The story of Jolee

  

< Teacher 1 > Jolee was a beautiful young queen and she ruled over Tibus, and the lands of Tibus stretched as far as the eye could see and then beyond. Sometimes it was said that the sun never set on Tibus because it was so large, so vast. Of course, as a queen, she inherited her role on the throne from her mother who was also a queen, who inherited it from the father who was the king. She came from a lineage of royalty.

So as she was growing up young Jolee very rarely went outside of the walls of the kingdom, very rarely went out onto the lands of Tibus. She was trained from a very early age to be a ruler, to be royalty. She was structured and disciplined to understand the rules and the laws of the land and she was trained to be a judge and a jury for those who would someday come before her when she was queen.

She inherited the throne at a very young age and she was given the responsibility now of hearing the complaints, hearing the cases, hearing all of the various arguments that were going on with the people of the kingdom, and having to make decisions and rules and judgments. Each day they would come before her.

Sometimes there would be a newly married couple who was quarreling and arguing and they couldn't resolve their differences so they were brought in front of Queen Jolee to make a ruling. And she would. She would consider both sides of the energy and then she would make her judgment and it would be done. No questions asked or heads would roll.

Sometimes there were land disputes. Landowners would come to her with a complaint that one had stolen land from the other, had moved the markers that blocked off different sections of land. And with very little knowledge about what was really going on, she would have to make a ruling, either with one side or the other.

People would come to her with all sorts of problems and issues and her days were filled with nothing but handing down rules and regulations and then making sure that every word within her ruling was abided by. She was fair and she was honest as she could be. She understood that she had a responsibility to everyone in the kingdom. She had an understanding of the responsibility that her word meant everything so therefore she must handle her word very sacredly. She must handle every case that came before her with honor and with balance.

But as a few years went on of handing down rulings, she got very bored and frustrated with her job. She wondered to herself each night when she went off to her own chambers, "There's got to be a better way of doing this. There's got to be a better way of just handing down rulings to those who are having conflicts because they're not learning anything. They're not learning how to solve the problems. They're not learning how to work it out amongst themselves. They are just coming here for the final judgment and the final say." Sometimes Queen Jolee would say to herself, "I don't even know if I made the right decision. I know so little about those who come in front of me. I know so little. Did they really commit that crime that they were accused of? Did they really steal from their family and friends?"

So she kept on fulfilling her role as a queen, kept on handing down rulings, but this sense of impatience, the feeling of being unsettled got worse and worse and worse to the point where she was getting severe migraine headaches. And in between her severe migraine headaches, of course, all of her court cases were backing up and more and more people in confusion looking to her for the answer. And when she wasn't having a migraine headache, she had a cold or a flu or some other type of affliction because she wasn't happy with what she was doing. So she gave herself these things in order to avoid having to go back each day and make rulings. Of course now things were getting worse in the kingdom because nobody was there to rule on what should go on.

One day out of total frustration and total despair she had her guards call in the Old Wise Man from the woods. Oh all these good stories have the Old Wise Man from the woods (laughter), and because she knew some stories, she knew there must be an Old Wise Man in the kingdom somewhere. So they brought him in. They brought him to her private chambers and she talked to the Old Wise Man and said, "I'm so frustrated in what I'm doing. I have no joy or happiness in it. What frustrates me the most is that nobody is learning. They just keep going about, doing the same things they've always done, and they know that if it gets to the worst situation they have to come before me for a ruling. I almost feel like I'm picking up feeling all of their guilt and shame, all of their issues, and I don't want that anymore." She said, "I want to be a teacher. I want to teach instead of judge. I want to teach instead of rule. So, Old Wise Man, what can I do?"

And the Old Wise Man sat back and took a deep breath, because that's what old wise men do, (some laughter) and he said, "You must give up your title as queen. You must walk away from this beautiful magnificent palace (kingdom). You must disguise yourself as a commoner (little human self). You must go off to a small village (Earth) somewhere where nobody knows you and then you can begin your work as a teacher."

