Struggling With Religion? Awaken To Love EP 413

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith.

When I'm—

hey everybody, welcome to Grief to Growth. And I'm your host, Brian D Smith. And I'm really glad you've joined us today. So whether this is your first time listening, or you've been a part of our journey for a while, welcome to the space where we tackle life's biggest questions. We talk about who we are, why we're here, where we're going, what's next, all those types of things. And what I want to do is help you navigate life's challenges with both wisdom and hope. Today, I'm honored to have with me David Hulse. Now, David is a spiritual guide, a teacher, a healer, and he's the founder of the Academy for Spiritual Awakening. His path has taken him from the confines of fundamentalist Christianity to an expansive understanding of spirituality rooted in love and inclusivity. His work bridges ancient wisdom with modern science, offering a transformative vision of human spiritual evolution. So in today's episode, we're going to hope to cover, uh, some incredible stories and concepts, including his experiences in helping release the spirit of Oral Roberts' son some profound lessons he has from his in-between life story. We're going to talk into topics like transitioning from a fear-based religious belief to love-based spirituality. We're going to talk about healing emotional and spiritual blockages, and awakening the higher consciousness. I think his unique insights are going to both inspire and challenge us to understand our understanding of divinity and our interconnectedness. So stay tuned for the discussion. And afterwards, make sure you join us at grief2growth.com community where we continue the discussion there. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth, David Hulse. Thank you.

It's really great to be with you today. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to a fellow spiritual traveler. We were just talking before we started recording. I think our backgrounds are similar. Anybody who's known me for a while kind of knows my background. Tell me about yours.

Well, I was born into a religious family of a lot of ministers, preachers. In fact, my own aunt was my pastor, and that's pretty phenomenal in the '50s to have in the Pentecostal Church a woman pastor, period. So, uh, one of the things I'd like to say about that is that gave me a different rapport with the feminine side of a very patriarchal masculine religion that kind of put women in their place. So I think that's been a blessing to me to have had that experience from the beginning of that. I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma. We were known for two things when I grew up: oil and oral. We were the oil capital of the world. And of course, the University of Oral Roberts. So a lot of religion was in Tulsa. It formed a lot of the culture there. So that was my upbringing. I was raised in what we call a Trinitarian Pentecostal, which is Assemblies of God. But on my own, I began to realize at that time my love for Jesus was so deep that I wanted to take on his name. I thought, if I'm the bride, I want his name. And so I started looking for people who were baptizing people in Jesus's name. So I made a big transition from what we call more Trinitarian Pentecostal to Apostolic, which again gave me two wonderful experiences that later we'll talk about how that— how I brought that together. And that's one of the things I do. I try to bring extremes into the middle. Uh, there's a scripture says, who will stand in the gap and make up the hedge? And that's where I teach and minister from, is in the gap where people are transitioning.

Awesome, awesome. So, uh, interesting you said you had that, that female connection in the Pentecostal church. Um, that was, that was very unusual. I know some people still think that women shouldn't be in the pulpit.

Exactly. Well, she was phenomenal. She was a singer, And she would take me to the African-American church on Saturday night for radio. And I sit there and listen to that music. And I listened to the way they sang Amazing Grace. And I went to my church and listened to them sing Amazing Grace. And I went, wait a minute, something's different here. And that started my relationship with sound, frequency, and vibration. And that served me many years later to this day that I'm very sensitive to how powerful frequency is in our life and vibration. Very simple.

Yeah. So, um, you were raised in the, in, in the Pentecostal church, and at what point did you say something was— you wanted something more or something wrong or whatever it was that you felt that drove you to do something different?

