The Non-Manifesto

AKA: Christian Mystics Manifesto

We are in rebellion, but we aren’t doing anything. Our rebellion is against this whole plane of existence, so considerations of doing and being are missing the point. We aren’t taking over anything; we don’t even pretend to take our own lives back from anyone or anything. This life is a prison, and whomever or whatever is welcome to it.

The only real manifesto we could offer is the way we face our existence on this plane. Each of us in our individual choices and actions, whether there be any perception of success or failure by any measure on this plane, is a manifesto. The labels are offered back to those who use them. We didn’t create them, only use them. The only reason anyone bothers to compose a manifesto in words is to make sure readers know we aren’t anything they expect.

If you have to ask, there is little we can do to help you. But it’s our nature to assay the impossible.

Nothing we have and nothing we do really matters in itself. That is, unless we catch ourselves turning away from our fundamental commitments. Those commitments are what we are, so to speak. We are committed to something which has no words, but we find some glimmer of useful meaning in words to point to those wordless commitments: peace, love, understanding, truth, empathy, welcome… But in actuality, nothing with a name is worth saving, simply because anything for which those names actually fit properly is not a thing of value to us.

We don’t care about this world. It’s just a place to which we are bound for a period we don’t determine, and we are eager to leave. Life is not precious, as commonly defined. It may be valuable to a lot of those who are in it, but not to us. We belong to another Life of another kind, and on another plane. That other Life is our agenda.

Thus, our manifesto is simply raising awareness of it. To do that, we end up rejecting just about everything everyone else holds dear. We are utterly certain this world can’t be fixed. We know there is a good way to pass through it, but humanity has spent their whole time on this plane trying to avoid that way. They have sought every way under the sun to replace it with something else, things absolutely guaranteed to fail every time. We point that out when we can.

Thus, we give allegiance to something which no earthly authority accepts. In return, we reject all earthly authority, in the sense we take none of them seriously. Going to take my stuff, confine me, cause me pain, take my life? I tremble not. Those things are surely in the power of earthly authority, but they just do not matter. There is something inside which cannot be touched by any earthly power, yet it can overturn the whole world when that serves the higher purpose for which we live.

We have no particular plans, just urges we cannot name, and which we will obey at any cost. While it is vaguely possible we might by necessity run over some folks and their little empires, it’s unlikely for the most part we’ll do anything to harm anyone. Then again, there is the question of measuring harm, and we reject standard definitions, even as we are thoroughly aware of them. We don’t care about what you care about, unless you are one of us. We can’t make you one of us, but we welcome you if you turn that way. It’s what we hope for, but we aren’t foolish enough to confuse cause and result. We can’t touch the cause of turning, only rejoice when we see it.

So we aren’t being anything, aren’t doing anything, but we refuse to conform. We are playing along with something you won’t ever understand until you find yourself in it.