The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    DO PRIVATE COMPANIES BEAR ANY
    RESPONSIBILITY FOR WORLD CITIZENS?

    In an enlightened society of sentient beings, what is more important and what is most reflective of a spiritually advanced culture: (A) protecting the intellectual property rights of innovative creators within that culture, or (B) making the innovations of innovative creators within a society available for the benefit of the largest number of people everywhere?

    And what if the innovations are life-saving, illness-curing, sickness-abating drugs that have been researched, invented and manufactured at considerable cost by major, privately owned pharmaceutical companies, and sold by those companies around the world?

    The above is not simply a philosophical inquiry. It may be playing itself out very soon in international courts — and it drives to the question of why the large pharmaceutical companies produce their products to begin with: to save the largest number of lives, or to make the largest possible profit?

    According to a report by writer Abby Zimet published at the website CommonDreams.org, the CEO of the German-based pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer — a gentleman named Marijn Dekkers — gave the reasons that Bayer researched, created, manufactured and has sold its anti-cancer medicine Nexivar around the world . . . and it was not to make the potentially life-saving drug available in places like, say, India, where Nexivar cost around $5,500 a month to use.

    “We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians,” the Common Dreams website reports Mr. Dekkers as saying at a little reported pharmaceutical conference. “We developed it for Western patients who can afford it.”

    A check with the global information reference site Wikipedia appears to have confirmed the report. The Wikipedia article says: “In an interview given to the Businessweek following controversies surrounding the Indian government’s decision to award a compulsory license to Indian company Natco Pharma Ltd. for Naxavar (sic) (Sorafenib), Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers equated the compulsory license with theft.

    “Regarding targeted markets, he said, ‘Is this going to have a big effect on our business model? No, because we did not develop this product for the Indian market, let’s be honest. We developed this product for Western patients who can afford this product, quite honestly. It is an expensive product, being an oncology product’.” (“Merck to Bristol-Myers Face More Threats on India Drug Patents”. businessweek.com. 2014-01-21).

    As noted above, Mr. Dekker’s comments came in response to media inquiries regarding an action taken by the government of India, which has compelled a local Indian drug manufacturer to produce a generic version of Nexavar for the Indian market, saying that because the product produced by Bayer violates Indian law because it is not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price.

    The government invoked what it says is its authority to compel the manufacturing of sorafenib, a generic version of Nexavar, and have it made available to the Indian population as a life-saving measure for its citizens suffering from kidney cancer or liver cancer.

    As a result, a local Indian company, Natco Pharma, is now allowed to manufacture and sell sorafenib in India for about $178 per month, rather than the $5,500 per month that Nexavar costs. By government order, Natco must make the generic drug available for  free to 600 Indian patients per year who cannot even afford this cost, and must pay a 6% royalty on all sales to Bayer quarterly.

    The Bayer company — which reportedly finished 2011 with a near-doubling of net income year-over-year to €2.5 billion (about $3.3 billion) —  has said it will evaluate its options “to further defend our intellectual property rights in India,” a Bayer spokesperson said in media reports. Bayer said it was “disappointed by the decision” of the Indian government to grant a license to a local drug firm in India to produce a generic version of its highly touted cancer-treating drug so that India citizens could afford it.

    As reported by the media, Bayer’s CEO equated the action with theft. The question, then, for highly evolved beings: Is Bayer being stolen from . . . or are the people whose lives are being taken by kidney and liver cancer in India being stolen from because they cannot afford $69,000 a year for a drug that could be made available to them for $178 a month in its generic form, if Bayer would only let it happen?

    What responsibility — if any — does a company which nearly doubled its net income from 2011 to 2012 have to a global society? (A major percentage of India’s population lives below the poverty line. The government’s most recent estimate is 32%. The World Bank says it is ten percent higher.)

    I’d very much like to hear your answer to the above question. Please post your comment below.  Thanks.

