THE TESTAMENT

I sat with Moses on a ledge, looking out over the Promised Land,

a foot away from the plunge into the gorge.

We discussed the coming war,

we discussed the locusts that we saw so far below

sweeping over the plain like the cohorts of drought,

we discussed the tablets lying on the mat beside us.

He said, and I remember this well,

“What use is it to me to speak with You,

when there is no soul on this earth who would believe me,

even if I pulled the nails from your hands and showed them what you did?”

I answered him, saying “Would you use your wooden staff

to lean on in your dreams? No more can you

use physical evidence as proof of things of the spirit.”

He was silent. He tossed a pebble into the gorge,

and we waited, counting, for it to land, but we never heard the thud.

Instead there was the echo of a wind that never originated in this reality.

Still that stone is falling through the mind of Moses, and through my mind.

From time to time I sit upon that ledge remembering Moses

and sending him my thoughts; I will not say where he is now,

so as not to give the game away.

I shook the dust from my robes and watched it swirl away.

I have watched things from many high places.

For the first time I, the Christ, will tell my own story,

write the words they never said I wrote,

explain my past, my genesis,

open up the Book for you to read, and though I write in verse

you should not suspect Me of telling anything but the truth

as I see it.

My words are not for all: but they are for you.

Before I came to earth I hung for hours

practicing my death in secret.

Since I can make all things, I made that body,

made that pain, ahead of time.

I raised the cross and sank it deep;

I called the nails which drove themselves into my flesh

with the hammer that I summoned with a shock.

I pierced my side, and stricken, dropped the lance

into the hand of a soldier who looked up numbly, blindly.

I made my body bleed, took heed of what I felt,

made decisions through the ripped part of my mind which remained.

And knew I could prevail.

Well, these were just rehearsals.

By the time it came to the real thing

my nerves sang out in remembrance,

tore into that other dimension reaching for the apex of my Self.

So do not think that I was unprepared,

except perhaps for the starkness of it all.

But after all, this is not a death that anyone believes in.

Did it happen at all? If it happened anywhere it happens here:

it is above all a death IN the imagination,

a play of love for those who have the courage to drag their cross

through the streets on the way to their own emancipations.

I am not done with earth.

I dance her dance with every birth.

I call, I whisper, I announce and I foretell.

There are still ears which hear Me well.

I bring my music to the dance floor

and I choose my partners well.

Some radical ideas are being bandied about -

I wonder if you can understand this:

that in my flesh I felt the wonder of flesh

as few can know

yet my heart was filled with the ecstasy of God:

the flesh and the ecstasy became one in Me.

I loved, and from that love you can not understand

I gave my flesh, my joy, to those I loved.

I joined and lifted in a perfect understanding.

I took them to a plane where all was joy,

where God leapt from their cells

into what can only be described

as the orgasm of creation.

But what lesser minds would make of this

I know too well. I know too well.

The thirst I feel puts other thirsts to shame.

My cracked and bleeding lips no longer feel the pain

for thirst consumes, enrages, overtakes all that I am.

There is above all else the pitiless sun

shemesh, bringer of life and thirst and death.

It may be that I will die.

It always came to this:

to death or decision,

for if I do not die

then I must choose.

It’s nothing so fanciful as duking it out with Satan.

It’s just a choice of what I want to be.

Here are the factors that I lay out before you.

First, there is the voice of God, who says:
“You promised Me this.” And He is right, I did.

(Please don’t imagine I am speaking of any crucifixion –

that’s not it at all, or at least, not yet.)

Second, there are the miraculous powers.

Let’s say I agree to walk on water,

there being an inexplicable shortage of boats.

Let’s say I bilocate from time to time,

being double-booked on My Hebrew calendar.

Let’s say I do the odd miracle just to keep My hand in.

My difficulty is this: I can’t seem to find a single good reason

to do these things, to become the star

of My own traveling freakshow.

Third, I learn let’s say to heal the sick.

They touch My robes and the cancer disappears,

the death sentence creeps back under its own shadow,

the child is saved. Which child? Whose child? This one,

then that one, your child, my child, then another

and another, then a thousand more, a million more?

