The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • All acts of violence are wailings of love

    This is the second in a series of entries from a chapter that I was invited to contribute to the 2013 book titled The Light, compiled by Keidi Keating. The book seeks to empower readers to reawaken their Inner Light via a series of universal truths. Others contributed chapters as well, including Don Miguel Ruiz, Marci Shimoff, Barbara Marx Hubbard, John-Rogers, Terry Tillman, and John Perkins. All net profits from the book go to charity. My chapter in this book follows in the posts here.

    PART TWO…
    The sages and mystics have said they want to see the world full of saints. They want us all to shine. How can we help the world to shine and not hide our own Light?

    By seeing the Light in others, even when they do not see it in themselves, by judging not and condemning not.

    Judge not and neither condemn, but be a Light unto the darkness, so that everyone might know who they really are and that you might know who you really are as well.

    The answer is to remove negative judgment from our experiences in all things and at all times. Simply see the perfection.

    When we see the perfection in all things we immediately step outside of negative judgment. And when we step outside of negative judgment we bring ourselves the experience of the Divine. It is difficult for most human beings to see the world without judgment if they do not understand the true nature of unconditional love.
    There is no action, activity, choice or decision made by anybody on the planet that does not spring from love. All actions are acts of love. When I make that statement the question I am immediately asked is: “Well, what about if somebody kills, robs or rapes someone? How can that be an act of love?” They do not understand that all acts spring from deep love.

    A person who acts violently acts that way because they lack something they would love to have, or because something they love has been taken from them, or because something they love and wish they had is not available to them. And so they reach out in violence in order to obtain the things they wish they had.

    All acts of violence are wailings of love.

    All of the great masters have made this clear to us. There is no spiritual master, therefore, who judges anyone, not even the so-called worst among us, which is why Conversations with God made the statement that “Hitler went to heaven.” When you understand that, you grasp at the edges of Divinity.

    (More information on the book titled The Light may be found by clicking this link.  The book may purchased here:)

  • WILL SYRIA’S CIVIL WAR TURN INTO
    ANOTHER WAR ABOUT GOD?

    Everyone in the world knows there is a civil war going on in Syria. But not everyone knows what is going on behind the scenes in that struggle.

    At its root, much of the animosity between the people in Syria is fueled by ancient disagreements about humanity’s Deity — called in Arabic “Allah”, or literally, “the God.”

    Yes, once again we are killing each other in a rage expanded by differences over the Source of All Love.

    Officially, the revolution is said to be about too many years of minority rule, oppressive government, and economic disparity, those fighting in the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) will say. The FSA is a rebel group that has been struggling for just over two years, asserting that what they—and the majority of the Syrian people—want is a free and democratic country.

    There is no doubt that these matters carry huge weight in the struggle, as the government of Syrian President Bashad al-Assad has — like his father’s government before him — strictly prohibited most forms of political dissent in the country, and outlawed all political parties except one—the Ba-‘ath Party that has ruled the nation since the early Sixties.

    But underneath the political-social issues is a raging underground stream of religious turmoil, those familiar with the Syrian situation say. President al-Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, which is a non-conformist branch of Shia Islam.

    The Religious Divide
    The vast majority of Syria’s people are Sunni, not Shia — which accounts for less than 20 per cent of Muslims worldwide — and even fewer belong to the Alawite faction (only about 12 per cent of Syrians, by most accounts).

    Even as in Christianity there are numerous sects or belief systems (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, etc.), so, too, is it within the Islamic faith tradition. Sunni Islam is the largest branch of that tradition, and is considered to be the orthodox version of the religion. The smaller, separatist groups in the religion emerged as a result of historical and doctrinal differences.

    In Syria — as in many other nations in the Arab world — Sunnis are in the vast majority, but have been ruled for decades by Shi’ites, and in Syria in particular, its Alawite faction. Since ruling parties generally look after their own, the result is that throughout much of the Arab world Shi’ites have favored far better economically and politically (more power over their own affairs and future) than Sunni’s, who tend to be at the lower end of the scale in terms of economic and political power and influence.

