It’s important to understand that Jesus, a normal human being by his own admission, was simply being guided via the Holy Spirit. And he was not attempting to direct any worship towards himself but to show us everyone else how to also access that Spirit of the universe that was guiding him and to help others experience that same oneness with the universe that he himself had experienced.
Worshiping Jesus instead of incorporating what he taught, which was to accept our unity and oneness as a species, to choose peace over conflict whenever possible, and rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance instead of our egos completely violates what he taught while being a major a misstep on the course towards a spiritual awakening. I would argue it is perhaps the biggest stumbling block and pitfall when anyone has selected Christianity as the spiritual path they’ve selected to experience a spiritual awakening. An accomplishment that isn’t even acknowledged in mainstream Christian churches.
That form of worship towards Jesus veers dangerously close to idolatry and cult of personality, directly contradicting his own message. One of the greatest distortions of his teachings was the posthumous insertion of dogma requiring his worship, something he never instructed. He was clear about where to direct any praise: to what he called the Father, essentially our Source, and to tap into the ever-present Spirit of the universe.
The formation of countless sects and splintered factions within Christianity is yet another violation of his call for unity. At last count, there have been 45,000 denominations of Christianity, which is evidence that for over 2000 years the human ego has made its best efforts to maintain division in the human species despite our best efforts to establish and normalize unity.
The desire for people to create their own customized version of this spiritual path has been persistent to this day. It all stems from our egotistical desire to want to feel and be seen as unique, special or separate from others. The desire for humans to create their own tribes symptomatic of a fully active and present ego. Ironic, given the first and foremost rule of the faith they are following is eliminating acknowledging our unity and dissolving our egos.
It’s important to abandon all the superfluous and unfaithful aspects to what Jesus actually taught and to actually follow the very clear set of instructions that Jesus taught that frankly could fit on a pamphlet. Many of those superfluous aspects were added years after his death, and have unfortunately become the norm. That will be explored in depth in later chapters but it’s best to stick to the foundational roots of what was being taught; roots that are shared across multiple spiritual paths such as Buddhism, Taoism, etc.
Whether or not these distortions of his message are an intentional sabotage or simple misunderstandings, the truth remains: the human ego has a tendency to manipulate teachings to fit its preferred worldview. We see that everyday with some of your most devout family members cherry picking the teachings they like the most while conveniently ignoring the teachings that they don’t agree with. Hence, the thousands of denominations of Christianity.
That egoic influence has been at work for centuries.
To restore Jesus’ teachings to their intended impact, we must strip away the additions layered on by tradition and dogma.
Many have left Christianity not because of Jesus’ message, but because of how thoroughly it’s been misrepresented. This can’t be ignored.
The suggestion that Christians are not supposed to worship Jesus may seem radical and upsetting to many who are deeply attached to tradition, but their attachment is to a misrepresentation of what Jesus taught, and its resistance to truth. Everything to them of course is “on pain of death and an eternal lake of fire”. It is solely the simple suggestion to Christians that they adhere to what Jesus taught and nothing else. That includes ignoring all the additions and distortions added to the religious path added after he died, of which there are many.
If Jesus had sought praise & worship, it would have been an enormous red flag of his intentions and revealed egoic desires fundamentally at odds with everything he embodied. To his credit, he never asked for worship. True spiritual teachers do not demand worship; they guide others toward awakening. We’ve seen this in Buddhism as well. Despite what many ignorant Christians think, Buddhists are not being taught to worship Buddha, and a Christian can literally incorporate the Buddhist teachings into their practices without betraying Jesus, since he was teaching from fundamentally the same set of guidelines..
Jesus deserves respect for the cost of his life for spreading his message but, the fact remains, worship was never what he sought or instructed. Instead, we should emphasize invoking the Holy Spirit and directing our acknowledging our unity of oneness with our source, which he referred to as our father.
Contemporary Christians spend so much time directing worship and praise towards Jesus, but never rarely ever encouraging/teaching people to invoke the Holy Spirit for guidance, healing, and a spiritual awakening from our egos.
Without this shift away from our egos, Christianity becomes dominated by loud, self-righteous voices who claim to represent Jesus while perpetuating hatred and exclusion, exactly what he stood against. These individuals believe they are upholding his message, but in truth, they are contaminating it.
A true follower of Jesus proclaims to the universe within all of us that we are all quite literally one. We explicitly extend love and blessings to others in full recognition that we are one.
The death of Jesus was not intended to be an intentional incident that earns us “salvation”. The idea that Jesus was some sort of sacrificial lamb for all of us, so that the “price for our sins was paid” was something manufactured later and became part of Christian mythology/lore but was never anything Jesus taught. Good luck getting your Christian aunts and uncles to abandon those beliefs, it would be undoing 2000 years of disinformation within Christianity. However, Jesus never taught that. Believing in Jesus or the occurrence of his murder or his death was not a necessary occurrence to “liberate” everyone. This achievement of a spiritual awakening was available to everyone right away and he says so explicitly without any ambiguity. Walk away from any church that promises that “heaven” as something guaranteed for you to experience and enjoy after death, as this is inconsistent with what Jesus taught.