  • The President Fails to Mention
    The Real Problem

    U.S. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union message, in our opinion, fell short in at least one area. The elected leader of one of the most powerful nations on Earth failed to give even passing mention to the cause of all of the difficulties and problems that he said he was committed to solving with or without Congress.

    With an audience estimated at 30 million, the chief executive of the United States said not a word about what’s true in America — and, for that matter, around the world.

    Even a casual observer can see that not a single one of the systems, institutions and devices that humanity has put into place to create a better life for all is functioning in a way that has generated this outcome.

    It’s worse than that. They’ve actually generated exactly the opposite.

    Our political systems — created to produce safety and security for the world’s people — have generated widespread disagreement and disarray.

    Our economic systems — created to produce opportunity and sufficiency for all — have generated 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 to the point where they have generated environmental disasters right and left.

    Our educational systems — created to lift higher and higher the knowledge base of the planet’s population — have generated such a drop in global awareness and sensitivity that each year our intellectual common denominator seems to sink lower and lower. We can’t even remember our own telephone numbers anymore, or how to spell equanimity, much less produce it.

    Our health care systems — created in hopes of producing a good and long life for an increasingly higher percentage of people worldwide — have done little to eliminate global inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services, thus providing the highest level medical services each year to an insufficient and unsatisfactory percentage of the global population.

    Our social systems — created to produce the joy of community and harmony among a divergent population –have generated (and in some cases even encouraged) discordance, disparity, prejudice, and despair.

    And, most sadly dysfunctional of all, our spiritual systems — created to produce a greater closeness to God, and so, to each other — have generated bitter righteousness, shocking intolerance, widespread anger, deep-seated hatred, and self-justified violence.

    What gives here? What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see itself even as it looks at itself? Where is humanity’s blind spot?

    Might it have to do with our understanding about God, and our relationship to God?

    Yes, I’ve mentioned God here because, in my opinion, unless we change our minds about God — about who God is and what God wants and who we are in relationship to God and to each other — none of the problems that Mr. Obama mentioned in his January speech are going to be solved. They may perhaps — perhaps — be given a band-aid, but they will continue to plague humankind as they have for lo, these many years.

    For a country that declares itself to be “one nation, under God,” the leaders in Washington, and local political leaders across the land are doing a remarkable job of ignoring the topic of God when considering how to meet our collective challenges. They appear to be trying to solve our problems at every level except the level at which those problems exist.

    The problems facing us are not political problems, and they are not economic problems, and they are surely not military problems. The problems facing us are spiritual problems. They have to do with what we believe about ourselves, about our world, and about God.

    Specifically, the vast majority of humans adhere to the belief that we are separate from God, and separate from each other. It is this idea of separation that is killing us.

    As we said in our headline story here on January 15: Might this be a fine stretch of eternity during which to declare that there is clearly something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?

    To put it more dramatically, is it possible that unless we enlarge and expand our primitive ideas about God and about Life in the decades just ahead, we may find that we have backed ourselves into a corner, from which there is no escape?

    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.

    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. This is what we have not understood about our existence on the Earth, the understanding of which would change everything.

    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. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle.

    It cannot be broken.

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    5th GRADERS TOLD: PARENTS HAVE
    NO MONEY? YOU GET NO LUNCH

    Some 30 to 40 children at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City were told as they came to the end of the cafeteria line last Tuesday that they could not have their lunch because their parents did not have enough money in their school account.

    The children’s lunches were taken out of their hands and thrown into the garbage, according to a report from CNN affiliate KSL. Students and parents reported the incident, and school officials confirmed the astonishing events.

    Parents pay for school lunches by placing money in their child’s school lunch account, officials explained, and if the account runs dry, the school cannot provide the child lunch.

    A fifth-grader name Sophia was met by a school district nutrition manager, she said, who took her lunch and threw it away and told her to “go get a milk.” When the child asked what was going on, she said she was handed an orange and told: “You don’t have any money in your account, so you can’t have lunch.”

