The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • OBAMA: TREAT GAY MARRIEDS
    THE SAME AS STRAIGHTS

    Should gay married couples have the same rights under the law as heterosexual married couples? The administration of President Barack Obama says yes — and is going to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue its case.

    Administration lawyers are asking the Court to declare Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Section 3 is the part of the current U.S. law that says that same gender couples are prohibited from eligibility for certain federal benefits, such as the ability to qualify for and file  joint income tax returns, or to receive federal employee benefits.

    In papers filed with the high court, the Administration said there are more than 1,000 federal statutes and programs arising out of current law that depend on a person’s marital status. Treating gay married couples differently than straight married couples should be illegal in all of these areas, the Administration said.

    The Defense of Marriage Act, in fact, singles out gay people specifically, the Administration’s lawyers said, including couples who are legally married, having met all the requirements to achieve that status in the states in which they reside. Targeting them as this law does, the Administration says, is “a harsh form of discrimination that bears no relation to their ability to contribute to society.” As well, the present law violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, its filing before the Court said.

    The court filing comes as little surprise to people who heard the President’s remarks about gays in his recent State of the Union message. On that occasion he said: “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

    Opposition to any change by the Court in the Defense of Marriage Act comes in the main from Republicans in Congress, who say that the courts should stay out of the issue of gay marriage rights and let the people decide at the ballot box how they want these matters handled.

    The Obama Administration told the Supreme Court, however, that there is a long history in America of discrimination against gays and lesbians. It also argued that sexual orientation bears no relation to one’s ability to contribute to society as an active member of the citizenry, and should therefore not be the basis of laws that fail to grant equal rights to those citizens.

    As well, said the filing, sexual orientation is a core part of a person’s identity, and there is broad scientific evidence that this is not a voluntary choice — which is, the filing asserted, another reason why discrimination based on such orientation should be declared unconstitional.

    But the Obama Administration filing saved its biggest argument for last. Gays, it said, have very limited political leverage, and what progress has been made on their behalf has not been uniform, and where it has taken place, has more often than not been the result of “judicial enforcement of the Constitution, not political action.”

    The New Spirituality, of course, is very clear on this issue. Gays should not be discriminated against in any area of civic, public or private life, from housing to employment to legal rights and benefits. And same sex married couples should be accorded exactly the same social and legal benefits as opposite sex married couples. I can’t imagine a single spiritual reason why that should not be the case.

    There are those, of course, who believe that gay sexual activity violates the law of God, and on that basis should be temporally illegal as well. Regarding this aspect of human behavior, everything should be “on earth as it is in heaven.”

    But is it this way in heaven? Are same gender sexual expressions of love an “abomination,” as some declare that the Bible asserts – and so, therefore, that God says?

    Is the Bible the infallible Word of God — on this or any other topic? If so, which topics? Every subject brought up in this Scripture?

    Do you agree with the Obama Administration’s actions in requesting the Supreme Court of the U.S. to declare portions of the Defense of Marriage Act, widely known as “DOMA,” unconstitutional because they fail to protect gay married couples from discrimination?

    What is the spiritual basis of your position, one way or the other? Let this be part of The Conversation of the Century.

  • What is the biggest problem in the world today, as you see it? By that is meant: What is the problem that you believe deserves the most attention right now, this very day?

  • A MUSLIM CLERIC ROUSES THE PEOPLE AGAINST INJUSTICE

    Is there a role in the world of politics and economics and social movements for spiritual messengers? If so, what should that role be?

    National Public Radio has just reported on a Muslim cleric — described as a “slight 61-year-old”— who has been, in the words of the NPR report, “shaking up the political scene.”

    “Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri returned to his home country late last year, after spending eight years in Canada. Since coming back, he has ignited a disgruntled electorate,” the report said. Qadri claims that “Pakistan’s oppressed and destitute are with him in his fight against inequality and corruption. His speech touches a nerve for many in the crowd,” NPR said.

    In an interview with NPR, Qadri said he wants to enlighten people about their democratic rights. This brought up a question that I have been looking at for many years. As the author of a series of books revolving around what I report to have been conversations with God, what role, if any, is it appropriate to play in the global economic, political, or social arena? For that matter, what role should any spiritual messenger have in these areas of human activity and communal life?

