Author Archive
Here is a quick survey of some of the things many people have been told by their ancestors, by their parents, by their teachers and by other authority figures in their lives, about What God Wants. It may be tough for some of you to get through this survey. Please do it anyway.
These passed-on messages have created the here-and-now views, ideas and experiences of millions of people who at least loosely adhere to, or live in cultures which have been deeply affected by, the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the big three of the world’s organized religions. Some of these teachings also became a part of other religions. The result of this is that a huge portion of the world’s people have been exposed to these ideas and deeply affected by them.
Let’s take the most obvious topics first.
GOD…Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for humans to understand that God is the Supreme Being, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Giver of Life, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Wise Beyond Human Understanding.
God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the Unmoved Mover, separate from humanity, but the creator of it in His own image. Separate from life, but the Creator of it, as His gift to humanity.
Most humans have been told that God is a single God, a unified God, the Only God there is. The word Allah means, literally, the God. Some humans have been told that this One God is divided into Three Parts, one of which became human. Some humans have been told that there is more than one God. And some humans have been told that there is no God at all. The majority of humans in the Twenty-First Century believe in a God of some sort.
Most of those who do believe in God have been told that What God Wants is Love and Justice.
To fulfill the first mandate, God has granted each human being ample and repeated opportunity to be reconciled with Him.
To fulfill the second mandate, God, at the end of each human life, sits in Judgment of every human soul, deciding at this Reckoning whether the soul has earned everlasting reward in Heaven or everlasting damnation in Hell.
Most humans have been told that God is a jealous God, God is a vengeful God, God is an angry God who can be filled with wrath and who uses violence directly on human beings—and who invites and even commands human beings to do so on each other.
They’ve also been told that God is a caring God, a compassionate God, a merciful God, a loving God who wants nothing but the best for human beings. All that humans have to do is obey Him.
It’s easy for humans to know how to obey God because God has told humans exactly what to do and what not to do. It’s all there in Sacred Scripture. It can be found also in the words and in the teaching of God’s personal representative on earth.
These are the beliefs of much of humanity.
One result of this teaching: Many human beings are afraid of God. They also love God. So, many humans confuse fear and love, seeing them as connected in some way. Where God is concerned, we love to be afraid (we have made it a virtue to be “God fearing”), and we are afraid not to love (we are commanded to “Love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, all thy heart, and all thy soul”).
Humans fear what God will do to them if they do not obey Him. They have been told He will punish them with everlasting torment. Many human beings therefore rely heavily on their understanding of God’s word and God’s desires and what meets God’s approval when regulating their lives, interpreting situations or events, and making decisions.
When U. S. President George W. Bush was asked if he ever sought the advice of his father, the first President Bush, he replied that he sought counsel from “a higher Father.” When the then new spiritual leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, delivered a speech at Gaza’s Islamic University in March, 2004, he told those assembled that “God declared war” against America, Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Rantisi added, “The war of God continues against them and I can see the victory coming up from the land of Palestine by the hand of Hamas.” Two weeks later Rantisi was dead, killed by an Israeli rocket attack on his car.
Earlier it was said, “Humanity’s ideas about God produce humanity’s ideas about life and about people.”
This is painfully clear. This is painfully obvious.
This is Part III of an extended series of headline articles in The Global Conversation
GOD’S WORD AND GOD’S MESSENGER…Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for God’s Word to be recognized as being contained in the Holy Scriptures and Sacred Texts, and for God’s Messenger to be honored and listened to and followed.
There are many Holy Scriptures and Sacred Texts, including the Adi Granth, the Bhagavad-gita, the Book of Mormon, the Hadith, the I Ching, the Kojiki, the Lun-yü, the Mahabharata, the Mathnawi, the New Testament, the Pali Canon, the Qur’an, the Tao-te Ching, the Talmud, the Torah, the Upanishad, the Veda, and the Yoga-sutras, to name a few. Many humans have been told that only one of these texts is the right one. The rest are wrong. If you choose the teachings of the “wrong” one, you’ll go to hell.
There are many Messengers, including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Confucius, Siddartha Gautama (who has been called The Buddha), Jesus of Nazareth (who has been called The Savior), Muhammad (who has been called The Greatest Prophet), Patanjai (who has been called The Enlightened One), Baha’u’llah (who has been called the Blessed One), Jalal al-Din Rumi, (who has been called the Mystic), Paramahansa Yogananda (who has been called the Master), Joseph Smith (who has been called many things), and others. Many humans have been told that only one of these messengers is the right one. The rest are wrong. If you choose the message of the “wrong” one, you’ll go to hell.
One result of this teaching: Human beings have been trying to figure out which is the right text and who is the right messenger for thousands of years. The followers of certain messengers and the believers in certain texts have sought to convince the rest of the world that the messenger and text of their persuasion is the only one to which people should turn.
On many occasions throughout history these attempts at conversion have turned violent. There has scarcely been a day on this planet when a battle has not been fought or a human being not killed in the name of God, or for God’s Cause.
The Holy Scriptures of all major religions indicate that vanquishing, punishing and killing is something that God Himself has repeatedly done, and so vanquishing, punishing and killing in God’s name and in the name of God’s Messenger is acceptable and, in some circumstances, required.
This is, many of the world’s people believe, What God Wants.
