Pogue,

Good Morning. Has it stopped raining where you are?

So this will be my last letter to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, for now, and to write it I have read Part 4 of the novel, a section that was not added by the author, Richard Bach, until 2014. By this point in the story Jon has left this world in a moment of shimmering light to continue elsewhere. Fletcher Gull, left to carry on Jon’s work of teaching those gulls who wanted to shed their limitations, has become an icon and is seen more and more as a messenger of the “Great Gull”, the “Divine One” as Jonathon passes from teacher to Divinity in the minds of the flock.

In time facts become myths and the myths are filled with imaginings that become rules and customs. Gradually the religion of Jonathon Livingston Seagull is established and all Jon strived to set the gulls free from becomes the Law. To any gull seeking freedom, to achieve its true potential, the cult of Jonathan becomes an obstruction and they close their minds to any mention of Jonathan.

Jon,

This may be my last letter for a while as I need to take time to think through the lessons that you have left me with. So today I want to ask you about the years after you left (and finally returned). How all that you strived to impart to those who would listen was taken, and over time, turned into a religious text, a set of rules which was exactly what you had spent your life striving to escape!

Indeed the very words you used were turned against what you had taught. Intending to firstly shed your own limitations and then impart that knowledge to others your teaching became the limits of a religion that bound others to its rules. Rules that became doctrines and doctrines that became divine texts. How this must have pained you.

But it all begs the question, “How much of the religion that pervades our world today has strayed from its origins and intended teaching?” Living in a world that is ostensibly Christian I would ask, “How much of the real Jesus do we actually know?” I mean, 2000 years removed from us, how can we possibly know this person. The records have been passed down generations and others have decided what is and isn’t permissible to know. Indeed it was some years after Jesus’ passing before any written records were created. So, how much do we know?

Then, history tells how there are those who use the teachings that have arisen to gain control over the masses, much like those who perpetuated the doctrine of the Great Gull Jonathon (Holy-Be His-Name) and built rituals around it. Jon, here, where I am, every Sunday, masses gather and enact rituals that venerate the “living” Jesus but take them no further than the seats they sit in. They reiterate songs and texts that insist that their “god” is present with them and then go away for another week with no reference to such beliefs. And Jesus, like yourself, tried to teach others to be more than they currently were, to realise potential and know their part in the divinity, the consciousness of the Universe. He wanted, to use your word, show others that they were “unlimited”. Now, 2000 years on, his memory is tainted by limitations.

So what is to be done?

Well, the story tells, that you return, eventually. Just turn up one day for a single gull who is struggling with the futility of life. Anthony Gull. And in that moment you move him from his desperate thoughts on the pointlessness of life to the possibilities that lay before him. Just by being the Gull that you are. Not by teaching principles, not be imparting religious truths, not by laying down rules. All you do is show him, in your actions, that he has potential as yet unrealised. Is that the “love” we spoke of last week? The leading others into being better, more fulfilled than they are? By removing the limitations they believe they have and putting aside the rules that imprison their minds and ability to be free?

Is it ‘love’ to carry the higher potential of others in our hearts when they can’t do it for themselves? When they can’t see beyond the fog of mere existence to the blue sky of potential. When the idea of freedom has been imprisoned in rules and rituals and confined to history?

I’m beginning to think it is and to believe that truth lies in simplicity. We don’t require the myths that entice and shackle us. No. Our reason to be, our raison d’etre, is to live free from confinement, particularly the restrictions that we find in our own minds whether they be rules we were given by others or restrictions imposed by beliefs we have yet to overcome.

How far we have wandered from the truth, the simple truth. How we have allowed ourselves to be deceived, both by others and our own imaginings.

And now?

Well the book finishes more or less where it begun. With one disillusioned bird and his meeting with potential. It ends with possibility and the journey ahead this journey being unveiled as “just playing…messing around…some fun-flying” and “beautiful”. Oh yes there will be a “bit of practice” but no drudgery, no guilt or shame, no sense of failure, all so prevalent in the religions we have grown. Just the simplicity of being what we have the potential to be with the hinderance removed.

Jon, you show me the journey to the joy of living is indeed a simple one. That the systems of this world are really a distraction and actually serve no eternal purpose. For this I find myself again thanking you.

Yours, believing all was intended to be simple,

Wic.