Is there any way — and way at all, short of all-out war killing thousands — to bring an end to the Israeli-Hamas conflict?
Author: Neale Donald Walsch
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Everybody is innocent. Everybody.
Among the most controversial statements in the Conversations with God books is the pronouncement Nobody does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world. The statement ranks right up there with other CWG messages such as “There is no such thing as Right and Wrong,” and…”There are no Victims and no Villains,” and….”Everything is perfect” in its unbelievability.
CWG is spiritually revolutionary, there is no question about that. Its statements challenge everything we have been taught and told since we were six years old. How can we hold these ideas within our operating guidelines and still function in our present-day world? That becomes the question for the day.
The statement says, essentially, that everybody is innocent. And it is true. Everybody is. People are just as innocent at 40 as they are at 4; at 30 as they are at 3; at 60 as they are at 6. We are all little children — and we are acting as little children, in case you haven’t noticed.
And, as little children (on the Timeline of the Universe) we can’t be expected to know all that we need to know to make decisions that are in our own best interest. We can’t even convince ourselves to stop smoking, for heaven sake, even when we know it is killing us. We can’t even convince ourselves to stop eating food that is not good for us, even though we know it is killing us. We can’t even stop ourselves from arguing with each other “to the death”…even though we know it is going to kill us.
What is the problem here? Is it that we are just plain stupid? Or unbelievably stubborn? Or astonishingly barbaric? Or is it that we just don’t understand something very important — the understanding of which would change everything?
I am going to suggest that it is the latter. I am going to suggest, as Conversations with God tells us, that we simply don’t know Who We Are. We are living a case of Mistaken Identity. And we don’t know what the purpose of Life is. Nor do we understand how it functions. We have no idea of our true relationship with each other, and with all of Life. And we certainly have no idea of who and what God is…and what God wants.
Our model of the world is extremely elementary. It is very, very incomplete. And, according to our model of the world, everyone IS acting appropriately. Or at least, certainly we are…
We are caught up in living into Fallacies about Life and about God, and these mistaken notions are what’s killing us. We think that we are being terrorized by others, and we are not. We are being terrorized by our own thoughts and our own ideas and our own beliefs about everything from where we are to why we are here to how we got here to what happens to us when we leave.
All of it. We hold terrifying ideas about all of it. No wonder we are living terrifying lives.
We will discuss, in this space, in the days ahead, what Conversations with God has to tell us about these things. And then we’ll invite all of you to do something with, and about, that.
Stay tuned.
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WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR HUMANS
TO STOP KILLING EACH OTHER?“All attack is called Self Defense.”
I have been reminded of that insight over and over again for the past week as Israel and Hamas have inched closer and closer to the next level of their seemingly endless combat that could lead to an all out war in Gaza.
Humanity has been trying to figure out how to bring an end to war since living beings evolved into self-consciousness on this planet. From those very first moments we have found reasons to oppose each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to fight each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to kill each other. It has never stopped, from those very first moments to this very moment.
I would venture to say that there has not been one day — not one single day — since the beginning of recorded history when one human being has not killed another. And I don’t mean by accident. I mean deliberately. With purposeful intent.
Not one.
Single.
Day.
…in thousand and thousands of years.
And now here we go again, on this particular day, trying to see just how many people we can kill in the main cities of Israel by showering rockets down upon them, or in the populated areas of Gaza, with air strikes raining bombs.
And as I write this, the talk is of a massive build-up of Israeli troops on the Gaza-Israeli border, prepared to launch a ground assault on a moment’s notice.
What has caused, and “who started,” this latest up tick in the hostilities between these parties is almost irrelevant at this stage. Each side, of course, insists that it is only defending itself. And it is. Seen from each side’s point of view, all each side is doing is defending itself.Aggression is always called defense. And aggression takes many forms. Not all of it is military. And so it is true that each side in this ongoing conflict has “aggressed” against the other repeatedly over the years. And one has to go back a half-century or more to get to the root of the cause of all of this. And even then the history doesn’t matter. All that matters today is what it would take to end the killing, to end the aggression and counter-aggression that is threatening to embroil a whole region — and even, conceivably, the entire world at some level, if not directly — in a war that could prove unspeakably tragic for the entire human race.
In the past several days I have been reading a wonderful book by MSNBC’s commentator Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy/Elusive Hero. America’s slain President was personally and intimately familiar with the savagery, barbarity, hideousness and atrocity of war, having served as a PT boat commander in World War II, losing a brother and a brother-in-law in the conflict, and earning the Navy and Marine Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” when he swam for hour hours to a tiny island in the Pacific, tugging a wounded comrade behind him, the strap of the fellow soldier’s life vest between his teeth, after his PT boat had been rammed and split in two by an enemy destroyer. Kennedy lost two men under his command in the incident — and saved the lives of 8 others. The ordeal was something that he, of course, never forgot.
Chris Matthews writes that shortly after the war ended, the future president wrote in a letter to one of his war buddies, “We must face the truth the people have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent to force them to go to any extent rather than have another war.”
Those words, written 60 years ago, are as true today as they were then — and as they have been for centuries.
Indeed, for millennia.
