Everything we believe, is formed within its own distinct bubble or sphere of belief , whether it be from an established religion, today’s modern spirituality, or a new healing modality.
While involved with that specific bubble or belief, you will see how everything is working for you and you will see signs and have affirmations and guided messages that help support what your bubble believes is true, necessary or inevitable. Your bubble will provide you with the experience to validate that it is true and important, and those experiences help you relax into it and more easily accept it as the perfect path for you.
The interesting thing is then to ponder, who is right and what is actually true? If every bubble or belief has a core of established truths and proof within their beliefs that they are true, how could there be more than one bubble? Or better yet, if every bubble has undeniable truths, yet these truths are not in agreement between different belief systems, how can you accept that anything at all is true?
How can you know what is true or what bubble or belief system to choose or let go? To leave you with a clearer answer, I am going to provide you with a little more background so you might understand better what I am calling a bubble, why I know they exist, and how to look at them more clearly, or at least with less judgement.
I was involved off and on with an evangelical base belief for many of the years between the ages of 10 and 38. When actively involved, I attended conventions, attended church regularly Sunday morning, Sunday Night, Wednesday night and was involved with other church related activities as well.
Within this experience, one primary defining element of being a Pentecostal believer was that of speaking in tongues as defined in the Bible:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts 2:1-4
Many believers did speak in tongues to some degree, as did I. There were a few, however, who were much more open for this kind of communication and they would receive messages from what was believed to be The Holy Spirit itself as indicated in the Bible:
Wherefore let him that speaketh in an [unknown] tongue pray that he may interpret.
1 Corinthians 14:13
When a very specific message was given, generally during a praise and worship session, an individual would feel highly compelled to speak and would suddenly, and often loudly, begin speaking in an unknown language. This would go on for a moment and then there would be silence.
Within that silence we all knew to wait and pray for the interpretation as validation that this message truly was from God. Generally within a minute or two, another person, feeling highly compelled to speak as well, would begin speaking in English, the interpretation of the preceding message.
Within that experience, having what appears to be undeniable evidence of a connection directly with our creator, you could only reaffirm your belief that you have found the truth and are on the right path. This line of thinking often then concludes by assigning all other paths to God as being wrong, misleading or outright attempts by Satan to deceive.
Let’s fast forward 20 years and for reasons I will not go into depth at this time, I had moved away from evangelical beliefs and embraced what I simply called Spirituality. I no longer saw Jesus as a sacrificial lamb who was going to return to slay billions of wicked people, but was instead seeing him as a totally loving and peaceful brother who preceded me in opening a door I could not open on my own, and who now walked with me.
Many things had come into my life that helped me make this transition, such as the first Conversations with God book, A Course in Miracles, a business associate who later became my wife, and a retired heart surgeon who found new ways to heal, to name a few.
Still, always, in the back of my mind I knew I had a true experience while being a Pentecostal, and I couldn’t bridge that gap of how they could be getting messages from God, when later, I discovered a whole different God that would have been providing very different messages.
The Pentecostal God, while being called a loving God, was also given justifiable license to be an angry god, a demanding god, a jealous god, a murderous god, a deceiving god, and an unforgiving god. The God I had discovered through spirituality was totally different. He was and is an unconditionally loving God that has no requirements and doesn’t need to forgive because he never found fault in the first place.
So who is right? Was I being deceived by all this “New Age” stuff? Was I on a path to eternal damnation because I turned away? Even within this new spiritual experience, I listened to people who channeled spirits, angels and beings from dimensions beyond ours and they had similar messages that depicted our God, or Source as being more like what I had newly discovered and not at all as described in the Bible or accepted by Evangelicals. So who is right?
When you truly open your heart and mind and set aside what you hope to hear, then ask a question, you will receive a helpful answer. So, how can it be that Evangelicals are receiving validating messages about their beliefs while those practicing Spirituality are getting different validating messages about their beliefs? Because they are all channeling from their own specific source or entity that agrees with what they believe and it has nothing specifically to do with any direct message from God.