    “I am trying to create an awareness of the true concept of democracy, an awareness of human rights, real human rights,” Qadri says in the NPR report. “People here are treated like goats. They don’t have any concept of democracy.” The NPR report goes on to say that “Qadri is taking on Pakistan’s government, saying it has failed to curb militancy or improve the economy. He’s also demanding electoral reforms to prevent corrupt politicians from holding office.”

    “I am fighting just to make the electoral and democratic process transparent, free of corrupt practices,” he says.

    Well, that is exactly what Conversations with God calls for — not just in politics, but in every area of life: complete transparency. Yet it is the role of spiritual messengers to issue a call for social, economic, and political change? I face this question every time I so much as utter one word about humanity’s political process. “I wish you would just stick to spiritual stuff, and leave politics alone,” people write. “You should not be expressing a political point of view,” others admonish.

    I notice that now even the motives of Qadri, a Muslim cleric, are being questioned. In the NPR report a man named Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and political commentator, is quoted as saying that Qadri’s message may be good, but he questions the messenger. Masood calls Qadri a demagogue.

    “He actually wants to be in the center stage. He wants power, he wants to be in prominence all the time,” the NPR report quoted Masood as saying.

    (The full NPR report can be found here: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/20/172416876/controversial-cleric-stirs-protests-upon-return-to-pakistan)

    I do not know enough about Mr. Qadri to offer an observation on his motives or his person, but I find it interesting that even in a culture where the Islamic faith is highly honored and Muslim clerics are revered, if you say something that rouses people against the prevailing power structure, you had better be ready to be marginalized — or worse — spiritual messenger or not. Mr. Qadri’s public speeches are made from a bullet-proof enclosure.

    So…what is the role of spirituality in day-to-day life “on the ground”? Conversations with God says that the political views of a person or a society are a demonstration of that person’s and that society’s spiritual values. If that is true, does this mean that there is a rightful place in the day-to-day “real world” for spiritual messengers who are addressing political and social issues, as I did in my last entry here? And if so, what would that place be?

    In the present case, should Mr. Qadri quiet down, or speak even louder?

  • Beware of ‘enlightment’ that requires
    you to remain loyal to a single group

    The is the second part of an extended series of explorations on “enlightenment” as a human experience. The first entry in this series may be found in the archives.

    At the conclusion of Part One I said that the danger of this business of enlightenment is two-fold.  The first danger is thinking that there is something specific that you have to do in order go get there.  And that if you don’t do that, you can’t get there.  The second danger is thinking that your way to get there is the fastest, the best way to do it.

    Now if you think that your way to get there is the fastest and best way, you are going to spend the rest of your life trying to convince me of that, because you believe that and you want to share this wonderful gift that you have gotten.

    Many years ago I was approached by people in the est movement.   How many of you know what the est movement is?  Most of you do.  “est” was an acronym for the Erhard Seminar Trainings.  The name was always presented in lower case letters, because “est” is also a German word meaning ‘to be’.  So it was a happy coincidence.  And Werner Erhard created the Erhard Seminar Trainings.

    The est movement was huge in the New Thought community in this country and around the world around 25 years ago or so.  And the people who were involved in the est movement were absolutely convinced that this was the fastest way to enlightenment.  You needed to take est!  And so they began recruiting people to take est and they became very engaged in the process.

    It was almost an urgent matter with them.  And they couldn’t understand why you didn’t get the urgency.  If you didn’t get it, they would look at you and say, “You just don’t get it, do you?  You just don’t get it.”  They had found something that changed their whole life virtually overnight, and they wanted to give that to you, and they knew that this was the way.

    There were many ways, they said.  This wasn’t the only way, but this was probably the best way.  Or certainly, if not the best way, among the fastest ways.

    And I enrolled in the est program and I took est and I, too, became enlightened.  In fact, I became so enlightened that I realized that I did not need est to be enlightened—which really upset some of the est people, because they wanted me to take the next level and the next level and the next level.

    You see, est was a program that had multitudinous levels. You could take level one, level two, level three—they had very fancy names for them.  And once you got in the program you could virtually never get out of it. I mean, not with grace. Not with ease. You had to almost extract yourself out of it. And if you did get out of it, you were made to feel by many of those who were inside of it that you had done something desperately sad. Not wrong, but very sad. Because you just didn’t “get it.”

