Feeding the world

What bread to be

Simply being bread isn’t enough

How can I feed the world? Indeed: once I have accepted that my mission in the world is to ‘be bread’ (see previous article here), I must decide what kind of ‘bread’ I want to be; or ‘can be’

Img. Stephanie Monot, Pixabay

There are thousands of types of bread in the world: taken literally, bread is a staple food for countless human civilisations, those that have developed around cereals. Whether in the form of chapattis or baguettes, it is always bread.

Using the concept of ‘bread’ in a metaphorical sense, as intended in these articles, there are billions of forms of bread, practically one for every human being. By this I mean that each person, in some way, nourishes their neighbour for who they are, simply by existing, in a wholly original way. The way of ‘nourishing’ I have just described consists of relationships between people.

Not all of these unintentional loaves are ‘nourishing’ or healthy for those who receive them. In fact, the quality of this particular nourishment depends on the stage of development of the person who pours themselves into the relationship.

Feeding the world in the Master’s words

Recently, I have been delving deeper into the teachings of a Master who is very dear to me: Jeshua ben Yussaf, commonly known as Jesus of Nazareth. This is not the place to undertake a detailed analysis of Jeshua’s teachings, nor to set out my own thoughts on them.

However, accessing Jeshua’s direct testimony through Daniel Meurois’s books has opened up new, immense horizons for me. The books in question are the two volumes of *The Secret life of Jeshua*, published by Ariane (Note: volume II not available in English at time of writing). I highly recommend them to anyone who feels a kinship with Christ’s teachings in their heart and possesses the open-mindedness necessary to explore an unusual source.

Now, accepting the idea that the essence of the Master’s message was Love, it is clear that the most important thing is, to use His words, ‘to love one another as He has loved us’. All of this must be put into practice.

The best bread is made with love

Putting such a revolutionary teaching into practice is challenging, yet the recipe is simple and within everyone’s reach; here it is, ingredient by ingredient:

• Do everything with love. I can already hear the first objections: “How am I supposed to love the daily nuisances I face?” This point is resolved by the following ingredient;
• Take responsibility for every event in our lives: we choose them. Yes, each of us is much more than a machine made of bones, muscles and blood. We are manifestations of souls with unlimited potential; we come into the world with tasks to fulfil and lessons to learn: that is why we choose our experiences. How does it work? The third ingredient helps us understand;
• Understanding the Law of Attraction. “Oh sure, that New Age stuff that says if you want a million euros, just think positively and it’ll come to you… Yeah, right!” No, it doesn’t work like that. It works like this: depending on who you are and what awareness you have, Life reflects that back to you through situations and experiences. So the following ingredient helps you improve your experience;
• Practising mindfulness, one of the cornerstones of Buddhist practice. But also of Christianity, because if you wish to be ready to welcome the one who comes ‘like a thief in the night’ (Matthew 24:43–44), you must stay alert. By paying attention to our inner stirrings, thoughts, emotions and reactions, we can understand where we stand and move towards awakening;
• Ensure that your aim is the common good. We are social animals, destined to live in communities, however they may be organised. Of course, each person is suited to a different role, but our true prosperity and health depend on that of the social community in which we live. Therefore, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Hence, the next ingredient;
• Practise restraint in speech. A great Master of the last century, Jiddhu Krishnamurti, taught that before breaking the silence, we should ensure that the words we were about to speak were: true, loving, and helpful. How much silence there would be in the world if we practised this teaching: to speak only with truth, love, and exclusively when it is helpful in generating something good;
• Finally, let us love one another, just as He has shown us how to love. How can we do this? Personally, I find that the most useful trick for achieving this – at least for parents – is to imagine that the person we are interacting with is our own child. To act as though they were standing right in front of us, rather than the person who is actually there at that moment. It’s a trick that usually works quite well.

Knead, prove, bake

If this is the recipe – perhaps enhanced with a few seeds or herbs to add a personal touch – it becomes clearer what sort of bread I want to be.

Life has kneaded me with a series of experiences, from the loss of a daughter to the betrayal of those close to me at critical moments, and a thousand others. As mentioned above, these are experiences that I have, in some way, ‘invited’ into my life to grow in awareness. Now that they are behind me, I can be grateful for them: I have learnt great lessons from them.

The many teachers I have met over the course of a life spent searching for a deeper level of reality – some excellent, others terrible, it matters not – have been responsible for making me rise. Considering also that every person we meet is a messenger of Life, the lessons accumulated have been many. A few missteps, taken more than once, have ensured I was kneaded again, between one cycle of rising and the next. To top it all off…

What put me in the oven was the rediscovery of the Master whom, in a wholly inadequate manner, they had tried to offer me in my childhood. To pass on a Master’s teaching, two ingredients are needed: a teacher who has understood it and practises it intensely, and a receptive pupil. It took its time to bake, but now the colouring is, if not perfect, acceptable enough to go on the counter.

Being bread, at last

And so here I am, fully aware that I have a kind of bread to offer that some may like, others less so, and which some might even find hard to stomach. But it doesn’t matter. I know – and I’ve seen plenty of proof of this – that it can be a vital source of nourishment for some.

When you realise you want to be bread, and feel the urge to offer yourself, the need to ‘chase numbers’ fades away. Being bread can certainly take place within a profession, but it is not a business. It is not sold through marketing or SEO. The Word of truth can be uncomfortable; it may even be outdated and not to the algorithms’ liking. It does not seek their favour.

That Word flows from heart to heart, and is transmitted on frequencies that do not travel via fibre optics, but via Light. Its CMO is Life, and it is Life that sends your newsletter to those who need to receive it, ensuring it reaches them at the very moment they need such bread.

The key word for being bread in the sense I have understood it is ‘trust’. As the Master said: if you desire something, believe that you have already received it, give thanks, and it will be given to you.

There you have it, bread is here.