out of the church and being a church leader. I wanted to see what I could do to help people experience freedom

because that's what I experienced. Once I realized, I started getting some downloads or some other messages, you know, almost audible type thing is about, God doesn't care about what you've been taught. He cares about it. He or she cares about it. And it started blowing up my world and there was no one around to talk about it. But as I was digging into the Greek of what is actually in the Bible and what Jesus's story was, I saw that Jesus was a badass. He wasn't a Sunday school teacher. And being able to accept a

different version is the transformation experience. Being able to look at the Bible with different eyes, just like you're doing, Shanna, and that I've been fascinated with what you sent over. I mean, I've been trying to listen, listen, listen, listen. And I think I'm on the sixth or seventh show. Once you dig in, you start to look at it with different eyes, that thing starts to come alive. There's some wisdom in there. And there is a path to transformation. And that's the part that I think we're missing in the West. I just want to say that I was shocked in reading this book because I was so focused on Sophia. Mandy asked me a few weeks ago, where's Jesus in all this? Which was a very good

point. But where Jesus was, was in my conditions and I didn't have to focus so much on him. But now I'm seeing that maybe Jesus is just like Sophia. How so? They are both part of that in fathomable. They are both in spirit. And so here I was finding this hidden feminine wisdom of God, focusing on that and finding that within me. But I felt like I didn't have to worry about Jesus so much because I knew about his story. Now I'm like, of course, it makes so much sense. They're the same. Now I'm like, of course it makes so much sense. They're the same. Just one is masculine and one is feminine. It's just the aspects of God.

I went down another rabbit hole. When I found out about the Essene, I could not get enough about them. So it was funny because those books were the ones that kept reaching out to me. So I'm over here reading about the Essene and Shanna's over there reading about the Pista Sophia. And that kind of blew my mind open. I feel like I could go out on the streets right now and ask a million people who the Essene were and none of them would probably know.

Oh, I thought they were a rock group. Yeah. Jesus was the lead singer. Dean, how did you get the position of writing this forward for this book? So a friend of ours introduced Colin Me into Calm's alchemy and in that area. And at the time I'm, I'm exploring everything because once I start to see that maybe my worldview is not exactly right, the synchronicity started happening. And next thing you know, I'm on a journey by myself in an RV, and I'm exploring everything from the mystery schools to witches to what is real. And when he did the circle, he came back to me and talked about, you've got a

big Christ spirit on you. And so we started talking about where is that coming from? And once I told him the story about how Jesus was a hero to me, once I started seeing there was more to this than what the church was teaching, I couldn't let go of this powerful figure that was able to not just do the miracles, but no matter what we thought of him, he influenced our collective subconscious and sometimes conscious in a way that we haven't, it hasn't been matched in the West. And so as I was digging into that and realizing, hey, there are so many ways to look at what is magic, what is happening in the world and what is happening inside of me and inside of others that I was speaking with. And then the love that I saw demonstrated from people outside of the church searching for, let's call it, and I'm going to put it in quotes, truth, was so much more pervasive than what I saw in the church.

And so we hooked up along those lines and shared a few stories. And then when that book came up, he said, this isn't for me, but you might want this. Right. That was all that was. I don't know if you know the backstory to Sense of Soul, but that's actually why Shannon and I started the Sense of Soul podcast because our minds had, you know, I had a near death experience and she had a lot of death in her life one year. And then we were diagnosed with all of these weird physical symptoms and we started going down rabbit holes. And then we, it was like one thing left to another.

And we started questioning everything that we'd been told to believe. And then thank God her and I had each other. Like we, we feel bad for people like you who are just you and your RB by yourself, because you know, our listeners are so grateful that they're not out there alone, feeling like they're crazy. I would have to say that I still do sometimes, but, you know, especially going down the Sophia thing, cause it's so hard for people to grab onto a concept that they've never, ever had an idea of. And I have to say that I related so much with Jeff. You know, he was on the same journey as I was speaking.

