The Thirteenth Disciple: The Story of Jesus Seen Through the Eyes of His Brother Thomas

By Edmund Wigram

This book tells us, in exquisite detail, about the amazing times when Jesus was teaching and healing in the Holy Land and about his shocking crucifixion, with tantalizing glimpses of what may have followed. This is not fiction; it is a real story that has never been told like this before. Jesus’s adopted young brother, Thomas, recounts the events of those days, including many of the actual words of Jesus. He helps us understand the enthusiasm and excitement that Jesus brought to the people then. His words are as relevant today as they were then. He understood the purpose of life, why we are here, where we are going, and what we should be doing to get there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982227197

Edmund Wigram

After some thirty years working in Industry, the author has lived as a healer and teacher for twenty-five years, helping people to open to their hearts, and to know that love is the basis for life. For the first sixteen years he taught hundreds of people in the north east of England about their healing gift. Then his soul sent him to the Holy Land, and to Auschwitz and other camps, and to many countries in Europe, and to Canada and New Mexico. For four years he left his comfortable life behind and gave everything to teaching healing and love. He learned to trust the whispers of his soul, which guided him well, and eventually brought him to Galloway in Scotland to write. The words for this story were first spoken into the author’s inner being by Jesus himself in a visionary experience beside the Sea of Galilee. Five years later this book came to be written, it happened over many months through daily meditations with detailed visions enabling him to personally experience each day’s story, and then write it.

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Copyright © 2019 Edmund Wigram.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-2718-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-2720-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-2719-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906842