HEAVEN AND HELL…Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for people to live good lives, and for good people to go to Heaven or Paradise after their deaths, while bad people go to Hell, Gehenna, or Hades. Those in Heaven will live in unending bliss in reunion with God and those in Hell will live with other evildoers who have been damned to eternal torture. Where each individual soul goes will be decided at the Reckoning on Judgment Day.
Some humans have been told that hell is a temporary experience during which sinners are tormented by demons until the debt created by the evil of their lives has been paid, while others have been informed that hell is but a phase in a soul’s journey as it passes through many experiences of reincarnation.
One result of this teaching: Millions of people have structured their entire lives around the struggle to avoid “going to hell” and around the hope of “getting to heaven.” They have done extraordinary and sometimes shocking things to produce this outcome.
The concept of heaven and hell has shaped not only their behavior, but their entire understanding of life itself. It has also shaped human history.
LIFE…Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for life to be a school, a place of learning, a time of testing, a brief and precious opportunity to migrate the soul back to heaven, back to God, whence it came.
Many humans have also been told that it’s when life ends that the real joy begins. All of life should be considered a prelude, a forerunner, a platform upon which is built the soul’s experience of eternity. Life should therefore be led with an eye toward the Afterlife, for what is earned now will be experienced forever.
Most humans also believe that What God Wants is for people to understand that life consists of what people can see, hear, taste, touch and smell—and nothing more.
One result of this teaching: Humans believe that life is not easy, nor is it supposed to be. It’s a constant struggle. In this struggle, anything other than what is perceived by the five senses is considered “supernatural” or “occult” and falls, therefore, into the category of “trafficking with the Devil” and “the work of Satan.”
Humans are struggling to get back to God, and into God’s good graces. They are struggling to get back home. This is what life is about. It’s about the struggle of the soul, living within the body, to get back home, to return to God, from Whom it has been separated.
Most people of religious persuasion focus heavily on Heaven and Hell. Those who believe that “getting to Heaven” is the ultimate Purpose of Life, and who truly and fervently believe that they can guarantee their entrance into Heaven by doing certain things while on earth, will, of course, seek to do those things.
They’ll make sure that their sins are confessed regularly, and that their absolutions are up to date, so that if they die suddenly their soul will be ready for Judgment Day. They’ll fast for hours, days, or weeks at a time, travel on pilgrimages to distant holy places, go to church or temple or mosque or synagogue every week without fail, tithe 10% of their income, eat or not eat certain foods, wear or not wear certain clothing, say or not say certain words, and engage in all manner of rites and rituals.
They’ll obey the rules of their religion, honor the customs of their faith tradition, and follow the instructions of their spiritual leaders in order to demonstrate to God that they are a worthy person, so that a place will be reserved for them in Paradise.
If they are distressed enough and oppressed enough and unhappy enough, some humans will even end their own lives and kill other people—including the totally innocent and the absolutely unsuspecting—for the promise of a reward in heaven.
(If that promised reward happens to be 72 black-eyed virgins with whom to spend all of eternity, and if the humans in question happen to be 18 to 30-year-old men with little future and a dust-laden, poverty stricken, injustice-filled present, the chances of their making such an extraordinarily destructive decision will increase tenfold.)
They’ll do this because they believe this is What God Wants.
But is it?
(Our exploration of this topic continues in Part IV of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)
After all these years I can say that I know what I have been searching for since I was a child. I have been searching for the experience of knowing Who I Really Am.
All my life I have been trying to figure this out. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Is there any reason for what I am doing? Does anybody care? Is there any outcome, other than the doing of it? What is the point of life?
These are the questions that plagued me as I tried to make some sense out of all this. There is a possibility that they have been plaguing you, too. If they have, you have come to the right place.
The Holy Experience brings us the answers to those questions. The Holy Experience is the answer. The Holy Experience is when you know the difference between Divinity and Humanity — and when that difference disappears.
Whoa! Did you hear that? The Holy Experience is when you know the difference between Divinity and Humanity — and when that difference disappears.
Whew! That was a mouthful.
Divinity and Humanity can become One in your experience, and when that occurs you have entered the Holy Moment. You cannot enter this Moment, however, until you know the difference between Divinity and Humanity—and why it exists.
So let’s explore that, shall we?
For me, the difference between Divinity and Humanity is that Divinity seeks only to distribute, and Humanity seeks only to gather. That is not the only difference, of course, but it is a milestone difference. It is a humongous difference. So let’s not gloss over it. Let’s not read past it and move on, without really grasping its implication. Let’s state it again. I said…
The difference between Divinity and Humanity is that Divinity seeks only to distribute, and Humanity seeks only to gather.
Divinity and Humanity can become One in your experience, and when that occurs you have entered the Holy Moment. You cannot enter this Moment, however, until you know the difference between Divinity and Humanity—and why it exists.
Divinity understands that it is only through the distribution OF Itself, the giving away OF Itself, that it can be magnified and glorified. Humanity believes that it is only through the gathering TO itself, the bringing TO itself, that it can be magnified and glorified.
So there you have it. Giver and Gatherer. That’s the difference. It is an astonishing difference. It is an exact opposite. That is no small distinction. Yet when it is deeply understood (not simply casually comprehended), everything becomes wonderfully clear at last, and the chasm between the two may finally be closed.
