Jesus Christ Superstar: My First Awakening

It was Easter of 2018. I traveled alone from my home in Germany to Amsterdam, one of my favorite places in the world, to watch the live performance of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, with Ted Neeley playing the part of Jesus like he did in the 1973 film. 

Having grown up in a Catholic, yet somewhat liberal environment in my native country Venezuela, I was very aware of the biblical Jesus and of this musical, both the original in English and the Spanish version. I once got to see a live performance by a Venezuelan ensemble and I also had a phase in which I would listen to the Spanish album very often, with the late Camilo Sesto singing the role of Jesus.

The musical has the power to make me cry, which is something I don’t allow myself much. Scenes like those when Jesus enters Jerusalem and is confronted by Caiaphas or the powerful moment when he cries to God in Gethsemane to free him from his upcoming suffering have always touched me deeply. Now in Europe, I had the chance to see and hear Ted Neeley live. The first two times were in The Hague in 2015 and 2017. These live performances by an all-Italian (except for the US-American Neely, of course) band and cast were extraordinary and a truly moving experience. I was really sucked into the story and had those evasive tears in my eyes every time.

So here I was on my way to the lovely Netherlands to have this experience once more. This time though, something was different. Unbeknownst to me at the moment, I was going down a path to darkness.

My day job from back then was one I had wanted to have for a long time. I had lobbied to have it and kind of manifested it in a forceful manner (which not the best way to manifest things, but I’ll talk about that in future posts). Now that I had the job I had come to realize that it was charged with so much negativity that it was tearing me apart. That Easter weekend was the perfect escape from that for me, being alone for a few days, walking through the streets of crazy Amsterdam, listening to this wonderful rock opera live once again.

So I sat there, enjoyed the musical, cried the usual tears. Yet this time I wasn’t that much into the story. Instead of being sucked into it, I found myself rather observing it as the play that it was. Not as free version of historical events. Not as a free version of the theological story I grew up with it, but as a play, a dramaturgy. A very well built one at that. 

During and, especially, after the performance, my mind kept on wondering about the way this story plays when being told, not only in musicals, movies and series, but in the Gospels. 

This story of Jesus is too well constructed, with very well defined characters, good-saintly, bad-evil, a beginning, a peak, a climax, etc. It was too much of a perfectly built story as to have been truth. And that’s because it wasn’t true.

The next day it was Easter Sunday and, for the first time in years, I didn’t visit any church and didn’t even make the effort to, despite having one near my hotel. Instead of that, I took one more walk in Amsterdam before boarding the train that would take me back home. I spent most of the train ride thinking about Jesus and my upbringing believing in that story. I kept asking myself questions: Who was this man? What did he really do? Did he actually walk on water? Did he turn water into wine? Did he the lepers, raise the dead, resurrect three days after a horrific death nailed to two wooden logs in the shape of a cross?

Allegedly, this man came to Earth, sent by God himself. He preached the word of Love. Taught peoples of an ancient, somewhat primitive culture that God is a loving Father and not a tyrant, although we should always observe the Scriptures (what we now know as the Ancient Testament of the Bible) as our guide. This man was considered both heretic by the Jewish authorities and the subversive leader of a dangerous sect by the Roman Empire that ruled that part of the world with an iron fist. He was dutifully executed with the cruelness that was the norm back then. And he took this sacrifice upon himself to "save us from our sins".

What? Really? Why would God, the extraordinary Force that created heaven and earth, the stars, the animals, the plants and man itself, need somebody to come down here and be tortured and executed so that mankind could be saved and his Kingdom announced? Why like this? Why there? Why then?

This has never made sense, and I know that, deep down, it never did. I had swallowed it, partially, for many years, because that was "the truth". It said so in the Bible. It was taught to us that way in Catechism. I couldn’t help but think that things in this third dimensional time-space reality just DON’T work that way.

Here in the third dimension, we NEVER ever see anybody levitate or "ascend to heaven". We NEVER ever see someone who was clinically dead and buried get off their tomb with already cured scars (granted, the "zombie" story is based upon black magic rituals, but that’s another topic). It just doesn’t work like that, because even Jesus, as venerated as he has been for almost 2000 years (before his sect was turned into an official religion), was still a man. 

He wasn’t God, but he was a part of God, like we ALL are. Is this blasphemy? Is this heresy? Or is it just accepting the fact that manifestations don't occur that way?

