Lecture - Matu Apiata

Sunday, 20th April 2025

 

 

Spiritual Awakening: Creation based spirituality, Manifestation and Inner Peace.

 

Thank you, Val and Maureen and the committee for inviting me to speak here today, and it's great to be on platform with Sonny. It's been a while since we have been on platform together. And I have to say that song, (Shine Your Light), is so poignant to this year because within Tarot, this year is the year of the Hermit, and the Hermit is depicted holding a lantern, with a candle or a light in it. So that was a perfect song. Well done.

I am also with Val in terms of the lotto. I'm quite sure the gods are paying us by instalments, $7 dollars at a time. One payment down, 1,000 to go.

So today's talk, it's quite funny. I was saying to my wife as we were driving here, I felt a bit surreal because my Guides have been chatting to me for a while about what I am talking about today. And being such a poignant day, Easter Sunday. And, I don't know, but I was debating as to whether I should ask if you know that what else is particular about today. No? It's actually Hitler's birthday today.

 

I was debating as to whether or not to tell you, and they said, that it's important to note that this is why the symbol of Easter is about the resurrection, about the change from the torture and torment to the resurrection and the faith.

So even though this is that birthday, it actually represents an awakening because we are so much more aware of the hate in the world. We are so much aware of the things that we need to do, the positive thinking that we need to have.

So, I said to my Guides, ‘I'm not sure if I want to say that.’ And throughout the last two weeks, they have actually been giving me a lot of information, but today I am going to start with the finish.

 

Stephen Covey says, “start with the end in mind, so I’ll start with the finish.”
I've have been given the original Lord's Prayer, the one that Jesus actually
would have said.

And it is a direct translation of His words. So that is how I'm going to finish today, because it seemed to be important that we actually hear the truth. And today, that is something that is missing in the world, the truth.

 

So, when I was working on my notes, the guides that I have been working with
introduced themselves in a reading about two or six weeks ago. I had not met them before, and it was quite nice to meet them. And they represented themselves as a group of guys dressed in white and on the edges of the white cloaks that they were wearing, was a blue stripe.  And it felt like a very Hebrew type of group. They called themselves the journeymen and, as I was working with them, connecting with them, they shared that they are part of Essenes.

 

And since then, they have brought more information to me, and they are
part of the Brotherhood who worked with the Essenes. They helped with the Keepers of the Esoteric knowledge. Much of the knowledge had been lost across the ages. So, they are working with me because I'm writing quite a bit at the moment,
and they are wanting to bring through the information that has been lost.
There are a hidden pockets around the Middle East down through to Africa, where they have stored things and the most famous of these items that has been discovered is the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, they hid the knowledge because they were fearful that the Romans and other sects would destroy or in some way make the knowledge disappear. The Essenes are a sect of Judaism, an offshoot, much like many of the Christian religions have many offshoots, Catholics, Protestants, etc. And so, each of these groups has different ideas about how to present the information.

 

I've been studying the Essenes for many years because I quite like their teachings. Because they come from a very Gnostic approach, a very practical approach about how to live a spiritual life in the world. I also like the Essenes because they accepted, and believed in, divination.

They worked with astrologists.
They worked with oracles. And that was against the Jewish Law. They were completely out of step with the Jewish law. And so, they practiced much of what we do today.

They didn't hold churches as we do today because they believed that you just need to be present to be able to worship with the Divine. The gospel of St. Thomas says something similar, “Look under a rock and I'll be there, speaking about the Divine.” That was the practice of their approach to life.

 

So, the Journeyman helped me with this. They brought a whole lot of stuff in, it was quite a lot, and it felt a bit jumbled at first, but they started putting it together when I started writing, so I'm going to do a mixture of reading because some of these are their words, and I need to get it correct. And I've got the opening today.

The world today is built on the idea of original sin.
Now, I need to also explain, I'm studying the Christian teachings of creation
spirituality. Creation spirituality is a form of Christianity but is based on the idea that we are blessed. We are not sinful, we are blessed, that we are co-creators with our experience. And so, when you take that approach, spirituality takes quite a distinct flavour, as opposed to being created in sin, which is very much a punishment idea.

 

When I first started studying, I thought, oh, this is so new, but apparently it was the spirituality before Judaism. They were focused more on creation than rules and guidelines. And so, I quite like that, because being a little bit of a rebel, I don't mind not being a mainstream sort of guy. I like to be slightly off the centre and this teaching has fitted so well with that ideal.

 

So anyway, the world is built on the idea of original sin, or rather the original error. First written by Saint Augustine of Hippo, the concept is drawn from Christian theology that we are inherently evil or have the tendency to evil, which I thought, wow, I don't feel evil. Do you feel evil? That's what the world was built on.

