I’m more and more realizing the idiocy of claiming to be an “expert.”

I’m left musing after reading Marilyn’s thought-provoking history of the Council of Nicea.

The only historical connection I have – even to the Christian Church broadly at that time, save a lifelong fascination with the desert fathers – is with St. Nonnus of Panopolis, (1) whom I came to admire.

St. Nonnus was an embodied archangel, Michael told me.  (2) His best-known act was his relationship with Pelagia, an actress and prostitute, renowned in Antioch. (3)

She had such a powerful experience listening to his sermon that she sold all her jewels and gold, gave the money away, and joined a nunnery, it was thought.

After her death, a brother sent to her discovered her locked in a brothers’ cell in Jerusalem, where she was known as Brother Pelagius. No one knew Brother Pelagius was a woman.

She’d lived on scraps, the most pious of the pious. (4) Wow, did that story have an effect on me at the time.

That’s it. That’s my knowledge of the times and the Christian Church back then. Having that scrap of knowledge, does that make me an expert?

Only if I spin it.

***

And that raises the second point. How many experts are indeed simply masterful at spinning it? We saw how many professional medical people were willing to swallow the Kool-Aid and go along with the Covid narrative even though they knew their actions were wrong. The persecutors claimed to be experts.

Going along with the narrative included attributing even deaths by murder to Covid, giving politicians the placebo and the rest of us the toxic vaccine, forcing people to take the vaccine, de-credentialing professionals who opposed it, etc.

How many of these people posed as experts on Covid, when what they were espousing was killing people?

I’m so tired of our tendency to make and worship “experts.”

***

I think that’s why I prefer awareness writing so much. I can really only tell you my story – what I see, hear, think, feel. It’s probably self-servingly packaged (reader beware), dressed up to look nice, told and retold perhaps. Hopefully not.

But, with that tool, I can burrow down, below that layer, below the vasanas (core issues), until we get to places in our field of awareness where things really happen – realizations, experiences, insights.

I’m an expert in me. That’s all I’m an expert in and, even there, if I don’t watch myself, I can kid myself, choose to remain ignorant, make things up. The human mind is capable … of anything… as we’re seeing all around us in these end times – the end of darkness.

Michael says he knows me better. Undoubtedly he does. But I’m the final arbiter, the final judge.  I plow the row. I plant the seeds. I reap the harvest.

Footnotes

(1) Wikipedia says: “[Nonnus of Panopolis] is sometimes conflated with St Nonnus from the hagiographies of St Pelagia and with Nonnus, the bishop of Edessa who attended the Council of Chalcedon, both of whom seem to have been roughly contemporary, but these associations are probably mistaken.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonnus.)

But Michael says Nonnus of Panopolis and St. Nonnus were the same being:

Steve: Did [St.] Nonnus write the Dionysiac? Is he also the Nonnus that wrote the [Paraphrase of the] Epistle of St. John?

AAM: That is correct. (AAM, March 13, 2015.)

(2) Steve: I’m trying to figure out why I love Nonnus [of Panopolis] so much. Whenever I come across his name I get a surge of love. Can you tell me?

Archangel Michael: Because you cherish this energy which is known in many ways and in many forms.

S: So it’s not necessarily Nonnus…

AAM: No, it is the energy that has been known as Nonnus’s, but is known in many ways.

S: Can you tell me of the other ways that it is known?

AAM: Archangelic, dear heart.

S: Nonnus was archangelic?

AAM: Yes.

S: Oh, gosh, isn’t that wonderful! (AAM, March 13, 2015.)

(3) It was common for actors and actresses to sleep with members of the audience, for the right price.

(4) Here is Oxford’s version:

“Pelagia, actress of Antioch, penitent at Jerusalem. Her Legend has been immensely popular in East and West. It was written by someone well versed in the writings of the Desert Fathers, who purported to be James the deacon of bishop Nonnus. According to this fictional account, Pelagia was a beautiful but dissolute actress of Antioch, at the height of her renown, with many lovers, jewels, and servants.

“When some bishops were seated at the tomb of St Julian, listening to a sermon from Nonnus, she passed by, provocatively dressed, surrounded by her ‘fans.’ All the bishops turned away shocked, except Nonnus, who was moved to tears by her zeal and success in her profession (regarded as Satan’s) compared with the tepidity and slowness of his own and others’ progress in holiness.

“After a dream-troubled night Nonnos preached in the cathedral of Antioch and Pelagia walked in again, was converted on the spot, and asked for baptism. A deaconess Romana was deputed to be her sponsor and Pelagia was duly instructed and baptized.

“Soon afterwards she gave away all her ill-gotten gains, left her life of comfort and luxury, and went to live as a hermit, dressed as a man, on the Mount of Olives ( Jerusalem). There the deacon James visited the beardless recluse ‘Pelagius’; only after her death. Not long afterwards were her identity and her sex discovered.”