There is no effort in the Kingdom.
February 10, 1989
“There. It’s finished.” I mutter under my breath, as I save the draft for The Jeshua Letters in a file, some part of me hopes it disappears into the strange black hole of cyberspace, that cosmic junkyard where the Gods of Computerland eat up everything not backed up or printed out! If this book could be so eaten, just maybe that part of me could rest as it gradually resumed authority and control over my life.
I am startled at the chuckle that comes as the thought ends. It surprises me because it has emerged from a place much deeper than where my ego lives, as though I just discovered a room in my house I didn’t know even existed.
As I push back from my keyboard, I notice for the first time that it is dark, and a glance at the clock reveals it is eleven pm. I realize I’ve been living in a very different world for the last seven weeks. I even missed Christmas, though I must say I can’t even remember thinking about it!
The writing has meant a deep immersion in all that Jeshua has shared with me, and I have been occasionally surprised when a strong feeling would come over me leading to the removal of copious amounts of material. At times I have heard Him say, “not yet”. Was it the personal information about His life? The controversial matter of the ‘End Times’? The visions He has shown me about what this Work is to be in the future?
There is no rational explanation for this, only a deep inner sense of rightness, and I trust that completely…I think!
Some things He has said recently keep stirring within me:
Choose then, only to release your useless dream, and
be born again into the experience of the Kingdom.
This choice gives birth to a process of recognition that
quickly reestablishes remembrance of the Son’s
rightful place.
That shoots a hole in what I now see has been the entire thrust of my ‘spiritual path’ since 1973, when I took up meditation and yoga, along with study of the world’s religions and psychologies. I see now, with extraordinary clarity, that all of it was based on a ‘me’ striving to attain, to gain a knowledge and (I humbly admit) a control over my life. Now it all appears in this new light as simply a dream, based on a false premise: I have looked the enemy in the face and seen it is but a ‘me’ that is little more than a habit cultivated since the choice was made to exist in the Dream of Separation!
After all these years, I feel like I have only truly just begun. What is it He alludes to as this mysterious ‘process of recognition’? Do I get to peek around the corner to see if it is safe?
Now, that thought brings an outright laugh; what a hoot! Who could be asking such questions if not that smaller part of me that is the habit of separation - rooted in fear - I once fully identified as my self?
How can I ever hope to discover what this mystery means, unless I fully submit to the way of love Jeshua reveals, and to which he has called us?
I rise from my chair, and shake off the stiffness in my legs as I roam to the kitchen for a cup of tea. While the water races to boiling, I break off mint leaves and breathe in their scent. I drop the leaves into the pot, and watch them as they are rolled and tossed in the water. A part of me senses that I am not unlike those mint leaves, plopped into waters I had heretofore been ignorant existed, while claiming all sorts of ‘knowledge’ about those very waters.
I feel embarrassed. I feel reduced to being not unlike a marriage counselor who has never been married, or a UFO expert who has never seen one…ugh!
Returning to my desk, I realize I was wrong. It’s not finished, yet. This manuscript isn’t finished, and I most certainly am not. I can feel it: this old nemesis that has lived so long and so deeply within me. This nemesis emerging from within the shadows of my own existence so clearly I am startled - no, shocked - that I could have looked past it in avoidance for so long. This nemesis has a name, and it is ‘Fear’. I don’t mean the kind of fear I felt in Vietnam, or at plenty of other moments. This is something else, something deeper. Something in the fabric of my very soul, if that makes any sense.
My body shudders suddenly. For it is clear to me that the only way to be free of this nemesis will somehow require that I be lived into Reality. What’s more, radically so, is that this is actually God ‘taking the final step for me’! Whoa! Where is there hope for any modicum of control in that?! Yet, He promises the result will be to arrive in a new land, a land that is the opposite of fear: Love.
Love. Sweet, sweet love! I thought I knew something about it, but now as I sip this delicious mint tea and hear the nearly freezing rain begin to pelt my window, I must accept I have known little - if anything - of its true nature. The love Jeshua speaks of certainly cannot have anything to do with what I deem pleases me, since that ‘me’ has been steeped in the soup of ego. I feel reduced, yet again, to being a mere child, a child with much to learn.
And what about His cryptic statement:
Soon, there comes a clear sign unto you of the Work
in which you participate, the Work of the Son’s
atonement. When you clearly choose the active
participation in this Work, there will be nothing
which will not be provided.
A clear sign! Yahoo! I could use some of those! Or, again, are they needed only by that now smaller part of me so used to fearful apprehension often hidden behind a smile?
I pull up the file again and find myself drawn to words I know I feel a deep resistance to:
There is no effort experienced in the Kingdom. There
is only a manifestation of the Father’s will through
you; a demonstration that touches the sleeping Son
cloaked momentarily in a dream of aloneness.
I flip through the printed pages of His recent communications, my eyes stopping on one more strange statement:
The completion of this project is inevitable now.
“Right!” I suddenly shout. “What the hell do I know about writing a book, much less getting it published! And who the f— would read this crap anyway, and why would they want to? Now, this thing actually becoming a book people read. Now, that would be a ‘clear sign’, ha!”
Really, I am screaming these thoughts, as though attempting to rebuff some unseen advancing army trying to storm my castle! My body shudders again. Not once, but twice. Three times, actually. What the heck is He talking about? That nemesis I thought I had buried deep enough to be rid of - like a cancer under control - is suddenly and literally kicking and screaming:
“No! Not me! I’m not worthy! Look at me! Look at my utter failures! I mean, I’m really the worst of the worse! There’s nothing that could be possibly manifest through me of any value at all, nothing!”
That final word explodes from the realm of thought, and a body shaking and trembling, into a loud, defiant scream that shakes me to the core.
I give up fighting it, all of it. If ‘allowing’ is the key to the Kingdom, then I may as well start with this sudden gushing of tears from a well deep within my heart and belly. The strength goes from my legs, and I collapse onto the floor. The tears - interspersed with a litany of self-loathing arguments - increase their flow. Yet the floor is comforting somehow. I surrender into this darkness, rather than fighting it. And touch for a moment, even as the flow continues, a hint of peace, of real peace.
The early morning clanging of garbage cans wakens me. I don’t know when I fell asleep, or whether the tears stopped before sleep, or because of it. Rising, I peer out of the icy windows to watch the garbage collectors do their important - and underrated - job.
What would they do if this was happening to them? What would anyone do? All of a sudden, an idea crashes head first into my whole being:
“I’m getting out of this cold, dark, dreary place. I’m gonna go to Hawaii again!”
Energy is surging through me as I pull out my suitcase from the closet.
“What, Marc, no careful planning?” My, things are changing!
The thought occurs to me to print out the draft of The Jeshua Letters. I see myself, as though in a movie, delivering it to Kendra on the way to the airport.
A week later, I am walking up the steps to her door, manuscript tucked under my arm.