    News Analysis — Part Two

    Throughout the region, Sunnis have been saying “enough is enough.” This is what created what has been called the Arab Spring, a region-wide uprising begun in December 201 in which, to date, “rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain, and Syria, major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan, and minor protests have occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Western Sahara,” according to the free-source online reference Wikipedia.

    (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring)

    The Syrian revolt has been the most violent, with estimates that over 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting—with the number increasing daily. As recently as May 3 it was alleged by the government’s opposition that more than 40 people had been executed in al-Bayda, a village near the port of Baniyas in northwestern Syria, by forces loyal to the Assad regime. The government says the incident was caused by what it labels “terrorists” in the village.

    Where Ideas About God Come In
    The religious “angle” is not insignificant in all this. Members of the Alawite sect were long persecuted for their beliefs by the various rulers of Syria, until Hafez al-Assad took power there in 1970, a Wikipedia article asserts. When Hafez al-Assad died in 2000, his son Bashad al-Assad assumed the presidency much as a king’s son would assume the throne in a typical monarchy. Any opposition to this maneuver was systematically squelched. And so, for the past 50 years the political system has been dominated by an elite led by the Alawite Assad family.

    Now the Free Syrian Army says al-Assad must go. It wants democratic free elections. But now, into the country are coming radical Islamic jihadists. They are flooding the towns and villages, entering by the thousands from elsewhere in the region, well financed by the broader Islamic jihadist movement.

    These incoming revolutionaries are not nearly as concerned with the economic, social, and political issues in Syria as they are with the religious aspect of daily life there.  They see the Syrian conflict as a battle for the survival of traditional, conservative Islam. Because bitterness has long simmered between Sunnis and Alawites, it is not difficult to find on-the-ground support in the poorer villages and towns of Syria as radical Islamists from other countries seek to turn the civil war in that nation into a religious jihad.

    Interviewed by international media outlets, some of these mostly youthful jihadists are not reluctant to make it clear that their desire is to create an Islamic nation regionally — and that they are prepared to die in that effort. They see this as dying for Allah, whose traditional followers have been downtrodden and marginalized and warred against for decades, in their view.

    A relatively new group of such jihadists has formed, calling itself Jabhat al-Nusra  (“Support Front for the People”). It is said to be officially allied with al Qaeda in Iraq. A second group, the Syrian Islamic Front, is described by media outlets as an overarching body of divergent groups with an extremely conservative religious philosophy, not unlike the ideology of the Taliban.

    Can outside radical Muslims turn Syria’s civil war — a battle for economic, social, and political equality — into a religious war, leading to the creation by fiat of a regional “Nation of Islam”?

    So long as human beings insist on arguing about God, and about whose teachings with regard to God are the most “valid” and the most “sacred,” battles ignited by religion will continue to be waged across the Earth.

    Might it be time for a New Spirituality to be explored across our planet? Might it be time for us to inspire such an exploration? Is it time for an Evolution Revolution?

  • Searching for a new headline:
    WORLD DECLARES ONENESS

    My Dear Companions on the Journey…

    Today’s “Are We Done Yet?” headline: U.S. SAYS SYRIAN GOVERNMENT MAY HAVE USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST ITS CITIZENS.

    That headline follows by days the news of the Boston bombing, and the weeks of endless threats by North Korea of atomic warfare. Every morning humanity awakens to another in an endless succession of stories of violence or threats of violence by one group of human beings upon another.

    As this continues, a central question looms larger and larger every day: How much longer must this go on before our species realizes that a fundamental shift in its ideas about itself is the only thing that will stop this endless slide toward our own self-destruction?

    A report from National Public Radio says that “multiple reports in recent days have cited the possible use of chemical weapons around the Syrian cities of Damascus and Aleppo last month and an earlier one in Homs. Victims reportedly suffered burns, blisters, breathing problems, severe irritation to the eyes and even blindness.”