Soon only perhaps three billion people will learn

to touch My robes and be healed, at least until they die

in any case.

Which child? If you understood what I understood

the question would not even cross your heart.

Fourth, say I should achieve that highest plane,

raising My own vibration so the merest glancing thought

would change a life, all lives, Gaia herself,

the future history of the human race itself.

Now at last we are coming to the reason

for My thirst. How to make this choice?

to accept what I am to be,

or live My life exactly as I am.

I am gazing across the desert into the mirage,

My eyes so tired the ‘ayin looks like mayim.

The truth is that I really can’t believe.

Though Gabriel hovered in front of Me

holding out My crown,

his wings fanning my fading ambition,

though he carried in one hand the contract

signed and sealed with the hundred names of God,

I still picture the faces of our neighbors

as they hear the gossip over the melon stall:
“Jesus has decided to be the Christ,

the more fool He!”

Here then is the crux of the matter:

A. If the words I hear are true:
“You must be Christ; it is for this

the manger laid its straw,”

and I choose to disbelieve

when billions of souls await my help

standing with their empty hearts

all waiting to be filled...

B. If on the other hand

the words I hear are false,

and I am just a fool,

deluded by some monstrous ego

of which I am unaware...

You see My dilemma, do you not?

Do you see the consequence of A,

the petty outcome of B?

Can you make this decision for Me?

Under the consequences?

As a child I wandered my way through the breadwinners

watching them make, buy, take, sell

looking into the future

watching breadwinners hunched in the stock market,

pounding rivets on the assembly line,

bent over a flickering screen ---

I drive the human being to his work,

I do not choose his work.

I send the human being into dreams,

I do not draw in the shapes for him.

But I open the door for the visionary

and here I stand before her wondering eyes.

There are secrets which are kept because they harm.

In the tears I weep for man are those tears

which drop into the endless pool of what they do not know

and will not even reach to understand.

I walk across that pool on the feet of my wisdom

and they stand upon the edge with the fear of drowning

swimming in their eyes.

There are sacred texts, secret words,

hidden things, whispered mysteries.

To you, to whom I give these signs,

they are guideposts on your way; they lean themselves

to your crossroads, tap on your shoulder

as you contemplate the turn.

Perhaps I have failed to say one thing.

You hear of Holy Ones: Hashem, El, Elohim,

JHVH, El Shadai, Adonai –

but it is I who holds dominion over all that touches earth.

My sovereignty is uncontested, (well, except for Satan,

of whom I must speak sooner or later).

But when you see events of man?

You must recognize either My hand,

or My permission,

the one or the other.

There is an embargo on the earth

placed there by forces of which you could,

but do not, conceive.

Your children starve from lack of love

from the scarcity of medicine for the soul,

your infrastructure of the spirit shattered

by long ages of neglect: it cannot now be rebuilt

without some foreign aid, which never comes.

The border (of which I will speak more)

stresses all who would cross it:

love is held in a close confinement,

rationed to the merest ounce;

there is no clean water to drink –

no mayim or shemayim.

The Council has spoken:
until you disarm yourselves of hate

this is your fate.

Why then do I stay My hand?

For it is true that I hold the veto,

true that I could open the borders,

true that I could rescue the dying,

raise the dead, restore the crippled

to their former limbs, rebuild Jerusalem...

true, all true.

Why do I stay my hand?

If you understood what I understand

the question would not even cross your heart.

You have to try to understand why I did the things I did.

I called the Council of the Archangels,

at least those assigned to earth sector.

This was many millennia ago, you realize,

long before I thought to come down Myself.

There were (still are) factions opposed to the embargo,

those who believed in a free market economy.

They spoke and said: “If man takes his nuclear technology

out to other planets, other star systems, if he exploits,

consumes, conquers and invades –

it’s just the way of things. You must just let things Be.

Events must be free to occur.”

Then others spoke. While trying to be kind,

they had little to say about the human race

which lifted up the heart. They spoke of your tiresome

proclivity for the fall, your falling and re-falling,

original sin, recycled sin, unoriginal sin.

