15.

Luxor

Saturday, March 16 - 11:25p.m.

When Mike left the stage, people tried to follow him to ask him questions and to be healed. Between his stage performance and dealing with Sarah, he was emotionally and physically exhausted, so he left as quickly as he could. He got on his Harley and rode down Las Vegas boulevard to the strip. When he got to the end of the strip, to the Luxor Hotel Casino, he had an idea. He parked the bike and went inside.

The Luxor hotel was a full-size model of the great pyramid at Giza crowned with a huge light that burned a path skyward. Its grounds were decorated with Ancient Egyptian statues and symbols and as he looked around, memories from his past-life as Jesus flooded his mind. When Jesus was still in the womb, king Herod, in an attempt to circumvent a prophecy, had devised a plan to have all firstborn male children–including Jesus–killed. To avoid this decree, Mary and Joseph fled Nazareth, eventually stopping in the small village of Bethlehem when the baby wouldn’t wait any longer. After the birth, they decided to move to a distant land to protect the boy. Although there is no reference to it in the Bible, they deemed Egypt to be the safest location, and they relocated. The exotic decor of the Luxor reminded Mike of the Egypt that he grew up in as the young boy Yehoshua.

He didn’t realize his mission on Earth back then; the seeds of his enlightenment had only just begun to sprout. He had always been the kid asking questions, and not simple questions, either. Why does the world exist? How do we know when something is real and when it’s not? Where do babies come from? Why is there so much pain, suffering, hunger and disease in the world? Such questions endlessly flowed from the child as he grew up.

He had fallen into favor with one of Egypt’s wisest men, Anankatem–Anan for short–who was long considered holy by his peers. He remembered late-night discussions with Anan about the nature of reality. One time he asked him, “My parents are Jews and they have their God Yahweh, but the Romans, Babylonians and Egyptians each have their pantheons of gods too. They’re all different, but aren’t they really all the same? Which God is the real one, the one who created the world?” Anan replied, “There’s only one God and that is your Father in heaven. It doesn’t matter if you call him Ahura Mazda, Horus, Zeus or Jehovah. They’re all different words for the same thing. People should not fight over words, especially the word they use for God. They should dip into the wellspring of their Love, and in that wellspring, they will find their creator. And from that love, they should find tolerance for their differences.”

Anan was a wise man, but heresies like that eventually cost him his life. The Pharaoh had him dragged to death behind horses while the teenage boy Yehoshua watched. He was so saddened at the loss of his friend that he decided Egypt was too barbaric. He decided to return to his birthplace of Israel, hoping his own people would be more enlightened. However, when he returned to Israel he was outraged by the closed-minded hypocrites he encountered there. He wondered, “Why can’t people just love one another?” It was there that he first met John the Baptist, who ignited the fire of his ministry. He stepped on the wrong toes, and eventually his heresies cost him his life too, but he accepted his death because he knew it served God’s purpose. He was consoled by the memory of Anan’s courage and conviction in death and how he stood up for what he believed in the face of adversity.

Now, two thousand years later, he was finally back as Mike, but the Luxor hotel stood before him, not as a monument to the great ancient Egyptian civilization, but to gratuitous self-indulgence, entertainment and greed.

Mike had never been a gambler. He lived in the gambling capital of the world, and yet when he could afford the money, which wasn’t often, he always knew better. He could never remember a time when there wasn’t a new hotel under construction on the strip. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the casinos were rich because the gamblers who flocked there by the millions almost always lost money. He believed there were three kinds of people in Las Vegas: the gamblers who lost money, the casino owners who gained it, and the poor people like him who supported the industry. Most people want to believe in luck, but he believed only in statistics. Smart people simply didn’t gamble because the odds weren’t fair.

However, the last time he had gambled–at the Tropicana–he had done very well. He had attributed it to psychic powers. That was before his out-of-body experience and meeting Joe. Now he remembered who he had been in his past-life, and as Jesus, he remembered how to manipulate matter and energy. He didn’t have to settle for sensing which slot machine would pay off, he could actually make a machine pay out. And wouldn’t that be fun?

