The Modern Day Messiahs
In the the game of life, whose team are you on?
May 25, 2007 — -- In days gone by, our messiahs wore robes, parted seas, were conceived through miraculous circumstances and died for our sins.
And to receive the Word, and deliver it to their flocks, they usually needed donkeys, lots of sand, lightning, fire, floods and a mountaintop.
But today, thanks to the blessings of modern technology from DVDs and podcasts, to audiobooks and the Web, inner peace or salvation is just a nanosecond away. Never have the secrets to financial and emotional success been so easy to achieve, or at least find.
My spiritual guide and new BFF Marianne Williamson has created a monthly telephone conference call called the Miracle Matrix, which she bills as a "private, intimate community." Ironic, sure, but effective.
Really, you would have to be oblivious not to have seen or heard of at least a few of these modern day messiahs. They come in a never ending variety of flavas -- just like Ben & Jerry's ice cream!
And they're not like the press-savvy (starved?) demigods so loved by the previous generation -- Jerry Faldwell, Billy Graham, Jim and Tammy Faye Baaker (the last my makeover co-star in the indie hit "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), even Jesse Jackson, with whom I recently marched in New Orleans. These stars of the '70s and '80s all had a heavy dose of ego and self-righteous indignation, and in regards to media coverage, subscribed to the ancient Buddhist teaching, "If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it…"
Where corruption and scandal seemed to plague these older holy heroes, the new breed of New Agers has discovered that they must actually practice what they preach.
I recently attended an intimate conference of 40,000, an audience hanging on words of wisdom from Tony Robbins. He talked ? a lot ? of his success working with buddies like Bill Clinton, Sly Stallone, Andre Agassi and Quincy Jones. Hey, if they can make it to the millionaires club after talking to Tony, why can't the rest of us?
Though I initially approached this world of self-help with a heaping dose of sarcasm, I confess, dear cyberfriends, I am now a true believer.
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