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/20/2019

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prologue

Part 1

The Travelling Healer

Chapter 1    Healing in the Hills

Chapter 2    Parable of the Wise Parent

Chapter 3    Gratitude and the Story of the Widowed Mother

Chapter 4    Looking After Jesus

Chapter 5    Healing My Anger

Chapter 6    Jesus and the Bird

Chapter 7    Jesus On My Feelings

Chapter 8    Jesus On Our Divinity

Chapter 9    Visiting the Essenes On Carmel

Chapter 10  A New Gospel of Love

Chapter 11  Gratitude and Angel’s Wings

Part 2

Teaching in Galilee

Chapter 12  Rosaria, the Farm On the Mountainside

Chapter 13  Looking Out for the Followers

Chapter 14  First Lessons: Listening with Love

Chapter 15  Finding Our Hearts’ Truth

Chapter 16  The Centurion

Chapter 17  Second Lessons: Seeing with Love

Chapter 18  Korazim

Chapter 19  Healing in Rosaria

Chapter 20  Third Lessons: the Living Presence of God

Chapter 21  The Home of Simon the Fisherman

Chapter 22  Noam the Spice Merchant

Chapter 23  The Village with A Fever

Chapter 24  Healing Lost Spirits

Chapter 25  Fourth Lessons: Holy Space and Remembering Love

Chapter 26  Healing the Blind Man Ephraim

Chapter 27  Mary and Magdala

Chapter 28  The Invitation for the Apostles

Chapter 29  The Invitation for Thomas

Chapter 30  Fifth Lessons: Finding Heaven

Chapter 31  Miracles of Levi and of Simcha

Chapter 32  Teaching the Multitudes

Part 3

The Apostles

Chapter 33  Making the Twelve

Chapter 34  Passover in Jerusalem

Chapter 35  Teaching the Twelve

Chapter 36  The Wheel of Light

Chapter 37  Bethsaida: To Heaven with Gratitude

Chapter 38  Healing in Kursi

Chapter 39  Breathing Down the Rainbow

Chapter 40  Falling Into the Divine Aura

Chapter 41  Healing the Spirits of the Mind

Chapter 42  Eden Within: Essences in Our Being

Chapter 43  Making the Loaves

Chapter 44  John the Baptist

Part 4

His Wider Ministry

Chapter 45  Our Journey To Tyre

Chapter 46  Walking and Talking with Jesus; Oneness Recreated

Chapter 47  Our Time in Tyre

Chapter 48  Caesarea Philippi

Chapter 49  Passover in Jerusalem Again

Chapter 50  Retreat in the Desert

Chapter 51  Return To Panias

Chapter 52  Journey Into the Decapolis

Chapter 53  Rabbath Ammon, Or Philadelphia

Chapter 54  The Last Winter in Galilee

Chapter 55  With Mary and Jesus in Galilee

Part 5

The Last Days

Chapter 56  The Return To Jerusalem

Chapter 57  The Last Supper

Chapter 58  A Healing At Bethesda

Chapter 59  The Arrest of Jesus

Chapter 60  The Trial of Jesus

Chapter 61  The Crucifixion of Jesus

Chapter 62  Fleeing To Galilee

Chapter 63  Meeting Jesus After His Crucifixion

Chapter 64  Our Last Lesson with Jesus

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge with heartfelt gratitude the guidance, help, and encouragement of these special people who have influenced me on my life’s path.

My mother was always a positive, loving, thoughtful, and questioning presence in my life. She was often too far away to sit down and talk with, but when that happened, our meeting times were always fruitful. We liked to explore ideas beyond the limits of traditional thinking. She passed on twenty years ago, and I still think of her often and miss our conversations.

The week before my first visit to Jerusalem, I was taken on an away-day by my then-employer, Cancer Bridge, in the north-east of England. We visited Simone Silverpath, a wise woman who took us on spiritual journeys. These journeys for me concluded with a profound vision of being by the Sea of Galilee and meeting Jesus after the crucifixion. He spoke to me; I was not able to hear the words, but I was told the words were in me. Nearly eighteen years later, they are here. They are this book. Simone’s special gifts opened this door for me, and I am very grateful to her.

Dr Sarah Glenn especially is a great friend and deep thinker. She helped and encouraged me in many ways when I first visited the Holy Land in November 2001, and in all the years that followed.

Yehuda and Yona Avni and their daughter Ya’ara welcomed me to their hotel in Galilee, and gave me a magical space overlooking the Sea of Galilee to live in for three months. Much of Thomas’s story took place in Galilee, and I was able to visit many of the places where Jesus walked, talked, and healed all those years before. His spirit is still there.

Each day my friend Anael Heather Harpaz collected me before dawn, and we walked for an hour along the shore, talking about everything and anything spiritual. Then we bathed in the springs and meditated in their flowing waters. Anael has spent much of her life there, and she was able to take me to many otherwise unknown places, hidden from the tourist routes. She is a generous person, and I am most grateful to her.

My visit occurred during a time of great violence in Israel. There were no tourists, there were many soldiers, and in places there were many tanks and much fighting. Being gifted this window of peace in Galilee, to contemplate Jesus and love away from all those troubles, was extraordinary in itself. I am grateful to all the people and the angels who made it possible, and to my eternal soul for bringing me there to do this work.

For seven years I came to Israel every year, often for three months at a time. Especially at Easter time, I would be in Jerusalem, living the Easter story. The most precious place for me is the Garden of the Tomb, a place which may well have been the resting place of Jesus after his crucifixion. The great gathering of churches around the Holy Sepulchre is also a most moving place, but at Easter too crowded for peaceful prayer and contemplation. At other times of the year I was teaching a workshop Passing in the Gift of Love which came to me in Galilee.

I am grateful to all the churches in the Holy Land which have, for centuries, honoured the memory of Jesus; I may have visited and prayed in almost every one of them. The Monastery of St Mark especially has a deep sense of authenticity as the oldest church in the world. They speak and pray in the language of Jesus. I am grateful to the Syrian Orthodox brothers and sisters who maintain this precious place and welcome visitors.

In late autumn 2005, I sought a peaceful retreat from travel in order to start writing about my experiences. Linda Ford offered me her holiday chalet for the winter, and I am most grateful for her generosity of spirit. I stayed there in Isle of Whithorn for seven years.