What God Wants is not unimportant information. Millions of people all over the world have been living their lives based on the information they have been given about What God Wants, and if the world’s prior information on this topic is inaccurate, the world could be in big trouble.
The world’s prior information on this topic is inaccurate.
The world is in big trouble.
The world does not have to be in big trouble. It is because it chooses to be. Its people could make a different choice.
I think that very soon they will. I think people have had enough. They’ve had enough of the violence and the terror and the killing. They’ve had enough of the bickering and the quarreling and the fighting that leads to it.
They’ve had enough of their own lives not working, of seeing their own relationships falling apart, of watching their own careers crumble, of having their own dreams dissolve and disappear.
They’ve had enough of everything being such a struggle in our world, with every day filling itself with adversity and difficulty all over the globe. They’ve had enough of human society taking two steps forward and one step back, constantly, constantly, constantly trudging into the wind.
The human race is losing patience with itself. People everywhere are saying, “There’s got to be another way.” And we’re becoming more and more clear that there is. Humanity’s problem, as it seeks to find that other way, is that people simply do not know What God Wants. They think that they do. Billions think that they do. But they do not.
If you find that hard to believe, consider this: If humanity does understand What God Wants, and if the present world situation is the best that humanity can do after all these years with that information, how much hope can there be for a brighter tomorrow?
If we really know everything that it is truly important to know about God—and if all that has been revealed, all that has been taught, all that has been said and sung about God has brought humanity to this, then what good has all of it been?
Yet if there is something new for us to learn, something more for us to understand about God, then it’s still possible for the human condition to change. Hope returns. Not hope for something better in the Hereafter, when life as we’ve known it on the earth has been destroyed, but hope for something better right here right now, before everything has been destroyed.
That hope cannot be realized, however, until some very important questions are asked and answered.
Is it true that humanity is utterly stubborn, completely unwilling and absolutely unable to overcome its most primitive instincts? Or is it possible that there is still some teaching left to be done, some data still missing, some important aspect of God and Life still not understood?
Could it be that the problem is not with the receivers of the information, but with the information itself?
Could it be that humanity’s understanding of God and of Life is not so much “wrong” as it is simply incomplete?
Finally, is it time for humanity to throw open the door to inquiry about God in a new way?
For far too long the world’s discussion about God has been moving in only one direction, led in the main by those who say that we understand all there is that’s really important for us to understand about God, and who assert that humanity’s problems are not caused by human beings who fail to understand, but by human beings who fail to act on their understanding.
This is a popular notion, but it’s a misconception. Just the opposite has been true. It has been people who did act on what they understood about God who have caused many of our biggest problems.
These are people who thought they knew What God Wants.
This is Part II of an extended series of headline stories in The Global Conversation.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created the 200 years of the Christian Crusades and the horrors of the Inquisition, seeking to win the world for Christianity.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who told armies of Muslims to send marauders far and wide to conquer every land and culture and bring it under the Nation of Islam.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who called themselves the Chosen People and reclaimed land they declared to be originally their own, ignoring the fact that history had caused it to be inhabited for thousands of years by others, and telling those others to now leave portions of that land, and to live when and how they are told to live, as second class citizens without equal rights in their own home.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who hanged men and women in town squares, and burned others at the stake, holding up the Good Book and declaring them to be witches.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who passed laws making it illegal for humans of differing races to marry, or for consenting adults to engage in certain sexual practices.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created cultural prohibitions forbidding people to sing or dance, draw pictures of any person, or play music of any kind except sacred songs.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who said that it was not okay to even utter or write the name of G-D—but that it was okay to kill in G-D’s name.
Is all of this really What God Wants?
Are you sure?
It is important to be sure, because we are not talking about a small thing here.
There is much that we have been taught about What God Wants. Are these teachings accurate? We’ll begin to take a look in our next entry here.
(Our exploration of this topic continues in Part III of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)
Very few people are going to believe what’s in the extended series of articles that begins today with this first entry in the headline story column at The Global Conversation.
The articles that will appear here over the next two weeks will answer the most important question in human history: What does God want?
For many people that answer will be startling.
These headline stories will be excerpted and adapted from the book What God Wants—and should, in my opinion, be the headline story every day in every major newspaper in every city the world. This news is that important.
This is because humanity’s ideas about God produce humanity’s ideas about life and about people. Dramatically different ideas about God will produce dramatically different ideas about life and about people. And if the world could use anything right now, that’s it—because nothing in our world is working.
Now I know it feels very “not okay” to some people for a spiritual messenger to talk in any way negative about life, about how things are, about what could be made better in our world, or anything that does not point directly to positivity and joy and loving solutions.
Yet one cannot discuss or explore joyful and loving solutions if one is not at least allowed to describe the problems. So we’re going to begin there, and then we’ll talk about solutions. And you’ll just have to have some patience with this if you among those who believe that “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” is the only spiritually valid approach to life.
The problem in the world today is that none of the systems we have put into place to create a better life for us all on this planet have produced the outcome for which they were designed.
It’s worse than that. They’ve actually produced exactly the opposite.
Our political systems — created to produce safety and security for the world’s people – have produced nothing but disagreement and disarray.