They spoke of your remarkable blue-green prison,

blue-green isolation cell, blue-green concentration camp,

quarantine zone... They said: “Above all else

they must be kept inside. And they must receive no good

from these adjoining dimensions.”

That is when we built the Temple of Sin

and I moved in.

After it was built, from black basalt

and granite and obsidian

I sat on the floor in the blackness,

opening as best I could my mind to God

(for this is not a plane that receives the higher vibrations –

it resonates to darkness like a gong.)

As I say, under this tombstone temple

I sat and listened, and this is what He said to Me:
If you take upon yourself this suffering

during the long period of the embargo,

it will be you who must take charge

of the destiny of everyone on earth.

And know this:

It is through your suffering for them

that you gain this right and power,

through your great love for their spirits

that you are given dominion over them.

And so I stayed. Not because I wished the power

but because I could not bear the alternative.

Let me be frank about the Jewish religion.

It has its points. They have always known of Me,

and some few have broken through to what I mean.

But sometimes I despair of their rules

which Satan loves well, for just so often as they are broken

he makes a little headway, writes another name into his book.

He keeps track of the payment and the forfeiture,

writing with a sharp-tipped pen that’s made from bones.

And of the ink I will not even speak.

He does not use the Hebrew alphabet

for his plots and reckonings,

but an alphabet that’s made from the scratch

of fingernails on the blackboard,

the droppings from a black candle

and the sound of wailing in the desert.

It has the texture of old meat.

He is not, you will surmise,

a being with whom I resonate,

but I understand him well.

I am standing at the foot of Mount Hebron,

looking up. Do not ask if I am in My flesh;

it matters not. Above the peaks there is a cloud

that looks curiously like a matador,

an archetype not from My time.

His cape is waving in that higher wind

and he charges at the mountain like a bull,

fighting off its peaks and horns

with energy and verve.

Just so I had embattled my way against evil

in my younger days, millions of years ago,

believing that that war required swords.

I use a different weapon now.

I see the cloud has disappeared, as clouds will do.

As I move up the mountain the shadows move

purple and blue around me, though I cast none Myself.

I’m looking for a particular place,

a stone that marks a tiny stream

where once I knelt and drank,

and prayed. Ah, here it is.

I settle down like a bird on her nest.

From here I have an inner view of Jerusalem,

a tried and often true perspective on her circumstance.

The people whom We chose to hear the Word

have come down through the centuries

rebounding from oppressor, to victim,

and in a circular return of the saddest crime there is,

to oppressor again. The long years of their own oppression

have taught them nothing.

Among them are solitary voices

chanting in the wilderness

trying to explain to Me what’s wrong,

pleading the stubborn ignorance of their people,

asking for mercy, hoping always I will understand.

In my understanding I must crave their forgiveness,

but I may not alter My verdict.

Until they learn, it must be as it must be.

Although it is with the greatest reluctance

in the universe that I permit this,

I permit the holocaust.

The dew on this mountain, now that it’s morning,

seeps from my pores like liquid grief.

I have only taken this short break from my obsidian temple.

I cannot sentence Our chosen people

to centuries of torment, without bearing it Myself.

The only difference there is

between the man screaming on the rack

and Me, shuddering in the Temple of Sin,

is that I understand what he does not.

Thus it is that I purchase my dominion over men.

I had my day in the tabernacle,

had my way with the priests,

wowed them, vav’d them, with my knowledge

astonishing in one so young.

Made my points, left.

Those rabbis died.

What difference did it make?

In two centuries the world was at war

over the color of my robe, and over the question

of whether I cut my nails, or not.

Any solution that is good for only one century,

or only fifty generations, is no solution at all.

I will not leave a legend, this time.

I must, this time, leave a transformation.

I have more than a passing interest in DNA.

Daleth Nun Aleph, 4 + 50 + 1.

(I know it’s qamec, not aleph, but grant me

some poetic license – I need the number 1.)

In My search for codes I think to use this one

to bury transformation in their cells,

to weave new force-fields of light

into the ganglia, permanent connections

to the internet of God. When all are connected

in this way, their tiresome attachment to technology

will fade. For now they pass my knowledge,

my Word, between themselves as Word attachments.