The next spring, I was in the Church of St Anne in the Old City of Jerusalem, at a service remembering the Last Supper, with my friend Liz Weir. Liz is a heart friend who has shared many spiritual experiences with me, and I am forever grateful. One of the convent sisters asked us to carry the wine to Jesus, which we did, and each of us had a profound experience of being there then. A voice spoke in my heart to tell me it was time to start writing the words that Jesus spoke into me in that vision five years before. I had extraordinary experiences finding those words and revisiting the Holy Land in meditation and being shown what to write each day. That is where and how this book came to be written.

During my travels, there were two other very generous and special friends: Ulla Graw and Coby Ziv. Each shared their wisdom while we were seeking this path to love, and each contributed their thoughts on how this book could be written, as well as welcoming me into their homes and lives. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for them, and for others who helped me along the way, and for those who came to the workshops.

My partner Clare Rome, my children Anthony and Clare, Anthony’s wife Sue, my brother Peter, and his wife Catherine have all been patient with me and have encouraged me during the past seventeen years while this book has been maturing.

The title for the book came from a healing workshop with my friend Dr Christine Page. We put the manuscript into our circle for the weekend, and she suggested that I should call it The Thirteenth Disciple.

Preface

This is not fiction. This is a real story that has never been told before. It is unique. It is the story of Jesus, as seen by his young brother, Thomas. Most people know about the story of Jesus, but as the Messiah, as a divine being, as someone truly awesome. No one knows what it was like to be with him as a brother, to live with him without awe—more as an equal, though still much younger brother.

I want to tell you how this story from the time of Jesus came to me in our time. My journey with this began on Friday, 26 October 2001, the week before I was to visit Jerusalem for the first time. I lived on Tyneside then, working full-time as a healer and teacher of healing too. I also had a salaried position for two days a week at a cancer centre near Hexham; sadly, it is no longer there. They employed four therapists to give treatments to cancer sufferers. We were offered a shamanic away-day in the border hills, which we all accepted. For me, this was a completely new experience. I had never met a shamanic practitioner before.

We were asked by our shamanic guide Simone to go out and speak with any elements of the forest that seemed to have died, and to ask them if they had wisdom for us on the subject of death and dying.

The first I met was a branch torn from its tree by a storm, its dried seed cones held in the curls of its long-dead twigs. The branch said to me, At the moment of dying, there is pain, being ripped from life. But nothing ever dies. My life stayed with the tree, my mother.

I asked others—a dried grass stem, a beautiful leaf, some tree bark—and they all said the same: that nothing ever dies, that their lives were drawn back and live on. Then I asked a fallen tree, and the tree said, Nothing ever dies. My life too was drawn back into my mother, the earth, and lives on. My body creates new life. It is the same for creatures and people—their lives are drawn back into their souls and never die. Their bodies too give new life to others in the earth.

Later in the day, Simone invited us to lie down while she drummed for us. She suggested that we return in spirit along the morning’s path, asking for further wisdom from those we had met there. They all said to me, I have no more wisdom to offer you. Then I asked a living tree, which gave me the message Love is the only way.

Unexpectedly, I felt a very sharp pain in my left palm. It shot up my arm, searing the nerves. These words came into my consciousness: I am Thomas. I touched the hand of Jesus and felt his pain.

At the same moment a vision filled my awareness. I saw Jesus emerging from the gloaming, walking towards me. As he started talking to me, the drum called me back. We had been told that when the drumbeat changed, we must come back. I did not want to, but I honoured the instruction. In going, I asked for more wisdom and was given this: Jesus’s words are within you now, a part of you. You do not need to know them in your mind, or remember them—you have become the words.

For the next five years, life took over. I went to Jerusalem the following week. Seventy of us gathered from all over the world to bring peace, led by Michael Lightweaver from Asheville, North Carolina, in the USA. This exceptional workshop also brought me a deep friendship with Sarah Zimin, now Sarah Glenn, which led on to me visiting Galilee and loving it there.

