The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • A MOMENT FOR SHARING
    FEELINGS AND PRAYERS

    There is nothing useful or substantive to be said right now. Not right now. There will be time later for words of analysis. Now is a time for feelings. And for inner pleadings.

    We plead with the God of our understanding, each of us. We ask our God — if we believe in a God at all — please God, tell us: What do we need to know, what do we not understand? Is there anything, anything, that could change all of this?

    They will say, of course, that we are making something of it that is not there. They will say that, sad as it is, this is just another one of those cases of a deranged man (Why is it always a man? Do women ever pick up a slew of guns and head out the door to commit mass murder?) acting out his derangement. Yet I feel a nagging sensation. Do you? I have this vague sense that there is something more to it than just one more guy with guns, shooting his anger or madness out. Or at least there’s more to the conditions that create and produce such insane acting out.

    But this is not a time for analytical words or distant observations. This is a time for feelings. So go ahead. Go within. Feel what you are feeling. And, if it helps, share those feelings here. This may not be a time for analytical words, but this is a time to share feelings.

  • Do you see anything contradictory in using the Death Penalty as a Society’s means of deterring people from killing people?

  • Would we be better off without CWG?

    Well, the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul suggested on this Front Page a few days ago has already gotten underway. Many people who read about this spiritual project have already agreed to become part of the initiative. Those of you who have said “Yes!” to my invitation here will be hearing from me personally within the days ahead, with an invitation to become part of Humanity’s Team, the global spiritual activism organization that is sponsoring the project.

    Many of you have joined the conversation about this initiative here, and the Comment String has been lively indeed. I should like to react to just a few of the posts that were made in that string now, and then, in future postings here,  move into a description of what becoming involved in this outreach could entail for you.

    First, let me interact with some of you, one Comment at a time…

    Kristen wrote: “The thought of a worldwide change is great, but I feel it would be more successful without CWG attached to it to include Jews, Muslims, Christians, Athiests etc, and if there was a clear point to include stopping suffering….”

    I agree with you Kristen, in part. I absolutely agree that the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul — may we use the acronym CRMS here? — I absolutely agree that the CRMS should “include Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, etc.”, and I am not sure if anything I have written or said anywhere would suggest or indicate that I do not. Nothing inherent in the CRMS eliminates participation by, or inclusion of, persons belonging to specific religious or cultural groupings.

    Quite to the contrary, the movement specifically invites members of all religious, spiritual, political, economic, and cultural groups to join together, to dialogue together, to explore together, and to examine together, with sincerity and honesty, the question: Are our present beliefs about God and about Life working? That is, are they producing the outcomes for which we had hoped — and for which they were intended?

    I also agree, Kirsten, that within this global project there must be “a clear point to include stopping suffering….” That is why I wrote, and just released, The Only Thing That Matters, which offers a detailed description of how suffering can be vastly reduced, and ultimately removed, from one’s individual experience.

    The passages and chapters in that new book about how to end one’s suffering as one moves through day-to-day encounters can change your life. They were intended to, so I hope that everyone here reads them. (The book, by the way, has been published, line by line, for free on my Facebook page, so that everyone can access it without needing to buy it. And Kirsten, if you want to avoid being “in debt” to me by reading it for free, you are welcome to “trade” me your dollars for my book, and then we will have what you feel is a fair exchange, with no subjugation intended or produced.)

    Now…going forward…I do not agree, Kirsten, that the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul would be “more successful without CWG attached to it.” CWG is offering humanity a whole New Theology, based on new principles, new understandings, new beliefs, new choices, new ideas, new clarity, new definitions, and the new behaviors that would emerge from all of this. Chief among these new ideas, Kirsten, is the firm CWG statement that CWG, in itself, is not the answer.

    Indeed, in Friendship with God the world was given A New Gospel. You have indicated that you have only looked at the CWG material in a cursory fashion. That could explain why you feel the CRMS would be better off without it. It is dangerous to criticize something of which we have deliberately caused ourselves to have limited knowledge. If one doesn’t choose to know about something in detail, that is one’s choice. But to then suggest that a spiritual/social movement would be better off without it seems ill-advised at best, since one admittedly doesn’t know what one is talking about.

    In fact, in Friendship with God we are given a brand New Gospel to spread and share with the world. This gospel was referred to again in The New Revelations.  Let me quote that second book from the CWG cosmology here, Kirsten, in case, in your cursory look at the CWG material, you missed it.

