(Continued from “one Piece of Baggage”)
After writing the previous piece, I was fired up to continue immediately, but life intervened, & the mood is a little different now. I wanted to get feedback from others before putting in a tentative answer of my own to the question I had raised. Thanks, Imemine, Serenity and Kathy for your proposals received so far.
If I am a sage and I’m going to dictate a scripture, even if it’s only three words in length, I have to be very careful. I’m going to be addressing everyone, now and in the future. My words will be taken out of context and misinterpreted by some odd people. Imagine if I apply for indemnity insurance, in the way therapists are obliged to do, in order to provide a financial incentive for people to sue them. Fill in the form. Occupation: ……..Messiah………. I think the premium would be out of my reach.
One thing you’d have to deal with would be cultural differences across the world. Imemine (see comments on last post) proposes “Mind your own”. I like it, I understand it, but others would see it differently. I recall a case in which an English tourist in a hired car was touring the southern United States. He got lost and knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse at 1 in the morning to ask where he was. A light was on, so he was fairly certain he was not waking anyone up. The householder opened the door and without asking too many questions shot him dead. I guess he was minding his own.
Kathy proposes “I don’t know”. Unless she means she doesn’t know how to answer my question, I think “I don’t know” is a pretty safe quote for a sage. I can’t see any consequential damages arising from it. On the other hand, if you have yet to establish your reputation, it might not enhance your credibility too much.
Serenity proposes “Governance by LOVE”. Now LOVE is something that Serenity knows about. It emanates from her: something more than kindness but which nevertheless includes kindness. I feel it is her gift and her destiny. But as a piece of advice I am not sure that people will know how to follow it. Those through whom Love flows like a mighty river, or even a timid stream, will already know its power to govern the world. But how will those currently in power, who use different methods, be persuaded to step aside and give it a chance? There’s the rub.
It is with some humility that I offer my own suggestion as to a three-word scripture for today’s world. I even had a moment where it felt like sacrilege (or is it blasphemy?) to set myself up, even playfully, as a Teacher, as if I would be struck down by lightning. Such is the effect of our religious conditioning.
Imemine, Kathy and Serenity offered their three wise words without interpretation, so I must do the same, at least for now:
“Distinguish what’s real.”
a wayfarer’s notes 
Sorry, I forgot the comma:
Mind, your own.
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“Distinguish what’s real.”
I love those words! Excellent advice. Thank you!
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Imemine: Ha ha. (Or possibly Ha, Ha.) Nice try, but you'll need a good defence lawyer too.
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Hi Vincent, I have no idea what this is all about, I guess I will type this then go read the last post and comments, maybe then be enlightened.
This messiah thing, and especially the part about the governments and leaders moving over and so on, there is no such of a problem involved in the whole concept of the messiah. And by the way, Jesus ain't it.
It is a deal about source, the government is sourced in this world only, really (regardless of what the Christians say). The messiah, the real one, will be sourced from the source behind all the worlds, and will not even be playing the same game, the government leaders will not have to move over, they will merely have to look up, they will not even have a word to say, and resistance will be futile, probably non-existent. The reason for this is the nature of the concept and its meaning, it is an actual changing that is above that of weather and cosmos, it is outside the scale of this world, a change dictated and implemented from outside this house.
My opinion, nothing to worry about.
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Hi Jim, perhaps I should not have used the word Messiah, for that has too much baggage for this travelling-light thought experiment. However, I suppose I was encouraged to use the word Messiah, and influenced somewhat, by Richard Bach's book Illusions: the adventures of a a reluctant Messiah in which there is a guy who flies around the mid-West making a living by giving half-hour joyrides in his plane wherever he lands. He can do miracles. He says stuff on a local radio phone-in programme which is a kind of preaching. In short he's an imagination of the Second Coming, as conceived by the Christians. But he ends up, like Jesus, being killed through his own failure to defend himself and also the blind ignorance of those who receive his message.
Thanks so much Jim for making me— no, us—see that the Christian myth is so vexatious to the Jewish myth.
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