Science, Indigenous Wisdom, and Jesus -Chapter 3, Part 3
Science, Indigenous Wisdom, and Jesus -Chapter 3, Part 3
Listening to the Voice of the Heart of Love
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 3, Part 3, Facing My Shadow and Listening to the Voice of the Heart of Love.
Here are all Chapter 3 posts:
Chapter 3, Part 1 — Introduction and Transforming Evil – By Connecting the Good
Chapter 3, Part 2 — The Ancient Blueprint I Found in Indigenous Wisdom
Chapter 3, Part 3 — Facing My Shadow and Listening to the Voice of the Heart of Love
Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy, which embodies the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Voice-overs are now at the top of my posts for anyone who doesn’t have the time to sit and read! Also, find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on
Spotify and Apple!
Previously, at the end of Chapter 3, Part 2:
I had a profound experience that is as vivid now as it was that very day. In my vision, I saw a glowing cross of light. Then, another line was added, what now looked like a glowing asterisk of white light. This light began expanding dramatically, and I saw the whole room fill with light. I burst into tears of deep emotion, as did everyone in the room, wailing for this beautiful person.
For three days after her passing, I walked around in a state of bliss, peace, and joy. While I can’t claim to have witnessed what happens after death, I felt myself vicariously experiencing her crossing from this world to the next. It was blissful and pure light. It was at that moment that I lost the sting of my own mortality and eventual death. It was a strange, and yet peaceful, feeling. My one-year experience of her life and death revealed more pieces of the mystery to me.
Chapter 3: Science, Indigenous Wisdom, and Jesus, Part 3
Facing My Shadow and Listening to the Voice of the Heart of Love
Facing My Shadow
After Doña Catalina’s funeral, I went back to San Diego, trying to figure out how I could live the way she had, with a focus on being of service to others. Although my journey with Doña Catalina ended when I returned home, the experience has reverberated through my life since that time. One incident stood out.
About three months before she died, I was in her house after dark. Amidst the flickering kerosene lights (remember, there was no electricity), she uttered something in Spanish: “The devil is in town.” When I asked what she meant, she told me that the “devil” had taken the form of a new couple in our region doing “evil deeds.”
She didn’t seem very concerned, and when I asked her why, she told me when you’re living a spiritual life and you’re connected to God, that becomes your shield of protection. “There is no need to fear evil,” she told me, as the connection to the Transcendent power of light is within each of us, radiating from within, moving outwardly at every moment.
I knew Doña Catalina was a woman with a deep faith in a transcendent God who, incidentally, had access to centuries of indigenous wisdom.
I felt I was being set up for a lesson, and I was right.
I retired to my tent and got ready for bed. Being at the foot of the mountain, with no lights around, it was dark — very dark. Suddenly, I had a sense there was something outside my tent — like a spiritual darkness. In any case, it didn’t feel good. You’ve heard the expression, “The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife?” That’s how it felt. I had the palpable experience that “evil” was right outside the tent.
Was I making this up? Had I fallen prey to the power of suggestion?
The feeling grew stronger, and I felt an upwelling of fear. That’s when I began to meditate and then to pray, and then another strange thing happened. I found myself having a dialogue with what I perceived to be the “devil,” only this devil was also inside of me. It was dwelling inside of all my fears and insecurities, swirling around in my own heart of darkness.
I had a one-hour dialogue with this “entity” until I became aware of a light coming from within me. And just like that, the wind picked up outside, and I realized my dance with the “devil” was over (at least for that moment!). Everything cleared, and there was a feeling of silent peace.
I still vividly remember this experience and how I was able to use prayer to dispel my own fear and my own darkness by reaching “in” and “out” to the Transcendent Ground of Being both “outside” and, at the same time, “inside.”
There was no theology attached to this, neither scripture nor scroll — just the contrast of dark and light and turning over my “will” in prayer to ask for help and of the power of love into my life.
Over the years, when people have heard the story of my time with Doña Catalina, they have commonly asked, “Did you become an apprentice? Did you become an herbalist? Do you do spiritual healing?” And the answer is no. However, I received something infinitely more precious and vast.
What I got from the experience was the grace of being allowed to be in the presence of an enlightened being, a God-loving, indigenous version of Mother Teresa. This enlightenment reflected a remarkable ability to transcend the bounds of ego in everyday existence, turning the common inclination for self-centered love into a self-giving Cosmic Love.
It’s not about giving up the ego but having the enhanced capacity to serve others as no different than being of service to self. I came away with a
direct experience of Doña Catalina’s humility, transmitted into my being.
Over the next thirty years, I would meet many celebrated pastors, rabbis, teachers, and healers, some highly competent, some just competent at hype. I would also enter fellowship with many religious faiths, primarily Christian churches and Buddhist Sanghas. I have yet to meet another individual with Doña Catalina’s profound simplicity — other than Dr. Ari, whom I will discuss more in future chapters.
Doña Catalina was instrumental in my formation as a human being. In addition to demonstrating the Ancient Blueprint in action, she offered a key to resolving Western Civilization’s deepest paradox and source of hidden pain — the separation of science and spirit, the linear and measurable from the intangible and intuitive. Thinking versus feeling.