    EXCERPT…

    NEALE: It is possible that the Word of God as put down by humans in their holy books has some errors in it? Is it possible that there is something we don’t know about God and about Life, the knowing of which could change everything?

    If only there could be a New Gospel.

    GOD: There can be. It was proposed before, in the book Friendship with God. Fifteen words that could change the world. A two-sentence gospel that would turn your planet on its ear.

    NEALE: Yes, I remember now. Two sentences that would alter everything.

    GOD: They are sentences that could not be uttered from many pulpits or lecterns, by many religious or political leaders. You can dare them to say it, but they will not. You can beg them to repeat it, but they must not. You can cry out for them to declare it, but they cannot.

    NEALE: Why? Why can’t they say it?

    GOD: Because to utter this New Gospel would be to invalidate everything they have taught you, everything of which they have sought to convince you, everything on which they base their actions.

    NEALE: You’re right. It’s a New Gospel that could save the world, but the world cannot preach these two sentences. The world cannot proclaim them. They are too powerful. They are too disruptive.

    Still, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are some brave religious and political leaders who might take up this proposed New Gospel and repeat it. Let’s proclaim it here!

    “We Are All One.”

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

    What a message that would be coming from the pulpits of the world! What a declaration that would be from the podiums of all nations!

    How powerful those words would be uttered by the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the leading cleric in the Baptist Church, or the world’s Islamic voices, or the president of the Mormon Church, or the head of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod!

    I invite them now—right here, right now—to say them, to declare this their truth, to include it in their next public sermon.

    Imagine the Pope saying, “God loves all God’s children, and we are all one. There are many paths to God, and God denies no one who takes a path with humility and sincerity. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.”

    The world would shake. The foundations of all the world’s major religions—separation and betterness—would crumble!

    I challenge every political party spokesman, every international chief of state, to place this in their party platforms and to announce this in their speeches.

    Imagine the candidates in the next U.S. presidential election saying, “This is a complex time, and there are many approaches to the challenges we face us. I have my thoughts and my opponent has hers. My opponent is not a villain. She is not a bad person. She simply has ideas that are different from mine. Listen to our ideas carefully, and then see which one of us it is with whom you agree. But in the end, I want you all to know this: These are the United States, and we are all one. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.”

    The political process would never be the same. Gone would be the demonizing. Gone would be the character assassinations and the impugning of motives and the “make-wrongs” and the belittling. Standing in every election would be two candidates presumed to be good people whose aspirations are to serve the public interest, who admittedly are seeking power because there are things they would like to get done, and who simply disagree on how to do them.

    GOD: That is a wonderful picture you paint. That is the picture of a transformed world.

    NEALE: But no major political party leader could ever say that. No major religious leader could ever declare it. Their whole message, their very credibility, is based upon just the opposite premise. The whole structure of humanity is built upon the idea of separation and betterness.

    GOD: That is the situation in your world, precisely. That is the point being made in this conversation.

    There are many humans who cannot abide the thought of living with such new ideas, and so they die instead, clinging to the Fifth Fallacy About Life as their truth. They declare:

    It is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all their other fallacies by killing each other.

    — END OF EXCERPT —

    And so we see, Kirsten, that the very underpinning of the Conversations with God message is that the material itself is simply a starting point for larger discussion, for deeper exploration, for ongoing expansion of our ancient views about God, about Life, and about who we are in relationship to each other. And yes, CWG offers some ideas about that, some thoughts about that, some pretty firm recommendations about that. Yet it makes it clear that its ideas, thoughts, and recommendations are not to be embraced as “truth”…but merely as a beginning commentary, allowing each of us to find our own truth.

    Throughout the CWG Commentaries the point is made that we should not, should never, allow CWG to become our “new bible,” our new inviolable dogma, but rather, should always and evermore self-reference, using our inner wisdom and inner guidance to lead us to our own inner truth. How can such a point of view be deleterious to a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, Kirsten?

    Your commentaries, ladies and gentlemen, are invited below…

  • OHIO TRYING TO FIGURE OUT
    HOW TO KILL A BIG PERSON

    Ohio is trying to figure out how to kill Ronald Post.

    Mr. Post killed the desk clerk at a motel during a robbery in 1983. He has been on death row at a state prison in Ohio since 1985 and is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on January 16. There is only one problem: executioners may not be able to find a vein into which to place the injection.

