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The conversation on this website is now open to any visitor who wishes to set the agenda relating to any subject covered or message found in the Conversations with God series of books and how it may apply to everyday life or the news events of the day.

The new process at this Visitor Driven Site is simple. You may raise any topic surrounding the CWG material that you wish to propose for group discussion by entering that topic, and your point of view about it, in the Comments Section below. Others coming here are invited to create a conversation around it, if they wish to do so.

If responses to the topic you raised show a high level of interest among the audience here, that topic will be “promoted” to Headline Placement on this website — which will attract even more comment and conversation. In this way the Global Conversation platform can and will be as vibrant as users here wish it to be.

I may also engage in the conversation from time to time as my schedule permits.

The length of your comments will not be limited in any way, and the only restriction imposed on this platform will be a prohibition of links to other sites, as well as the inclusion of personal contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.), or use of this site for solicitation, fundraising, or other purposes not directly related to discussions of CWG and its application or relevance to today’s world and its current affairs.

The purpose of The Global Conversation has been to create a place where people could discuss topics related to the messages of Conversations with God, trade ideas back and forth, pose and respond to questions among themselves, and, in general, produce an ongoing conversation at the intersection of spiritual and temporal matters. This purpose will continue to be served here.

As well, people may wish to visit a second internet platform called CWG Connect, which now lists nearly 6,000 members, with the number growing daily. The Connect site offers a highly sophisticated and vast array of resources — video, audio, and written — for persons wishing to delve deeply into topics that arise around the CWG messages.

There is a Community Forum that is part of CWG Village at CWG Connect, which offers opportunity short-form exchanges around the principles of CWG, and is just one facet of a multi-level site that includes a wonderful list of written articles of interest, an Ask Neale column for people wanting to question me, specifically, about the meaning and interpretation of the messages in CWG, a daily excerpt from one of the most powerful texts in the CWG body of work, with a place for reader comments and interactions, a Weekly Reader focusing in-depth on a major element of spiritual interest, CWG Radio, with its archive of fascinating programs and interviews, regular contributions from CWG Voices (a group of messengers and mentors steeped in how to apply the material in everyday life), and many other resources, features, and opportunities for spiritual expansion.

I will be interested in observing whether you enjoy continuing to engage in conversations here about CWG and your world.

This is an announcement that as of January 1, 2018, The Global Conversation internet platform will cease to function as it has in the past — and that, in the second quarter of the upcoming year, it will be closed down altogether, with its function supported by other CWG platforms now online.

This change is the result of our team refining our mission and our vision, as our digital presence has evolved to new levels of sophistication. That transformation has produced a change in my own personal priorities, allowing me to spend more time with more people online than this platform allows me the opportunity to do.

Presently — as one regular visitor here called to my attention in a recent post — a very small number of visitors come to this site. I find that my outreach efforts are not being utilized here in an energy-efficient way.

The purpose of The Global Conversation has been to create a place where people could discuss topics of the day as presented in headline articles revolving around the messages of Conversations with God, trade ideas back and forth, pose and respond to questions among themselves, and, in general, produce an ongoing conversation at the intersection of spiritual and temporal matters.

The site served that purpose, with a fair number of people participating, in its earlier years. In more recent times, participation has plummeted, to a place where now, on an active day, perhaps 12 or 13 people may come to the site.

In the meantime, a worldwide internet platform called CWG Connect now lists nearly 6,000 members, with the number growing daily. That is understandable, as the Connect site offers a highly sophisticated and vast array of resources — video, audio, and written — for persons wishing to delve deeply into topics that arise around the CWG messages.

The Global Conversation has essentially evolved into the Community Forum, which is part of The CWG Village at CWG Connect — and that is just one facet of a multi-level site that includes a wonderful list of written articles of interest, an Ask Neale column for people wanting to question me, specifically, about the meaning and interpretation of the messages in CWG, a daily excerpt from one of the most powerful texts in the CWG body of work, with a place for reader comments and interactions, a Weekly Reader focusing in-depth on a major element of spiritual interest, CWG Radio, with its archive of fascinating programs and interviews, regular contributions from CWG Voices (a group of messengers and mentors steeped in how to apply the material in everyday life), and many other resources, features, and opportunities for spiritual expansion.

As well, for people looking for global spiritual involvement that reaches into the business and social leadership community, the wonderful work of Humanity’s Team (www.HumanitysTeam.org) has grown into a stunning resource. And if it is spiritual activism one is looking for, there is www.EvolutionRevolution.net.

I contribute commentary on each of these platforms, as well as at my own Facebook page, which has close to half a million followers. Within that context, it may be understandable that my participation here at The Global Conversation, with its dozen or so regular visitors, might not be considered the highest and best use of my personal energy at the age of 74.

We will, therefore, be keeping the Comment Section of this platform open beginning January 1 for anyone wishing to continue their “chat room experience” here, and, as we move into the second quarter of the year, we will forward The Global Conversation link to www.CWGConnect.com, with its huge collection of resources, and its Community Forum in the CWG Village.

Several of the “regulars” visiting here have already joined in the ongoing conversations there, and I hope that all of you who have enjoyed visiting here will find it equally stimulating to join in the exchanges there.

Meanwhile, as we approach these changes, I send you my very best wishes for a happy Holiday Season! May God’s blessings flow to you and through you in the days and weeks ahead.

