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A little background about me: I was raised in church since diapers. I attended a non-denominational church from pre-kindergarten all the way through somewhere in high school. The church ended up moving buildings to a farther-away location, so my family quit going. Also, my parents' divorce had a lot to do with them attending less. During high school and college, I would bounce around to different churches that my friends would invite me to. I tried out Lutheran, Methodist, and Catholic before landing at a Baptist church. I stayed at the Baptist church for several years, and my dad and sister attended too. After a really heart-wrenching incident happened to me, {a colossal heart-break}
I had the strange reaction of giving up church. I'm actually glad that I did, because it gave me a chance to free my mind from the Baptist preachings, that, in my opinion and hindsight, were pretty harsh in many ways. The particular Baptist church I went to was VERY patriarchal in their views, and very judgmental against most other people and religions. They required the women to wear long skirts and minimal makeup as well. After I left church, I was going through so much life turmoil, that I went through some periods where I wasn't sure what to believe, or if God existed or what. I guess you could say I went through a period of being a bit Agnostic. I felt like I was lost, floundering, and confused. I would go through bouts of wondering if there was a God, and then I would still pray sometimes. I was like caught somewhere in-between with my beliefs.
After I got The Calling to do the Angel Project, things really changed spiritually for me.
Presently, I am just spiritual in my beliefs. I'm not sure I can say that I subscribe to any particular "set" of religious beliefs. I believe in a mesh of things that many religions may encompass. I absolutely believe in Angels, God, and that supernatural things are out there, because I've had some personal experiences that really showed me they are around. {Exposure to the Supernatural}{Emergence of the Phoenix}{The Angel Cards}
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One day earlier in 2013, while I was attending classes on meditation and spirituality, one of our "homework" assignments was to meditate on the topic of religion, and see what would happen. When I did my meditation, I actually received a pretty profound message from the higher realms:
"Religion is a loose term used to describe a set of beliefs, of which there are many variations, that try to explain why we're here and the purpose of life."
What do you believe and why? What basis do you use to back up your belief system? Do you believe the things you do just because you were raised that way? How do you know for sure that whatever you believe in is right or the truth?
I don't think people realize that when they adamantly follow a particular religion, they're basically putting a cage over their mind and restricting the way they may live their life. Hey, whatever makes a person happy I guess. What sucks is when religious "fanatics" try to force their beliefs down other people's throats, or persecute and harshly judge others because they don't conform to what religious people deem as worthy behavior.
Case in Point: The Westboro Baptist Clan. You know, the "God hates fags" crew. They enjoy spreading messages of hatred all over the country with their posters. I'd like to know who is funding them...Somehow they can afford to travel all over the country to upset families at funerals of soldiers, and they have professionally-designed signs that they use. One of my wishes is to stand in front of them with MY posters about KINDNESS, LOVE, HELPING & ACCEPTING OTHERS. (It's odd that their hatred clan can get funding and sponsors, but I haven't been able to yet for my Angel Project.)
Here's a related story from earlier this year 2013: I was sitting in an Italian restaurant with 2 business friends discussing my Angel Project, and I had my wings strapped to the back of my chair. When our waiter came up to greet us, he had tears in his eyes and asked me about my wings. He then began to tell us with a trembling voice that a man at one of his other tables had loudly berated him in front of other guests that he was going to hell because he was gay. The customer had hurt the waiter's feelings so much that he cried in front of everyone, and kept crying sporadically since the incident. How cruel. So some "Christian" religious dude made his waiter feel like crap and ruined his whole day, by chastising him about his personal preferences. I don't know what you think about gays, and frankly I don't really care, but I believe that if two people love each other and/or want to have sex, as long as they are two consenting individuals, it doesn't matter if they are straight, gay, bi, tranny etc... Love is of the highest value. Sex is a natural part of life. Religions, in my opinion, shouldn't cast out those who don't conform to their "ideal". Some people are born gay!!! I've known some people who's parents knew their kids were gay as young as elementary age. God does not hate non-straight people or send them straight to hell. Some religions have taken one or two sentences from the Bible that were probably written by some homophobic bishop, that say gay sex is "an abomination" and have used those Bible verses to chastise gays ever since. To me it's ridiculous, which is why I designed these two photo shoot themes for my Angel Project:
Oh and I have some news for the "Bible-thumpers": I have read many areas of the Bible myself throughout my life, and there ARE many beautiful passages, prayers, and great universal spiritual advice, such as promoting forgiveness, patience, love, and kindness. BUT, the Bible has been manipulated, written, re-written, and corrupted by men in power all throughout the ages. There are so many different versions of the Bible now it's ridiculous. And when you change just one word in a sentence sometimes, it can change the entire meaning of it! Did you ever play the game "telephone" as a kid? I did once in elementary school. Basically, the teacher whispered a story to a student, and that story got passed along to all the students in the class while we sat in a circle. By the end of the last student in the circle receiving the story, the story was in shambles and not anything like what the teacher had originally told. The point of the game was to show how information gets screwed up when told from person to person. Now realize this is what happened with all the stories told in the Bible over the last 2,000+ years. For those of you follow the King James version of the Bible, do you even know who King James was? For those people who are expecting the return of Christ/The Messiah....what makes you think it'll be a man again?
