It’s an incredible marketing campaign, that Dos Equis Most Interesting Man bonanza, and if that’s what it takes to remind ourselves in a non-threatening way that we are the living, breathing manifestations of perfection, I’m all for it. Let’s set aside the social commentary about the way the message is dressed up, and the product it is selling, and for just a moment savor the delight that is engendered when a character is willing to state an audacious truth about himself.
I love it. I love the thought of parallel parking a train, and I love the thought of sharing inside jokes with people I’ve never met. I love the humorous prod towards accepting we are all, deep down, a rampant delight. I think we really do share an inside joke with people we’ve never met. The joke is that we’ve never met. The joke, which isn’t always all that funny in our world, is that something has gone horribly wrong. The punchline is the subtle memory we all have, the power of which we have yet to claim, that horrible is the product of a flawed perspective, and Reality is far greater than we have dared imagine.
Here’s another joke: Jesus walks into a room full of executioners who tell him they’ll spare his life if he’ll just admit he’s been over-selling himself. Sure, he’s a good guy who means well, but this Son of God business is a little over the top. Frankly, it’s creating a bit of social havoc, and the proletariate is getting feisty. There’s a line here, and you crossed it, Son, and let’s just be clear, we all know you don’t really believe it, right? So just admit it, so we don’t have to kill you.
Jesus can’t do it. Won’t do it. He states an audacious truth about himself, and then extends the audacious claim to every one in every realm in every world of every kingdom that has been or ever will be. The room either got really loud or really quiet- I’m not sure which, but the world has never been the same since. Such is the power of standing on Truth.
This blog is the product of that moment. I like to think about that. Please don’t misunderstand and think I mean that there is anything special about this blog. It is a simple person’s effort to cozy up to the Truth, to take a dip in it as often as I can, hopefully sharing an inside joke with a few friends along the way. But the connection cannot and should not be denied. This moment is the product of That Moment, and so are countless other expressions of Love. Legion thoughts of peace, blossoming inside of hearts everywhere, have their roots in Moments like That One.
The challenge we face is this: perfection must be claimed. We are called to accept what is true about ourselves, a truth we neither created nor established, an inheritance for which we can never prove our worthiness. I haven’t parallel parked a train in quite some time, and I’m freaked out half the time that the inside joke people are really sharing with me is that deep down I screwed up somewhere along the way, so at times it does have the ring of utter nonsense to state that we’re all living, breathing manifestations of perfection. Other times, in quiet places we don’t talk about, my heart whispers otherwise. Jesus gently reminds us in A Course in Miracles and in A Course of Love that accepting the world’s evidence over the calling of our own hearts is insanity.
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Once, the world’s evidence was piling up, and my heart convinced me to ask Him the world’s most interesting question. I did, and Jesus answered. So you see, now I really am in a jam, because eventually I’m going to have to stop this charade of mulling over His Answer… Eventually I’m going to have to quench this thirst once and for all… Meanwhile, he won’t stop ribbing me about this crazy Joke we all share…
Embracing Forever 
Michael,
How are you. One Dos Equis commercial had the voiceover say, “In a previous lifetime he was himself” and that one really got me laughing. Curious to know the world’s most interesting question and the answer you got from Jesus.
Thank you,
Jerry
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Hi Jerry, I’m doing well. Hope you are also. Thanks for visiting! That riffing on previous lives cracks me up, too.
I think the world’s most interesting question can probably be asked in many ways, from “what the @#$% is going on around here?” to “do I really know all there is to know about myself?” I think the world’s most interesting question is anything that questions- openly and with the willingness to hear the answer- the reality of a world that isn’t working. Is this it?! It’s whatever comes out when we finally reach our limit on working with false perceptions, and put our foot down, and discover there’s no reason to believe things are what they seem to be at face value.
Jesus’ answer is always silent and clear, just a knowing. No, this is not it…
The rest of what happens next is wrestling with the tension between what seems so real, but isn’t, and that clear, simple knowing that seems so elusive, but will never let us down.
Michael
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Michael,
We have both been impressed by ACIM. Many others as well. There are one or two passages that talk to the choice is simple and obvious. I have yet to fully grasp some of the message with regard to those on Earth who are responsible for harming others. For example I put up a video of Vincent Bugliosi around the time he wrote “The Prosecution of George Bush For Murder.” Bugliosi was suggesting that any of 1,000 prosecutors in the country could charge Bush for murder for lying America into the Iraq War, leading to 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis losing their lives. Being a reader of ACIM made that a tough call. My gut told me to do it.
Thanks,
Jerry
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Hi Jerry,
I think I understand where you are coming from. It seems absurd to ponder the notion that it could be okay to accept peace and unity within the core of our being, while so much suffering and death seems to be left unattended. How could it ever be okay to be at peace, while so many of our brothers and sisters suffer? And needlessly.
