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The Quest for the Apocalyptic Beast – Part 2
An Healthy Ego?
There is not such thing… Your ego is that personality, that mask that you have came to believe is the true you.
And the worst thing: You are actually intertwined with that thing, with that false notion of your true self.
Of course, your true self is the spirit within your human body.
And there are a lot of different apparels that the ego uses in order to trick us: False modesty and even shyness is nothing else that the ego, working in an inverted fashion. You see, shyness as well as shame comes from the caring of what others would think of “you”.
In other words, when you are concerned about the image projection of “you” or the perception that others would have of that image the ego created to hide itself, in reality you are worried about which might be the best way to deceive everybody…. including yourself.
The good news is that, even though the ego believes that it totally controls you, in fact, you -a spirit- are the one that has the power.
Anyone of us can shutdown its ego completely, just as Jesus thaught us to do. At the very least, you can start by diminishing it right away. All you have to do is be vigilant and aware that the beast is ready to jump out of the cage as soon as you loosen your watch.
That Voice in Your Brain: Conscience or Ego?
Beware! What many believe to be the voice of the Conscience, is in reality the voice of an impostor: the ego.
If you think that you have a conscience of your own, you have been deceived.
Self-awareness or consciousness is one thing, and most of the time it is “personal”, and we humans tend to believe that it is ours; but the Conscience is quite different.
Since the ego has another powerful trick which is to convert instantaneously any thought you have into a belief, the defense of that belief turns into the most important task you have. It doesn’t matter if that thought/belief is good or bad, or right or wrong… the only important thing is that it is “yours”, so you automatically defend it.
But the Conscience is a quite different matter.
To begin with, we all share a common, omnipresent, universal Conscience, not a particular one. That Conscience, which is by nature unselfish, wise and perfect, bonds all of us. So, there is no way you can have your own peculiar Conscience, different or apart from the one that everyone else have.
So, there is the voice of the ego and there is the one from the Conscience.
How can we distinguish one from the other? Easy. The Conscience always speaks of the divine Law, of good and love, unselfish love. It uses no fancy wording, no trickeries, no hoaxes. And there is no way for you to negotiate with the True Conscience. It is implacable, immutable, inexorable… it does not accomodate to your personal agenda.
The other voice, the voice of the ego? It will start throwing to the table which is your human mind, all kind of selfish ideas, thoughts, schemes and stratagems, interpreting, misrepresenting and accommodating things so they suit the false belief system that the ego has developed, no matter what cost to your true self or to others.
So, next time you clash with someone else’s belief or self-interests system, and that person insists in that he or she is listening and obeying the voice of his or her conscience which contradicts and opposes the voice of the Conscience in you, you better be prepared to make sure that it is not a battle of egos: yours and theirs.
The Anti-Ego Recipe
2. Take the decision of correcting the bad choices you made, so next time, you could do better than that. Forgive yourself remembering that perfectionment is a process, not a place.
3 As soon as you open your eyes, review again last night decision and plan your day accordingly.
4 Pray to God asking for help and guidance… not just for you but for everyone in the whole Universe. And don’t forget to feel and express your gratitude to our Heavenly Father for everything… even the apparently not so good things in your life… and smile. Again: There are lessons everywhere.
5 Keep on your watch all day long.
Do this for at least 21 days so you start developing the habit of being a good unselfish, loving “you”.
Next, just keep trying to be a wonderful loving creature for the rest of your life (both in the human and the spiritual sense)… one day at a time.
To sum up the recipe:
“Prevail over your own selves and the journey will be easy for you; then, you will be able to conquer the beast that John beheld in his revelation.”
The Third Testament
This way, you would not let your mind play tricks on you… on behalf of the ego.
The Quest for the Apocalyptic Beast – Part 1
Getting to Know Your Enemy
The word ‘ego’ is defined by the Webster’s dictionary as:
1: the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world
2: egotism, self-steem
3: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that serves as the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality.
The first acception or generally accepted meaning of the word ‘ego’ is precisely what defines the main problem with it: It separates us one from another.
By confusing individuality with the ego, and by following the traditionally wrongful psychological assumption (now under fire by advanced pyschologists) that it is the ego the one that gives us our identity, there has been an immense brain-washing in the media giving a monstruous importance to the selfish personality, opposed to altruism, which is the one prerequisite to manifesting the wonderful spiritual virtue of charity.
The present chaos is the result of that massive brain-washing… as prophesied by our Lord since the first Israel prophets up to John’s vision as narrated in the Book of Apocalypse also known as the Book of Revelation.
It were mainly two prophets that anticipated the rising of the ego as the major enemy of mankind. The first was Daniel, in ancient Babylon, and the second, John, in the island of Patmos.
And both identified that mortal enemy as the beast.
Sure, that description is a metaphor, but, wow! How precise and self-explanatory that metaphor is.
The Drop of Water and the Ocean
So, how are we going to deal with our own existence, our own identity?
Well, take for example a humble drop of water in the ocean. Of course, it has most of the ocean attributes, not all of them, of course: A single drop of water cannot make a tidal wave by itself, isn’t it?
That single drop of water is, by itself, an individual, and it has an identity with which you can distinguish it from another quite similar to it. But it ocuppies a diferent space and position in that ocean.
Now, suppose that drop of water has a mind, and discovers that it exists; in other words, it has a self-awareness.
Is that an ego?
Not at all, because along with its own self-awareness, comes the awareness of belonging to something greater than itself, starting with its neighbouring drops of water.