    Mr. Post weighs 450 pounds and doctors who examined him say his arms, legs, and hands are too fat to find an accessible vein.

    The state could use a backup procedure, Mr. Post’s lawyers say, but it would involve injecting the life-snuffing drugs directly into muscle, and that process could be neither easy nor rapid. It could, in fact, require several doses over several hours, or even days, Mr. Post’s lawyers say in court papers recently filed asking for a stay of execution. That could only result, they say, in a grueling and painful end to Mr. Post’s life—far surpassing the legal standards prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

    In fact, they say, records show that it took Ohio executioners something like two hours to insert IVs into the veins of Christopher Newton in 2007, and that condemned man weighed only 265 pounds — 200 pounds less than Mr. Post.

    Nevertheless, the State of Ohio says it feels certain that Mr. Post can be humanely executed, either using its regular procedure or the backup process, which has never been used before — meaning executioners do not know through experience how it will work.

    Still, Ohio Assistant Attorney General Charles Wille said in court papers that Mr. Post has not presented the court “sufficient evidence demonstrating that his obesity or other physical conditions will present a substantial risk that his execution cannot be conducted in a humane and dignified manner.” A hearing will be held in Columbus later this month, at which a federal judge will decide whether Ohio should kill Mr. Post on January 16.

    The United States is one of an ever-decreasing number of countries where the death penalty still exists. Most of the world’s civilized nations have decided that killing someone in order to send a signal to their society that it is not okay to kill someone is probably sending a reverse signal. Futhermore, it has been proven factually and statistically that the death penalty does not work to lower the capital crime rate. Removing guns from the streets by not making them so easily available does lower capital crime, but in a startling and striking contraction, U.S. voters don’t seem to care. So it is not reducing crimes involving death that American voters seem to be concerned with, it would appear to be revenge.

    In the State of California just last month, citizens rejected a ballot measure to repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. A majority of voters indicated that spending life in prison was not sufficient punishment for a capital crime, and that they want people killed by the state for such crimes — whether those state-sponsored killings actually deter capital crime or not.

    An impressive list of people from within the law enforcement community in that state supported repealing the death penalty, but that did not seem to matter to most voters, who apparently see simple revenge as an appropriate reason to kill someone.

    Typical of the statements supporting repeal of the death penalty was this observation offered by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, a former police chief: “Given my experience, I believe there are three compelling reasons why the death penalty should be replaced. (1) The criminal justice system makes mistakes and the possibility of executing innocent people is both inherently wrong and morally reprehensible; (2) My personal experience and crime data show the death penalty does not reduce crime; and (3) The death penalty wastes precious resources that could be best used to fight crime and solve thousands of unsolved homicides languishing in filing cabinets in understaffed police departments across the state.”

    Meanwhile, Cathy Lynn Henderson — who at one point had been two days away from execution after being convicted of the murder of a baby — was granted a new trial on December 5 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, based on recent scientific developments and the alteration of testimony presented at trial by the prosecution’s star witness, who has since change his initial diagnosis as to what might have caused the baby’s death.

    Ms. Henderson insisted at her trial that the baby, who had been in her care, had squirmed and slipped from her arms, falling onto a concrete floor. But the star witness for the prosecution, former medical examiner Robert Bayardo, testified that the findings during an autopsy of the child indicated that death could not have been caused by such a fall.

    Since that 1994 autopsy, however, advancements in the understanding of pediatric head injuries now indicate that relatively short falls onto a hard surface could produce injuries similar to those he discovered, Dr. Bayardo has said. This caused a district judge to rule earlier this year that no reasonable juror would have convicted Ms. Henderson if presented with this evidence. The Texas appeals court agreed, and days ago ordered a new trial for the woman, who has been in jail for over ten years and was once just 48 hours away from being killed by the State of Texas, all for a crime she may never have committed.

    Yes, the district attorney of San Francisco is correct. Mistakes can be made by law enforcement that leads to the unwarranted and unjustified death of an innocent defendant. But American voters seem to be willing to take that risk, insisting that government should kill a person for killing a person — even if the government cannot be sure of the defendant’s guilt.

    I believe that this is another reason, a strong case, for supporting the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, which seeks to end, at last, the oppression of our beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God. For it is our belief in an “eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth” kind of God that we employ consistently and obstinately as our moral authority for our own “take that!” revenge mentality.

