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An Easter Story

By Don Miguel Ruiz (First published in The Fifth Agreement April/may 2002)

LET'S SHARE A DREAM...

I want you to imagine this happened two thousand years ago, just like a movie, a movie where you are the main actor.

It's early on a Friday morning, before sunrise and you are in the Garden of Gethsemane . You are sitting on a rock, dreaming, remembering an entire lifetime. You are tired but you are satisfied, and you know that the end is near. You start to remember the most impressive time of your life, a period of forty days, when finally you finally learned that only the present moment exists, and everything is here and now, including your memories.

Before those forty days, you knew that you were not alive, you were not dead but you weren't alive either. You used to believe that you were someone else, something you teamed to be but wasn't really you. You traveled for almost thirty years to find yourself, and you knew that life was not worth living any more unless you recovered your integrity.

You remembered all the different stories you learned from your teachers, from your masters, all the different mythologies. You remembered your teachers by the Dead Sea when they told you about the Judgment Day and you knew the Judgment Day was waiting for you in the desert. The Last Judgment meant the end of the world, as you knew it. The end of your own world and everything you believed about yourself and the world around you, your creation. With the Last Judgment, came the end of the world of illusion and the beginning of the real world.

You had forty days to face the voice of the world, a voice full of superstition, a voice full of lies. You remembered your walk to the Jordan River where your cousin was baptizing people, an initiation of water. You remembered your own initiation, when John asked you "do you renounce Satan, do you accept God?"

A vision came in your mind while the water was falling on your head. You saw yourself in the middle of the Garden of Eden, hand-in-hand with your beloved, in front of the tree of knowledge, and you remembered the fallen angel that lived in the tree of knowledge. Angel means messenger, and a fallen angel is an angel who delivers the wrong message. The right message is the truth and the wrong message is the lie, symbolized by a snake. And you remembered how your beloved believed every word that came from the Prince of Lies, the snake. You saw her take an apple from tree of knowledge and eat it. You knew she was also eating the seeds inside the fruit, and those seeds would grow in the mind of your beloved like a brand new tree in a fertile land.

Every word that came out of the mouth of the fallen angel was a seed that grew in her mind, and very soon, the tree of knowledge occupied a place in your beloved's mind. And that tree, the home of the Prince of Lies, was installed in your beloved mind, hiding in the knowledge. In front of your eyes, you saw her become insane and sick and you understood that the original sin was believing in lies. Those seeds grew in her mind and created more food that she could share with others wherever she went.

Your love for her was so big that you needed to rescue her, but she no longer listened to you. She only could see through the eyes of what she believed, and what she believed was the word that came from the Prince of Lies. The only way for you to rescue her was by eating the same fruit and dreaming the same way that she dreamed, taking the risk that you would die with her into the world of illusion, the world of lies. And you remembered that as the beginning of the two forces that controlled the humans, the forces the Prince of Lies called "good and evil," but you knew as the truth versus the lies.

When you said to John that you renounced Satan, that meant, that you renounced your own lies. When you said you accepted God, you really were saying that you accepted the truth. When the initiation of water was over you knew what you really were, but you could still see all the knowledge and lies living in your mind. That's when you decided to recover yourself, your own integrity or die with the intent. You went directly to the desert to face the Prince of Lies, the voice always speaking your head, That voice is the one who let the humans know that they are not good enough, not strong enough, not worth it, that they are bad.

You are still sitting in Gethsemane , on that rock, having all those memories about the most important time in your life. You pictured yourself in the desert drawing a circle around yourself. Then you closed your eyes and you started to challenge every single belief, every single concept in your mind. And you decided not to believe them anymore. You could see the entire program in your head. You discovered that you were brainwashed in the process of growing up, and in the process of education. Everyone filled your head with superstitions, lies, fear, and with false concepts that you believed. It became very clear in your mind as you saw yourself practicing and practicing lies until you learned them very well and they became a habit, and you pretended to be what you were not. You remembered what your mother taught you, what your teachers taught you, and how important it was to come from the House of David. Then they told you that you could be the king who brings Justice back to your people, the Messiah. And they educated you very well so that perhaps someday, if you had enough personal power and courage, you could claim your kingdom.

You spent forty days facing every single belief, facing all the hopes from all the people around you. You knew the Zealots were just waiting for a leader who would lead them in a war against Rome . They believed that you had enough power to win the war and destroy the Roman Empire . How could you disappoint them when they had all their hopes on you? The King from the House of David; have you the courage to claim your place as King and face the Romans or you are Just a coward if you refuse the throne? Imagine how difficult it was to resist the temptation to be King when a whole nation would Judge you as a coward if you let go of the throne. The voice of knowledge tempted you to be the greatest conqueror. How difficult is it not to believe the voices in your own head?

Finally he resisted all temptation and he became the Christ, he found himself completely Then he said, "I am life and I give life and life is one and the same and it's moving everything, and I am one with life because life is passing through me." In that moment, all the seeds of knowledge came out of his mind and he was free again.

When he went back to town after the desert, he saw that the voice of knowledge was speaking through every human's mouth and the Prince of Lies was using every human to communicate. From that moment on, it was an interchange of communication between him and the Prince of Lies, and his beloved Eve who was all humanity. His challenge was to help her to wake up, and to help her stop believing lies and to take the seed of knowledge out of her mind.