All right, one of my favorite stories, and I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest, uh, that being raised in my aunt's church, of course, put me— I was the minister's nephew, so it was a position kind of I inherited but with no experience. You know what I'm saying? In other words, I did all the things they said to do. I did the salvation thing. I played the piano for her, but I didn't have any self-experience. And we were the church on the hill that had a pretty good crowd. And I noticed this little church down at the bottom of the hill that had 2 or 3 cars. And I thought, oh, those poor people, you know, were the ones that apparently got the truth. Then I noticed a change of all these cars started showing up.. And one night after our service, something said to me, why don't you go in there, see what's going on? And I went in there and for the first time felt the power of presence. It was amazing. It scared me because I thought, here I was in a Pentecostal church and I've never felt this, but in this— and it was the beginning of an 8-week revival that hit Tulsa that was phenomenal. In fact, it grew so much they knocked out the wall of the church and put a tent up. And whatever. That brings me to a particular Saturday night after a date or something. I decided, because they was just getting going about 9 o'clock. So I went in there and I was sitting in the back because people knew I was my aunt's nephew. So I didn't want to be known. I was trying to hide. And the preacher was preaching. Oh, he was sweating. The hair was down in his head. And all of a sudden he just stopped and looked right over in the corner at me. And now there's hundreds of people there. And he just stopped like he heard something. And he said, young man, stand up. And I'm going around, who's he talking about? I knew it was me. I know what to do. I just stood up. He says, God just spoke to me. He has something for you tonight that's going to change your life. Do you want it? I'm going to say no. I said yes. He said, well, come up here. So I started walking down the aisle and I didn't get down the aisle about halfway until what we call the power of the Spirit hit me. And literally laid me on the floor. And at that moment, I did what they called receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I went out into a place in myself that changed everything for me. And I won't go into that, but I had 2 or 3— and I'm not a person that gets a vision every day, so the ones I'm going to talk about today on your, uh, podcast are rare moments but significant moments that that changed the trajectory of my path. And so I had an experience, uh, in that place that changed everything. Uh, I'll try to give you just a real short— but it was— and you, you know, when you say you see things and hear things, you're actually interpreting things. You know, you get a feeling and it becomes a voice in your head. So I don't— people think I'm hearing voices everywhere, but I, I know how I hear. From my higher self. You know, we all have to learn how we communicate. But I would interpret this way as a great light I'd never seen before. It was like a, a, a brilliant light that was alive with molecular power and whatever. I didn't know what it was, but out of it came, said— and I thought it was Jesus because that's all I knew. I didn't see a person, but it was like the light said to me, go and gather me 12 yellow rosebuds. In this, in this inner vision or cellular memory. I don't know what it was. So I remember going down to a florist, and I, I, my heart sunk because all of the flowers were old and drooping and terrible looking. And I thought, I can't give this to the Lord. And so I was about to leave, and I found— my eye caught one perfect yellow rosebud. So to make a long story short, I went down to all these different florists, and I found one or two of these yellow uh, rosebuds. So I was so proud to bring these back and present them to this presence, again, Simi Jesus. And then it said to me, formed in my mind, go and gather the fragments of my truth in all religions. And when you have done this and presented unto the people, you have done this unto me. Now I'm 17 years old. I have no idea what that meant at that time. But I have learned through the years that's exactly what I have done, is I've looked into Christianity, mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, all of the major religions that have survived. I have found nuggets and fragments of what I believe to be true that's gotten lost in the, in the interpretation of it. And that's how I built a ministry of over 60 years, was beginning to gather those fragments of truth. And when I stand before a group of people, I'm presenting those yellow roses to the people of Fragments of Truth. So I hope that was okay to share with you, but, but, you know, I'd rather talk experience with you than just knowledge.

Yeah, well, I think this— I, I want to— that is your experience, and I appreciate you sharing that. And I— what I find fascinating is I think language is really interesting because in the church we have a particular language, and, and the world, as we would say, there's another language. And sometimes it's the same experience that we that we say different things about. Like you say, I received the Holy Spirit, which is what I was taught too. I would say now you had a spiritually transformative experience. Um, and it sounds so— and I know people have had these experiences inside the church and outside the church, and it's interesting how we interpret them.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I've really, from the level of consciousness I've attained, I've, I've gone back and looked at these experiences without dogma. Exactly. So I wonder what really happened to me. It's not that I received— I didn't receive something I didn't have. It was my higher self itself, right, that penetrated into my human consciousness, right? It's like a penetration of conception that happened. And the orgasm of it was that Pentecostal thing we do when we shake and move. There is a reality to that because it's vibration. And it's retuning us. And I went down on that floor as a skinny little shy kid that didn't want to stand up before people. And after that, this voice boomed out of me that people started wanting me to come to speak. And it was transformative, as you said. That's what happened to me. I received my whole spirit, not my h-o-l-y, but that part of my spirit that was kept whole from man, so culture, society, and religion could not penetrate it and, and form it into their likeness.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's fascinating. And the other thing I think is very interesting, and I— this came to me the other day, you know, a lot of times when people go through the process that you've gone through and I've gone through, we call it deconstructing our faith. Um, I, I just— it just hit me, it's like, I like— I prefer the term reconstructing because I think what you— what you said, the way you said it beautifully, You gather these nuggets of truth from all these other traditions and religions and stuff, which again, it's kind of— we're talking about the same thing in different languages and bringing those things together to form this, you know, this beautiful whole picture. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper, thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast, essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it, the community that showed up, people who are doing exactly what you're doing, listening, learning, trying to find their footing, readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become, a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

So true. And, and when we do that, we kind of lose a lot of labels along the way, uh, even to the point that I had to question, was God a Christian?

Yeah, yeah.

Was Jesus a Christian, or who was— or was he just the Christ?

Yeah, yeah. And what conclusions did you come to?

And I came to conclusions very easy that God was not a Christian. In fact, this God thing has haunted me for decades and decades and decades. You know, I left the anthropomorphic old white man in the sky years and years ago. But when something is taken from you, something should take its place. So I didn't— there was a vacuum there about really this idea of God, G-O-D. So again, when that happens, I go inside because I think the answers we're seeking is in us now. I think we come in with everything we need. I don't think we learn everything outside of ourselves. I think we forget it when it comes into the density of a 3D world, kind of the simulated world that I call the world of sleep. Yeah, yeah, we're kind of asleep in an illusion of ourselves. And that's why I call this a spiritual awakening, because even in the Bible, from beginning to end, it's wake, awake, awake, shake thyself from the dust, awake, awake, awake, awake. And I thought, well, and then I realized in a biblical way, Adam, a great sleep came upon Adam. And then I challenged and said, tell me where he woke up.

Yeah.

So when he went into a slumber or a stupor, which is the word we get stupid Uh, everything that happened— separation, God driving him out, God getting mad, God being vindictive— is in the dream, not in the reality of who and what God is. None of that happened. We just believe it happened because we have bought into an illusion, uh, of that idea. So, um, people need to wake up, and that's my mission, is to wake people up to truly who they are. And that's the biggest question is, who am I? What is man that God is mindful of him?

Right.