These parts of me had been developing in tandem, though they previously didn’t speak to each other as an integrated whole. Through this experience, I became clear about what lies deeper than the thinking and feeling functions—profound intuition.
Intuition is a deeper knowing, like a hotline to the Transcendent, that we can all access and have it guide us beneath and beyond the fears and worries of daily life.
In the secular, scientific world I was raised in, there was no language for what I experienced at twelve and for years afterward. I threw myself into nature as a teenager, but I experienced just the masculine side: adventure and danger, with Nature as a challenge. Then, later, I cultivated the other masculine trait of measurement and observation as I sought to learn more about whales and dolphins.
Finally, I was able to enter true communion with nature as preparation for being with Doña Catalina.
And that’s what made my time with her so significant. She demonstrated, through Aztec wisdom and Christian devotion, a way to make sense of both the physical and the non-physical. I never had to give up my perspective as a curious, scientific observer. I could hold all these encounters as experiences beyond belief. I don’t mean they were unbelievable, but rather, belief was not required to make sense of them.
The missing piece in both Western science and Western theology is the feminine and indigenous sensibility that all of nature—even the inanimate, like rocks—is “alive,” and so is the invisible world between worlds.
It then became clear that I had the best of both worlds — instead of the rational mind running the show, with the intuitive as a servant, I had reversed the priorities. Now, the rational mind was in its proper place, in service to the deeper part of our own nature — connected to the Transcendent Ground of Being.
Listening to the Voice of the Heart of Love
There was one other gift Doña Catalina gave me — and that was the gift of having a relationship with Jesus. Keep in mind that I was raised in a secular Jewish household, meaning we followed Jewish culture and traditions and tacitly celebrated certain holidays — yet there was never a concept of God in our family.
I never had a childhood container of religious belief. There was no sense of transcendent power, and as with many of the families I knew, science — the tangible and measurable — was our guidepost.
And being identified as Jews nonetheless, Jesus was something “religious Christians” believed in. However, as I got to know Doña Catalina and recognized her authenticity, I came to see Jesus anew. Maybe it helped that she was also grounded in a deep indigenous tradition, but her connection to Jesus sparked my connection as well.
Looking back, it was during this period that there was a shift from experiencing the Transcendent as an abstract, impersonal, and invisible Reality to
becoming a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The personification of the Transcendent came naturally to me without having to get there through a specific religious framework. To some extent, it seems as if I was already “converted” through decades of direct experience that led me to a place of “trust” and “faith” in a Transcendent Reality.
Don’t get me wrong—I am not making any judgment about religion or non-religion, and I am not sharing this as if I were bestowing some new religious or spiritual viewpoint. I’m not.
I am sharing this as my experience and how it led me to understand the Ancient Blueprint and its application in building a unified community.
After I returned to San Diego from Mexico, I began working as a teacher in a school for children whose parents came from Central America to flee political persecution. There, I became friends with a Catholic woman, and over the year we knew each other, she was diagnosed with cancer.
When she was in the final process of dying, she began to deepen her relationship with God, and she spoke about Jesus Christ often. In her presence, I could see the peace that had come over her — it was as if a golden light enveloped her.
She died around my birthday in the late 1980s. I remember standing in a parking lot near San Diego State University, and I felt a sense of peace and was overcome by a feeling of Love — and that’s when I realized my friend had just died. There was so much light surrounding her in the last few weeks, and at that moment in the parking lot, I could feel the love that she had for everyone.
What an amazing human being. Instead of being fearful of death, instead of feeling bad and having regrets for her life, as many of us have, she expressed nothing but gratitude. Beyond the gratitude for her life, she opened her heart to everyone.
Through her, I got another small taste of the love Jesus must have shown people.
Later that night, I was at home. I lit some candles and prayed for a while. It was a very calm and quiet space. Suddenly, I felt a tapping on my left shoulder. I thought it might be some draft. But the tapping came again at the same place.
Then, I felt a light on the top of my head, a beautiful golden light shining like a brilliant star. The light descended downward into my head and further into my body. My inner awareness was bathed with such a radiant light that appeared all around me inside my bedroom. I was filled with such love, peace, calm, and joy.
Then, I heard a voice within my head saying, “I will watch over you and others as a guardian angel, guide and protect you, and help lead you to the peace and joy of God.”
For days, I walked in a blissful state, like when my dear friend Doña Catalina had died.
I knew that my friend spoke to me and was going to be there for me. Whenever I thought of her, I felt the same joy and unconditional love, like she was Jesus sacrificing for us and yet being present and available to us all the time as Spirit. She was in such peace before she died, a palpable feeling that seemed to survive after her death.
Such faith and devotion were incomprehensible to me at the time. All my petty little problems paled in comparison; all my garbage inside seemed purified and washed away with the flow of love.
It is probably no coincidence that shortly after my time with Doña Catalina and the experience with my friend, I had my own direct encounter with Jesus.