And many of the religions are built on the same idea. And it's a structure that's been built into many governments because many governments, while they say they are not connected to religion, at their core the teachings of a religion can be found, bringing a lot of religious teachings into the governments.

Our sinfulness … I love this, this is from my guides because they were very much into this. Our sinfulness was inherited from Adam and Eve during the fall from grace, where the first man and woman transitioned from innocent obedience of God to a state of guilty disobedience. I like being guilty disobedience. Now, who's eaten a lot of chocolate? Guilty? Yes.

And being disobedient, I think sometimes you do need to challenge the rules, because that's the way we grow and learn, because much of what you learn is designed to keep you within a box, within a certain understanding.
And the only way to really grow beyond that, is to step out and challenge, which is what the Essenes, as a community did.

 

I believe Mary and Joseph were from the Essenes. Then they moved into the Nazarenes, which is why Jesus is now called Jesus of Nazareth. But in fact, they were originally followers of the teaching of Essenes.

And I asked them, why did why did they leave? It was more that Mary left.
And they said, she left because she knew she had to. Jesus had to be born outside of the box. If he was born within the Essene’s box, that's all he would be seen as.
So he had to leave, or rather be born outside of the box, to be disobedient, which is what he was. And look what happened.
(As Matu said that the door to the hall slammed loudly, startling all of us.)

Matu: “Hello. Thank you for closing the door. Do I have your attention now?
So, the idea of original sin accepts that sin is real and fully justified. Because I don't know if you realized, and even when Val was speaking at the beginning, we use language that inherently calls us bad.

Throughout our day we think thoughts, between 50,000, or 60,000 thoughts.
And most of them are negative. And usually, those thoughts are punishing us.
They are saying, ‘you should not have done that. How bad are you?
You are going to get punished. And that is what the idea of original sin is built upon. It's insidious.

 

Even if you are not a follower of one of the faiths that practices this manner of thinking, it's embedded in much of our language now. So, I've got this question for you … What if it's not true?

 

What if we are born of something called the original blessing? What if we are born in the idea of joy and creativity, born with the idea that we are a soul that's having an earthly existence. Isn’t this what we all often say? I'm a spiritual being, having a physical experience, but we don't always act like that is what we are having or how we are being.

Well, that's a bit of confronting, but I believe that it is something we need to hear more often, because this is a year of transition. Neptune has moved into Aries. Neptune is the planet that governs our collective unconscious, our spirituality.
It's a water planet, so it's about emotions.

 

But Aries a fire sign. It's governed by Mars, which is about action, about doing, it's about making it happen. And so, with Neptune moving into Aries, and it is going to be in this sign for the next 14 years, we are being pushed to stand up for our spiritual selves.

 

But first, let’s ask ourselves, ‘What does that mean?’ What does ‘being a spiritual being’ actually mean? We quite often read, and we hear people talk about their experiences, but really, you need to ask yourself, ‘Who am I as a spiritual person?’
Much of my lecturing over the last two years, has been about practical spirituality, and more recently, it's been about the spiritual warrior.

The Hermit that we were just talking about is someone who is no longer in the
cave. He stepped out. He has done enough reflecting, enough looking at himself, and he has come to understand himself as a spiritual person and is now standing out in the world, holding up the lamp, not to show himself to the world, but to show the way for others, the ones who are following. Or the ones who don't know what it means but they see the light and want to know so they follow.

If you follow tarot, you will know that inside the lantern is a six-pointed star, and it
represents the Sun Sirius, which is our spiritual star, our spiritual sun.
It is our guiding light. So, the question for you is, ‘What is your guiding light from a spiritual perspective?

 

I'm reading now about creation spirituality because I want to accept within myself that I am a co-creator. Being a co-creator doesn't mean that you can't want something, but it is an understanding that all I must do is get into alignment with that truth for it to become part of my experience.

 

Matthew Fox is the teacher I follow. I like Matthew, he's a ‘disobedient.’ He is a defrocked priest. He is a rebel. He confronted the Pope, and the Pope said, ‘No, I'm not having any of that,’ and sent him on his way. And I like him because he stands up to the traditional religious beliefs in quite a profound way. He said, ‘What if we were born of original blessings and inherently and fundamentally good? How would the world be different?’

Would there be wars if we believed that we were fundamentally good?
When we were judging, what we are actually doing is, we are saying that we are not
good enough, they are not good enough. They need to meet the standards that have been set. Now, that thinking comes from original sin, because original sin has a measuring stick.

