An email from a friend. . . thanks N. for sharing . . . ~J

When things get busy for me, emails can sit on my desk – for too long. Somehow, though, I’ve learned to let the timeline go; when I read it, I read it, and hopefully I read it at the ‘right’ time. This email which refers to the novel, Ishmael, fits this category. If you all haven’t read it yet, let me say you’re in for a treat.  ~J

Dear Jean:  My dear Lady Sumati read this to me recently, and I felt compelled to  paraphrase from the last few sections ...

“You want a program?”

“Of course I want a program!”

“Then here is a program:  The story of Genesis must be reversed. First, Cain must stop murdering Able. This is essential if you are to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world–not because they’re humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right way to live. 

“And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of that forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.”

“What you do is to teach a hundred what I have taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That’s how it’s always done.

“Of course it’s not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there’s no hope at all. You can’t say, ‘We’re going to change the way people behave towards the world, but we’re not going to change the way they think about the world or the way they think about divine intentions in the world or the  way they think about the destiny of man.’ As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are,of course,going to go on acting the way they’ve been acting for the past ten thousand years. They’re going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of Human property and they’re going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. 

“You can’t change these things with LAWS. 

“You must change people’s MINDS.

 ”And you can’t just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind; you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they’ve lost—something that makes better sense than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn’t serve his needs directly or indirectly.

“‘What were you expecting to learn from me? An incantation? A magic word that would sweep all the nastiness away?’

“Ultimately, it would seem you’re no different from those you profess to despise: You just want something for yourself. 

“Something to make you feel better as you watch the end approach.

“The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison. During the last century every remaining Leaver people in North America was given a choice: to be exterminated or to accept imprisonment. Many chose imprisonment, but not many were actually capable of adjusting to prison life.

… “but it should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.”

” Ishmael, An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit”

~Daniel Quinn

…so Jean,  I tend to wait for things to cross my path before I make determinations, but once made, I tend to stick to them….Not surprisingly there is so much info. being foisted upon us right now that one’s head can be made to swim, but underneath there remains a current that one can follow so I put my oar in and keep as true to my Heart as possible…

I’m asked regularly about what I know and the answer covers such a broad and seemingly unconnected range of topics that I most often go back to what I do know….and that is how it feels to be in “compassion”…..

Be Well,

 Love and Light,

N.

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