Never answered the question because the answer's in us.

Yeah.

Yeah. So all of that was, was just such a part of setting a foundation for me to build on. And one of the biggest things that came into my mind that I knew wasn't coming from my thoughts was nobody in the Bible spoke English. I thought, where did that come from? And, and yet I was being warned, stay away from Eastern teachings, stay away, it's of the devil, it's false teaching. And then I thought, well, the whole Bible's Eastern. Jesus was Eastern. They spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And so I started looking up these words out of the English in the Bible and getting these different languages that they were speaking, and I started preaching and ministering those meanings, and people liked it. They started resonating with it. So, you know, that was the thing that changed everything for me. Um, ah, so much I could say. So you kind of guide me or what you want.

Yeah, well, how long— I'm curious, how long were you able to stay in the Pentecostal church? I assume you were— you started preaching in the Pentecostal church.

Um, I did, but immediately I had a different sound that they didn't like.

Right.

And that came from a scripture in Ephesians 4 that says, until we grow into the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ, being no more children, being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but growing up. And when I read growing up, I thought this— we're on this planet to grow, not to get stuck in the dogma and the doctrine of a fixed religion. That imprisons us. But we're here for evolution reasons. We're here to evolve, to change. So I took on that idea of teaching more than preaching.

Mm-hmm.

And I started teaching, uh, at that point, uh, some of these deeper things. So it's cool that at the end of this age that we're calling it, which I think we're at the end of the church age, is what's happening, the end of the 2,000-year Piscean Church Age is over. And I think people as ourselves are not accidents to be on the planet at this time. Many that are listening to us that have the ears to hear and resonate with what we're talking about today are part of a critical mass of souls who are together as lightworkers and bring a great shift collectively to the planet. No more one-man person. That's over. No, no one man or one woman. No more gurus, no more saviors, no more whatever. It's all finding our what we have sought outside of ourselves in ourselves, right? I know this has been worn out and you've heard it a thousand times, but I have a group spell a guru slowly. G-U-R-U.

Hmm, I've never heard that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. I like—

find your own guru within.

Yeah. So again, I, I'm still curious about like when, or your— because I know the Pentecostal church, there's a, you know, and I don't mean to bash anything, but I was raised in the Pentecostal church myself. My grandfather was my pastor. And I told you before we started recording, my grandfather was raised as a Methodist, so he was different than even a lot of the Pentecostals himself. He was a very well-educated man, and he spoke German, and, you know, so he would, you know, he was very studious in his approach to things. And I think I got a lot of that from him. But what happens is when we start to question certain things, then the fear takes over and they're like, oh no, no, you're, you're— we can't talk about Buddha here, you know, those people are all deceived. So did you come to that point where there was so much contention that you had to leave, or, or how did that go?

No, I was never put out of the church. I outgrew the church.

Okay.

Because I became a self- I took the responsibility of doing my own research. And that's what changed everything, right? I just found out what they were saying. You know, I'd hear about this God out there, the God that's vindictive, the God that would send people to hell, you know, that whole thing, right? But I feel that inside my heart, I felt a different kind of presence that was loving and kind. And I had to make that decision. Do I want to follow what I'm being told mentally? Or do I want to follow you know, the presence that I had found in my heart. And of course, this takes you from fear to love.

Yeah. Are you familiar with Carlton Pearson, his story?

Oh yeah, he attended my church in Tulsa when he was a student at ORU.

Okay. Yeah, I, I discovered him a couple decades ago, I guess, and I've always loved, you know, his story. And, and as you were talking, remind me of the story when he was watching television, saw these children in Africa, and he prayed to God and said, why are you sending these? Why are you throwing these babies in the hell? Or, you know, and I just— I, I— but it was interesting in his, in his case because he, he grew up under Oral Roberts and everything, and his church rejected him. I mean, like 90% of the people in his church left him.

I remember that. In fact, there's a little story there. I'm not sure, I've never been able to confirm it, but, uh, I was called to come and speak at a large church in Little Rock. Apostle so-and-so, the name, a big church who had read some of my little booklets that I had written and was interested to move on and then went to a Zusa Street convention in Tulsa where Carl— and the story is that Carl followed him home and started reading these books about inclusiveness. And I was into what's called universal reconciliation, God's love for every person.

Exactly.

All come out of God, through God, and back into God.

Yeah.

And I think somehow maybe I played a little part of just giving him that little push to follow what was already happening inside of himself. And because he paid a great price for it, there's no doubt about it.

He absolutely did.

He did. We'll always have appreciation for his contribution to what we're about today.

And let's talk about universal reconciliation, because this is a concept I came across, I think, in my 30s. And because I've been taught up until then that, you know, there's good people and bad people, there's heaven and hell, it's binary. You, you go to one or the other if you don't believe in Jesus and, and say the right prayers and get baptized the right way. Then you're going to hell. And then universal reconciliation is like the exact opposite of that. So just tell people what, what that is and what it means to you.

Well, uh, first of all, I think people has got to, to, to shift their identity from what makes us different to what makes us alike. And what makes us alike is we are spiritual beings. Now, today's language, because of the work I've been in for 25 years and teaching energy work, I call it energy beings. It's just a different word. Religion kind of thinks it owns the word spiritual. So I've used the word energy to give people a different way of thinking about it. But we're all spiritually energetic, pure, whole beings created by We're no less than what created us. In fact, we are what created us individualized.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then we chose to come down here into this story because we want to change the story. Now, I call this material world the body world, the world of form, not creation. And I got that in Genesis very early, that God created in the likeness and image male and female created he them. There's no Adam and Eve there. That means all creation had a male and female aspect to it. And called their name Adam, which is an— Adam is blood, and blood is congealed light. But anyway, that's another thing. Uh, but anyway, um, what was I saying? Now keep me, keep me on the track here.

