GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

35. I Witness Mary’s Healing Power Of Love | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 35]

August 04, 2021 Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
35. I Witness Mary’s Healing Power Of Love | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 35]
Show Notes Transcript

"Yes, Mary has a very accessible, feminine, maternal love that is very healing for you."

Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

Read God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher.

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JLM

The incarnation is reincarnation. That thought came to me, either on my own or perhaps a hint from higher up. I had not yet read the Upanishads or had my own experience of the Self behind the self, but I wondered if the incarnation of God in Jesus could be understood by analogy with the relation of your soul to your personal existence. It was Jesus who responded, speaking of himself in the third person.

JESUS

That's right. God's soul was in Jesus: Jesus was God in this life. 

Just like the reincarnated baby, God had to be born, 

grow up, learn things, and was actually bounded 

by life circumstances, biology, and so forth. 

He was " just a man," as much as your soul is in this life. 

JLM

Then God put it to me this way:

GOD

I expressed Myself in him. 

Remember that I'm evolving. What problem did I need to solve? The people of Israel were not obeying. 

They did not understand Me. 

There was no explicit recognition that I suffer. 

They knew I loved them, but to them it was abstract and remote. It needed to be made concrete. 

I had spoken through the Prophets, but they failed – 

they were not heeded.

JERRY

Are You talking about the 'new covenant, not of letters but of spirit' announced by Paul [2 Corinthians 3:6]?

GOD

Not a supercessionist Christianity . . .

JLM

Supercessionism is the view that the covenant under Christ annuls or supercedes the Mosaic covenant.

GOD

. . . which is a human invention, but a new step 

in My relation to people. 

I expressed Myself in Jesus.  He was My medium. 

JLM

In the sense that an artist works in a medium such as oils or marble.

GOD

Jesus brought the personal aspect of relating to Me 

to a new level of intensity, of intimacy, of inwardness, 

not the vague inwardness of mystic meditation, 

but the inner place where the individual and I 

could meet and talk and pray together. 

When he says, in so many words, "I am God," 

he is reminding everyone of their direct identity with Me, 

and "people know God through me" offers him 

as a personal intermediary. 

JERRY [added]

So an intermediary is needed?

 

GOD

 

No, an intermediary is not necessary, 

but people find God fearsome or awesome or distant. 

In many times and cultures they expect to relate to God 

through priests and officials. 

They are hesitant, shy, feel they do not know how to proceed 

or how to talk to God.

JERRY [added}

And Jesus helps with that?

Jesus as a human being comes before them, 

affirming his own identity with God, and 

offering to have the same relation to them that he has to Me. 

He opens his heart wide and offers it as a thoroughfare to Me, removing many obstacles that indeed can include 

the laws and the priesthood and rituals, 

which can create distance as well as drawing people closer, 

and offering a direct relationship with him and, 

through him, a relationship with Me. 

Think how few obstacles, how little clutter, 

Jesus puts between believers and himself, 

not even guilt and moral rules, 

just "believe in me."

[music]

JLM

As Abigail and I looked forward to our first Valentine's Day together, I wanted to give her something meaningful. I asked for guidance.

GOD

Ask Mary.

JLM

I had had enough strange experiences for a lifetime, and with a deep sigh I thought to myself, "Here we go again," but, as usual, I did what I was told.

JERRY

Mary, what should I do about Valentine's Day?

JLM

Immediately I felt Mary's full presence, a presence that filled me with joy.

This won't be surprising to Catholics perhaps, who have a strong sense of the presence of the Mother of God, but I was raised Baptist. We did not believe in praying to Mary. Nevertheless . .

I was showered in a breathtakingly luminous joy. For some minutes, I could only sit back, enraptured. Then I started to bow down to her, but she cautioned:

MARY

Do not bow to me.

JERRY

Why not?

MARY

I am only mortal, like you. One should not bow down to idols.

JERRY

But you are so powerful.

MARY

That is because I am human, and feminine. I touch you as a person even more than Jesus does. I also have a better disposition.

JLM

Her presence was accompanied by a fragrance of perfume and flowers and the glow of soft lights in an array of pastels--and of joy. 

JERRY

What is that?

MARY

That is the healing power of love. I am not pure love as Jesus is, but I am a simple, direct, uncomplicated source of love--and of divine light, which is refracted through me. 