We can do this one person at a time — undertaking humanity’s huge course correction by pointing singularly to every allegedly offending individual we can find, bringing that person down with career-ending and life-ruining accusations — or we can do it en masse by just admitting that our species has been divided into the Oppressors and the Oppressed for thousands of years. We can confess that we have been getting it all wrong all along.

We have a problem on this planet that transcends the current outrage over sexual assault, harassment, and misbehavior — as legitimate and important a development as that is. (And it is.) Yet we should not allow our outrage and our social course correction to stop there.

We can continue by acknowledging that it is not just women who deserve to be placed on the Finally Being Believed List. People of color, citizens with special needs, persons who identify as gay, members of particular religions, people who are poor, those who are homeless, and more than one or two other subgroups within our society have also been begging to be heard and crying out for justice for a very long time.

The problem here is systemic. The problem is cultural. The problem is massive and widespread in areas sexual, social, racial, political, economical, and spiritual, and it will not be solved by asking those few who actually get caught (or who are alleged to have gotten caught) to alone pay the price for the ongoing, centuries-long dysfunctions of an entire species called humankind. And before that statement is mis-characterized, this is not a call to excuse any specific behaviors – sexual misconduct or others – but just the opposite. We must all pay the price, because humankind has NOT been kind, but has been behaving like barbarians. We must pay the price beginning now, by increasing the cost, at once and all across human society, to people and groups who would oppress other people and groups ever again. And I believe we would do well to see if we can find a way to forgive those who have offended in the past, to look within our hearts to see if there is a place of compassion and mercy sufficient to allow us not to overlook their offenses, but to overcome them, even as we have allowed many of the very worst among us to be pardoned, and to attempt to reclaim their lives and make things right with their Soul and their God (if they believe in either).

There is a story told about a custom purported to part of the culture of a certain tribe in South Africa. According to the story, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe, regardless of age, begins to talk out loud to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime.

Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. No one is pemitted to fabricate, exaggerate or be facetious about his accomplishments or the positive aspects of his personality.

The tribal ceremony does not cease until everyone is drained of every positive comment he can muster about the person in question. At the end, the tribal circle is broken and a joyous celebration takes place, with the person symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.

The story is told in at least two books. Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit after the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, by Alice Walker, and Contact: The first four minutes, by Leonard Zunin, MD

Ms.Walker said in her book: “I am convinced the only punishment that will ever work is love.”

It should be reported that some have said the story has been completely fabricated, and has no basis in fact. I love it whether it is true or not, because I think it give us a wonderful model of how we may heal both ourselves, if we have been hurt or offended by another, as well as the perpetrator of the offense. And, of course, Conversations with God offers us the insight that forgiveness is not part of God’s response to the mistakes made by human beings. As we are told in the CWG cosmology, “Understanding replaces Forgiveness in the mind of the Master.” And God understands that humanity’s weaknesses derive from humanity’s immaturity as a species.

It is that immaturity that has caused our entire species to have never stopped oppressing each other. We’ve never allowed ourselves as a species to experience “power with” – only “power over.” THIS has been the blind spot of humanity. This has been the weakness of our civilization. This has been the core issue from the beginning. And until we resolve this issue, there will always be the Oppressors and the Oppressed.

We are like animals. Like insects. Like every life form that exemplifies and demonstrates behaviors establishing Survival of the Fittest as the highest and best measure of effective and efficient conduct. And the difficulty with trying to change all of this one social issue or one offender at a time is that it will take decades to even make a dent in the number of individuals who we’ve alleged to have been oppressors, and by doing so to change collective behaviors. And we don’t have that kind of time.

Our society is unraveling. Our world is on the brink of nuclear war. Our environment is degrading. Our political frameworks are crumbling. Our economic structures are collapsing. Our spiritual communities are colliding. Our global systems, ladies and gentlemen, are falling apart.

We are seeing that our civilization is not civilized. We are seeing that all lives matter, that all grievances need now to be given fair hearing, and that all of us can play a role in not allowing assault, harassment, and misconduct to continue in ANY area of life without the course correction that our intelligence as a species is telling us is so long overdue.

What is the solution here? Is it really to focus on one issue at a time and all the individual offenders we can find? Or is it to undertake an overhaul of the entire human experience by challenging and changing the fundamental beliefs of our species, and the group behaviors that emerge from them?

As we find ourselves in the last month of the year, I notice myself wanting to place before the house a discussion I have had here before. Indeed, as recently as August 30. I’m going to dive into it again now because, for me, it’s a perfect way to bring this year’s experience to an end, and prepare myself to embark on the New Year with reenergized spiritual vigor.

The topic has to do with our individual sense of Who We Are in the overall scheme of things. I apologize to those of you who have seen this material before, but there is always a chance that someone new may have found their way here since last summer. And for the rest of us, I hope you are like me in never tiring of revisiting the core, or central, issues of life. And this certainly is one. It is, perhaps, THE core issue of our entire life.

The subject is: How do you see yourself, how you conceive of yourself, how you construct your idea of who you are. And to me is seems as if you, and all of us, have two choices regarding this. Maybe I’m oversimplifying this, but to me these choices look like this:

Choice #1: You could conceive of yourself as nothing more than a chemical creature, a “logical biological incident.” That is, the logical outcome of a biological process engaged in by two older biological processes called your mother and your father.