We're talking about Universal Reconciliation.

Yeah, so to see universal reconciliation, you have to see first from— I'm using scriptural language— God is a spirit. We are that spirit individualized. So how could God lose any part of itself? Yeah, so every part that is of itself, the spiritual being that we are, must be reconciled back into the source to be whole. So I think you have to start at that level and realize that reconciliation doesn't mean we're going to reconcile because we're all going to agree on racism, sexism, all the isms of the world, which we've been trying to do forever. We've all tried to come together and be one in something that we're not, instead of embracing the diversity and the richness of diversity. I don't need to try to make you me. You know, I got into the African American thing for years and tried to be African American, learn the music and travel with Mahalia Jackson. And, you know, I loved that culture. But at the end of the day, I was a Caucasian body.

Yeah.

Culture.

Yeah.

So I don't think that's the answer. I think we got to work from the inside out and we've got to realize that we're one as spiritual beings. And that's where reconciliation starts with me. I am you, you are me as a spiritual being.

Yeah.

And, uh, but I think the Bible teaches it. I think it teaches, as a scripture I just gave you a while ago, all things come out of God, through God, and into God. So I can't see anything being lost would make any sense to me of a loving, kind God. So that wasn't a hard thing for me when I heard the first message of reconciliation, universal reconciliation, it's like I didn't have to learn it. I knew it.

Yeah, well, that goes back to what you were saying earlier, and I completely agree with you. It's awakening. It's remembering. We don't have to learn anything. And when we hear these truths, it kind of comes to us like, oh yeah, it just clicks.

Thank you.

And for me, growing up in the church, and you mentioned, I think before we started recording, you said how much you love Jesus. Um, and I love Jesus as a kid too, but God was like, what's wrong with this guy? I did. And I was like, I was tormented because I knew that I had to love God to get into heaven, and there was only one choice, heaven or hell. And I knew I couldn't love God. I, I just could not love this, this person that even if I escaped hell, what about all the people around me? Um, and I haven't— I have an uncle who happens to have been gay. He was murdered many years ago. But I'm like, what about him, right? And, and the church taught then that you're out, right? You can't, you can't be one of us if you're gay. And I— that just made no sense to me.

And it doesn't on a deep intuitive level. Everybody has that. They just haven't— they're not in touch with it.

I think so. I think so. I think people know that's just wrong.

They do. And they— and in their private life, it's totally different what they're saying. Even what's going on today politically all these people that are marginalizing people and we're going to get rid of gay marriage and we're going to do all of that, they probably have it in their family. They probably know somebody who's gay and really likes them. But it's just a surface part of cultural conditioning that people live under.

And we were taught you have to believe this, you know. And again, I think people, I think in their spirit, I think they know it's wrong. And what I found at Universal Reconciliation, for example, I found that this was the teaching of the early church for like the first 500 years of the church. They don't teach you that in Sunday school.

They do not teach you that. You know, I'm— I consider myself, if anything at all, I lean toward Gnosticism. Uh, I, I really get Gnosticism, um, which was the first two centuries before the church was organized into the Christian church. What went on those two centuries are very important, uh, because it was just groups of people who were seeking knowledge, direct knowledge. They didn't want knowledge passed down from others. They wanted knowledge that came to them, self-knowledge, or gnosis in Greek. And that's the way I have felt. I want direct knowledge. If you have something to say to me, God, tell me. Yeah, you can use people to confirm it, That's where we need ministry teachers, people like that. We should just be confirming what people are already coming to in themselves, but they don't have the words for it.

Yeah, exactly.

The biggest compliment for me is after I do a lecture or talk and somebody's standing in the back and saying, "Thank you for saying that. I've been feeling that for so long, but I didn't know how to put it into words." Exactly. So I didn't teach them. I just helped them to put it into— to move it from knowledge to understanding.

Right. Well, it's— and it's almost, I think, uh, in a sense it's unlearning. Because again, I believe that we're born with this, this knowledge, this knowing. We know that we're spirit beings. We know that we're hap— we're— that we're whole. We know those things. The world, and unfortunately a lot of times church, tells us that we're less than, that, that we're evil, that we're, you know, the materialist world tells us we're nothing, we're accidents. So we— that's put upon us. And then, as you said, for— I know for me when I was— I discovered people like Marcus Borg, and, you know, I started finding these guys that taught a different, a different thing. I'm like, oh wow, that makes sense. And not only that, what a lot of people are surprised is that's what your Bible will tell you if you learn how to read it properly.