Our economic systems — created to produce opportunity and sufficiency for all — have produced increasing poverty and massive economic inequality, with 85 of the world’s richest people holding more wealth than 3.5 billion…that’s half the planet’s population…combined.
Our ecological systems — created to help us produce a sustainable lifestyle — have been abused so much that they are now generating environmental disasters right and left.
Our educational systems — created to lift higher and higher the knowledge base of the planet’s population — have produced a drop in global awareness and sensitivity that each year sinks our intellectual common denominator lower and lower. We can’t even remember our own telephone numbers anymore.
Our health care systems — created in hopes of producing a good and long life for an increasingly higher percentage of people — are doing little to eliminate inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services, thus actually providing top level medical services each year to a lower and lower percentage.
Our social systems — created to produce the joy of community and harmony among a divergent population — more and more generate and even encourage discordance, disparity, prejudice, and despair…to say nothing of rampant injustice.
And, most sadly dysfunctional of all, our spiritual systems — created to produce a greater closeness to God, and so, to each other — have produced bitter righteousness, shocking intolerance, widespread anger, deep-seated hatred, and self-justified violence.
This article is Part I of an Extended Series of headline stories in The Global Conversation
We stand today on the brink of a global cultural war. The opening volleys have already been exchanged. The really major clashes, the unthinkable FutureWorld battles, may be yet to come.
Given the direction in which humanity appears to be moving, it may seem as though this larger conflict is inevitable. It isn’t. There’s something very powerful that can stop it: dramatically different ideas about God and dramatically different ideas about life and about people.
Such ideas, if accepted and adopted, will produce dramatically different ways of living and being. Values will change. Priorities will change. Power structures and power-holders will change.
Of course, as we know, change can be a dangerous thing to suggest, not only around people of power (to whom change is the ultimate threat), but also around ordinary people (for whom change is threatening simply because it leads to the unknown).
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore had it exactly right in a September, 2004 interview in The New Yorker:
“In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it’s not going to be the source of your salvation.”
The final part of that sentence (italics mine) tells the tale of humanity’s belief about God and life in 15 words. Mr. Gore confirms this with his next statement. “And the deepest roots,” he says, “are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back.”
Al Gore’s insight leaves us all facing a thunderous question: Is the way forward to be found by going way back?
The answer is, no.
And while, as the former Vice President notes, we never question the possibility that our philosophical and religious traditions are not going to be the source of our salvation—presumably because we feel threatened by such questioning—could there be times when not to question those traditions presents an even larger threat?
The answer is, yes. And this is one of those times.
(Part II of this extended series will appear in this space soon. Watch for it.)
All of my life I have been seeking the Holy Experience. All of my life I have known that the Holy Experience would reveal everything. Everything about God, everything about life, and everything about me. The only questions for me have been, what is the Holy Experience, and where can I find it?
Those questions have been asked by people all over the world since the beginning of time. Perhaps you have asked those questions, too. I should like now to offer my personal definition of the Holy Experience, so that we can know just what it is, exactly, that I am going to be talking about.
This definition kind of popped out of me unexpectedly a few years ago as I was responding to a question e-mailed to me by a man in Maine. Let me share with you that question and answer, and you’ll see what I mean.
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Hi Neale…I have been struggling recently with what “mission” means in a pluralistic world. Mission has had so many different objectives throughout history—converting others to the “true” faith; extending God’s kingdom; doing justice for the poor and marginalized, etc.
Our world seems very near-sighted when people consider their faith the “true” faith and others as condemned to Hell. Since all of us have a somewhat different conception of what “faith” means, what is each person’s responsibility to other people—both people of other faiths and people of no faith?
Should we try to show others what we consider “true”, or should we only try to share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships? What does it mean to be a person of faith — ie: Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or otherwise—in a pluralistic world?
Thanks for any comments or insights you may have, Neale!
Matt, in Natick, MA
Dear Matt…The only True Mission is the mission of the individual soul. Every other mission is an extension of that.
The mission of the individual soul is to know itself as it truly is, in its own experience. I have learned that this is accomplished by creating itself as that. Life is not a process of discovery; it is a process of creation.
The hitch here is that in Ultimate Reality it is not possible to create anything, because everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be has already been created. So the Process of Creation turns out to be, after all, not actually Creation, but Perception. It is about seeing what has always been there, knowing what has always been true, and experiencing the Only Experience There Is. We call this, loosely: God.
The challenge here is that one cannot experience The Only Experience There Is if it is, in fact, the “only experience” there is. This is because in the absence of That Which Is Not, That Which IS, is not.
Put simply, in the absence of darkness, the light is not. In the absence of cold, hot is not. In the absence of up, there is no such thing as down. None of these things can be experienced in anything other than relative terms. The same is true about God. And, for that matter, about the human soul. For the human soul IS God, in part. It is a holy and individuated aspect of That Which IS.
If there is nothing in the environment, if there is nothing in the vicinity, that is NOT That Which IS, then That Which IS cannot be known experientially. If there is nothing in existence that is NOT That Which IS (and by definition this would have to be true), then That Which IS cannot be experienced. Nor can any Part of It. It can be fully known, but it cannot be experienced. That is, it cannot be known in relative terms (which is what “experience” is), but only in absolute terms. This is what is true in the Realm of the Absolute.