 

I don't know if you were like me, but as a kid, I used to get, you know, the big rulers. My Dad disciplined me, and he wanted me to put my hands on the table, and bang, down came the ruler and if your knuckles weren't out of the way, it was quite a painful lesson.

But that's what original sin is; it is a stick of measurements that we must live up to. And what happens? Most people fall short because of what they are told that they must live up to and the requirements are difficult and therefore they fall short and slip into the shame of thinking that they are worthless and this all stems from the thought that they are of original sin.

But, if we were born as original blessings, then as a co-creator of the universe, we are born with inherent goodness and connection with the Divine. Just think about that for a minute. And because we are born of original blessings as we grow, we grow as spiritual beings, and as spiritual beings we learn to appreciate Awe, and Wonder and Gratitude, not shame or guilt.

 

Now, shame is something that we say to ourselves, its and internal job while guilt, now that is given to us from the outside. Guilt is a measure of someone else's statement about who you are not.

Shame is something you hold in yourself. And with shame you have got your own internal measuring stick. And if you don't meet your internal standards, your internal measuring stick, your emotion becomes shameful. And this calls for a spiritual returning to the truth of who you are. Because what you are is a Soul-spark.

 

I'm a Course in Miracle student, and today's lesson is so related to my talk, I find the synchronicity is so amazing. My lesson today is, ‘I am created as God made me.
I am a creation of God. I am an extension of his thought, his love.
He reached out his mind and created me. So that means that I was created perfect.
You were created perfect. There is nothing wrong with anyone. We were all created perfect. Nothing can change it. We are eternal children of God. And as such, nothing that the world can throw at us can change that or damage us.’

And it's a belief that, once you begin to practice, you recognize that belief, and all the troubles go away. You begin to live in awe of the mystical, of the experience.

You begin to be grateful for every moment and, every experience you have, is a learning of that gratitude. Matthew Fox titles it, ‘The great spiritual reframing of who we think we are, and this new idea calls to us to,’ … and I’ll read this because this came from them.

 

‘Number One: Appreciate nature and the cosmos we live in, not use it up or change it to suit ourselves. … Because that is what is happening in the world.’

 

I remember as a child lying in a big open field. We lived in the middle of nowhere. There were no other homes or houses around us, just open fields and I would lie there, and I would look up and I would see the moon. And just imagine the moon as a ball. And then beside the moon, there was Mars. And I would picture that, and it was just so magical to be an awe of the fact that these things are up there, floating in the middle of nowhere. Who the hell did that? At that moment it was just magical.

 

‘Number Two: There would be a deeper understanding of mysticism, that is, seeking direct personal experiences of something beyond ordinary reality, often a Divine or spiritual connection.’

 

So, when you are looking at me, when you are using all your senses, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your touch, you are getting feedback about a reality, but that is not true reality. True reality is behind it, because inherent behind everything is the energy, which scientists now call the unified field. It's a magical energy that, if you look at it, if you can get so that you can magnify everything down to the point where you can see that energy between the atoms, between the elements, between the quantum energy particles, …and right down at that level, you will see something looking back at you.

 

And it is intelligent.

 

It looks back at you, and it is waiting for you to tell her what you need.
That is what manifestation is; getting into alignment with this universal energy.
And right now, you are sitting on that universal energy. So, you can say, ‘Thank you for holding me up, because otherwise I would fall through this world into something else.’

 

‘Number Three: There would be more social justice in the world, because we would recognize our spiritual reflection in everyone we meet, transforming relationships and connections.’

 

We are a mirror. We project out our unresolved guilt and shame and issues.
That is why you see things in the world that may not be comfortable, may not be the things you want to experience. They reflect what is happening inside of you. The book, ‘A Course in Miracles’ talks about the fact that we try to change the world. Well, you can't change the world, because it's a direct reflection of what is happening inside. In other words, it’s an inside job. When you are at peace, when you are joyful, when you are grateful, then the world around you just immediately adjusts. The outer world reflects what is happening inside you. Even in the darkest of moments, even the darkest traumas, you will see gratitude.

 

I am a survivor of sexual abuse. And I recognize the lessons I got from it, the resolutions that I got from it and this is creation spirituality, learning ‘via negativa,’ from the negative. Sitting in the dark, in the shadow, in the shame, to understand what is it teaching? Because everything teaches. Everything that you experience has a lesson that you are wanting yourself to learn.

They just reminded me of something … I don't know but, who used to follow Monty Python? (Lots of hands are raised.)
There was a great skit where these two guys are on the wharf, and one was swinging this little fish, dancing and swinging the little fish, slapping the other gentlemen across the face with a little fish, and then he stopped and was still. The other guy then, pulled out a big tuna and whack, knocked him into the bay.