But then? Oh then the Word will flow between their souls;

their computers will sit rusting in the corner,

their circuits fried by the lightning speed

of their sudden unexpected obsolescence.

Into the ether with the ether-net.

In order to reprogram with DNA

I am remembering to count in 12’s

(the strands of my apostles),

pairing protein molecules, shifting and arranging them

like tinkertoys, adjusting their force-fields with my mind,

working out the mechanics of lift.

More on this later.

During the exile(s) I hovered over Egypt

for a good long while, spent time comforting the Shechinah,

that part of Myself which went into exile with the Israelites.

You are surprised? Does it surprise you more to know

that I should locate Myself physically (as it were)

over a particular place, or to know

that I am the Shechinah?
Or is it Her femininity that confuses you?

Listen to Me now:

I am the Father Son and Holy Ghost

El the Mashiach and the Shechinah

female male and that state which is

so far above them both.

If you do not understand this

you understand nothing.

There are secrets that are dangerous to know.

He who peeks into the kabbalah without understanding

will put an arrow through his mind.

To put a mystical understanding before a non-mystic

is to force a graft which will not take;

their roots, their leaves, have not yet learned

to draw sustenance from that source.

How then to adjust ever so slightly

the xylem and the phloem of the average man?

I must leave you now for a moment.

Please excuse my inability to ignore completely

My own suffering.

The germination of the idea for My own incarnation

came about this way. I was working with one of the prophets,

Ezekiel; I had in fact just added the ‘el to his name,

and was tinkering with one of the visions

to force through the meaning more clearly.

I was trying to define ‘chariot’ in such a way

that it would carry my message in its spokes.

I spoke, Ezekiel listened, but the channel wasn’t clear;

in spite of all he saw in the whirlwind,

his interpretation lacked one thing,

the thing I had never quite been able to convey.

I had pondered this problem for centuries,

the advisability of a different method of communication,

but whoever We sent down

lost heart, lost focus,

became heavily confused by grief,

went into intractable depression.

I called another Conference of the Archangels.

They came at once, their wings beating

like the drum of human hearts.

I explained My idea, guiding them gently

through the rationale. After two circuits of discussion

we had to dissolve the group without concensus.

They were distraught: they draw their strength from Me;

they are very dependent in that way,

forcing open their own gates only at my command.

They could not bear to see Me leave them there,

no matter what the gain might be for earth.

At last I said to them this:
“I will suppose for a moment

that one of you is lying desperate

under the screwdriver gaze of Satan himself,

hearing behind you the flick of a lighter

and the sudden hiss of a blowtorch ---

when a human says to me:

‘You cannot go to help, and leave me here alone

sitting under the cedars in the Garden of Eden.

I need your company. Find someone else.’ “

Even in the higher realms

the love I bear, the love I AM,

is coveted for itself. This is the sad truth of it.

Therefore if an archangel speaks to you

be certain that he is speaking with My voice.

So that was when I planned My earthly life,

rehearsing events, moving people into place,

imagining the worst.

To make a long story short

I went to earth, did as men do,

died as men die, left the message

carved into my own tombstone –

yet after all of this the world is still

as the world still is.

The time is drawing near

to end the experiment.

Among other things, I learned something about motherhood

being a mother myself and a father too

when I rock to sleep those souls who died too soon

when I stroll softly through the incubators

I remember my own birth, the stretching of the fabric

separating my soul and her body from the other world.

That boundary was crossed, until I lay helpless

on the other side of the border, now under the shadow

of the embargo. I had expected not to feel love there

until my mother held me close.

I think love made it worse.

Until I came to the decision,

to the knife-edge of my own future,

I was free to accept or reject love,

to live among the chickens and learn to cluck,

brooding over my injuries. But after the Opening

though I stood in the Glory Radiance of God

love made it worse:
made worse my grief for all they couldn’t be.

Yet now I know they can, each of them,

be what I wish them to be.

It is their rejection that keeps Me rocking to and fro

in the Temple of Sin.

What I remember as being the hardest time

of my life on earth, the time that cracked me open

like an egg, were the years before the decision.

I was green, green and growing like a plant,

ordinary, I thought, a fellow among my fellows

no different from any other man.