JLM

Then she was gone. I had forgotten to get an answer about Valentine's Day. So I asked one of the French ladies at Abigail's favorite dress shop for a recommendation. She said that Abigail had been admiring a piece of jewelry which, luckily, was within my modest price range. It turned out to be just the right present.

(MUSIC)

JLM

One day, as I sat down to pray, I heard the voice of Jesus:

JESUS

I am always with you. 

I love all of you, 

even the things shameful to you. 

I loved you when you turned against God at the age of five. 

I anguished over that.

JLM

When I was five years old, my baby brother, only eighteen weeks old, died in a terrible accident. I had resented this upstart -- and then he died. The finger of guilt pointed at me.

JERRY

I felt guilty as charged, but I was too young to have any thoughts about God.

JESUS

You had a simple, natural faith and relationship to God.

You felt terribly abandoned, betrayed.

JLM

My mother was overwhelmed with sorrow and cried every day for years. In her grief, she could not reach out to me. Emotionally, I was on my own.

JESUS

That emotional neglect 

was more a key to your turning away from God 

than "murdering your brother." 

The shame resulted mainly from abandonment, 

from lack of standing. 

Feeling abandoned, you abandoned God out of resentment.

JERRY

But, Lord, I was just five years old.

JESUS

You are not just a five-year-old. 

You are also an older soul. 

The soul does not bring specific memories from past lives 

but it brings life experience, 

the kind of knowledge or deepening or character development you have from living through something.

[brief interim]

JLM

In these early days, I was still worried about giving up my job to pursue a very strange project called "telling God's story." 

JERRY

Jesus, I'm not asking you to second-guess God, but please give me your perspective on all this.

JESUS

What would you want someone you loved to do? 

I know you can trust God's promise. 

He will keep his covenant with you. 

You must keep yours with Him. 

It will not always be easy. That is not the promise. 

But it will work out fine. You will never regret 

doing what He wants of you.

JLM

Since Jesus had said I could get help from others, and remembering that historian Paul Johnson prays to Jane Austen, I called on Martin Buber and was told:

“The life of faith involves risk. You must leap over the chasm. This is not a journey you can take by easy steps. You will have to stretch yourself to the breaking point. Faith demands that. Spiritual insight demands it. Do not be afraid of the Abyss. The Lord's hands will be underneath you. You will not slip. This is an opportunity to put your intellectual training to work in the most important way imaginable. Do not shrink back. Do not delay."

[brief interim]

JLM 

I asked Mary:

MARY

All I can say is that you will have my support and succor. Go forward and all will be well.

[brief interim]

JERRY

God, I feel the most love from Mary.

GOD

Yes, Mary has a very accessible, feminine, maternal love

 that is very healing for you. 

You should contact her more often 

and in a quieter, more sustained way.

JERRY

Would it be okay to do that now?

GOD

Of course.

JLM

I was eating some walnuts at the time. Mary appeared:

MARY

You believe those walnuts love you, 

but not that I and others do. 

You need to wean yourself from that dependence. 

It is a form of maya, an illusion of love and care and goodness. Then focus on the real thing. 

Let down your guard and just soak up the love, 

like lying in the sun.

[brief interim]

JERRY

I feel the presence of God in all His power and glory but, Lord, I still don't feel the love.

GOD

Relax and drop your defenses.  You will.

JERRY

I feel too shameful to be loved.

GOD

Shame is a burden, an obstacle you have fallen in love with. 

You nourish it and keep it alive. 

Let it go.  Give it to Jesus.

JLM

I "gave it" to Jesus, as best I could. 

JERRY

Thank you, Jesus.

[brief interim]

JLM

I tried to envision myself as someone who loves me might see me.

JESUS

No, you still don't get it. 

You have a beautiful soul. 

It is your soul, the real Jerry Martin, we love. 

The empirical Jerry Martin is okay too and should not feel shame. But we really cheer for, root for, your soul 

to win its chariot race of spiritual development.

JLM

So I go back into my soul, into that "inner nothing" I had visited before, that I subsequently understood as my Atman or something like it. From that vantage point, my shame seems superficial, like some debris that floats by on an ocean current. The shame is no longer an obstacle. But can the "empty nothing"--as I experience the Self behind the self--be loved? Oddly, yes. It seems as if it is made of love, or made of the same stuff love is made of, so that love flows right in and fills it.