Who are The Angels?

For me, the best characters in the brilliant drama of The Nativity have always been the angels—although the camels are a close second. While the human players always seem almost boringly predictable, since I was a child I've been fascinated by the way angels always show up just at the right time, always calm but slightly "off" and weird.

As a child, one of my favorite books was an illustrated religious childrens' book, published for Roman Catholic households. The brief moral stories featured angels as the heroes and devilish-looking angels as the villains, always seeking to tempt children away from God in clever ways—while it was never clarified exactly what would happen if one did stray—so I didn't worry about that.

Although I greatly admired the visual illustrated beauty of the good angels with their multi-colored wings, I was far more attracted to the mischievous tempters, and felt a special kinship with them. In spite of the stunted, dark wings the illustrator had given them, I especially liked that they had much more interesting facial expressions, with none of the perfectly composed, almost self-satisfied smirks of the "good" angels. They weren't "bad" -- they were just more down-to-earth and just wanting to have fun. Ever since then, I seriously questioned if there really is any such thing as an imperfect or bad angel in a universe of absolute good.

Now, many years later, here is what the Risen have shared with me about "angels":

The alleged fall of rebellious angels from Heaven recorded in many ancient texts is actually a fabrication of the ego-mind. We are the angels, and while we might be drifting we haven’t actually fallen. Perhaps we could be called fledglings in the egg, and may still have a long process in our angelic development, but that is why we have immortality. The separation drama of “good” from “not good” angels is a dualism myth built from lies of the ego-mind, which seeks to make Authentic Self feel separated from Source and then keep Authentic Self under its control. This lie was effective in appearing to lower the Divine Human Authentic Self by creating a false hierarchy. It placed humanity at the bottom, and the inconceivable and unreachable angel at the top—beings who are always “closest to God.”  

Typical of the ego-mind’s approach, fear is used to keep humanity in its place. As noted in The Risen Dialogues, a myth is based upon certain realities that were misplaced from the present consciousness of the embodied collective of humanity. The ego-mind fostered this myth by capitalizing on certain psychological attributes of humanity’s mentality, making it believable by assigning to the angels human-like “lower” attributes such as fear and jealousy in order to explain their so-called “fall”—yet angels are supposedly perfect beings. This contradiction of lies appears true due to our aeons-long tendency to follow while not questioning such beliefs, rather than resting in the true knowledge that we are beings who can never stop living. 

Who are these powerful, light-filled beings who so often appear to humanity in the service of Creator Source? These angels are none other than “Beings and Becomings”—people like us—who have been evolving and transmuting for unfathomable eternities, just as we and our loved ones will on our immortal journey.

We are beings who are becoming angels.

When we can allow our self to become truly quiet and rest from a feeling of alignment we will begin to feel our Source, which is omnipresent, changeless, and resides here and right now within each of us. The now of within is the middle of everything. The feeling of now is the connection with the feeling of immortality. It is the feeling of “I Am.” 

The feeling of reaching and reuniting with our immortal residence is also the feeling of coming Home. The vitalized Authentic Self will inevitably recognize the feeling of its truth in its various states, thereby recognizing Itself as an immortal being as It moves inwardly from any felt point, ever onward.

[Excerpted from A Risen Companion to Grief (in press)]