The Global Conversation

Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • N.Y. COP GIVES HOMELESS
    MAN THE BOOT IN TIMES SQUARE

    A New York policeman has given the boot — two boots, actually — to a homeless man who was doing nothing but sitting peacefully on the sidewalk on a recent frigid night.

    Police officer Larry DePrimo, of New York’s City’s Sixth Precinct, has drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users as a result of his actions. He was away from his usual precinct, assigned to patrol Times Square a few nights ago.

    Officer DePrimo saw the homeless man sitting on the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue near Forty-Fourth Street, with bare feet. No shoes, no socks. So he gave him the boot. First, he bent down beside the man and said, “Hey, what’s up? Where are your shoes and socks?” The man replied simply, “I never had a pair of shoes.”

    “All I remember.” the cop told the press later, “is that it as extremely cold outside, and all I wanted to do was help this gentleman.”

    The policeman went to a nearby shoe store and said, “Look, this gentleman has no shoes and no socks. I need to get something for him. Something that will last. I don’t care what it cost.” He then spent $100 of his own money to buy a pair of thermal socks and insulated winter boots. The store clerk used his employee discount to cut the price in half.

    The officer then knelt down next to the homeless man and put the socks and boots on him. A passerby from Arizona snapped a picture of the kind act and posted it on Facebook. It went viral within minutes. Soon, the officer was the subject of massive media coverage. He was brought before a press conference. He was on the morning talk shows. He was honored by the NYPD, personally presented special cufflinks by the city’s police commissioner.

    “I feel very humbled,” he said, to be on the same force and in the same company “with all the officers who are real heroes,” who’ve put their life on the line in extreme situations. What he did, he told the press, with “nothing. I was just doing my job. But I just want to say that all cops really aren’t bad….and this is just something we do every day.”

    All of us know this is true. For every rare instance where police have behaved poorly, there are thousands of moments such as this. We all know that. It is good to be made aware of it again with such heart-warming evidence.

    To see the snapshot of Officer Larry DePrimo kneeling down to help the homeless man (who thanked the policeman profusely and then quietly walked away), click here.

  • Are we supposed to fear God?

    Is God a being to be “feared”?

    The idea that it is good and wonderful and something to be admired to be “God fearing” has been put back into the public arena by a young television star who has taken to the Internet to urge his fans go stop watching the program that made them his fans to begin with.

    Angus T. Jones has been playing the role of Jake Harper on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men for ten years, and a few years ago (2010) became the highest paid child star in television, earning, at age 17, nearly $8 million in just two seasons. But earlier this year he acknowledged that he is these days experiencing some discomfort playing some of the story lines that were being written for his now older character on the show.

    That discomfort apparently erupted full blown last week when Mr. Jones posted a video on YouTube saying that he no longer wanted to appear on the program, on which he has been a continuing character for a decade, declaring that the show conflicted with his religious views. Mr. Jones said he had just been baptized as a member of the Forerunner Christian Church.

    In the video Mr. Jones went further. He asked his fans to stop watching Two and a Half Men and “filling your head with filth.” I have nothing to say about that. If Mr. Jones feels his own television program is “filth,” so be it.

    (Mr. Jones has since released a statement in which he essentially says that he did not wish to personally insult or dishonor the show’s producer, director, cast, or crew with his remarks, all of whom he thanked for the opportunity and the help each have given him in show business — but he did not withdraw or disavow his assessment that show’s content was “filth.”)

    What I would like to discuss here, however, is not the show’s content, but the content of Mr. Jones’ remarks about God. Mr. Jones has been quoted by news sources as saying on the YouTube video: “If I am doing any harm, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be contributing to the enemy’s plan…You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that. I know I can’t. I’m not OK with what I’m learning, what the bible says, and being on that television show.”

    So since this now world-famous young actor (the show is syndicated in several countries) has placed before a planetary audience his idea of what it means to be “a true God-fearing person,” I would like to place for the planet my idea of whether God means for each of us to be a God-fearing person. I would like to explore this in the days ahead here, and take a really close look at exactly what God wants in this regard.

    But first, let me ask you. People from all over the world read this online newspaper, and this column. I’d be curious to know: What is your truth, what is your awareness, what is your own personal experience and understanding around the question: Does God want us, need us, request us, command us, to fear God? What is your knowing around this? What would be God’s reason for it?