    The NPR report was careful in noting that such symptoms may also be caused by conventional weapons of war. White phosphorus, for instance, is “a component in some artillery shells that is not a chemical weapon. It produces large clouds of smoke and can cause the types of injuries that have been reported,” the NPR report said.

    Nevertheless, the assessment of other nations, not just the U.S. (among them, France, Great Britain, and Israel) is that some from of chemical weapon has likely been employed against the Syrian rebels by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    What will be the “Are We Done Yet?” headline tomorrow?

    NEWS ANALYSIS – Part One

    Are we done yet? Have we had enough yet? Are we ready now, at last, to do something about humanity’s inhumanity? What will it take for the human race to stand up en masse and say, “No more. We are done with this.”

    Can we bring about the Miracle of the Ages? Is our species capable of creating a new world headline?

    HUMANITY RENOUNCES SEPARATION

    Human beings can split the atom, create a cure for disease, send a man to the moon and crack the genetic code of life itself. Yet, sadly, many people, perhaps the largest number, cannot do the simplest thing.

    Get along.

    Why is this, do you imagine? Do you think it may have anything to do with the fact that we do not see ourselves as Family, but, rather, insist on telling ourselves a Story of Separation? Right now we are embracing a Separation Theology on this planet. Separation Theology 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.

    We can change all that. But the important element there is the word “we.” It will take many of us. Millions of us. But “we” can do it.

    (In Part II of this analysis: No Fair. “The world is a better place than it has ever been.” Is this true?)

    ====================
    EDITOR’S NOTE: You may find it valuable and interesting to read two other articles on this Home Page. (1) OF ADDITIONAL INTEREST: One Possible Response to Violence in Our World; and (2) the article at the bottom on the right-hand column headlined And Finally…

  • Are you ‘The Light’?

    This is the first in a series of entries from a chapter that I was invited to contribute to the 2013 book titled The Light, compiled by Keidi Keating. The book seeks to empower readers to reawaken their Inner Light via a series of universal truths. Others contributed chapters as well, including Don Miguel Ruiz, Marci Shimoff, Barbara Marx Hubbard, John-Rogers, Terry Tillman, and John Perkins. All net profits from the book go to charity. My chapter in this book follows in the posts here.

    PART ONE…

    You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men.
    ~ Matthew 5:14-16

    People ask all the time, “Am I really the Light?” There is nothing in the universe that is not Divine. Everyone and everything is the Light. Divinity is expressed through life itself at every level and in every way.

    The Light shines with increasing brightness from beings who have expanded their level of consciousness. People who know themselves as the Light will experience themselves as that, and others will experience them as that as well.

    When I asked God what it would take for me to get to the place for which I so deeply yearned, He chuckled and said, “Neale, I get that you still think your life is about you, but your life has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t now, it never did and it never will.

    “On the other hand, if you are clear that I sent you here in a state of utter perfection and it is only you who have imagined yourself not to be in that state, then you will move through the world no longer concerned about yourself at any level. In fact, your only concern will be for all those whose lives you touch. You will, therefore, give to another what you have sought to obtain for yourself.”

    The fastest way to experience yourself as the Light is to cause another to experience themself as the Light, for what you give to another you give to yourself, and that will become eternally true in your experience.

    Don’t  go  around  asking:  what  are  we  to  eat, what are we to drink, wherewithal  will we clothe ourselves?   Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  heaven and  all  these  things  will  be  added  unto  you.
    ~The Gospel According to Matthew Chapters 31-33

    So yes, you are the Light, but the fastest way for you to experience that is to make sure that everyone whose life you touch sees themselves, knows themselves, and experiences themselves as the Light, And they will know themselves as that depending upon how you interact with them and how you see them.

    As you give them their own sense of being the Light, so too will you grant that same sense to yourself. The masters have put this in one sentence: “Do unto others as you would have it done unto you.”

    When people ask me, “Am I the Light?” I ask them, “Am I? How do you see me?” If they see me as the Light then I say, “Good, now see the next one hundred people you meet as the Light and you will begin seeing yourself as that. But so long as you have judgment about another and see them as less than the Light, you can never experience yourself as the Light. You will experience yourself as you experience the world around you, and it can be no other way.”

