The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • THE GREATEST CHALLENGE
    NOW FACING HUMANITY

    The great challenge facing Humanity, if it wishes to evolve to the next level, is finding a way to release negative emotions without harming ourselves and others.

    In the first installment in this series–found here–we discussed the problem and the presence of violence in our world—as well as the source of it. Much of it, we said, has to do with sudden eruptions of unwanted data in one’s mind.

    We said that you can shove your unwanted data (bad memories, traumatic events) into your personal “trash bin” (the subconscious), but can never get it completely out of your mind. You can “overwrite” it with dozens of newer and better memories, and soon the bitter memories can begin to fade, but they will never be deleted.

    Unlike computers, however, there seems to be no way to control if or when this “unwelcome data” shows up in our lives, triggered by something that causes it to spontaneously arise out of the subconscious and take over the conscious mind.

    I believe that this is precisely explains the state of human affairs on this planet today.  Yet there some ways open to us through which humans can release these negative emotions without harming others or themselves.

    Now, in Part II of this series, a look at what psychology offers around all of this.

    Because such spontaneous eruptions can apparently be stimulated, and thus occur, at any time—nearly always temporarily controlling, and sometimes severely warping, our behaviors—mind scientists such as Arthur Janov and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross spent years looking at ways that this reservoir of emotional content could be emptied on command, at will, under controlled conditions, so that people took control of them, rather than they taking control of people.

    Their idea was to engage in deliberate triggering of the subconscious to release the buried pain through the voluntary expression of it even before it is actually felt. The theory is that expressing emotion does just that: express it. That is, push it out.

    PART TWO OF A THREE- PART NEWS ANALYSIS

    Processes such as Janov’s tool (which he called Primary Therapy) and Kübler-Ross’ device (which she termed the Externalization of Repressed Emotions)—to cite two examples—involved top-of-the-voice screaming, or beating a set of old telephone books on a mattress, using a rubber compressor hose. Persons were encouraged to begin the screaming or the banging even when no negative emotion was being experienced in their present moment.

    The result was in many cases remarkable, if surprising to the participants: the spontaneous “appearance” on the surface, a bringing forward to a place of present-moment consciousness, of intensively negative and apparently deeply-held feelings about another person or a long-past event—negative emotions that shocked many participants with their intensity, with many swearing that while they certainly understood that they held “bad feelings” about some things, they never knew they had such mountains of anger within them.

    As Janov and Kübler-Ross suspected it might, the expression of these negative energies in such a dramatic way turned into the expulsion of them, releasing them from their captivity in the subconscious, where they had been held in some cases for many years, and allowing patients to “let go” of them permanently.

    The idea, once again, is to release these long and deeply held emotions on purpose, under controlled conditions, rather than have them overtake us, becoming an episodic (or, worse yet, a chronic) aspect of our personality, behavior, and experience. (As in the case of the man who shot people in a Colorado movie theatre, or the person who kidnapped, beat, raped, and imprisoned three women in Cleveland over the past ten years.)

    What can possibly cause such repugnant and repulsive deviant behaviors? Clearly, mental aberration, abnormality, anomalousness. Yet what causes this? Is it possible that there is a pain even more deep-seated than that caused by obvious childhood traumas or life-impacting tragedies? Or there be something along the lines of a “primal pain” that precedes all the others, and actually gives weight and substance to them?

    If we can find the answer to that question—or at least one answer—we could go a long way toward eliminating eruptive anger, malevolence, violence, and killing from the collective human experience. We could create a society in which, at last, its members were much more safe, much more secure, and much more free from fear.

    Will we, can we, ever completely eliminate every cause or source of attack, one human upon another? Perhaps not. Can we enormously reduce the number of such events occurring in our communal lives? I believe we can. Yet the solution I propose will come from the spiritual, not the psychological, community of healers.

    And that’s where you come in.

    (In the final installment: The source of the original pain—and the way to get rid of it. A surprising description of what you can do as an average, ordinary person to offer a non-psychological solution that, if it swept the planet, could change the world.)

