The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • Over 10,000 page views in less than two days have been given to www.GodsNewNews.com — have you checked out this page?

  • HUMANITY: THE IMPOTENT SPECIES

    With all of our intelligence, with all of our inventive genius, with all of our years of evolution, we just can’t find a way to do the simplest thing, can we…?

    …We simply can’t find a way to stop killing each other.

    We are impotent, utterly and completely impotent, in the face of this basic, fundamental developmental challenge.

    Will it never end? Will the killing and the violence and the continual threats to world peace never, ever end?

    The Western powers (U.S., Britain, France chief among them) are said on this day to be considering a military strike against the military apparatus of the government of Syria. Such a strike by these major powers would be, they say, in response to the alleged use by Syria’s government of chemical weapons against its own people.

    The Syrian government, for its part, claims that the chemical weapons were used by “terrorists” who have long been agitating to upend the government.

    As all the world knows, a civil war has been underway in Syria since March, 2011, with rebels seeking to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    “As a result of the ongoing civil war, an alternative government was formed by the opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Coalition, in March 2012,” an article on the country in Wikipedia states. “Representatives of this government were invited to take up Syria’s seat at the Arab League on 28 March 2013. The opposition coalition has been recognized as the ‘sole representative of the Syrian people’ by several nations, including the United States, United Kingdom and France,” the article goes on.

    Now, the government is suspected of using chemical weapons against its civilians. US Secretary of State John Kerry has been widely quoted in global news reports as saying that it was “undeniable” that chemical weapons had been used in the country, and that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed a “moral obscenity” against the nation’s own people.

    “Make no mistake,” Kerry is reported to have said. “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapon against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.”

    On Aug 27 CNN’s website headlined a report that the U.S. military was in position with warships and ready to strike on a moment’s notice should the order be given. Syria, in return, has said that the U.S. would be “surprised” by the shape and power of its response.

    Must this go on forever? Must life on this planet go on forever like this? Is there no way—simply no way at all—for members of the same species…a species that considers itself to be evolved…to resolve the differences that arise between them without putting hundreds of thousands of people, if not the entire world, at risk of annihilation?

    What would it take for human beings to find a way to live together in peace and harmony? What is the missing ingredient…that one piece of data that could change everything?

    In Syria, the Assad family has held power for decades. The rebellion there is the uprising of thousands of citizens who say they are tired of the repression by the Syrian Government of any form of dissent. Indeed, the rebellion itself turned violent when peaceful protests in 2011 were ruthlessly squashed by the military, with intellectual leaders of the rebellion arrested and tortured—some of them now among Syria’s so-called “disappeared.”

    People will agitate for freedom as long as people are alive, because freedom is a basic and fundamental aspect of Divinity, and human beings are individual expressions of Divinity. That is why revolutions have been part of human history for thousands of years. For centuries the human scenario has been a struggle between the powerful few and the freedom-seeking many.

    With all the killing, with all the needless dying (not just of armed combatants, but of countless bystanders, including unarmed and nonaffiliated men, women, and children), one would think that our species as a whole would find a way to end—finally, at long last, end—the cycle of murder and violence. But we don’t seem yet to have found the key to doing that. After thousands and thousands of years, we
    Just.
    Can’t.
    Find.
    The.
    Key.

    What stops us, do you think? A species that can put its members on the moon, a species that can unlock the sequencing of DNA, cannot find the key to stop killing each other.

    Remarkable.

    Our species is in a never-ending struggle to end its own most vicious struggles. It seems powerless to end its own misuse of power.

    What stops us, do you think?

  • Should the United States and other Western powers (i.e., Britain, France, etc.) undertake a military action in Syria, bypassing the United Nations Security Council in doing so?

  • WHY WOULD GOD PLACE SADNESS
    AND SUFFERING INTO THE WORLD?

    There is so much sadness and suffering in the world, and anyone who believes in God and defines it as the Source of Pure Intelligence and Perfect Love would have to ask: Why?

    Why in the world would God place sadness and suffering in the world? And what tools, if any, has God given us with which to deal with sadness and suffering when we encounter it (as surely we will during our life)?

    The answer, as I have come to understand it, is that God has not deliberately placed sadness nor inserted suffering into our world, we have brought it into our experience of our own free will.

    This is difficult to believe or embrace, I know, and so it requires a little exploration and explanation.

    Sadness and suffering are responses, both emotional and physical, to particular situations, circumstances, and events that manifest or occur during our lives.

    FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
    PART IV of an ONGOING SERIES

    Because they are responses and not events in themselves, they are entirely within our control. Because they are entirely within our control they are created by us, not foisted upon us.

    There are some who have said that God has imposed sadness and suffering upon us as a punishment for our so-called evil deeds. Yet my understanding is that sadness and suffering are not punishments, they are consequences. And consequences of what? They are consequences of our thinking.

    Thinking is the tool that God has given us with which to deal with life events and circumstances, situations and occurrences. Yet why do events and circumstances, situations and occurrences that ordinarily might be reasonably expected to produce sadness and suffering within human beings even have to arise?

    Ah, that is an even larger question — and on humanity’s answer to that question hinges the future of the entire human species. We will explore that question in the upcoming entries in this series. But for now, let us go about this investigation step by step. Let us look at this business of our thinking, and the role it plays in bringing sadness and suffering into our experience. We’ll take that first step in Part V of our series here.

  • Introducing your child to the concept and the reality of God – Part VII: Be matter-of-fact

    We have been exploring in great detail in this space over the past several weeks the topic of how to introduce your child to the concept and reality of God. That series continues with Part VII, here.

    The main question is, of course, how to do it. How can we best introduce our child to the idea and the existence of God? The answer begins with a willingness to assume and accept that your child may be far more attuned to Larger Realities than you might think. Therefore, talking about God in matter-of-fact ways will feed right into child’s already-present inner knowing.

    True, your offspring may not know the words to describe that which they sense must exist and must be true, but they will readily and easily accept the notion that Something Larger is “out there” if they see their parents readily and easily accepting it—just as, in the area of sexuality, they will readily and easily accept the differences and the wonders of their bodies if they observe that their parents readily and easily accept these differences and the wonders.

    We have touched on this matter-of-factness about God before, encouraging casual and off-handed mention of “God” in everyday conversation around the children. One easy and natural way to do this might be through the age-old tradition of “saying grace” before meals. If this happens from the time a child is old enough to hear, the child will have encountered the notion of “God” long before they ask for a fuller explanation, making that fuller explanation much easier for the child to absorb.

    Is it okay to personify God?

    One of the questions I am most often asked by parents is: “Is it okay to allow our children in the early stages of understanding God to think of God as a ‘person’, even if we, ourselves, don’t really think that this is what God is?”

    My answer is always yes. A small child will may find it difficult to grasp oblique or inexplicit concepts such as “Essence” or “Energy.” If offering thanks at meals to The Essence seems challenging for your 3-year-old, allowing the child to personify God is perfectly okay. Indeed, as an adult I personify God all the time.

    The dialogue in Conversations with God taught me that “God” is The Essence and The Prime Energy of Life Itself; the Source of all Love, all Wisdom, all Power, all Intelligence, and, indeed, everything in the Universe. This Essence can form and shape itself into any appearance or embodiment It desires, and has done so—including the form and shape of a wonderful, kind, gentle, caring, compassionate, understanding, unconditionally loving and incomparably wise woman or man.

    I encourage people, in fact, to use the terms Mother/Father God and Father/Mother God interchangeably and as often as possible when referring to The Divine. This helps to remove the traditional male gender identification that so many children often attach to the idea of God in the early stages of their lives.

    Here is a possible Grace that might work in your home:

    Dear Mother/Father God…We thank you for the food we are about to eat, for the love that we feel at this table, and for all the wonderful gifts of life that we share. And thank you, too, for the good days and wonderful times that are still to come for the rest of our lives. We promise to share all good things with all those whose lives we touch. Amen.

    I love this little prayer because it introduces the concept of Sharing as well as the idea of God to the mind of the child.

     Nightly prayers and morning prayers are another sweet way to place the concept and the reality of God before your little ones. Here is a wonderful, short nightly prayer for children…

    Dear Father/Mother God…Thank you for this day, and everything that happened. Even the ‘bad stuff.’ Because I know that all of it helps me to be a nice person, and that’s what I love to be! See you tomorrow…your friend…Neale.

    And here is a morning prayer I’ve been saying myself for many years.

    Dear Mother/Father God…Thank you for another day, and another chance to be the very best Me I can be!

    Invite children’s own CWG

    If the “prayer” idea doesn’t feel that it would work for you, you can encourage your children to have their own conversations with God, and to develop a positive attitude about life in the process, by inviting them to talk to God for one minute every night about The Things I Liked Best About Today.