    And your thoughts?

    (EDITOR’S NOTE: The conversation about the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul continues on this newspaper’s front page in the space titled Interpreting Conversations with God. If you were following that conversation, please look for it there.)

  • Read the book that started it all, here!

    The 25 Core Messages of Conversations with God are summarized in the One Thousand Word Statement of Eternal Truth found in the Top Of Page story now running on the Home Page. Please read them there, and accept our invitation to join the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.

    The website you are currently visiting is an outgrow of the writing in the book The Storm Before the Calm, in which you have been invited to co-author a New Cultural Story for Humanity. That book is now being posted here, one chapter at a time. (See First Installment, below). It is important that you read this if you wish to become part of the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.

     

    THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM

    Chapter One

    My dear, dear friends…my wonderful companions on this human journey…

    I’m so glad that you’re here, and I hope that your answer to the question just above is yes, because it’s very important that you hear this: We’re experiencing something quite extraordinary on the earth right now. I’m going to give it a name here.

    We are experiencing The Overhaul of Humanity.

    This is not an exaggeration. This is reality. It is observable at every turn.

    Yet here is something that is not so observable: Things are not as they seem.

    And I think, before the world and its people get too far along this road, we all need to be aware of that.

    We also need to be aware that there’s nothing to be afraid of in our future if we will all but play our role in creating it. And that role—the role we are being invited to play by Life Itself—is going to be very easy to play.

    I have more that I want to share with you around all this. Let me give you a summary of everything I have come here to say:

    * A major shift is occurring on our planet

    * There is nothing to be afraid of if we all play our role in this shift

    * Our role is easy to play, and it can actually be fun

    * It involves having fabulous conversations revolving around seven simple questions

    * The asking and answering of these questions can result in the creating of solutions to humanity’s biggest problems

    * It is time for us to place before humanity a New Cultural Story, sending us in brand new directions in politics, economics, culture, education, relationships, work, marriage, sexuality, parenting, and every area of human endeavor; a manifesto created by all of us, working as co-authors.

    * There are some exciting opening thoughts about what that document could contain that I think you should hear.

    Oh, and I don’t want to talk with you just about “world conditions” or “the global situation” or “our planetary crisis.” As important as those topics are, I’m clear that the Overhaul of Humanity is overhauling each of us. One look at how much has changed in your life in the past three years will tell you that.

    So I’d like to have some exchanges with you as well about easing any struggle or negativity that may be present in your own personal life.

    Okay, there you have it. The whole agenda. Can we talk?

    ###

    The Overhaul of Humanity is not a small thing. The words I’ve used to describe this phenomenon are dramatic because the event is dramatic.

    It is going to involve (indeed, it is already involving) every aspect of our lives: our governance and politics, our economics and financial stability, our commerce and industry, our social conventions and constructions, our educational systems and approaches, our religions and beliefs, our customs and traditions—in fact, our entire Cultural Story.

    We can participate in the Overhaul of Humanity or we can merely witness it—but we cannot stop it. Nor would we want to.

    This can be the greatest thing that has happened to our species since our appearance on this planet. The years just ahead, and some of the trials and tribulations we’re going to see, can bring our planet to a new and wonderful place when the process is complete. And the process will be complete in a relatively short period of time.

    And you can help bring about that completion if you choose to.

     

    ###

     You don’t have to simply read this

    Life is inviting you to not have this be a book that you simply read. Life is inviting you to have this be an experience in which you participate. This is your opportunity to join me and others from around the world in the conversation that is being initiated here. You may do so at any time by simply stopping your reading, marking your place, then getting on the Internet and navigating to…

    www.TheGlobalConversation.com

    There, click on the icon labeled The Storm Before The Calm. Find and post any comment you wish at the numbered “Conversation” you’re currently reading. (You’ll notice that this book is not broken down into “Chapters,” but rather, into “Conversations.”)

    At this special website there’s also a separate icon inviting you to post your ideas, your thoughts, your concepts, and your inspirations regarding the contents of Humanity’s New Cultural Story. It is for this purpose that you have come to this material.

    If you are like many others, you have long been asking, “What can I do? How can I help to make things better?” This is an answer to that question.