  • LET’S DISCUSS IT…How do natural disasters such as the Oklahoma tornado fit into the CWG statement that “there are no victims” in the world?

  • Introducing your child to the concept
    and the reality of God – Part I

    Nothing will play a larger role in the reality experienced (and created) by our children during their lifetime than the notions we give them about what I call the Three Foundational Aspects of Physical Expression upon the earth:

    1. Life Itself, and how it works
    2. Children Themselves, and who and what they are
    3. Life’s Larger Realities, and what some people call “God”

    The ideas that they carry forward about all of this will impact every area of their day-to-day encounters from this moment until their final moments in the body—just as your thoughts and my thoughts about these things have affected us in precisely the same way (though we may not have known it).

    This cannot be overstated. What your children imagine to be true about themselves and the environment in which they find themselves—as well as who or what controls that environment—will not only impact, but create…

    • Their thoughts, their energies and moods
    • Their willingness to attempt and to achieve
    • Their decision to risk and to dare
    • Their determination to reach and to strive
    • Their choice to wonder and to solve, and…
    • Their ability to step into and live the grandest concept of themselves, allowing them to fulfill their highest dreams

    So what we are talking about here is pretty important. No. It is extremely important. No. It is of ultimate importance.

    I cannot, in this online column, address all of the Big Three. To do so would require a small book. But I would like to share with you here what I imagine myself to know about how to introduce and discuss with your child the last and most important topic: God.

    Before we begin, a question please…

    The first thing you have to do is ask yourself a key question: Do you want your children to embrace an already established-in-your-own-mind and very particular set of beliefs? Or do you want your children to notice and be aware of your beliefs, and then be empowered to form their own?

    Always, in the issue of parenting, this becomes the key question. Not only as it relates to the subject of God, but as it relates to everything.

    And we will continue this discussion in our next entry here. I invite you to return.

     

  • YOU CAN OFFER HELP RIGHT NOW
    TO DEVASTED OKLAHOMANS

    We began here in our column last week a three-part series of New Analysis articles on the fact that we are doing little to address the cause of violence in our world, and looking at some of the tools our global society might use with which to do so.

    That series was scheduled to continue in this entry, but I am going to take the liberty of interrupting the series with my present post, because it seems in appropriate for me to simply continue in that vein here without a single mention of the horrific events in Oklahoma. I cannot — and we cannot — ignore what has happened there and just move on with our lives without at least asking how the concepts of the New Spirituality apply in this situation, and where those of us who were not immediately affected by it may fit into all of this.

    The first principle of The New Spirituality, as most readers here know, is: We Are All One. If this is true (and it is), then what occurred in Moore, Oklahoma (a near suburb of Oklahoma City) is part of all of our lives. If we are practicing The New Spirituality then, we will be immediately looking for ways to help that part of Ourselves that has been impacted or hurt by the huge level EF5 tornado that hit there.

    Alia E. Dastagir, staff writer for USAToday, has offered a terrific rundown of ways in which people can do that immediately. Her story can be found here:

    Here, from her story, is a list of helping opportunities. I hope and trust that you will respond with an open heart as soon and as hugely as you can.

    The American Red Cross has several shelters open in Oklahoma and Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles have begun delivering hot meals throughout the affected areas. The Red Cross is also working to link loved ones in Moore who are OK through a website called Safe and Well. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief, donate online or by phone at 1-800-RED CROSS.

    The Salvation Army is activating disaster response teams and mobile feeding units to help residents and rescuers in Moore, as well as in other locations in the Plains and the Midwest that were impacted by tornadoes. Donate online or text STORM to 80888 to contribute $10 to the Salvation Army’s relief efforts or make a donation by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY. If you’re sending a check make sure you put the words “Oklahoma Tornado Relief” on the check, and mail it to: The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 12600, Oklahoma City, OK 73157.