    Here’s one way that could look…

    PARENT (just before bedtime): Let’s play the One Minute Game!

    CHILD: Yea!

    PARENT: Okay, we have one minute to think of what we liked best of all the things that happened today, and tell God about it. If we can think of at least two things between us, I think God will be very happy. I’ll go first…

    “Hey, Mother/Father God…the thing I liked best about today was…the really neat time I had with all my kids and with Mommy, playing that game after we had dinner! I just wanted to say ‘thanks’ for all the good stuff! You’re neat, God!” (Or…“that I didn’t have to put away all the groceries by myself, because my little sweetie helped me!”) (Or…”How nice my little sweetheart Madelyn was when she didn’t make a fuss at Daddy when nap time came…”) (Or…”Making a super dinner for everybody that they really liked, because they told me so. It feels so good to do stuff that makes other people happy! Thanks, God!”)

    You can’t even begin to imagine the many messages you can send to a 3, 4, or 5-year-old with a nightly tradition such as this—without seeming to “preach” to the child at all. They’re just listening to Mommy or Daddy talk to God!

    In addition to setting up a positive attitude, this creates the habit of your children having their own conversations with God on a regular basis. That habit will extend into adulthood, I promise you. Especially if, later, when your child grows older…of if the child has had an especially rough day…you can model for her or him how to talk to God about that, too…

    Well, God, things didn’t go so well today, as I’m sure you know. So thanks for giving me the help to get through it—and thanks for making everything better…which I know is what is going to happen! I’m glad you’re hear, Father/Mother God. I’m really glad you’re here!

    I think nothing could be more important than the time you spend with your child in this way. (Something could be equally important, but nothing could be more important.) And why? Because, if you will suffer me making the same point repeatedly, what your children come to understand about God and how they experience God through you will stick with them all the days of their life.

    Childhood imagination and childlike faith

    Do not discourage childhood imaginings. That is one of the biggest pieces of advice I offer to parents. Most parents would not discourage this anyway, but I try to make the point with them that they are on the right track in not doing so.

    I have been told by a number of people that I have a child-like faith in God. (An important note here: child-like and child-ish are not the same thing.) I suppose I do. And I am glad of it. I have a childlike faith in all of Life, in fact, not just in God. I have faith that life is on my side. I have faith that I can do anything I set my mind to. I have faith that things will always be okay with me, and that all things work out for my highest good in the end. I have faith that God loves me completely, without condition, reservation, or limitation, and that I am never alone, or outside the embrace of God. I have faith that I will be Home with God when this physical life ends.

    Maybe I am imagining all of these things. Maybe I need to (as some of those who have observed me have said since I was a child) “grow up” and “face facts” and get my “head out of the clouds and feet on the ground.” But I believe that my childlike faith has served me. It has given me strength when things did not seem to be going my way. It has brought me comfort in times of loss, optimism when I might have been tempted to feel hopeless, and enthusiasm for tomorrow even if my “today” made it look as if my future might not ever be bright again. In short, it has kept me in a positive frame of mind the majority of the time.

    More often than not I look for the solution when others see problems. More often than not I see molehills where others make mountains. More often than not I go for the gold when others are willing to settle for the bronze—or no medal at all in the Olympics of life—not because I need or want to be a “winner,” but because I hold quite naturally the idea that we are all intended to be winners, that life was made for us to be happy, and that all we have to do to get to that place is understand who we are and why we are here…and, of course, that God and Life are on our side.

    For more on this I strongly urge you to read—or if you have already done so, to re-read—Happier Than God.

    I could, in fact, be imagining all these things. But if I am, I must say that my imagination seems to be a very effective mechanism, a wonderful tool used in the fashioning of life. And here is my point; here is the reason I am bringing this all up now:

    My parents encouraged me to use my imagination as a child. And they did not discourage me when my imagination ran wild. Rather, they simply coached me to notice when my imagination served me (that is, made me happier or gave me confidence) and when it disserved me (that is, made me scared or tentative or sad or took my confidence away).

    If they saw that I was imagining something that made me scared or tentative (“There’s a monster under the bed!”) (“I’ll never get the part in the school play, so why bother even trying out!”), they would gently demonstrate to me that what I was imagining was (A) not helping matters any, and (B) probably not true anyway, if I just explored it.

