In the year 2004, I began to feel a strong inner intuition: I needed to investigate and confirm whether what I had received as faith truly came from God. Many things—though not all—that I read in the New Testament sounded to me like human thoughts or human productions, and I knew that God is not a man. His thoughts are higher than ours. He does not reason in earthly terms as we do, whose lives revolve around the material. And I am not speaking only about money, but about everything we perceive through our physical senses. God’s spiritual world—and God Himself—exist above those limitations and are not subject to the restrictions of the body or the human mind.
God does not think as we do because He is not a physical being. This does not mean that God lacks form or nature. On the contrary, we were created in His image and likeness. According to the Book of Adam and Eve, our first parents had the same bodily form we recognize today—head, arms, legs—but of a spiritual constitution, clothed in a “radiance” that came from God. That light was a reflection of the divine nature, whose essence is an intense, self-existing light. After the breaking of the covenant, that radiance was withdrawn, and the spiritual body was covered with skin and organs, adapted to physical needs such as eating. Thus, the form did not change, but the nature did: we moved from a spiritual constitution similar to God’s to a material body subject to limitations. The image of the “clay figurine” does not reflect this origin; rather, it appears to be an inheritance from Sumerian myths in which the gods molded humanity from clay.
God’s ways are also higher than ours, because ours tend to repeat inherited and superficial patterns: marrying at a certain age, the man being older than the woman, or having children in order to be considered a “complete” family. That socially imposed model is, at its core, a failed way of living, because it is driven by obligation rather than conviction. God did not create us like identical pennies, all the same and without distinction. The diversity of His creation is immense, and so are our personalities, desires, and convictions. Above all, He gave us freedom to live as we choose, with the single condition that we do not do evil. Those who live in balance between the Spirit and their human condition become the heads of their own destiny, free from social impositions and able to decide what they truly want and what truly benefits them.
Related to this, I personally believe that some of the messages Jesus delivered have not been properly understood, precisely because of our limited way of seeing and understanding—that is, our earthly perspective. Jesus said many things that were not grasped in their true meaning. For example, he said: “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Our minds almost immediately interpret this passage as meaning that following Jesus is not a path of prestige or material security, but one that requires renouncing comfort and the supports even animals have. But is that really what he meant? Jesus knew the Scriptures of his time, and in them God’s covenant with Israel included promises of material abundance. Yet from our earthly understanding, we interpret this saying as if he were teaching that following him meant living an ascetic life in a physical world, placing the spirit in opposition to the body.
Jesus was not bound by the social norms and traditions of his time—those inherited customs that, over generations, became obsolete. He demonstrated this on many occasions and was harshly criticized for it: he spoke publicly with the Samaritan woman, breaking gender and ethnic barriers; he stayed in the house of Zacchaeus, a tax collector; and he shared meals with tax collectors and sinners, who were despised by society. Jesus deliberately ignored those social conventions.
Indeed, Jesus chose a different path: to live in true freedom, guided by the Spirit, far from meaningless, repetitive human patterns. Perhaps, then, his radical comparison was not exalting deprivation, but highlighting the difference between a life repeated under human patterns and a life guided by the freedom of the Spirit.
It is therefore well known that Jesus did not feel bound by many social conventions. The Gospel of Philip, an ancient text discovered in Nag Hammadi, presents him differently: “The companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and kissed her often.” The term used is koinōnos, which means companion or intimate partner. In simple terms: Mary Magdalene was his wife.
According to the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene was not only Jesus’ wife but also his closest disciple. That dual role—wife and follower with a privileged position—broke with the religious hierarchies of the time, in which women rarely held spiritual authority. It is true that scholars maintain this gospel was not written by the apostle Philip. But that does not invalidate it, since many New Testament writings are also anonymous or pseudonymous. The Letter to the Hebrews does not name an author; several letters attributed to Paul were written by others; and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were composed anonymously and only later assigned those names.
