christ consciousness and your buddha nature

The book I bought that answers pithy questions about life by way of citing Edgar Cayce's readings has proven to me to ring with a lot of Truth. The concept of Christ consciousness was what I read about last night, and it is a type of consciousness innate to us all, even if we aren't aware of it, it resides within us. This would mean that even an athiest can tap into this consciousness and lead a spiritual sound life. I've come to the conclusion that a belief in the Divine is not necessary to balance out karma or live in Love. In fact it would seem to be that if a person lived truly in a state of Unconditional Love and Kindness that they would naturally be alignment with the Divine and through that alone come to know the Christ consciousness.

Back in my agnostic (and sometimes almost atheistic) days of spiritual exploration, I believed in the existence of a soul and that I also knew that to be spiritual meant to live kindly and to do good. I wasn't yet aware of the Love aspect, but I was aware of the Golden Rule and did my best to follow that ideal. I was most attracted to Buddhism because it spoke of living spiritually without having to praise any god figure, and the whole singing of hymns and the preaching of fire and brimstone was something that was repulsive to me—it didn't reflect how my internal spiritual being felt.

Zen Buddhism is like trying to solve a brain-teaser, and the harder it seemed to be the more I liked the challenges it presented. The whole concept of Buddha-nature enchanted me, for I really didn't understand what it meant and so I let it go. It wasn't until I had my major epiphany that I came to the understanding that one's Buddha-nature is the same as Krishna consciousness and Christ consciousness.