On my return to Newcastle, my soul told me clearly that it was time to move on. I was to pass all my work on to other healers, leave my apartment, and give away my things. I went back to Israel for Easter, the first of seven Easters spent in Jerusalem, reliving the full experience of the shocking happenings there two thousand years ago.

That summer I spent six weeks in New Mexico, mostly with Deva Foundation, on their Sacred Path of the Soul. During this extraordinary course, I learned many things. In one spiritual journey, I was told clearly that I must spend Christmas in Auschwitz, and then visit the camps in Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen too. Tears poured from me as I said I did not want to do this, but my soul said I had promised and I must go.

I visited my brother Peter and his wife Catherine in their beautiful home in Canada for a glorious month of mountain hiking, and returned to Israel in early October.

I caught the bus north from the airport to Haifa, then another to Tiberias. A local bus took me on to Korazim, and the Vereh Hagalil Hotel in Galilee. Here the owners Yehuda and Yona Avni and their daughter Ya’ara welcomed me. There were no tourists then due to the high level of danger from the recent intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising against the Israeli people.

This is a most special place, high above the Sea of Galilee. My room was cabin 13, with outstanding views. I could see the sun and moon rise and set, and all the Sea of Galilee. Tabgha, with its places of miracles, and the Church of the Beatitudes were far below me. Over the next two months, in my daily meditations, I was given a new weekend workshop to teach. I called it Passing on the Gift of Love, and I believe it came from the presence of Jesus there. It is also possible that it came from the words Jesus spoke into me during that first shamanic experience in 2001, but I was not aware of this at the time.

We held the first trial weekend in Anael Harpaz’s beautiful home in Rosh Pina, only ten minutes north of the hotel. I tidied up the workshop notes a few days later and emailed them to all who attended. I sent another set to my friend Liz Weir in England, as she was hosting a group after Christmas. When my finger pressed the Send button on my computer, I felt a great release. My whole body changed. My back and shoulders straightened and felt freed, as if from a great burden. My soul spoke to me, saying that I had completed the first part of my life’s main purpose by creating this workshop, writing it down, and passing it on.

I didn’t tell others at the time, but my soul also spoke clearly in my consciousness, saying, You may come back now if you wish to. This offer was made in the knowledge that I really did not want to go to Auschwitz for Christmas. It gave me an alternative, but death or Auschwitz was a stark choice, and I was not ready to leave this fulfilling life.

I spent two weeks in the camps—a week in Auschwitz, on to Buchenwald, and then to Bergen-Belsen. The whole time was extraordinary, deeply spiritual, with much healing. I met a lovely new friend, Ulla Graw from Germany. She knew Auschwitz well and guided me, and we walked and talked together throughout Birkenau. On Christmas Day, it was simply beautiful. A foot of fresh snow covered everything, softening the outlines of the once-electrified fences with their watch towers, and covering the remains of the gas chambers and crematoria. We met deer who showed us no fear.

When I returned to Jerusalem in mid-January, four groups came together for the workshop, and much healing was done too. My teaching in Jerusalem continued for three more years until 2005, when it seemed time to start writing about my experiences.

I tried writing in Kibbutz Kalia, beside the Dead Sea, staying with my lovely friend Coby Ziv. I was receiving many requests from Jerusalem for more teaching and to give more healing, so I decided to find a quiet retreat. My soul said to try Galilee. This didn’t work out. I tried Galway in Ireland, and it didn’t feel right. But when I was led to Galloway, everything fell into place. I was offered a quiet holiday cottage for the winter, to do my writing, and stayed there for seven years. I found that I had ancestors from Galloway, and from further north into the Highlands too.