Without sounding too cynical, the promise of a post-mortem heaven was a convenient and easy way to get returning customers to churches to ensure a perpetual stream of income in those offering plates. The formal establishment of Christianity as a religion and the churches that sprang up as a result, made it official in the religion that there needed to be an intermediary between humans and “God” to receive a spiritual awakening/enlightenment, when Jesus taught this was never a pre-requisite. You receive it here and now and we all have a direct connection with the universe to experience this. No death needed.
That access is within and available to all of us now, can only be triggered by living what he taught, not by merely shouting his name and declaring out loud how much you believe or love him. Incorporating invoking the holy spirit for all guidance instead of your egos, forgiving others, helping the poor and suffering, welcoming strangers in our lands, letting go of the past and concerns about the future, releasing our clinging for absolute control our egos are addicted to, loving our source.
It’s also critically important that the interpretation and understanding of the statement “believing in Jesus” actually means. Since it’s been misrepresented and distorted over time.
To “believe in” Jesus is not just to simply declare your spiritual alignment but to emulate him, to embody his teachings through demonstrable and visible action. This is the only implication of “believing” in someone, especially in the context of that era. It’s not a declaration of which tribe you belong to. Belief does not equal worship.
To the dismay of your most devout Aunt, this experience of ego dissolution/spiritual awakening can be realized without ever stepping foot inside a church. Though many may naturally be drawn to community once they experience the profound clarity and peace that comes with spiritual enlightenment.
For those who feel challenged or even offended by the thesis here, that more steps need to be taken than just worshiping or expressing love towards Jesus, it’s important to examine the roots of that resistance. Realistically, it stems from fear of punishment from not following specific directions (directions he Jesus never gave) and attachments to long-held traditions rather than faithfulness to what Jesus actually taught. Letting go of these baseless longheld traditions allows us to embrace the deeper spiritual truths he taught.
Invoking the Holy Spirit may seem like to many people a supernatural ability to call on greater forces for help. However it is as simple as explicitly asking it for help with absolute confidence and faith. It is a very real and present layer of the universe that is accessible to anyone who calls upon it regardless of religion. It’s very present and very real, and the field of quantum physics has just recently started to discover components of the universe that, while not visible to the naked eye, confirms that we are all made of the same underlying field structure. This is undoubtedly what some of our most iconic spiritual gurus have tapped into upon discovering it and teaching how to access it to their students.
It’s important to achieve a level of self awareness where we realize and recognize our own ego’s weaknesses. Our weaknesses are deeply personal, and our task is to identify and transcend them, not through blind belief, but through conscious inner work and self awareness. As stated previously, asking the holy spirit to help you identify your own ego’s weaknesses, and over time you’ll see them, more often than not you’ll notice you are projecting your weaknesses and flaws being projected onto others. So pay attention and reflect on if you’re guilty of those. Ask for help overcoming them. Becoming aware of them is an easy way to help make them disappear, thank you very much, observer effect.
Announce to this very real field in the universe that binds us all together within your consciousness…
“Holy Spirit, please heal my mind, my consciousness, my spirit, my body which I welcome you to reside in eternally. Forgive me, Father, for any missteps I’ve made along the way. Help me recognize and see them so I can realize them on my path towards total self realization of my higher true self. Help me see my own missteps in others to help me recognize them sooner. On my path forward, please continue to guide my mind, my thoughts, my actions. Lead me on a path that is consistent with your plan and purpose for me. I let go of all control and leave my future in your hands. I let go of all control and relinquish control to you. Help me realize and be aware of any and see any negative habits and missteps I’ve made in life. Whether they be negative aspects of my personality or attachments to specific elements of the world. Help me realize these attachments and bad habits. Amen”
Despite what may appear on the surface to many to be something that comes off as something supernatural, it is in fact completely natural. An ability we’ve always had access to as members of the universe that we are all one with.
This natural ability has long been neglected by many either because they’re skeptics or by members of spiritual communities because their spiritual leaders in their communities often neglected to emphasize or teach this despite being what Jesus and other spiritual gurus were showing us what and how to access.
