Being One's Own Prophet
   
   
   
   
   
   Mohammed the prophet commenced a prophetic challenge to the politically
motivated non-prophetic more literal redesign, by Emperor Constantine's
associates, of Abraham's trinity and of the idea of identity sacrifice by
religious renunciants. Abraham was the originator of the single God idea,
apparently inspired by the unusually intelligent mysterious voice that
speaks in the minds of people on a vision quest.
   The trinity idea refers to a collective social presence, a new child who
has no separate identity and a divine spiritual force guiding the collective
presence. The identity sacrifice is a conventional method of spiritual study
in which a person temporarily sets aside the social labeling that they took
on as a child, in order to be able to get a clearer view of the real world
around them. The Catholic committee converted these three spiritual aspects
into an image of a solitary divine split personality acting on people's
lives invasively or even maliciously, and a literal horrible execution of an
incarnation of one part of this three part personality.
   The catholic committee set aside the focus on the Jewish progression of
prophets, and converted Jesus into a sacrificed aspect of God rather than a
divinely inspired spokesperson for the mysterious subtle intelligence in
everybody. Mohammed and the Gnostic christians insisted that Jesus was a
regular person, special only in being the next prophet in the line
commenced by Abraham. Mohammed also insisted that he was the prophet after
Jesus, and that the divine intelligence recommends friendliness and a
moderation of personal commercial ambition.
   He suggested that each major prophet pulls their listeners a bit further
out of animal-like self-centered life direction into a more clearly refined
cultural recognition of the divine voice. I think a prophet's listeners are
inevitably people who seek and appreciate simplistic definitive answers to
ridiculous questions about being alive. That I can tell, actual government
leaders and cultural or technical innovators generally give only a pretense
of recognition of any of this, if at all.
   I think that Abraham's monotheistic God idea was an attempt to win
recognition for the divine inner voice as a determiner of right living,
rather than use of choreographic tradition, as is common matriarchical
practice. I view the Catholic committee as a re-emergence of the use of
choreographic tradition, overlaid onto Abraham's religion.
   Abraham began his religion with an appeal for reverence and
deliberateness in the evoking of pregnancy, so as to make possible a
deliberate participation by a literal father in the identity formation of
his newborn child, as women always do with newborn daughters. Unfortunately
this resulted in a brutal prohibition on orgasmic interest among teenagers,
creating menstrual cramping, painful childbirth, inspiration to commit
rape, and a general conviction that people are innately born flawed.
   Abraham also included an appeal for everyone to be careful about
potential for both good and evil in pursuit of technological development,
with an allegorical story about a woman exploring it.
   I believe that his concern arose from the results in Sumerian culture of
the introduction of the domestic technology of the Kurdish highlands. I
think that the harsh climate and relative lack of warfare threats, in the
area near Lake Van in eastern Turkey, created a seed-ground for domestic
innovation by women, wherein stored food could be kept from rotting fairly
easily, the inspiration to recognize and protect tiny growing plants was
spontaneous, fire was in constant use for many purposes and would have
accidental effects, and animals normally hunted could be befriended by
raising young ones orphaned by winter.
   The influence of male perspective on the women's innovations was what
I think concerned Abraham. He observed that stored food, and protected
plants and livestock, created new targets for male warfare interest. The
creation of metal tools also immediately inspired new ideas for weaponry.
Thus the problems of theft and murder escalated once the innovations were
imported into areas where soil fertility and abundant raw materials made
huge excesses possible.
   The Sumerian culture developed barter, measured trade units, and record
keeping as well, to cope with the complexity of big scale commerce between
strangers. Leaders were thus forced to referee and declare artificial
entitlements, as in the code of King Hammurabi of Babylon. At the time of
Abraham there were no clear commercial expectations in his culture and much
lamenting to him, as a leader, about the tragedies resulting.
   Two basic approaches to coping with this have emerged since then, in the
form of leaders who can ride a wave of cultural devotion to a bloodline,
and in the form of leaders who can inspire awe from a majority of their
associates. On his deathbed, Mohammed was harassed by his associates to
declare policy about this one way or another, but he resisted and died
without saying an answer. The result was a fairly even split between the
Sunnite sect that approves the policy set by the first man to take
leadership after the death of Mohammed, of leadership through consensus
nomination of someone, and the Shiite sect that press for recognition of
the bloodline of Mohammed in deciding leadership.
   I think what Mohammed wanted, and maybe what all the prophets wanted,
was to see an emergence of multiple prophets during their lifetime. Dying
without seeing that, they don't know what to say. The Bible tells the story
of the Prophet Samuel being harassed about this, due to his sons being
clearly unworthy of devotion, and Moses laments the lack of other prophets
in his time.
   So I will aspire to channel divine intelligence, to be a prophet, at
least for direction of my own life, and encourage likewise of everyone
else.
   
 
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