    Please leave your Comment here, below. Then, in the days ahead, I’ll get into what I think about what God wants.

  • What is the case for secrecy? What is the case for privacy? How do you think the world would change if there were neither?

  • WORLD MOVING TO TOTALLY
    TRANSPARENT SOCIETY

    Should people’s “privacy” be protected, even if it allows them to get away with breaking the law? Even if it allows them to get away with murder?

    Should women be allowed to travel without their husbands being notified by the government?

    Should businesses be allowed to pay two different employers different wages for doing the same work in the same way in the same amount of time?

    Should anyone ever have “secrets” from anyone? And if so, why? Why is it so hard for human beings to simply live with the truth?

    These are the questions that are going to be placed before humanity in the years just ahead as technology races ahead of individuals’ ability to control it, and governments seize more and more power to use it to enter people’s “private” lives.

    A remarkable police case in Rhode Island in 2009 brings the case for transparency home in major ways, and in very clear ways. In that case, a woman had called emergency services at 911 to say that she had found her 6-year-old son was not moving that morning.

    An ambulance crew arrived at the woman’s apartment, found the child unconscious in his bed, and raced him to the hospital. A police officer who also responded to the call stayed behind for a moment, talking with the mother’s boyfriend, who was in the apartment at the time, as the child was taken to the hospital with the mother.

    The officer heard a cellphone beep in the kitchen, papers filed with a court said, and when he picked up the phone from the counter he saw a message: “Wat if I got 2 take him 2 da hospital wat do I say and dos marks on his neck omg.”

    The message appeared to be from the child’s mother to her boyfriend, court documents said. The man was taken to the police station for questioning, and his cellphone was seized.

    The boy died by nightfall, court records indicating that the cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the abdomen which perforated his small intestine,” according to press reports.

    Police then obtained search warrants for the cellphones of both the man and the child’s mother, as well as their relatives. In addition, they obtained records from the cellphone companies that provided carrier services to the phones in question, with records of phone calls and voice mail messages.

    But a judge in the case ruled almost three years later that police had no right to look at the phone without a search warrant. The phone, she said in her ruling, was not in plain view, nor did the owner of the phone give consent to have it searched. The boyfriend should be able to have a reasonable expectation that text messages to and from the child’s mother would not be seen or seized, the court ruled, and then threw out all the evidence that police had gathered with their warrants. The judge also suppressed evidence regarding the original text message that had drawn the police officer’s attention to begin with.

    That case is now on appeal to the Rhode Island supreme court, with the defendant remaining in custody during the appeal process.

    Meanwhile, in a far less serious, but nonetheless groundbreaking incident last week, a Saudi Arabian couple was traveling outside their country when the husband received a text message on his cellphone alerting him that his wife had left the country. Both the husband and the wife were surprised — and outraged — that the government had informed the husband of his wife’s travels without her permission or his request.

    They found out that in Saudi Arabia, when a woman presents her passport to border control agents, her “guardian” is immediately notified — whether he requested to be told or not.

    Every female in Saudi Arabia has a male “guardian,” or mahram. Traditionally this is a father, husband, or brother. The mahram can register with the country’s Interior Ministry to be notified if the woman over whom he has guardianship has traveled outside the nation’s borders. But apparently, as of last week, mahrams are now being automatically notified whether they registered and requested to be or not.

    This may not seem strange in a country where women are not given the right to drive (the only country in the world where this is true). They are also not allowed to go to school or hold a job without permission from their “guardian.”

    But the question of a mahram being notified by text message of the travels of the woman of whom he is the “guardian” raises larger issues within the context of the new world within which we now live — and are going to increasingly be encountering. The question is: What, if anything, is “wrong” with Total Transparency as a lifestyle? And, of course, the same kind of transparency would have to apply to men as well as women. Wives would then be notified of the whereabouts of their husbands at all times.

    Conversations with God says that in highly evolved societies there would be no secrets of any kind, and that all things would be known by everyone. Moreover, says CWG, highly evolved beings would have no need or desire for secrets or privacy of any kind.

    Total transparency in personal relationships, in governance, in business and industry, in commerce, and in all areas of life would be the standard practice.

    Prices and costs for goods and services, for instance, would be transparent, with businesses voluntarily placing two figures on their price tags: “Our Cost/Your Price.”

    Companies, likewise, would voluntarily pass around information sheets each month to all employees, listing the income and benefit packages of all workers, so that everyone would know to the penny what everyone else is getting for the services they are providing.