    The lunch was thrown away because once it is on a tray carried by a student, it can’t be retrieved and given to someone else, but must be discarded, cafeteria employees later confirmed.

    More than 30 children faced this experience at Uintah Elementary School on Tuesday, all of told in front of other students and staff that because their parents hadn’t kept their accounts paid up, they were having their lunches taken away.

    Some students and school staff members were reportedly in tears over the incident, the KSL news story said.

    Two Utah state senators who visited the school on Thursday said that the employee responsible for taking the action against the children should be fired if found after due process to have acted as it has been reported—and as school officials have confirmed—because that person “used (their) power to humiliate and embarrass children.”

    But it isn’t the first or only time such a thing has happened in U.S. public schools, according to a story on Jan. 30 by Annie-Rose Strasser for the website Think Progress.

    “In November, a Texas middle school student’s lunch was thrown away because he was 30 cents short on payment,” the news story said.

    Strasser’s story goes on to point out that “depriving children of food — and embarrassing them in front of their peers — isn’t the only option. In Boston, for example, public schools provide all students with cost-free breakfast and lunch no matter what their financial situation.”

    “Boston is the largest city to participate in a national program called Community Eligibility Option that waives meal fees for all students. It’s also being implemented in Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, and parts of New York City,” a September story at ThinkProgress.org said.

    Utah school officials this week did not deny that what students reported last Tuesday is exactly what occurred, and they told students and parents they were sorry. “It was wrong. It should not have happened, and we apologize that it did,” Salt Lake City School District spokesman Jason Olsen said Thursday.

    Another way needs to be found to deal with lunch accounts that have fallen to zero, parents, school officials, and state political leaders agree.

    It feels to me that in a spiritually evolved society it would be incomprehensible that a child would be denied food for lack of money. Why all school systems don’t do what Boston does is unclear — except that in America’s increasingly “every-man-for-himself, you’re-on-your-own” society, the Boston example may be simply going out of style.

    What’s the great American saying? “There’s no free lunch.” Apparently. Not even for a fifth-grader — or a middle school student 30-cents short.

    All this, in a world where 85 people hold more wealth than 3.5 billion — half of the rest of the global combined.

    Enough, already.

    Enough.

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    SHOCKING TRUTH REVEALED TO THE
    WORLD ABOUT HOW THINGS ARE

    How long will humanity allow this to go on…? The 85 richest people in the world own the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest people. That’s half of the Earth’s population.

    This mind-boggling statistic was released last week by Oxfam, the international organization that monitors life in Earth in many of its aspects, and reports to the world periodically about global conditions.

    Is creating this kind of disparity the way that a spiritually evolved species constructs its society? Or is this a model that could only be put in place by the primitive species of the Universe?

    That is the question placed before humanity today as billions suffer from not enough food to eat while fewer people than it would take to populate a fair-sized Manhattan cocktail party have enough wealth to end world poverty overnight.

    The plain and unassailable fact is that the global economy does not work to produce the outcome that human beings have imagined (or at least hoped) it was designed to produce.

    Indeed, even a casual observer can see that not one of the systems, institutions and devices that our species has put into place to create a better life for all is functioning in a way that generates this outcome.

    Our political systems clearly are not working. Our economic systems clearly are not working.  Our ecological systems clearly are not working. Our health care systems clearly are not working. Our educational systems clearly are not working. Our social systems clearly are not working. Our spiritual systems clearly are not working.

    Nothing that we have created is producing the outcomes that were intended. 

    It is worse than that. They are actually producing exactly the opposite.

    Our political systems are creating nothing but disagreement and disarray. Our economic systems are actually increasing poverty. Our ecological systems are generating environmental degradation. Our educational systems are failing to educate enough people in enough places to bring our species anywhere near the reaching of its full potential. Our health care systems are doing little to eliminate inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services. Our social systems are known to encourage disparity, prejudice, and injustice. And, perhaps most dysfunctional of all, our spiritual systems are producing intolerance, righteousness, anger, hatred, and violence.