Well, and that's what I, uh, I had a lot of friends, uh, gay, straight, and whatever, who became so unhappy with the church that they left everything. I didn't. Something in me said, stay and try to transform. Yeah, be a voice. Be a voice in the church for those that are at the threshold of transformation and change. And that's what I've tried to do. But I have a different rapport with Scripture. I think Scripture is coded, you know, and even in the English, Jesus said, the things I say to you are hidden in the parables. They're not the parable. It's hidden in the parable. And I think some of us have cracked the code enough to, to get to the purity of the word as it was purely out of spirit before man got a hold of it and reinterpreted it in a way that benefited what I call the ego part of man, the greed, the power, the whatever. And that's mostly what religion ended up being, a power. You know, our own Pentecostal church started on Azusa Street. In 1905, a group of people got together and said, we need to pray. I don't know what we're praying for, but God needs to do something in the world. And that's where Pentecost started. And Pentecost came down upon them and they spoke with the tongues and, and it was pure. All these religions started out so pure as an experience by their founders, and then the people took and organized it without the experience.

Yeah. Yeah, well, you're, you're absolutely right. And, um, and that's why it's really important for us to get to learn our history, to learn you know, a little bit of Greek and a little bit of Hebrew and Aramaic and understand the languages and understand things like the Council of Nicaea, understand what happened with, uh, Constantine, I think was the, the emperor that, that, you know, co-opted Christianity into the Roman religion, and understand, you know, and Thomas Jefferson, I love the way he says to separate the diamonds from the dung because there is a lot of dung in the Bible too. There's a, there's a lot of crap that people put in there because they were trying to influence us. So we have to understand how these things came to be, how the canon was put together, the gospels that were left out because they didn't like, you know, what they had to say. Um, the doctrine of reincarnation, that was a, that was a big part of Christianity. Yeah.

Well, that's it. I mean, I don't understand. I was raised, of course, in a generation where the King James Bible was the inerrant word of God.

Yeah.

But yet all of a sudden they started putting into the Amplified and then the Good News Book. I thought, if I thought that was the pure word of God, I wouldn't be messing with Why do you need all these translations? And they let me know that deep down they're not sure about what they're reading, that they don't have an experience with it. Uh, but I, I, I do believe that, uh, that there is this awakening that's happening. Um, I just had a different rapport with, with scripture. I just saw it so, so differently than— and the thing about me, I was so young, I was 17 years old when I went to full-time ministry. And back in that day, you just got the call, you know, I didn't have to go to theology school, right? I went to neology school. Yeah. Yeah, I just got on my knees and started seeking, what is your truth for me? I want to hear it no matter what it was. When it came to me, it didn't fit the dogma of my doctrine. I mean, my own aunt, my uncle, who's the overseer of the denomination, all said I was going toward, you know, the wrong way. But, you know, it almost felt like I had made that decision before I came. I don't know if you believe in that or not, but I believe in contracts and agreements between lives in which we make when we came. And I've been told that this is my last incarnation in 3D time-space.

You did have a between-lives experience, right? Did you?

Oh, I do.

Yeah. Yeah.

I really thought the answer was in a past life experience. But I wasn't finding it. And I was finding some interesting things. But it was actually— it was a sovereign experience that happened to me that I— and what it was, was— I don't know how to explain it. It's hard to talk about spiritual things in words. But it was like an innate anger in me that wasn't mine. It wasn't like I was angry about anything. But there was some angry and, uh, that was there. I think maybe it was anger at the God that I had been taught and the Jesus I'd been taught, because I was told as being a different kind of person, that I was a wrong kind of person, and that if I would give my life to God and Jesus, I would be delivered from what they said was wrong about me. Nothing ever changed. So I felt left down in that way. And somehow that became a part of my subconscious part of me that I didn't understand. And I was seeking to find an answer. So I had an experience of before coming into this incarnation. And the way I describe it, I was standing before 3 beings or entities,. And they were reviewing my life that I was getting ready to come into, into this body. And so they went through all that. But at the end of it, they said, we're looking for enough souls to volunteer. But anyway, during— I'm jumping, because during that time, I started experiencing what it means, why we have a gestation period. For me, it was 10 months, some people 7, 9 months. But there's a reason for that, because the soul has to attune itself to the body that it's incarnating into, because the soul is such a higher frequency that it has to go through these stages of slowing itself down to be finally birthed into the body.

Interesting.

And so, yeah, so I went through that whole experience of experiencing that. And but anyway, at the end of this thing, they said, we're looking for enough souls to volunteer, because you gotta understand, there's free will involved here. I didn't feel anything was making me do anything. I didn't feel any God over me saying, you got to do this, you got to do that, which I did when I first started the ministry, because I thought God called me and chose me and get out there and save the world. And, uh, so I didn't, I didn't go to the prom, I didn't finish graduation, I didn't have a regular upbringing as a teenager because I was out pastoring my first church at 19 years old in Montgomery, Alabama. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I was a little— at some level, I was pissed off, you know. Let me finish. Let me finish growing up before you're sending me out here. So I didn't know that until I had this experience. But what happened to me that was so cool is I shifted from being victim to co-creator.

Absolutely.

And I realized— and what they said to me is really cool. They said to me, this is the end of incarnations for a critical mass of souls. And therefore, because not enough of us has reached the level of consciousness— now I'm going to try to say this as easy as best I can— because a collective group of us now living have not reached a level of consciousness to stabilize the new norm of the new dimension of energy that's coming in we would have to sign up to live that many lifetimes in this one to reach that level. And mine was 4 lifetimes. So in this lifetime, this crazy lifetime of mine— oh my God, you wouldn't believe that I've never been able to, to ground myself in this 3D world. I don't know what it is to stay long or have roots in anything. Or other people talk about reunions and things like that. I don't have any of that because I've been moving and changing and going all the time because I was cramming all these lifetimes linear into this one.

