< 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)