    What do you think? Assuming the standard of complete visibility was applied equally to all companies, agencies of government, and individuals (which, many would argue, will never happen…but, assuming that it did)…would you be willing to live in a society of Total Transparency?

    What “secrets” and “privacy” do you think people, companies, or governments should have a right to maintain…and why? What reason would anyone have to keep something a secret from anyone else? If all things were known by everyone, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Does WikiLeaks make you angry, or happy, that government maneuverings are becoming more and more revealed?

    Your comments…?

  • A witness to your life

    In the next several weeks here I am going to do something different in this column. I am going to present occasional excerpts from a transcript of a Conversations with God Spiritual Renewal Retreat that took place in October, 2012 in Medford, Oregon. I can think of no better way to give you an idea of one approach to interpreting the CWG material than by showing you how it is interpreted by me for participants in such an event.

    Below, then, is an excerpt #1 from this CWG retreat, in which I welcome the participants into the room. It offers a wonderful invitation — not only to the people who were in that room, but to everyone who is gathered here, at this website.

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    NEALE: Welcome to the space.  You’ve traveled so far to be here, not just in miles, but in years and moments.  Each of us journey along the highways of our life, and here we are in this perfect moment, perfectly situated, perfectly prepared, perfectly ready for perfection itself to visit our lives at last.

    There is more going on here than meets the eye.  And by “here,” I don’t mean in this room.  I mean in life, for most people.  And every so often a chosen few — and it’s usually a handful really, a veritable handful of people — decide to gather together in one place to look at what’s going on, out of a thought that sometimes, once in a while, looking at it together with some others who are on the same journey can be more productive and bring us greater insights, in some cases bringing those insights to us faster and in a more impacting way, than if we continue traveling alone on our path.

    So we find that from time to time it feels good to join together with others who are on the same journey, even if they may not define the journey or describe it in exactly the same way, but we know broadly in the largest sense that they’re on the same journey, this journey through life.  But the journey is more than the journey through life from birth to death, from my awareness.  A great more than that.  We’ll talk about all of that during this retreat.

    Of course, people have historically gathered like this. We’ve gathered around campfires at the very beginning. Not just family and kin, but increasingly as our experience of life went on, others who we joined at the campfire, so that we might share experiences, so that we might say to each other: How has it been for you?  This is how it is for me.  What’s true for all of us?

    We say this to each other in a struggle, a fight, to find common ground, and out of common ground, common understanding — because it is when we find common ground that we share a common experience which gives us a common understanding.

    And that common understanding is what binds us together and allows us to move forward as a species, as a culture, and thus to know ourselves as a culture in a way that only the sharing of the individual members of that culture could possibly create.  So your story and mine are very important.

    They are the keys that unlock the mystery of life itself.  The challenge is getting to know that story; your story and mine.  People interestingly enough don’t want to share their story often.  They think they’re either wasting the time of others, or perhaps they’re embarrassed about it or they don’t have all the answers yet, or they don’t want to look bad, or they’re too hurt by the story and it brings up too many damaging or hurtful memories.

    For whatever the reason, we largely keep our story to ourselves, and perhaps we share it with one or twos others, maybe with our beloved other with whom we’re going through life,  a dear companion or partner or lover, and perhaps with a close friend as well.  But the number of people who know our story in many cases can be counted on one hand.

    There was a wonderful movie a few years ago, Richard Gere was in it, called Shall We Dance?  And in the film, there was a wonderful scene.  I won’t bother going through the whole scenario with you, but there is a scene in the film where a woman is sitting at a table with a private detective, and she’s hired the private detective to follow her husband. She’s convinced he’s having an affair because he’s gone every Tuesday and Thursday night on a regular basis after work and he was always saying to her, “Well, I had to work late,” or whatever.  But she caught him at one point.  She called his office, he wasn’t there, and all of that.  So she thought, well, rather than confront him with what I don’t know about this, I’ll find out.

    So she hired a private detective.  And he follows her husband.  Then he finally ‑‑ the scene in the movie is that she’s meeting him at a restaurant for lunch and he’s got the photographs of her husband going in and out of places.  He’s been trailing her husband for weeks.  He says, “I don’t know how to tell you this because your husband is not having an affair.  And I hate to ruin the surprise.”  She says. “What surprise?”  He says, “Well, he’s been taking dancing lessons. He wants to learn how to ballroom dance because you’ve always wanted him to be a ballroom dancer with you and he was clumsy and didn’t know how to do it. So for your 25th anniversary, he wanted to take to you a ballroom dancing competition and show you how you guys could win it.” It turns out that the wife was a very good dancer and she just needed a partner.