Hmm.

So that I could reach a level of consciousness in this incarnation that could match the frequency of what I call 5D energy coming into 3D. Well, I'm not alone, but there is a collective group of people, and that's coded in the 144,000. Which, of course, you've got people who believe that's bodies, 144,000 bodies. No, it's a frequency number. It's 1 plus 4 is 5 plus 4 is 9. 9 is completion. And I said, completing what? And it said, all incarnations in 3D. And when we all come together and create a collective consciousness, we will call a global shift. Barbara Marks Hubbard was a great mentor of mine, and she dubbed this planetary Pentecost.

Wow.

Yeah, what happened on the day of Pentecost is going to happen across the whole globe, and every man's going to understand every man's language and every man at the same time. And we're going to be joined in such a way that it's going to evolve us to the next level of what it means to be human. That's when we come out of Homo sapiens sapiens into Homo luminous, or light beings.

Oh wow, that's heavy. Yeah, well, it sounds awesome, and I love what you said about, you know, no one's sending us here, making us do things, um, because it does take you from victim to co-creator, you know. Again, I was taught— we were taught in the church God's in charge of everything. God's the one that, you know, made you the way you are, right or wrong, you know. And we said some people, we— the church tells them they were made wrong. Um, and God's, you know, God's the one pulling the strings and you're just a victim. But when you have this idea of like, what if I— and I ask people, just, just explore the idea. What if you did choose this, you know? And then the next question is, well, why would I choose this? And have you learned anything from what you've been through? Well, yeah, I've learned a lot, you know. Did you learn anything from that, that illness that you had, or the divorce that you went through, or someone dying, you know, even— did you learn something from that? Well, yeah, I, I did. I learned, I learned a lot. I think I've grown a lot through that. Well, maybe that's why you chose it, right? It's, it's such a shift of— and it's, it's so empowering, I think.

Well, I agree with you 100%. I tell people I'm where I am today in my consciousness not because of the blessings and the miracles of my life, which I could talk about But it's been the challenges. It's been the times I had to go deeper or I had to cross a line, read a book they told me not to read. But I remember reading my first deeper metaphysical book by taking it out to a cemetery so nobody would know that I had read this book because it wasn't the Bible. But I found myself being pushed out of my boundaries by the desperation of the condition.. But I came out of it learning more than when I went in.

Right.

So I call them evolutionary drivers. They're what have driven me to this place, every experience. So how can I regret any experience that I've been through, whether I see it as good or bad or hurtful or whatever? It's all been my teachers.

Yeah. You know, as you said that, I was thinking about a friend of mine, and he's a, he's a former pastor. And after my daughter passed away, we would go on these long walks and have, you know, talks and everything. And I remember talking to him about like near-death experiences and different things, and I mentioned like books like by Marcus Borg and, you know, stuff like that. And he goes, I don't read books about the Bible, I just read the Bible. And I'm like, wow, okay, so you've limited yourself to this, this collection of things that was written literally 2,000 years ago. You're not going to look at any new viewpoints of it, any new revelations, anything that God might be talking to someone today. And we talked about, like, Paul, and I said, I believe Paul had near-death experiences, you know, at least one. And I gave him some, you know, what the reasons I believe that Paul did. And I said, if Paul could have that and learn and be taught, what about Mary that just had a near-death experience yesterday? Would you want to hear what she has to say? Uh, no, I don't really want to. I don't care what she has to say. I just want to listen to Paul.

Yep, that's out there. It's called literalism. You know, it's literalism is alive in that way. But yeah, I've run into that too. So, and there's nothing you can do till people are willing, right? I follow a little bit of Marianne Williamson's Course in Miracles, and there's a line in there that the Holy Spirit says, just give me a little willingness, I'll do the rest.

Yeah, yeah.

That willingness is opening the heart's door. And people won't do it because it may mean changing what they thought was true. And that wounds their ego, because people want to be right. So it's truly becoming a student of the universe, of God, of whatever you want to call it, that you got to be willing to do that. And I just have— I'm willing every day to change something that I say. Because new, new information is coming up in me all the time. And I do that. I get up. I'm a spiritual leader of a spiritual community here in Charlotte, called Heartlight, and a very unique group of people. We're not trying to be church, but we're trying to be a community of seekers, of people who are learning and very diverse. But I will tell them, I'm saying, I said this And now I've gotten new enlightenment on this, and we need to adjust it and be willing to evolve what we thought 6 months ago. So, yeah, growing.

I think, yeah, that humility, that willingness to grow, it's so key to just being in life. I think we have to be students of life. And you touched on it. It's like people get so connected to their beliefs that they believe if you challenge their beliefs, you're, you're saying that you're wrong, you know, you're— and I'm like, no, it's not, you're not wrong, it's your beliefs might be wrong. Can you maybe consider that?

You just say the best things to lead me into things I wanted to say. In 1988, I had a transformative experience, um, in which I believed I'd lost everything that I believed. Mm-hmm. And I've been preaching for years, and I've always preached under what we call an inspiration of the Spirit. I mean, I'm just somebody got to open my mouth and talk. But all of a sudden that stopped, and I started just— I wasn't in the zone any longer. It's like I lost it. And I was very upset that I thought, how's it— if there's a God, how could a God bring me this many years and then desert me? So I was very upset about it. And but it turned out to be a transformative experience for me, because what I realized is the God I lost was a belief in God that I had made God.