What this means is that there is a spirit or collection of spirit beings that, either because of what they truly believe or through tainted or malicious intent, they connect with groups of like-minded individuals and this creates an energy exchange that tends to be mutually beneficial for all involved. This is what I call a ‘bubble‘ or ‘sphere of belief‘.
With respect to my Pentecostal experience, I can see now that it is very possible that the reason why the messages are consistent within that bubble of belief is because the Pentecostals are tapped into spirits or entities that embrace the core belief in a demanding and needy god. It is likely those same beings influenced the teachings in the Bible and were very likely the actual embodiment of Yahweh, the ancient God of War.
I view modern Spirituality as an attempt to break away from those ancient influences or bubble, and I believe Jesus came to make that clear. Of course this could not be accepted at that time because those same ancient influences lead to Jesus being rejected and killed over 2000 years ago. Then later, those influences skewed what had been taught by Jesus so that it fell more in line with Old Testament base beliefs of a demanding God vs an unconditionally loving God.
Overall, my experience within both the Pentecostal bubble and the Spirituality bubble have provided me with a unique perspective that all belief systems exist through separate and distinct entities, and are, for all intents and purposes, real and true within themselves. So, when looking at any belief system or bubble, bear in mind the reason those involved within that belief can be so devoted to it is because their beliefs are validated within it as much or even greater than your beliefs are validated to you within your belief system. They know and have evidence they are right as much as you know and have evidence you are right.
So who is right? Within each bubble, they are all right, but outside the bubble, some of their truths might fit or mesh with other truths, but distinct differences will always be there. It’s at that point when certain believers might think they must convert or convince others their beliefs are right and all others are wrong, and this misguided endeavor creates an energy imbalance between believers. This imbalance causes strain to be introduced where it does not need to be and may lead to conflict or even war, all because of different interpretations of love. It’s what A Course in Miracles refers to as a “mad idea” because it’s an irrational thought that appears totally rational to all believers within the mad idea.
The bottom line is that a bubble does not like change or the idea of change, so it never has and never will work to try to change a bubble or belief. However, you always have the choice to leave a bubble for a different one, but you first need to set aside the belief in the repercussions taught by that bubble, as to what will happen to you if you leave the bubble or begin to disagree with its core concepts.
With the background I experienced as a Pentecostal and the experience I now have with Spirituality in general, I still see there are many, many, spiritual bubbles, including the bubble in which I currently reside. I don’t see a way to not be in one bubble or another since we will all believe in something or another, but I think it’s important or helpful to include a base concept into your beliefs:
When an idea resonates with you, follow it, embrace it and learn what you can from it, but understand that it’s fine to let go of the source of that idea, without any repercussions of any kind, when it no longer resonates with you.
Bubbles exist for a reason. They provide multiple pathways to learning and experiencing that would not be achieved if following just one belief system. What is helpful to be aware of is that any and all bubbles are skewed in some way, including whatever bubble you or I are currently in. There will always be something within that bubble that is vulnerable and that vulnerability will be protected with what appears to be rational thought systems and actions while within that bubble, but will be clearly seen as unnecessary or unhelpful from outside that bubble.
Even within many new age spiritual beliefs, there are those who believe their beliefs or teachings are better, higher or more evolved than others. This may or may not be true, but that line of thinking is the root cause of why established religions eventually stop growing, become stagnant and serve nothing other than to hold people back from moving on to whatever may be best for them.
Knowing this, accept the idea that you are not confined by any thought within a belief system or healing modality. I believe it is our highest path to experience these bubbles, obtain the highest lesson from them and then leave the trappings or ‘solid requirements‘ of the bubble behind us, moving on to what is next.
How do you know what’s next? As expressed earlier, when something resonates with you, let it in. Don’t be afraid of what it might appear to require from you because that is just the trap of that bubble or belief. Just embrace the idea that draws you; learn from it and then simply move on to whatever resonates with you next. During this process, don’t judge yourself and simply set aside the judgement of others. It’s your path to create and you cannot make a mistake because real truth is simply how you choose to look at something in that moment.
Namaste