In the Treatises of A Course of Love, Jesus says, “When it was said within A Course of Love that the great paradox of creation is that, while creation is perfect, something has gone wrong within it, this fear in relation to the human experience is of what it was I spoke. The choice for suffering that has been made within the human condition is what I speak of specifically here. While I can tell you suffering is illusion, you still cannot still your fear of it nor tear your eyes away from it or remove from it the feelings of the heart. While I came to reveal the choice of love to you, the choice that you each must make to end such suffering, the illusion of suffering has continued and in its continuation made the choice of love seem all but impossible. [Emphasis added] If not for the suffering that you see all around you, the choice for love would have been made. If the choice for love had been made, the suffering you see around you would be no more. That is the paradox.” (Treatises, 5.3)
Here we face a seemingly debilitating decision. It gets into what we define as “real”, does it not? Are the circumstances of the body our reality? Or the timeless nature of our spirit? We simply can’t have it both ways… If we accept that we are Love, we are told that suffering would be no more. Yet we feel it is impossible to accept that Love is the reality, when we perceive such suffering. We feel we are turning our backs on something- turning our backs on one another…
I do think Jesus’ message is simple in content, but difficult to accept. We can try other avenues- e.g. seek to fix the external world and end the apparent suffering of our brothers and sisters, but this has frankly never worked. We endeavor for a while to effect a solution born of our own mind, but come back in the end to this inflection point. We couldn’t fix the world. What now? Do we try again, only try harder this time? Yell louder? Give more? Sacrifice everything? Martyr ourselves if necessary? Or do we try an alternate road? To choose peace within ourselves… To see all actions which exacerbate suffering as cries for help, as the actions of those who “know now what they do” and are in fact crying out for compassion?
I think this is why Jesus emphasizes forgiveness in A Course in Miracles, because what we cannot forgive we are insisting is real, and if the infliction of pain and suffering on another were truly real, forgiveness could never be justified. This would be a world that was truly broken. Truly. And this is why Jesus suggests we be thankful we’ve been incorrect in our assessments of what is happening. This is why the journey without distance begins by acknowledging we really have no idea how to interpret the reality that is presented to us.
I think this is the type of paradox that can only be resolved within one’s own heart. I cannot tell you how to be or think or relate to this conundrum. We each have to reach peace with our own decision, and bless all others. I think A Course in Miracles was written to people who have exhausted their options- tested myriad fixes and come up short- people who are at their wit’s end. Without coming to such a dead end, how and/or why would we ever concede the fact that we don’t know how to interpret even a simple object like a table, or a chair, or a room, or a body…
Michael
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I’ve never read A Course On Love. Who wrote it and is there a website to go to read it? ACIM has that passage which says we look and see either flesh or spirit. Science seems to be coming closer to spirituality these days and that has sparked some interesting discussions. Besides ACIM the Bhagavad Gita has impressed me. Come to think of it every writing from all spiritual traditions are impressive and resonate. My intuition tells me that I have to take action to end, not just in my small circle of family and friends, but the world, human suffering. Why set small goals, right?! Hopefully any actions will be taken without a desire for the “fruits” from such actions, like fame, fortune or self-aggrandizement etc. Maybe I have a messianic complex. Probably not. After three months of blogging I could have followed thousands and thousands of other bloggers and been up to 10,000 or 20,000 followers/ 100,000 hits because of choosing to go that route. I know there are those who do that and do rack up followers and hits. But it is manipulating. There was one fellow who I’m sure follows thousands of blogs but never reads a one. He got me to check out his site and his posts could not be shallower. Example one post read “I’m gonna have a beer this morning, so what?” and he gets like 80 likes and 40 comments on drivel. To be honest with you I can’t say that I will never take that route, because love and forgiveness is more important than having a morning beer. All in all blogging has been enjoyable.
Jerry
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Hi Jerry,
A Course of Love is described as being authored by the voice of Jesus- just as A Course in Miracles was- and scribed by a woman named Mari Perron. There is a website you can check out if you’re interested.
I have not read the Bhagavad Gita, but agree that writing from many, many spiritual traditions has helped me and inspired me, and remains necessary reading to this day! And the work we are doing is most certainly not small… In A Course in Miracles Jesus tells us we are the light of the world, and that in our healing is all the world healed. Nothing small about that! Nothing easy about it, either, some days. We don’t get to point the finger at things “out there”. We can stir up the flock of misperceptions we’ve been harboring, and scatter them out into the world for a time, but they always come home to roost. Our lives are our curricula, so we follow our intuition and desire, as you are, and we cannot help but arrive.
All choices lead Home. Some just take roads that are under construction. Keep on keepin’ on! Real blogs for real people, Jerry!
Michael
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Michael’
My brother-in-law was a truck driver and the drivers going in different directions would say goodbye on their CBs with “see you on the flip-flop.”
Thanks for the chat,
Jerry
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