    (More information on the book titled The Light may be found by clicking this link.  The book may purchased here:)

     

     

  • IS CALAMITY TO BE OUR
    ONLY PATH TO CIVILITY?

    My Dear and Wonderful Companions on the Journey…

    As the world reflects on the events of these most recent days — from the bloodshed in Syria to the killing in Afghanistan to the bombing in Boston — and on all the terror and all the savagery and all the violence that has emerged from and through people of every race and creed during the course of its long history upon the Earth, the heart of humanity breaks, and the collective mind of humanity cries out…

    “What will it take for us to stop ourselves from doing this? Are we truly primitives still, who have found no way to control our most barbaric impulses? Does our desperation remain so acute that we feel lashing out in murderous rage is justified, and is the only announcement of it we feel will be heard? Is there no way to ever, ever put an end to our species’ bestial behaviors?”

    In fact, however, the question is larger than that. It is more pointed than that. The question of the day is: Even if there was a way, can we ever gather ourselves together in sufficient numbers to actually employ it? What, if anything, could cause us to unite at last in Singular Purpose?

    So far, it has only been calamity.

    News reports out of Boston have told of a whole city joining to bring comfort, aid, and succor to bombing victims and their families, and to heal the city itself from its shock and dismay. And so it is, everywhere on the planet where disaster strikes any community. Suddenly, our sense of community is given re-birth. Our humanity is reawakened.

    Yet why must it take cataclysm and catastrophe to arouse our awareness of community? Is there nothing else that could cause us to relinquish our “story” of “separation” and embrace the truth of our oneness?

    There is.

    We could abandon our Story of Separation finally and forever. We could embrace the Story of Oneness at last and always.

    All it would take would be numbers. Large numbers of people. All it would take would be a revolution on our planet. It would be the last revolution we would ever need. It would be the Evolution Revolution, and when it was complete, we would have civilized civilization.

    I realize this is a big order. There have been massive social revolutions before. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led one for blacks. Gloria Steinem led one for women. Harvey Milk led one for gays. Mahatma Gandhi led one for an entire nation. Nelson Mandela did the same. And others have done so as well.

    Yet now the time of individual revolutionaries has passed. It is the Moment of Movements, and movements are ignited by cohorts, cadres, corps. If a corps can be formed — a global cadre of inspired, motivated, engaged but gentle activists — humanity’s final great revolution, the Evolution Revolution, can and will sweep the planet.

    How does such a revolution begin? By people sitting down together and talking about what it is they wish to change, and how they wish to change it. That is what The Conversation of the Century is all about.

    Once again I should like to share something from Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (2002).

    This is a globally known consultant on organizational behavior. She received her doctorate from Harvard University, holds an M.A. in systems thinking from New York University, and has worked on every inhabited continent in virtually every type of organization.

    In other words, Meg Wheatley knows her way around. Here’s what she says:

    “There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation…We can take courage from the fact that this is a process we all know how to do. We can also take courage in the fact that many people are longing to converse again…Change doesn’t happen from someone announcing the plan. Change begins from deep inside a system, when a few people notice something they will no longer tolerate, or when they respond to someone’s dream of what’s possible.”

    That is precisely, to the letter, what The Conversation of the Century is all about. And here is the Dream of What’s Possible: A new way of being human, arising from a New Cultural Story for Humanity: A Story of Oneness.

    What is now being proposed is a global cohort — small groups of people meeting in their homes twice a month to, first, talk about, discuss, analyze and deeply explore the elements of Humanity’s New Cultural Story, and then, to place that story on the ground in cities, towns, and villages around the world, partly through a gentle but persistent brand of civic-social-spiritual activism that epitomizes the spirit of Victor Hugo’s immortal observation: All the armies of the world cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

    Thus will be born the Evolution Revolution.