    AmeriCares has a disaster relief team working with first responders and local health care organizations on the ground in hard-hit Oklahoma City suburbs. Shipments of water, medicines and emergency aid have been sent, with more shipments underway. You can help by donating through the AmeriCares website or by phone at 1-800-486-HELP. Text LIVE to 25383 to make a $10 donation. You can also mail a check or money order to: AmeriCares, 88 Hamilton Ave., Stamford, CT 06902.

    Operation USA announced it’s providing emergency aid where needed to community-based health organizations across Oklahoma. Donate online, by phone at 1-800-678-7255, or by check made out to Operation USA, 7421 Beverly Blvd., PH, Los Angeles, CA 90036. You can also donate $10 by texting AID to 50555. Corporate donations of bulk quantities of disaster-appropriate supplies are also being requested.

    Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief says it has deployed at least 80 volunteers to respond to severe weather in Oklahoma. Those interested in helping can make a tax-deductible donation to the BGCO’s Disaster Relief ministry online or call (405) 942-3800. You may also send checks to: BGCO Attn: Disaster Relief 3800 N. May Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73112.

    Feed the Children, which is headquartered in Oklahoma City, has transported bottled water and food to the impacted area. The organization is accepting diapers, canned goods, non-perishable food, snack items, water, sports drinks, and cash donations. Text “Disaster” to 80888 to make a $10 donation. After receiving a confirmation message you must type “yes” to complete the donation. Cash and corporate donations can be made online or by phone at 1-800-627-4556.

    Samaritan’s Purse, which provided relief to residents of Moore after the devastating tornado in 1999, deployed two Disaster Relief Units from their North Carolina headquarters before dawn on Tuesday. One will be based in Moore, and the other in Shawnee. Samaritan’s Purse is looking for volunteers to help with the relief effort. You can donate online or by phone at 1-800-528-1980. To give by mail, please send donations to: Samaritan’s Purse, P.O. Box 3000, Boone, NC 28607-3000.

    Save the Children is mobilizing staff to provide support, relief and recovery services to communities and families in Oklahoma. The organization is prepared to deploy their Child Friendly Space kits in shelters, creating safe play areas for kids. They are also ready to deploy infant and toddler hygiene materials to support young children displaced from their homes. Text TWISTER to 20222 to donate $10 to Save the Children and help the response effort. You can donate online or call 1-800-728-3843.

    Operation Blessing International, a Virginia-based humanitarian group, is deploying to Moore, after working on tornado relief in Granbury, Texas, following last week’s storm there. A caravan of OBI emergency equipment was sent to Moore, including a construction unit, mobile command center, trucks full of tools and supplies, and a team of construction foremen. You can donate to the group online or donate by phone at 1-800-730-2537.

  • We Are Doing Little to Address
    the Cause of Violence in Our World

    Could it be that all that is going on in our world right now—Syria, New Orleans, Boston, Iraq, Iran—is the result of a very young species of sentient beings undergoing the pains of its own evolutionary process?

    The violence, the unending assaults of one group of humans upon another, the loathing and hatred which fuels it, the struggles of the rest of the world to overcome all of this while living alongside it…I believe that all of this could be, in part at least, the fallout of a fundamental condition in the human psyche—one might even call it a “psychological injury”—from which humanity must recover if we are ever to take our place as highly evolved life forms within the cosmic community of sentient beings.

    Any animal, backed into a corner, will attack. When people are in pain—pain they cannot seem to find a way to end—they can react and respond in painful ways. They plunder, they injure, they rape, they kill. They go to war with each other, and in not a few cases they go to war with themselves.

    What is not understood as widely as I wish it were among the people of the world is that this is a spiritual problem, not merely or simply a psychological one. It is because I understand this that I know the messages of the New Spirituality to be of such importance.

    PART ONE OF A THREE- PART NEWS ANALYSIS

    Humanity’s deepest pain is felt collectively by the species at varying levels among its members. Yet no single human being seems immune to it. The secret of ending humanity’s deepest pain may be found in a simple four-word statement that leads off a nine-book series of spiritual texts spanning more than 3,000 pages, called Conversations with God.