    The New Cultural Story co-created here by adding your insights and inspirations and heartfelt hopes and dreams for our world will be placed before humanity in a separate book: Our Collective Dream: A New Cultural Story for Humanity. This will be a book read around the world, and a book that you co-author.

    So what you are reading now is not an ordinary text. This is your gateway to participation in what I am clear could very well be The Conversation of the Century. Your voice is valuable and needed in this exchange, in order that the exchange itself may sparkle with the vitality of a wide variety of ideas, insights, and visions. So do, please, consider interacting with this book, as well as reading it, yes?

     _________

     POINTS I HOPE YOU WILL REMEMBER…

    * A major shift is occurring on our planet.

    * There is nothing to be afraid of if we all play our role in this shift.

    * Our role is easy to play, and can actually be fun.

    * What Life is inviting us to change is our Old Cultural Story.

     

    ACTION I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE…

    * Check out the website that has been specially created to allow the conversation that has been started here to continue. Go to  www.TheGlobalConversation.com and see what you think.

    * Return to that website any time during your reading of this book that you see something you want to discuss further. Create your own Topic Board if you don’t find the subject you wish to discuss already being explored there.

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

    End of Chapter. Now, a Note from Neale…Portions of this website referred to in the above opening chapter of The Storm Before the Calm have been temporarily moved to the background of this site. These icons will be brought forward again in the near future. In the meantime, you are invited to continue reading the book here day-by-day, and offer any input you wish to make in the Comments Section under this posting. Thank you for your interest in helping us all to create a New Cultural Story for Humanity.

  • A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
    FOR THE SOUL IS IGNITED

    A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God, has been re-energized by The Global Conversation, with nearly 100 people saying ‘yes’ to the invitation placed in this space just four days ago.

    The purpose of the movement, which is the prime mission of a global community known as Humanity’s Team, is to release our species from a dogma that creates separation and competition, replacing it with unity and compassion, and to put Spiritual Activists on the ground in cities, towns, and villages around the world, challenging us to examine our old spiritual beliefs and ask, honestly: Are these doctrines working?

    The end of our Old Cultural Story and the writing of a new one based on the spiritual truth of who we are and what is really so about Life has, of course, been spoken of, and yearned for, for thousands of years. But now humanity has the tools with which to finally make this dream come true.

    First, it has answers now to life’s most critical question. And second, it has a way to get those answers to millions of people rapidly.

    Life’s most critical question is: How is it possible for 6.9 billion people to all want the same thing—survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love—and to be unable to produce it, even after thousands of years of trying?

    The answer is that we have been going after the wrong thing. This idea is fully explained in the book The Storm Before the Calm.

    In addition, the true coming of age of global instant communication is now making it possible to send that information to multi-millions virtually overnight. And that is what the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul is all about.

    Within days of it being discussed here December 5th, nearly 100 people signed on to join the Movement, and one of them — a man named Eric Silver — said “Yes, with a condition: A simple, practical blueprint for achieving this. For example, a distillation of the principles and premises of ‘Conversations with God’ and other enlightened materials into a one or two page, incorruptible, guide to life and living that even a child could understand and apply intuitively. (And don’t say it can’t be condensed down to that, because it can.) When heeded, its truth will be indisputably evident through the lifestyles of those who follow it.”

    Well, Eric, it just so happens that just such a statement has been given. I, too, have been asking for such a summary — a quick read that could say all that needs to be said and open the door for further exploration and discussion by people around the world. And I was given, a while ago, a simple statement that fills your request perfectly, reducing 3,000 pages of CWG dialogue to 1,000 words.

    Eric also wrote about the changes in human behavior that such a single summary could produce. In the Comments section below he asked: “Can such change occur without a massive ‘environmental’ (physical, mental, and spiritual) calamity to motivate it? At no point in human history have people gotten together and said, ‘Gee, we are doing this Life/Living thing wrong; let’s all fix it,’ unless some severe external/internal pressure forced them to do so. Perhaps this will be the first instance?”

    Yes, I believe so, Eric. This Civil Rights Movement for the Soul can be the first time. So here is that summary statement you were looking for Eric…

    Here, in 1,000 words, is all that the human race needs to know in order to live the life for which it has yearned and which, despite trying for thousands of years, it has yet to produce. Carry these messages to your world:

    God talks to everyone, all the time. The question is not: To whom does God talk? The question is: Who listens?

    We are all One. All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing There Is.

