Diary: Coffee talk hints and ativities:

~~I’m up early today, relate yesterday’s Jack’s talk hints and my Mani essay plans.~~

My first laundry load it awaiting its eight o’clock moment. This time point I got used to in my previous apartment, where that was management’s rule. This out of consideration for the occupiers of the unit adjacent to the noisy laundry machines.

I was out taking a quick picture of the Patisserie with its newly painted trees, because the sun was lighting up the whole scene from just the right angle. As you may deduce, I was the early bird catching that poor worm, this morning!

For lunch later on, I’ll be at Rene’s, who invited me last night to come over and I chose today on account of the nice temps. He has a garden and I don’t, so I like to make use of that when the chance arises.

Yesterday aft Jack and I had a long talk over a two coffees. I had asked him for a critique relating to my talk of last Sunday. I knew that this presentation was not a good one and he was so kind to ‘let me have it’-:). On the contrary, he uses stories and examples to get the point across, so I have to translate what he says into what it means for me.

The long and the short of it is, that I forgot about my audience while preparing for this presentation and while making it.

The long and the short of it is, that I forgot about my audience while preparing for this presentation and while making it. Not good! But, I’m still working on why this happened to the extend that it did and that has to do with ‘the message of Mani’ in a personal way.

Last night I straitened and sorted my notes from Sunday’s presentation and retuned to my half completed essay. I kind of surprised myself with this action, because all the other times I would let those presentation notes just be, until later and much later at times.

I now have all the different corrections collected into the 4th essay version and ready to be implemented. However, the essay will have to be expanded considerably as well. One is the completion and rounding out of the present material, secondly I want to show how Mani’s teachings in various forms are still around today. Thirdly there is the interpretation of the Mani’s message as a stage in religious thought and concept development taken over time in human cultural history.
[8:00am!; but there was an earlier bird, so I’ll wait about ten minutes. And now it is 8:16 after my edit. And better luck now; that first load is in and the dryer will be ready in 50 minutes.]

Writings: Following threads across time:

~~In the aftermath of my presentation, I explore notions of connectedness to events of around 2000 first, with a sense of stretching further back into history relating to Gnosis in its time.~~

Below follows a note on the way I am experiencing the preparation for my talk on Mani and its aftermath, even now today after my discussion with Jack yesterday.

There is an aspect of personal involvement at play with this subject and its historical significance. It is akin to my ‘Cathar’ experience back in 1999/ 2000. At that time Jeltsje and I discussed the Cathar’s history and ideas. There was also a similar sense of a connection with my friends who were visiting Southern France that summer, when Tom and I stayed in their house in June of 1999.

When I was back here for the summer of 2000, I even spotted a 1998 published book by M. Lambert titled “The Cathars”! And I followed up with a visit to the “Bibliotheca Hermetica” in Amsterdam’s Bloem straat in 2001. It led nowhere, but the felt connection remained.

So, here I am again feeling this same engagement with not just the topic, but also the experience of Mani the person, the Manichaean and their beliefs and experiences. It was this feeling of involvement that informed me that I had to stay true and be accurate in my representation of Mani’s message and not give it my interpretation.

I had to use in part the words as Jonas gives them on pages 230, 234 and 235 of his book “The Gnostic Religion”. I had to say that this way ‘from the platform’ for people to hear in our world today. Very symbolic, but not very helpful to the ‘hearers’ of my presentation.

I am not finished with this feeling of connectedness across so many centuries, but I know from experience that subtle as this may be, such a sense of intuited awareness must not be denied.

So, it is to me as if I was connected to those times of Mani and had to say the words that people of that time said about his message, which closes on page 235 with: “This is the Knowledge of Mani, let us worship him and bless him.” With this very quote I closed off my talk; maybe not very smart, but I felt compelled to convey the nature of the belief so held at that time.

I am not finished with this feeling of connectedness across so many centuries, but I know from experience that subtle as this may be, such a sense of intuited awareness must not be denied. It often reminds me of the saying in the gospel of Thomas: “ Express what within you, lest it destroy you.”

I have learned to make room for such intuitions and guide them to conscious expression. After all this would only be in line with my earlier expressed conviction that ‘consciousness is continuous’ and this may just be the way we humans become aware of that and then can use it!!

There was a certain inevitability about the way my presentation ‘Mani’s Lost message’ came to be expressed last Sunday and the way I prepared for that, which is still reverberating at this writing!
<9:21am and with edit 9:43am~