    If you really got how powerful est was you would have stayed in it forever and gone all the way to the top and become an est trainer.  Then you could train other people in how to become trainers by enrolling them in the est program.

    What I realized was that my whole life could be caught up in the est program very quickly and very easily, doing virtually nothing else.  I actually met people in the est training and in the est program who did virtually nothing else but that.  They had literally turned their lives over to this process called est.

    Now I want you to know that the process called est was very powerful and I could understand how people could become so attached to it, because it did change people’s lives. In fact, it was so powerful in my life, as I said, that I realized that I didn’t need est anymore — and probably never needed it. AND, having said that, it was very helpful to me in leading me to an understanding that I did not need it, or anything else outside of myself, to be fully Who I Really Am.

    I don’t think some of est trainers intended it to be quite that powerful, because if everyone, after taking the basic est training, realized that they didn’t need est, there would be no more est training!

    Some religions have the very same problem. They convince you of the wonder of God, but then when you get in touch with the wonder of God, you realize you don’t need the religion anymore. So some religions do whatever they can to hold you within the confines of membership, by telling you that only through the ways that the particular religion has established can you remain in the good graces of God.

    All of this is natural. It’s understandable. Who wants to start of movement that convinces people you don’t need the movement? Yet this is the ultimate purpose of all religions and of all movements—or should be. With 7 billion humans on the earth, there are enough people to continue introducing the highest truth to, and one doesn’t, or shouldn’t, need to hang onto all the old members in order to create a power structure that supports itself in continuing itself.

    This is the problem with most organizations and movements. They tend to need to be self-perpetuating. Yet, I repeat: the true purpose of every religion and every movement that would bring you to “enlightenment” should be to render itself obsolete, should it not?

    Many years ago Paramahansa Yogananda gave birth to the Self-Realization Fellowship.  This is now back in the late 30’s or early 40’s, I don’t know the exact time, but it was somewhere in there.  When Paramahansa Yogananda, or Master, as he was called, came to America he brought with him a technique for self-realization, which was his phrase meaning enlightenment.  It was called self-realization.

    When you realize who the Self, is you become enlightened.  And Master described himself as being enlightened.  And, by the way, he was enlightened.  He was enlightened because he said he was. I hate to break the spell that someone may be under, but to be enlightened is to say that you are.  It is quite as simple as that. And we will talk more about that as we move forward with this series of entries.

  • DO AMERICANS DESERVE A
    CONGRESS THAT ACTUALLY VOTES?

    U.S. President Barack Obama issued a public dare to members of Congress in his State of the Union address that rang a bell with fair-minded people everywhere  — even those who oppose his points of view. And it certainly rang a bell with people who embrace the New Spirituality as articulated in books like Conversations with God.

    CWG, of course, speaks of truthfulness and “transparency” in all areas of life, from politics to economics to our social interactions and our most personal choices, actions, and decisions. Speaking from his global podium (people around the world were watching his address, with millions of Americans paying particular interest), the President put forth a simple, eloquent plea regarding gun control legislation: just take a vote.

    When citizens vote, their vote is private, of course. But when members of Congress vote on an issue, their vote is publicly recorded — and that’s where the problem lies. On issues such as this, many politicians hate the suggestion in Conversations with God to live a life of complete and total transparency. Yet the refusal of Republicans in the U.S. Congress to even vote on what many have called “common sense reform” through gun control legislation is a travesty in a country that prides itself on its democracy.

    The first and most important and most highly touted aspect of its democracy, U.S. citizens will tell you, is the right and the ability to vote. Yet in Washington, D.C. — which is supposed to be the seat of America’s government — there is apparently a rush to run away from voting on any issue where doing so might cause politicians to lose votes among the electorate.

    It seems clear that in the U.S. House of Representative, Speaker of the House John Boehner is in no way willing to put his fellow Republicans in the uncomfortable position of having to vote ‘No’ on common sense gun control proposals that public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of the American people (including moderate Republicans) favor.

    If such a majority of citizens favor the proposals, why will most Republicans in Congress not vote ‘Yes’? Simple. It is elections that keep politicians in office, not public opinion polls. And in elections, the National Rifle Association and other conservative political activist groups exert massive power within the Republican Party’s far right wing element (the Tea Party faction, etc.) — and it is the far right wing of the GOP which plays a huge role in deciding who wins GOP primary elections (which, of course, determines which candidate then runs in the general election against a Democratic opponent).