    So he was gone every Tuesday and Thursday night for months to this dance class.  And the private detective has got pictures of him going in and out of the class and so forth.  Now, he says, you must let him have this surprise.  You can’t let him know that you know.  She said, of course not.

    But I always remember the scene in the movie, not for that content so much, but for a single line in the picture that in a sense almost devastated me when I heard it, because it was so impactful.  She says to the private detective, you must have been hired on a hundred of these surveillance things by spouses who think their other is cheating on them.  He says, “Yeah, I have.  It kind of makes you cynical about marriage and the whole trip.”

    This spurs her to say, “Why do you think people get married anyway?”  And the detective gives, well, you know, a variety of reasons.  “I’ve been looking at it for 25 years.  Sex, companionship, bring an end to loneliness, have a partner to carry the load.” He gives all the answers you would expect to hear.

    She say, “I don’t think that’s the reason.”  He then asks, “What do you think the reason is?”  She replies, “I think people marry so that they can have a witnesses to their lives.”

    That’s got to be one of the great movie lines of all time. The wife goes on, “People want, they need, someone who saw it all, the worst of it, the best of it, the highs and the lows, the struggles, the losses, and the victories.  Someone who saw it all happen to them, so that their experience doesn’t have to be questioned in their own mind…like, is any of this real?”

    So I observe that people gather around and gather together in many of the  places where other people collect: Sunday services, Saturday events, Friday night gatherings at the temple or at the synagogue or at the church or in many other places…the corner tavern, and so forth…to see if there is some way they can share and create a common experience, and be witness to each other lives.

    These moments are precious and few, representing a tiny percentage of the number of days and hours and minutes in your life, when you look at these moments on a percentage basis.  Most of the time we’re in our mind, and more or less by ourselves.

    Don’t miss any opportunity, then, that you have created to explore together the common ground we all share; to witness each other lives.  Let us know your story.  Let us know about your ups and your downs, your challenges and your victories.

  • Hold it! Everything that happens is ‘perfect’?

    I, as God, will never interfere with your choices—but I will always know what they are. Therefore, you may assume that if a thing happens to you, it is perfect that it did so—for nothing escapes perfection in God’s world.

    The design of your life—the people, places, and events in it—have all been perfectly created by the perfect creator of perfection itself: you. And Me . . . in, as, and through you.

    Now We can work together in this co-creative process consciously or unconsciously. You can move through life aware, or unaware. You can walk your path asleep, or awake. You choose…

    …If all you desired is what your soul desired, everything would be very simple. If you listened to the part of you which is pure spirit, all of your decisions would be easy, and all the outcomes joyous. That is because . . .

    . . . the choices of spirit are always the highest choices.

    They don’t need to be second-guessed. They don’t need to be analyzed or evaluated. They simply need to be followed, acted on.

    Yet you are not only a spirit. You are a Triune Being made up of body, mind, and spirit. That is both the glory and the wonder of you. For you often make decisions and choices at all three levels simultaneously—and they by no means always coincide.

    It is not uncommon for your body to want one thing, while your mind seeks another, and your spirit desires yet a third. This can be especially true of children, who are often not yet mature enough to make distinctions between what sounds like “fun” to the body, and what makes sense to the mind—much less what resonates with the soul. So the child waddles into the street.

    Now, as God, I am aware of all your choices—even those you make subconsciously. I will never interfere with them, but rather, just the opposite. It is My job to ensure that your choices are granted. (In truth, you grant them to your Self. What I have done is put a system into place that allows you to do that. This system is called the process of creation, and is explained in detail in CWG-Book 1.)

    When your choices conflict—when body, mind, and spirit are not acting as one—the process of creation works at all levels, producing mixed results. If, on the other hand, your being is in harmony, and your choices are unified, astonishing things can occur.

    Your young people have a phrase—“having it all together”—which could be used to describe this unified state of being.

    There are also levels within levels in your decision making. This is particularly true at the level of the mind.

    Your mind can, and does, make decisions and choices from one of at least three interior levels: logic, intuition, emotion—and sometimes from all three— producing the potential for even more inner conflict.