If you see yourself as a nothing more than a chemical creature, you would see yourself as having no more connection to the larger processes of life than any other chemical or biological life form.

Like all the others, you would be impacted by life, but could have very little impact on life. You certainly couldn’t create events, except in the most remote, indirect sense. You could create more life (all chemical creatures carry the biological capacity to recreate more of themselves), but you could not create what life does, or how it “shows up” in any given moment.

Further, as nothing more than a chemical creature you would see yourself as having very limited ability to create an intentioned response to the events and conditions of life. You would see yourself as a creature of habit and instinct, with only those resources that your biology offers you.

You would see yourself as having more resources than a turtle, because your biology has gifted you with more. You would see yourself as having more resources than a butterfly, because your biology has gifted you with more. Yet what your biology offers you is all you would see yourself as having in terms of resources.

You would see yourself as having to deal with life day-by-day pretty much as it comes, with perhaps a tiny bit of what seems like “control” based on advance planning, etc., but you would know that at any minute anything could go wrong— and often does.

Choice #2: You could conceive of yourself as a spiritual being having what is called a “body.” (And, as well, a “mind.”)

If you saw yourself as a spiritual being, you would see yourself as having powers and abilities far beyond those of a simple chemical creature; powers that extend beyond basic physicality and its laws.

You would understand that these powers and abilities give you collaborative control over the exterior elements of your individual and collective life, and complete control over the interior elements—which means that you have the total ability to create your own reality, because your reality has nothing to do with producing the exterior elements of your life, and everything to do with how you respond to the elements that have been produced.

Also, as a spiritual being, you would know that you are here (on Earth, that is) for a spiritual reason. This is a highly focused purpose and has little to do directly with your occupation or career, your income or possessions, your achievements or place in society, or any of the exterior conditions or circumstances of your life.

You would know that your purpose has to do with your interior life—and that how well you do in achieving your purpose may very often have an effect on your exterior life.

(For the interior life of each individual cumulatively produces the exterior life of the collective. That is, those people around you, and those people who are around those people who are around you. It is in this way that you, as a spiritual being, participate in the evolution of your species.)

My own answer: I’ve decided that I am a spiritual being, a three-part entity made up of Body, Mind, and Soul. Each part of my tri-part being has a function and a purpose. As I come to understand each of those functions, Who I Am begins to more efficiently manifest in my experience, as the Totality of Who I Am serves its purpose in and through my life.

I have decided that I am an Individuation of Divinity, an expression of God, a singularization of the singularity. There is no separation between me and God, nor is there any difference, except as to proportion. Put simply, God and I are one.

The analogy I like to use to help me understand and embrace this is the relationship between an ocean wave and the Ocean Itself. I believe that I am, to God, as a wave is to the Ocean. The wave is in no way separate from the Ocean, nor is it other than the Ocean. Rather (and quite simply), it is a singular aspect of the Ocean…an individual expression arising and emerging as a product of its Source. And when the expression of the wave is complete, it recedes back into the Ocean, whence it came.

This analogy brings up an interesting question. Am I rightly accused of heresy? Are people who believe that they are Divine nothing but raving lunatics? Are they, worse yet, apostates?

I wondered. So I did a little research. I wanted to find out what religious and spiritual sources had to say on the subject. Here’s some of what I found . . . .

Isaiah 41:23—Shew the things that are to come hereaf­ter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold together.

Psalm 82:6—I have said, ‘Gods ye are, And sons of the Most High—all of you.

John 10:34—Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, “I said, Ye are gods?”

The Indian philosopher Adi Shankara (788 CE – 820 CE), the one largely responsible for the initial expounding and consolidation of Advaita Vedanta, wrote in his famous work, Vivekachudamani: “Brahman is the only Truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately Brahman and individual self.”

Sri Swami Krishnananda Saraswati Maharaj (April 25, 1922 – November 23, 2001), a Hindu saint: “God exists; there is only one God; the essence of man is God.”

According to Buddhism there ultimately is no such thing as a Self that is independent from the rest of the universe (the doctrine of anatta) – any more than there is a wave that is independent of the Ocean.

Also, if I understand certain Buddhist schools of thought correctly, humans return to the earth in subsequent lifetimes in one of six forms, the last of which are called Devas . . . which is variously translated as Gods or Deities.

Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese discipline of Taoism speaks of embodiment and pragmatism, engaging practice to actualize the Natural Order within themselves. Taoists believe that man is a microcosm for the universe.

Hermeticism is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs or gnosis based primarily upon the Hellenistic Egyptian pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermeticism teaches that there is a transcendent God, The All, or one “Cause,” of which we, and the entire universe, participate.

The concept was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the famous words: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.”

And in Sufism, an esoteric form of Islam, the teaching, There is no God but God was long ago changed to, There is nothing but God. Which would make me . . . well . . . God.

Enough? Do you wish or need more? You might find it instructive and fascinating to go to Wikipedia, the source to which I owe my appreciation for much of the above information.

As well, read the remarkable books of Huston Smith, a globally honored professor of religion. Among titles of his that I most often recommend: The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (1958, revised edition 1991, HarperOne), and Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions (1976, reprint edition 1992, HarperOne).

So . . . that is my response to the invitation that life is presenting me, and all of us, regarding the making of a choice about Who I Am. I am an out-picturing of The Divine. I am God in human form. As are we all.