    So in Congress, the situation as seen by GOP office holders is: “Heads you lose, tails you lose.” If you vote for reasonable gun control legislation — such as making high capacity ammunition magazines illegal, or requiring background checks for gun purchasers — you lose the support of the far right wing element in the U.S., and you lose the next primary election, taking you out of office. If, on the other hand, you vote against reasonable gun control legislation, you lose the support of the rest of the American people, and you lose the general election, also taking you out of office!

    What to do, what to do…

    The Republican-majority House of Representatives has figured that out. Do nothing. Simply use whatever legislative tactics are available to avoid taking a vote on gun control measures, no matter how reasonable or how well supported by the general public. (To be fair, a handful of right-leaning Democrats, elected in conservative home districts, also join in the game, called Whatever You Do, Don’t Be Transparent! Do NOT Vote Your Conscience!)

    Now, President Obama has made this tactic much more difficult to get away with, without looking like what one critic called “gutless, lilly-livered politicians who claim to be the country’s leaders.” Mr. Obama said that if members of Congress feel they have to vote ‘No,’ then they should stand up and do so. But, he said, at least vote. The American people, he declared, deserve that.

    As he gave his speech the President turned to the upper gallery, where parents of a slain Chicago teenager who performed at last month’s inauguration were seated, and said: “They deserve a vote!” Then he pointed to a former member of Congress, also seated in the gallery, who was shot by a crazed gunman while making a speech in Arizona. “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote!” he said, and the positive reaction in the chamber swelled.

    “The families of Newtown deserve a vote!”, the President went on, and now the applause and cheers were deafening. His voice rising above the clamor, Mr. Obama would not stop. “The families of Aurora deserve a vote!” he hammered on. “The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote.”

    Of course, the President is right. The obstructionists in Congress who won’t even let the matter come up for a vote are ignoring the first and most basic right of a democracy — and making a mockery of what they, themselves, say is what makes America great. And the Right To Vote does make America great…except when you have to do it with courage and visibility, apparently.

  • From a New Spirituality point of view, what was your impression of U.S. President Obama’s State of the Union message?

  • Is there really no such thing as “right” and “wrong”?

    (Editor’s note: This series of articles has moved from the top of page headline position to this space, providing this important dialogue its own unique location as the headline position is used for topical stories in the news.)
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    Has humanity lost True North on its moral compass?

    The whole idea of  “wrong doing” is part of humanity’s cosmology of life. We really do think that there is such a thing as Right and Wrong. After all, God has told us so. Our religions have told us so. Our parents have told us so. Our culture has told us so. Our societies around the world have made it clear that some things are Right and some things are Wrong.

    Yet now here comes a new theology arising out of the Conversations with God series of books which tells us, in one of its most provocative statements, that “there is no such thing as Right and Wrong.” And the Mind begs to know, how can this be true? Are we to simply abandon all of the understandings that all of humanity holds all of the time?

    No, my own Mind said, when I first heard this: Surely Right and Wrong must exist at some level. Surely there must be some guidepost, some yardstick, some standard or criterion with which we can measure or determine whether particular choices and behaviors are appropriate or inappropriate, are good or bad, are best taken or best ignored.

    A remarkable post here a while ago from a reader named Carol Bass has ignited this series of articles about the state of humanity’s spirituality today.

    In this series, I am attempting to respond directly to what Carol had to say in a striking entry that, to me, seemed to perfectly frame the way so many people are holding their reality today. I believe that Carol’s comments deserve serious and complete responses. So Carol, here we go again…as we continue to look deeply at the observations you offered.

    In my last entry here in reply to you, I quoted your comment that…

    “It seems that so many have turned their back on what is right and what is wrong. The ten commandments according to the bible have become just another thing to cast off as just someone’s religious beliefs but not necessarily truth.”

    The human race seems to agree, Carol. People have stuck to their guns about this—and I mean that quite literally—for many, many years. We are absolutely certain that there is such a thing as Right and Wrong, and we are absolutely sure that we are right about that.