    And within one of those levels—emotion—there are five more levels. These are the five natural emotions: grief, anger, envy, fear, and love.

    And within these, also, there are two final levels: love and fear.

    The five natural emotions include love and fear, yet love and fear are the basis of all emotions. The other three of the five natural emotions are outgrowths of these two.

    Ultimately, all thoughts are sponsored by love or fear. This is the great polarity. This is the primal duality. Everything, ultimately, breaks down to one of these. All thoughts, ideas, concepts, understandings, decisions, choices, and actions are based in one of these.

    And, in the end, there is really only one.

    Love.

    In truth, love is all there is. Even fear is an outgrowth of love, and when used effectively, expresses love…Everything expresses love, when the expression is in its highest form.

    Does the parent who saves the child from being killed in traffic express fear, or love?…Here we see that fear in its highest form becomes love . . . is love . . . expressed as fear. Similarly, moving up the scale of natural emotions, grief, anger, and envy are all some form of fear, which, in turn, is some form of love.

    One things leads to another. Do you see?

    The problem comes in when any of the five natural emotions become distorted. Then they become grotesque, and not recognizable at all as outgrowths of love, much less as God, which is what Absolute Love is.

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    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…

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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.

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    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).

  • ANGLICAN CHURCH DECIDES:
    NO PENIS, NO MITRE

    The lay members of the top legislative body of the Church of England have voted never to allow any priest among its clergy who does not have a penis to be consecrated as a bishop within their church.

    In a vote that defied outright the wishes of a striking majority of its own present bishops and priests, members of the House of Laity of the General Synod of the church fell a handful of votes short of reaching the two-thirds majority within their category of the synod required to approve a change of rules that would allow persons with a vagina to rise to the level of bishop within the leadership of the church.

    The synod is divided into three units: the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy, and the House of Laity. All three units must each separately reach a two-thirds majority of its voting members in order to overturn present church law, according to media reports.

    On the matter of allowing females to become bishops, the three houses voted collectively to approve the measure by a 75% majority. But the breakdown came when one of the houses did not reach a two-thirds majority in its indivivdual vote. The House of Bishops last Tuesday voted 44-3 in favor, with two abstentions. The vote in the House of Clergy was 148-45 in favor. The vote in the House of Laity was 132-74 — just six votes short of the two-thirds majority needed in that body, the New York Times and CNN both reported.

    Women are presently allowed to be ordained as priests in the Church of England, and indeed, one-third of its priests are female. Women may hold other senior positions as well, such as canons or archdeacons, so it is apparently not a question of the spiritual or intellectual qualifications of females that causes conservative lay members to consistently vote against female elevation to the highest offices within the church. It is, it would seem, a lack of a particular physical characteristic. The church’s lay persons have laid down the law: No penis, no mitre.

    The overwhelming support of the House of Bishops itself could not persuade enough of the church’s regular members to support a reform that has been 15 years in the attempting. A sufficient number of lay people within the church have made it clear: In the House of Bishops it shall always be: Vaginas Not Allowed.

    Unless something radical occurs within the Church, the three houses of its General Synod will not even have another opportunity to vote again on the proposal to allow female bishops for another five years, according to procedural rules.

    Reaction to last week’s vote was negative and strong from the majority of priests and bishops within the church — perhaps the most candid from the spiritual leader of the church himself, the Archbishop of Canterbury. After the vote, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams told the General Synod: “We have, to put it very bluntly, a lot of explaining to do. Whatever the motivation for voting…whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke, the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society. Worse than that, it seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society.”

    Somewhat startling is the fact that, even in this first quarter of the 21st Century, when the question of women’s equality seems that it has been asked and answered by human society in most places, in the very sector of society where one would expect it is to resolved absolutely without discrimination toward any human beings — namely, Religion: the major institutions promoting God — the proclaiming of women as Second Class Citizens continues to be a major pillar and principle of its most sacred beliefs.

  • What will you be most thankful for between now and this same day in 2013?

  • PUBLISHER CALLS FOR ABOLISHING
    THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

    Thanksgiving Day, of course, is one of the biggest family holidays of the year in the United States. But I have an idea about this holiday that is different from most Americans. I think that the holiday should be abolished.

    I don’t think that Thanksgiving should be a holiday at all. I think it should be a holy day, and placed on the calendar of all sacred days and events.