    There’s enough. It is not necessary to compete for, much less fight over, the resources you have been given. Simply learn to share.

    There’s nothing you have to do. There is much you will do, but nothing you are required to do. God wants nothing, needs nothing, demands nothing, and commands nothing.

    There are Three Basic Principles of Life: Functionality, Adaptability, and Sustainability. Thus, there is no such thing as Right and Wrong, there is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is you are trying to do. What you are trying to do and what you will do shall determine who you are and how you evolve as a species in the cosmic community of sentient beings.

    Love is all there is.

    You are the creator of your own reality, using the Three Tools of Creation: Thought, Word, and Action.

    Your life has nothing to do with you. It is about everyone whose life you touch, and how you touch it.

    You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. You are the unique combination of all three, which comprises the Totality Of You. You are an individuation of Divinity; an expression of God on earth.

    The purpose of your life is to recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.

    There’s no such thing as Right and Wrong. There is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is you are trying to do.

    There is also no such place as hell, and eternal damnation does not exist. There is no such thing as Space and Time, there is only Here and Now. Death does not exist. What you call “death” is merely a process of Re-Identification. There are no victims and no villains, and no one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.  

    The moment you declare anything, everything unlike it will come into the space. This is The Law of Opposites, which produces a Contextual Field within which that which you wish to express may be experienced.

    There is no such thing as Absolute Truth. All truth is subjective. Within this framework there are five levels of truth telling: Tell your truth to yourself about yourself; Tell your truth to yourself about another; Tell your truth about yourself to another; Tell your truth about another to another; Tell your truth to everyone about everything.

    The human race has created a precise set of illusions. The Ten Illusions of Humans are: Need Exists, Failure Exists, Disunity Exists, Insufficiency Exists, Requirement Exists, Judgment Exists, Condemnation Exists, Conditionality Exists, Superiority Exists, Ignorance Exists. These illusions are meant to serve humanity, but it must learn how to use them.

    The Three Core Concepts of Holistic Living are Honesty, Awareness, and Responsibility. Live according to these precepts and self-anger will disappear from your life.

    Life functions within a Be-Do-Have paradigm. Most people have this backward, imagining that first one must “have” things in order to “do” things, thus to “be” what they wish to be. Reversing this process is the fastest way to experience mastery in living.

    There are Three Levels of Awareness: Hope, Faith, and Knowing. Spiritual mastery is about living from the third level.

    There are Five Fallacies about God that create crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that God needs something. Second, the idea that God can fail to get what He needs. Third, the idea that God has separated you from Him because you have not given Him what He needs. Fourth, the idea that God still needs what He needs so badly that God now requires you, from your separated position, to give it to Him. Fifth, the idea that God will destroy you if you do not meet His requirements.

    There are also Five Fallacies About Life that likewise create crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that human beings are separate from each other. Second, the idea that there is not enough of what human beings need to be happy. Third, the idea that in order to get the stuff of which there is not enough, human beings must compete with each other. Fourth, the idea that some human beings are better than other human beings. Fifth, the idea that it is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all the other fallacies by killing each other.

    You think you are being terrorized by other people, but in truth you are being terrorized by your beliefs. Your experience of yourself and your world will shift dramatically if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:

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

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

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

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

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

    These 1,000 words, embraced and acted on, could change the world in a single generation.

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

    (From the forthcoming book WHAT GOD SAID: The Words of a Spiritual Revolution. Now, you are invited to take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species, based on the message above. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul. That is, Neale Donald Walsch and Humanity’s Team will get in touch with you personally and invite you to become involved in what could produce a spiritual renewal on this planet the likes of which we could only have dreamt of until now. The Moment of Our Tomorrow has arrived. And nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come.)

  • So ‘God’ is a ‘collective’?

    GOD: There is only One Soul, One Being, One Essence. Some of you call this “God.” This Single Essence “individuates” Itself as Everything In The Universe—in other words, All That Is. This includes all the sentient beings, or what you have chosen to call souls.

    Neale: So “God” is every soul that “is”?

    GOD: Every soul that is now, ever was, and ever will be.

    Neale: So God is a “collective?”

    GOD: That’s the word I chose, because it comes closest in your language to describing how things are.

    Neale: Not a single awesome being, but a collective?

    GOD:  It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Think “outside the box”!

    Neale: God is both? A single Awesome Being which is a collective of individualized parts?