    What gives here? What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see even as it looks at itself? Where is humanity’s blind spot?

    Might it be time to ask: “Is there be something we don’t fully understand here, the understanding of which would change everything?

    Does anybody even care about this global economic inequality? Does anybody care enough about it to do something about it? Does anybody think they can?

    Have we gotten to the point in our world where the conditions in our world are seen as being totally, completely, and utterly out of our hands? Have we given up? Simply given up?

    Is this what our spirituality calls us to do? Give up?

    Just wondering here…

  • Should the death penalty include abject suffering?

    Headlines are being made about the suffering possibly endured by convicted murderer Dennis McGuire, who was put to death with a new and previously untried method by the state of Ohio on Jan. 16 as punishment for his killing of a pregnant woman years earlier. The state used a chemical injection never before utilized to put someone to death, despite warnings from some medical experts who said that the process might produce what was called “air starvation.”

    NBC News quoted an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the execution who wrote that McGuire, 53, “appeared to gasp several times and made several loud snorting or snoring sounds during a ‘prolonged’ execution,” which several news agencies said took nearly 26 minutes from start to finish. Other witnesses said that Mr. McGuire also clenched his fists repeatedly, and tried in vain to raise himself up from the table to which he was strapped, apparently gasping for air.

    In short, it did not appear to be a peaceful death — leaving many to ask: Is paying with his life enough of a punishment for someone sentenced to death for a killing…or is it acceptable for that punishment to include abject end-of-life suffering and agony for nearly a half hour?

    Yet the main question has been avoided through all the news stories and commentaries on this particular event: Is the death penalty itself appropriate in an enlighted society?

    Our answer is no. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, we are not going to solve society’s problems using the same energy that created them. We will not put an end to violence by using violence, an end to anger with anger, and an end to killing with more killing.

    All we as a people are saying is that killing is perfectly okay when we believe that “right’ is on our side. But of course — with exceptions for those who are mentally incapacitated — all people and all governments thinks “right” is on their side when they kill, or they wouldn’t and couldn’t do it.

    The central question then becomes: Is it ever “right” to kill people if one’s own life (or the life of others) is not in immediate danger?

    A man in Florida, a former police captain, pulled out a gun and killed another man with whom he was having an argument over texting in a movie theatre because the other man threw a bag of popcorn at him, and the former police officer said he thought the other man was going to attack him. (Why he didn’t simply pull out the gun and say, “Not one step further….”, rather than shoot the man point blank in the chest from four feet away is not clear.) So now, once again in Florida, we are going to have a chance to see if that state’s Stand Your Ground law is going to be applied to justify killing someone.

    Yet the question in this quarter is not, “What does the law say?” And not even, “What does our culture in general say?” But rather, “What does the Soul say?”

    What does your Soul say? What do you believe is justification for killing someone? And if you agree that the State should have the right to kill someone because that person killed another — should the State’s execution include abject suffering?

  • Getting going with getting involved

    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.
    ================================================

    (This is Part VII of an extended series on being part of the change, rather than simply observing the change, that is occurring on our planet right now.)

    We said in our last installment here that the first step in becoming a spiritual helper is to:

    1.   ANNOUNCE OURSELVES TO EACH OTHER

    This means that you have to declare yourself, publicly.

    This means taking a risk. It is about being a bit uncomfortable. It is about being willing to “look bad” or to “fail.” It is about knowing that “failure”, in fact, does not exist, that it is an illusion, a figment of our imagination.

    It is about forgetting the self  and putting the highest good of the largest number at the top of our priorities. It is about being able to be counted on. It is about forging ahead, pushing on, even when the bramble covers the path.

    Especially when it does.

    It is about understandingWho andWhat You Really Are, and determining to express and experience that.

    It is about knowing why you are here, and what life is really all about.

    And then it is about announcing that.

    Hellen Keller famously said, “Do what you can do.” That last ten per cent is about doing what you can do. Nothing more, but absolutely nothing less.

