Judas Revisited - Synchronicity

By clicking on the title to this article you will connect to the National Geographic site on the Judas Gospel. The english text was available there in a PDF format, but today I only find the coptic text. The book however is in all the stores.
The single most critical line may be Jesus speaking to Judas, saying: "For you will sacrifice the man who clothes me."

Which brings to mind an experience Regina Dawn Akers related before just before Easter, in the context of her writing down the paraphrasings of the New Testament text by the Holy Spirit, which she recorded as follows:

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Since I have been writing the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the New Testament, I have experienced intense joy and gratitude for what I am hearing and learning, and I have experienced intense resistance as well. One of the most difficult books for me to write was the Holy Spirit’s retelling of the Book of Mark. I think this was difficult for me because I wanted to know the “truth” about Jesus’ life, and I knew the Holy Spirit was giving me another fictional story.

I once asked the Holy Spirit why it would tell a fictional story through me, and I was guided to a random opening of A Course in Miracles. I opened to the Clarification of Terms, #3, and read these words:

Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so. . .

And so they need an illusion of help because they are helpless; a Thought of peace because they are in conflict. God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all concerned with form, but having given the content it is His Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator.

After this, I accepted that the revised fictional story of Jesus’ life was being given to me because it included new symbols that are more helpful to us now than the symbols originally given in this story. However, I must confess, Mark remained my least favorite part of the interpretations, and I perceived it as the least useful of all of the interpretations that I was being given.

Since then, my eyes have gradually been opened more and more.

Everything given to us by the Holy Spirit is given for one purpose, the healing of the Son of God. Or, said another way, it is given to lead us from illusion to the remembrance of Truth. A part of that process is, obviously, letting go of illusion. The retelling of the Book of Mark offers wonderful opportunities for letting go of our thoughts and beliefs about illusion.

For example, as I wrote about the early miracles (e.g., the healing of a crippled hand), I experienced resistance. My belief was that the physical miracles did not happen, and now the Holy Spirit had me writing that at least some of them did. Why would he have me write that? Why, to lead me to let go of the world, of course. As long as I hold onto my belief that the miracles did or did not happen, I am holding onto the world.

As long as I hold onto my desire to defend that the miracles did or did not happen, I am holding onto the world. This led me to really look at my beliefs about Jesus’ life. As I opened up to willingness to look at these beliefs, an article found its way to my inbox. This article included a lot of “evidence” to prove that Jesus never walked the earth. He was just a myth, built up by early “Christians” to support a new cult they were making. This article included all of the earlier mythological sources from which the fake personality of Jesus was made. The article, standing on its own, seemed convincing. I felt confusion. I saw doubts. I noticed fear. And then, I remembered forgiveness.

It took about 1/2 day, but I was led to look closely at my beliefs about Jesus and his life.

My key belief seemed to be that if Jesus didn’t live on earth, the Truth isn’t true.

Now look at that - - If “x” didn’t happen within the illusion, then “y” cannot be true.

What the heck does “x” have to do with “y”?

This is when my eyes were opened. I was expecting something within illusion to prove truth to me, instead of forgiving illusion by letting go of it. And if a seeming person named Jesus did walk the earth, even he had to let go of belief in “Jesus” and the “life of Jesus.”

It was then that I realized that holding onto Jesus as a person and having any desire to defend stories about his life as true were ego-maneuvers of holding onto illusion as true. It was then that I let go of Jesus as a person.

This letting go experience happened after I finished writing the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of John and just before beginning the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of Acts. I let go of Jesus! And then, do you know what happened? The Holy Spirit gave him back to me again in Romans, Chapters 6 & 7 as a powerful symbol and guiding light.

http://www.forholyspirit.org/romans.htm#6

You could say that Jesus died and was resurrected in me.

So, with Easter coming up . . . I felt guided to share this story. I am also looking forward to going back and rereading the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of Mark, now that I can read it with openness and a willingness to learn from symbolism that was given to me by our one Holy Spirit.

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In the same time frame an interesting exchange took place on the Dutch Course list (ACIMNed on Yahoo), instigated also by the Judas issues, and culminating in an interesting way in a message of Annelies Ekeler, who is the moderator of that group, and which pertained to Bach's Mattheus Passion. I subsequently translated some of her message and posted it to the ACIM&Abraham list, and I repeat some of that material here with slight modifications:

Apparently there was a TV program in Holland in relation with the new Judas material, in which Johann Sebastian Bach was discussed, and the fact that evidently he very well understood what the real story was. This is not at all surprising, since the insight that the Twelve Apostles were purely a symbol for the whole sonship in it's stumbling attempts of following Jesus out of the Diaspora of this world was evidently around in Bach's day.