Let’s look again, as this year ends, at your response. And if you’re new here, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on all of this.

(The above article is adapted from an excerpt of the book God’s Message to the World: You’ve got me all wrong, by Neale Donald Walsch – Rainbow Ridge Books, 2014)

Is this what we’re doing now? High school girls twirling rifles?

Did anybody notice? Does anybody care?

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. It was the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I’ve watched it on television every year since I was a child. It’s been kind of a Thanksgiving morning tradition. All the floats. The appearance of celebrities. The marching bands from high schools all over America, with their drum majorettes fastastically tossing and twirling, and miraculously catching, batons.

Only this time they weren’t batons. They were facsimile rifles.

That’s right, rifles.

What is that about???, I asked myself when I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Not just one high school marching band, but several, with their teenage drum majorettes marching along with them in flashy outfits. Let me offer you the definition of “drum majorette” found in most dictionaries:

“drum majorette — noun: the female leader of a marching band. * a girl or woman who twirls a baton, typically with a marching band or drum corps.”

Well, in America as of Thanksgiving 2017 (and perhaps before…I hadn’t noticed until now), we have to change that definition to “a girl or woman who twirls a facsimile rifle, typically looking like a military weapon, with a marching band or drum corps.”

Did you see it with me? Did your jaw drop with mine? The high school majorettes were twirling white objects, but not batons. Apparently made of wood or plastic (or who knows what), these items were cut in the exact shape of a military rifle, with its stock, trigger housing, magazine, barrel and sight.

I couldn’t believe it.

What are the children watching this parade—on 34^th Street in New York and on TV at home—supposed to think? Is this the imagery we want to embed? What is the message we are sending?

For that matter, what is the energy and imagery that the teenagers in those marching bands and majorette units are absorbing? Are we actually proud that facsimile weapons have replaced shiny, sparkly batons as the item of choice that we’re having our teenagers twirl — just like the real-life military marching units also in the parade, members of which were twirling actual rifles with bayonets?

Have we gone far enough to glorify weapons, to glorify the military, to glorify killing and war? High school drum majorettes twirling rifles?

My God, what have we come to? As a society, what have we come to?

Am I the only one whose heart sank seeing teenage drum majorettes smilingly and flashingly twirling facsimile weapons?

Am I just getting too old? Am I so far out of step with where we as a society now are…and want to be?

Here are my last answers to the series of questions I placed for us back in late September.

Let’s review the final questions in that series first, then I’ll offer you my answers. Those last questions were…

What does it take to make life work? Is it possible that there is something we do not fully understand about God, about life, and about ourselves, the understanding of which would change everything? If so, what do you think it might be?

I have become aware that what it takes to “make life work” is to understand what life is about. I had no idea what it was about until I was 50 years old. Oh, I thought I knew what it was about. There was a whole formula I could recite that described what it was about, and for over 30 of my adult years I was “playing by the rules” and doing what I was “supposed to be doing.”

The Formula: Get the guy, get the girl, get the car, get the job, get the house, get the spouse, get the kids, get the dog, get the better job, get the better car, get the better house, get the better spouse, get the grandkids, get the office in the corner with your name on the door, get the building on the corner with your name on the wall, get the grey hair, get the retirement watch, get the cruise tickets, get the sickness, and get the hell out.

There were slight variations on the theme, but that was basically it: a 20-step process that got you from 18 to 78 (if you made it that far), or even a bit beyond.

And there were some good times…I wouldn’t try to kid you into thinking it was all without joy…but my life seemed to be getting nowhere…and I would up, eventually, living in the weather as a street person, through a series of events too long to go into here. At that point my life was a shambles…and I see now that it was because I didn’t know where I was trying to go, or what I was trying to do. I had no idea in the world what life was really all about.

I wound up writing about this is the book titled The Only Thing That Matters, which leads off with the paragraph, “98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that don’t matter.” I was one of those people, for sure.

I now realize, after my Conversations with God experience, that I’m not here for anything having to do with my body or my mind, but that I’m here to serve the Agenda of My Soul. My body and my mind are merely tools with which to complete that agenda while I am in the Realm of Physicality.

And what is the Agenda of My Soul? According to CWG it has nothing to do with anything I am doing, and everything to do with what I am being while I am doing whatever I am doing.

The Agenda of My Soul is to recreate myself anew in every golden moment of Now in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about Who I Am. That is, (to put it neatly in a phrase), to evolve.

And this becomes a real adventure when I hold within me a wonderful vision of Who I Am. And CWG helped me there, too. It invited me to remember that Who I Am is an Individuation of Divinity.

This is what I did not understand, the understanding of which could change everything. Since coming to clarity about this, I have experienced my life in an entirely different way. I have become aware — among other things — that my life is not about me. It is about everyone whose life I touch, and the way in which I touch it. This is, for me, the fastest way and the most effective means by which I can evolve, becoming in my experience what I know myself, conceptually, to be.

To turn Concept to Experience has become the goal of my life. It is the greatest irony of my life that through this process, everything else that I was ever working for has been manifest in my personal reality without effort. All the love, all the joy, all the peace, all the inner serenity and sense of personal fulfillment that I would ever have hoped for occurs almost automatically.

This has been my experience. And I am so happy to be able to share it with you!

Recently I posted a series of questions that I suggested it would be fascinating to ask every person we met for the rest of our life. I promised that I would answer those questions myself — even though most of the visitors to this site already know how I would answer them — just for the record.

