NOT MY KINGDOM
I just read a quote from Jesus in the Bible that got me to crying for the world. The quote was from his trial with Herod and he said, “my kingdom is not of this world”. That was 2000 years ago and we still do not get this at all. Of course all the “religious” minds want to interpret that as meaning that his “world” is this after life world up in some cloud ridden thing called heaven. I am amazed that intelligent people got away with that crap. Come on, put it in context.
Jesus’ world was right here on earth, but it was a world without judgment, without separation, without killing our brother, without ignoring the lest among us. He was not talking of some other place, but this place where we all live right now.
“Not of this world” means that he was describing this world of “right and wrong” and constant separation with our names and titles and cultures and our religions and our nations and our ego centric living and all that goes with that. Any one who claims to be a Christian is part of this. For to name yourself that, is to create separation and that separation is the root cause of all hate and war. He was against all this stuff of “this world” where we praise the powerful and those in control.
He is speaking of presence in this world, and in that presence, we are connected to the oneness of what God is about. We are all children of this Oneness until we can experience it and then we become a grown up into the world of that God. But, we do not want to grow up. We want to maintain our separations so we can try to find that holy grail of “control”, for that is our God of “this world”. We want to be right and judge those who are wrong, just as they judge us.
We want power over, rather than power with. We desire personal pride and importance rather than the beauty of being an invisible part of the one. And the game goes on and on.
And I feel my own growing pains in this. How powerful the culture that constantly pulls us into wanting to be important and right. And sometimes I do not catch myself until after a reflection of the my living. We all get seduced into the “positive affirmations” and the “ rewards for the exceptional” and all the other ways we continue this illusion of being in this world and not in the “kingdom” of presence. And you may be reading this and saying “he is wrong” and I will be wrong in your mind, but what is in your bigger mind, the one that is outside the you who lives in this world? Can you see this outside the defined you? If you showed up outside “this world”, what would you be? Love…tlane 2/25/12