But my last episode, I just got done recording. It's about how the word of God was so the age of Pisces. Jesus was the word. And Sophia was known as the first thought. And one thing that was kicked out of everything was any kind of thought, right? That anything that had to do with thought, anything that had to do with choice, which is the word heresy. And so now, especially even for women, there is a root of this. There is a history of thought and us, you know, seeking gnosis, right? This is our brains were actually meant to do. Along the lines of like you mentioned, you know, thought and Jesus was the

word. I recently discovered the Logos is that Greek word translated. It had the idea of an idea. It's really an idea. And when you think about Jeff's book and Jesus, did he exist or not, Jesus the idea. The bit that I really like, especially about where Jeff takes this, where he started and where he takes this, the thinking through all the way from the Gnostics all the way through to astrology. You mentioned that the age of Pisces going through into the age of Aquarius. I mean, I love, I don't know if you've got to that bit yet, Shana, where he exposes how a lot of the language and a lot of the symbolism within the New Testament is driven by that acknowledgement by astrologers. And even the appearance of the three wise men coming out of the ancient

tradition of Zaranustra, who were also very deep into astrology, and then into numerology, and how even the structure of the words and the names and the letters, influenced by the sacred numbers in ancient tradition. The thing that I love about where he leads it is that he says in the end, you know, it's going to be up to you guys reading this and thinking this. For you to decide who Jesus is for you today, it's not for somebody to tell you who Jesus is.

In other words, there's no Pope in the broadest sense anymore, who has the right, if you like, to dictate, you know, this is what a Christian is, this is what a Christian should believe. But we become our own Pope, we become our own imprimatur on what we believe. And on that score, for me personally, that's what took me down the road of Carl Gustav Jung and Jung's philosophy. Because for me, my devotion to alchemy, which was also Carl Jung's devotion as well,

for me, that's one of the myths if we're talking about the power of myth that's one of the myths that kind of completes the jigsaw puzzle of where Christianity kind of started me off so Christianity gave me lots of pieces and I've tried to put those together in my life and found there were bits missing but when i discovered carl young and i understand what he meant by the self and how the self and jesus are in his understanding are synonymous in the psyche um that really was a huge breakthrough for me but that's for me not like i've now invented or i've now signed up to a new religion. What we're talking about here and what Jeff is exposing here is that Carl Jung explained this really well, is that all of our myths, all of our ancient myths and all of our modern myths, like Star Wars, for example,

or The Alchemist by Paolo Chelo, which I talked about in the last time you interviewed me. I mean, these are all myths. And Carl Jung said, you know, they influence us. They actually enable us to make a bit of sense, a bit of structure out of this chaotic thing, which is our unconscious self. And the job of our lifetime, according to Jung, was to, if you like, the self-realisation of the unconscious.

In other words, it's our job from the moment we're born to the moment we pass in a way to try and make sense of what's going on in our own psyche in a way that makes us feel whole and makes us feel as though we have a sense of being, a sense of purpose in our life. And that's been the power of myths since time eternal, since the beginning. In Column, you know, we had on a rabbi who had told us, we always knew these were allegories. They weren't meant to be taken literal, but yet people have. They're deep allegories. So allegory and myth, the same in many ways, right? Absolutely. You know, Carl Jung went even further, and he said

that actually a story, a myth, and legend are the psyche's way of making sense of the feelings and the urges and particularly the need for God, which obsessed him and absorbed him in many of his studies and writings. He said, if there's one thing that all humans have in common is this sense of the need for a greater power, the need for God. And the way we've tried to explain that down through the millennia is through story and myth. So the Greek myths, the Roman gods, the Egyptian gods, the rise of alchemy, and eventually the place of Christianity within that whole mass of different myths are all, in the end, trying to pursue the same thing. It's the psyche's way, as Dean said, collectively of trying to make sense of life, of why we're here.

What is this actually all about? What shocked Carl Jung, I think, was the commonality and the similarity between multiple myths all around the globe. So what is that? I mean, he came up with this answer. He called it the collective unconscious. If we're talking about Judaism and maybe Sigmund Freud, I mean, he said, that's a load of nonsense. You know, don't believe in that at all, not for a minute. I believe in the personal unconscious, no problem with that but what's this thing that young's going on with this collective and because we've got to admit that one of the reasons why the jesus story in particular seems to work so well and seems to have such power over the human psyche is the fact that it takes all the best bits. It takes the bits that tackle the main archetypes as Koyang, the main motifs that come out of the collective unconscious, the need for the hero, the need for the sacrificial hero, the need for the wounded healer, the need for the sun god,

the need to understand death and resurrection, the need to understand rebirth, all of those things that Carl Jung would say that we share all of that in common, that goes without saying. But we've just discovered through different myths and then through different religions, ways of dealing with that and creating a framework in which to talk about those things and in the end of course young said ultimately and this is why i think certainly dean and i won't let go of jesus is because he said that ultimately the psyche wants to transform it's always looking forward we are always looking forward to the better to the next thing that the thing that makes us feel more whole whatever that is and and the psyche's way of