Remember this always:
EXPERIENCE IS THE KNOWING OF THE ABSOLUTE IN RELATIVE TERMS.
So in the Realm of the Absolute, That Which IS cannot experience Its own magnificence. It cannot know the glory of Itself, the wonder of Itself, the Truth of Itself.
This is the condition faced by God (That Which IS), and this is condition faced by your soul. You now understand the reason that physical life as we know it exists. The creation of Physicality produced a solution to God’s conundrum—a solution that is ingenious and spectacular: create an entire reality based on Illusion.
That phrase in itself, “reality based on illusion,” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, but it gets the idea across.
And so we find ourselves in this Alice in Wonderland world (an Alice in Wonderland universe, really) in which we swear that what is So is Not So, and that what is Not So is So.
It is a “wonderland” in the sense that it allows us to experience the True Wonder of Who We Really Are. We do this by calling forth the Opposite of Who We Are, and by experiencing ourselves in relation to that. Suddenly, we have a point of reference by which we may know ourselves. (Remember that I said that the mission of the individual soul is to know itself as it truly is, in its own experience.)
All of this lays down the theological basis for my (finally!) direct answer to your direct question. That which is opposite to us, that which is “not us,” exists for a very holy reason: so that we may announce and declare, express and experience, become and fulfill Who We Really Are.
Therefore judge not, and neither condemn. Raise not your fist to the darkness, but be a light unto the darkness, and curse it not.
Our “mission” vis-a-vis people of other faiths is to accept them exactly as they are. Not to seek to convert them, not to judge them, and certainly not to condemn them.
Now Matt, you have placed your question inside a riddle that offers two choices—yet these choices are not, in truth, mutually exclusive. It does not have to be one or the other, as you have posed it.
You have asked: “Should we try to show others what we consider ‘true’, or should we only try to share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships?”
I believe we can do both.
As we share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships, we DO “show others what we consider true.” In fact, that is the most effective way to show it. Thus, we set people free from their own limiting beliefs about us. This eventually will set them free from their own limiting beliefs about themselves. Soon they, too, will know Who They Really Are.
And so, Matt, walk through the world not as one who seeks to convert or convince others of anything, but simply as one who seeks to know others as Everything. When you know all of it as Everything, then you know your Self as Everything as well. You see your Self in every other person. Indeed, in every other thing that exists.
Suddenly, the magnificence and the glory of Who You Are becomes apparent to you. It becomes part of your experience. It is no longer something you know intellectually; it is something you know experientially.
Many people have had this experience (the experience of being Everything) momentarily. They have had it in meditation, perhaps, or in a time of pure silence, or in the midst of an impactful interaction with another (such as sexual union or laughing until tears come, or weeping together, or walking alone through the woods on a sunlit morning, or swimming in the ocean, or, simply…washing dishes.)
I call this The Holy Experience.
It is when you know Who You Really Are.
While many people have had this experience momentarily, the trick is to have it continually. Or at least a great deal more of the time. That was the yearning of the Buddha. It was the journey of the Christ. It is the opportunity placed before each of us.
Many Masters have shown us the way. The way is for us to BE the way. I am The Way and The Life. Follow me. This is what all Masters have declared. This is what all Students have understood.
Therefore, do not look for your Master, BE the Master for whom you have been looking. Do not seek the Truth, BE the Truth you have been seeking. And do not attempt to change another, BE the change you wish to see.
That is your mission, Matt, and there is no other.
Bless you, Matt, with the knowing of Who You Really Are. May God be experienced by you through you, and through the living of your life.
Love always, and all ways…Neale.
We are living in a world where more and more people are feeling more and more insecure, and searching more and more for certainty, in times of more and more turbulence.
And so it has happened.
For the first time in the 21st Century it has been announced that an entire nation will hereafter be ruled by the tenets of a religion as a matter of law.
The nation of Brunei has declared that it has officially adopted sharia law, and will incorporate it into the country’s existing civil penal code, where it will operate alongside of that code.
The online, commonsource encyclopedia Wikipedia explains that “Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygience, diet, prayer, everyday etiquette and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, most Sharia law is determined through human interpretation of the laws, which fuses together the modern context of society with Islamic values.”
Some online news sources have reported widespread negative reaction by international human rights groups to the announcement by the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, that commencement of the first phase of the sharia-based penal code has begun in Brunei.
That nation had already implemented several strict religiously-motivated laws, such as the banning of alcohol sale, and now the adoption of sharia law as part of its civil code has some international observers worried. Sharia includes punishments such as flogging, dismemberment and death by stoning for crimes such as rape, adultery and sodomy.
That may be alright for people who adopt, accept, and embrace the Islamic teachings upon which these prescriptions are based, but global sources point out that while some parts of the new Islamic code will apply only to Muslims, other parts will affect all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. This means it will impact Buddhist and Christian communities as well.
“Around 70 percent of people in Brunei are Malay Muslims, while the remainder of the population are of Chinese or other ethnic descent,” a May 1 report from Arshiya Khullar for CNN said. The report may be seen here.
That CNN story went on to say, ”The United Nations has also publicly condemned the move.”
“Under international law, stoning people to death constitutes torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and is thus clearly prohibited,” Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was quoted by CNN as saying in a press briefing in Geneva last month.
