{"id":17682,"date":"2019-01-15T09:33:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17682"},"modified":"2019-01-15T09:40:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:40:10","slug":"jesus-wisdom-teacher-the-kingdom-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17682","title":{"rendered":"Jesus: Wisdom Teacher; The Kingdom of Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jesus: Wisdom Teacher<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>The Kingdom of Heaven<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Tuesday, January 15, 2019<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YhCzzQQNnLA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nGuest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.<br \/>\nThroughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus uses one particular phrase repeatedly: \u201cthe Kingdom of Heaven.\u201d The words stand out everywhere. \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is like this,\u201d \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is like that,\u201d \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is within you,\u201d \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.\u201d Whatever this Kingdom of Heaven is, it\u2019s of foundational importance to what Jesus is trying to teach.<br \/>\nSo, what is the Kingdom of Heaven? Biblical scholars have debated this question for almost as long as there have been biblical scholars. Many Christians, particularly those of a more evangelical persuasion, assume that the Kingdom of Heaven means the place you go when you die\u2014if you\u2019ve been \u201csaved.\u201d But the problem with this interpretation is that Jesus himself specifically contradicts it when he says, \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is within you\u201d (that is, here) and \u201cat hand\u201d (that is, now). It\u2019s not later, but lighter\u2014some more subtle quality or dimension of experience accessible to you right in the moment. You don\u2019t die into it; you awaken into it.<br \/>\nOthers have equated the Kingdom of Heaven with an earthly utopia. The Kingdom of Heaven would be a realm of peace and justice, where human beings lived together in harmony and fair distribution of economic assets. For thousands of years, prophets and visionaries have labored to bring into being their respective versions of this kind of Kingdom of Heaven, but somehow these earthly utopias never seem to stay put for very long. Jesus specifically rejected this meaning. When his followers wanted to proclaim him the Messiah, the divinely anointed king of Israel who would inaugurate the reign of God\u2019s justice upon the earth, Jesus shrank from all that and said, strongly and unequivocally, \u201cMy kingdom is not of this world\u201d (John 18:36).<br \/>\nWhere is it, then? Author Jim Marion\u2019s wonderfully insightful and contemporary suggestion is that the Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. [1] It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place.<br \/>\nMarion suggests specifically that the Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus\u2019 way of describing a state we would nowadays call \u201cnondual consciousness\u201d or \u201cunitive consciousness.\u201d The hallmark of this awareness is that it sees no separation\u2014not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. These are indeed Jesus\u2019 two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jesus: Wisdom Teacher The Kingdom of Heaven Tuesday, January 15, 2019 Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher. Throughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus uses one particular phrase repeatedly: \u201cthe Kingdom of Heaven.\u201d The words stand out everywhere. \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven is like this,\u201d \u201cThe Kingdom of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17684,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17682\/revisions\/17684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}