With all this in mind, I embarked on a search to confirm whether what I had received as faith truly came from God, knowing that my spiritual life was at stake. I was confident that I would find what I was looking for in the Scriptures. I gathered courage—because religion instills fear—and placed my full trust in the belief that my relationship with God would protect me from inadvertent error. What I found surprised me greatly. I have shared with you my discoveries and reflections regarding religion, the laws of Hebrew ritual, and their influence on the religion that formed after Jesus’ death, among other related topics. While researching, I encountered the fascinating ancient world of Mesopotamia and the earliest Hebrew generations.
Samuel Noah Kramer titled one of his books History Begins at Sumer, and the Sumerians themselves claimed this in their tablets: with their gods, cities rose, commerce flourished, and kings and priests appeared. But our true history did not begin in Sumer—it began in heaven. One of the writers of the Book of Enoch acknowledges this when he says: “I longed to dwell there, and my spirit yearned for that dwelling; that was my inheritance from before, as it had been appointed for me by the Lord of Spirits.” The Life of Adam and Eve explains this plainly.
This is the part of our spiritual origin that our human condition—through ego and the untransformed mind—together with opposing spiritual powers, seeks to prevent us from remembering. They want us not to know our true beginning, nor to return to it. If we were to succeed, God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. And if God’s will is fulfilled on earth, not everyone benefits. There are those who do not belong to our field and who strive to prevent this, because they know that its fulfillment will mark the beginning of their end.
Have any of you researched your family origins? Discovering where we come from and how those before us lived reminds us that our story does not begin in the small reality around us, but is part of something much larger, with true continuity. That perspective changes everything: it is not the same to look at a single tree as it is to contemplate the entire forest.
When we do this, we begin to understand ourselves better—to see how the history of the world passed through our ancestors and how important it is to know that we, too, lived it through them, because we were born from their lineage. That is the investigation of our earthly roots. But few dare to investigate our spiritual roots. In a way, a parallel can be drawn between the spiritual history of our creation and our earthly one. We were conceived by love and by the will of a Being who considers Himself our Father. We were children and heirs of His greatness. When we know that origin, darkness fades and clarity enters, allowing us to see who we are, where we come from, and where we are going—if we choose to.
Investigating our spiritual roots reminds us of our true identity as beings who come from God and not merely from flesh; it gives us direction and purpose so that we do not miss the mark; it opens our eyes to discern between what comes from God and what are human inventions; it strengthens our spirit against antagonistic forces that seek to divert us; it produces inner transformation by moving us away from ego and closer to the divine plan; and it fills us with hope by confirming that our destiny does not end on earth, but in the fulfillment of all God’s promises: returning to the Garden and participating in what He prepared for us—things so wonderful that our eyes have never seen them and our minds have never imagined them. Finally, it equips us to fulfill the purpose of doing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, which is the ultimate goal of the divine plan.
The lineage of Israel transmitted to us the origins of the human race. Other ancient cultures also have creation accounts similar to Genesis, but most are wrapped in highly embellished and fantastical myths. By contrast, the Hebrew tradition left us a more sober and clear—though incomplete—version of our origin. And we, heirs of the Judeo-Christian worldview, also have what many call madness: faith, the firm conviction that God’s promises will be fulfilled.
We are not born by chance. God imagines and conceives our birth, our virtues, and our existence. Does this mean our lives are predestined? In a sense, yes—but here is a key point: God’s plan can be difficult to fulfill if we are not aligned with Him. That “alignment” is His will. When Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of the Kingdom because of their breach of the covenant, God warned Adam that he would live on a land full of hardship, because they would not be alone. There were others who would try to separate them from God’s love, prevent His purpose from being fulfilled, and, if possible, destroy them. The same happens to us. If we do not agree to do what God designed for our lives, then we are misaligned, unprotected, and His plan is not fulfilled.