    GOD: Good! Very good!

    Neale:  And why did the collective come to Earth?

    GOD: To express itself in physicality. To know itself in its own experience. To be God. As I’ve already explained in detail in Book 1.

    Neale:  You created us to be You?

    GOD: We did, indeed. That is exactly why you were created.

    Neale:  And humans were created by a collective?

    GOD: Your own Bible said, “Let Us create man in Our image, and after Our likeness” before the translation was changed.

    Life is the process through which God creates Itself, and then experiences the creation. This process of creation is ongoing and eternal. It is happening all the “time.” Relativity and physicality are the tools with which God works. Pure energy (what you call spirit) is What God Is. This Essence is truly the Holy Spirit.

    By a process through which energy becomes matter, spirit is embodied in physicality. This is done by the energy literally slowing itself down—changing its oscillation, or what you would call vibration.

    That Which Is All does this in parts. That is, parts of the whole do this. These individuations of spirit are what you have chosen to call souls.

    In truth, there is only One Soul, reshaping and reforming Itself. This might be called The Reformation. You are all Gods In Formation. (God’s information! )

    That is your contribution, and it is sufficient unto itself.

    To put this simply, by taking physical form you have already done enough. I want, I need, nothing more. You have contributed to the common good. You have made it possible for that which is common—the One Common Element—to experience that which is good. Even you have written that God created the heavens and the Earth, and the animals who walk upon the land, and the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and it was very good.

    “Good” does not—cannot—exist experientially without its opposite. Therefore have you also created evil, which is the backward motion, or opposite direction, of good. It is the opposite of life—and so have you created what you call death.

    Yet death does not exist in ultimate reality, but is merely a concoction, an invention, an imagined experience, through which life becomes more valued by you. Thus, “evil” is “live” spelled backward! So clever you are with language. You fold into it secret wisdoms that you do not even know are there.

    Now when you understand this entire cosmology, you comprehend the great truth. You could then never demand of another being that it give you something in return for your sharing the resources and necessities of physical life.

    Neale: As beautiful as that is, there are still some people who would call it communism.

    GOD: If they wish to do so, then so be it. Yet I tell you this: Until your community of beings knows about being in community, you will never experience Holy Communion, and cannot know Who I Am.

    The highly evolved cultures of the universe understand deeply all that I have explained here. In those cultures it would not be possible to fail to share. Nor would it be possible to think of “charging” increasingly exorbitant “prices” the more rare a necessity became. Only extremely primitive societies would do this. Only very primitive beings would see scarcity of that which is commonly needed as an opportunity for greater profits. “Supply and demand” does not drive the system of Highly Evolved Beings.

    This is part of a system that humans claim contributes to their quality of life and to the common good. Yet, from the vantage point of a Highly Evolved Being, your system violates the common good, for it does not allow that which is good to be experienced in common.

    Another distinguishing and fascinating feature of Highly Evolved Cultures is that within them there is no word or sound for, nor any way to communicate the meaning of, the concept of “yours” and “mine.” Personal possessives do not exist in their language, and, if one were to speak in earthly tongues, one could only use articles to describe things. Employing that convention, “my car” becomes “the car I am now with.” “My partner” or “my children” becomes “the partner” or “the children I am now with.”

    The term “now with,” or “in the presence of,” is as close as your languages can come to describing what you would call “ownership,” or “possession.”

    That which you are “in the presence of” becomes the Gift. These are the true “presents” of life.

    Thus, in the language of highly evolved cultures, one could not even speak in terms of “my life,” but could only communicate “the life I am in the presence of.”

    This is something akin to your speaking of being “in the presence of God.”

    When you are in the presence of God (which you are, any time you are in the presence of each other), you would never think of keeping from God that which is God’s—meaning, any part of That Which Is. You would naturally share, and share equally, that which is God’s with any part of that which is God.

    This is the spiritual understanding which undergirds the entire social, political, economic, and religious structures of all highly evolved cultures. This is the cosmology of all of life, and it is merely failure to observe this cosmology, to understand it and to live within it, which creates all of the discord of your experience on Earth.

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

    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the end of the blue, 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 Conversations with God-Book 3.

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

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

    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).

  • If there was one thing that could change the self-destructive direction in which our world is moving, what do you think it would be?