    Some practical ways to take Step One

    Taking this first step in becoming a spiritual helper is as simple as A-B-C.

    A. Get clear on what is true for you . This is the beginning of everything. Clarity precedes action, and sustains it. Indeed, clarity produces  action where confusion stalls it. You must, therefore, commit to getting clear about what is true for you…

    *  AboutWho You Are

    *  AboutWhat You Choose

    *  About How YouWill Demonstrate That

    B. Find out what is already being done, and by whom.  There is more going on in the world than most people are aware of. Causes and movements with which you agree need your support. These days, with Internet search engines such as Google.com  and Ask Jeeves , you can find just about anything and anyone you are looking for—including groups of people who a goal in common with you.

    C. Create what you cannot find.  If you really can’t find anything out there that speaks to the issue of your concern or that is doing what you want to see get done, create it. Stop waiting for some other group to form or some other person to stand up. Form a group or organization of your own. Call a meeting. Hold a rally. Raise your flag and see if anyone salutes.

    Now let’s take a look at how you can do this.

    This series of articles here assumes that you have already read one or more of the Conversations with God  books. If you have not, one of the fastest ways to get clear aboutWho You Really Are, and about your right relationship to the universe, is to read Conversations with God-Book 1 (PutnamPublishing)

    Indeed, the entire opening Trilogy in the CwG series is highly recommended.

    (The 25 Core Messages of the Conversations with God  9-book series are summarized and expanded upon under one cover in the 2013 book What God Said. This is the first time that such commentaries and observations, spiritual-principle-by-spiritual-principle, have been offered on these remarkable books. Each chapter in What God Said concludes with a list of practical suggestions on how to apply in one’s life the key principle being discussed.)

    Everything in the current writing is based on the messages in those books and in the dialogue books that have followed, including:

    * Friendship with God
    * Communion withGod
    * The New Revelations
    * Tomorrow’sGod

    This booklet is also heavily foundationed in thematerial found inmy 2005 book, What God Wants.

    Getting clear on who you are and what you want is not as difficult as it may seem. I have created a program designed to help you do exactly that. It is an intensive (and highly enjoyable and exciting) retreat called ReCreating Yourself.

    The intent of the retreat is to provide a space within which you may recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held aboutWho You Are. It is offered in a five-day format several times each year.

    Many people who have participated in these programs have told us that they have reached a level of personal clarity about themselves, their relationship to God and to Life, and their life purpose, that they never thought they would ever achieve.

    You may receive more information about these retreats by clicking on the Neale Donald Walsch circular icon at www.CWGPortal.com, then looking in the Calendar of Events.

    It is important to understand that you must be in-the-moment clear about Who You Are and about your true relationship to the universe, to all of life, and to each other, before you can become maximally effective as a spiritual helper.

    There are many programs and opportunities in theworld opening up the space for you to do this.

    Ours is only one of them. Find a personal growth and spiritual development program or activity that you feel best suits you, that resonates with your current sense of self, and undertake that activity with commitment and deep caring.

    If you do, you should be able, in relatively short order, to know and to declare:

    * Who you are.
    * What you choose.
    * How you will demonstrate that.

    Embark on a reading program as well. At the conclusion of this series will be  an opening list of Recommended Reading for persons seeking a greater awareness of themselves and the world around them. Check this list out when that list comes out, and decide to read at least one book a month for the rest of your life that supports your personal growth and spiritual development.

    Remember that the New Spirituality that is talked about in the CwG books is based upon the following assumption:

    There is somethingwe do not now fully understand aboutGod and about Life, the understanding of which can change everything.

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    HOW LONG WILL PEOPLE STAND FOR
    ‘STAND YOUR GROUND’?

    Many citizens of the United States — and many people watching them from around the world — are shaking their head in disbelief and dismay in the aftermath of the shooting to death of a 43-year-old man in a Florida movie theatre by a former police captain who says he fired the shot because he was afraid he was going to be attacked.