If God gave us a clear talent—such as for business—but we set it aside simply to follow someone else, we step outside His plan. Blessing is not found in trends or social commitments, but in living what He envisioned for us. We can choose otherwise—we are free—but that freedom does not always lead to what is best. True prosperity, both material and spiritual, manifests when we remain in the direction God traced and stay united to the Source.
If we do not reconcile with the Creator, the forces that exist on earth and do not come from God will do everything possible to make us miss the mark, to prevent us from fulfilling our destiny and receiving the blessings He prepared for each of us. A poor choice also brings problems that should not be part of our lives. By contrast, if we are meek under God’s guidance, we are protected from making wrong decisions.
We come to this earth with an objective and a goal. The first objective is salvation. Our true self is spiritual, and being given a physical body allows us to attain that salvation—if we accept it and allow it. All the effort God must undertake is a consequence of our stubbornness and excessive pride in refusing to accept the reality of what we are: created beings who need a relationship with Him to reach spiritual maturity. The maturity of the physical body is achieved through natural elements, but the maturity of the spirit only through the Spirit of God. That is why He promised to give it to us when we reconciled with Him—though that is only the beginning of the journey.
The purpose, then, is to return to our spiritual nature. That is the process of transformation, the reverse of what happened to Adam and Eve. They moved from spiritual greatness to the limitation of a physical body. Their fall was a descent: from life in the Garden to life in exile, from spiritual fullness to the human condition subject to pain, fatigue, and death. That was the downward path.
Our task, by contrast, is to walk the opposite path: to return to what we were in the beginning and recover our true nature. The transformation we need is the inverse of the one they experienced—from the darkness that clouds our identity to the clarity that reminds us who we truly are. This process is neither automatic nor forced. God does not compel us. It is a path of choice, of meekness, of recognizing that on our own we cannot recover what was lost in the Garden. It is also a process of maturation: learning to live as spiritual beings within a human condition, until spirituality definitively overcomes the fragility of the flesh.
God created our first parents in the heavens and placed them in a garden that was an extension of His kingdom. There He established a covenant with them: not to engage with evil—a commitment that still remains. But when they ventured beyond the garden, the Transgressor, using a serpent, deceived Eve and led them to lose the power with which they had been created.
There is much teaching about our human nature in the events of the beginning. Many of our behaviors have their roots in Genesis. The fallen angel twisted God’s Word, presenting it as if it contained a hidden meaning that he alone could reveal, and thus deceived Eve. She, in turn, was manipulated and then manipulated Adam. And he, instead of standing firm and saying, “We will not do that,” chose to follow her, showing a complete lack of resolve. From this arise human attitudes that persist to this day: manipulation, evasion of responsibility, and weakness in the face of pressure.
Manipulation acts as an influence that comes from outside. It may appear as thoughts in our minds or through real people who plant ideas in us. Every spiritual operation seeks to make you do what another wants. It is a subtle form of mind control, never forced. That is what happened with Adam and Eve: the serpent did not command—it merely suggested, casually planting the idea that disobedience would bring benefits. Eve accepted that suggestion as something good and ended up dragging Adam with her, when in reality everything resulted in pain. And because they did not act with full control of their free will, God decided to save them from sharing the Transgressor’s same eternal fate.
The manipulation of thoughts works like an enchantment: it clouds truth and makes what destroys appear desirable. From humanity’s earliest moments, we have been marked by this tendency to varying degrees, often without realizing it. That inclination must be removed from us. Reconciliation with God cleanses us of those negative tendencies and restores to us a heart capable of choosing what is truly good and beneficial.
However, confusion does not always come from outside. Sometimes we ourselves misinterpret Scripture and therefore fail to understand what the author is truly saying. At times we take literally what was not meant to be read that way; at other times, we interpret symbolically what should be read plainly. A clear example of this habit is Isaiah 7:14: the sign that an almá (a young woman) would give birth was for King Ahaz, as immediate proof that God was with Judah. Later, a forced interpretation was applied to support the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus. The original text, however, simply referred to a young woman.