He had been poor all his life. His mother could barely afford to feed her kids, but now he had the world at his fingertips. He had the casino owners by the balls. He could take as much money as he wanted from them, and maybe it wasn’t for selfish reasons, he told himself. He could play Robin Hood, take from the unjustly rich and give it to the poor.

He walked through the smoke-filled Luxor with a smile on his face, past rows of noisy machines ending up near a set of blackjack tables and wondered which game he should play first.

Just then a fuzzy shape started forming next to him. It was a translucent figure, but Mike could make out curly red hair and dark sunglasses. The ghostlike form was smiling from ear to ear.

“Joe, is that you?” he asked the ghost.

“Yep.”

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought I could only see you in an out-of-body experience.”

“Nah. I can appear any time. Besides, you’d do the same for me.”

“Do what, Joe?”

Joe’s vibration level was high enough to render him invisible to everyone but Mike, and people sitting at the blackjack table nearby looked up and saw Mike talking to thin air. The dealer said, “I guess they’re not all locked up,” and wondered if he should call security. The rest of the people at his table just chuckled, but some kept watching Mike.

“I’m here to remind you.” Joe said.

“Remind me of what?”

Joe cleared his throat and spoke like a smooth car salesman giving a pitch. “All this I would give to you,” he said as he took off his sunglasses to reveal his half-Asian eyes, “if you bow down and worship me. Sound familiar?”

Mike was stunned. He had been asked a similar question as Christ. During his temptation in the desert. The Bible said he was tempted by Satan and offered all the cities of the world, but in reality Mike knew it was a metaphor. He had countered, “What good is gaining the world if I lose my soul? Get thee behind me, Satan.”

The whole lesson came crashing down on Mike as the blackjack players watched him suspiciously. He thought, These coins and bills are just distractions. They have no value. They are empty. They can only lead me away from my true purpose. He chuckled and joked, “Get thee behind me, Joe.”

“Ah, I see you got the message,” Joe said. “If you piss away your time here on Earth, all you’re going to get in the end is just that: a whole lot of piss.” Mike was amused that Joe wasn’t like other teachers. He talked like one of the guys, without the “Holier than thou” attitude that he encountered in the church of his youth. “Besides, the poor people are poor for a reason, and the rich people are rich for a reason. If you robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, it would only interfere with both of their life-lessons, and you would be doing them more harm than good, spiritually speaking of course.”

Mike said, “You’re right. But if you focus on Love, you will find peace. We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we Joe?” People stared at Mike, talking to the air.

“Yes we have.” Joe grinned. “But back then, people thought you were talking to the dead prophets like Elijah. These people just think you’re crazy.”

“Who cares what they think?” replied Mike. “They’re the crazy ones.” And he was right.

“Roger that,” Joe said, and disappeared.

He had meant to ask Joe about what happened to Barabbas after Jesus’ death, maybe even give him a hard time about the way he had handled his ministry after the crucifixion, but he had forgotten. Now Joe was gone and it was too late, but he had the feeling he would “see” Joe again.

As he walked back to his Harley, he remembered the words of his friend Anan in Egypt. “The greatest challenge in life is also the greatest joy: To understand that love is all there is and to make it manifest, to bring it to the surface of our lives. To love and be loved.” The words also reminded him of the song, Nature Boy: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” But how does a rock and roll singer get the whole world to understand that? he wondered. Somehow he felt that Jennifer was the key because she was encouraging him, showing him how to direct his focus.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

Someone asked him, “Are you the chosen one?”

He said, “There’s nothing special about me. Did I not say, ‘Not me, but He who sent me?’ Did I not say, ‘Thy will, not mine, be done?’ Let no man or woman be singled out as God, for we are all God’s chosen ones. We are all here for a purpose. We all have some lesson to be learned or some mission to accomplish. We are all teachers and all students. We are all messengers of the Word, and the Word is Love.”