I continued travelling to Israel for another three years. But it was in 2006 that this message came from my soul. I was in Jerusalem for Easter with my friend Liz Weir, and we went to the Church of St Anne for the Thursday service to celebrate the Last Supper. We were quietly waiting for the service to begin when we were touched on the shoulder by one of the sisters, who asked us if we would be willing to carry the wine to Jesus during the service.

She came for us later, and we took the wine up the nave, to the priest acting as Jesus. Twelve other priests were acting as the disciples. This was a very moving experience, and after, when sitting again in our pew, I meditated into it. My soul was clear, like a voice in me, saying that the words I was writing in Galloway were not the words for now. It was time to find the words that Jesus had spoken into me five years before, in 2001.

I had never forgotten that experience, but I did not know where to find the words, nor how to access them, and I had been too busy to try. On my return to Isle of Whithorn in Galloway, I started looking within in my meditations, remembering the vision of meeting Jesus after the crucifixion.

Jesus encouraged me, saying, We are now an age later, yet my words are in you, remember? When we met that last time beside the Sea of Galilee, I spoke the words to you, and they are there in your heart. Now in this new age, they are ready to flower and to be given to the world. You only have to look within and all is there.

My sacred heart space has many creatures living there, so I asked if any of them had seen the words. The swallows told me that they saw Jesus’s words falling into my heart in a beautiful spiral of golden rain, and sinking into the earth of my being.

I asked what the words said, and was told, We hold the words, but we do not know them or how to hear them. We live within the presence of the words, within their wisdom and truth, and have no need of more.

These words are the consciousness of Jesus within me. I want to hear them now, I said.

Another knowing came: Take your awareness to your highest heart and write; ask a question and write the answer.

My first question was Where do we start?

It was Jesus who answered: In Galilee, of course. This is where the story begins.

Every morning for many months, I followed this pattern, going into a meditation with the simple question, What are your words for today?

Every morning a new experience came, and I lived these events with them, and then wrote them down. Everything fitted, and together it all became this book, The Thirteenth Disciple, the story of Thomas’s four years of looking after Jesus, travelling with him as his close companion.

When you have read this book, your heart will tell you, too, that this is an authentic account from the time of Jesus.

Prologue

My name is Thomas, and I come from Nazareth in the land of Galilee. This is my story of the four years that I travelled with my brother, Jesus.

I was orphaned when I was a boy of ten years old, and Mary and Joseph took me in. Soon after this, Jesus returned home from his travels in the east. Jesus was ready to bring his teachings to our people. He took me with him to care for him, make his camps, find his food, mend his clothes and shoes, and most importantly for me, to learn from him too.

This book is my testimony of the words and actions of the living Jesus during the four years that I was with him. These are my actual experiences of the teachings of love he brought to us in Galilee. Jesus taught us well. First, he showed us how to find our innermost hearts, and taught us to make a space for love there. Next, he helped us to fill this space with an eternal flow of divine love, and then to open that flow of love to the world and become a beacon of love for God.

Jesus taught us about love. He only taught love, and he showed us why love is the only thing that matters in our lives. He said that when we die and return to God, love is all we can take back to heaven. We draw together all that we know of love from our life experiences, and we become this love that we have learned. As this love, we return into the being of God.

He taught us how to find the sources of love within the realm of God. Love is the presence of God in our world, so he taught us how to attune to God’s love and how to hold people in our hearts in love. When people are in this place of love, they are in the presence of God, and this is the essence of healing. Jesus worked so much through healing, and he taught us to do it too, because the power and the beauty of healing is love. Healing is one of the finest ways to help people become aware of the power of love and to feel it working. By the simple act of choosing to receive healing, a person is unconsciously opening themselves to love.

Once you have felt the touch of love, you can learn to open your heart more easily, and when you are able to freely open your heart, then you can receive love so much more fully. As soon as you are receiving love, everything follows naturally, because love is a flow, and in receiving love, you are also allowing love to flow in you. In time you learn to live in that flow of love and to simply be love, and then you become a beacon of love for the world.