    The difficulty and the problem has been that our ideas of Right and Wrong change from time to time, from place to place, and from culture to culture. The result: what one person or culture says is Right, another person or culture says is Wrong. And this is the source of more than a small or trivial amount of the conflict and violence, killing and war that we have seen on the planet—much of it, ironically, in God’s name.

    This article is Part V of an ongoing series:
    LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR TOMORROW

    Not only can we not seem to be able to agree on what is Right and Wrong, we can’t even agree to disagree about this. We don’t seem capable of observing our differences and calling them simply that. We apparently feel the need to make each other wrong for holding views different from ours.

    We can’t even agree to openly explore the topics on which our beliefs diverge, with all possibilities on the table, with compromises at least considered. No, there can be no compromises when we are right. One does not compromise one’s principles, one does not bargain with the devil—and we have already demonized each other, not just each other’s views, so there you have it. We are left with our disagreements and our absolute inability to overcome them.

    Worse yet, we are left with our righteousness about them. We imagine we are so right about what is Right and Wrong that we are willing to belittle others, to criticize others, to persecute others, to judge and punish others, to attack others and even to kill others—all of which we would consider Wrong if others did it to us. The interesting thing about Right is that it is always on our side.

    The problem here, of course, is with the model of the world. CWG famously made the statement that “no one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.” It is this model that tells us that things are morally right and morally wrong—and, billions believe, that it is God who has said so. If God says that something is Right or Wrong, who are we to contradict that, or even to question it?

    So our model of the world leaves no room for discussion, no room for debate, no room for exploration of any possibility other than what we have been told and commanded by the God of our understanding.

    There would be no problem with this if we could be certain that our understanding of what God has said is Right and Wrong is “right.” But what if it’s “wrong”? Or, at least, incomplete?

    Even casual observation informs us, Carol, that,with regard to What God Said about what’s Right and what’s Wrong, we can’t get things straight on this planet from one culture to the next, or even from one moment in history to the next. What, then, to do? How to resolve this problem?

    The answer is to build a new model of the world, based on a new understanding, brought to us by Tomorrow’s God. And that new understanding is that there is no such thing as Right and Wrong, there is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is we are trying to do.

    Dare we? Dare we use this New Model as a universal device for determining our actions, for making our choices, for taking particular decisions?

    I want to explore more of what Carol Bass had to say in her post, and will do so in our next entry here, as The Carol Bass Dialogue continues…

    (EDITOR’S NOTE: Much of the commentary in the column above comes from What God Said, the latest book from Neale Donald Walsch, to be published by Penguin Putnam in October.)

  • Why it takes so long to create what you want

    NEALE: Why does it take so much time for me to create the reality I choose?

    GOD: For a number of reasons. Because you do not believe you can have what you choose. Because you do not know what to choose. Because you keep trying to figure out what’s “best” for you. Because you want guarantees ahead of time that all your choices will be “good.” And because you keep changing your mind!

    NEALE: Let me see if I understand. I shouldn’t try to figure out what’s best for me?

    GOD: “Best” is a relative term, depending on a hundred variables. That makes choices very difficult. There should be only one consideration when making any decision – Is this a statement of Who I Am? Is this an announcement of Who I Choose to Be?

    All of life should be such an announcement. In fact, all of life is. You can allow that announcement to be made by Chance, or by Choice.

    A life lived by Choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived by Chance is a life of unconscious reaction.

    Reaction is just that — an action you have taken before. When you “re-act,” what you do is assess the incoming data, search your memory bank for the same, or nearly the same, experience, and act the way you did before. This is all the work of the Mind, not of your Soul.

    Your Soul would have you search It’s “memory” to see how you might create a truly genuine experience of You in the Now Moment. This is the experience of  “soul searching” of which you have so often heard, but you have to be literally “out of your mind” to do it.

    When you spend your time trying to figure out what’s “best” for you, you are doing just that: spending your time. Better to save your time than to spend it wastefully.

    It is a great time-saver to be out of your mind. Decisions are reached quickly, choices are activated rapidly, because your Soul creates out of present experience only, without review, analysis and criticism of past encounters.

    Remember this: the Soul creates, the Mind reacts.

    The Soul knows in its wisdom that the experience you are having in This Moment is an experience sent to you by God before you had any conscious awareness of it. This is what is meant by a “pre-sent” experience. It’s already on the way to you even as you are seeking it — for even before you ask, I shall have answered you. Every Now Moment is a glorious gift from God. That’s why it is called the present.