Except for the voice, but no one knew of that

save Me. How would you feel

if each time you stood in the silence of your soul

the Voice said deep within your head:
“I Am. I would have You know who You are.

You are My ambassador, My chosen one,

the one to save the world. All You must do

is remember this.”

To suspect oneself of craziness is the smallest part

of the problem. I rejected all these messages out of hand.

How could I believe them except out what I saw

as a monstrous ego. At the same time

there was no way of persuading my rebound humility

that I could indeed have the power promised

if I chose. I can’t even make this sound poetic,

add metaphors. It’s stark plain language:
I would not believe it.

Even as the messages progressed, told Me more,

told Me things I will not tell you even now,

I would not believe.

And yet they haunted Me.

The day I asked Myself “How?

How would I begin to do this?”

was the day God won.

And so I took my first step

toward Calvary.

We send very few Messiahs now.

I would like to speak of justice for a moment.

There is a spontaneous combustion

whenever the forces of sulfur and water meet,

so as the brimstone touches flesh the soul ignites –

and this is hell.

I do not subscribe to hell Myself

but it exists for some, pouring

like fresh lava through the brain.

In case you wondered,

I sentence no one there.

I sentence them instead to seek their own level,

and therefore some are taken to that place.

This is the only sentence

I have ever pronounced.

Thousands have reached heaven in this way,

lifting themselves on the wings of their own desire,

not knowing how their goodness fanned the wind.

Heaven and hell are easy to achieve,

and all the other levels in between.

There is another level not spoken of in sacred texts,

rarely achieved, hidden entirely in mystery,

spectacular beyond description or comprehension.

This level is Anai – it is My home.

But I have long been absent,

being occupied with my long journey

through your time frame.

I would explain My home to you

but it cannot be done in words.

If you will sleep, and dream of the rush –

I will bring you to stand at the window.

Anai:

In the worse of times

when My courage fails,

that one word is enough.

Here in your own world are the acolytes,

bearing candles large as crypts,

marching behind their leaders, always in step,

chanting the chants, wearing the robes –

saffron or crimson, ebony or gray –

giving all autonomy away.

I am not saying that Krishna, for example,

or the Buddha, if we must have examples,

are not worth following. I know them well:

they are great and powerful souls

pouring forth radiance to those now on their levels.

But they are distractions. In the parlor where they sit

are pictures of them gesturing – lovely mudras, quite sublime.

Before these scenes, the acolytes sit in silent worship,

projecting, avoiding, canceling, forsaking, abandoning,

and forfeiting their powers in a massive dereliction of duty

which has gone on for centuries.

Sometimes when they think I’m not looking

the angels come to warm their hands

in my aura.

Still waters run deep. Still, waters run deep.

I have an image of a river, turbulent at the start,

racing through its youth and tumbling over barriers,

plunging through its own foam

to the battering rocks so many feet below,

then emerging softly into a wider bed

but deep, deep, settling on to its own surface

and alighting like a thought.

This is my image for the soul

as it journeys many lifetimes.

The sweet soft flow of the quietest river

has a power beyond the ability of any harbor to resist,

and yet our boats go drifting gently down.

When I look into the souls of those on earth

I see there are few such rivers, and many tortured streams.

Perhaps this isn’t the best analogy,

but it is one which has always worked for Me,

as I am always looking for mayim in shemayim.

Those deep and quiet rivers arise from their own source.

All other streams arise from the tears of My own sorrow.

I engage in systems thinking,

in systems analysis and design.

I mean by this that you cannot change the height

of even one blade of grass without altering the course

of some small bug through the forest.

To say that everything is connected

sounds like platitude,

but connections are always rolling off My tongue.

From here I watch one electron

collide with another, and follow its path

to an earthquake in Peru.

I watch the Schickelgrubers plan their wedding

and see the skies darken with smoke over Dachau.

I watch the ovens bear their nightly load

and see the gates of heaven open wide.

I am trying to convey to you

the perspective that I have

which changes EVERYTHING.

I am trying to take the burning from your heart,

to make of that rising smoke a sacrifice,

to convey the lifting joy of those rising souls.

