The Messiah's Handbook

I've been leafing through Reminders for the Advanced Soul by Richard Bach. Reminders because you already know. Advanced because it's a certain kind of soul who is asking the kind of questions to which this book offers answers. It's a soul that's been bruised and stripped bare, brought down to its knees pummelled by blow after blow. It's a soul that's done playing hide and seek, that's drawn a line in the sand and is poised to step over it and never look back. The advanced soul says "I'm ready." The reminders are for those who are ready to remember and live anchored in and liberated by these simple yet complex truths.

You don't have to fight 

to live as you wish.

Live as you wish 

and pay whatever price is required.

"Your depth of intimacy with another is inversely proportional to the number of others in your life."

"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."

"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 and teachers."

Is this my highest sense of right?

Is this the direction I want most to go?

Is this the way in which I can give my greatest gift?

Reality has nothing to do with appearances,
with your narrow way of seeing.
Reality is love expressed, 
pure perfect love,
unbrushed by space and time.

To love someone unconditionally

is not to care who they are or what they do.

Unconditional love, on the surface,

looks the same as indifference.

The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.

You wait a lifetime to meet Someone
who understands you, accepts you as you are.
At the end, you find that Someone, all along,
has been you.

How do you want 
to come out of this experience - 
how do you want to be changed because of it?

The individual is always the exception.

"Everybody can't..."

but

anybody can.

Before you'll change,

something important must be at risk.

Even when you're brought together by miraculous magnetizing,

you still have to work out problems.

The creative, loving-something life
is also the healthy one.
There is healing and protection
in doing what makes you happy.

No heavens,

no hells,

just these endless worlds

you create

till you think you've got it right.

Richard Bach is the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, both of which rank among the top 100 books I wish to be buried with.