from Letter Twenty-One "Jerusalem"

“...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 the small
glass down. You take my hand again, and I am a little apprehensive. Every time you
do that, something happens. 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 myself 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 ancient 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 narrow, winding, side street. I regain my composure a bit, and
survey the alley. 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. Down
the way is a crowded market area, with a jumble of wares hanging under awnings and
piled on tables along the street. I am still feeling myself drawn into you. I look at your
face, your bright silver eyes, with wonder. You stare back quizzically.]

I don’t know what you’re exactly feeling, but it obviously 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 also 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, but they each
represented sovereign perspectives on what a solution might be. Try as they might,
they could never reach accord among their core beliefs. Truly, there was no resolution
that would have satisfied the core beliefs of all the factions involved. 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 get the upper
hand.

The Jews and Muslims, as you know, went to war trying to exterminate 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 instance, at the core of their dearest prophecies and doctrines, believed
contradictory destinies for the city we now stand in. This intractable state of affairs
endured for many decades leading up to and through the Great Storm.

Some felt that the Christian and Jewish behavior toward Islam was causing the
problems, and leading toward another world war; some felt it was all the fault of
radical Islam. Each camp pointed to prophecies that foretold a cataclysm; many
Christians actually desired an ultimate war, Armageddon, because they believed it
would hasten their religious objectives. Never mind that such a war would have
destroyed 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.”

Passions rose to explosive proportions. There was great gnashing of teeth and spitting
fire and brimstone from religious leaders and politicians; mobs were raised, spouting
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 engendered 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 new direction.

“Are you saying this is where the genetic mutation began? My vision, from before,
showed me a state of profound peace descending on people here...”

Copyright © 2009 by Robert Potter