I can understand how many readers might roll their eyes when they read this, but I assure you this experience was as real for me as being in Doña Catalina’s presence. Interestingly, my Jesus encounter happened in Mexico, on a car ride through a rural part of Baja California, Mexico, from Ensenada to San Felipe in 1990.
I was riding in the front passenger side on a dark night. We drove past homes and villages, kerosene lamps lighting the homes, providing soft, flickering lights in the darkness.
Suddenly, I felt my heart opening and a feeling of love and compassion for everyone. Then, I saw a figure reflected inside the window of a man with a dark complexion, a white robe, and a beard. What appeared to be Jesus was right in front of me, appearing through the car's windshield. I experienced this not as a hallucination appearing before me but as an inner spiritual vision.
He spoke to me in a voice coming from the image “out there” and yet from within. I recognized his voice as what I used to call the Voice of the Heart of Love.
“Let me tell you about the end of the world,” he told me.
At that point, I felt I was rising into the sky, higher and higher, until I had a bird’s eye view, now seeing the whole Earth as one would see it from space.
As I was shown this wonderous view of our beautiful planet, normally, from this vantage point, on the night side, you would see the lights of cities. However, instead of seeing cities, I had the experience of seeing billions of lights, each emanating from every precious human heart all over the world.
Out of each human heart came a ray of golden light, and there were billions of lights coming from billions of hearts, all heading upward. These rays of light converged into a spot above the Earth directly opposite from where I was. That spot glowed with such beauty and radiance that it was hard to look at it for very long.
The spot above the Earth, where the rays converged, was itself a magnificent heart, hovering above the Earth, so brilliant. I knew immediately that the billions of rays of light were going vertically right into what felt like the Cosmic Heart of Jesus Christ.
Right then, I saw golden and purple light starting to radiate back down as if it were Cosmic Love itself raining—no, it was pouring back down into each of the billions of human beings on Earth.
When the light returned to Earth, it activated webs of light that began to extend horizontally from person to person and community to community worldwide —
a new Human web of Love and Life.
Heaven was indeed coming down to Earth. In this vision of light, I saw the Luminous Web of Love and then Nature’s Luminous Web spreading from person to person and to all life forms until it engulfed the planet.
I came away from this profound and, in many ways, inexplicable experience, seeing the end of our Culture of Separation — and the end of our fundamental separation from one another, from nature, and from the Transcendent Ground of Being, the Logos itself.
As I write this experience down, I can still feel its power nearly thirty-five years later. The tears that are welling up within me and down my face right now are not tears of suffering, they are tears of overflowing joy. My heart is still wide open, holding space for the vision to happen, even with all the challenges humanity faces amidst the conflict and ongoing division.
I couldn’t come up with a better image of the ancient Blueprint—with its Transcendent connection to the Cosmic Heart and infinite Love pouring down into us, giving us the power to share this Cosmic Love in our families, neighborhoods, and local communities.
The powerful but loving voice continued within my heart, “The end of the world is near. Hear my message. The Law of Life and Love is written in your heart from the very beginning. Since man doesn’t recognize and act upon this hidden treasure, your civilizations have risen and fallen for the last 3,000 years, always repeating the same pattern.
“In times past, regional empires collapsed, chaos reigned, and other civilizations rose, taking their place, but they, too, failed. Today, the singular global empire of man has occupied the whole world — if you repeat the past, all will be lost.”
Jesus continued, “This is the message of your life. Remember, the Shadow world does not want you to proclaim these words. This is how you will confront Death. Give of yourself and be available as an empty vessel for my Love. Love everyone, especially those different from you, from all the other ‘clans’ and ‘tribes.’
“When you can still love those that hate you, then you will be doing my work….
“Now is the time. Start with yourself and your family. Be a Witness for and an Advocate for Love, a source of uplift and activation for new communities based on this Law of Life and Love.”
I reflect now over the decades, seeing how this experience jolted me beyond the boundaries of narrow belief of any particular tribe and equipped me to bring together individuals with widely diverging religious, political, and cultural worldviews as one tribe around a symbiotic purpose — to channel the Cosmic energies of Love to unite our immediate communities around shared virtues and needs.
Imagine if we each made this absolute commitment!
I began to see the global emergence of a new commonwealth, made up of networks of thousands of local communities coming together, an unnamed eruption of spirit, transforming the battlefields of this world.
I felt I was on to something — revealing an Ancient Blueprint to a New Creation found by connecting Transcendent Reality with the Immanent, horizontal human society in a Symbiotic Culture — a possible solution to fragmentation, polarization, and the many crises we face.
Could my initiation, where I was “disoriented” from my old worldview and “reoriented” towards a new one capable of uniting Western, Eastern, and Indigenous sensibilities, be a precursor of a mass initiation for the world as a whole?
Now, in my early thirties, I had a sense that I had completed my initial “schooling,” and I was ready to take my vocation, my calling, out into the world — to discover the power of local symbiotic community networks in making fundamental change on the ground in real-world communities.
My thought was, how could I possibly “operationalize” the global vision I saw on that dark mountain road?
Another powerful figure, Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, founder of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement from Sri Lanka, who would also change my life forever, held the key!