Yeah, yeah.

People worship what they believe something is without the experience of what it is. And people— wars are fought from that. People are killed because of that, because they believe this is what God would do. There's a scripture I really like in Psalms that says they made images and idols that had eyes that could not see, ears that could not hear, a mouth that could not speak, and feet that could not walk. But the next verse is what scares me: and they became like them.

Hmm. Hmm.

If my image of God is vindictive, I'm going to act it out and be vindictive and thank God for it.

You're 100% right. I was just listening to, uh, I listened to a podcast called Off the Left Eye, um, and it's about Emanuel Swedenborg. And I'm, I'm just learning about that, you know, recently. And, you know, again, all some of the things we were taught were just like so wrong. And they're, they're talking about, you know, this idea of heaven and hell and God sending people to hell. If you believe that God says, if you do something wrong, I'm going to eternally torment you, then you're going to become the kind of person that says, if you do something wrong, I'm gonna do whatever, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna punish you, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And, and this idea, you know, that God could not be satisfied until he saw his own son tormented. Again, I, I was— when I was in the church and I would read justifications for this, you know, like, well, there's got to be, because God is just, there's got to be payment. And since there's got to be payment, it could only be from a pure And I'm like— and I kept thinking, this makes no sense, but you feel like you have to believe it. It's— it will drive you insane if you're a think— if you're a thinking, caring person.

It will. Well, so much there. First of all, we got to realize, uh, Christ is not Jesus's last name.

Yes, yes.

That's the first thing people's got to get over. He's not Mr. Christ, right? He was the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus was not the Son of God. Christ is the Son of God. Jesus brought us the true Son of God, which is the Christ we all are. And I can prove that in the Bible.

Hmm.

Well, this is Christ in you, Christ in me, Christ in us, the hope of glory. It's talking about the authentic, true self of the very spirit of the mind of God that has been put in us.

Hmm.

And people have missed that completely. Well, first of all, you can't crucify Christ because Christ is of the Melchizedek order. Of an endless life without mother, without father, beginning or ending of days. How are you going to kill and crucify that? So Christ was not crucified, even if Jesus was, if that's true. And by the way, he never heard his name as Jesus in his life. He was Yeshua. Jesus is a translation. And you said something, but I don't want to get by this without us mentioning it, is people study from the Bible, they don't study about the Bible.

Right, right.

There's a book called God's Secretaries about King James and his 50 men that he got together to to do this book without any prayer, without any inspiration at all, just because he, he wanted the king to take over the place of the pope. And people are calling that— and, and I have people that open your King James Bible, what's the first page? King James Version, right?

Right.

Not God's version, it's King James Version that you're, you're putting on me to put me in hell and to do all of that. Oh, I'm sorry, I just get all, uh—

I know, I, I appreciate your passion. No, I, I— no, I, I appreciate your passion. I feel the same way. I'll start preaching sometimes on here because so many people are being misled, um, and it's, it's— some of it is intentional. I mean, again, some of these things we're talking about were intentional. There's a lot— there's so much political stuff. King James The translation, you know, there's a, there's actually a book called, uh, I think it's called Why Hell, or Hell is Disappearing from the Bible, because the translate— most of the time when you see the word hell in the Bible, it's— that's not the word. In the Old Testament, Sheol, which is the grave. The Jews didn't believe it's a place of torment. Yeah.

First book I wrote was Hell Yes or Hell No.

Uh, yeah, yeah. So I, I think it is our mission to to help people take that next, that next level. And one thing I want to do before we finish, because I, I saw that you had an experience, I think, with Oral Roberts' son, um, and I wanted to cover that if you could.

I don't even know how you know that, but anyway, um, uh, I raised in Tulsa. If you're raised in Tulsa, you knew that Oral Roberts had a gay son that they pretty much paid to stay in California to stay away. And we all knew him because Tulsa's a small city. So we knew he would go to the gay bars and whatever. So he was— we pretty well knew that. I was co-ministering in Peoria, between Peoria and Decatur, Illinois, in 1981. And I was driving one day. It was a beautiful day. I wasn't thinking about anything. Going down the interstate, and all of a sudden what I call the spirit came upon me, and I literally lost about 10 miles of where I was driving, and I went into spirit language.

Mm-hmm.

And I thought, what in the world has happened? Because after it was over, I felt so free. And what happened— I don't talk about this very often, so here we go. Uh, What had happened at that time is old Robert's son had just committed suicide in a hotel room in West Palm Beach, Florida. I did not know that. But I— when I found out, I asked Spirit, why? What? What? And it said, because of the level of consciousness you were on, I was able to use you to free his spirit because the family beliefs would have held him earthbound. Wow, this is heavy stuff. And I went into a whole teaching about releasing spirits from then on. Release spirits. And so, um, that's, that's what happened. Um, yeah, I have no way of proving anything like that. I'm just telling you that was an experience that I had, that I felt like people's belief systems of families and religion, if we're not careful, can hold us into the lower atmospheres of our crossing over.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it is a difficult subject to talk about, but I think it's important to not turn away from, from the truth. And are you familiar with Father Nathan Castle? No, he's a Catholic priest, and one of the things he does is he helps release people who have, who have crossed over, and they've— it's, it's guilt, it's self-imposed.

Yeah, there's people doing it.