Now you can easily fulfil Jesus’s great commandments: to love God, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Remembering that absolutely everything in this universe is part of God and is therefore your neighbour, you can love all creation, including yourself.

Jesus gave us a vision of God’s purpose in this creation, showing us why this universe is here, why we are here in it, where we are going, and how it is all about love. He took us into what was there before the beginning, and showed us that there was only love in the darkness, because this was before the light was born. Here in this great heart of God, our creation was dreamed and all of life within it, including each soul’s path that guides us from the beginning to the end. He showed us that the soul is the essence of who we are.

He taught us that the soul has been learning about love through all the aeons of creation. When each soul becomes ready, it flowers as love, and as love it becomes God again. When the multitudes of souls are all ready, they will flower into the divine love that they are, and as love they will become the fulfilment of God’s dream and purpose for our universe.

The story of Jesus may change after we are gone. Many people followed him, and each will have their own distinctive interpretation to give substance to their personal vision of this extraordinary presence of God on earth. Jesus told us that this would happen, and the way for us to know their truth is easy. As Jesus himself said, If their words are love, then they are mine.

This amazing brother whom I knew was a man of love and compassion above all, speaking powerful truth with great beauty. Yet he was a man of lightness too, for he was full of fun. Truly he was a man filled with God’s presence. Everyone who met Jesus loved him, and few resisted the supreme truth of his teachings of love.

We now know with certainty the divine truth brought to us by Jesus, and by other great prophets and teachers. This truth says, clearly and without compromise, that love is the only way.

And this is my story.

PART 1

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THE TRAVELLING HEALER

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CHAPTER 1

HEALING IN THE HILLS

Where are we going? I asked as we walked down the hill from our home in Nazareth.

He answered, We will let God be our guide.

So, for more than a year, we travelled throughout Galilee and Samaria, bringing God’s love and healing to all.

Jesus’s reputation grew quickly among the people we visited, his name travelling ahead of us. There were always connections between neighbouring villages; people traded their goods and skills and sometimes visited members of their families who had married outside their own village. In such simple but effective ways, the name of Jesus flowed across the hills, with villages beckoning us to visit them along our way. We did, and we had such fun and joy. We became loved by all and welcomed everywhere.

He is no longer with us, so I am remembering our times together, including the joy and the freedom from any cares, the feeling that with love the world would change, and the certainty that with Jesus all things were possible. He helped everyone who came to him, and they loved him. Everyone knew that he was a holy man, a man close to God, a man who could ask God for help. It was good for him to be among the people. He enjoyed simple human pleasures while spreading his clear truths and helping those in need.

Our holy temple was wherever we were. We thanked God every day for our freedom and joy in the beauty of nature. This is the truest connection with God. We were in God’s world, touched by the beauty of God’s creation and feeling the vast and awesome scale of the vision that conceived this magical world where we live.

The people knew that Jesus was a rabbi, so they often sought his wisdom on the Sabbath. He would take us to a shady tree and teach us about his vision of a loving God. He told us that God is only love, that there is only joy in heaven, and that when we die, we can take only love with us back to God. Everything else we must leave behind. He challenged us to let go of all that feels less than love and to become love now.

People asked him about their difficulties with this, saying that for all of us there are shameful things we have done and people we have harmed, whether intentionally or not. There are so many things that we know we could have done better, including actions and words that were less than love. This is being human. Jesus told them that they were judging themselves. God is love—and love does not judge. Love can only love. Indeed, it must only love. He said that once we knew that God loved and understood us and did not judge us, then we could understand that we are not here to judge ourselves or each other. You cannot find love in judgement, and God’s law is only love.

Where does judgement take you? Jesus asked. "How often do you judge someone else to be right? Judgement is mostly made when actions are set against man’s laws and rules, and the rules are all about what you must not do. Judgement, therefore, is usually about whether you are in the wrong and rarely about whether you are in the right.