    =========================
    The Evolution Revolution is a spiritual activism outreach of Humanity’s Team, a global organization founded by Neale Donald Walsch, the author of the Conversations with God series of books and the creator of The Global Conversation internet newspaper. Information on joining the Evolution Revolution by initiating a Conversation of the Century action group may be had by writing to neale.donald.walsch@HumanitysTeam.org

     

  • LET’S DISCUSS IT: One of the men allegedly responsible for the Boston bombing has been killed in a confrontation with police. The second suspect has been caught. If he is tried and should be convicted of the bombing, what do you believe an appropriate sentence would be?

  • Have you read this passage?
    It is one of CWG’s most powerful

    GOD: If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says “yes” to some, “no” to others, and “maybe, but not now” to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide?

    If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken.

    God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect.

    It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

    In this sense, your will for you is God’s will for you.

    You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.

    This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.

    I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay.

    Of course, you will always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.

    You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. It is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy—not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result—that comes close to describing the dichotomy of God.

    Yet God, in a sense, does not even care about the outcome. Not the ultimate outcome. This is because the ultimate outcome is assured.

    And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.

    It is this doubt about ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator—you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life.

    If you doubt God’s intentions—and God’s ability to produce this ultimate result—then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace?

    Yet God has full power to match intentions with results. You cannot and will not believe in this (even though you claim that God is all-powerful), and so you have to create in your imagination a power equal to God, in order that you may find a way for God’s will to be thwarted. And so you have created in your mythology the being you call “devil.” You have even imagined a God at war with this being (thinking that God solves problems the way you do). Finally, you have actually imagined that God could lose this war.

    All of this violates everything you say you know about God, but this doesn’t matter. You live your illusion, and thus feel your fear, all out of your decision to doubt God.

    But what if you made a new decision? What then would be the result?

    I tell you this: you would live as the Buddha did. As Jesus did. As did every saint you have ever idolized.

    Yet, as with most of those saints, people would not understand you. And when you tried to explain your sense of peace, your joy in life, your inner ecstasy, they would listen to your words, but not hear them. They would try to repeat your words, but would add to them.

    They would wonder how you could have what they cannot find. And then they would grow jealous. Soon jealousy would turn to rage, and in their anger they would try to convince you that it is you who do not understand God.

    And if they were unsuccessful at tearing you from your joy, they would seek to harm you, so enormous would be their rage. And when you told them it does not matter, that even death cannot interrupt your joy, nor change your truth, they would surely kill you. Then, when they saw the peace with which you accepted death, they would call you saint, and love you again.

    For it is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value most.

    But why? Why do we do that?

    All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions—fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions—only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.

    These are the two points—the Alpha and the Omega—which allow the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist.

    Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions—different twists on the same theme.

    Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love, or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.

    And here is how human behavior produces repeat experience after repeat experience; it is why humans love, then destroy, then love again: always there is the swing from one emotion to the other. Love sponsors fear sponsors love sponsors fear. . .

    . . .And the reason is found in the first lie—the lie which you hold as the truth about God—that God cannot be trusted; that God’s love cannot be depended upon; that God’s acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God’s love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?

    . . .And so it is that in the moment you pledge your highest love, you greet your great­­est fear.

    For the first thing you worry about after saying “I love you” is whether you’ll hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediately to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose. And so all action becomes a reaction—defense against loss—even as you seek to defend yourself against the loss of God.

    Yet if you knew Who You Are—that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created—you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being.

    But you do not know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? From the only people whose word you would take on everything. From your mother and your father.

    These are the people who love you the most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this, and not enough of that? Have they not reminded you that you are to be seen and not heard? Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imagining?

    These are the messages you’ve received, and though they do not meet the criteria, and are thus not messages from God, they might as well have been, for they have come from the gods of your universe surely enough.
    It was your parents who taught you that love is conditional—you have felt their conditions many times—and that is the experience you take into your own love relationships.

    It is also the experience you bring to Me.

    From this experience you draw your conclusions about Me. Within this framework you speak your truth. “God is a loving God,” you say, “but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation.”

    For have you not experienced the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with Me?

    You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. And so you try to imagine what God’s love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world.