Here are more of my answers to those questions.

Is there such a thing as the human soul? (I answered this in my last entry here, so now I move forward with this continuing inquiry.) If not, are humans simply two-part beings, comprised of Body and Mind and nothing more? Within that context, if we hold this to be true, what is the best, the most fruitful, the most fulfilling, the most joyful way to live our lives? Is there any reason to behave in a certain way, other than to avoid the punishments or consequences of civil law or the disapprobation of our friends, relatives, and peers?

I believe that human beings are more than two-part beings, comprised of Body and Mind. But let us suppose for the sake of this discussion that we are. What, then, would be the best, the most fruitful, the most fulfilling, the most joyful way to live our lives?

I would never presume to answer that question for anyone else. Each person must decide that for themselves, obviously, and their answer would be intensely personal.

For me, the answer is found in Conversations with God. There I was told: “Your life is not about you. It is about everyone whose life you touch, and the way in which you touch it.”

I have come to understand that this means my life is not about “local” me, or “little” me — the part of me that identifies as the person I see in the mirror every day. It is about all the other “little me’s” that adorn the Earth. Or, if you please, it is about “universal” me, or “big” me — the part of me that is One with everything and everyone, and which chooses to express that, thus to know it in my experience.

Even if all of this last part is just stuff that I am imagining, I can’t imagine a better, more fruitful, more fulfilling, or more joyful way to live. Sadly, I didn’t learn this until I was in my 50s. And even then, I have not practiced it nearly as much as I would like. But at least now I know what for me is the pathway to true happiness, and I’m doing better than I ever was before at taking it.

The next question I have been considering…Is there any reason to behave in a certain way, other than to avoid the punishments or consequences of civil law or the disapprobation of our friends, relatives, and peers?

For me the answer goes past simple “self improvement,” which is essentially a solitary pursuit, and it also goes past the desire shared by most of us to be our “best selves” for others. For me, the “reason to behave in a certain way” has to do with the evolution of my species. This feels to me to be a really meaningful endeavor to which to be committed — and I have felt especially dedicated to this cause since reading Conversations with God-Book 4: Awaken the Species.

That newest text in the CWG series of books, released just seven months ago, tells us that now is the perfect time for our advancement as a breed or genus of sentient beings. We no longer have to wait for this to occur through centuries and millennia of evolutionary adaptation within our species. We can now exchange “adaptation” for the much more rapid — the unbelievably rapid — process of “imitation.” When imitation replaces adaptation as our evolutionary driver, we can achieve Critical Mass and Species-wide transmogrification within years and decades, not centuries and millennia.

So the way for us to move ahead right now in our evolution is for each of us to self-select; to say: “I am going be one of those who wishes to send a message of Who We Really Are to everyone whose life I touch, creating a ripple-in-the-water effect.”

Don’t think that it doesn’t already have an impact, because it does. The only question is not whether ordinary people can do that. The question is “What shall be the idea that drives them forward?” What shall be the understandings that are now being embraced by humanity, collectively?

Is it possible that there’s something we don’t fully understand about God and about life and about ourselves…the understanding of which could change everything? That’s the question of the hour. So if you’re wondering what direction we should now be going, I would say that the direction that humanity is now invited to go is in the direction of answering that question.

Is there something we don’t fully understand about God and about life, the understanding of which could change everything? If there is, what is it, and what does it look like to embody it, to embrace it, to be an exemplar of that new idea?

Every spiritual master who has walked the face of the earth has answered that question with a resounding “yes!”, and then demonstrated what we might find it useful to understand and to implement more fully, through the living of their own life. Now, all of us have an opportunity to do that. All of us. By simply saying “I self-select.”

By the way, those who might have an interest in engaging in this process may go to: IHaveSelfSelected.com This is a very simple Internet site that gives people an opportunity to join with others around the world who say, “I’m all in.”

The hope and the idea is to invite and encourage everyone whose life we touch to accept their own spiritual inheritance and embrace their True Nature.

Do you want to see something that describes our True Nature with imagination in just over four minutes? Watch this. Here is what the wonderful team at MindValley did with this message. You’ll be glad you saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8EBwV9UctI

Recently I posted a series of questions that I suggested it would be fascinating to ask every person we met for the rest of our life. I promised that I would answer those questions myself — even though most of the visitors to this site already know how I would answer them — just for the record.

Here are more of my answers to those questions.

What is the point of human life? Does it have a point? Is it simply, and nothing more than, an expression of a biological entity that begins in utero and ends at death? Is there life (that is, individual existence, consciousness and awareness of self) after death — and, for that matter, before birth? Is there such a thing as the “soul,” defined as a metaphysical individuality? If so, what is its function or purpose?

I think these questions drive to the heart of the human condition. That is, I believe we experience our condition as humans differently — perhaps radically differently — depending upon our answers to these questions.

In my own mind, I want to go further. I find myself wanting to say that I believe humanity’s complete and total dysfunction…its appalling self-destructive behaviors…are all the product of what I perceive to be nonbeneficial  or incomplete answers to these questions.

There is no question as to our dysfunction. There are those who like to point to the “progress” we have made as a species through the centuries and the millennia, but I’m sorry…I’m unimpressed.

