Breadcrumbs

 

I watched a podcast earlier—really, a video of a podcast. An MIT scientist, also a Christian, was talking about scientism. He wasn’t arguing so much as describing how his own philosophy had led him back to Christianity. I understood that immediately, because I also identify as a Christian.

I stop short, though, of pushing Christian dogma.

In that podcast, the scientist referred several times to “the person of Christ.” I’ve come to believe that this way of framing things may actually be counterproductive—especially for someone with a scientific or philosophical background. I don’t say that to be argumentative. Still, it’s hard not to notice the confusion baked into the language. Jesus was a person. Christ is not a last name.

Jesus was a wise man. Studying his life and sayings is worthwhile if you want to understand what he taught. What Jesus understood—and the way he lived and taught—is what I would call Christianity.

In fact, Jesus stands as the clearest example of The Christ I have ever encountered.

The first‑century Romano‑Jewish historian Josephus referred to Jesus as a “wise man” and noted that he was called the Christ. Other passages attributed to Josephus are debated by scholars, and I won’t get into those here. That single observation is enough for me.

For a long time, I was confused about Jesus and his message. That confusion didn’t begin to clear until I encountered Neville Goddard. I didn’t accept what Goddard said on authority—that would have been trading one dogma for another. Instead, I approached his ideas intellectually. What I discovered convinced me that there were hidden messages in the same texts I had been immersed in since childhood.

As I allowed myself to look again, I found Joseph Campbell and his articulation of the Hero’s Journey. The parallels were astonishing. I couldn’t even tell whether Campbell and Goddard were aware of each other’s work, but that almost made it more convincing.

Campbell taught me something that quietly changed my life: a myth is not a lie. That distinction seems subtle until you feel it. I eventually realized that when I’m drawn to a modern hero, it isn’t the costume or the powers that move me—it’s the journey.

That insight changed the way I looked at everything.

I returned to the writings of the Inklings and found myself especially drawn to Owen Barfield. Barfield gave me what I now think of as the rainbow metaphor—a simple illustration that revealed something profound: perception itself might be the key.

Around the same time, I learned how Eckhart Tolle’s own spiritual awakening began with a simple question. He asked, “Who wants to know?” That question cracked something open for him—and for me.

William Blake arrested me when I read his line, “So am I, and so are you…”

Plato quite literally opened my eyes with his allegory of the cave. For the first time, I felt free to turn around and see what was making the shadows on the wall.

Together, these ideas gave me the freedom I had been looking for. I no longer felt chained to the dogma I’d grown up with. I felt permitted to look directly at reality—whatever that might be.

That search led me into modern scientific thinkers who take consciousness seriously: Robert Lanza, Rupert Sheldrake, Bruce Lipton, Anil Seth, and others. Despite their differences, they all placed remarkable emphasis on the observer and on perception itself.

Suddenly, I could go back and watch Star Wars again with the Hero’s Journey in mind. I could see it clearly. My favorite expression of the same myth remains The Wizard of Oz—especially the film version.

Alan Watts helped me see what I had really been searching for: my essential self. One of his simplest statements affected me the most. He said, “You have an outside and an inside.” What he went on to explain was even more startling—that in a very real sense, I am the universe.

More recently, Federico Faggin arrived at a similar conclusion by carefully re‑introducing consciousness into science. I’ve read him slowly and attentively.

So how does all of this bring me back to Christ and Christianity?

Only by remembering what Goddard taught and what Blake believed: that Christ is human imagination.

This does not mean that Christ is untrue. It means Christ is a myth—not a lie, but a metaphor for something that cannot be explained any other way.

All of the thinkers I’ve mentioned helped me walk this long and winding road. Without them, I don’t think I could have found my way back to Christianity at all.

This way of seeing also changed how I see other people. Indra’s Net became more than a concept—it became my lived picture of reality. Everyone matters, because everything reflects everything else.

As Alan Watts put it, “The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex interrelated organism.”

I now understand myself as a character in a play—coats borrowed, like those worn by the Pevensie children, to be returned when this imaginal life ends. Of course it’s a metaphor. That’s what metaphors are for.

The only thing I discovered without the help of others is why I am here.

My mentors taught me who I am. I began to see it clearly once I left what Campbell called the Ordinary World. Like Luke Skywalker, I faced my opposite likeness in the cave and lived to see my own face.

Like Dorothy, I came to see that the companions on my journey—each with their peculiar traits—were not obstacles but aids, helping me find my way home.

Still, one question remained: Why am I here?

I stripped everything away—people, ideas, roles—and tried to imagine what would remain. That’s when it became clear to me that God is complete with or without me. God is love. Consciousness is where I come from. God does not need more love—there is already all the love there is.

So what, then, could God possibly hope to accomplish through opposites—through consciousness, through us?

That’s when I found myself thinking about bread again.

Jesus used bread to teach. He fed thousands with it. He broke it and said it represented his body. He prayed for daily bread and told his followers to do the same.

Knowing what I had learned from Campbell, I allowed bread to remain a metaphor. I went back to the ancient story of manna—and suddenly everything came together.

This didn’t just tell me who I am. It told me why I am here.

I am here to do what God cannot do without me: to gather and to give the portions of bread I find.

Bread is joy.

Joy is the only thing I can gather and give without God—and then offer back to God.

The expansion of the universe is the expansion of joy.

In the story of manna:

1. Joy appears as if raining from heaven.
2. Each person gathers only what is needed for the day.
3. Those who gather much have nothing left over, and those who gather little lack nothing.
4. Joy cannot be stored for tomorrow—it must be lived today.

In John’s account, Jesus climbed a mountain and faced a crowd of about five thousand. He asked Philip where they could buy bread for everyone. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to teach something.

Andrew mentioned a little boy with five barley loaves.

The miracle wasn’t simply what Jesus could do. The miracle began when the boy offered what he had. The baskets of abundance represent what follows when we do the same.

It is joy.

Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to everyone on the hillside. Then he said something else: “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”

Twelve baskets were filled.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life that comes down from heaven.”

Gather joy. Consume it. Give it.

Give us this day our daily joy.

Please don’t mistake what I’m saying for the truth. Think of these words as breadcrumbs.