The Man with a Billion Faces

The man with a billion faces.

We are one, but are one billion in our number.

I am but one representative of the billion, of the one, but I embody the ideas of each individual's embodiment of the one. In essence, the billion are the same person but with different faces and names to those faces. We act in unison, believe in unison, and love each other in unison. Our numbers seem to die and grow each day, with some faces falling and new ones rising to take on this persona.

We have what you may call an initiation. It is a very simple process, and I would be welcomed in sharing the initiation process with you once you see how our order revolves. Before our initiation, we were our own individual being. We breathed in and out, just like the billion, but our thoughts were our own and we desired for our thoughts to be our own. Our actions were motivated by our own desires or what would help reach our own preset idea of perfection. And our love, we only knew half the meaning of love.

But when we took the initiation...in that one specific moment...we somehow changed. When the initiation was complete, we were all handed a mask and asked to place it on our face �" to wear it with pride. Indoctrinated in what we believed and currently believe to be the truth, we put on the mask, but the process didn't end there. The mask never came off. The mask cannot be removed once it is put on. It is permanent. The only moment the mask comes off is in death, when we receive a brand new mask. The first few days of wearing the mask are invigorating, the sense of pride we feel in our newfound face and belief. We are all handed the order's 'code', and each member of the billion of the one read it religiously. The more we delve into the code, the more the mask becomes part of each individual. The mask slowly starts to form itself over the prior impure face and rearranges it to the mask's universal appearance. Eventually, each member of the billion looks the exact same �" a billion people all with the same face...the same belief.

We become the mask, and the mask becomes us. We all become one with the mask, and those one in the mask become one together under the mask. For you see, these are not the words of one of the billion, but are rather the words scrawled across the mask we all bear. The next would say the same as I have said.

I can see your mind beginning to spin, curious as to how some come to this realization of the need to join the order of the billion. If our thoughts, preinitiation, were of our own, then how could we simply subscribe to a universal idea? Wouldn't that notion defy our very preinitiation existence? An excellent question indeed, and a one that all non-billions ask new initiates. Odd that the non-universals have a universal curiosity in the same question, but I digress.

The answer is rather simple: yes. Yes, it does defy our very nature to accept a universal premise whilst rejecting the individualistic premise. What you may not realize though is that each of the non-billions and even the billions are a species capable of defying their own nature. In a sense, we have two natures we may choose: one of the individual or one of the one. We must defy the other and embrace the other. Each individual begins on the side of the individual and a few are brought to the initiation and asked to defy their prior nature and embrace the nature of the one. Those who do now possess that nature and cannot defer back to the prior �" it is permanent. Those who reject the nature of the one and wish to remain in the nature of the individual may come back to the initiation table at any point in time and choose to change so long as they live. We are capable of changing our nature on a one way system.

But why would one want to reject individualism in the place of the synonymous conglomerate? Another simple answer to another complex question. In the individualistic mind, the individual is responsible for crafting an entire worldview that a full-fledged society can accept as a decent or good standard. The individual must as well fulfill his own needs individually - quite a daunting task. The individual must find completion in himself and only in himself whilst fitting into his social standard. The process of being the individual is exhausting, tiresome and lonesome in time. Some never come to finding that exhaustion, or they simply reject the notion that it is present �" thus they refuse to defy their individualistic nature. But, there are those that recognize they are not capable of functioning purely as an individual �" that they need more, they need the order of a billion and the code we all share. The billion have 999,999 supporters, each ready to aid the newcomer in any which way they can. The billion have no worries of claiming a social standard of rules, as the code details a socially acceptable code accepted among a billion brothers and sisters of the one. The newcomer may find completion in being accepted, as once he places the mask upon his face...he is one of the billion of the one.

Our order was established long ago, back to what we believe is the very existence of time. You see, when we first began to roam the earth, we all started out as the billion of the one. I know, if in the beginning we all started as the billion and the billion cannot change back to the individual, then how did the individualistic order begin? A complex answer for a rather simple question. Somehow, when the billion were only represented by two, those two managed to find a way to defy the billion's purpose. There began the first writings of the billion's code. Some managed to later revert back to the billion's view and some managed to make an individualistic standard resembling the billion on the surface, but no deeper than that.

Then, after thousands of years, the billion of the one's beginning founder made his first visit. The founder came and realized that the billion's code had become distorted from its original intent. He then explained what the the code truly meant and then reestablished the code in a new light �" he redefined the order. That is where things began to downhill for the founder. He was taken by the defected hypocritical billion and was made a martyr for the very order he established thousands of years ago. Then the founder rose three days later.