For three years, he worked so hard with his disciples and students trying to help them to win over the lies the way he did in the desert. Expectations grew in the people around him; as he became more and more powerful and he performed incredible miracles. He had a lot of followers many who believed that he was the Messiah.

He remembered how a few days before, he crossed the doors of Jerusalem with thousands of followers, claiming him to be the new king. They were waiting for him to proclaim himself on Thursday. The people of power in Jerusalem didn't know what to do because he had become so very powerful. If he decided to be the king and he won, they wanted to be on his side, but if he didn't they wanted to be ready to destroy him.

Thursday he was in front of all those crowds in Jerusalem and the Zealots were ready to start a war in that moment, should he proclaim himself the king. Thousands of people were waiting for him to speak and when he finally did, he said he would not be King and almost everyone felt betrayed by him. The Disciples needed to protect him because the crowds wanted to kill him right there. During all the confusion, the Disciples were able to take him to a safe place.

That evening, they performed one of the most powerful rituals, the ritual of communion and the last supper. He knew that it was the end; he knew that all those crowds that felt betrayed by him would destroy him. They judged him right away: they found him guilty and they wanted his blood.

For the last supper he gathered with the main Disciples and let them know that it was over, and he gave them the last instructions. He told them " time will pass, mountains can change places, kingdoms will be destroyed and other kingdoms will arise, but my word is eternal because my word is the truth and the moment will come when you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, the same way that the truth set me free. I'm so tired right now, but before I leave, I will share myself with all of you. I will give myself to you as a gift," and he took the bread and he said, „this bread represents my body." And he took the wine and said: "this wine represents my blood; whoever eats my body and drinks my blood will live forever with me in the kingdom of heaven." His body and his blood represented the fruit of another tree that existed in heaven, the tree of life, of the truth, of love.

In silence, they had a communion of love, and from that moment on, those new seeds of love, the seeds of the tree of life went into those fertile minds and they grew in the minds of the Disciples. And that is when he told them, "by the fruit you will know the tree." This means, by the words that they speak, you know the tree, which means the tree of knowledge or the tree of life.

He had all those memories in the Garden of Gethsemane . As the sun started coming up he turned his face to the two witnesses and saw they were steeping. They could not even stay awake the whole night with him, his last night. Before everyone awoke, the soldiers were already in Gethsemane , and they took him prisoner. Hours later, he knew that his physical body would be dead because his Spirit would abandon his physical body and live forever in heaven.

Jesus the Christ was not exactly what mythology says he was, he was even more than that. When he conquered his dragon he taught us the way and he left us a legacy. First he showed us how to be aware that it's the truth versus lies and the liar lives in our mind. The liar is the one who lives our lives just because we believe our lies. This is a great gift, "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free," because by knowing the truth, you can stop believing the liar and the liar will not survive in your head.

Then he gave us another gift, forgiveness. With forgiveness we can heal our emotional wounds. With forgiveness, we can recover the truth. If we eat love, real love, not the love that comes from the liar, we will live forever in the kingdom of freedom.

What Jesus Christ taught us is beyond any religion or philosophy. It's common sense, and unconditional love.

Who ever becomes the tree of life is the Christ: there is not just one Christ, yet at the same time there is only one Christ because all humans are one, and we are the same. We are eternal; the Christ is eternal because life is eternal, and we are life.

So knowing this, how would you treat your father if he was Jesus, if he was the Christ? How would you treat your son or your daughter if you knew they were the Christ, how would you treat your friend, your brother or your sister if you knew that they were the Christ, how would you treat yourself if you knew that you were the Christ? How would you live your life if you knew you were the Christ? How could you ever do anything against yourself, how could you disrespect your parents or your children, or whoever if you knew this?

"The truth will set you free," but are you ready to hear the truth? Now that you know who you are what are you going to do with that information? How are you going to treat the people in your life now that you know, how are you going to treat your neighbor now that you know? How are you going treat yourself now that you know? What will be your choice? Who will you believe, the Christ or the liar, the liar that creates separation and pain, or will you choose love?

My choice is to love, to choose life, to choose joy. You have been sleeping for so long, wake up and choose love also, choose yourself, choose to be alive, choose to take the risk and detach from what you believe you are. If you choose the truth and decide to return to life, this is what we call resurrection. You arise from death, from the image you believe about yourself, which is your grave. Someone else has been living your life and using your body even if that someone is your own creation, it's not the real you, it is what you believe you are, and it's a lie. The way you know you should be and are not, is a lie. You try so hard to be the way you should be, but you know you are not. And that's why you judge and punish yourself, and you suffer because you believe your lies. Stop and face the liar whether you call it the dragon, a snake, or a devil.

Today could be the day that the true master of justice, your integrity, the real you, comes out. The false king is afraid that the real messiah, the real king will return and reclaim the kingdom. The Last Judgment is when you don't believe the liar anymore. The whole world of illusion collapses and is destroyed. The end of the liar's world means a new beginning, a resurrection. Take a chance and use this beautiful mythology to create a dream of heaven on earth. Blessings!

Mehr unter Don Miguel Website at www.miguelruiz.com