Jesus -- the Green Shaman
One day, I was out in my woods, sitting on Hugo's stone, enjoying the sunshine and the music of the trees. In the chatter of the leaves I heard a small voice, and this voice told me a story about Jesus that I had never heard before. It's a story from the little people, so please don't take it seriously. The story went something like this:
A long, long time ago, when Jesus was alive, it was a lot like today. People were suffering and struggling under the weight of civilization. There was a powerful military system running everything. Few were rich and many were poor. Common people had no power at all. It was not a happy time.
When Jesus was about 30, he'd been working for many years, watching the suffering, and thinking. One day he came to realize that carpentry was not the answer, so he set off for the wilderness. Out in the wilderness, he met a wild uncivilized holy man named John, who wore animal clothing and lived on locusts and honey.
John's story was one of baptism and repentance. He called out to civilized people -- the warriors, carpenters, farmers, and priests -- and he begged them to repent of their sins and return to a state of harmony. Those who repented, he immersed in the River Jordan, and thereby opened their hearts to the perfection of Creation.
When John baptized Jesus, the sky opened up, the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a shining white dove, Jesus was filled with divine ecstasy, and he instantly recognized the infinite beauty and power of the Creator.
Immediately after his awakening, Jesus went off into the mountains for a 40-day vision quest. During that time, his soul was deeply imbued with the perfection of Creation. It was a time of profound healing and growth for him. Many important answers were revealed.
One day, Satan, the King of the Yuppies, saw this scruffy long-haired blue collar pilgrim sitting on a rock in the sacred forest. Satan offered Jesus a free ticket to Consumer Nirvana -- a lifetime shopping spree at every mall on planet Earth. By this time, Jesus was so high on Creation that he just shook his head, laughed, and said "Nah, that sounds like a bad trip, man."
Out there in the wilderness, Jesus found what the people of Palestine had lost. When he finally came back into town, he was floating, glowing, and utterly radiant with holy energy. Folks picked up on this right away, and they asked him what he'd been smoking.
Well, Jesus would just break into a big grin, laugh, and sit down and tell them his story. Accumulating riches isn't the answer, he'd tell them. Wealth is a disease of the soul. Blessed are the humble and poor, and woe unto the consumers.
Another thing Jesus talked about was unconditional love. The Romans ruled the land by using the tactics of divide and conquer. They kept people alone and afraid. Love was the antidote to this tyranny. The miraculous power of love could bring people together, unite them in action, and make their journey easier and brighter.
Jesus told them about the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Most of the great theologians of Christendom have never taken a 40-day vision quest in the wilderness, so most of them have completely missed the great meaning of the Golden Rule. This rule doesn't just apply to human matters, it applies to interactions with every species that walks, flies, blooms, and swims.
Well anyway, it didn't take too long before this talk had the priests and generals riled up. We all know what happened next. Jesus got killed long before he could live out his vision. The truth of his vision still stands. His vision still remains to be completed -- and it's up to us to pick up where he left off.
Three centuries after Jesus died, when Christianity became the sole official religion of the Roman Empire, people of many different stories were suddenly all jammed together under one roof. It was like the bar scene in Star Wars. A lot of compromises were made. Christianity became a melting pot of many diverse and unrelated stories.
From the Hellenist mystery cults we absorbed the story of a lord who dies and is reborn. From the Gnostics we absorbed the story that the world is a place of evil, that humans are alien to this world, that the world is our enemy. From the Mithraists, we absorbed the tradition of Sunday worship and fasting at Lent. From the German pagans, we absorbed the notion of Hell, and the celebration of the fertility goddess Ostara -- Easter.
From the Sol Invictus cult of Rome, we absorbed the story of the Son of God being born of a Virgin on December 25. These are just a few examples. The result of this infusion of strange stories is that the story of Jesus, to a large extent, got diluted and scrambled in the confusion.
In 1945, a farmer named Mohammed Ali found an ancient jar near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Among the contents of this jar was a book containing the Gospel of Thomas. This gospel of Jesus' life had never been edited, corrected, clarified, or blessed by the official Holy Roman Church. Perhaps the words of the Gospel of Thomas are clearer and cleaner. Perhaps they contain less static from pagan cults.
In chapter 113 of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is talking about the nature of heaven -- God's kingdom. He said that it was not an event that would occur in the future. Here is what he said: "The kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it." In other words, Heaven is where your feet are standing.
Jesus was baptized, filled with the Holy Spirit, went to the wilderness, and spent 40 days in the company of the giant trees, the wild animals, the birds and the bees, and the wee folk -- the angels. This experience flooded his heart with profound knowledge that later sent shock waves through the civilized world. Heaven is all around you. Give away your wealth and live a life of unconditional love. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- make the forest happy with your songs, and the forest will make you happy.
Forty days in the wilderness -- five vital words -- perhaps the most important words in the entire Bible. Five words that clearly describe exactly where the treasure lies, where the Holy Spirit is to be found, where the mystery of Heaven is revealed, where one can throw off the chains of civilization and find beauty, love, meaning, and salvation.
A weekend trip won't do it. A two week quest won't do it. It takes forty continuous days to unwind, to forget your past, to become purified, calm, trusting, loving, open, and receptive. It takes forty days to begin to catch mind-exploding glimpses of the perfection of Creation, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Seek and ye shall find.
The interiors of churches are imitations of the wilderness where Jesus quested, the sacred grove. The high walls are the massive tree trunks, and the high vaulted ceilings are the canopy of foliage. The music of the church represents the songs of the animals, the birds, and the breeze. The burning incense reminds us of the fragrance of blooming blossoms. The church is a poor imitation of the wilderness. I encourage you to do what Jesus did -- seek out the real thing. Maybe you'll find what Jesus did.
He is a Prophet born by a miracle of God without a father; he invited the Children of Israel to follow the true path and showed them many miracles.
He is the Messiah and, as the Qur'an says, he is the "word of God" (Qur'an, 4:171). Together with his return to earth, the lack of understanding between Christians and Muslims who believe in the same God, share the same moral values and, as the Qur'an says, are closer to one another in love than all other people (Qur'an, 5:82) will be repaired, and these two greatest of the world's religious communities will be united.
The members of the world's third monotheistic religion, the Jews, will also accept Jesus as their true Messiah and find their way to the true religion (Qur'an, 4:159). So the three monotheistic religions will unite, there will be one single religion on earth based on faith in God and obedience to Jesus, His Prophet.
This religion will defeat the atheistic philosophies and pagan beliefs with intellectual means; thus, the world will be saved from wars, conflicts, racial and ethnic hostility, cruelty and injustice.
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