    You have projected the role of “parent” onto God, and have thus come up with a God Who judges and rewards or punishes, based on how good He feels about what you’ve been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with Who I Am.

    Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. Its Sponsoring Thought is wrong, but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to be feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.

    This fear-based love reality dominates your experience of love; indeed, actually creates it. For not only do you see yourself receiving love which is conditional, you also watch yourself giving it in the same way. And even while you withhold and retreat and set your conditions, a part of you knows this is not what love really is. Still, you seem powerless to change the way you dispense it. You’ve learned the hard way, you tell yourself, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to leave yourself vulnerable again. Yet the truth is, you’ll be damned if you don’t.

    [By your own (mistaken) thoughts about love do you damn yourself never to experience it purely. So, too, do you damn yourself never to know Me as I really am. Until you do. For you shall not be able to deny Me forever, and the moment will come for our Reconciliation.]

    Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear, not simply those dealing with relationships. Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choices involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide—every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.

    Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.

    Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.

    Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

    Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select…

    …You have been taught to live in fear. You have been told about the survival of the fittest and the victory of the strongest and the success of the cleverest. Precious little is said about the glory of the most loving. And so you strive to be the fittest, the strongest, the cleverest—in one way or another—and if you see yourself as something less than this in any situation, you fear loss, for you have been told that to be less is to lose.

    And so of course you choose the action fear sponsors, for that is what you have been taught. Yet I teach you this: when you choose the action love sponsors, then will you do more than survive, then will you do more than win, then will you do more than succeed. Then will you experience the full glory of Who You Really Are, and who you can be.

    To do this you must turn aside the teachings of your well-meaning, but misinformed, worldly tutors, and hear the teachings of those whose wisdom comes from another source.


    ====================================

    The above excerpt is from Conversations with God – Book One

  • One possible response to violence in our world

    WRITTEN and PUBLISHED September 12, 2001…
    re-published the day after the Boston Bombings of April 15, 2013…
    ==========================

    The events of September 11, 2001 cause every thinking person to stop their daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life.

    We search again for not only the meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have created it—and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew as a human species, so that we may end at last the cycle of violence which has marred our history.

    The hour has brought us much sorrow, yet behind the sorrow, if we look closely and long, we will see opportunity.  It is the opportunity for us to take a new path, to show the world a new way, to demonstrate at the highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are—as a people, as a nation, and as a human family.

    The whole human race is invited now is look to see what it is we truly wish to experience on this planet. Then we are invited to be the source of that for each other.

    If we wish to experience peace, we are invited to provide peace for each other.

    If we wish to know that we are safe, we are invited to create safety for each other.

    If we wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, we are invited to help each other to better understand.

    If we wish to heal our own sadness or anger, we are invited to heal the sadness or anger in each other.

    If we wish to have justice done, we are invited to act justly with each other.

    The world is waiting now. It is anxiously awaiting the morrow, not knowing what may come. Its people are looking for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking for love.

    The words to that familiar song were never, ever more meaningful than they are today:

    What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some, but for everyone.

    This is the moment of your ministry. This could be the time of your greatest teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years to come.

    We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment.

    There is much we can do, but there is one thing we cannot do. We cannot continue to co-create our lives together on this planet as we have in the past. Yet we will continue to do so if we focus our energy on pinpointing where blame falls, rather than where cause lies, in the unhappiest of our experiences.

    Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our wounds, we will never heal. Instead, we will forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family who feel aggrieved—and, likewise, we will forever seek retribution for them.

    To me the cause is clear. The majority of the world’s people have not learned the most basic human lessons. They have not remembered the most basic human truths. They have not understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, most people have not been listening to God, and because they have not, they do ungodly things.

    The message of God is clear. No matter what the religion, no matter what the culture, no matter what the spiritual or indigenous tradition, the bottom line is identical: we are all one.

    The Bible, which is only one of humanity’s many sources of spiritual teaching, carries this message throughout, in both the Old Testament and the New.

    (Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Malachi 2:10… so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Romans 12:5…Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body…1 Corinthians 10:17)

    This is a message the human race has largely ignored.

