My Journey on the Spiral Path
The Blonde Mystic 2006: Post-Angel-Makeover
I didn’t always look like this. This is me in 2006 at age 48. Just three years before this picture was taken I looked so old and haggard I was mistaken for a senior citizen.
From 1998 until 2003, I tried with all my strength to follow a traditional spiritual path of humility, oneness, and dissolution of the self. My goal was to grow closer to God. Unfortunately, what I was actually doing (though I didn’t realize it) was taking myself farther and farther away from an honest and trusting connection with the Divine.
Jen 2002 Pre-Angel-Makeover
Along the way, I discovered to my great surprise that I have a natural talent as a contemporary channeller. I had no inkling of this talent while I was growing up in an ordinary middle-class household in Toronto, Canada. It was something I began to practise seriously in the year 2000. Today, channelling the soul who once lived as Jesus has become a normal, everyday part of my life, though in the beginning it was very difficult.
At the park in 2014
Many of the posts on this site are written in dialogue form. In these posts, A=Author (me) and J=Jesus (the soul who once lived as Jesus). These are channelled dialogues, and sometimes they’re a bit untidy (grammatically speaking) because I type what I hear without stopping to change words and phrases too much. I don’t write my posts ahead of time. I simply write when I can, then hit “Post.” I try to go back later to fix typos and small factual errors.
Who am I as a person? Well, as mentioned above, I grew up in Toronto. When I was young, my father (a graduate of the chemical engineering program at the University of Toronto) worked for an electrical engineering firm, and my mother (an Ontario College of Art grad) worked as a professional interior designer. When I was about 9, my father switched careers and became a high school Chemistry teacher at a large downtown Toronto technical school. Later, when I was a young adult, my mother also switched careers. She became a fairly well known Canadian watercolourist before she passed away in 2016. She painted landscapes from all over Canada — from British Columbia to the Arctic to the East Coast. I like her landscapes from Newfoundland best.
My parents weren’t religious. Science, good design, and practicality ruled in the household where my younger sister and I grew up. Humanist values were upheld. My father respected the intelligence and abilities of women, and treated my mother, sister, and I as equals. My parents celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary before my mom’s death.
When I was 18, I went off to Queen’s University on a tuition scholarship to enter an undergraduate program in Fine Arts. Half-way through my first year, I realized I was in the wrong program. I was too fond of science to let it go and focus solely on drawing and painting. In second year, I enrolled in a medial (translation: almost a double major but not quite) in Chemistry and Art History. I graduated with first class honours in 1980.
In the summer of 1980, I married a man named Brian. We’d met in Organic Chemistry. By the time we married, Brian was in medical school and I was embarking on graduate work in Art Conservation. We both completed our course work in 1982, and then began the journey of becoming working adults and, soon enough, parents of two wonderful boys. Eventually our marriage ended, though, and in 2000 we officially separated.
In late 1988, our younger son was diagnosed with leukemia (A.L.L.). Despite a successful bone transplant from his older brother, who was a perfect match, our beloved son died in September 1989 at the age of 3.
Today my older son and I remain close, though he has his own life as a teacher, artist, fencer, and committed partner to a wonderful young woman. He is the designer of this website. I want to thank him with all my heart for trusting me and supporting me in my work as a researcher, writer, channeller, blogger, and Master of Theological Studies student in more recent years. I couldn’t have done it without him.
I should also note that it was my lifelong commitment to scholarly research and the scientific method that led me, in 2007, to enroll in a Master of Divinity program at Queen’s University. My original plan was to seek ordination in the United Church of Canada, but a number of experiences led me to change my mind. In the end, I opted to take a Master of Theological Studies degree, with courses in biblical studies, Koine Greek, a smidgen of biblical Hebrew, plus church history, church theology, and church liturgy. My respect for the scientific method made me a much a tougher, more objective researcher in the fields of theology and mysticism than I otherwise would have been.
My life as a 21st century cataphatic Christian mystic has been filled with countless twists and surprises, things I never saw coming. (I’m a mystic, not a prophet.) But the uniting principles of my journey —wonder, science, and faith — have proven to be a solid bedrock for an enduring exploration of what it means to be in relationship with God.
The posts on this site are the fruit of many years of hard work, rigorous academic study, and continuing spiritual inquiry. I hope you’ll find here the answers you’ve been seeking.
Blessings!
Jen Thomas, B.A., M.A.C., M.T.S.
May 2012
(edited April 2017)
