Jun 17
10
Removing the Veils
Of Spiritual Blindness
Help me to see you Lord.
What is the result of one blind man leading another blind man? According to one old parable, don’t they both fall into a ditch?
According to another bit of scriptural wisdom we are all looking through glass which has been darkened by much smoke and other debris. If that is true then, at best, each of us has only partial vision; who, therefore, is equipped to lead another into total spiritual LIGHT?
Before we jump fully into some modern day revelation, let’s take a look at one more ancient text:
“Don’t let anyone refer to you by any title that implies spiritual superiority or authority and don’t you refer to anyone else by any such title, you all have one Teacher, Leader and Spiritual Parent and Guide, you must all be as brothers and sisters to one another.”
Further on in the same passage is an admonition not to pray publicly, but to do so in one’s own closet.
Don’t worry, you can follow my lead…
Therefore, brothers and sisters, who among us are the most afflicted with spiritual sightlessness? The tragedy is these who are the most blind are attempting to lead, teach and control those of us who are only partially blind.
Are we beginning to see the utter stupidity of ALL religious argument, but most particularly within the ranks of those who assume or aspire to assume roles and titles of spiritual authority and leadership?
If we are prepared to remove the religious reverence directed toward some ancient luminaries and offered here only as examples and because some of those who claim to follow them miss the point of several things each of them said.
I’m thinking of Siddhartha Gautama who is thought of the world over, as “The Buddha” – Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ – Muhammad as the Prophet I mention these three only because I have been exposed the most to the arguments of, again, those who claim to be followers of each.
A Christian, Hindu and Jew walked into a bar….
Interestingly, just now, this moment, I flashed on some Hindus and Jews with whom I have interacted and shared some of what I’m about to introduce as a way to see a bit more clearly; and in each instance they humbled me with their humility and lack of argument – AND acceptance of what I, a fellow beggar, shared with them about where I found bread.
I wanted to call what I’m about to share as the “resurrected Jesus project,” but the name carries too much religious baggage with it – the truth of the matter is that it could also be called the “resurrected Jay, Moo, Sid and YOU project” because that is basically what it is about.
Resurrection has the connotation of being raised from the dead, but as the term is being used here, related to YOU and me, it means INSTEAD of experiencing physical death EVER.
Here we go, ready? (Generally I take much longer to set the stage before sharing revelation, but I’m getting to go, NOW!).
Can you see the light?
There was a VOICE that spoke from the middle of a fire in a bush that didn’t burn. This VOICE introduced itself as “I AM that, I AM – the God of Abraham” and who others declare is (Abraham) the physical father of all humanity.
What does this VOICE have to do with YOU? How will understanding what this VOICE has to say to YOU help lift the veils of blindness? By giving you the LIGHT that all humans are brothers and sisters and religion is the cause of blindness and separation, both total and partial.
The beginning glimpse of seeing just a bit more clearly for me, began when a friend who had moved to Hawaii and had started several businesses there and whose physical eyesight several months earlier had been improved to the point that he threw his thick glasses into a dumpster and never again had his driver’s license annotated with “Corrective Lenses Required.”
Healing…Crusade…Oxymoron.
He called me from Kihei, Maui and asked if I’d be willing to go to Lahore, Pakistan and do an outdoor healing crusade with a local Pakistani evangelist. He was offering to pay all my expenses as well as the monetary support he was already providing for the local, including the printing of thousands of posters, the flatbed trailer to be used as a platform and the necessary sound equipment.
My flight was booked, some 45 days out, passport and visas all in order and I had already arranged to stay with the local and I was quite excited on a number of levels – not the least of which was the ego-spawned thought of being known as someone who had braved the threat of being jailed or even put to death (proselytizing is illegal in Pakistan and thus carries those kinds of possibilities).
Shamed by the realization of my purely selfish motives, I knew I was not prepared for such a momentous undertaking. I decided to pray and forego eating anything for as long as it took to break out of such nonsensical motivation.
Eleven days into the fast, at about 2:00 a.m., I was on my face on the floor, literally pounding with my fists to have only God’s will and purposes as my motive. A picture came into my mind of a book cabinet in the living room. I knew I was supposed to get up and go there.
Muhammad, who was he…really?
We had a set of encyclopedias and it was like a spotlight was shining on the volume with an “M” on it. I took it down and walked back into my office and asked, what I was supposed to do. I opened it and was amazed to see that it was a quite long article about the life of Muhammad. Two things got my attention; one was that, according to the article, he had been raised in a form of Arabic Judaism. Two, after the angel Gabriel had instructed him to write that which became the Qur’an, he believed that he was teaching basically the same message that Jesus of Nazareth had taught some 700 years earlier.
I got back on the floor and started pounding again, “What was I being shown?” Quite clearly, the words came to me that all I would be doing by making the trip was leading hundreds of people from the shadow of reality of one religion to the shadow of reality of another! I knew the trip had to be cancelled!
That was embarrassing on all sorts of levels such as backing down from all the personal commitments I had made; then realizing that what bothered me most was missing out on a trip I really wanted to take just for the travel – a different kind of shame came over me.
Reluctantly, I called my friend and told him what had happened and I was disappointed that he simply took it in stride and mentioned a rather well-known evangelist who he knew and would call to take my place.
Go to the beach and get your own mantra…today!
This was just the beginning for me, a deeply humbling experience. One thing led to another and this friend several months later asked me to come to Hawaii to help him dispose of several businesses and consult with him about others.
It was while on another fast, walking and jogging on Shugar Beach near Kihei, Maui, close to my home, the next step in my partial spiritual-vision-improving took place.
The following, which has become my “mantra” several times a day for over twenty years, came over me and initially frightened me because I thought I might be engaging in blasphemy.
“I am in and of the will of God. Your presence and power are upon me; I want and have nothing else and no other thought or feeling shall have a permanent place in me, I AM.”
I immediately ran to my car for the short drive home so I could write the words down and pray over them. Assured that the words were not blasphemy and I was learning about my identity and was to be sharing them with others.
This is what lifelong friends are for…
I had more to learn, before that particular lesson became clear. I got involved in a business that I initially resisted because I knew nothing about it. That business took me initially to a small island in the Caribbean where I met a man who has become a life-long, close friend and associate.
When I was first introduced to him and he asked me the mundane, how are you, I answered, with what had become my standard, “perfect and how are you.”
“I AM that I AM, he said immediately.
We both became involved with another man, from Canada, who understands the “I AM presence, as he puts it, within us.
That business took the other man and I together, to such far flung places as Manila, London, Geneva, Nassau etc and separately all over the world. Ultimately it took me to Uganda where I would be kidnapped, accused wrongly of all sorts of heinous crimes and imprisoned – all of which leads back to I AM that, I AM (with a comma) and the point of this article.
Before there was a Brad Cullen, I AM that, I AM – and so are YOU.
bc
PS: If you want more, simply write brad@spiritualhealingsource.com or
doug@youwithoutlimits.life or cferguson@providentconsultingsolutions.com (all of which are the same guy and still closely associated with the other two mentioned above) and a world-wide network of many individual spirits occupying physical bodies and businesses.
If you would like to e-mail the other two guys for verification of all the foregoing (and any other questions), their names and e-mail addresses will be supplied upon request.