By Anna Von Reitz
In the Bible, Satan promised Jesus (Yeshuah) the whole world, all the power and pelf of the whole world, if he would just bow down and worship Satan.
This is called The Great Temptation.
What we may not understand, is that each of us is similarly tempted.
The situation arises because people don't like the burden of their own authority.
We don't really want to take responsibility for our own lives and govern ourselves. We want someone or something else to do it for us, like a surrogate parent.
It's easy to see how we are bent this way.
As children we have our parents, then our teachers, then our drill instructors or college professors, then our bosses on the job.
There is always someone in each stage of our life, cradle to grave, telling us what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it....
When we come out of that system of things, and there isn't someone telling us what to do and there isn't a clear hierarchy of "power" and a specific "authority" standing over us, we are at a loss.
We are like ducklings searching for Mama Duck.
We get frustrated and scared.
Many Retirees are so nonplussed by this sudden lack of external control, that they die soon after they retire, complaining that they feel purposeless and adrift.
We see the same pattern in long-term prisoners who are suddenly released from prison. They are so used to the schedule and routine of life in prison that they can't function in the outside world.
So where are you in your life?
Have you accepted your responsibilities as well as your rights? Have you seen the limitations of authority? And the abuses of it?
The leaders of our State Assemblies are daily faced with The Great Temptation as scores of new people pour through our doors, seeking to claim their birthright as Americans--- but they are coming to us from the hierarchic Federal System, and they shortly make it clear that they want Mama Duck.
"Who is in charge here?" they ask, bewildered.
They barely taste their freedom before they want to lay it down, and they are insistent about it, too.
They want the Assembly leadership to lead them and abhor their own natural authority because it is so unfamiliar and cumbersome.
Some people overreact to the lack of authoritarian hierarchy and have delusions of grandeur. They think, oh, nobody is in charge here, so I must be King! (Or Queen.)
They have yet to learn that their rights end where the rights of others begin.
Others start wandering around aimlessly, nonplussed and vaguely frightened.
All these people want the Assembly Leadership to take charge -- either by making themselves the Assembly Leadership or by forcing others to assume the familiar role of the Despot in Charge.
It does not immediately occur to them that they are in a different paradigm now, and that our leadership is charged with a different role and responsibility.
The leaders in the old (Feudal) Federal System were trained in the foreign hierarchy model of leadership, in which the goal of the leadership was always to accrue more power for the leaders.
Our system is exactly the opposite. The goal of our leaders is to empower others, not to further empower themselves.
When everyone is looking at you, begging you to take the burden of their power and authority from them, and expecting you to exercise their authority instead --- then you are facing The Great Temptation.
It would be so easy and familiar to disempower them and exalt yourself. Look, they even want you to do it. They are begging you to do it.
But.... and this is the whole point:
The only way that the people are going to be free, is if you stand your ground and force them to accept the burdens of their own responsibilities.
As a member of the leadership of an American State Assembly, it's your job to empower them, not yourself.
Even if being empowered is something they are afraid of. Even if they beg you to make all the decisions for them. Even if they bitterly complain about your lack of leadership.
They will come to know the infinite gift and glory you bestowed, when instead, you chose to make leaders out of each and every one of them.
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