    To see how this could be true, we need first to identify humanity’s deepest pain. That can be done with one word: Separation.

    World famous  psychologists and psychiatrists, such as Arthur Janov and Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, have suggested for years that deep emotional pain that has been repressed by the mind is at the root of many of the psychological challenges faced by human beings, and nearly all of their dysfunctions, including violent behavior.

    It is the mind’s job to push such pain deep into the subconscious, so to allow each person to go on with life in a reasonably well-adjusted way. So when bad things happen to us, we automatically and quickly submerge them—not actually forgetting them (although is rare cases we do even that), but removing ourselves (sort of, “stepping away from”) the emotional content of them.

    Yet when you step away from something, you do not cause it to cease to exist. You merely put some distance between you and it. It still exists, it’s simply not right in front of your face.

    Negative emotions are never deleted from our memory. They are simply stored in a different place: the subconscious; the layer beneath our conscious mind. Thus, our mind holds the data of our emotional pain forever.

    Today’s computers work very much the same way. It is virtually impossible to actually delete data from a computer. You can send a document to TRASH, but that does not delete it from the computer’s memory bank. It merely moves it to another location on the hard drive—a place that is not “seen” on the desktop or in any of the user’s folders or files.

    The data still resides in the computer’s memory, however—as persons with criminal intent have learned to their chagrin the moment that sophisticated law enforcement investigative techniques are used to examine their laptops.

    You can now purchase software for your computer called, by some companies, a “shredder” (which inspires images of a paper-shredder-kind-of-program in your computer), but even this software does not remove any data from your machine. It merely overwrites it. Overwriting a file multiple times renders the data within it virtually indecipherable, and that is said to be one sure way to “trash” the data. Yet, technically, it is still there.

    So it is with your mind. You can shove your unwanted data (bad memories, traumatic events) into your personal “trash bin” (the subconscious), but can never get it completely out of your mind. You can “overwrite” it with dozens of newer and better memories, and soon the bitter memories can begin to fade, but they will never be deleted.

    Unlike computers, however, there seems to be no way to control if or when this “unwelcome data” shows up in our lives, triggered by something that causes it to spontaneously arise out of the subconscious and take over the conscious mind.

    I believe that this is precisely explains the state of human affairs on this planet today.  It explains Syria and Boston, Iraq and Cleveland, and all that is going on in between. Yet there some ways open to us by means of which humans can release these negative emotions without harming others or themselves.

    (Next: A look at what psychology offers around all of this—then, a surprising description of what you can do as an average, ordinary person to offer a non-psychological solution that, if it swept the planet, could change the world.)

  • Should major pharmaceutical firms be asked to offer drugs to the poorest countries at prices that cover only their costs, and provide no profit?

    BACKGROUND: The New York Times reports that “two companies that make vaccines against cervical cancer announced Thursday that they would cut their prices to the world’s poorest countries below $5 per dose, eventually making it possible for millions of girls to be protected against a major deadly cancer.” See the full report here.

    The vaccines typically costs about $130 per dose in the United States, the Times reports.

  • Maybe I’m just a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

    I was talking with a dear friend the other day and the subject of life’s travails came up. “I understand all about how God uses life to experience Itself,” she said, “but why does it have to be so hard on us?”

    We talked then about the many things that people on Earth are going through — from, in recent days, the Boston bombing to the Cleveland kidnapping to the carnage in Syria, to say nothing about the individual trials and tribulations to which we are all subject in our daily lives.

    “Is God just playing with us?” my friend wanted to know. She then said she knew better, but was still at loose ends trying to explain to herself why it was necessary for truly horrible things to occur in peoples’ lives.

    This one is difficult to explain. I have asked myself this same question many times. From the Conversations with God dialogue we come to know that it is not “necessary” for such things to occur. Communion with God tells us about The Ten Illusions of Humans, of which #5 is: Requirement Exists. Nothing is required of God, ever. Who would do the requiring? And since God and we are One, nothing is ever required of us, either. Who would do the requiring?