I have learned to not argue with certain religious people beyond a certain point. Some people are dead-set on thinking that they are right, and no amount of justification or even facts can change some people's minds. So I encourage you to ponder this: If most individual religions all think that THEY are right, and all the others are wrong, then....who is right? It cracks me up that so many people are adamant that all non-believers/non-followers of their particular religion will "go to hell". Please.
God loves us unconditionally, and most people have no idea what that actually feels like, because most people have only ever experienced conditional love from whoever raised them, or maybe never have felt loved. RELIGIONS teach fear-based perspectives AS A MEANS OF CONTROL. They have been doing this throughout the ages. Think about it. All throughout time, religious institutions have been so powerful, and always had their hands deep in the money-collecting system. Why? Because money gives power! By preaching to people that if they don't follow their religious rules and tithe etc... they put the fear in people that they'll be rejected by God and go to hell. God is LOVE-based. There is the illusion of "separation of church and state". They actually often work together behind the scenes to control the masses however they can, so they can stay in power as best they can.
If you're the "average" church-going hard-working American, you're giving like 30% of your income to the government, and another 10% tithed to the church. And that doesn't even include all the other crazy taxes imposed on you! Like sales tax, property tax etc... By the time church and state have had their way with you, you're damn near just scraping by or already in debt up to your neck. And churches don't have to pay taxes! If that's not a big enough hint that church and state are in bed together, I don't know what is. Here's a sad fact for you: I did a lot of volunteer hours at the San Antonio Battered Women's Shelter after I graduated high school, and during their volunteer training course that I had to go through, they revealed a startling statistic: Men in the RELIGIOUS and LAW ENFORCEMENT fields were the largest percentage of culprits in battered women cases. And these are the guys who are ruling America.
Christians and religious people are no less "sinful" than anyone else. They are just as flawed, scarred, emotional, and a duality like everybody else. You never know what goes on inside other people's heads, inside their homes, or behind closed doors. There is no normal, only the illusion of it that people create with their facades. There is just as much corruption and as many dirty secrets inside all levels of church hierarchies as there are outside of churches. Many people just like to hide their sordid behaviors by going to church and giving the illusion to others that they are "good" people, when in reality they aren't.
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I would like to close this religious rant with a story that is very special to me. I thought about keeping it private, but I think it would be good to share with others because to ME, it's proof that God is different from what many religions preach.
I have been inducted into the Modern Mystery School, aka The Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Light. It may sound weird, but it's been around since the time of King Solomon and Christ. Their classes are very spiritually deep, eye-opening, and sacred. They used to be a closed, secretive school until they decided to be more public with the coming of the New Age. One of their classes I took was called "Astral Travel". It was a guided meditation to take you to a higher spiritual place, with the goal of getting to see the "Akashic Records". Before being introduced to the school, I had never heard of Akashic Records or Astral Travel stuff. I wasn't sure what to think of the class when I signed up, but I'm glad I took it. Once we got into the meditation, this is what I experienced:
I shot up into the Heavens and landed on top of a sea of white clouds. I spiritually called out if anyone was around to take me to the Akashic Records. Suddenly, an ethereal blurry large blue hand appeared beside me, took me by the hand, and started to lead me along. The next thing I saw, was what looked like a sunrise over a sprawling maze of records as far as the eye could see! It was like a library of sorts, but I couldn't see all the detail, just rows and swirls of records all basked in golden sunlight.
The next thing I remember, is that God himself appeared before me in a large human form. He had a LONG white beard that reached down past his torso, and was dressed like a knight, except his mesh metal suit spanned far behind him like a wedding dress train. The front of his outfit looked like soft red King's robes with fuzzy white trim, almost like Santa Claus's red outfit. I remember saying, "Dad?" He smiled at me, and told me that he took this form so that I could see him. He then sat down on a huge throne, and he picked me up and put me on his knee (like some fathers do with their children). He began to stroke the top of my head lovingly, and he said to me, "You are loved unconditionally here. You have nothing to fear."
--That is all I remember--
The only thing I remember after that was being led out of the meditation and back to reality in the classroom. I had tears streaming down my face and a sense of immense relief that I was loved unconditionally. It's a sense of peace that is hard to find in this world.
(This photo was the best example I could find of what I saw him wearing in terms of his knight headwear and mesh metal train behind him, but without a sword)
It was a really beautiful and amazing experience to have, and I'm so happy that I had it.
So, whenever you feel really down on yourself and unworthy for whatever "mistakes" you have done in life, remember, you are loved and accepted unconditionally on the higher planes. In the soul journey, mistakes are just lessons that you {hopefully} learn from.
Namaste,
~Mandelyn Reese
12-8-13
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