Now, Jolee was a bit concerned about all this because this meant a major change in her life and she didn't know if she could truly disguise herself and she didn't know if she could give up the comfort of this beautiful mansion, this beautiful palace that she lived in. But after a bit of contemplation and thinking about serving another thirty, forty, fifty years, every day making rulings and judgments, she said "I'll do it." Now the Old Wise Man, of course, said, "Always expect the unexpected. Things aren't what they seem. (laughter, Tobias chuckling) Keep your eyes open, keep yourself in a balanced and stable place."

So, several weeks later, the queen wrote a lengthy note and said she was going off to visit some foreign lands all by herself. She wanted to see what lay beyond the ocean. She made arrangements that nobody should come and try to find her, that she would return someday. In the meantime, anybody who had problems and issues, needed rulings, should see one of the others in her court. She packed very few things so that she could disguise herself as a commoner and she went off into one of the small villages where she had never gone before, a village called Commonville. (some laughter, Tobias chuckling) And she said "This is where I am going to begin my teaching work." She said "This is where I am going to truly begin to find my passion." She was so excited about it, thinking that she could teach everyone in Commonville all of these wonderful and wise things.

She took up residence with a family who were renting out a room, they needed the extra money. They had a lot of problems. They had financial problems. They had problems with each other. They were fighting all the time. Jolee thought to herself "This is an excellent place to start my teaching work."

So she moved in, unpacked, and immediately began to try to teach them. She didn't actually know what teaching was, she didn't understand what all of it was about, but she went out to the father in the family and started to say, "Well the reason that you're having all of these financial problems is because you're not balancing your budget. You're spending more than you make. You're only working a few days a week and therefore you don't have enough money to feed your family, and because of that your family is arguing and fighting with each other."

And she had a big smile on her face as she talked to Bob, the father of the family. And he pounded his hand on the table, enough so that it scared Jolee a bit, and he said, "Who are you to tell me about my finances? You have no idea. I'd like you to leave the room and never try to talk to me about how to handle my situation until you've walked in my shoes."

She knew that... there was a lot of family problems and she knew that the young teenage girl by the name of Susan was having a lot of issues with the family, with boyfriends, with things in her life, so she thought, "Well I'll be a teacher to Susan instead." And she sat down with Susan and said "Now you're having problems with this boy because he's trying to control you and he's not giving you the type of attention that you want and here's what you need to do" and she gave Susan and bit of advice. And Susan reared back, had a frown on her face and said, "Who are you to tell me what I should do with my boyfriend. You're not even married! You've never probably been with a man before and yet you come in and you're trying to solve my problems? Get out of my room immediately."

Within a few days, with Jolee trying to teach everyone in that house, trying actually to preach to them, that she was thrown out on the streets. She learned a valuable lesson here. She learned the lesson that there's a lot of people that actually don't want their problem solved. If you're going to be a teacher, you can't force yourself on those who choose to hold onto their problems.

Well, Jolee didn't give up in Commonville. Soon she found a few friends by hanging around at the restaurant and she got to know a lovely young lady by the name of Barbara, and they got to talking. And Barbara was filled with all sorts of problems and issues. And of course Jolee was trying to help her, trying to resolve the issues, but she just couldn't seem to get through to her new friend Barbara. And Barbara just carried on and on and on about her health problems and her emotional problems, carried on and on about how many times she had been married, carried on all the time about how her kids were in all of this trouble.

Jolee was very concerned because she wasn't able to help her friend Barbara either and one day she just had to walk away, just had to leave and stop trying to be a teacher to Barbara. And here she learned a very valuable lesson as well. There are some people that really don't want the help. There are some people that just want to talk about how their problems are the grandest of all. They're not looking for resolution. Sometimes they just want to have that energy of knowing that their problems are bigger and better, that they're more special than any other human.

Now, Jolee was getting a bit distraught at this whole teaching thing, but she decided to keep trying. And she met a young man, a young man that had an interest in her and Jolee had an interest in him - to help teach him. She was willing to do anything at this point to teach! (laughter) She spent evenings, she spent days with him, talking and chatting, and every time she left him... his name was Jim... every time she left, she felt exhausted and drained to the point where she felt herself getting sick again. She felt herself totally depleted to the point one day she said, "I just cannot see you anymore. I can't try to be a teacher to you anymore." And from this she learned a valuable lesson as well. There are some people that really don't want to change. They just want to take your energy. That's exactly what he was doing with her, just stealing her energy.