    I also think we should change the way that Thanksgiving is celebrated. Forget about sitting down to a big meal and offering thanks to God for all the bounty that has been received during the past year. Instead, create a new ritual. Sit down together and thank God for all the goodness that is to come.

    Do not go around the table and have each guest tell what he or she has to be thankful for. Rather, go around the table and have each guest say what they are going to be thankful for in the coming year — and then have everyone give thanks right then and there, ahead of time. For that matter, repeat the ritual every day for the next year. Sincerely believe and be grateful for receiving the gifts that you just know will shower down upon you from God’s limitless bounty.

    In Conversations with God the message about gratitude is clear. It is the most powerful form of prayer. Gratitude in advance, not gratitude after the fact.

    This is because to thank God in advance for something is the highest form of faith. It is a statement of supreme confidence. It is the Ultimate Knowing.

    When we come from this Place of Knowing, we move into an energy that creates miracles.

    The most powerful prayer that I ever heard is only 17 words long:

    Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.

    So, while it is well and good to say “thanks” for things past, especially with other human beings to whom we owe a word of gratitude, it is extremely empowering to thank God ahead of time for all the goodness that will flow to you in the coming year. It is even more powerful to decide ahead of time what that goodness will be.

    Make a list. Check it twice. Write down all that you choose to have happen between Thanksgiving 2012 and Thanksgiving 2013. Read your list out loud at dinner. Encourage others to do the same. Share and Declare. There are few things more inspiring and powerful than public declaration.

    Suddenly, Thanksgiving 2012 will have a new meaning. It will now be about Sharing and Declaring. It will be about Knowing and Growing. We grow into what we know.

    So I think that Thanksgiving should not be a mere holiday. It should be elevated to a Holy Day. It should be the holiest day of the year. The day on which we say “thanks be to God” for all the wonder, all the abundance, and all the joys of life we anticipate and that we know in our hearts God is sending us in the coming year.

    It should be the holiest day of the year because gratitude is the most sacred tool in the Creator’s Toolbox. With it anything can be produced, anything can be created, anything can be experienced!

    Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

  • A Thanksgiving weekend message

    So this is the Thanksgiving weekend holiday in the United States, and I hope that all people around the world stop for a moment and send thoughts of gratitude and love to our wonderful God for the breathtaking world that has been created by us for us. Then I hope that we will, each of us, renew our commitment to do whatever it takes to make this a better world.

    I want to learn to share more. We all share, I know, and so do I…but I want to learn to share more. To share more of all the bounty with which I have been blessed. And I do not mean merely physical abundance. I do mean that, yes, but I also mean the love that resides deep inside of me, and all the gifts of the heart and soul that are mine to give.

    I promise to bring forgiveness to my world, to bring compassion and understanding and a deeper caring and a higher love, to every moment.

    I am clear that this must happen in the day-to-day of my experience. It takes place with every exchange I have with any other human being. It’s about how I talk, how I act. I want to be gentle, I want to be caring, I want to be accepting and tolerant and understanding and forgiving. Most of all, I want to be connected. I want to feel that I am genuinely a part of every other person, one with every other soul, and one with God.

    The opportunity, the chance, to do this is what I am most grateful for today. The chance to be Who I Really Am is what I treasure in my life. Each morning is a Starting Over. Each day is a new day. Transformation begins with Forgiveness and Unconditional Love — for the Self, and for all others.

    It’s the Self part that I have the most trouble with. I have done so many hurtful things in my life. I rationalize all this most of the time, telling myself that it is all part of being human. None of us is perfect, etc. But at some point I have to begin taking responsibility for my actions, so that the past does not repeat itself in the present.

    So part of self forgiveness — and what makes it possible, I think — is self discipline and self awareness; a determination to become something Other than what I have been in the past.

    I am grateful for this chance. Life is so incredibly wonderful. Each day it gives me a chance to recreate myself anew.

    This is Thanksgiving weekend  in my country, and at this time of year I want to express gratitude in advance for all the wonderful moments yet to come, for all the wonderful experiences yet to be created, and for all the wonderful expressions of Who I Really Am yet to be placed into the world.

    Thank you, God. Thank you, Life. Thank you, every one of you, for being part of my world, and bringing me the daily opportunity to become a grander version of myself through my interaction with the wonder of you, and to work together with you to create a grander version of our world.