We have those moments of inspired clarity when we see who we are and want to be, and the life we desire to live. And then real life starts happening again! What if those visions you see about yourself and your life in those flashes of lucidity were your real life?
Who are the people with the raw materials and capacity to create, be and express the person and life that resonates with their deepest self and desires? You! Are you a human being? Good; you’re in! If it’s true that we all have this potential within ourselves, why aren’t we being who we know ourselves to be and living the life we see in those epiphanies?
I have 50 copies of Being Jesus in Nashville en route to me from my publisher. If you’re interested in receiving a signed copy and making a donation to the Tourette Syndrome Association, let me know. Most of you know that I have Tourette’s. The books are $20 each, and $5 of each book will be donated to the TSA. You can make your payment through PayPal, and I will reserve a copy for you. You can find me on PayPal through my email: nobody.jimpalmer@gmail.com. I’ll cover shipping costs.
So, I’ve been thinking about personal transformation in my own life and the lives of those I coach. In 2005 I began shedding religion to find God and wrote two books about my journey: Divine Nobodies, and Wide Open Spaces. Shedding religion led to a deconstruction of my personal identity as I was unsure who I was disentangled from the mentalities that made me into a religious “Christian” automaton. Interestingly enough it was Jesus who set me free from my Christianity, which is the story I tell in my latest book, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life (whoever and wherever you are).
I’m seeing that personal transformation involves keeping a few promises. First, there’s a a promise to yourself. Are you worth living a life of fulfillment? Is who you are for the world a big enough deal for you to become a fully expressed person? How interested are you in knowing and experiencing yourself as a whole and complete human being? Transformation begins with an empowering relationship with yourself, which includes seeing yourself as someone who is worth what transformation has to offer. If you are reading this post, YOU are worth living a life of fulfillment, it is a huge deal for YOU to be fully expressed, and YOU were meant to know and experience yourself as the whole and complete human being that YOU are. I think religion can stand in the way of making this promise to ourselves. If we are “filthy rags” in the eyes of God, are we really worth a anything at all other than compliance to the rules and rituals of religion?
I set off on a journey searching for Jesus… and found myself… and then discovered these weren’t two mutually exclusive and separate things. I’m guessing the above song won’t be in any Easter services today, but I’m feeling it in my heart this morning.
So, there’s that despairing view of life encapsulated in the popular idiom, “Life sucks and then you die.” Hmm… what to do. The dictionary says that “sucks” is “an expression of disappointment.” Okay, well then, life sucks sometimes. Like, TOTALLY sucks! There are several ways life sucks for me lately. I won’t blather on about them.
But is Life supposed to suck? And if so, how much? And if “life sucks” is the human condition, are we supposed to embrace this or transcend it or both or neither? It seems like like sucks sometimes because the human condition is one of limitations.
What if all us divine nobodies gave religion up for Lent, and what if we started a new conversation this Easter about a religion-free Jesus? On April 12th, Jim Henderson and I are going to be teaming up on a Cloud Call to launch the effort. If you’ve never been on a Cloud Call, they are a blast! Jim Henderson, author and founder of Off The Map, has perfected the art of hosting them.
Jim asked me to be his featured guest on his next Cloud Call on April 12. He and I are both giving up religion for Lent, and we’re going to be discussing the religious-free Jesus I discovered during my year of being Jesus in Nashville. We’re wanting this Cloud Call to gain some media attention and hopefully create a different kind of public conversation about Jesus during this Easter season, a religion-free Jesus.
It’s $3.99 to register and participate, and every registered participant will receive something fun for me The call can only have 200 participants, so register soon. Please share the Cloud Call link with your network, and lets make this thing happen together! Thanks.
The cover for Being Jesus in Nashville has sparked lots of curiosity and even stirred up some controversy. Hmm… is there anything about this book that isn’t controversial??? I guess that’s why it got the warning label – “WARNING: Rejected by Major Christian Publisher.”
When you write for a publishing house you have a voice in the cover design but you don’t really want to have a battle over it and so the author normally defers to the publisher. But deciding to self-publish, I’ve really enjoyed having more artistic license in the process. As my Facebook friends know, I use images with most things I post. For me, the images are just as important as whatever the text is conveying. I’m eclectic, I like edgy images, and the ones I choose are often mind-benders in terms of their meaning. Ahhh… just the way I like it!
“So, I found out that you can purchase the ebook version of Being Jesus in Nashville on the site of iUniverse, who published it. See the attached link below. It will also be available as an ebook on Amazon in a couple weeks. The ebook cost is $3.99, which allows you to buy additional copies for all your friends, neighbors, long lost cousins, and random people you meet in the street. lol. Seriously, a number of you have asked about the ebook version and that’s the update.”
The call can only have 200 participants, so register soon. Please 
