Jim Palmer > Quotes

“Being Jesus means that we go through life embracing it all fully and feeling it all deeply. That we don’t hide and try to protect ourselves. That we live. That we show up. That we laugh. That we cry. That we hurt. That we heal. That we care. That we love. And then, that we wake up the next morning and sign up for it all over again.”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“One of the most freeing discoveries these past few years in my relationship with God is discovering that God is not a belief system or a fixed set of theological propositions.”
― Jim Palmer, Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity

“Perhaps everyone finds him or herself a time or two sifting through the rubble and ruins of a devastated life, wondering whether or not it's worth rebuilding or even salvageable.”
― Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God

“Maybe being Jesus is simply seeing people as they truly are.”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“My striving couldn't get me any closer to knowing God. He had always been there, waiting for me to give up and listen.”
― Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God

“I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around.”
― Jim Palmer, Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity

“There is a peace deep within myself from knowing that all things are held within and sustained by the love of God.”
― Jim Palmer, Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity

“People who ask a lot of questions often find themselves at odds with other people, and even institutions and governments. Sometimes questioning types don't fare very well within religion.”
― Jim Palmer, Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity

“I'm slowly seeing that God really does love me, although I still sometimes try to earn his love and depend on my talents, achievements, or traits for self-worth. So many times, I choose destructive patterns and misplaced dependencies over his love. I'm weary from my lists of dos and don'ts and tired of trying to figure it out, yet I struggle to simply receive the love and life God wants to give.”
― Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God

“If you pray and ask God to make bananas red, God won’t, because there is nothing wrong with bananas being yellow. If you pray and ask God to change your health, finances, relationships, employment, and possessions to make you happy, God won’t, because changing them won’t make you happy. Not only is there nothing wrong with the impermanence of the world, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is present in this world of impermanence.”
― Jim Palmer, Notes from (over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering

“Being Jesus doesn't mean that I am always at the center, always doing something, always making something spectacular happen. Being Jesus simply means that I show up to be "part of" something. Maybe being Jesus isn't so much about making it happen as it is letting it happen.”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“Enlightenment is simply realizing the indisputable Truth of who you are. You are fundamentally complete in every respect, and cannot be improved upon or diminished. You gain nothing from all your effort to be more spiritual, religious, or enlightened. There is nothing to gain. Your true Self is one with God and there is nothing to add, achieve, or improve.”
― Jim Palmer, Notes from (over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering

“I can't control or predict God, but I trust him enough to allow this journey of knowing him to take me wherever it may lead, even if I don't know where that is until I get there.”
― Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God

“FEAR IS A REACTION YOU HAVE WHEN YOU’RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE TRUTH”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“You are a filthy, dirty, incurable scumbag. God is perfectly holy. If it were up to God you’d be tossed into Hell to burn in conscious torment forever. That’s what you deserve by being you. That’s how bad you are. Thankfully, God worked this out by brutally executing his innocent son by death on a cross. If you believe and accept this along with other central doctrines, God will forgive you. God will never be fond of a scumbag like you, but at least you’ll make it into Heaven when you die. In the meantime, you’re off the hook because when God looks at scumbag you, God magically doesn’t really see scumbag you; he sees Jesus instead. You will never amount to much in God’s eyes anyway. But how amazing that God loves someone like you who doesn’t deserve it.”
― Jim Palmer, Notes from (over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering

“suffering. I paid attention to my deepest desires and passions. I sought to cast off my fictitious self, and be an authentic and fully-expressed me. I explored the connection between spirituality and sexuality. I expanded my relational world beyond religious sub-culture. I resisted creating a new religion out of my latest discovery. I operated with the assumption that every human being knew something I needed to know. I resisted latching onto the latest guru, and began seeing all people as my teachers. I explored new fields and areas of interest”
― Jim Palmer, Notes from (over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering

“Jesus came two thousand years ago to demonstrate, testify, and bear witness to the truth, and that truth still stands. There is a heavenly Bethlehem within each of us, and the same Spirit that was in Jesus is in us—that is the true messiah that is to be birthed out of us to save the world! We are the priesthood, but instead of turning people toward the Spirit within, the Christian religion did and does the very thing Jesus exhorted his disciples not to do—build a religion around the physical human Jesus. Jesus stated unequivocally that his kingdom and authority were not rooted in this cosmos—the carnal and religious mental reasoning and mindsets of this world. This faulty cosmos thinking perpetuates the most primitive notions about God and Jesus.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“Pattie helped me understand that you can provide someone with food and shelter, train them in a skill for employment, even offer professional treatment for an addictions, but these acts don't necessarily reach down to that place inside a person where fear, shame, guilt, hurt, and hopelessness wreak havoc. Pattie's greatest need was to be seen, and then to be loved, accepted and validated.”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“The misteaching of what Jesus meant by “repent” has kept people circling around in that cosmos of false beliefs and mindsets that lead nowhere.   The word Jesus actually used was metanoia. Meta means “beyond or outside,” while noia means “understanding.” Noia is derived from the Greek nous, which means “our minds.” In practical terms, metanoia means to “change the way we use our minds”—to think beyond the normal limits of the way we have been taught to reason. It implies that we haven’t been using our minds correctly. An example of this metanoia principle would be metaphysics. As mentioned, “meta” means outside or beyond, so metaphysics means outside the normal limits of physics. Likewise, metanoia is a spirit awareness that is beyond the normal reasoning of the mind, which is trained from birth to focus on our world. True metanoia is referencing our higher mind—the spirit.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“The reasoning of our minds keeps us locked inside the powerless ideas, beliefs, mindsets, and ideologies of the cosmos. But when we turn to the deep feelings that bubble up from the life-giving Spirit within us, we are accessing and operating within a very different, powerful dimension—and this needs investigating. All those Father-like loving, forgiving, and protecting attributes that religion taught us to associate with a God located up in the sky are qualities of the life-giving Spirit within us. The power to save our world and create a new order is not up in the sky, but inside ourselves. We are carrying it around daily.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“Jesus once said, “If the eyes are good, the whole body is full of light” (Matt. 6:22). Jesus was not talking about physical eyesight; he was speaking of spiritual vision—seeing through the discernment of the Spirit. He would also often say, “Whoever has ears, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15). Jesus was not talking about physical ears and the ability to hear audible sound; he was inviting people to listen in and through the spiritual realm within them.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“Christianity’s false understanding of the death of Jesus means there are only two ways of reaching the “heavenly dimension”—either by dying and being taken up to God or by Jesus bringing it down with him when he returns. Meanwhile, Jesus taught and demonstrated that this dimension—the heavenly powerhouse—is present right now within us! The whole box of tricks! For the past two thousand years, Christians should have been the ones opening that box. Instead, we’ve had it cemented shut! ”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“It is not the physical or bodily Jesus who is the messiah who will save the world, but the presence that filled Jesus and fills us too.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (John 12:32). This was not a challenge for people to start a Jesus religion and go around the world trying to convert people to it. Jesus was saying that when the eternal Spirit—within him and us—is lifted up out of us into the world, then that eternal Spirit will be easily recognizable to us all and draw us together as one human family.”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“But as tragic as the unjust and brutal murder of Jesus was, it created a demonstration that leads us to the truth. Jesus was aware of the significance of this, which is why he did not resist the events that ultimately led to his death. But to understand this significance, we must “see” what happened on a different level—in and through the Spirit.   Jesus himself said he was “in” this world but not “of” this world. In other words, Jesus operated within our time-space dimension that is governed by science, physics, and nature, but he was also part of a spiritual or SUPERnatural world or realm that is not limited by these laws. We are also part of that same realm! The same eternal Spirit that put Jesus there puts us there too. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Repent (metanoia), for the kingdom of heaven is here.” You might remember that metanoia means to change the way we use our minds. In other words, Jesus was saying that the SUPERnatural realm—the kingdom of heaven—is accessible to us right now, but it requires us to connect to that higher dimension within us by changing the way we use our minds. We do this by thinking in and through those deeper feelings!   Does that sound a bit too naïve and simplistic to you? If so, then you are in the right place! Jesus said unless you put your old, fixated beliefs aside and open your mind like a little child, you cannot see that dimension, let alone get in. How do you connect with and access this heavenly powerhouse within the eternal Spirit? By being a Bible scholar or following a stringent routine of meditation and other spiritual disciplines? No! We simply open our minds, put aside mental limitations, and trust those deep feelings inside us. Then express these feelings between us! There is nothing too hard about that, is there? It’s just a matter of changing the way we use our minds, and then joy and freedom begin to flood us. ”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“Consider one chair in particular to toss: our present human reality and how it does not line up with Jesus’ promise of a new world. We try every conceivable theological explanation to avoid admitting that something is desperately wrong, continuing to rely on some God in the sky who is going to bail us out.   In many respects we have never progressed past the most primitive notions of a God out there, somewhere up in the sky. It is the way our minds have been trained to think. That training encourages all our belief systems—worldly and religious—to become “deities,” ruling us from somewhere “out there” in the netherworld of our imaginations.   That training in the Christian religion has been the immovable stone, sealing off the secret within us that Jesus taught would save our world. Those who cling to that training stand in the doorway, not entering in themselves and blocking everyone else who is wishing to enter. This is tragic.   It is time to rebel and find that new world. Listen to that world. Follow that world. Express that world. It’s a very different world than this one, and it will open up a whole new reality if we will only begin to trust it. This is what Jesus taught, what he lived for, and what he died for. Jesus offered hope to anyone who wanted to discover that new world: “Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7).”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“Jesus was an inner anarchist. His central message was that another world was waiting to be born. The people confused this message with the notion that Jesus was somehow going to physically displace the ruling regime of the day and achieve political freedom. Jesus did not advocate the expulsion of religious or worldly leaders by the sword. Instead, he told people to find liberation inside themselves and then unlock the prison cells for everyone else to break free. ”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“But what did we do? We killed him and then built a great, useless religion around him on the wrong level. We made the physical Jesus into a god and overlooked that he was really explaining and demonstrating the Spirit in him—the same that is in us! That was the “God,” not him! We didn’t listen to what he said. Anyone who tried to understand his path was severely dealt with by the religious people who claimed to represent him. What a mess! Still”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World

“I made peace with my religious past. I took responsibility for my spiritual journey. I stopped dividing up the world into “sacred” and “secular.” I began listening to and trusting my inner voice. I started looking past the externals, and relating to the deepest reality I knew was present in every human being. I quit making my humanity the enemy. I resisted the need to build a persona around being an enlightened person. I opened myself to the rhythm and flow of life in nature. I explored what it meant to truly be “present” in life and became a student of my spiritual aura and energy. I focused on addressing the root of my”
― Jim Palmer, Notes from (over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering

“Taking what Jesus meant by metanoia, you could restate Jesus’ central message as follows: “The dimension and authority of heaven are here now, but it’s going to require you to shift from your typical way of reasoning to an inner awareness of the Spirit inside you.” ”
― Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy: Dethroning God and Jesus to Save Ourselves and the World