    The story of this sad episode has made headlines across the globe and received thousands upon thousands of ‘opens’ on the Internet as people search their hearts to try to figure out why a person trained in the disciplines of law enforcement would fire a gun at another man’s chest at point-blank range after the first man threw a bag of popcorn in his face.

    The incident occurred on Jan. 13 at a moviehouse in Pasco County, Florida where, according to various news reports, 71-year-old retired Tampa Bay police captain Curtis Reeves became annoyed when a man in the row of seats in front of him, Chad Oulson, began using his cellphone to tap out a text message with his 2-year-old daughter’s babysitter while the previews were playing before the movie started.

    Mr. Reeves asked Mr. Oulson to stop texting, but Mr. Oulson ignored him. According to witnesses quoted in news reports and in the police report filed by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Dept., the two began arguing. Mr. Reeves then left the theatre, apparently to find a management employee.

    According to the sheriff’s report, the manager was busy with another customer, and Mr. Reeves returned to his seat.

    When Mr. Reeves returned, Mr. Oulson is said to have stood up and asked him if he had gone to management to tell on him. The two exchanged angry words again, and Mr. Oulson threw a bag of popcorn he was holding at Mr. Reeves, the bag apparently hitting Mr. Reeves in the face.

    At this point, Mr. Reeves is alleged to have reached into his pants pocket, taken out a .380-caliber pistol, and shot Mr. Oulson point-blank in the chest, the bullet passing through the hand of Mr. Oulson’s wife, Nichole, who was trying to pull her husband away.

    Mrs. Oulson’s injury was not life threatening, but her husband was severely injured, stumbled across the movie theatre aisle, fell into the lap of a moviegoer and his grown son, and died after being taken to the hospital. His last words were, “I can’t believe I got shot.”

    In court the following day, the attorney for Mr. Reeves, Richard Escobar, portrayed Mr. Reeves as the victim in the incident, saying that Mr. Oulson was the “aggressor.” He said Mr. Reeves, after being hit in the face “with some object” that he could not identify, was afraid he was going to be attacked by Mr. Oulson, and so he pulled his gun — which he had a license to carry — and shot in self-defense, fearing for his safety.

    Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper did not agree that the evidence gathered by the sheriff’s department and the testimony of witnesses showed Mr. Oulson to be the clear aggressor, and ordered Mr. Reeves not to be released on his own recognizance, as his attorney had requested, but remanded into custody on a charge of second-degree murder.

    The whole case has brought to public discussion once again the question of gun violence in America, and in particular has given the country and the world another look at the State of Florida’s now famous Stand Your Ground law, which states that in the case of a reasonable presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm, a person is not required to retreat, but may stand their ground, and use deadly force, if necessary, to do so.

    It is not clear if Mr. Reeves and his attorney will seek to use the law as a defense in this case. Law enforcement officers on the scene after the shooting have said to the media that the facts they have gathered do not appear to support its use in this instance.

    Witnesses say that no punches were thrown, nor attempted to be thrown, by either of the men, and that their exchange was limited to raised voices, with both men standing up, and then the throwing of the popcorn — until Mr. Reeves allegedly pulled out his pistol and shot Mr. Oulson in the chest from a few feet away.

    Many are asking, if Mr. Reeves is a retired police captain, whether he would not have been trained in recognizing when the shooting of another person was absolutely necessary. Observers also wonder why, if he really felt Mr. Oulson was about to climb over the row of seats between them and launch a physical attack, Mr. Reeves did not simply take out his gun and tell Mr. Oulson, “not a step further.”

    But the larger question before the American public is, how long will citizens of the United States continue to put up with lax gun laws, easy availability of weapons (including rapid-fire assault weapons), and laws that threaten to turn the country back into a Wild West version of itself, where most men openly pack a side-shooter and where the motto of the day is: “Smile when you say that, brother.”

    People across the U.S. are beginning to ask: Is this what civilization is all about?

