Notes from
'The Messiah's Handbook'
from
"Illusions"
by
Richard Bach
Learning is finding out what you already
know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as
well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.
Your only obligation in any lifetime
is to be true to yourself.
Being true to anyone else or anything else
is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah.
The simplest questions
are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile,
and watch your answers change.
Your friends will know you better
in the first minute you meet
than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand
years.
There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need
their gifts.
You are led through your lifetime
by the inner learning creature,
the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
Don't turn away from possible futures
before you're certain
you don't have anything to learn from them.
You're always free to change your
mind and choose a different future,
or a different past.
Imagine the universe beautiful and
just and perfect.
Then be sure of one thing:
The Is has imagined it quite a bit
better than you have.
A cloud does not know why it moves
in just such a direction and at such a speed,
it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the
patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too,
when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
You are never given a wish without
being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
The world is your exercise-book, the
pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can
express reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense,
or lies, or to tear the pages.
Every person, all the events of your
life,
are there because you have drawn them
there.
What you choose to do with them is
up to you.
The truth you speak has no past and
no future.
It is, and that's all it needs to
be.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is
finished:
If you're alive, it isn't.
Don't be dismayed at good-byes.
A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or
lifetimes,
is certain for those who are friends.
The mark of your ignorance is the
depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
What the catepillar calls the end
of the world,
the master calls a butterfly.
Everything above may be wrong!
