The faith of Jesus is the knowledge that all existence is a materialization of the Divine Mind. And the Divine Mind is the only Mind, and so in truth your mind is the Divine Mind. It is just this faith that makes it so in appearance. Your mind and your reality are equivalent. Your reality is a materialization of your mind, as all reality is a materialization of the divine mind. When one has this faith and knowledge, one can make use of it. If all is mind, nothing can happen without your mind making it so, and anything can be made so by that same mind. Thus Jesus has no fear when he is out at sea during a terrible storm. This also is also the meaning of Jesus' teaching, ‘resist not evil; but whoever shall slap you on your right cheek, turn to him your other.' Do not resist the negative in your life. In fact, do not even acknowledge its existence at all. Without giving it any focus whatsoever, it cannot be. It is only this mental focus that brings all things into existence, and sustains their existence. It is in this way, using these principles, that Jesus performed his miracles. Through his absolute faith that his entire experience was of his own mind, and focusing that faith on his desired result. An absolute faith that it was so, a clear picture of what he wanted in his mind, and it was so. Thus even when attempting to bring a man back from the dead, he simply declared ‘Lazarus, come forth.' He says something is so, with absolute faith and confidence, and it is so. This is the meaning of ‘the Word,' ‘which was with God in the beginning, and was God.' Again, ‘without him happened not even one thing that has happened.' Jesus' teachings were not intended to be a demonstration that he was the great exception of humanity, to whom no one could ever be compared. He was rather a demonstration of the inherent potential of humanity, the nature of his self and his reality and how to make use of it. Yet so much faith was put on him, that HE had particular powers, or was of particular importance. He had made clear that the divine mind was everywhere, that there was no other power than the One. Thus no man was exempt. His death was like a wink, his final teaching. His spirit lives on, for we are all of one mind and spirit. The faith-mind is one. It is just the self-created divisions within one's Mind that makes all of this not apparent. ‘If your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light.' If you see only one, if there is no divisions in your mind to allow you to see more than one, everything will be bursting forth with the creative forces. Yet your mind must be unified, ‘for no man can serve two masters.'
Kinda tangential but inspired by the OP... I recently had an epiphany about faith... In the nondual perspective of God, faith is possibly the most important thing. It's not about believing or hoping things can be better, it's about willing them to be better. We are the manifestation of God so if we lose faith then things go to shit... if God doesn't have faith then how can it be? But if we/God have faith which is more accurately confidence in our ability to change ourselves and the world then we have all the will power we need to make it happen. Faith isn't a belief in this sense but rather the direct power of the spirit. God had faith in itself when it said, "Let there be light." Light = God = Love Can you see God? You can see nothing but God.
Yes, it's interesting thinking about non-duality and God and how these can be compatible. Non-duality with God, to me, allows for the same basic philosophy of non-duality, yet being more empowering and positive, or something like that. Non-duality seems to be the most basic key philosophy, but there is something in these ideas involving this sort of spirituality and 'God' that I cannot help but feel connected to and that it may be an essential piece of the whole picture. Something to do with giving purpose to everything, with their being a purpose behind why manifested existence happens at all, rather than JUST being illusory.
Yeah, my studies of Buddhism, Taoism, enlightenment and non-duality have been most beneficial in my understanding of Christ/God. The sacrifice of Jesus from the perspective of the 'eye in the sky' God doesn't even make sense. It's a silly gesture... But from the perspective of the Living God it makes perfect sense that God 'lives and dies' through us. But when we realize there is no other state but the way things are/Tao/Christ we overcome the illusion of death and understand that we already have the gift of eternal life. As for purpose, I try not to get too caught up in it... it's just about being happy... "The Lord makes me to lie down in green pastures."
^ Mmmm . . . the need to find purpose can really get in the way of just being. The irony is - really being often gives insight into purpose without the need to look for it.
I wouldn't say that christ and tao correspond. They are different ideas. If you want to look deeper into the meaning of christ, you should look into the hermetic writings. And for the tao, look simply to the tao teachings of the far east. Buddhism and Sikhism.
This isn't at all what Jesus taught; and your examples do a poor job of supporting it: for your examples to be at all persuasive you'd have to disregard practically everything else Jesus said, as well as everything said about His teaching--which is quite a lot. Jesus wasn't promoting the ludicrous idea of the Law of Attraction (which is not only one of the most narcissistic theories ever conceived, but it has also been easily disproved by science). Jesus' real teaching was that of a theological salvation.
Well, to speak with certainty of Jesus' 'real' teaching is a bit of a leap. The standard representation of Jesus' teaching is based on rulings made by a group of individual centuries after Jesus is purported to have lived, codifying one standard doctrine that was to be seen as the 'official' teachings of Jesus. Anything that taught otherwise was to be violently discarded.To claim that those were the 'real' teachings of Jesus is fairly arbitrary; it's well known that there were many different schools of thought on Jesus, with widely varying ideas, and different texts,in early Christianity.
I don't believe I'm speaking with anymore certainty than you are. But even if I were, I wouldn't feel all that presumptuous. Because if you actually read what I said, I never got that specific; I said Jesus' message was about a theological salvation. Even many of the heresies still maintained this is what Jesus taught.