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    WHAT HUMAN BEINGS DON’T
    UNDERSTAND ABOUT GOD

    Might this be a fine stretch of eternity during which to declare that there is clearly something we don’t fully understand about God, the understanding of which would change everything?

    To put it more dramatically, is it possible that unless we enlarge and expand our primitive ideas about God and about Life in the decades just ahead, we may find that we have backed ourselves into a corner, from which there is no escape?

    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. 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. This is what we have not understood about our existence on the Earth, the understanding of which would change everything.

    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. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle.

    It cannot be broken.

  • Worldwide Discussion:
    ARE FUNDAMENTALISTS CREATING
    THE PROBLEMS IN OUR WORLD?

    No one denies that there are many problems in our world, but few people – stunningly few people – seem to be able to agree that it is humanity’s most sacred beliefs that have created a huge number of them.

    Conversations with God made it clear years ago that “beliefs create behaviors,” asserting that it is humanity’s beliefs that are killing us, creating everything from the horribly unending disaster at Fukushima to the unending calamity in Syria to the unending stalemate in Washington D.C. and the unending terrorism around the world.

    Now a new analysis, contained in an op-ed piece just published at www.NationofChange.org by author Robert J. Burrowes, places the responsibility for many of the world’s ills specifically on the foundational beliefs of its people.

    In a sweeping indictment, the author writes:

    “Fundamentalism, in a religious guise, is both widespread and problematic.

    “For example, Christian fundamentalism plays a crucial role in shaping US domestic policies in relation to abortion, gay marriage and theories of evolution as well as US imperial and military policy, Jewish fundamentalism is a key driver of Israeli domestic and foreign policy including in relation to Palestine, Islamic fundamentalism (of the Wahhabi variety) drives attitudes towards women and foreign policies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Hindu fundamentalism manifests as a form of religious nationalism in India, and Buddhist fundamentalism is driving the violence against the Rohingya (Muslim) population in Burma.”

    Conversations with God long ago made it clear that it was our beliefs that are the cause of humanity’s ills. In the first CWG text to be released after 9-11, titled The New Revelations, God told the human race: “You think you are being terrorized by other people, but in truth you are being terrorized by your beliefs.”

    And it is the most deeply and firmly held of these beliefs, God said, that are at the root of the problems — particularly the problems of violence — confronted daily by our species.

    Author Burrowes appears to agree. He also outlines the nature of the problem as he understands it in the op-ed piece.

    “Psychologically, a fundamentalist is a person with an intense fear of being ‘wrong’; that is, an intense fear of being judged to hold the ‘wrong’ view or to engage in the ‘wrong’ behavior,” he says.

    “This intense fear of being wrong develops during childhood when one or both parents, and probably teachers, dogmatically refuse to listen to the child, thus denying it the chance to develop its own views and moral code (based on its own experience), while also terrorizing (by threatening and using violence) the child into believing/adopting a particular set of values and beliefs, and behaving in a particular manner.”

    Virtually the same points are made in The New Revelations. When asked what humanity can do to avoid any new 9-11’s in its experience, God said: “Education, education, education.” 

    The dialogue points to how we are raising our children, and the beliefs that we have been instilling in them, as the chief source of humanity’s difficulties.

    The op-ed piece by Mr. Burrowes  puts it this way:

    “It is the intensity of their fear of being judged ‘wrong’, and the violence they will suffer if they are so judged, that makes the child hold, with phenomenal tenacity, to the ‘approved doctrine’ with which they are presented.

    “It is this intense fear of being wrong that marks out the fundamentalist from the person who is open-minded and/or conscientious.”

    What is the solution? Mr. Burrowes says:

    “Fundamentalism is a significant social problem, particularly in some contexts. And to fix it, we need to recognise its psychological origin. Unfortunately, however, this is not easy to do, because the terror that holds their value and belief system in place, and drives their behaviour, is deeply hidden within the individual’s psyche.”