As we read this today, one-quarter of the human species lives without toilets. Some 1.6 billion do not have electricity. Just under 1.7 billion have no access to clean water. And these are not simply inconveniences. Thousands die each day from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Wait. It’s worse. Over 650 children will die on this planet in the next hour because of starvation. Not because of some exotic or unfamiliar disease for which we have not yet found a cure. Because of not getting enough food to eat. This, on a planet where we throw away more unfinished dinners in the restaurants of Paris, Los Angeles, and Madrid than it would take to feed all of those 650 children for a week.

All of this raises some interesting questions: How is it possible for 7 billion members of a single species to all want the same thing—survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love—and be unable to produce it, even after thousands of years of trying? Is it possible — just possible — that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything? Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

Now I know there are those who answer “no” to those last two questions. And I think this is part of our dysfunction. We refuse to believe that there might be some data “still out there” that could alter our entire perception of reality.

I am not among them. I am not willing to look at the world the way it is and “tsk-tsk”, or downplay, those statistics, pointing instead to whatever “progress” we have made, such as it is, in improving the human condition. We are still threatening each other with total obliteration. The only difference has been the lethality of our weapons. Whereas before it was sticks and stones, then rocks and arrows, then knives and bullets, now it is bombs that annihilate millions in ten seconds. Such has been humanity’s “progress” from its caveman days.

Well, I am not willing to look at that and call it “progress.” And I’m certainly not going to stare into the face of those stark global statistics and point instead to all the good that we have achieved. I am, instead, going to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw here: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That’s the essence of inhumanity.”

So out of my refusal to be indifferent to the progress we haven’t made, let me offer my answer to the questions above. First, my reply to those last two inquries…

Is it possible — just possible — that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything? Yes.

Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

Yes.

Now, my answer to the questions with which I began this writing.

“What is the point of human life? Does it have a point?”

Yes. The point of human life is to recreate ourselves anew in each golden moment of Now in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.

Put another way, the purpose of life is evolution. That is both its Purpose and its Process.

“Is it simply, and nothing more than, an expression of a biological entity that begins in utero and ends at death?”

No. Life is much more than that. It is an eternal expression of a singular spiritual entity that has no beginning and no end.

“Is there life (that is, individual existence, consciousness and awareness of self) after death — and, for that matter, before birth?

Yes. There is no such thing as death. What we call death is merely a process of re-identification.

“Is there such a thing as the ‘soul,’ defined as a metaphysical individuality?”

Yes. The Soul is the individuation of the pure energy, or the Essential Essence of the Universe, that some of us call God.

“If so, what is its function or purpose?”

The function of the Soul is to provide a vehicle through which this Essential Essence expresses and experiences Itself in discrete and individual form.

I believe we are all on a journey here. I call it The Journey of the Soul. I believe that (to speak metaphorically) we come through the Door of Birth and leave through the Door of Death. I liken this to white light beamed through a prism. Beamed one way, we divide into three parts — Body, Mind, and Soul. Beamed the other way, we reintegrate into the Single Essence of the Soul, which is the pure energy of the Essential Essence, singularized.

It is my understanding that our journey is cyclical, or circular, with no beginning and no end, but with a purpose that is served by the very fact that it is circular. It is my awareness that the cyclical nature of life’s endless expression is what creates the possibility of its expansion through evolution.

When I look at the world as it is today I again think of wonderful Mr. George Bernard Shaw, who offered us this: “I hear you say ‘Why?’ Always ‘Why?’ You see things, and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream of things that never were, and say ‘Why Not’?”

And I think of William Shakespeare, who wrote: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Now I know…I know….what the rationalists and those who are deeply into Scienceism (the theology that Science has the only, and all, the answers) will say. “More ‘woo’,” they will say. While the religionists join them in declaring: “Blasphemy.”

But let’s get back to Mr. Shaw. It was he who observed: “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” He also said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Finally, Mr. Shaw asked a question that actually brings pain to the heart: “Must, then, a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”

Do you want to see something that describes Who We Really Are with imagination? Watch this. Look what the geniuses at MindValley did with the messages of Conversations with God. I dare you to watch this and say, “Ho-hum…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8EBwV9UctI

Recently I asked 21 questions to which I invited answers from visitors here. I also promised to offer my own answers. Here is my second installment in the keeping of that promise.

Questions: Do our thoughts have anything to do with creating or producing our reality? Is there such a thing as collective consciousness? Is there such a thing as “consciousness” at all — collective or individual?

NDW Answer: Yes, yes, and yes.

I should really just stop there, but I feel such simple replies deserve a bit of explanation. So here goes…

I experience thoughts as energy. To be specific, I understand them to be energy transmissions. Energy projections. Energy transferrals. Energy exchanges.

It is my awareness that all of Life is energy. Nothing more, and nothing less. It is my further awareness that energy is not only the fundamental element of Life, but that it impacts upon itself. Energy affects energy through the processes of Energy Itself.

I see Life’s every expression as merely an exchange, or a transfer, of energy between the countless particles of energy that exist, each of which emit energy in the form of vibrations or oscillations that send out “waves,” not unlike a pond sends out ripples when its surface is shaken.

Our thoughts, then, are a shaking of the surface of the Universe. They send out ripples, which have their effect on the whole pond (to speak metaphorically). Or, if you please, on the quantum field (to speak scientifically).