    Everything we do, we do out of choice. In our physical life this is true, and it is true in our metaphysical, or spiritual, life as well. We may think that we are “forced” to do certain things in our physical life, but upon closer examination we realize that every choice or decision we’ve ever made has been the result of an examination of our options and of a cost/benefit analysis that we have rapidly performed.

    This does not mean that nothing can ever happen to us in our physical life that we have not consciously chosen (the proverbial piano falling from the apartment building). Plenty of things happen to us that we did not consciously choose. But it does mean that every act of Will on our part derives from our singular choice or decision about it.

    Speaking metaphysically, the same thing is true. The Whole of Us (that is, the Totality of All Souls) works in a collaborative way to create the right and perfect circumstance in every moment of Now, allowing every Soul involved to announce and declare, create and become, fulfill and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.

    We are doing this right now, collectively, on the Earth as a species of sentient beings.

    CWG tells us that, both collectively and individually, every act is an act of Self-Definition. Example: on the day that I wrote this, the House in Minnesota voted to legalize gay marriage. The State Senate was expected to follow suit, making it the 17th state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. This is one example of human beings collectively self-defining.  Another example in the U.S. might be the failure of its Congress in Washington to approve any kind — even the most limited kind — of gun control, such as background checks on gun buyers.

    All over the world humanity observes itself defining itself. We are doing so in Syria, we are doing so in North Korea, we are doing so in Israel, we are doing so in the United States and in every nation on earth. We are also collectively creating the conditions in which individuals define themselves through their separate choices and decisions.

    All of this is what I said to my friend in our discussion. Life on earth does not have to be so hard, I said, and it would not be nearly as challenging for nearly as many people if our species collectively began making other kinds of decisions.

    Today 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 producing exactly the opposite.

    Our political systems are producing too much disarray. Our economic systems are producing too much poverty. Our ecological systems are producing too much environmental degradation. Our health care systems are producing too much inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services. Our educational systems are producing too much incomprehension. Our social systems are producing too much disparity and injustice. And, perhaps saddest of all, our spiritual systems are producing far, far too much intolerance, anger, hatred, and violence.

    And this article has only just begun to lay out the case. I will tell you this: We would eliminate 95% of the human-made problems facing people every day if the human race simply adopted and embraced the 15-word New Gospel offered to us in Friendship with God:

    We are all one.
    Ours is not a better way,
    ours is merely another way.

    Would that have stopped, specifically, the Boston bombing, the Cleveland kidnapping, or the carnage in Syria? Perhaps not. But would it make incidents such as these far, far less prevalent in the human experience? Absolutely. I am convinced it would, absolutely. Because a global mindset that embraced the truth and the concept of our Oneness with everyone else and with all of life could not result in anything but a reduction in the kinds of mental aberrations that produce such events. And the idea that our way is no better than any other way would virtually eliminate all the justification behind our wars and our terrorist bombings and many of the rest of the negative ways that human beings behave with each other.

    I don’t know, maybe I’m just a dreamer. But I’m not the only one…

     

  • What could cause the Cleveland kidnappings and years of abuse?

    It was a miracle that three young women in Cleveland escaped from the home in which they were kept imprisoned and were physically abused for years, allegedly by a man named Ariel Castro.

    Today we are left wondering how any person could do a such a thing.

    News reports now have it that Ariel Castro had apparently written a suicide note in 2004 questioning himself on exactly that, and making references to wanting to die.

    In the note — which reporter Scott Taylor of Cleveland’s WOIO-TV “19 Action News” says police found in Castro’s home, and of which Taylor says he obtained a copy — Castro allegedly wrote: “I am a sexual predator. I need help.”

    The sadness is that he did not call for help outside of his own mind. TV journalist Taylor also reports that Castro’s note goes on to question why he grabbed a third young lady off the streets in 2004: “I don’t know why I kept looking for another. I already had 2 in my possession,” the note allegedly said.