I have two rules, and they are simple to understand, if sometimes more difficult to achieve. Firstly, you must love God, which is easy to do. Secondly, you must love all of God’s creation, including yourself. This is more difficult, until you understand that there is no judgement in my rules; you may simply love and accept. When you feel that you have fallen short of loving some part of God’s creation—maybe because of some action of your own that makes you feel less than you are and brings a feeling of shame—then you go in your heart to God in prayer, and with compassion ask to be shown what you have done. In this way, you will know how to make amends. Then you can let this go, and like an eddy in the river, soon it is gone and merged into the whole.

A man asked, If a person is walking close to God, and in his rapture can no longer stand and therefore falls, damaging some precious thing, what is he guilty of doing?

Jesus answered, "Try not to even think of words like guilty. Such words assume that wrong has been done; they are a judgement in themselves. This man, in his divine rapture, did not intend harm to anyone or anything. He was like a wild bird flying by and gracing you with his presence. Remember too that the presence of God was with him in his rapture. So my advice to you is to put a pillow under his head and ask him to pray for you too. I would also advise the man himself to learn to enjoy his raptures in safer places, in quiet places, such as sitting in nature under a tree or beside a flower. If rapture takes him there, he will be safe, and all around him will be safe too. But always remember that it is not you who chooses when or where this rapture will come to you."

Another asked, If the fires of passion strike two who are married, but not to each other, and they choose to find ways to be together, are they guilty?

Jesus answered that adultery has many hurtful aspects to be learned and understood. "Who among you has not admired the person of another and even desired it? Many have done this. Both men and women like to possess, but no person given life is here to be possessed by another. All are here to find God and become love, including men and women and children too.

The attractions of the body are part of human life. They are a powerful God-given gift, and they come with a price. It is important to learn about the price. It is a fundamental truth that love never hurts another being. Learn this first, because all else follows. From the perspective of love, you can see the surfeit of hurts created by unfaithfulness or adultery.

He paused, and then he added, "Suppose you feel drawn to another’s spouse and she responds. Then together you will create pain and often turbulent anger in all her family. You must truly know this in order to love enough so that you will never do it. You must know that this one you love is going to be consumed in guilt and the hatred of others, so how can you truly love her and then help her to do this?

Even more so in you, for those who surrender to their passions knowing that others will suffer—they too will suffer. In doing harm to another, the one who suffers most may well be the one who does the harm. This is because what you do comes back to you, and the secrets that you hide bring poison into your being. Adultery indeed has many aspects to be understood, and once these are learned, you will know that a joyful relationship is only found between two people who are free to be with each other.

He paused, and then he continued further. "Learning about good relationships with other people is hard. The hardest lesson for you is to stop judging other people for all the harm you perceive that they have done. First of all, however, you have to stop judging yourself for those things that you have done and for everything that is shameful to you and makes you feel less than you really are. When you have learned this lesson about judging yourself, you will find that you no longer want to judge others. You will see them with compassion and understanding. This is the way God sees them always, and it is the way God sees you. Learning to live is just that: learning. It is learning about life through your relationship with all other life, through your relationship with all the rest of God’s creation.

Allow me to help you now. Close your eyes, and invite God to embrace you with love. Feel this love that is holding you in life. Float in it like a warm sea.

He was speaking slowly now, pausing to allow each phrase to find meaning in us. "Ask God to help you to bring into your conscious awareness any feelings of guilt and shame. Allow them to come. Feel the embarrassment at opening these secrets to share with God, and lift them into your heart. Hold them in love and allow them to be there. Simply float in God, and allow the feelings to be in your heart. Feel how the love is slowly dissolving all the other like crystals of salt in warm water. All becomes the sea again, a sea of love. Only love. Love is truly all there is.

"You may feel pain somewhere in your body. You can heal this too by apologising to the being of God for holding these secrets locked in your body. Now you can fill all your being with love