joining up the dots of this sort of muddle if you like that exists between the conscious self and the unconscious self and that's a lifelong journey. And for some reason, the guys who did whoever they were, who did put the gospels together, you've got to take a hat off to them. They did a pretty sound job of pulling some really good bits together. Otherwise, we just wouldn't have the church today, I don't think. And how about you, Dean? What does Jesus mean to you today? And did you go through a stage like Shannon and I, where we had to grieve like our old religion? We went through like all of the anger. We went through the sadness. Like, what did that look like for you?

Yes. So that message that I got was God doesn't care. I said, well, that can't be true. That just, there's no way. And then followed by, we'll go check. So I started digging in the Bible and, you know, it became an obsession. And as I was sitting inside the church, pieces were disintegrating. And next thing you know, I'm looking around. People loved what I was talking about, but it didn't sink in. It didn't come in to them. Okay. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. It's for freedom that Christ set us free. So yeah, that's cool. But at the end of the day, when I left church and opposition, they weren't around. There was no one else. Like you guys mentioned earlier, you had each other. And I was angry. As I started sitting in meditation and started realizing all the times Jesus went off to pray, he was probably meditating, right? And then started aligning the cultural references and then the Greek words as it was slowly coming together. It was hard, right? Because there

were so many things I was latching onto. And it's one of the things that I was a little bit angsty about with this book. People don't give up, right? Don't give up on the transformative power, the transformative promise that your churches teach because it's there. It's just not in church usually because there is doctrine and dogma that you have got to follow depending on the brand of church. It was very disconcerting. And, you know, multiple times on this journey where I just threw up my hands and said, doesn't matter. I'll just be an atheist. And then that really sent me down into depression. Like when I decided I'm not going to believe in anything that lasted about six months. And actually I could have quit after six hours because I didn't like it. Right. It was,

it was this crazy. I just stopped the search, but then I picked it back up again. And is it because of the synchronicities that you mentioned? Oh yeah. You know, that's kind of like what happened to me. I was so mad. I'm like 2000 years, you know, I'm so mad. All of a sudden I'm getting all these divine synchronicities and messages and dreams. And I'm like, wait, if I never believed before, I believe more now in this journey. So that's what I think is the miracle in it. Because I went from thinking,

has everything I've been taught a lie, you know, and then finding this deeper story of God within myself, right? And that light within. Well, see, that was Jesus's printed message, but I fell in love with the Beatitudes. And because I saw, you know, the first two or three really aligned to my life at the time, but I didn't really get it. I didn't have the time to really start digging in there. But if you think about it, the first Beatitude is blessed. That means the happiest you can be as a human being. And that's what I want to be, right? So the happiest you can be as a human being is to be poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of God. And the kingdom is that place of transformation, is the place of power, is the place of being awakened to what is. But poor in spirit has

multiple connotations, but one of them is I don't know everything about God. I don't know what he is or she is or it is. That's poor in spirit. And I think that when we are almost, it feels like a disintegration. And when we are screaming out at God and that force and that idea, it's almost, that's pouring spirit as you can get. You know, Eugene Peterson in the message version of that verse says, blessed are those at the end of the road, for theirs is the kingdom of God. It's very powerful. And we all know what that place is like. Oh, yes, we do. Some of the fascinating things about this book and about what you guys

have discovered, as I have too, is similarities, like you said. I mean, like how many virgin births do we have? I mean, quite a few, right? You know, and starting from when? So what are some of the oldest similarities in this book? It's Egyptian, isn't it? Yeah, that era, certainly. So Osiris, the Egyptians believed that the sun god, which was Ra, every night he died, he had to die. And he would go down beneath the earth. And he would have to go through all the sorts of trials. He'd have to fight off this and he would have to rediscover that and then in the morning he would be reborn yet again and that was the sun as the sun came up he was he was being reborn and that most scholars I think Dean would say that that

was the beginnings of the sun god and that is the beginning certainly from Carl Jung's point of view those were the earliest days where for some reason and they call it sort of the vegetative gods in other words the origin of the need for God had to just simply to do with the need to grow crops to provide food to eat as a species that That was the number one need. So the instinct and the psyche began to form legends and mythology and the Egyptians with their Raghuram and so on. That all came together around that time. But that evolved. So this evolved in the psyche. So as each generation got born and adopted the mythology of the one before, it elaborated on it, and then it split, and then it split again, and then even other pockets of species, of our species that weren't in any connection with the others, because it's in the psyche, they would formulate their own one. Some of the favorite mythologies are the Australian First Nationals, used to be called Aboriginals. These First Nation people in Australia have been there for 70,000, 80,000 years, completely devoid of any contact with anybody else.

