A Gnostic Christian Neoplatonic Neopagan Deist Church

Disclaimer

It's against my religion
to tell you what to believe
So forgive me please
If I seem to commit that sin


Everyone Knows

I pledge allegiance to God
Goddess
Hosts of heaven on Earth
Holy Spirit
agape love
I seek
The key

Polar shift
Something suddenly
everyone knows
And everyone knows
everyone knows

Click here to go to the "Poetry of Don Eli" page


Polar Shift

The coming spiritual polar shift is a change of heart and mind when we finally raise enough hell on earth (apocalypse/revelation) that serving in heaven on earth starts to look better than a chance to rule in a hell of darkening chaos.  Our new beginning will be like in the Jesus story when the prodigal son (who chose to waste his inheritance) repented, returned to the heavenly family and became at one (atonement/at-one-ment) with the will of the Great Spirit of natural attraction holding together all forms of being--the Great Harmony and fount of creation.

Hell is self-service sublime, like believing that greed is good.  Heaven is serving the greater good.  The God-thing is found in all peoples as visions of how best to live together rather than off of each other.  Every culture sees a different face of the Holy Spirit.  One sees a God who must be obeyed, another a God whose truth sets us free.  Both are sides of the one Great Spirit, and both want the same from us:  virtue, not vice.

The Great Spirit is both a dictator and a liberator:  he who demands total submission, and he who gives us freedom.  It is like the parent who teaches virtue and demands obedience of the child, but later frees the adult offspring to learn the knowledge of good and evil by exercise of free will choice and experience of the results. It is not hard to imagine my God having these two sides, since I have come to know both these sides in myself.  (I choose my loving kindness, but also respect my anger against injustice.) If I have to choose between the father I fear (Enlil, Jehovah, Allah) and the father who champions freedom (Enki, Lucifer); I choose liberty.    But I realize that the love of virtue motivates both gods.  My choice is to love and respect them both.

It seems Abraham left his homeland in ancient Sumer and brought the two Sumerian brother gods with him, who became known as Jehovah or Allah (Enlil, Lord of Heaven) and Satan or Lucifer (Enki, Lord of Earth).  Enki had long been loved in Sumer as the god who saved mankind from the great flood created by Enlil (which became the Noah story).  Enki was also the god who gave humans free will, against the will of Enlil.  The Abraham religions copied the gods of the earlier Sumerians but turned everything around.  Although the Sumerians loved Enki, the Abraham religions turned Enki into Satan (the snake in the Garden of Eden) and changed Enlil into the god who loved humans.

My King James Bible tells me that the God of Moses "...repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people" (Exodus 32:14) after Moses talked him out of destroying Israel and giving Moses a new chosen people (32:10).  This was not a creator who endowed mankind with free will.  Submission or death was his rule.  Yet Lucifer would probably agree that "the wages of sin are death."  I imagine the Great Spirit has these two sides.  Enlil is in disagreement with Enki giving mankind free will because of the suffering that is caused as we learn good from evil by experience of the good and ill effects.  Enki thinks we will choose virtue over vice in the end, and serve better in the garden than the brother who had no other choice.  Which brother is right?  Will the higher consciousness of the repentant sinner prove to be worth the suffering?  

The great spirit is also both male and female (God and Goddess).  Do we have to choose one or the other?  Armies of men gone wild without Goddess have led us to our destruction.  Do we need to say no to God and yes to Goddess, or do we need both?  This is like asking myself to choose between intuition and logic, faith and reason.  I choose both.

Grail Curse

Whom the Grail serves
is of less import
Than for what end the power is sought
and sharing the throne of thought
For without a queen
on the throne of reason
All wonders of science
and industry
cannot heal
the wounded king
of wasteland

Constitution of the First Church of the Goddess of Vivian Gardens

The above link is to The Thirteen Laws containing all the beliefs and rules of the Vivian Christian mother church.  The Thirteen Laws can never be changed.  There is no leader.  People in agreement with this constitution may proclaim themselves Vivian Christians.  The idea is that the mother church can never be corrupted because it is not an organization and no one has authority to change it.

Within Vivian Christianity, people will have different beliefs and ideals concerning morality and theology that go beyond what is agreed to in the Thirteen Laws.  People will also have differing levels of involvement in projects.  People who are most involved are showing leadership and it should be possible that they can be given authority as leaders by those who choose to be less involved, even though the mother church has no leadership.

Offshoot Vivian Christian churches may be created with leaders and additional dogma in conformance with these Thirteen Laws (as provided for in Law Twelve).  As an example, my offshoot church (Church of Vivian Gardens) has a constitution starting with the Thirteen Laws  of the Vivian Christian mother church.  Additional laws start with number Fourteen.  I am the presiding minister, although the mother church has no leadership. 



Gnosis

Gnosis starts with a feeling
That we are part
of something greater than ourselves
--a larger purpose

We come to realize
that our bodies, spirits, souls
and the Earth itself are sacred
And our visions of deity are merely metaphors
--symbolic archetypes meant to inspire
greater gnosis

Awakening is when we see
that the key to Heaven
is not in a book
and comes not from a preacher’s mouth
But rather is found within us
As is the knowledge of good and evil
and what is truth

Later on the path
Our freewill choice to serve
in accordance with divine will
Opens our hearts
to the transformational possibilities of gnosis
Including transcendence of karma
Which makes it worth the quest

Goddess