85. My Childhood Was Not Perfect

My trust in the Father and my leaning upon the Father did not come to me at once. That was a long and tedious path to my mind of the animal genetic inheritance. All the time my mind did not trust many things, like your mind does, it doubted many things, it did not comprehend many things, and all the time it was questioning and searching.

And you must not be scared of not knowing a lot; just ask questions and search. Your animal ego does not allow you to ask that which you do not know. Ask without any fear for there is no man on the world who knows everything. In that case all creation would fall to pieces since growing would lose its meaning. And growth is possible as one can know and experience ever more and share that knowledge and experience with those who are in search of this and who desire to experience it. Therefore, do not stifle your ego with the fetters of fear but rather boldly ask questions and investigate.

At the present time you are the real scientists-researchers who walk on an untrodden path while asking yourselves questions and searching for answers, getting acquainted with the achievements of others and applying them in your own research. Do not be afraid to investigate both your lives and yourselves. The more you investigate the more you experience.

And by no means be afraid of mistakes. There is no one infallible. Even those who claim that I have lived my life without erring are wrong. I was not a robot or a machine programmed beforehand. I also had emotions and outbursts of irritation. Only you do not know it because you have not read the narratives of my life anywhere.

Had I been different than all other children I would not have been understood by my friends. I could not stand out from the others. I was a restless child. I also enjoyed running around and climbing up the mountains like the other children. Therefore my mother would worry that no accident would happen with me. Being totally absorbed in playing with my friends like other children, I would not come home in time and would be scolded by my parents for coming home late, but I looked upon this scolding, as did all my friends, as an inevitable means, on the part of the parents, in their children’s up-bringing. I got into a habit of communing with the Father at an early age because I noticed that neither my friends, nor my parents, nor my teachers could explain to me anything clearly about God because those scriptures that the Jews adored so much seemed to me to be untrue and lacking answers that would satisfy me. Therefore, my association with the Father, my conversations with the Father as I used to call them, soothed me. Had I been supplied with more profound answers by my parents, or my friends, or my teachers, maybe I would have searched for them less from the Father, maybe I would have caused even more trouble to my parents, friends, and teachers.

However, my inquisitiveness and restlessness caused plenty of problems to many. I was not a bully. But, I never avoided conflicts to defend somebody else or myself. That is true I never provoked them, neither did I react to them right away. However, many a time I came home after my clashes with children feeling anger that they had been so silly as to resort at once to fist fighting. I did not like it altogether but I never gave anyone a chance to call me a coward. Even the children who were my senior I treated the way I dealt with the children of my age. Therefore, I was flogged by them many a time. But you must understand one essential thing that Nazareth was a small city where everyone knew each other and therefore there could be no such severe conflicts that would produce very painful consequences that are produced by the contemporary conflicts, even among the teenagers. At that time man’s strong fear of the punishment of God made him, from his very young days, keep in mind this attitude of God to any misdeed.

Life in Nazareth had more freedom than that in the villages and cities of Judea. Therefore, there was more fist fighting among the teenagers here than in Judea. Galilee had a poor reputation among the Judean Pharisees and rabbis. Therefore, according to their understanding, apart from merely problems, nothing good might come out of Galilee that would please God Jahve. Thus, our childish clashes were absolutely possible since our education was not that strict as it was among the Jews of Judea.

In your narratives or writings, when you present me as the one who was only good and only the embodiment of God’s love, you portray me merely from the outside. You do not say anything about my inner feelings and sufferings, which none of you could have ever either known or understood. These are known only to me and to my Father. And no one else other than me can reflect the definite episodes of my life.

Meanwhile, not all of them have been only the outbursts of the Father’s love in my life. But the relationship with the Father, ever deeper attracting me from within, ever more enabling me to experience a real impact, allowed me to feel that there was something certain in it and that I was missing this certainty in my relationship with my parents and friends. Therefore, I was leaning upon this relationship within me ever more. It was this relationship that kept me away from the faulty actions that were common at that time among the young men of the Jews such as wine drinking and entertainment with women.

However, I was seeking this relationship not only by my own efforts but also by an incomprehensible-to-me attraction from within. It was really pleasant to feel that peace and bliss within my own self. And this pleasant attraction let me experience that in this relationship there was something much deeper than my human mind could comprehend and explain to others. Therefore, I had to keep all this within me. To keep it within me, since I could not explain even to myself what was transpiring within me, in my mind, that even I was afraid to reveal to others.

This state of mine provided me with both a pleasure from within that I knew some secret, and anxiety in my mind since I did not know what it was. But all the same my inquisitive mind, that mind of the animal legacy, was searching for answers as to who was the source of that pleasant feeling and inner peace, so that I was less disturbed and irritated by even the silly actions of my contemporaries, by their attacks, as I began to react ever less to the remarks fired by them that I was turning ever more into a dreamer-philosopher.