And when its awareness expands and becomes a full awareness, it tells that humble drop of water that it is not “I” or “Me”, but that it is “Us”, and furthermore, it is “The Ocean”, giving that drop of water the sense of belonging, of being a part of something greater than itself.
When Was Jesus Born?
Nowadays, most serious Bible students and scholars agree in that Jesus was not born on December 25th. Why? It is simple. Because the shepherds had their flocks in open field [1] which implies a date prior to October. And having in mind that the reason why Joseph and his pregnant wife, Mary, traveled to Jerusalem in order to be taxated. No competent Roman administrator would require registration involving travel during the season when Judea was impassable. [2]
Who decided December 25th as Jesus’ birthdate?
The early Christian church did not celebrate Jesus’ birth, and therefore the exact date has not been preserved in festivals. The first recorded mention of December 25th is in the Calendar of Philocalus (354 A.D.) which assumed Jesus’ birth to be Friday, December 25, 1 A.D.
December 25th was officially proclaimed by the church fathers in 440 A.D. as a sincretism between the new religion of the Roman Empire and the tradition of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, observed near the winter solstice, which was among the many pagan traditions inherited from the earlier Babylonian priesthood. [3]
So the, just when was Jesus born? Although the Bible doesn’t explicitly identify the birthday of our Lord, many scholars have developed diverse opinions as to the likely birthday of Jesus.
The Year of Jesus’ Birth
In the other hand, the year of Jesus’ birth is broadly accepted as 4 B.C., primarily from erroneous conclusions derived from Josephus’ recording of an eclipse, assumed to be on March 13, 4 B.C., “shortly before Herod died.” There are a number of problems with this, in addition to the fact that it was more likely the eclipse to happened on December 29, 1 .B.C. Considerable time elapsed between Jesus’ birth and Herod’s death since the family fled to Egypt to escape Herod’ edict and they didn’t return until after Herod’s death.[4] Furthermore, Herod died on January 14, 1 B.C. [5]
Fact: Tertullian, (born about 160 A.D.) stated that Augustus began to rule 41 years before the birth of Jesus and died 15 years after that event. [6] Augustus’ died on August 19, 14 A.D., placing Jesus’ birth at 2. B.C. [7]
Fact: Tertullian also notes that Jesus was born 28 years after the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C., which is consistent with a date of 2 B.C.
Fact: Iraneus, born about a century after Jesus, also notes that the Lord was born in the 41st year of the reign of Augustus. Since Augustus began his reign in the autumn of 43 B.C., this also appears to substantiate the birth in 2 B.C.
Fact: Eusebius (264-340 A.D.), the “Father of Church History,” ascribes it to the 42nd year of the reign of Augustus and the 28th from the subjection of Egypt on the death of Anthony and Cleopatra. [8] The 42nd year of Augustus ran from the autumn of 2 B.C. to the autumn of 1 B.C. The subjugation of Egypt into the Roman Empire occurred in the autumn of 30 B.C. The 28th year extended from the autumn of 3 B.C. to the autumn of 2 B.C. the only date that would meet both of these constraints would be the autumn of 2 B.C.
John the Baptist
Fact: Other approach to determining the date of Jesus’ birth is from information about John the Baptist. Elizabeth, John’s mother, was a cousin of Mary and the wife of a priest named Zacharias, who was the “course” of Abijah. [9]
(Priests were divided into 24 courses[10] and each course officiated in the Temple for one week, from Sabbath to Sabbath.)
When the Temple was destroyed by Titus on August 5, 70 A.D., the first course of priests had just taken office. [11]
Since the course of Abijah was the 8th course, we can track backwards and determine that Zacharias ended his duties on July 13, 3 B.C. If the birth of John took place 280 days later, it would have been on April 19-20, 2 B.C., precisely on Passover of that year. The birth of John and the birth of Jesus was separated by 5 months. Therefore, we have again the autumn of 2 B.C. as Jesus’ probable birthdate.
Fact: John began his ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. [12] The minimum age for the ministry was 30. [13] As Augustus died on August 19, 14 A.D., that was the accession year for Tiberius. If John was born on April 19-20, 2 B.C., his 30th birthday would have been April 19-20, 29 A.D., or the 15th year of Tiberius. This seems to confirm the 2 B.C. date and, since John was 5 months older, this also confirms the autumn birthdate for Jesus.
John’s repeated introduction of Jesus as “The Lamb of God” [14] is interesting if John was indeed born on Passover.
Jesus’ Birthdate
CONCLUSION: Elizabeth hid herself for 5 months and then the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary both Elizabeth’s condition and that Mary would also bear a son who would be called Jesus. Mary went “with haste” to visit Elizabeth, who was then in the first week of her 6th month, or the 4th week of December, 3 B.C. If Jesus was born 280 days later it would place his birth on September 29, 2 B.C.
Notes:
- Luke 2:8.
- Matthew 24:20.
- Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, Loizeaux, Neptune NJ, 1916.
- Matthew 2:15, 19-22.
- Magillath Ta’anith, an ancient Jewish scroll contemporary with Jesus.
- Tert. adv Judaeous, c.8.
- No year 0 between B.C. and A.D.
- Eccle. Hist., i.5. 9.
- Luke 1:5, 8-13, 23-24.
- 1 Chronicles 24:7-19.
- Both the Talmud and Josephus confirm this.
- Luke 3:1.
- Numbers 4:3.
- John 1:29, 36.