An illustrative case of the confusion that arises from reading a text literally when it should not be is Psalm 51:5. David speaks in deep anguish after committing adultery with Bathsheba and ordering the death of her husband Uriah. When he says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me,” he is justifying the evil he committed by presenting it as the product of his human condition: a sinner born in sin who therefore sins. This is a personal justification. The problem is that this individual confession was taken as literal doctrine, and from it very likely arose the teaching that all are born in sin—that we are all stained by Adam’s guilt.
Under this view, being born in sin led to the body itself being seen as the bearer of evil. It was thought that the body had to be punished, humiliated, or denied in order to “purify the soul.” This led to practices such as extreme fasting, bodily flagellation—beating or whipping oneself—radical asceticism—denying food, pleasure, or even hygiene—and the development of monasteries with vows of poverty, celibacy, and physical penance.
In Paul’s letters we see echoes of this same mentality. In Romans he says, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” In 1 Corinthians he states, “I discipline my body and keep it under control.” And in Galatians: “The flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” Although Paul does not explicitly teach self-flagellation, his words could be interpreted as an invitation to subdue the body because it was seen as inclined toward evil. Combined with the concept of original sin, this fed centuries of physical mortification practices.
I remember once when one of my daughters, as a small child, scribbled on the wall with a crayon. I asked her why she had done it, and she answered, “My hand slipped, Mommy.” It was funny, but it reveals something profound: even a child may try to justify what they know they should not have done by blaming a part of their body instead of assuming responsibility. She claimed she had no control over what her hand did. David does the same thing: he blames his birth and his human condition instead of acknowledging that what he did was a personal decision of his will.
The most common doctrine resulting from that interpretation was that humanity is born corrupt. Life then had to be lived as a constant struggle against the flesh, sometimes involving violence against oneself. Holiness became associated with denying the body and with suffering. Believing that we are born in sin led to viewing the body as an enemy, turning spirituality into physical penance, and building an entire ascetic tradition—monasticism, flagellation, and mandatory celibacy. In short, what the prophets had said was pushed aside: that what God desires is a repentant heart, nothing more.
Here lies the inconsistency in those doctrines that arose from a literal reading of David’s words in that psalm. If we were born in sin, then the spirit or breath of life that enters our body would be evil. But that life comes from the Spirit of God, who is good. Therefore, we are all born good. The problem appears along the journey of life, when we choose wrong paths. That leads to ignorance in spiritual matters and even to distancing ourselves from God, to the point of doubting His existence.
Experience confirms this: from a very young age, a child can distinguish right from wrong. At five years old, for example, a child understands that stealing a toy from a friend is wrong. The child is not born evil, but learns to do evil if he or she chooses it. We may have inclinations or tendencies toward improper behavior, but we also have free will. That freedom of choice can lead us to reconciliation with the Creator. Reconciliation, in turn, gives us His Spirit, enabling us to overcome firmly any kind of evil within us. Our power of decision is immense: every decision we make brings a consequence and leads us in a specific direction.
As for the body, it is merely an instrument in which our self or spirit lives. That body does not move by itself; it is inactive until we direct it. We can use it for good or for evil, to love ourselves or to harm ourselves. Evil manifests in actions, and those actions are born from an inner decision. Everything begins as a thought, is affirmed in the will, and is expressed through the body. But the body itself is not evil. We can use it to do evil—that is different.
All of this reminds us that we are not merely bodies that are born, grow, and die like any other creature of the animal kingdom. Our body is only an instrument; our true identity is spiritual. And if everything began in heaven, our destiny is also there. The purpose of our life on earth is not to repeat inherited patterns or allow ourselves to be dragged along by manipulation of all kinds, but to develop our spirituality, reconcile with God, and recover the greatness with which we were created. That path lifts us beyond our limited human condition, because God’s plan is not for us to live like beasts driven by instinct, but like children who know who they are and where they are going. To the extent that we choose to live this way, God’s will begins to be done on earth as it is in heaven.