    If they saw that I was imagining something that made me happy or confident (“I’m Superman!”) (“I’m going to try out for the play and I bet I get the part!”), they would gently smile and demonstrate that they loved all ideas that made me feel better about myself—whether I was imagining all the good stuff, or talking about actual reality.

    In this way, the line between Good Imagining and Good Reality began to blur, and as I reached 10 or 11 I began making a connection between the two.  By the time I’d hit 16 I had a reputation in our family: “Neale has all the luck! He always seems to get what he wants.”

    What I am saying here is that I think there is a direct connection between positive thinking and positive outcomes. And I am very clear that the way my parents worked with my imagination, and the way they encouraged it when my imaginings were positive, even if unrealistic, made that connection real for me. (“You know, son,” my father once said to me, smiling, “in a lot of ways you are Superman.”)

    If you don’t take away a child’s dreams, you guarantee that he’ll keep dreaming. And what does all this have to do with introducing your child to the concept and the reality of God? Well, imagination is the tool of God. Dreams are the stuff of God. Great visions for tomorrow create excitement today—and nothing makes a dream more exciting than knowing that God is on our side to help make them come true. And this is what my Mother always encouraged me to feel.

    “If that’s what’s best for you, God will help you make it happen. And if it’s not what best for you, God will bring you something better,” is what I would say to children from the time they are old enough to understand that idea (which might be a lot younger than you think).

    “Thank you, God, for this or something better” is, by the way, another wonderful prayer to share with children (and adults, for that matter).

    Stories and books are terrific tools, too, of course

    I know this is obvious, but just as a reminder….Story Time provides another wonderful opportunity to introduce your children to God. Some parents merge Story Time with Bed Time, so that children will look forward to, rather than revolt against, bedtime. Others like to create Story Time in the afternoon, or after dinner in the evening.

    It used to be difficult to find children’s books in which, if God is mentioned, the story and “the moral of the story” didn’t emerge from a Traditional Idea About God. This is perfectly okay, of course, if what you hold, and what you wish to share with your children, are those traditional ideas. If, on the other hand, your ideas about God lean more toward what might be termed New Thought concepts (such as the concepts in the Conversations with God texts), it was not always easy to find children’s books that reflected those values.

    I am happy to say that these days it has become a bit easier. The CWG4Kids program has been gathering resources now for quite a while, and I think you’ll be impressed with the number of children’s stories that are out there—as well as short audio programs on CD, and even some animations on DVD.

    For instane, there is a wonderful animation that a professional film company made of the CWG children’s book, The Little Soul and the Sun, as well as an audio enactment of the story with original songs that kids love. The second book in the Little Soul series, titled The Little Soul and the Earth, offers another resource straight out of the Conversations with God cosmology, as does the very special Christmas story Santa’s God, in which a little girl asks Santa the most important question of all time: Who is the real God? Who does Santa pray to?

    The answer that Santa gives is exactly what you would want your children to hear if you, yourself, have embraced the message in CWG, yet it is placed before children in a way that is neither “preach-y” nor “teach-y,” but is presented in language and through an example that all children can easily understand.

    And there are other wonderful children’s books and resources out there as well—and that’s what the CWG4Kids program is all about. It is about helping parents to introduce their children to the concept and the reality of God in a way that aligns with how they would like their children to start out on their own search for inner truth.

  • Do you believe the sentence handed down to Bradley Manning was appropriate? If so, why? If not, Why?

  • DIVINITY IS MANIFESTING ITSELF
    IN, AS, AND THROUGH ALL OF LIFE

    Even just a cursory exploration of this website reveals the extent to which sadness and suffering inhabit the human experience. It is impossible to be alive on this planet without encountering both. The question is not whether you will encounter it, the question is, how much of it will you encounter?

    Behind that lurks another, more important question. When you do encounter sadness and suffering, how will you deal with it? What tools will you have. More to the point: What tools do you have? I mean, as human beings what tools are we given?  And by whom?

    I believe there is something larger than myself, something larger than all of humanity, something larger, even, than the entire universe. I call this something “God.”

    I believe that God exists and that God is the Supreme Intelligence behind and in everything. When I say “in” everything, I mean to assert that the Thing that I call Divinity is manifesting Itself in, as, and through all of Life. It is the underlying aspect, the foundational energy, of all that exists, in any and every form.

    Using human language (which I understand is very limited), I call this energy the Divine Essence. It is That Which Is, manifesting in a million-billion-trillion ways that ultimately form everything in existence, both physical and non-physical, visible and invisible. It is part and parcel of All That Is, and nothing that Is can be in any way other than, or separate from, It.

    FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
    PART III of an ONGOING SERIES

    I believe this Divine Essence has intelligence — indeed, is Intelligence in its Purest Form — and that the degree to which this Intelligence manifests Itself is related to the level of Consciousness evidenced or present in any Life Form.

    Further, I believe that Consciousness is expandable when it is Aware of Itself. That is, when a Life Form expresses the quality of Self-Consciousness, it is said to be Aware of Itself, and is thus labeled, in our language, a Sentient Being.

    I believe that Sentient Beings are the Ultimate Expression of Divine Essence, and that the Pure Intelligence of God is accessible to all Sentient Beings. Indeed, I believe it is the purpose and underlying intention of all Sentient Beings to fully express Divine Essence.

    I define Divinity as The Sum Total of All Essential Energy.  Using the limited language that is available to me, I describe this Essential Energy as Pure Intelligence and Perfect Love.

    I see this Essential Energy as the Totality of All That Is, and in my understanding it is from this Totality that All That Is emerges and expresses.

    This is another way of saying that it is in God that we live and breathe and have our Being.

    If any of this is true, then why is does sadness and suffering exist? What form of Pure Intelligence or Perfect Love would will for Itself this kind of experience — and why? And what kind of tools does Life provide for its various Expressions in the moments of their encountering this experience?

    To answer this question we must inquire into the nature of sadness and suffering itself. And we will do that, precisely, in our next entry here.

  • Given that she is a potential (and highly predicted to be) Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 2016, do you believe it is appropriate for NBC and CNN to each produce documentary films or programs on the life of former U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

  • IS HUMANITY AT THE EFFECT OF CONDITIONS ON THIS PLANET??

    Every event and circumstance on Earth is jointly produced, placed into the collective reality as a collaborative creation of The Collective Itself.  And the tragedy is that The Collective does not know this—or, worse yet, does know this, and merely acts as if it does not.

    The result of this is that most people wind up turning to God at the wrong time….usually after, rather than before, events have taken place or circumstances have been created.

    This is because most people do not know who they truly are, nor do they have an accurate understanding of what their relationship with God is.

    Thus, people think that most of them are at the effect of events and conditions such as conflict and war, financial collapse, political upheaval, violence and killing.  They believe that it is the tiny few who are in power who are creating them, and the masses are left to only endure them. And when it comes to so-called Acts of Nature, even the powerful few are thought to be at the effect of life.

    Whether it’s an act of Man or of Nature, our species is very clear: It’s not our fault. We had nothing to do with it.

     

    FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
    PART II of an ONGOING SERIES

    No human behavior has anything to do with global warming (which half the planet continues to deny is even occurring), earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, raging wildfires, torrential rains, or tsunamis—or the increase in disease among the Earth’s people, such as the growing cancer rate, or the increase in early heart attacks, stroke, and Alzheimer’s.

    No human behavior has anything to do with the dying off of the bees (which, if it continues, is going to have a disastrous effect on pollination worldwide, and then on global food crops), or the increasing toxicity of our drinking water, or the fact that tests show that hamburgers from fast food chains rarely contain more than 15% real meat (and in some tests have been shown to contain only 2% actual meat), or the fact that more than 650 children die every hour on this planet because of starvation.

    When an entire culture refuses to believe that it has anything to do with what is occurring, it cannot do anything about what is occurring. 

    This, in 25 words, is a summation of the present reality on Planet Earth.

    As I have noted in this space before, much of this has to do with our understanding of the nature of God itself. Is there even a being called “God”? What is the true nature of The Divine — and what does it want, need, require? What does it actually do in our lives? How does Divinity interact with Humanity? What is the nature of this relationship? Does it even exist?

    These questions and more will be explored here in this multi-part series titled FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time, headlining The Global Conversation online newspaper in the weeks ahead.  I hope you will join in the discussion by posting in the Comment Section below — and invite your family, friends, and acquaintances to do the same. Now is the moment for a worldwide conversation on a matter of global impact and universal significance.

    In the months ahead I will bring this discussion right into your home via telephone and video links. Look for that from CWGConnect. In the meantime, join us here for the online print-media element of this exploration.

  • Do you think it is possible for a Muslim to write an objective scholarly exploration of the life of Christ and its meaning to humanity? Do you think it is possible for a Christian to write an objective scholarly exploration of the life of Muhammad and its meaning to humanity?