    The Soul intuitively seeks the perfect circumstance and situation now needed to heal wrong thought and bring you the rightful experience of Who You Really Are.

    It is the Soul’s desire to bring you back to God — to bring you home to Me.

    It is the Soul’s intention to know Itself experientially — and thus to know Me. For the Soul understands that You and I are One, even as the Mind denies this truth, and the Body acts out this denial.

    Therefore, in moments of great decision, be out of your Mind, and do some Soul searching instead.

    The Soul understands what the Mind cannot conceive.

    If you spend your time trying to figure out what’s “best” for you, your choices will be cautious, your decisions will take forever, and your journey will be launched on a sea of expectations.

    If you are not careful, you will drown in your expectations.

    NEALE: Whew! That’s quite an answer! But how do I listen to my soul? How do I know what I’m hearing?

    GOD: The Soul speaks to you in feelings. Listen to your feelings. Follow your feelings. Honor your feelings.

    NEALE: Why does it seem to me that honoring my feelings is precisely what has caused me to get into trouble in the first place?

    GOD: Because you have labeled growth “trouble,” and standing still “safe.” I tell you this: your feelings will never get you into “trouble,” because your feelings are your truth.

    If you want to live a life where you never follow your feelings, but where every feeling is filtered through the machinery of your Mind, go right ahead. Make your decisions based on your Mind’s analysis of the situation. But don’t look for joy in such machinations, nor for celebration of Who You Truly Are.

    Remember this: true celebration is mindless.

    If you listen to your Soul you will know what is “best” for you, because what is best for you is what is true for you.

    When you act only out of what is true for you, you speed your way down the Path. When you create an experience based on your “now truth” rather than react to an experience based on a “past truth,” you produce a “new you.”

    Why does it take so much time to create the reality you choose? This is why: because you have not been living your truth.

    Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

    Yet once you come to know your truth, don’t keep changing your mind about it. This is your Mind trying to figure out what’s “best.” Stop it! Get out of your Mind. Get back to your senses!

    That is what is meant by “getting back to your senses.” It is a returning to how you feel, not how you think. Your thoughts are just that – thoughts. Mental constructions. “Made up” creations of your Mind. But your feelings – now they are real.

    Feelings are the language of the Soul. And your Soul is your truth.

    There. Now does that tie it all together for you?

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    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt from Conversations with God – Book Two, please scroll down to the end of the red ancillary copy that appears just below, which has been placed here for First Time Readers…

    If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life.

    One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from Friendship with God.

    Now, may we tell you about a very easy way that you can share these wonderful messages with others? Please keep reading…

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    About Book-On-A-Bench…

    If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.

    Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.

    If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a very short period of time.  So you are invited to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

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

    ABOUT the author of Conversations with God…

    Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before experiencing his now famous conversation with God. His Conversations with God series of books has been translated into 37 languages, touching millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

    Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.

    A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.

    By his late teens Neale’s involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin dipping into a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people became involved in organized religion they sometimes seemed less joyful and more angry, occasionally exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that humanity’s collective experience of theology was not as positive as it was meant to be. It seemed to him that there was something missing in standard theological teachings; that they might contain very good lessons, he concluded, but that they might not be complete.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.

    Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director, a newspaper managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

    He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

    Over a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him two weeks shy of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found a modest part-time job, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time broadcasting, eventual landing a spot as a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

    He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside that he could not define, and the daily difficulties that everyone faces continued.

    In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take to make life work?” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad. “And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?”

    What followed has been well chronicled and widely discussed around the world. Neale says his questioning letter received a Divine answer. He tells us that he heard a voice just over his right shoulder—soft and warm, kind and loving, as he describes it—that offered a reply. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled the response onto a yellow legal pad he’d found on a coffee table before him.

    More questions came, and as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed to have moved inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue.

    He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad. Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue that was created in this way was published without alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.

    In addition to producing the With God series of books, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than 7.5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CWG is one of the most widely distributed hand-to-hand books ever published, with estimates that, on average, at least two people have read every copy purchased — meaning that something more than 15 million people worldwide have read the CWG messages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale has created several global outreach projects dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love revolving around their core messages.