For those who are insisting on being part of a church community, which is understandable, make sure that their focus is on actually emphasizing on teaching his instructions, not guilt tripping the congregation or telling them to worship Jesus which he never asked anyone to do. Ask them to guide you on how to access the kingdom of god within soon (which is Jesus called experiencing oneness with the universe) and see what they say when you ask them. Any confused looks is your cue to walk away. See if their focus is worshiping Jesus rather than forgiveness, and teaching people how to invoke the holy spirit over your own egos. See if their focus is on the old testament which contains texts that are ripe with amoral and unethical teachings that are completely incompatible with what Jesus taught. Any church that neglects to emphasize the invocation of the Holy Spirit and explicitly relinquishes our will in exchange for the divine guidance of the holy spirit, is ultimately derailing its followers. It’s not complicated. To invoke the Holy Spirit is to activate something innate within us, a divine switch waiting to be turned on.
In my own meditations, I can offer gratitude to Jesus, not as the object of worship, but as another vessel in which this message was delivered by the universe. Teaching us all the ability to stop living in the past, the the future, and to live in the present moment, relinquish control and leave it in the hands of the holy spirit which we all have access to. He was definitely guided by the Holy Spirit, and his mission was to awaken those around him to that same divine presence within themselves. But leave it to humanity to kill him, not as part of some greater plan, but because humans have a tendency to fumble the ball. The results of his teachings are real and reproducible, available to anyone willing to step up to the plate.
For anyone who attempts to refute this article saying that while Jesus didn’t explicitly instruct anyone to worship him, he didn’t stop any attempts from his rabid supporters at the time to stop praising him. He absolutely did. He deflected all worship and insisted constantly that he was a son of man, in other words a human, not the son of god. That label was plastered onto him years later by people who decided to unilaterally upgrade him from man to divine, god on earth status. This fact makes it especially remarkable that Jesus was converted into a figure of worship but it becomes clear once you understand the political and religious interests in turning Jesus into a religious figure of worship and the interests in doing so.
Not only can we say with conviction that he never once asked to be worshiped, but in scripture we see that he actively deflected praise and worship. When someone called him “good,” he responded, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” That alone should be enough for anyone to understand his stance. He didn’t claim divine status or seek glorification, he redirected it to God. That’s not a subtle hint; that’s a clear boundary being set. And that fact alone, that he never instructed anyone to worship him is all the justification needed to not worship him. He was an enlightened human being, and his entire mission was to guide others toward that same enlightenment.
There’s a constant line of atheist criticism that points to the instance of Jesus praying to God as if it’s some kind of paradox “How could Jesus be praying to himself?”
He wasn’t.
Jesus repeatedly made a clear distinction between himself and the one he called God the Father. As stated previously, he didn’t go around presenting himself as God, and he regularly referred to himself as the Son of Man, a human being. That wasn’t accidental. It was likely his way of shutting down the rabid, exaggerated reactions of people who wanted to treat him like a literal deity walking the earth, when his entire message was the opposite: he was showing others how to access the same oneness with God and the universe that he had discovered.
So no, Jesus praying to the Father wasn’t “God talking to himself.” It was an enlightened human being directing devotion where he insisted it belonged—toward the Source, not toward his own personality. In light of that, it makes total sense that Jesus having gone out to the desert on his own, would have been equally subject to the inner battle with his ego (what the bible symbolized as Satan/The Devil) just like any other human would have had. It also explains why he would have fell victim to the same weaknesses that any other human would have, like losing his cool at the marketplace, flipping tables. Not something you would expect from a walking deity that preached against operating from anger our temper tantrums. These two instances alone offer more than enough proof that Jesus was not only a human being and not a perfect entity, but also dealing with the same occasional battles that other humans faced.
If you think Jesus declaring oneness with God was an invitation for worship, you’re misinterpreted the statement being made. Enlightenment aka spiritual awakening and unity with the universe, reveals that oneness with God isn’t exclusive to one person; It’s a state Jesus invited and taught all of us to realize. He wasn’t presenting himself as some sort of divine anomaly to idolize, but as proof of what’s possible through surrender to God’s will and alignment with the Holy Spirit. His life was instruction, not a pedestal: not “worship me,” but “become as I am.” Tragically, ego-driven humanity quickly distorted this, within a generation his teachings became distorted dogma, and the one who came to awaken others became an object of misplaced veneration despite what was explicitly taught.
Simply put, Jesus was teaching his students to achieve that very same oneness with the universe that he himself, and persons on other spiritual paths had achieved.
Christianity could have triggered far more spiritual awakenings if believers had focused on living as Jesus instructed, rather than idolizing his image and name. Ironically, the patriarchs of the religion after the death of Jesus and the churches that elevated him into an object of worship may have done more to sabotage his message than even the crucifixion itself. Imagine how many more people might be spiritually awakened today if the emphasis had been on embodying his teachings instead of performing empty rituals in his name.
We are left with two paths: one that leads to transcendence and higher consciousness, and another that traps us in performative religion, where gold crosses and church attendance substitute for true spiritual practice. The latter path often leads to hypocrisy and division—ironically under the banner of Christ.
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