So to make a long story even longer... (much laughter) to make a long story even longer Jolee finally became so frustrated with trying to teach in Commonville that she left. She went off to try to find the Old Man in the woods, and sure enough she did and she sat down and she said, "I wanted to be a teacher, I had such a passion - such a passion - but none of it worked. The people didn't want to change. They wanted to hold onto their problems. They just wanted to feed off of me. They just wanted to talk about how grand and special their problems were but they didn't really want to do anything. So what am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to go?"

And the Old Man in the woods took a deep breath, as the old man in the woods always do (laughter), and he said "Part of the problem here Jolee, one of the things I've tried to warn you about, is that you didn't have the experience, you didn't have the knowingness to truly be a teacher. You had the passion, but you didn't have the experience. Now you have to go off to another town, to a different place. You have to take on and experience all of the problems that common people have. You have to go off to this place called Plainfield; you have get married; you have to have children; you have to take on a job; you have to forget (veil) that you were ever the queen; you have to forget that you ever wanted to be a teacher. You have to go there and just live and experience what it is like to have all of these problems and issues so that you have true and deep empathy for the very ones that you want to teach."

And Jolee thought about where she had come from. She thought about the kingdom. She thought about her passion. She didn't know where else to go, so she took the old man's advice, she went off to Plainfield, she got married, she had children and soon she forgot. She forgot about why she was there. She was living like everyone else.

And this went on for year after year after year, totally forgetting that she ever had been queen of this grand land of Tibus. Until one day, of course, she felt something come over her. She felt like a shaking and rumbling within. She felt everything in her life start to change. Now she couldn't remember where she had come from, but she knew that something was going on. She was going through a re-awakening.

Now, having forgotten where she came from, forgotten why she went out on this long journey, but feeling that there was something wrong inside, feeling very confused and frustrated, not knowing where else to turn, she was wandering off in the woods one day and of course came across the Old Wise Man. She said, "Old Wise Man -" and of course he recognized her - "Old Wise Man, there's something changing in my life and I don't know what it is. Something I'm unhappy with. I was a wife, I was a mother, I had a good job, but none of this is satisfying anymore. So what's going on? I heard that you're an Old Wise Man who can help me."

So the Old Wise Man sat her down and of course he remembered her as the queen, he remembered her as the teacher, and he told her the story, told her how he remembered her. Of course she didn't believe it. She couldn't accept the fact that she had been queen. This was too grandiose. She couldn't accept the fact that she gave up being the queen of the great land of Tibus to go out and be a teacher. That seemed crazy. She couldn't accept the fact that she had even gone off to Plainfield and forgotten about who she was, gone into a commoner's life. And the Old Wise Man said "You did that so you would have the empathy, so that you could be the teacher, so that you could help your people."

She got very upset with him, very angry. She felt fear. She felt nauseous. She felt uncertain and disoriented because it was all shaking up her reality - her reality that she was just a common person.

The Old Wise Man said, "Yes, yes, you asked me to sit down and talk to you and remind you of who you are, remind you that now that you've developed the empathy, living like everyone else, living in the illusion, living in mass consciousness, now you can be a teacher. Before you were trying to be a preacher. Before you were trying to go out and tell other people how to live. But now you can truly feel what they've gone through. You have the heart and the soul and the empathy. Now you can go out and do what you originally set out to do."

And in that moment Jolee remembered everything. She remembered being queen. She remembered going out to Commonville and trying to change everyone. She remembered going into this deep sleep, this coma of consciousness, so she would forget, so she could live like everyone else. She remembered that she had set out to do this in order to truly serve her kingdom and all of its peoples.

In that remembrance she woke up, she looked the Old Wise Man in the eyes and she said, "Thank you. Thank you for being here with me the whole time, this whole way. It's been an incredible journey. Now I can go out and teach. Now I can have that passion I have sought forever."

She hugged him and kissed him and said, "By the way, I forgot to ask you your name, Old Wise Man." And he smiled as he put his feet up on the ottoman, took a sip of his wine and a puff of his cigar (laughter) and said, "My name is Tobias." (much laughter)

 

  

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