My life has shown me that particular kinds of thoughts produce particular kinds of energy, which I would describe as generating particular kinds of ripples in the slipstream of collective consciousness. The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale authored a book on this subject in 1952, titled The Power of Positive Thinking, and French psychologist and pharmacist Émile Coué described, years earlier, a process he called optimistic autosuggestion.

There has been much other writing and teaching offered on this subject, including a seminal book, As a Man Thinketh from James Allen (1903), The Law of Attraction from Esther and Jerry Hicks (2006), The Secret from Rhonda Byrne (2006), Psycho-cybernetics from Maxwell Maltz (1960), Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, first series (1841), Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results from William James (1898), and others.

(I owe this list to author Mitch Horowitz, who declared that “positive thinking is at once the most widely embraced and the most frequently reviled philosophy in America” in this 2014 book, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life, which purports to answer the age-old question—Does it work?—and says that it shows that, yes, positive thinking can change the world.)

If my own life had not demonstrated to me the power and efficacy of thought (both positive and negative, by the way), I would never be making such a point of all this — in spite of the fact that Conversations with God does.

The dialogue’s 3,000 pages offer a virtual treatise on energy impacting energy, and on every sentient entity in the cosmos being a source of such impact, both individually and collectively. But I needed to try it in my own life, and see affirming and confirming results, before I was willing to embrace and adopt Focused and Intentioned Thought as a dynamic force and creative tool.

I have seen such results, over and over again. I see our world at large, as well, as striking evidence of the power of collective consciousness — and of the need to raise and shift that group consciousness if we ever want to see real change in humanity’s experience of itself.

My awareness and understanding of this was firmly corroborated and substantiated in Conversations with God-Book 4: Awaken the Species, the newest dialogue with Deity, release just last March. There is no question in my mind now that the thing we call “consciousness” exists. I think that is a three-syllable word referring to the collection of energy particles, magnetized by their similarity to each other, surrounding both individuals and collectives throughout the cosmos, and having a direct effect on the milieu in which those particles swim.

I could, of course, be wrong about all of this. It is merely my own understanding. The journey in life is about reaching one’s own understanding, coming to one’s own conclusions, acting on one’s own awareness, and expressing one’s own convictions. I’m sure I don’t have to advise you not to take my word for anything.

One of our most regular commenters here at The Global Conversation has said about my last post here: “I just read Neale’s post again, and I must again marvel that with little manipulation, it can fit right into a scientific paradigm. There is no talk of souls or afterlives or manipulating matter, reading minds, or the other typical woo nonsense.”

This gentleman, named Patrick Gannon, then adds:

“With just a little bit of work, this article can be an analogy for the quantum wave, of quantum fields, of which our universe is comprised. Energy affecting — other energy — those can be quantum fields interacting. Probably wishful thinking on my part, but is this a small step away from the woo?”

I would like to reflect on that commentary here.

Let me begin by saying that it should not be surprising that my understanding of God “can fit right into a scientific paradigm” with what Patrick calls “a little manipulation” — and what I would call “a little imagination” and “a little information.”

I’ve never for a moment thought that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive, or somehow at odds with each other.

What CWG has done for me is add to my thinking “a little information” that I did not previously have…and the dialogue does not restrict its information to that which humanity already fully understands, but invites me to stretch my imagination to include the possibility that there may be something about God and about Life that humanity do not yet fully understand…the understanding of which could change everything.

I think the only difference between what CWG is telling me about God and what science is telling us about the universe is that CWG (and, more broadly, the New Spirituality) is saying that the process of life has been (and continues to be) consciously created by a force and a source of wisdom, self-awareness, and purposeful intention that I would, in my own vocabulary, describe in one word as love.

I have come to conclude that the energy I feel as love is the Essential Essence, or the Pure, Undifferentiated Energy that some people (myself included, for shorthand) call God. I believe that this Essential Essence or Pure Energy moves with purpose and intention — the purpose and intention of each element which is capable of consciousness choice…and that the combined or collaborative purpose and intention of The Whole is what we might call God In Action.

I believe this Pure Energy exists in, as, and through everything — and, furthermore, that it can be affected and manipulated by itself. That is, by facets or particles of itself. I have long (echoing what I was told in CWG) stated that energy affects energy through the processes of energy itself. This is, others may note, quantum physics at its most fundamental level.

I have been talking for 20 years about the “contextual field”…and physics has been talking for many years of the “quantum field.”

CWG told me two decades ago that “there is no straight line in the universe,” and quantum theory confirms that the basic “shape” of the cosmos is curved.

CWG told me two decades ago that time, as we understand it, does not exist, and quantum physics makes it clear that there is no separation between what we call Time and Space, and that we are actually living in what a layman (or a spiritual author) might call the Eternal Moment of Now.

I think, in the end, that it would be ironic if the only real difference between Mr. Gannon and myself, in terms of our larger cosmological understandings, is the terminology we use to describe many of the exact same things. What he describes as “woo” is what I describe as that which we “don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything.”

Mr. Gannon leaves me with the impression that he feels that if something cannot be proven and demonstrated scientifically, it is “woo,” and not worthy of our consideration.

I rather like the viewpoint of people such as Albert Einstein, who didn’t dismiss ideas simply because they could not (yet) be proven, but rather, said: “To sense that behind everything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense…I am a devoutly religious man.”

