Article by Doug Esse

The following is taken from an email exchange I had with a Catholic priest about the future of Christianity. I speak about ET, reincarnation, and inner planes work as being normal phenomena for a future Christianity. This email is redacted to make sense to the reader.

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I would see myself as a practicing Catholic and not only do we attend Mass but we are raising our 3 kids in the faith. Heck, our 3 kids have Biblical names: Jonah, Leo (named after St. Francis’ best buddy, Brother Leo), and Tessa (named after Mother Teresa). Though I disagree with much of Catholic (or Christian dogma), it is important to give kids a “container.” We as parents help fill in the “contents,” which includes a more nondual notion of reality. I know that the fact that I love the Catholic Mass while seeing God, the universe, and theology from such a cosmic paradigm as the Law of One will no doubt confuse some of my readers.

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To be a Catholic, for me, is to participate in a Universal Truth that is embodied and grounded right here and now. It’s truly a universal and rootedly incarnational spirituality. However, if the Catholic authorities knew what I believe, then I’d be seen as a heretic, for sure.

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I was fired as the director of counseling at the University of Dallas a few years ago because the admin was upset 1) when they learned that I had founded an LGBTQIA group (since gay students/counseling clients of mine were afraid for their lives and didn’t know where other LGBTA+ people were), 2) taught Fr. Richard Rohr’s work in a graduate class (whose students were mostly Catholic seminarians) and 3)  found out about my blog and thought I was a cult leader. 

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I don’t blame them, though.  Were I them and operating from a more dualistic theology, I’d fire me, too. The day they fired me, I offered no explanation nor defense.  Though very painful and traumatic for me, I leaned heavily upon the example of Jesus’s vulnerability and courage.

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I believe strongly that a Christianity of the future–on the surface–will look different than it does today.  Things like ET, reincarnation, and serving others via inner-planes work (such as what Fr. Nathan Castle does) will be normal.

– Prayer will be seen as energy healing,

-God will not be seen as “Father” or masculine, but rather understood as the mystery of intimate union and unity, and that this Mystery can be engaged with via relationship.

-The Trinity will be seen as it is, the only “formula” that could be possible for there to be a Creator and creation: 1) there has to be a Source of creation that at some level, always remains transcendent to creation; 2) this Source incarnates AS the material universe (there are no “two natures” but rather one nature with two nuances: there is the Eternal Spirit which remains unmanifested and there is the Eternal Spirit which manifests. All is Spirit and everything is divine and sacred); and 3) this Source indwells in all things (as all things indwell in Source).  Indeed, pantheism (all things are God) and panenthism (all things are in God and God is in all things) are both true even though the latter is the ultimate truth.

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Gone will be dualistic paradigms which are so present now. These would include: 

-Atonement Theory (unless it is understood as At-One-Ment),

-male-only priests,

-Catholic hierarchy (replaced by a Catholic holarchy),

-Satan as understood as a real person who is snatching souls from God, and exclusionary notions that those who “don’t accept Jesus as Lord and Savior” are doomed to hell.

-There is no eternal hell even though there are hellish realms. But those who are there have chosen to be there and they are free to leave–and choose to do so–as they become more open to grace, which is always and everywhere present.

-No soul is lost eternally and all of creation is the Prodigal Son walking home (as Ram Dass has said similarly), even angelics and other entities who dwell within (by their own choice) the spectrum of negative polarity. 

-All separation is an illusion (but necessary) if God Who is Infinity, Itself, is to experience Godself, infinitely.  All of creation is God’s “sensory organs.”

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If you were to transport a conventional Christian (Catholic or Protestant) to this future, they would likely freak out and think that Christianity has been totally co-opted by Satan. But if they could go down and in towards the center, accessed through mystical practices (Centering Prayer, TM, Lectio Divina, etc), they would see that the core is the same and what was cleared out (which they thought was essential) were products of the historical/cultural zeitgeist from which Christianity emerged and evolved through its 2000-year history. 

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The Christ mystery–which is the total and eternal union (the oneness) of the spiritual and the material) is forever the shining center of the great torrid field of reality.  Indeed, the universe is a torus and a torus occurs when you spin a merkabah–and a merkabah is a 3D version of the Star of David.  It’s all there and science (which knows about torrid fields) and Catholicism (especially) will be saying the same thing. 

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[As a side note, here is an article I wrote about the Catholic notion of Communion–> Holy Communion, the Logos, and the Law of One]

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I have written Fr. Richard Rohr about how the disclosure of ET life will confound Christians whose faith is mostly founded upon some version of penal atonement theory, even if it is a “lite” version.  I also told him that it is my belief that one of his great vocations in his lifetime is to be a bridge for Christians to cross from the 1st tier of Spiral Dynamics to the 2nd tier–the Yellow level.  He agreed wholeheartedly and hoped it was true.  

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In any case, one of the biggest obstacles for today’s Christianity which makes it very difficult for this facet of the Perennial Tradition to move into more cosmic realities (many of which are confirmed by science) is a theology founded upon a transactional notion that Jesus’ death was necessary for us to go to heaven because God’s (the Father’s) wrath was too great and “He” had shut the doors. 

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But a Christianity that understands Jesus as a visible icon of an invisible Reality [aka “God, the ‘Father’ “] who revealed for all to see how God and creation are already one and God’s eternal becoming follows the pattern of dying and rising (the cosmic notion of the Paschal Mystery), will be able to move more seamlessly into future disclosures of things that would today seem like the paranormal and/or New Age.  

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May we today feel and enjoy the great peace, perspective, inspiration, and joy of Creator, Who eternally transcends all things, incarnates as all things, and dwells within all things. Amen!

Love,

Doug

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