 

You know that the universe will do the same for you.
After they have been hitting you on the face with the little fish, they see that you are not paying attention, so the universe thinks. ‘Where's the bigger fish?’
And that’s the wake-up call.

 

It is not punishment, which is what the original sin would want you to believe.
It is a statement, “I want to teach you”. There is something unresolved within you that needs to be faced. It needs to be brought back to the light. Because you know that darkness is not a thing. Darkness is just the absence of light.

 

Rumi said that ‘The scratch or the wound is where the light gets in.’
And so, when we sit with that, we learn the deepest spiritual lessons. As a coach, one of my first mentors said to me, ‘The best coaches and, in the world are those who have been the most traumatized, the most punished, because they understand. They can relate.’

‘Number Four: We could live in a more creative world because our access to the Divine would allow creation to flow easily without any hindrance. We would see the Divine in every experience.’

Do you realize that right now you are hearing the Divine voice in your mind?
Not mine. I'm not talking about mine. But right now, you are hearing your Guides, your Angels, God, your Higher Self, chatting to you. Now, some of them may be going, ‘Okay, for the shopping tonight, we need to be doing this and getting that and don’t forget the other thing.’

Or it could be going, ‘Oh my goodness, I can relate to that.’ It's your voice, every single moment, every question you have asked has always been answered, but we may not be ready to hear. So, that they'll say it again. And it is never shouting, it is never yelling, it is never demanding you pay attention, because that's the ego.

The ego screeches. It shouts louder and louder to get your attention, and this is because the ego realizes that, if you were to apply Number Four, where you have access to the Divine at every given moment, it cannot exist. I will say that again.

The Ego cannot exist! The light and dark cannot exist at the same time. It just is impossible.

But, when you are quiet and you are still, the quiet voice becomes all you
hear. And you know it is the right voice because it is not just complementing, it is encouraging. It is saying ‘This is where you are, and this is what you are learning.’

This is why Easter is such an important time to explore more than the quality of chocolate, but then that too is important. More than the historical storytelling, because there is a big story around Easter.

I like the miracle story about Easter. The book, ‘A Course in Miracles’ teaches the idea of Easter as a deeply symbolic spiritual message about resurrection, forgiveness, and the nature of humankind and eternal life. It is quite a different message.

Most people are focused on the trial. They are focused on the Jesus carrying the cross. They are focused on the crucifixion because they are told that He is dying for their sins. That is not true.

It is just not true.

 

The resurrection is the core element of Easter. Not the suffering, nor the crucifixion. In fact, it is said that Jesus didn't suffer during the many indignities that he suffered, not during the trial, the beatings, the crown of thorns.

Let me just read you this. This is something that I found quite interesting.
Jesus did not call out. Instead, he endured. Jesus is spoken about as ‘suffering for our sins.’ In fact, it was said that many were amazed when they saw him.
Quote “His face was so disfigured, he seemed hardly human, and from his
appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.”

But it's also written that despite this tortured appearance he had a serenity about him, a peacefulness that calmed the crowd as he carried the cross up the stairs.

 

Now, Jesus is one of my guides, He helps me with my course. And he tells me that when you get into a place where you no longer experience guilt, there is nothing for the pain to hang on to. There is only peace. When you recognize that you are only a soul spark that is an extension of God's mind, there is nothing the physical world can do. So, he lived in that space.

And this is where the spiritual warrior is asked to not take up arms. Not to use fists. Instead stand in their truth. Because when you are standing in your truth, everyone notices. There is a difference about you.

There is a Facebook meme, which I love, ‘The caterpillar says to the butterfly, you're different. And the butterfly says, that's what we are meant to be.’

And this is us. We just see the caterpillar, but … we are a butterfly that needs to fly.
[Val interrupts telling me it’s time to finish] Ooh, is it? I've got three more pages.

I'm not kidding. Let me Let me just finish with the prayer.

So, the traditional Lord’s Prayer. …

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Now, that's the modern version, the sanitized version.

This is what Jesus actually said.

O Brother! Father-Mother of the Cosmos
you create all that moves in light.

Focus your light within us—

make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.

Create your reign of unity now -- through our fiery hearts and willing hands.
Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.

Don't let us enter forgetfulness
But free us from unripeness.

From you is born all ruling will, the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews.

Truly -- power to these statements --
may they be the source from which all my actions grow.
Sealed in trust and faith.

Amen.

They were the true words of Jesus.

Beautiful words. So, I will leave that with you.
May you be ripe and go forth.

 

Thank you, everyone.