He, he's, he's been on my podcast. I'll send you a link to the episode. Um, he's also spoken at IANDS, International Association for Near-Death Studies. Um, so it's a really interesting thing, right? Because, you know, our, our beliefs can hold us back. And again, the church tells certain people, you're the way you are is just, it's wrong. And you need to change. And, you know, I, I tried to stay in the church for as long as I could. And my wife, the last church we were going to was this big, uh, uh, one of those mega churches here in Cincinnati. And it was run by a bunch of people from Procter Gamble, so they had coffee and, you know, the show, you know, everything was really nice. But once or twice a year, you know, the mass would slip a little bit and they talk about, you know, you're going to go to hell if you don't believe in Jesus. And then once or twice a year, they'll bring in people from the, uh, gay conversion ministries and say, you know, I, I was released from this, and you, you know, that kind of stuff. And, you know, it seems harmless. It can seem harmless, but it's, again, it's telling people you're, you're wrong for being who you are, and that can drive people to take their own lives. So I think it's important that we, we talk about this and we share that.

Well, thank you, and thank you for opening a platform to talk about it because it's not being talked about enough. Suicide among gay teens is one of the highest suicides there is, and there's a reason for it. If we would talk about it and make people understand that their sexual orientation does not fully identify them for the whole person that they are.

Something I, I struggle with after my uncle was murdered, um, and I was like you know, what is this? What does this mean, right? So I got a book by a guy, he's a Catholic priest, um, and it's called What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality.

Yes.

And I started reading that, and then because I was like, well, you know, it's wrong. And if you look at the suicide rates and depression rates and drug use, clearly there's— and then I've realized the reason why all that is out of whack is because we're telling them that they're wrong. It's not because it's something about being gay that makes you depressed or commit suicide. Um, it's, it's what— it's people telling you that you're living an evil lifestyle. So I think it's, um, it's vitally important that we stop telling people that, you know, that— whether it's that or other things too, you know, stop judging people. Um, you know, let people live, live their lives. And I was— there's a rant on Facebook the other day. We're gonna kind of off the subject, but this woman, she's just ranting about like, I'm not a Christian, stop trying to make me live by your Bible. And some people are like, oh, she's awfully angry. I said, wouldn't you be really angry if someone tried to make you live by a mythical book that you don't believe in? Of course she's angry.

That's, that's the anger I was trying to tell you, that it wasn't lining up with my inner—

well, yeah, and that, that was the anger I felt, the guy, when I was a child, because I was like, why would you? And again, I, I'm like, I'm a good person. I, I was baptized, I spoke in tongues, I did all those things. But I'm like, not everybody's going to get that chance. What about the person that was raised in, in India?

They're going to be—

and I realized if I were born in India, I'd be a Hindu. I would not be a Christian.

And, and the missionary dies before they get to you to save you, right? Right. So now you're going to spend eternity in hell. Totally doesn't make any sense. It's just common sense we need a little bit of.

Yeah. Well, I— well, there are people like you, and I, I'm, I'm so grateful for people like you who have, you know, stayed in the church, you know, and and, and can talk, and can talk to people from that level. Because I think we need to release a lot of, frankly, so-called Christians. Um, they need to be released more than some people who aren't Christians. Um, yeah. So we're coming to the end of our time. I've so enjoyed talking to you. So let people know where they can find out more about you and what it is that you do.

Sure. Uh, I've started the Academy for Spiritual Awakening exactly for that reason, that people are ready to wake up from all of these illusions of how we've been formed by culture, society, and religion. But the true self is waking up in them, might need a little help and assistance. And that's all we're offering is just a hand to cross the bridge over into— from fear to love. But you can get a hold of— while I'm doing it— David Holtz, my last name is Holtz, like your pulse, with an H, uh, .com. And, uh, if you get on there, there's a free awakening sampler that you can get, but give some little samples of some of the things that the academy is going to offer people. I do start out with like Bible 101, so I'm taking people right from the Bible and, uh, those kind of courses all the way to deeper things, uh, wherever they are on the path. I'm trying to meet them so we can help them to further them along the path. So we'd love to have people to check us out and see a little bit about— we're brand new, so really it would mean a lot for people to, to get on there and give us some feedback and to give us their email or something and get on our mailing list. And I want to thank you so much for the platform you're providing. I'm overwhelmed with your openness to have conversations that I think are being suppressed. You know, sometimes we're too heavenly good to be no earthly good, you know, that old saying. Yeah, talk about where we live. Yeah, what's going on?

Well, I, I think that, uh, I, I, I think we're born where we're supposed to be. And as my grandfather— I feel like I'm following his legacy in, in a way that, um, you know, I, I, it's just, it's what I, I feel like I have to do. So, uh, hopefully this will be my last time here too. So I, I haven't gotten that revelation, but, um, I'm trying to make I'm trying to do as best I can.

Yeah. Check in. Check in sometime when you're meditating and just see what your inner self tells you. Because talking to you, I call people like ourselves conscious born. We came in this earth on a different frequency than some people because we've chosen to say, I'll go to— I call them the first fruits of the— remember the Bible talks about the first fruits, right?

Exactly.

The first fruits. Yeah. The rest will come. Yeah, you know, in the harvest, the wheat will show up first, but the rest is coming. That's universal reconciliation.

Absolutely, 100%. But we'll have to do this again. I really appreciate it.

Oh, I'd love to. Much more I'd like to talk about with you.

All right, well, enjoy the rest of your day.

You too. Thank you. Bye.

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