I would not describe myself as devoutly religious, but I would say that I am “a deeply spiritual man.” By this I mean to communicate that I believe there is a spiritual basis, presence, identity, and essence behind all of life that cannot yet be explained by humanity’s currently limited linear scientific logic or proof-driven model.

Or, as Shakespeare put it far more eloquently: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

There are simply not many who will say out loud what has been said in their hearts. People seem to find it much safer to keep their innermost metaphysical understandings or beliefs quietly hidden, following Shakespeare’s admonition, put into the voice of Hamlet: “Swear by my sword. Never to speak of this that you have heard.”

So what many of us “hear” within ourselves we keep to ourselves.

I, of course, have not done that. And I feel a quiet inner certainty that many of the major messages of Conversations with God will someday soon be revealed to have been not so far off the mark. Yet they are today called heresies by some. In moments when they are, I find comfort in the observation of George Bernard Shaw, who wryly noted: “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”

So Mr. Gannon’s scientific method may disavow the existence of the spiritual essence that I call “God,” but Einstein offered us this: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.”

Okay. I call that God. Someone else may call it Something Else. But a rose by any other name…

I have become aware in my life of the existence of what I would call Intentioned Essence and Pliable, Usable, Directable Energy. This is what I call God, and I think that God can be (and, indeed, places Itself at our disposal to be) used to produce consistent and predictable results in many areas of our lives. But we have to believe this to be true for it to manifest as truth in our day-to-day experience. It turns out that believing is seeing, and this is how energy impacts upon itself.

The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale called this The Power of Positive Thinking, and it has generated sufficient pre-desired outcomes in my life to leave me convinced of its efficacy and of its reality. Whether my personal experience meets someone else’s “scientific test” of proof beyond doubt or question is irrelevant to me.

Getting back to Mr. Einstein, I am particularly fond of what he said in a talk at Union Theological Seminary on the relationship between religion and science: “the situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

I am not nearly as comfortable with the word “religion” as I am with the word “spirituality,” because I experience most “religions” to be collections of doctrines and dogmas that must be accepted whole and without question by a religion’s adherents. Conversations with God, on the other hand, says to all its readers: Do not believe a word of this. Simply try it in your own life. If it resonates and works, use it. If it does not, throw it out immediately. In this, and in all matters, be your own authority.

Mr. Gannon likes to assert that CWG in a religion, but not a religion in the world says that. Nor do any of the contemporary writers and teachers within today’s religions say: “I could be wrong about all of this.” It would be refreshing if they did. It would be refreshing if they simply said, “Here is what we believe. Decide for yourself what is true for you. And know that you will be neither condemned nor rejected by us (and certainly not by God) should you not embrace these beliefs.”

Many of the messages of Conversations with God are difficult for many people to believe. And (to repeat), people should not believe them if they cannot. But just for review — to see whether there are any that you can embrace — here is a list of what I call Eleven Unbelievable Beliefs from Conversations with God:

1. There is an Essential Essence in the universe, which some people call God
2. This essence is Pure, Undifferentiated Energy, which is aware of Itself and which differentiates in variable physical and metaphysical forms.
3. The purpose of its differentiations is to provide the Essential Essence with the full and complete experience of Itself.
4. You are an Individuation of this Essential Essence, a spiritual entity comprised of three parts called, in human language, Body, Mind, and Soul. There is no separation between you and this Essence that has been called, by some, God. All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing there is, arising and existing in Individuated Expression. You are to God as a wave is to the ocean: In no way equal to it, yet in no way other than it, and in no way separated from it. There is no such thing as a Separate Thing, and no such thing as No Thing. What is called “empty space” is not “empty” at all, but a collection of energy particles and waves, the fluctuations and vibrations of which are too minute to be discernible or noticeable by the human mind, but which can be detected with instruments.
5. That which some people call God wants and needs, requires and demands, nothing from you. Eternal punishment does not exist, but eternal life does. The Soul of you always was, is now, and always will be. Its eternal existence does not depend upon adherence to a set of “rules” or “regulations,” “requirements” or “commandments.” What has been called the Kingdom of God is not a meritocracy. It is simply a field of experience, a field of energy expressing, a Contextual Field providing opportunity for the endless experience of Itself by the Essential Essence. This field manifests in what has been called metaphysical and physical form — or what has been labeled, in some of humanity’s belief systems, Heaven and Earth.
6. The purpose of Life is to recreate yourself anew in each Golden Moment of Now in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.
7. In most commonly used human terms, your life is not about you. That is, it is not about Local You, but about Universal You. It is about everyone whose life you touch, and the way in which you touch it. It is by this means that you recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are, allowing Local You to experience yourself as Universal You.
8. There is no such thing as “right” and “wrong,” and every such designation or definition is a human construction, subject to (and evidenced by) fundamental changes across periods of what you call “time.”
9. Time itself does not exist in the way humans have defined it, any more than space exists as humans have defined it, but both exist as a Single Reality that could be called spacetime, producing an Eternal Experience of Always Here/Always Now.
10. Forgiveness is the biggest obstacle to spiritual growth, because every act is an Act of Love, and therefore understandable, if not condoned. Understanding is not condoning. No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.
11. 98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that don’t matter. That is, most people don’t know what they are doing here, who they really are, or what the purpose of life throughout the universe is. Most people aren’t even sure that life has a purpose — which is the biggest and most profoundly negatively impacting misunderstanding of our species.

Enjoy the discussion.