  • OUR WORLD MUST COME TO
    AN END THIS MONTH

    We have gone as far as we can go. We can’t go any further. I know that nobody wants to hear this (it’s been said over and over again now for 25 years), but the way we are living — what we are doing spiritually, politically, economically, environmentally, educationally, and socially — is totally and utterly unsustainable.

    In every one of those areas, it is unsustainable. The world as we are running it must end. Now. That is what the whole “2012 Phenomenon” is all about. It is not about the end of the world, it is about the end of the world as we know it. It is about re-birthing ourselves. The question is not whether something needs to be done about the way humanity has been living, the question is: What?

    The answer is not a mystery. We must change. But what must we change, specifically? And how do we change it? Those become the operational questions. Those become the functional inquiries. Those become the central issues of our time.

    We have the answer here.

    We must change our Cultural Story. We must rewrite it, from the very first chapter. We must launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a virulent, violent, and vindictive God.

    Why? Why bring our beliefs about God into this? Because the beliefs held about God by billions of people — including the belief that there is no God — is what creates the belief of billions of people about themselves, about each other, and about the purpose and function of Life Itself. And that is what creates the world around us. The unsustainable world around us.

    We can no longer survive as a species by holding the beliefs that we hold. This is not an answer that I just made up. This is the answer that has been given to us by God.

    In the book The New Revelations (2002) the following dialogue with God appears. Have you ever read it? More important, what are you willing to do about it?

    Tell you what. Decide, after you read this interaction with God. I dare you to do it. Read it all the way to the end. Right now. Dare you.

    I understand that our world now lives in a 120-word sound-bite mentality, but I put this opening dialogue before you nonetheless. Is it worth ten minutes of your time to find out what’s really going on here? What appears below are the first few words in a dialogue with God that occurred at this time of year ten years ago…

     

    God, please be here. We need help.

    I am here.

    We need help.

    I know.

    Right now.

    I understand.

    The world is on the brink of disaster. And I’m not talking about natural disaster; I’m talking about man-made calamity.

    I know. And you’re right.

    I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars—which are bad enough—but to the end of civilization as we know it.

    That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.

    You understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.

    Which is?

    The level of belief.

    The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.

    Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.

    You keep trying to solve the world’s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem.  And that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.

    Then help us.

    I am.

    How?

    In many ways.

    Name one.

    This book.

    This book will help us?

    It can.

    What do we have to do?

    Read it.

    And then what?

    Heed it.

    That’s what they all say. “It’s all in The Book,” they say. “Read it and heed it. That’s all you have to do.” The problem is, they all hold up a different book.

    I know.

    And every book says something else.

    I know.

    So now we should “read and heed” this book?

    It’s not a question of what you should do.
    It’s a question of what you may do if you choose to.
    It is an invitation, not a requirement.

    Why would I want to read this book when I’ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books—the books that they are telling me to heed?

    Because you have not heeded them.

    Yes, we have. We believe that we have.

    That’s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.

    You keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.

    You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.

    But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!

    No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.

    What does that mean?

    It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.

    There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.

    This is what you are now doing.

    It is what you have been doing for quite some time.

    You cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.

    You argue among yourselves about what the Qur’an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean.  You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says…

    And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?

    Okay, we get the point.

    No, actually, you don’t. And that’s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.

    It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.

    Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your way.

    This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more—and caused other people to suffer more—over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.

    You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.

    That’s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?

    Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.

    They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.

    What?

    Being right.

    You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be “right.”

    Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.

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

     

    (End of this excerpt. Next in this space: take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.)

     

     

  • WHO and WHAT is ‘God’?

    Who and what is God?

    The day has long past when we imagined that God is a huge man in the sky, sitting on a throne in robes with a long white beard. Today we know better that that, right?

    Right?

    So then, who and what IS ‘God’? Is there even such a thing? And if so, what is it? And what is its purpose for existence? And what does it want from us? What does it need humanity to be, do, or have?

    All of these questions are answered in Conversations with God. Yet the answers are, for many (indeed, for most of the people on Earth who profess a belief in God) heretical.

    The CWG message is considered blasphemy. Yet is it? George Bernard Shaw famously said, “All great truths begin as blasphemy.” Could this be the case with Conversations with God?

    Setting aside these books for a moment, what are your answers to the questions above? Is there a ‘God’? If so, who and what is God? Why does God exist? What is God’s purpose? And, most important of all, what does God want? And why?

    Let the discussion begin…