The problem that remains, of course, is grief,

but grief is that necessary inversion of love

that tears open the heart

and lets the love flow forth;

it makes the everlasting connection

between the quick and the dead.

Perhaps at this time you need to understand something

about the serpent. I remember a day in the Garden

where a bird sang so sweetly with such joy

the trees stood still in spite of the soft warm wind.

I sat under a vine all rich with blooms,

My hand on the deep dark earth

when I felt a movement across My fingers

and a familiar nudge at My wrist.

I raised My hand and stroked the clean bright scales

while he looked up at My face,

a question in the flat black eyes.

“You are, indeed,” I said to his unspoken sign,

“You are, indeed.”

Even the serpent, from time to time,

needs to know if he is one of My creatures.

Even the serpent.

He slid away into the undergrowth

with a sideways flick, a danger to none

except those who fear him.

And thus is it that fear became the venom

in his fangs. But it was not he

who filled the hypodermic.

I don’t see how to make things

any plainer than this.

I am trying to raise your perspective

to a point where you can stand

in a sea of your own pain

and not ask why.

There are diffuse mechanisms

available for understanding –

hard-won, crafted from grief,

turned on the lathe of experience

and set upon the mantle-piece of love.

As you kneel to light the kindling

you may as well pray,

being well situated before the fire.

I am trying to raise your prayer

to a point where you can stand

beneath the firmament of stars

and know that they are yours to command.

These are things that my disciples never learned.

It was not that they were poorly educated,

for my lessons are of the heart, not the brain.

It was not that they were spiritually undeveloped,

for I chose well and carefully.

The thing I could not convey to them

arose because of a curious flaw in all beings,

their inability to express love while feeling pain.

That’s the trouble with pain:

it sets up the blowtorch

and the fuel that drives it

is just your breathing in and out;

the fire that burns you

leaves so little room for love.

You ask about my twelve, saying:
Did they not then love at least when things were well?

They loved, but with desire.

This then is what I was unable to change

in spite of the example I drove like nails

into my own flesh. To love without desire.

It seems so plain to me.

He who learns this thing commands the stars.

After they took me down from the tower where I died

and wrapped my body in linen, it lay in the tomb without breath.

And yet the cells still did their work: capillary action,

osmosis, the exchange of fluids and nutrients,

growth, movement, all these continued.

The hair and nails grew, the stomach digested.

The heart no longer beat

and yet there was life in that body –

life, growth and movement.

I arose from that slab,

slipping off the garment of my corpse,

and went up to stand before the throne.

The angels stood around it in ranks,

weeping and trembling, their wings fluttering like birds

that hit the wire. Their tears flowed down

like water from a thousand broken jars.

I stood before the throne, silent, waiting.

At last when the sound of weeping subsided

I climbed the three wide steps

and took My place.

Seated now, I was able to see them all,

to smile upon them all.

They were afraid to look at Me.

I had to command them to take the wings

away from their eyes, and to look up.

Even in their sorrow and anguish

their faces were as beautiful as Death,

shining through their tears.

Then all at once they knelt, all together,

in their thousands, they knelt and asked My forgiveness.

But there was nothing to forgive.

I could not, can not, blame them

for desiring My presence and My love.

I gave them things to do

to take their minds off what they almost did.

When I returned for that brief time on the third day

they stood shamefaced beside the road

unable to look at each other.

And I loved them at that moment

with a love so great it could crack the firmaments.

Yet I knew that still

they did not understand.

Do you see how there is only the solitary message

standing in the air of a hundred worlds?

Yet it is still unread.

The letters twist softly

waiting for the merest glance

to justify their existence,

but Mine is the only eye

that has ever caressed them.

You are probably wondering about Gabriel,

about Michael and Nuriel and Rafael –

how could these letters escape their all-seeing eyes?

You must understand they see the teachings only through Me,

leaving the originals unread: the letters spin

in a brightness that would blind the Metatron.

God placed a finger on the Tablet of Thought

and all those words sprang forth, released like birds.

There are not so many words, for what there is to say

is very brief. I read them once, just once,

and burst into a flame that burned a million years,

fueled by the spontaneous combustion of His Love,

radiating new worlds, new universes, in my spinning wake.