    Conversations with God also offers a solution. Says this dialogue:

    “Your experience of yourself and your world will shift dramatically if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:

    “1. Permit yourself to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.

    “2. Explore the possibility that there is something you do not fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything.

    “3. Announce that you are willing for new understandings of God and Life to now be brought forth, understandings that could produce a new way of life on this planet.

    “4. Courageously examine these new understandings and, if they align with your personal inner truth and knowing, enlarge your belief system to include them.

    “5. Express your life as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.”

    CWG makes it clear that violence is neither an inevitable nor an unavoidable aspect of human behavior. “Your differences do not have to create divisions, your contrasts do not have to create conflicts, and the variations in your beliefs do not have to produce violence in your lives,” the dialogue tells us.

    Yet how to stop the violence before it stops us? That will take a collective effort. A massive collective effort. And this is where the spiritual activism work of Humanity’s Team — a global movement based on the messages of Conversations with God — comes in.

    “What is needed is a worldwide Evolution Revolution,” Nanette Kennedy, a spokesperson for Humanity’s Team and the Managing Editor of this online newspaper, has said. Persons who feel the impulse to join in producing such a revolution may learn more about it by clicking on the blue box in the right hand column of this newpaper.

    As well, persons wishing to join another worldwide movement to end all violence, in whatever form it manifests, may sign online “The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World, Mr. Burrowes said in his op-ed.

    A person posting as “AntiSocialSailor” in the Comment section beneath Mr. Burrowes’ article offered this additional observation:

    “The author left out the most insidious and evil fundamentalists of all, Free-Market Fundamentalists. These are the fundamentalists that have caused the majority of problems for this country since the 80’s. They’ve infected our government to such an extent that they pose a far greater risk to the country, and the world, then all the religious nutcases combined.”

    What about you? Do you believe that fundamentalist thinking — in politics, religion, economics, or any area of life — is a danger, or the bedrock of a civilized society, the bulwark against constant and destabilizing change? We invite you to share your own Comment below.

    ===================================
    Editor’s Note: Robert Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending
human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to
understand why human beings are violent, and has been a nonviolent activist
since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence?

  • Don’t ‘go it alone’ if you want to really help

    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.
    =====================================================

    (This is Part VI of an extended series on being part of the change, rather than simply observing the change, that is occurring on our planet right now.)

    The first step in becoming a spiritual helper is to:

    1.     ANNOUNCE OURSELVES TO EACH OTHER

    The first thing we have to do if we are going to change the world is to let the world know that we are here. We have to tell each other about each other. We have to “announce” ourselves to each other.

    One of the biggest reasons that people do not see themselves as “world-changers” is that they imagine themselves to be standing alone against overwhelming odds.

    The earth is populated with people who believe that they are the only ones who think the way they do, who hold the viewpoints they hold, who want to do what they want to do. It is as if we are all living by some Silent Agreement. The Agreement is to keep our views largely to ourselves and to remain unknown to each other.

    This is not an agreement that we are keeping because we want to. It is not even an agreement that we are keeping consciously. We are keeping this agreement unconsciously, without even knowing that we are doing it. We keep this agreement by “going along,” by “giving in,” by “accepting” life “as it is,” without raising a peep of serious protest.

    This is an agreement that the human race is keeping by default. And we are keeping this agreement because we think we have to. We believe that it is the only way we can be happy—and maybe the only way we can survive.

    Then, every once in a while, something fascinating happens. Every once in a while we chance upon a meeting, we hear of a gathering, we learn of an assembly or a conference of some kind, or we see a small write-up in the local newspaper about some group or association or non-profit organization that is focusing its attention on exactly what we have been thinking about—but about which we have said little or nothing to others.

    And maybe we go to that meeting or attend that gathering, and we are startled to find that there are actually other people—perhaps many other people—organizing around just the ideas that we have been tossing around in our head. We find that someone agrees with us.

    This is an important moment. This is the moment that real action can begin, that real progress can be made, that real solutions can be put into place.