    He also supposedly writes about wanting to kill himself and “give all the money I saved to my victims.” Castro is also said to have written that he was surprised by how young one of his victims was (14 at the time of the kidnapping). The note he allegedly wrote he says he thought she was a lot older.

    According to the online news source Slate, another media outlet, CBS News, “reports that Castro wrote about his whole life in the letter, at one point ‘saying that he was abused by his parents as a child and that he was raped by an uncle’.”

    If this is true, it becomes a little easier to understand how a man could have perpetrated such crimes. None of this, we are all clear, excuses anything that Mr. Castro is charged with. It could, however, help explain it. It could open a window onto the life history of the accused, and his state of mind.

    Conversations with God invites us to ask a remarkable question of people who would do things such as Mr. Castro is accused of doing. The question: “What hurts you so bad that you feel you have to hurt others in order to heal it?” I am deeply, deeply sorry that these terrible events occurred in the lives of those young women and their families. I am also terribly sorry that any human being could hurt so bad as to hurt others in this reprehensible way. I pray for the day when all members of our human society treat all other members with honor and respect, with caring and compassion, with pure and good and undistorted love.

  • The Ultimate Statement
    on how life works
    YOU WILL WANT
    TO READ THIS

    For the past 18 years, wherever I have gone, I have been besieged with questions about God and Life and the purpose and function of our existence on Earth. This has been understandable, of course, and not unexpected in the aftermath of the worldwide publication of Conversations with God, which attracted millions of readers in more than 35 languages.

    Also understandably, I hear the same questions over and over again from different people in different places and times. So repetitive have been my exchanges that I realized recently that I can now recite them from memory. And that gave me an idea. Why not do exactly that? Why not produce a written summary of the questions I usually receive and the answers I have given, post it on the Internet, and then refer people to this resource if they wish to have a lasting record of the answers for future reference?

    So here you are. I invite you to visit this corner of our global Internet newspaper’s front page often. I will post new material in this ongoing “Dialogue from Memory” on a regular basis here. And, of course, you will always be able to check into the Archive should you miss a particular posting. When we are finished here, I hope you will know a great deal more about what I have called The New Spirituality, based on the messages in Conversations with God. Welcome to…

    CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANITY

    Installment #1

    Q. Is there a God?
    A.  Yes. The New Spirituality holds that there is a Central Essence, a Creative Force, a Dynamic Energy within the Universe that fills the role of what has been called by many names, including Adonai, Akshar, Allah, Brahman, Brahma, Deus, Divinity, Divine Mother, Ekankar, Elohim, God, Hari, Indra, Jehovah, Krishna, Lord, Mahesh, Manitou, Ormuzd, Parameshwar, Purush, Purushottam, Radha Soami, Ram, Rama, Theos, Thor, Varuna, Vishnu, Yahweh, among others.

    Q. What is God? A “person”…a single, grander-than-grand Being? An “energy”? What, precisely, is God?
    A. The more productive question is, “What is God not?” The answer to the first question is so sweeping, it would take all the pages of all the encyclopedias on the Internet to offer just a beginning description. Yet the answer to the second question can be given in one word: Nothing. There is nothing that God is not. For God is the Essential Essence that comprises everything—both seen and unseen—in existence.

    This means that God is the All-In-All, the Alpha & the Omega, the Beginning & the End; the Up & the Down of it, the Big & the Small of It, the Fast and the Slow of It, the Here & the There of It, the Now & the Then of It. It means that nothing stands outside of God. That Which IS is God…and God is That Which IS.

    Q. I find that sad, because if that’s true, then we no longer have a personal God…someone we can pray to, someone we can ask favors of, someone we can go to for help.
    A. It would be sad if that were true, but Conversations with God tells us that the Sum Total of Everything has—as might be expected—unlimited intelligence and unlimited creative capacity. The Essential Essence may, therefore, form and shape Itself in an endless number of configurations. Indeed, physical life itself is nothing more than a collection of those configurations.