And yet within their mythology, they've still got these transformative rights. They've still got this sense of needing to move towards wholeness. So that's what we all share in that. But going forward as well, thinking about where does all this go and thinking about the age of Aquarius as well, I think what's happening, and I know you guys have talked about this before, but what's happening, this expose, if you like, of the origins of Christianity, the origins of the Jesus of Christianity, is enabling us to see our place within the universe in a much bigger

and broader and more powerful way than I think we ever have before. We are not just the guardians, as the Bible would like us to be, we're not just the guardians of creation. We are part of creation. And one of the great challenges, I think, going forward for us as a species is that we are creators. We are God. In that sense, we have a responsibility to create what is going to happen in the future and that it's not some other power out there somewhere who maybe is going to fix it or make it right or it is written somewhere that it's going to happen.

It's you. It's me. It's us. We're it. And that's going to happen. It's you. It's me. It's us. We're it. And that's a bit scary. That's why another reason why this is also important is because to truly understand our creator place within the universe and within the great scheme of things

in our short little time that we have in our lifetime, but passing it on to the generations to come, it's a big responsibility. And so I wear that. And this is one of the reasons I wanted this book published again. And why I did my book, The Secret of the Alchemist, is because I wear that responsibility quite really seriously. Again, to quote Carl Jung, he he said one of the greatest responsibilities that we have in life is to show up you need to show up guys come on you know show up and put yourself out there you know and seeing Dean and his his work and what you guys do you know I'm humbled immensely humbled because you're out there and you're you, you know, I want to contribute. I want to do whatever I can do to move, to make change happen, to move things forward.

Even if it's just a little nudge, you know, I'm just a little ant who's nudging this little twig a couple of millimeters in one direction. That's great. You know, do it. Because it all is going to add up. I love that. Do you guys, as you, you know, were in the mystery schools, I think I saw a reference to and started to learn that. Was there any place there that you started to realize the power of a creator? Was there any special moment of that? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've had some pretty amazing moments. It's like, now that you have this, now that this has been revealed to you, which it actually is a scripture in the Gnostic Gospels. It's like, once this truth is revealed to you, you know, you'll doubt everything you ever knew. So, but now that it is revealed, what do you do with it? And the the thing is is there's so much power behind it and this is one of the reasons why I think perhaps it's been hidden for so long because like Jesus said those who have ears let them hear but not everyone has ears for this and I do understand that and that other scripture and then it was in Thomas, like, you know, what you discover, like bring it forth, right? And that will save you.

It will save you. The power behind, you know, the gnosis is something that will actually save you. And if you don't, it could destroy you. And that's what we've been doing. So I look at that, all of the hiding and the ignorance really to the truth, or maybe not even wanting to know it. that's where we've lost our power and so regaining it so i think it's a reclamation it's a reclaiming of the true power that is within each of us and wow what will happen well and i also feel like it's divine timing

these younger generations are very much more open-minded. The fact that you guys grabbed onto this book and put it out there now, I have a feeling it's going to be huge. My son, I asked him to print off all this information on you guys. And he came downstairs like, oh my God, mom, I need to read this book. This is everything that I've always thought and believed. Yeah. He asked me about 15 years ago,

I'm actually his godmother. He sat down with me and by the end of our conversation, he had me doubt and everything. He said, I just want to know, Shanna, where's Joseph? Was he like the first deadbeat dad or what? Well, that's my hope, right? Is that we can simplify this, get it sort of chip away at all the confusion, give some clarity to, Hey, even as hidden inside all the doctrine and dogma, there's power in there, but you've got to strip it all away. Yes. And you know what? I was a little concerned about this episode. And it's just my own fear because, you know, we've got Texas as these big listeners. You know, we're going to probably lose Fort Worth after this.