Hereby a translation of what Annelies wrote about her experience the program:
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[she tuned in to the program just as the narrator mentiond that evidently JS Bach also understood the true message, I am taking some slight liberties with the translation, to make it smoother]
When I just started to read ACIM I developed a sort of revulsion against the Mathheus Passion, to my own surprise, because I only heard the message of suffering played out in it. But the funny part was that the music survived all that in me, so I thought something is not right, the music is right-on, so Bach HAD to have understood, must have been in a connection to Truth, how then can the text be so much of the ego. But in the program yesterday the point was raised that at a certain moment when Jesus is at the table with the twelve apostles, the apostles ask who is the betrayer. In the chorus by sopranos, altos, tenors and bassos, we hear: "Herr, bin ich's?" (Lord, is it me?) This is sung three times by the sopranos, altos, and tenors, and twice by the bassos. ELEVEN times therefore. You would expect that
Judas (the twelfth apostle, a basso), would sing "Herr, bin ich's" a twelfth time, but no, immediately after [the eleventh repetition] the choir starts a Choral, which was alwasy sung by the whole community and which sings: "Ich bin's, ich sollte büssen," etc. So here the collective comes to the fore, that we have collectively assumed the guilt, and it cannot be projected on to one person. And so then my
toughts had obviously been right on, and forgiveness has taken place, and I understand why people like Bach are such a powerful presence in the collective consciousness. They understood and understand the message, and that is recognized by the listener. So now I can listen to the Mattheus Passion all over again, differently.
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On one level I think Judas can be understood as acting out the tendency we all have in our attempts to follow Jesus, or being students of his Course, is asking the ego to sanction it. That is the betrayal by which we shortcircuit ourselves constantly and fail to be true to Jesus, by relapsing into the arms of the ego at just the crucial moment. The message of love which the teaching of the crucifixion and
the resurrection entails, however is that Jesus is not his body, not a form in the world, but he is alive within us as our Inner Teacher, who we may follow on the way home.

On another level, this is the same issue that the body of Jesus, his appearance in the dream, is a symbol we must let go of in the inner process of choosing content over form permanently, which RDA also reported on in her message, quoted above. In that spirit we can understand that gratitude to Judas is in order, for he acts out the mistake we all make of ever again choosing form over content, choosing the crucifixion over the resurrection, until we finally do learn the message of Love, that nothing is ever lost, and moreover that it is us who have to let go of our false reliance on form over content, the world of time and space over the real world which the Holy Spirit holds out to us through His guidance and Vision. Thus the self accusation of "betrayal," is turned into a realization that it was merely the empty form being handed over to demonstrate to us in the resurrection the true meaning of a Kingdom NOT of this world, and of the eternal life of the spirit which is our true home in God.

Again in the same wave of exchanges on various lists, Lucia Constain, a moderator on the DU forum reported her earlier acquaintance with some channeled materials on the true meaning of Judas as follows (on the ACIM&Abraham list 4/14/06) :
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"The Christ cannot BE betrayed" In the tradition that Rogier mentions, exposed in the book "The Flight of the Feathered Serpent" (TFOTFS) by Armando Cosani, it is clarified by Judas himself that his role was just as important as Jesus's. Yes, it is around playing the chosen role well, and the Holy Spirit doing with what the ego would use to destroy, something miraculolus. Judas was drunk according to DU. What was he drunk on? According to TFOTFS he was AWAKE, and during the last supper J dipped the bread in the wine, giving it to Judas said: "What you are to do, do it promptly" As he took the wine-soaked bread into his lips his consciousness fell asleep all over again, he forgot himself once more, and as agreed, his heart became darkened so that he could carry out his agreed upon mission. This is why I say "Blessed is He would would lay down His reputation for His Friend, for all eternity." The image of Judas as an evil greedy betrayer would be the root of condemnation for all Jews and was for ages used as the stereotype by which orthodox Christians would accuse and judge the Jewish community. Much hatred has come from all this. But I say onto you "Blessed is He would lay down His reputation for His Friend, for all of time, for when time is over He is One with Me. One cannot lay down his life, as Life is One and it cannot be laid down, but one can risk a mistake perception of onenself for all the illusion of time, and that's is ok, since time will not last long. The Christ cannot BE betrayed. Only Love is true. What Judas did was an act of Love, or an "act of obedience" as revealed in the Gospel of Judas by now. This is why Judas is the one to be mentioned in A Course in Miracles, the one without whom a perfect lesson in Love is incomplete.
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Also on the ACIM&Abraham forum David Fishman reminded us of an earlier post of his going back to a post of November 13, 2005.
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In speaking to Rogier last week, I shared with him an AHA that came to me some years ago.... As someone who was brought up Jewish in a mostly Christian society, my early learning from the world's curriculum was that Jesus was not for Jewish people, as he was the center of Christianty, and certainly they were "different religions' as all
religions are different from all others. Part of the belief system we
engage in here.

