Into Christ Consciousness

A personal perspective from Gillian Paschkes-Bell

When we set out on the journey of bringing about the Gathering, Into Christ Consciousness, the first thing Janice Dolley and I did, sitting in a car in a hotel car park near Rhyader on a summer Sunday in 2009, was to meditate together, and ask what was wanting to ‘come through.’

For me, three clear themes emerged, and have stayed with me in the months that have passed since.

The first was ‘Going Beyond Fear.’  The second was ‘Balancing Masculine and Feminine.’  The third was to do with ‘Spirit and Nature.’  I’d like to expand a little on each of these, exploring how they relate to Christ Consciousness.

Going Beyond Fear

Fear has been seen by countless spiritual thinkers as standing at the opposite pole from love.  Fear gives rise to the ‘fight/flight’ response, which causes separation.  That includes separation from others, giving rise to conflict, ghettoes and fundamentalism (seen as an ‘I’m right; you’re wrong’ attitude).  It includes separation from Self, where the individual engages in self-attack, with such commonplace attitudes as ‘I’m not good enough/lovable enough.’  Or, again, where we hide from ourselves – whether that’s on the level of refusing to face our actions, or refusing to accept the extraordinary miracle we undoubtedly are.  It includes separation from Spirit, seen in the stories in many mythologies of a great calamity, known in the Christian tradition as ‘the Fall.’  Separation from Spirit means forgetting we are spiritual beings and essentially all one.  This gives rise to separation from others and from Self – and we go round the vicious circle again.

Balancing Masculine and Feminine

Most of human society has lived three thousand years or so of patriarchy.  Anthropologists tell us that before that there were matriarchal societies.  A look at some aspects of these societies in the mythologies that remain suggests that they were probably no more balanced than the patriarchal ones that followed.  Both have given rise to much oppression. It feels as if the time has come for each of us to balance and harmonise our own masculine/feminine polarities.  The way was prepared by Jung in his writing about the animus and the anima, in which he recognised that men have a feminine aspect, and women a masculine aspect, and that these need to be integrated if we are to be whole people. Balancing masculine and feminine is to balance polarities.  When we do that, we engage in co-creation.  When we don’t, we become ‘I’m right; you’re wrong’ fundamentalists.

Spirit and Nature

One of the ways I see Spirit is as Source, as the potential within the formless void out of which Nature – the Many – emerges. Materialism is a world view that has been dominant for around 300 years. Within this world view, Spirit does not exist.  The Many exists, as separate entities, lacking an understanding that basically we all come from a common Source.  This way of looking at things has given rise to a culture of exploitation.  Animals have been farmed and worked with no regard for their quality of life.  Indeed, some humans have denied that other species have feelings, despite appearances to the contrary.  We have used this as grounds to justify actions that, if we believe animals do have feelings, are clearly abuse.  Land has also been exploited.  Soil has been depleted in the interests of creating massive monocultures, required by the economic imperative of doing things cheaply on a grand scale.  Earth’s treasures have been scooped out, too often with scant regard for humane and safe working conditions, fair trade, or sustainability.  But it is not just materialism that has given rise to these situations.  The words in Genesis that gave Man dominion over Nature have also supported people in feeling we are within our rights to take from Nature without giving.  In this way, Spirit has been set against Nature too.

What does this have to do with Christ Consciousness?

As we all know, the title ‘Christ’ was given to Jesus of Nazareth.  I see him as someone who fully embodied the Christ, but not as the only Christ.  Indeed, I believe we are all called to grow into embodying the Christ, by claiming our spiritual nature in every level of our being and knowing our one-ness with all the other beings. I see Christ Consciousness as the consciousness of  Christed beings.  If we take Jesus as the central example, we can see all three themes played out in his life.  He went beyond fear time and again in his willingness to stand with the underdog.  Ultimately, his way of going to his execution showed him going beyond fear by refusing to compromise love, even in extreme conditions.  He also balanced masculine and feminine. In a patriarchal age the stories show he had plenty of interactions with women.  The Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene suggest that Mary Magdalene was his beloved companion, but even in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John it is clear he had women friends. If we consider that even today, in much of middle Eastern society it is normal for men only to interact with women in their immediate family, we can see how amazing this was.  The apostle Paul wrote, ‘In him there is no male nor female…’  I understood this to mean that he had integrated the polarities.

Turning to the Spirit and Nature theme, the numerous stories of Jesus’ miracles show a shamanistic figure who was at one with nature in a way that makes sense to the world only in terms of quantum physics. (This state of consciousness  is also described right at the end of The Gospel of Thomas.) Again, it is Paul who wrote that the whole of nature is groaning with labour-pains, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Relating these themes to our world

As I look at world conditions today, it seems to me that the challenges we face have a lot to do with these three themes.  Fundamentalism, exploitation and oppression are all fruits of a human consciousness that has failed to balance the polarities, and failed to work co-creatively. Amazing changes emerge through those – like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King – who have stepped beyond fear.  When we change consciousness, we change our world.  And the pathway to doing that in a way that will create heaven on Earth is to step beyond fear, into love.

Gillian Paschkes-Bell

Gillian Paschkes-Bell is an interfaith minister with an open spirituality and a Christ-centred path which she expresses through the Celtic tradition of the Ceile De. She has studied Christian theology as a mature student at Heythrop College, London and at Oxford University, graduating with an MTheol. She lives at the spiritual community of Findhorn,where she is co-convenor of the 2012 Into Christ Consciousness gathering, and an associate member of faculty within the seminary of One Spirit Interfaith Foundation.