“He further expressed concerns about the implementation of sharia law’s impact on women,” the CNN article from reporter Arshiya Khullar went on. “A number of UN studies have revealed that women are more likely to be sentenced to death by stoning, due to deeply entrenched discrimination and stereotyping against them,” Mr. Colville is quoted in the CNN report.
The action by the nation of Brunei invites every member of the human community to sincerely ask: Is it the highest and best choice of a sovereign nation to base its civil code on the religious beliefs of the largest number of its citizens?
Alongside of this might come a second inquiry: Do other nations, albeit more quietly, do precisely the same thing?
Is not the civil code of most Western nations based on the principles, ideas, and proscriptions of old Roman Law, which was based on the teachings of the Catholic Church, which is, in turn, based on messages in the Bible? If not, what is the purely Civil Law basis that supports opposition to, say, gay marriage in the Congress of the United States? Is not that opposition based on what legislators say believe about What God Wants?
The larger question is: What role, if any, should What God Wants play in our collective social and civil experience?
For that matter, what does “God want”? Who can know for sure? What source can tell us?
Would it be Moses and the Old Testament? Would it be Jesus and the New Testament? Would it be the Prophet Muhammad, bless his holy name, and the Qur’an? Would it be Bahá’u’lláh and the writings of the Baha’i faith? Would it be Joseph Smith and the writings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Book of Mormon? Would it be Lao Tzu and the words of the Tao Te Ching?
For a close look at what Conversations with God has to say about what God wants, return here in the days ahead for an extended series of articles covering the next two weeks, built around excerpts from the book What God Wants. Your comments, ideas, observations, and beliefs will be anticipated with great interest in the fortnight beginning Tuesday, when our first installment will appear.
Was Jesus a fanner of the flames of fear? Did Jesus use “vitriol” and “quippy rejoinders” to make his points?
I ask this because following my last entry in this headline space — a story about how America is returning to its own Wild West, where everyone packed a six-shooter and the question was not, who is carrying a gun, but who is quickest on the draw? — a reader posting as Rian Dean entered this response in the Comment section below…
Neale, I Love You. Your work has inspired me to make changes in my Life I would never have dreamed possible 20 years ago. You have lead me to a place where fear has no hold on my Life or on the manner in which I choose to express my Divinity. Please do not choose to lend your voice to fear.
I have read and watched the message you bring to us change over the last few years and it seems, from my limited viewpoint, that some of what you write on these pages is increasingly coming from a place of fear.
The Loving, gentle urging of our Souls toward Love has been slowly replaced by ever more strident descriptions of the injustices you perceive in our World today. Less often do I see solutions based in Love. More and more often now these articles hold a sarcastic, snarky tone that definitely spurs conversation, what seems to be missing is the Love-based solution to those perceived injustices.
The Global Conversation website is a treasure. It is an opportunity to expose a fear-based Society to a message of Divine Love in a manner that is unique to our times. The number of posts that rally behind your clarion calls against injustice is impressive, but no more so than every other political site where battle lines are drawn on every issue and people whip out their most quippy rejoinders to defend or attack any given issue.
Please, please, may we use this opportunity to trot out solutions to the issues rather than engage in heated exchanges of vitriol? May we offer solutions to the fear that so grips our Country and our World rather than fanning the flames of that fear?
Remember, we will not solve all of these problems at the same level of consciousness by which we created them.
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I am grateful to Rian for posting his comment, because it brings up what I think is a very important discussion of a very important topic: Is it spiritual and loving to use sharp words — even harsh words sometimes — to make a point?
To find my answer to this question I decided to do a little research on the life of Christ. Whatever their religion, whatever their sacred beliefs, few people would deny that the man called Jesus made a huge impact on this world, and was and is considered by many to be one of the most spiritual, loving human beings who ever lived.
How is it, then, that Jesus repeatedly used the words “brood of vipers” and “hypocrites” to describe those whose behaviors reflected views other than his own? And how is it that he used those words in statements that were very direct and very energy-charged? Utterances such as: “You brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things?”…and: “You say in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times!”…
…and elsewhere: “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?” And again, elsewhere, he actually called forth bad things upon certain of those who opposed him, saying: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.”
How could Jesus speak with such “vitriol”?
But wait. It’s worse. When he found the money changers in the Temple, he actually made a whip out of a rope in which he tied knots…and then he overturned all the tables of the traders in the Temple and drove the sellers and buyers out, waving his whip and shouting: “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”
What happened to… “we will not solve all of these problems at the same level of consciousness by which we created them”…? Was Jesus “offering solutions,” or was he just expressing his anger?
Is there a place for anger in the words of spiritual messengers?
Let that be our question for the day. Rian? Your thoughts? Others? Your thoughts?
The State of Georgia in the United States has passed one of the most permissive gun laws in that nation — legislation that its critics are calling the “Guns Everywhere Bill.”
The new law sends America back to its old Wild West Days, when cowboys packed six-shooters, and the measure of one’s personal safety was not whether you carried a gun (everybody did), but who could get it out of the holster faster.
The U.S. is now returning to the days when the personally carried gun is once again The Great Equalizer. It used to be that laws, and the enforcement of them, provided equalizing comfort and safety in public places in America, but ever since Stand Your Ground laws came back into play — allowing people to think they can shoot-to-kill other people in places like movie theatres because someone threw a bag of popcorn in their face — the people of the United States have apparently decided that a loaded revolver, carried everywhere, is the only way to go.