Yet it was also apparent to me that Jesus was Jewish, not even knowing what a "Christian" was... as practiced by 500 million people worldwide.

Concurrently, I also saw the way that Christians by their talk and actions condemned the Apostle, Judas.

They would name their children and churches after all the other Apostles gladly, even those that denied and doubted Jesus...yet totally condemned the "betrayer" Judas.

Many years later, I was led to ACIM, and after going thru the Original Text book back in 1978, found on Page 87 (page 95 numbered edition, Ch 6, para 15), under Chapter 6, The Lessons of love and the Message of the crucifixion, Jesus speaking very personally in the "first person" of his experience with his own Apostles, and then mentions the only name in 1200 pages of The Course, "Judas"...(Adam which is mentioned is symbolic of all mankind).

It is clear from his Message to us..that he could never have said ..."Thou betrayest me with a kiss"... the famous line that has endured for 2000 years and has turned generations of Christians "to despise Judas as having done the unforgiveable". Betraying the SON of God.

As we read, study and practice ACIM, it is clear why we choose to leave Judas as "unforgiveable"... as he is the symbol of "our own guilt" based on our belief that we "betrayed our Father, Creator, Love, Our Self..and it is this guilt, we would project out onto the "scape goat"... Judas... The Course tells us on every page of its 1200 pages, this is impossible. We cannot betray either God, His Son, or Love, except in our dreams of sleep and forgetfulness.

Jews perceive Jesus the "one to blame" for their centuries of being nomads without a country, and for their persecution as a "hated minority"..that is "responsible for the death of the "Son of God".... again...an impossible dream...which remains intact until finally exposed as the ..."illusion we believe in and by our belief,
strengthens it so it becomes hardened in our minds" ...until we bring it to the Light and expose its fallacy.

Yes... I see it is a mistake of the same level and proportion...

"Jews need to Forgive Jesus...for what he did not do... as Christians need to Forgive Judas...for what he did not do...."

Jews ...do not see Jesus...as ONE with them...their projections on Jesus as he is the "source to blame for their being attacked and discriminated against over the centuries... in a way, a Jew, betrayed them.....of course that is pure projection of the ...idea that we are unloved and outcast... nomads from our Home.

Christians...do not see Judas as ONE with All the Apostles...choosing to name their children and churches after all the Apostles...except Judas, for he has done the "unforgiveable... "betrayal". Betrayal...is what we all "believe we did, as that is the 'source of guilt"...from all who have 'renounced their Creator and Home and Self, in favor of being author of their own will and world.

As it is impossible..yet we believe in it...same as belief in guilt... guilt equates to betrayal... the idea that Jesus used Judas ....as the only person's name used in the 1200 pages of ACIM, outside of Adam, the symbol of mankind... his message to us all... is "betrayal...in any form...is impossible...and if you believe in it...we use it to perpetuate the dream... for it serves only to reinforce our "fearful weak self".

The Son of God when He Identifies with The Strength of God as His Source, and Extends Love... can only Create by Extending His Love....

Those are the thoughts that came to me...many years ago when i came across page 87 in the original unnumbered Text.
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Lastly, again in this time leading up to Easter, our Dutch friends Reint and Gabriela Gaastra-Levin sent a newsletter (in Dutch) on the true meaning of Judas, which also greatly emphasized how much Jesus was grateful to Judas for playing a vital role in the cosmic drama of the Crucifixion, and how he was clearly a dearly beloved disciple, who played a crucial role in the cosmic dramav of the crucifixion.
The emphasis in their story is different, but I feel that the content is very consistent.

Throughout all of these various traditions, perhaps the most important realization is that Judas is an integral part of the sonship and our brother in Christ, and that his role is instrumental in having us learn the true message as Jesus sums it up in the Course: "Teach only love, for that is what you are."

Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.