I cannot expect the angels to undertake such a journey.

I am, therefore, so far, the only One.

I am remembering now

the last few hours before My death.

Until a few moments ago I could see

the faces of My loved ones suffering below Me,

but now My sight has gone. I stare over Jerusalem

like a blinded hawk with a broken wing

foundering on the Dome of the Rock

yet still calling My shrill cry

as though the power of flight

still lifted up My wings.

Yet contrary to accounts which you may read later,

I do not believe even through My gasping breaths

that God has abandoned Me.

I still know the things I know,

and one of them is this:
I sent Myself.

There is no one to blame.

I spun out the days of My lifetime

with the threads that tied Me to the hem of God,

plucking carefully at His garment from time to time

to draw the golden cords into My life.

There is no form of death can sever these.

Today, however hard, is only one more thread

that binds Me to His will.

It’s a shame that even thoughts like these

can never conquer pain.

The body has a mind of its own,

often failing to subscribe to those ideals

which quite by accident

and strictly through a passionate intent

destroy and even mutilate the frame.

There is another factor of which I wish to speak

before I can no longer speak.

We are living with the serpent at all times.

It’s coiled within our spines,

straightens only with the epiphany

that joins its will to ours.

In the excitement of approaching death

it stirs, it flicks its tongue

to taste the air of this unfamiliar wind

which curvets its way into the unknown future

just over the hard-won hill. And when we die

the serpent is released.

What do I mean by this?

I would like you not to apply

a logical process to this image:

you must learn to understand it

in the channels of your bones.

Through the thunder I can hear the angels singing now.

They are singing Our song, the tune We danced to

the night We fell in love with the world.

And with my last breath

I can assure you of one thing:

the love We sang and danced

will never end.

Into your hands I now commend

My world.

That was My last commend-ment,

and there was only the one.

What I am saying to you now

is that I give to you, on My behalf,

the sovereignty of the world.

What I am expecting you to do

is to accept it.

It is through your suffering for others

that you have gained this right and power,

through your great love for other spirits

that I give you dominion over them.

Have you a problem with this?

The reason that birds flutter from tree to tree

is just to attract your attention.

They are always hoping some human eye

will admire the backs of their wings

or the sweet red pulse at their throats.

Always when I walk through the Garden

there is the flutter of wings,

and some shy thought-wave from an angel I’ve not met,

someone new to the Garden, not altogether sure

of My welcome. What they still don’t realize

is the temporary nature of their stay.

The Garden exists in what I describe

to higher souls as a spiritual limbo –

it’s neither here nor There. I have a room

overlooking the Fountain of Wisdom

but I rarely stay. I touch the wings

of some who teach the Transit,

give some direction and encouragement,

then move to one of a thousand other worlds

that need My touch.

I used to portion out My many selves

sending one to calm each universe

in tandem with a fleet of councilors

until the troubles began. But then

I joined My selves together for this task.

I said to you before I might speak more

about Satan and the role of sin,

and now I must.

There has been an error in the force-field -

it grieves Me to bring it to your attention

but some things must be said.

There are things you need to know

in words: these things I will not have you learn

within your hearts. I do not want

your apprehension of evil,

but only your assent to its necessity.

And in the end you may ask Me

why I fight so hard: that is when

I will ask you to look within yourself

for what you know.

Let us apply a pesher to this.

Speaking symbolically, the eyes of Satan

may be seen as the place

where Someone has chosen not to place Himself.

There are no Sefirot there, no channels of wisdom,

no rivers of mercy, no spark of redemption.

No One has been given authority over him.

What is seen through those hypothetical eyes

is seen through a black light: it radiates nothing.

And anyone who should go so far into evil

as to look into those eyes shall not come out.

They would be, and are, absorbed

into the terror of the universe.

I know of souls from many worlds

who met that gaze

and were not heard of again,

though their spirits were later used

as bricks in the Hall of Anguish.

I have walked that hall,

the only One to have ever done so,

heaving cleansed Myself

in the Shower of Blistering Radiance

and clothed Myself

in the Garment of the Essence of Love.