No, but, you know, it's a hard topic to talk to people about. You know, so many people have been instilled with fear. And then on top of it, you know, they twist it like, oh, that's the devil disguising himself, trying to get you to believe this. So I love that Jeff, you know, went out and did his own research and then broke it down so that just the average person could digest this and take it in. How crazy that no one was ready for it when he did release it. Yes. Right. There would have been accepted. right? And now there is that possibility of it being accepted. But the possibility also of embracing the mysteriousness of the Jesus figure

in line with embracing the Christ that has been around way before, right? It might have been called the spirit in the Bible or in Christianity, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. And I think as I look around, it's definitely a hope, but I think it's possible that we don't, and we reestablish a sense of spirituality. And don't throw the mama out either. Yeah, don't throw her out either. That's the craziness, right? It's like the power that's there. My dad, you know, he was all tough guy, right? Tough guy mechanic. And so you should have been born a girl. And, you know, for a while that messed with me. And then when I started to discover all this, I'm like, okay, maybe next time

I will be or maybe I have before. So that's right. You know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about Carl Young, because I'm big on the 12 steps. I'm in recovery. You know, Carl Young had a little bit to do with, you know, he met with Bill and Bob and he has a little bit to do with these 12 steps. And one of the things you hear in AA is what you were talking about earlier. Just show up, just show up. And there's nothing in those rooms that tells you to believe in a certain God. You know, it's just believing in a higher power of some sort. And I love that you guys are

bringing this message across so softly. You're not like Jesus is a mythical figure and you know, it was all crap. And you guys, you're not saying just to dump Jesus to the side and, you know, not have that faith anymore. And I love that message that you guys touched on in the forward and throughout the book. So I, you know, I always tell my mom, my mom is Catholic. We have long conversations. I have been able to explain Sophia to her throughout all of this. I, I, it might be difficult for me to explain all this about Jesus to her, but I'm going to try a lot to ask. However, you it's just we have to shift the language a little bit right to where meet people where they are today which is exactly I think what source does they

meet us where I mean the synchronicity that I was receiving is not academic by any means but this is how I received it really quick question question. Was there any sort of evidence or research that he did that just blew your mind where you were like, wow, like one particular thing? Mine was the Pauline scriptures that was written so much before the gospels and that Paul never met Jesus. And, you know, definitely he met Christ. And if you when I looked at that, and then went and looked at some of the scriptures that Paul wrote, I was like, oh, he was probably talking about something totally different. Christ, that's more of a spirit. Yes, it's more of the spirit. Not his last name. How about you, Tom?

Yeah, as I mentioned, right at the beginning, the Sanskrit translation work, hundreds of years before the Gospels. I always knew there was Buddhism in the Gospels, particularly in the Beatitudes, but where it had come from, that kind of was the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle for me. So yeah, that was it for me. You know, it seems to me that the other thing that's attractive about this book is it's like saving people years of research. Yes. And, you know, how hard it was to get to that, you know, 10 years ago. It's even harder now, which, by the way, I would like to reach out to you guys because you guys have got some sources I want. If we wouldn't have had this next interview, I would have been talking to you guys probably all night. So I just appreciate the work that you've done, I mean, I actually referenced even the

alchemist in my mini series, because to me, it's very similar. You know, all of those things are all doing the same thing. Just like you said at the beginning, there are all ways to help us find our Jesus, right? It's a personal thing. And I think that that's where we're going in the future is a personal religion more than the dogma. What is the myth that I am living? Well, you want to know, it really blows my mind, and I'm gonna have to journal about it is that, you know, my near death experience, I saw what I believe to be Jesus when I was, you know, in my coma. His back was to me.

I do believe that if I were to die again today, my idea of what my experience is would probably evolve. You know, that's what got me thinking. Like, I saw Jesus in my near-death experience. So clearly, he's definitely part of my spirit today. And just because I've been told some lies, that doesn't mean I need to turn my back on that. Exactly. And now it's time for break that shit down. Believe what you want, then live like it's true.

Love is the answer. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Throw out where everyone can get the book amazon is a good place to start the true origins of jesus yeah it'd be really ironic but we could stick it in people's christmas stockings perfect i love these don't throw don't throw the baby don't throw the baby out with a bathwater it's Christmas who wrote the song Personal Jesus

Personal Jesus you know Shanna's always singing well that was that was Jesus and the Essenes wasn't it well happy holidays

you guys thank you so much for joining us always a pleasure thank you so much for joining us always thank you so much for having us thanks for being with us today we hope you will come back next week if you like what you hear don't forget to rate like and subscribe thank you we rise to lift you up thanks for listening