    The projects include: (1) the Conversations with God Foundation, an adult education outreach; (2) Humanity’s Team, a global spiritual activist outreach; (3) CWG for Parents, an outreach providing resources to those who wish to bring their children the messages of CWG; (4) the Changing Change Network, a CWG helping outreach to persons facing major life challenges; (5) The Global Conversation, an internet newspaper outreach relating the spiritual messages of CWG to the news of the day; and (6) CWG Connect, a multi-media communications outreach creating a worldwide CWG community featuring Video and Audio On-Demand services, together with ongoing personal interaction with the author of CWG. Access to all of these programs will be found at the gateway internet site: www.CWGPortal.com

    Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.

    Neale’s latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, was published in October, 2012. He lives in Ashland, Oregon and is married to the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).


  • Should there be armed guards in our schools? Is the NRA right about that?

  • What is your path to ‘Enlightenment’?

    Let’s talk now in this space about “Enlightenment”—this elusive magical mystical experience for which everyone seems to be reaching and for which everyone seems to have a yearning, and for which every one seems to be searching.  And I understand the reasons for the search, because if we all were enlightened one presumes that our lives would be better than they are now, when we are presumably unenlightened.

    In addition, it occurs to me that if all of us were enlightened relatively quickly, the whole world would be different and we would experience life in another way.  Presumably with less turmoil, with less stress, with less conflict, for sure, I would imagine, with less sadness and anger and less violence and much less of all the things that make our lives sad and disjointed and unhappy in these days and times.

    So humanity searches for Enlightenment and we have been searching for Enlightenment from the beginning of time, ever since we became consciously aware of the fact that it was possible to be Enlightened—whatever that is.

    We have not only been searching for Enlightenment, we have been searching as well for a definition of Enlightenment, because we can’t get to that destination until we know where we are going.  And so the first step for most human beings has been to try to define what Enlightenment is, or what it looks like, or feels like, or tastes like, or what it is like to experience that.  And then, after we have that clear, after we know what our destination is, then we can try to figure out what would it take to get from where we are to where we want to be.

    And there is this rush to Enlightenment that I observe that humanity, or a portion of humanity, is engaged in. And many say that they know how to get there and they know how to get you there. And so we see many, many “Paths to Enlightenment” that are suggested, recommended, created, expressed, experienced, shared, and put into the space of our collective lives. Masters of every shape and size and color have been creating a way to be enlightened for millennia.

    Paramahansa Yogananda said that he knew a way to Enlightenment.  The Buddha said that he knew a way to Enlightenment.  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says that he knows a way to Enlightenment.  Sai Baba says that he knows a way to Enlightenment.  In their own way, Jesus the Christ and Abu Al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Abd Al-Muttalib ibn Hashim—Muhammad—said that they knew the way to Enlightenment.

    Now the interesting thing here is that the followers of all of these Masters have insisted that their Master was right about that, that their way was the best way and the fastest way. Maybe not the only way, but the fastest way and, therefore, you needed to take that way. There was a great urgency. You needed to become Catholic or you needed to take Transcendental Meditation or you needed to learn Tai Chi, or you needed to raise your vibrational rate, or your needed to change your brain, or, for heaven sake, change something.  And not some time, but right now, immediately, this month.

    You needed to join this group or do that process or read this book or be baptized or be un-baptized or do whatever it is that you have been told by your particular master or monk is the fastest, quickest way for you to get to where all of us want to go—which is the place called “enlightenment,” “awareness,” “higher consciousness,” or “vibrational harmony.”

    The brain is now the latest path, the latest route, everyone is talking about. It is about moving your energy, your focus, your awareness, your presence, your essence, the vibration of Who You Are, from the brain stem to the frontal lobe. Many people are teaching this now. Many people are talking about actual science, physical science, brain chemistry, as a path to this thing we call Enlightenment.

    All of that is wonderful. That is just terrific, and it gives me great hope for humanity. But there is something we have to look at here. There is a pitfall here, a detour, a time-waster.  And even a danger, if we choose to damage others with it. The danger of this business of Enlightenment is two-fold.  The first danger is thinking that there is something specific that you have to do in order to get there, and that if you don’t do that, you can’t get there.  The second danger is thinking that your way to get there is the fastest, best way to do it.

    And I want to pick up on that in my next entry. For now, what is your path to Enlightenment? Have you tried any particular path? What has been your experience?