…“So, why of all places, did you bring me to Jerusalem?”
Because this region, this city, more than any other, was in the eye of the Great Storm. Now it has become the center of our great sense of peace, both inner and outer. Why don’t we walk around a little more, and see some sites. Finish your drink and come with me.
[I take a last sip of the biting, anise liquid. Then I gulp some water and put down the small glass. You take my hand again, and I am a little apprehensive. Every time you do that, something hap-pens. Sure enough, as we touch, I feel a new kind of opening take hold of me. I’m being drawn into your psyche somehow. I feel my-self inside you, personally and intimately, like we are ancient friends, brother and sister, or even closer. I feel you opening to me.]
“What is this?” [I ask.] “What are you doing?”
I’m not doing anything at all, only holding your hand. [You say innocently.]
“But I’m feeling like I know you in a new way, and a very an-cient way at the same time.”
[You smile. The feeling is still there; and it is in motion, pulling me in deeper. I can hardly stand up. I stumble into you, and you offer me support. Now we’re off the square, moving down a nar-row, winding, side street. I regain my composure a bit, and survey the alley. My eyes are reluctant to focus, but I’m sensing that deep peace again. This place looks much like it has for several thousand years, I imagine. Pitted stone walls rise up closely on both sides, with small windows, adorned by flower boxes. The blossoms are colorful and cheery, even in the fading light. They revive me. Down the way is a crowded market area, with a jumble of wares hanging under awnings and piled on tables along the street. I’m still feeling myself drawn into you as you clutch my hand. I look at your face and your bright silver eyes with wonder. You stare back quizzi-cally.]
I don’t know exactly why you’re having this feeling, but it ob-viously has to do with our connection—as friends and long-time soul mates. It may be your visit to the threshold with Black, or part of your own awakening. That is something that will be accelerating in the near future, I assure you. It also may indicate that I am a kind of conduit for your soul, drawing you into your own destiny.
“Yes. That’s very much what it feels like. It just occurred to me that it also must have to do with this place. Doesn’t Jerusalem mean the ‘place of peace’ or something?”
It means many things to many people. You’re close. Shalom means ‘peace’, of course. But that is not the root word for the name of the city. The Hebrew word, Shalem, means ‘wholeness’; Jeru, means ‘legacy’. In the last 500 years, Jerusalem has come to be called ‘the city of wholeness’. But it is also appropriate to think about peace here. Jerusalem has become a place of profound peace today, after thousands of years of war.
In your days, it was the foremost center of contention on the planet. Jews, Christians and Muslims clashed over the city and the lands around it endlessly, each viewing the holy sites as their own in an intensely separative sense. The discord spread out in psychic waves from this center, and became the rationale for much friction around the globe.
“Jews and Christians clashed? I thought they were on the same side.”
As long as egos ruled, it was every side against the other. It might appear that the Christians were supporting the Jewish cause in Israel, but they were only doing so to justify their own beliefs and designs. This was, after all, the way of humans. It would not be any other way as long as you were humans.
Many great leaders struggled to resolve the conflicts over long periods of time, but they each represented sovereign perspectives on what a solutions might be. Try as they might, they could never reach accord among their core beliefs. Truly, there was no resolu-tion that would have satisfied the core beliefs of all the factions in-volved. This is the nature of ego-based psychology. Each side’s emotional attachments, religious certainties and refusal to yield, guaranteed in the Middle East that no one would ever achieve what they wanted.
The Jews and Muslims, as you know, went to war trying to ex-terminate each other’s beliefs as one solution. Another solution that was promoted over decades was a continuous cycle of attack, revenge, assassination and terrorism. Each of the religions, for in-stance, at the core of their dearest prophecies and doctrines, be-lieved contradictory destinies for the city we now stand in. This in-tractable state of affairs endured for many decades leading up to and through the Great Storm.
Most Islamic peoples felt that the Christian and Jewish behav-ior toward them was causing the problems and leading toward an-other world war. The Jews and Christians tended to feel it was all the fault of Islam. Each camp pointed to prophecies that foretold a cataclysm. Some Christians claimed to desire an ultimate war—Armageddon—because they believed it would hasten their religious objectives. Never mind that such a war would have de-stroyed the whole of world civilization.
“I had a vision of those clashes here, earlier. I can still see vivid images of fighting in these same streets we’re walking on.”
Passions rose to explosive proportions. There was great gnashing of teeth and spitting fire and brimstone from religious leaders and politicians. Mobs were raised, following the rhetoric of condemnation in many nations. Hatred, fear and irrationality swirled in the collective mind of man like never before in its history. It seemed there would be no stopping it! Every conflict in the world was either triggered or inflamed by what was occurring right here.
Yet there were events afoot, behind the scenes that finally manifested on the world stage. Leaders began to emerge in unlikely places, in unlikely ways. Subtle shifts happened that rippled out with enormous effect. Finally, here, something unprecedented happened. This holy city, in this sacred and magical land, gave birth to yet another one of its historic miracles. Here at the very center of the controversy, not far from where we are standing at this moment, a simple molecular adjustment began to unfold, way down at the tiniest levels of the human constitution, silently, unseen, shifting the balance in a totally new direction.
“Are you saying this is where the genetic mutation began? My vision, from before, showed me a state of profound peace de-scending on people here…”
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Potter
Letters From 500 