Effective July 1, the new law in Georgia will allow licensed gun owners to carry firearms into more public places than at any time in 100 years.
This would include — as in days of old — bars. It would also allow guns to be carried into government buildings that don’t have security checkpoints. As well, the law authorizes school districts to appoint staffers to carry firearms. It allows churches to “opt-in” if they want to allow weapons inside their houses of worship.
The law has not been passed without opposition. It has been criticized as being “the most extreme gun bill in America” by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group co-founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has also been highly critical of the legislation.
Law enforcement organizations hate it. “Police officers do not want more people carrying guns on the street, particularly police officers in inner city areas.” Frank Rotondo, the executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, has been widely quoted in the media as saying.
In a new twist on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, the language of the new law prohibits police officers from even detaining momentarily any person “for the sole purpose of investigating whether such a person has a weapons carry license.” In other words, “I’ve got a gun, and you don’t get to ask me whether I have a permit to carry it. Take that, police people.”
None of the opposition from law enforcement and mayors, etc. has mattered in a country gone wild about its guns since the massacre of 20 school children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012.
Apparently wracked with fear that the escalating gun violence in America would move people in that country to advocate against easy access to guns, a backlash has formed and grown enormously in the past two years, led by the National Rifle Association and buttressed by Second Amendment Rights supporters.
Nine states have now loosened gun regulations in the U.S., and the National Rifle Association called the new law in Georgia “a historic victory for the Second Amendment.”
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to “keep and bear arms.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the past that this does not stop the government from regulating the sale and use of firearms…but Second Amendment advocates see it another way. Thus, even attempts to limit sales of guns to people without a background check, or place limits on the sale of semi-automatic combat weapons that shoot many rounds per second, have been vociferously opposed by an increasingly loud constituency in the United States.
So powerful has this constituency become that even the grandson of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Democratic state senator Jason Carter, voted for the bill in the Georgia legislature. (Jason Carter, not incidentally, is running for governor in his state.)
Speaking to critics of the new law, Georgia state Rep. Rick Jasperse, the Republican who introduced the bill, said it is simply about restoring Second Amendment rights and allowing licensed gun owners to carry their weapons in more places. He said this was “not extreme.”
So the question now before the American people in an increasing number of places will be not, “Are you packing?” (most people will be), but rather: “How fast on the draw are you?”
And the new American motto?
“Smile when you say that, brother.”
And whatever you do, don’t throw your popcorn at someone if you find yourself in an argument in a movie theatre. You’re liable to get shot and killed.
On the spot. No questions asked.
Self defense, you see…
In America, you get to Stand Your Ground.
With a six-shooter. Like in the Old West, remember?
Have Gun, Will Travel.
Conversations with God told us that humanity nearly rendered itself extinct once before. Barely enough of us survived to regenerate the species and start over. Are we at this same turning point again? Have we arrived once more at the intersection where theology meets cosmology meets sociology meets pathology?
Right now we are still embracing a Separation Theology. That is, a way of looking at God that insists that we are “over here” and God is “over there.”
The problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology. That is, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.
And a Separation Cosmology produces a Separation Psychology. That is, a psychological viewpoint that says that I am over here and you are over there.
And a Separation Psychology produces a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages the entire human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.
And a Separation Sociology produces a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, engaged in individually and collectively, and producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands—as evidenced everywhere on our planet throughout human history.
Only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Oneness Theology will our pathology be healed. We have been differentiated from God, but not separated from God, even as your fingers are differentiated but not separated from your hand (to reuse an earlier illustration).
We must come to understand that all of life is One. This is the first step. It is the jumping-off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story of Humanity.
Oneness is not a characteristic of life. Life is a characteristic of Oneness. Life is the expression of Oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are One. You are a part of Life. Therefore, you and God are One.
It is as simple as that.
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Did you know that there is a new book that identifies the 25 most important messages of the 9-installment Conversations with God series? It then offers practical suggestions on how to apply each message in every day life. Powerful and inspirational reading. To see the first seven chapters and hear a one chapter sample of the audio book, click here.
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Is changing the world all about changing what people “want?” Or is it about changing why people would want one thing rather than another?
This is a major question facing Planet Earth’s politicians, business figures, spiritual leaders, and social scientists right now — although very few of them have “framed” it in this way…because, regrettably, very few of them have deeply understood the nature of humanity’s current problem.
It is a problem of beliefs, not of behaviors.
There is a global conversation taking place on this website that is now heating up, with nearly 100 Comments posted beneath the last entry alone in this newspaper’s headline space, and I would like to direct its attention now to the nature of the challenge presently facing our species.
This has all come to the forefront for me because of a Comment posted under the last top-of-page story here. The Comment was authored by a person posting as Kristen.
“WOW,” she wrote, “this is a crazy thread. Are we still on Earth??? I feel I have been teleported to some weird no man’s land.
“A very simple thought — has it ever occurred to anyone that most people are actually happy with who and how they are and do not want to change? It is merely others that want them to change creating the illusion.
“A classic CwG train of thought I think. Perhaps just my perception?!
