F. Aster Barnwell

We are “saved,” spiritually and psychologically, only when we outgrow egoic consciousness by bringing our Higher Self into expression. This Transformation is the only salvation on offer for anyone and everyone!

Nonfiction
Hidden Treasure unveils the psychology of transformation behind the New Testament’s story of Jesus and his teachings.
Properly decoded, the Book of Revelation can be seen as an expose on the psychic forces behind the human life drama. It’s not about the end of the world.
ARTICLES
Various Articles Related to Spirituality & the Transformation of Consciousness

ARTICLES

Various Articles Related to the Transformation of Consciousness and reinterpretation of the Christian dogma pertaining to "salvation."


To think that there’s a path to God apart from working to transform our consciousness is a delusion. There is no magic set of beliefs which can do the work for us, as God doesn’t do side-deals. It’s the same for everyone, whether we’re Christian—Catholic or Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever. This means that identifying with a religion cannot be a substitute for the work we must each do, day-by-day, personal interaction by personal interaction, to transform our egoic consciousness into one more sensitive and responsive to our connectedness. The path to God and our deepest and truest reality is beyond dogma and is only found through the process of transformation.


The popular Christian belief that Astrology is condemned in the Bible is contradicted by the basic fact that it serves as a master-key to unlocking the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, serves as the template for the Beatitudes in Matthew, as well as the names of Jesus’s 12 disciples as they’re presented in the Gospels. Maybe, this idea that it’s condemned is simply a ruse to discourage people from discovering this Biblical reliance on Astrology for themselves.


I believe that the Christian community has for too long concerned itself with trying to convert self-declared atheists. What should really occupy the concern of Christians are the people who claim to believe in God but act as if no one else matters, especially when they exist outside one’s immediate circle, or community, or nation.


The enduring debate in popular Christian theology over whether salvation is by “works” or by Grace is based on a false understanding of what constitutes “salvation.” Once we understand “salvation,” not as an end-of-life reward, but as an in-life process of spiritual transformation and awakening of a higher consciousness, then the notion that individual effort does not help is obviously absurd.


The chakras serve as our bridge between Matter and Spirit, helping us evolve in our experience of life between a predominantly selfish existence at the lowest chakra, and one that is purely selfless and spiritual at the highest. It should be the goal of all spiritual disciplines to assist us in moving toward the higher end, where we can experience a greater sense of joy in life. It is this challenge of moving our consciousness up the “ladder of being,” that constitutes the transformation of consciousness.


The kind of purity I’m talking about here is the state of feeling that we’re a stakeholder in Life, and that the Universe bodes no ill towards us. In this state we are able to stay open and receptive and non-judgmental. This is the environment most conducive to the transformation of consciousness and for invoking God.


An editor once responded to a reference to faith that I made in my recent book with the query, “Faith in what?” Of course, this was the wrong question, for she was interpreting my use of the word to mean “belief in,” whereas my understanding of faith is more in the sense of a faculty which we can use to discern situations in life where we need to make conscious choices that can have significant impacts on the growth of our consciousness.


An account of my effort a number of years ago to answer a question related to the transformation of consciousness, posed by my then 9-year old daughter.


"Toward Open-Ended Growth: Moving Beyond Roles and Goals" - Downloadable Table of Contents and Chapter 5 from The Pilgrim's Companion-A Handbook for the Spiritual Path, available for purchase on this website.


The “unforgivable sin”, discussed in the New Testament, is nothing other than a psychological dynamic in which we continually frustrate and impede the efforts of our own Divine Spark to lead us to the source of our being. As long as this dynamic persists, it presents an impasse to the process of our transformation. This is what it means to be “un-forgiven,” since this impasse cannot be resolved externally, but must be dismantled from within.


This brief collection of poems, penned between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, represent some of my thoughts and reflections on the transformational journey from a personal perspective.