    This means that God can—and will—reconfigure Itself in any form or shape that suits the believer. Divinity can therefore be thought of as your Spiritual Father, as a Sacred Mother, as a Best Friendship with God, or in any guise or image that best helps us to relate and communicate with it.

    IN OUR NEXT INSTALLMENT: Since you say there is a God, what is God’s “job”? What is its function? What does God do and what does God not do?   

    =====================
    Installment #2
    =====================

    Q. Since you say there is a God, what is God’s “job”?
    A. I can tell you what it is not. It is not to “grant us wishes.” Nor is it to watch us from afar, judge us by our actions, and reward or punish us after “death.”

    Q. Okay, so what is God’s job?
    God’s “job” (I prefer to refer to this as the basic function of the Essential Energy) is to empower Life in all of its physical forms and manifestations with the ability to create, impact, and direct their experience at a level commensurate with the Self Consciousness with which each of those manifestations has been imbued.

    As it relates to humans, God’s “job” is to provide us with the ability to create our own reality. This includes our collective Exterior Events and our individual Inner Experience. To do this, we have been given the Tools of Creation. Specifically: Thought, Word, and Deed.

    Q. So we get to experience whatever we want to experience?
    The Collective known as Humanity does, yes — and our world as it now presents itself is evidence of that. It is the Cultural Story of humanity that produces the Exterior Events of humanity’s history and present adventure. If we want to change our collective Exteior Events, all we have to do is change our Cultural Story. That is, what we think of ourselves; what we tell ourselves about ourselves.

    The Individuation of Divinity known as a single human being also gets to experience what it wishes to experience. Everything is what we say it is. There is no direct connection between the Exterior Events of Life being co-created by the lot of us and the Interior Experience of those events, which is individually created by every human being.

    The process by which Exterior Events are transformed and translated into Interior Experience is explained in wonderful detail in the book When Everything Changes Change Everything. It involves the Mechanics of the Mind and the System of the Soul, and the ideal is to use both, in perfect balance. That is what spiritual masters do, and have always done.

    The trick is to know what Life itself is all about. Then we know what it is that we are trying to do!

    Q. What does that mean? What are you saying here?
    I am saying that most people do not understand exactly what it is they are seeking to do. That is, they are not keenly aware of the purpose of their lives—or of Life Itself. They do not understand why we are even here upon the Earth. They do not know who they are, where they are, or why they are where they are. So most people are simply wading through the ocean of life, trying to make the best of it, trying to keep their head above water, trying with all their might to simply stay afloat. But they have no idea how they got in this situation, what the situation actually is, where they are trying to go, much less how to really get into the swim of things. So they experience themselves swimming upstream, as it were. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way.

    Q. Oh, really? Then what way can it be?
    Ah, yes. That will be our next installment.

  • LET’S DISCUSS IT: The executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association served notice to America on Saturday that “we will never surrender our guns.” In an address to the annual NRA Convention, Wayne LaPierre characterized his organization’s opposition to any kind of gun control, or even background checks on potential gun purchasers, as a flight against “elites.”

    “Mr. President, you can give all the speeches you want. You can conjure up all the polls you can and call NRA members all the nasty names you can think of, but your gun control legislation won’t stop one criminal, wouldn’t make anyone safer anywhere,” LaPierre told the convention on Saturday. LaPierre and the NRA propose, instead, that current laws be enforced, that schools include armed guards, that the government rebuild a “broken mental health system,” and “for God’s sake, leave the rest of us alone!”, a CNN story on the NRA Convention reported.

    What do you think? Do you believe that background checks on potential gun buyers, and other kinds of gun control measures — such as limits on the sale of  high capacity magazines that allow a gun to shoot multiple rounds in seconds — would be good for America, or do you believe this would be a violation of a sacred right, that all humans should have, to “keep and bear arms”?