“IF people wanted to stop polluting, they would. If they wanted to stop traveling and reduce their carbon footprint, they would. If they wanted to help end the suffering of others, they would. If they wanted to be nicer, they would.
“Everyone is living as they WANT to, which differs greatly from how others want them to. This is not right, possibly not even wrong, merely the cold hard truth.
“I don’t think trying to convince people they WANT to change has been very successful to date, which is why I am pro law and consequences, including person carbon footprint ‘rations’, the illegalisation of many ‘non-foods’ (as Mewabe would word it), banning all coal mining, anything that causes animal suffering, executing peodophiles and torturers, letting addicts kill themselves, etc.
“I’m almost at the point where I think we need a full dictatorship communist world!!!”
My response…
Dear Kristen, I understand perfectly and completely the frustration you clearly feel with the state of affairs on our planet right now — although I must say that I am not in agreement with some of the “solutions” you’ve mentioned. Sidestepping those for the moment, let’s look at the central point in your thesis…
You say that people do what they WANT to do, and you “don’t think trying to convince people they WANT to change has been very successful to date.” On this I agree with you — but perhaps not for the reason that you hold this view.
My own awareness tells me that you can rarely (if ever) get people they WANT to change until you get them to change their minds about WHY they want WHAT they want.
In other words, peoples’ choices change when peoples’ reasons for making certain choices change.
Let me give you a very simple example. It has never been my choice to drink beet juice. It simply wasn’t a taste I enjoyed. Now my reasons for drinking any kind of juice have been two-fold: to enjoy the taste (and usually, the sweetness) and to quench my thirst. So I’ve always insisted on drinking juices I liked — and beet juice was not among them.
Then one day I read that in preliminary research, beetroot juice lowered blood pressure, and thus may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease due to the high nitrate content of the beetroot. I’ve had cardiac weakness since I was born with a congenital heart defect. As I have gotten older, I’ve wanted to pay more and more attention to my heart’s health. When I saw that report, and checked it with my doctor, I immediately ran out and bought two bottles of beet juice at my local whole foods store.
These days I drink one glass of beet juice a day. What caused me to WANT to drink beet juice? The reason WHY I was drinking it!
As soon as I altered the “why” of my behavior, the “what” of my behavior changed spontaneously and automatically.
Now, let’s get back to your commentary, above. You asked: “Has it ever occurred to anyone that most people are actually happy with who and how they are, and do not want to change?”
My answer would be that of course it has. But the problem has been that most people who would like to see things change on this planet are approaching the problem at the level of behavior, rather than the level of belief. They are trying to get people to stop acting certain ways, rather than trying to stop thinking certain ways and stop believing certain ways.
In the Conversations with God cosmology it is made very clear that beliefs create behaviors. If you want to get behaviors to change, you’re going to have to get people to change the beliefs that sponsor them.
Sadly, most of those in leadership positions in our world do not want to even get close to suggesting that people’s beliefs are the problem; that our beliefs are causing the difficulties and challenges and poverty and suffering and wars and violence and environmental degradation and weather and climate extremes in the world today.
Saying such a thing would cause those leaders to lose their popularity almost at once — because our beliefs are very sacred to us, and the person who questions those questions the very basis of who we see ourselves as. The very suggestion that the basis on which we have laid the foundation of our culture might not be totally and completely accurate is far too threatening for most people, societies, cultures, political parties, and religions to even explore, much less embrace.
Now Kristen, you have said, “If people wanted to stop polluting, they would. If they wanted to stop traveling and reduce their carbon footprint, they would. If they wanted to help end the suffering of others, they would. If they wanted to be nicer, they would.”
This if true, of course. But the unaddressed question is: What could cause them to want these things? Simply telling them that they “should”? No. Obviously, no. That’s been tried.
Yet when people are willing to explore deeply the reason behind their choices, then change that reason, their choices shift immediately. To use my personal metaphor, they start drinking beet juice.
Why hasn’t this worked with more than just a fraction of the world’s population? Because the reason that people have been given to change their behaviors has not been good enough. Their behaviors appear now to be supported by their beliefs and their present beliefs generate their behaviors, so we have a circle.
As noted, most of humanity’s basic beliefs — about Life, about God, about who we are in relationship to each other, about how life works — have not been seriously challenged, or even questioned, within the global human collective.
Our opportunity, then, is to invite people to do what nobody wants to do: Question the prior assumption. And, once having done so, to entertain the possibility that many of humanity’s most sacred and fundamental beliefs may be mistaken. They may be simply inaccurate.
And that is where the screw turns, Kristen. We do not need, as you wrote, no doubt facetiously…“a full dictatorship communist world!!!” What we would benefit from the most right now would be “a full partnership community world!!!”
We need a Million Voices asking a few piercing questions:
1. How is it possible that 7 billion members of a single species could 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?
2. Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?
3. Is it possible that there is something we don’t understand about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?
And after asking these questions, those million voices might begin offering some suggested answers. They might decide to start a discussion; to initiate and to instigate an evolution revolution. Not just here on the Internet, in places like this within a virtual reality, but on the ground, in homes and meeting rooms, church halls and community centers, in cities, towns, and villages around the world.
And what could cause this to happen, Kristen?
You.
You could decide to be among those who cause this to happen. We don’t need a communist dictatorship, Kristen. We need you.