    Our religion, our politics, our economics, our education, our whole way of life is based on the idea that we are not one, but that we are separate from each other.  We are thus willing to inflict all manner of injury upon each other. We would never do this if we thought that we were actually inflicting injury upon ourselves, yet this injury inevitably does fall upon ourselves—for like begets like, and negativity only breeds negativity.

    Our history has proven this. Still, there seems to be one thing for which many human beings will give up anything. They will give up peace, love, happiness, joy, prosperity, romance, excitement, serenity, everything—even their own heath—for this one thing:

    Being right.

    But even if we are right, what is spirituality’s recommended course of action? What do the greatest spiritual teachers of all time, each in their own way, tell us at times such as these? It is something that many of us cannot (or do not wish to) hear.

    …I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, (Matthew 5:44)

    Can this be sound advice?

    If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand why they have done so, what would be the final result?  Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then will be the outcome?

    It is easy at times like this to fall into rage—and even to mistake it for justice. Yet rage never produces authentic justice. Indeed, it inevitably creates injustice—for someone. That is because rage is anger that has been repressed, and, when released, it is always misdirected. This is exactly what happened on September 11, 2001.

    Anger itself is not inappropriate. Anger is a natural human response, and can even be a blessing, if it leads to change.  Yet as we feel our anger and express, there is one thing about which we should make no mistake.  The human race has the power to annihilate itself.  We can end life as we know it on this planet in one afternoon.

    In the early days of our civilization, we were able to inflict hurt upon each other using sticks and rocks and primitive weapons. Then, as our technology grew, we could destroy a village, or a town, or a major city, or even an entire nation. Yet now it is possible for us to destroy our whole world, and do it so fast that nothing can stop the process once it has begun.

    Is that the process we wish to begin?  This is the question we must answer.

    In searching for our answer, I hope that each of us will have our own conversation with God, for only the grandest wisdom and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems, and we are now facing the greatest problems and the greatest challenges in the history of our species.

    It should be no surprise that we are doing so. It is not as if we have not seen this coming. Spiritual, political, and philosophical writers for the past 50 years have predicted it. So long as we continue to treat each other as we have in the past, they have said, the circumstance we face in the present will continue to present itself in the future.

    We must change ourselves. We must change the beliefs upon which our behaviors are based. We must create a different reality, build a new society. And we must do so not with political truths or with economic truths, and not with cultural truths or even the remembered truths of our ancestors—for the sins of the fathers are being visited upon the sons. We must do so with new spiritual truths. We must preach a new gospel, its healing message summarized in two sentences:

    We are all one.

    Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

    This 15-word message, delivered from every lectern and pulpit, from every rostrum and platform, could change everything overnight. I challenge every priest, every minister, every rabbi and religious cleric to preach this. I challenge every political party spokesperson and the head of every national government to declare it.

    And I challenge all of us, right now, to become spiritual activists. If we want the beauty of the world and not its ugliness to be experienced by our children and our children’s children, we must choose to be at cause in the matter.

    — Neale Donald Walsch

     

  • AND NOW, BOSTON

    We shake our heads in sadness and dismay. And we ask: Is there any way to civilize civilization? Are we, as human beings, simply unable to resolve our differences in any way other than through the use or threats of force? Is violence just plainly a part of the human condition, built into the barbaric psyche of our species, having to be expressed one way or another whether we like it or not?

    The terrible bombing at the Boston Marathon — even as the bloodshed continues in a seemingly endless civil war in Syria, in the same moment that North Korea insists on threatening the entire global community daily by brandishing atomic warheads on ballistic missiles, while the U.S. flies stealth bombers dropping ammunition-free bomb casings over the Korean Peninsula in a display of its own military prowess — raises the question among all thinking people:

    What would it take, and how much more is humanity willing to endure, in order for the largest number of the People of Earth to gently but massively rise up and say to all humans everywhere — leaders and rank-and-file citizens alike: “No! Enough. We are through, finished, done with this. We will no longer harbor terrorists, we will no longer sanction violence, we will no longer encourage, threaten, declare or support killing at any time in any place for any reason. We will find another way to resolve our differences.”