I went upon appointment,

being sent by Him I serve

to carry a message to that dark throne.

Satan had before him on a low table

a life-sized globe of your earth.

Giving Me a deep red smile

he poised one claw over the pole

and waited. I was still.

I had come to say

what God would have Me say

and that was all.

I folded my hands

over a small blue crystal ball

I carried near my heart. I said:

This message comes to you from God.

He says:

“I give you time

as your tool,

and nothing more.

And I promise you this:

when we have done,

all time shall end.”

As I turned on My heel,

as his low resonance shook that terrible room,

I heard a monstrous crack as the globe on his table

splintered into a thousand shards

and the rivers bled out onto the shivering bricks on the floor.

Holding hard to My small blue ball,

I left.

On my return, I held a conference

for the Highest of the High.

I told them what God said,

and what I did.

I will not try to describe for you their reaction.

Perhaps you can imagine it for yourselves.

Although they obey Me in all things

they were unable to come to terms with what We’d done.

And yet I needed their support, their legions and their strength.

And so for the first and only time in existence

I forced My understanding on another,

on all of them, rather than letting it grow in them

at their own pace. For this time only,

as time was now the enemy, My need

was greater than their rights.

As I moved into their minds, probing and arranging,

they blinked on and off like fireflies,

and their wings changed hue, fluttering and shimmering.

Patterns formed and swept away,

they sang like rainbows, wailed like harps

as they opened and closed their hard-pressed hearts

around the truth.

There were consequences to the angels.

Having been forced to walk before they crawled,

some shattered, have lived silent under My left wing ever since.

Some survived, some grew and thrived.

But it is not a means that I will use again.

I will not force my point of view on you

who read these words, however few you are,

however small My legions on the earth.

What am I trying to do?

I'm trying to pull you back

so far behind your own viewpoint

that you shift the point of your focus

to a higher realm.

And you must come to this point yourself.

You must turn the wheel of your own kaleidoscope

for I will not force my point of view on you.

But I will tell you what it is,

so you may think about it for yourselves.

I begin with the scriptures

given to your people long ago.

Moses and the Son of Asher stood

on the high point together when the Word came down.

I still have the chisel that carved the Ten Commandments

stuck into my belt. It is a useful tool for a carpenter

who planes into the spirit. So I remember why

I wrote the words He dictated to My touch.

There was a heavy emphasis on righteousness

that found its way into all the ancient tomes.

But I will tell you something else:

In all my years on earth

I never did a righteous act.

I acted only out of love,

for the one follows inexorably upon the other.

This is the first lesson, and the last.

It is also the answer to the question of Satan.

The necessity existed for the existence of a force

that could only be conquered through the force of love

and thus must all beings be forced to love

to conquer that force through love; then and only then

would the necessity for his existence no longer exist.

I have chosen a convoluted method for expression.

Mark it well.

And note there are no other weapons

which can prevail. Not courage, nor honor,

nor justice nor righteousness can win this war.

And if your heart grows taut with this thought,

do not despair, for I AM LOVE,

and I AM ALWAYS THERE.

Well, perhaps you cannot feel My presence.

Perhaps you feel only the trembling of your own wings

in the turbulence of fear, but I hand you,

with your life, the only tool you need.

Should you stick love into your belt

you may chisel what you will

into the bricks in that dead black hall.

So lifetimes come and go.

Millions and billions wail and weep

while Satan's claw tears at their suffering hearts.

But while his hand tightens around the globe,

I hold your world in the palm of my mind.

Do you remember some time back when I spoke of hell,

and the sentence I pronounce from time to time?

I said: "I sentence no one there. I sentence them instead

to seek their own level, and therefore some are taken to that place."

They are drawn from above to below,

their wavelengths increasing, tones deepening,

slowing, darkening; revolving ever more slowly

they meet at last the being they most resemble.

You may think I would rejoice at this evidence

of justice, as surely as their victims would.

But for each of these I suffer like a mother

whose only child has been run over in the streets.

I grieve and stumble over their failure to love.

With this I close for now,

but more will come, and soon.

I will speak again

when you have taken, or rejected,

made your decision,

and chosen your weapon.

Pax domine.