Jesus Christ was enlightened. We have been telling his story for 2,000 years. Each year his stories are modified and enhanced, until now it is very hard to really understand Jesus as one of us. The personal story of the life of Jesus has become bigger than human life. It is commonly considered heresy to even challenge what is said about Jesus. Authority is now passed down by a bureaucratic organization split into hundreds of smaller organizations. Each individual organization has a different perspective about what Jesus said and really meant. They argue constantly and warn their members not to listen to any of the other organizations built up around Jesus. Each claim to know the true Jesus and most are ready to fight about it until you agree to call them ‘right’.
Because Jesus was enlightened, what he spoke could not be understood by the reactive mind. He told people to ‘love their enemies’ and to ‘turn the other cheek’. It just didn’t make any sense at all to angry people, people who were ‘going to get even’, and those people who had wealth and power from the status quo. To manage this lack of true understanding, an external ‘Heaven’ was created, so if you did these things, which you could not understand, you would then get into Heaven. Churches using a wonderful description of all your desires answered in ‘Heaven’ put a ‘because’ to the words of Jesus, and anyone could understand that! Enlightenment was thus made dumb because that was what people could understand. This making dumb of enlightened states, happened officially at the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. Enlightenment was simplified, reducing truth to fixed dogma. It did not work. Enlightenment happens only to each individual, one at a time, and not to groups of people who vote together on church issues! The Council of Nicea suppressed many enlightened text.
Church issues have not been the issues of Jesus. The church dogma is reactive. Enlightenment teaches unity, as we are all each other. Jesus taught unconditional love, church conditions love. It can only be seen by those who have eyes to see. The church has followed what could be political agreed to (convoked by the Roman Emperor Constantine) some 325 years after the death of Jesus, using people who ‘understood’. This was reactive. In a reactive culture, there is no word for reactive mind, as it is invisible. Only little children and enlightened beings can see unconditioned truth. A reactive person is certain that they are ‘right’. This was a political decision, not a religious decision. There were many political decisions made. The Homoousians taught that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, i.e. both uncreated. The Sabellian form had been condemned as heresy .
The church over the next 1700 years continued to make a series of mistakes. Once forcing an external ‘Heaven’ they need an external ‘Hell’. Once these were in place, the church then filled the power vacuum that was created. To wrap the curse tighter, you were considered a sinner from birth, sex was forbidden and you were taught to let the church think for you. Science was forbidden and you must always send them your money. These separated the church from enlightenment. Especially the inquisition (1184->1860) which killed thousands, could not be considered at all ‘enlightened’.
“Those who reconciled with the church were still punished and many had their property confiscated, as well as were banished from public life. Those who never confessed were burned at the stake without strangulation; those who did confess were strangled first. During the 16th and 17th centuries, attendance at auto de fe reached as high as the attendance at bullfights.” Taken from the Jewish virtual library http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Inquisition.html
The messages Jesus gave us (and hidden by the institutional church) were all about Love. Jesus taught how to live a life of love, how to grow love in those around us, and how to make that love unconditional, unbounded and non-conceptual. This was a love unspoken in the public culture of his time, or for that matter our time too.
Enlightenment is available to everyone. Throughout time enlightened people have guided humanity. In most cases, they are not even noticed. They don’t get in the way. Enlightened people don’t seek the public eye, they prefer being effective to being noticed. In my understanding, the story of Christianity is not the story of Jesus, it is the story of how enlightenment was suppressed and ignored. Our world always contains enlightened people. It might be the baker who lives across the street, or the librarian, or the person who drives a delivery truck. They are always available, if you but look.
Enlightenment just knows at a non-conceptual level that all is one. No real distinctions are valid; no separation creates anything but the illusion of separation. Separation is the cause of all suffering. Love is the bridge back to unity, but within unity there is no ‘feeling of love’ since that would require that something was missing, or that something could be done about it. An enlightened person can live anywhere and not be even noticed. Many hide in the Christian Churches not taking any credit, but always doing the enlightened action.
The ‘story of Jesus’ is amazing because it also hides so many enlightened people. They officially see themselves as ‘followers of Jesus’, but this is not so, it is just the story. They know enlightenment directly from the inside, but that is hard to understand and everyone knows they killed Jesus. Christianity is just a way to hide. Let only those with eyes to see, see and let the others sleep. Jesus died giving other enlightened people a ‘cover story’ so that they can live and love in plain sight. The reactive mind can never understand, so we all just wait.