    I know what it would take, of course. We all do. And it is not a declaration, or a pronouncement, nor a futile and impotent protest. It is a change in the very way that humanity sees itself, understands itself, defines itself, and experiences itself.

    There is a way to civilize civilization, but it will more than just a few of us to do it. It will take the lot of us. A huge swath of us. An overwhelming majority of us.

    And what, if anything, could produce such a collective cohesive cohort? Do we have enough time left to gather our energies together in such an effort before the forces of violence overtake us completely and destroy us utterly?

    Is Boston enough? Is Syria enough? Is North Korea enough? Have we had enough? Are you — you reading this right now — willing to take the first step in forming a collective cohesive cohort?

    If you are, let us gather now in cities, towns, and villages around the world and ignite The Conversation of the Century. Let us inspire a global Evolution Revolution. Let us work together, let us mobilize, to “civilize civilization” at last.

    And let us begin by stopping trying to solve the problems facing humanity at every level except the level at which those problems exist. Let us invite, urge, inspire humanity to write, and then to live into, a New Cultural Story; a new understanding about ourselves, about who we are, about why we are here, about our True Relationship to each other, to Life, and to the Source of Life Itself, which some of us call “God.”

    To create an Evolution Revolution action group in your community write to neale.donald.walsch@humanitysteam.org  You’ll get a response telling you how to can do something, and not just talk about it, regarding violence in our world.

    Also…please, please take a moment to read the article in this edition of The Global Conversation in the lower right-hand column, headlined:
    OF ADDITIONAL INTEREST: One Possible Response to Violence in Our World

    This is A Message to the World that I wrote on September 12, 2001. I believe it has major relevance today.

  • MUST HUMANITY DO THE SAME
    THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

    This isn’t the first time we’ve come to this crossroad, you know. We’ve been here before. And each time we get to this place we swear that we’re never going to slide backward again. We make an oath that this time, we’re going to move forward. The evolutionary journey of humanity is not going to stop here, and reverse course, ever again.

    And then — in the past, at least — it has done just that. Our forward motion has been stopped dead in its tracks, and we’ve taken the species right back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. On at least one occasion, we took it right back to its origins.

    All of this has happened every time we have reached the stage in our development as a species of sentient beings where our technology, our science, our medicine, our very human genius, outstripped our human understanding of how to best use it. And so we destroyed much of our planet, and most of the inhabitants of it.

    We are about to do it again. But do we have to do it again? Is there no other way for our species to evolve than for us to insist on using the Two-Steps-Forward/One-Step-Backward method?

    People in the power centers in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and the U.S. capital of Washington D.C. are about to answer that question. But not them and them alone. Others are now addressing, and will soon be answering, that question as well.

    These others include the Earth’s political figures as the authors and thus the authorities of our governance, the captains of business and industry as the drivers of our economies, the Earth’s ecological experts as the protectors of our environment, the globe’s medical establishment and its scientists as the guardians of our health and the creators our potential, the planet’s educators as the producers of our future, the leaders of the world’s religions as the pronouncers and the validators of our beliefs, and individuals around the world as the determiners of our values.

    So far, the people in these positions of influence have not done a very good job. Not one of the systems, institutions and devices they have put into place to create a better life for us all is producing this result.  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 our human society has created is producing the outcomes that were intended. It is worse than that. They are actually 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, saddest of all, our spiritual systems are producing far, far too much intolerance, anger, hatred, and violence.

    What gives here?

    Isn’t it time to ask, “Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?

    “What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see, even as it looks right at itself? Where is our blind spot?”

    Do we have to ignite another massive war? Do we have to blow ourselves to kingdom come and start the whole process of civilizing civilization all over again? What will it take for us to stop this endless, insane process?

    Are you willing to join in working to bring this endless cycle to an end?

    IN THE NEXT POST: Humanity’s Blind Spot, and what you can do to help heal it.