This questioning went on for days and days. Reading about the historical Jesus and reflecting on these things was leading me somewhere else. Instead of seeing beyond the fabrication to get to the core of the message this wonderful Teacher left us, I was being tempted by agnosticism. My religious beliefs that had kept me company for so long where starting to crumble exactly at the time when I needed the most help. I was constantly under attack at my day job, living in stress and becoming more vulnerable as a result of losing that spiritual basis. Somehow, a part of me resisted giving in, so I was still saying The Lord’s Prayer in my head every night before sleeping, because I was telling myself that this set of words had power (they do) and could help me to protect myself from the constant negativity.

Jesus was not the real problem here. There was just something going on with(in) me, keeping me from moving forward in life the way I wanted to. Anger and fear were being collected inside. I was very insecure and I didn’t have the courage to raise my voice in the face of all the injustices that were being committed at my former day job but also outside of it. My wife tried to comfort me, but she couldn’t understand what was going on inside of me. I don’t blame her and I know she did what she could. It’s just that nobody can really understand what goes on in the heart and mind of somebody else, regardless how much they love this person.

My mother, who still lives in Venezuela, was also aware of the situation. She was always spiritual but she went through a long dark period most of her life and had recently started her very own spiritual awakening. One day she reached out to me with a message from Archangel Michael, who warned me about the dark path I was on, due to all the negative thoughts and feelings I had inside of me. Michael is a character whose representation I always loved. He beating the dragon represented the triumph of good over evil. I had even considered tattooing an image of his on my right arm before coming to Germany (because tattoos in Venezuela were less expensive than here). Michael was recommending me to retake my spirituality because darkness was pulling me in more and more. The consequences were clear: sickness, depression, marital problems, etc.

Despite the state I was in, questioning beliefs the way I was doing it, the message resonated with me immediately. Why would I believe this but doubt Jesus, you may ask? Well, resonance is the key to any belief you hold. The message felt right for me and it made my heart jump in joy. I saw myself discovering the greatest truths, being in a state of positive alignment with God (who I now call "Source"). Furthermore, there was another fellow willing to help me on my quest: Archangel Metatron, of whom I had never heard before. My mother was using the Archangel Tarot Cards of Ulrike Hinrichs ("coincidentially" a German) to get these messages for me. Metatron wasn’t like the other Archangels, because he had been indeed a human before he reached that state of Ascension.

Now I knew I should return to spirituality in order to save myself, but where to start? The first step was to come back to Christianity, which I hadn’t really left. But what about all the things I had questioned? Well, I decided for myself to accept parts of the Bible and accept Jesus as a form of Saviour, yet remaining critic about the manipulation of the Scriptures and his teachings by the different religious currents. 

This, however, was still too much of a dogma to help me on my quest for a better alignment and I knew I needed to look further. I had tried meditation a few times but wasn't into it yet. Then I retook the reading of spiritual materials, letting myself be guided by "intuition" (Inner Self). An obscure book, The Code, by Tony Burroughs, was my first read involving channeling. I had received it as a present nine years earlier and all of sudden felt the need to look for it and I read it in two days. It was too far out there for me but I kept an open mind. Was channeling something I could consider possible? Yes, but there was not just channeling in it, but also the principles of what most of the world know as Law of Attraction (called "intentioning" in the book).

This wasn’t a new knowledge but rather a refreshment of that which I already knew (and we all know deep inside), which is that we create our own reality. The Code was what I needed at the moment in order to get that spiritual impulse. Then I went back to Metaphysics, reading two books by Conny Méndez which my grandmother had given me several years before. I wasn’t aware of Applied Christianity, but reading Conny Méndez led me to find The Church of Unity and Emmet Fox. It was as if Christianity and New Age were being reconciled for me, so I was coming full circle. I had Jesus as man, as teacher, as somebody with a special power, but one that could be achieved by everyone of us. I had a God that wasn’t a punishing tyrant, but a loving Source that created us with free will and gave us part of his power. The Power of Creation.

What started with Jesus Christ Superstar had come to this form of Christianity. I was still praying every night and going to the church more often. I even started listening to Christian Rock some time later, because I needed that powerful music with a positive message, rather than the usual satanic-horror imagery found in metal music (although, to be fair, the Bible is full of it). 

My curiosity about the Universe wasn’t contented with this, as you can imagine. Growing up I was interested in other things outside the dogmatic Christian world and my family was open about it. So this return to a form of resonating Christianity was just the beginning for me, my first awakening. 

More awakenings have and will come, but I’ll save them for future posts.

Love,

Henry