I have always thought that any human problem can be solved by talking about it. I have said this to my children. I have said this to my wife and to my extended family and to my friends. I have said this in public, at lectures and in spiritual renewal retreats and personal development workshops. I have said this on-the-air in radio and television broadcasts, and in writing in newspaper stories and magazine articles. I still believe that. But we have to talk about the right things.
There are some who say that human beings cannot — simply cannot, for reasons of biology, genetics, you name it — stop themselves from needing to be right…to say nothing of killing each other over their differences. And the problem becomes, what do you do when the other party won’t listen? What’s left when all the talking has achieved nothing? When one or both parties are intractable? When no one will give an inch? Or when one gives an inch and the other takes advantage of it?
How do you solve it when talking simply does not, will not, has not, and cannot?
The answer is that we all need to talk more — but in an entirely different way. We need, as an entire group called humanity, to talk about not what is going on, but why.
And that is something that no one wants to talk about.
Or, at least, very few people do. Because it is going to put the spotlight on — and may be even ask people to change — beliefs. And that is something that many people would rather die than do. And so, they are achieving exactly that outcome.
Conversations with God famously said, “No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.” This is the same as saying that everybody believes that they are acting correctly — given the way they see themselves and see life in any given moment.
What humanity needs to do, then, is talk about its model of the world. When our model of the world, our whole idea about Life and what it is and what it’s for and how it works and why it exits and who and what God is (if there even is a “God” at all) — when the whole construction produces nothing but anger, crisis, violence, killing, and war…and has done so for thousands of years…isn’t it time to question some prior assumptions?
We need to talk about Who We Are and What We Believe and How We Imagine Life To Be and Where We As A Species Wish To Go, and When We Are Willing To Do What It Takes To Get There.
And we need to request, invite, plead, beg, implore, entreat, petition, ask, call on, and beseech our world’s leaders in government, politics, economics, religion, the military, education, and every area of human endeavor to place these subjects at the top of their agenda. We need to call these the Five Required Topics at any meeting that any of them have about anything whatsoever anywhere in the world at any time.
Let’s call upon our leaders now. Right now. Our world’s leaders need someone to lead them. We thought they were going to lead us, but they can’t. Or won’t. So we need to lead them.
You know who to write to. Write to them. You know whom to contact. Contact them. Then post The Agenda to Save Humanity From Itself on every website, in every newspaper or magazine Letters-to-the-Editor column, on every feedback forum of every television show, every week of your life. Do it. Once a week, every week.
Are you willing to do it?
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MAJOR CRIME SPREE HITS SARASOTA
A series of horrible crimes has hit the golden city of Sarasota, Florida, according to news reports, and the city government itself has had to marshal all of its forces — from the city manager to the police department to the depart of public works — to forestall a complete collapse of civility and safety, law and order there.
First to be arrested in a crime sweep last Sunday was 28-year-old Darren Kersey, a homeless man, who was charged with charging. He did not charge the officer who arrested him on the charge of charging, and because he was homeless he could not charge on a credit card the $500 bail required to be released on the charging charge, so the charge of charging landed him in jail for the night, where the police were put in charge of him.
To explain further, Mr. Kersey was charged with charging his cell phone at a public electric outlet in a picnic shelter in the city’s Gillespie Park. The arresting officer was not a mere patrolman, but a sergeant on the city’s police force, Anthony Frangioni, who wrote in his arrest report that he told Mr. Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy,” according to a news report in The Sarasota Herald Tribune which may be found here…
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121112/ARTICLE/121119888
Sgt. Frangioni, as a 14-year-veteran of the police force, knew a serious crime when he saw one, and took immediate action to protect the citizens of what in 2006 was labeled the “meanest city” in the nation by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless.
The charge of charging against Mr. Kersey, standing alone, might be considered a minor offense — if an offense at all — but his crime is part of a larger and escalating problem at Gillespie Park, according to news reports. Apparently, more than a few homeless people use the electrical outlet there to charge their cell phones. They carry the phones, they say, so that they are able to call 911 should they ever need to. They also try to stay in touch with whatever friends or family they have left, the Herald Tribune story said.
Residents living near the park have started complaining, not only about the charging of cell phones, but the escalating situation when a homeless woman in an electric wheelchair stopped to charge her chair. And the crime spree goes further, the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association says. According to the Herald Tribune report, the association president said in a letter to city officials that the stealing of electricity was not the only crime being committed at the location by the homeless. They were also burning wood in the park’s grills to keep warm, sleeping in the park overnight, and smoking and drinking in the park, her letter said.
To stop at least the first of these rampant crimes from continuing, the municipality recently sent a crew from the city, accompanied by a police captain, to the park to shut down all electric power at the location.
This left the homeless lady, identified as Maura “Cookie” Wood, with only an hour’s power left in her wheelchair, but it did stop the electricity theft crime wave. At least for an hour. Sixty minutes later that the park’s power was turned back on, with the city manager calling the shut-off a misunderstanding. Or, as he termed it in his own words, an “oops,” according to a follow-up Herald Tribune story, found here:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121113/ARTICLE/121119842?p=4&tc=pg
Meanwhile Mr. Kersey, the criminal originally arrested for the flagrant broad-daylight theft of the city’s electricity, said when he was interviewed later by the newspaper, that he wondered if perhaps his arrest on the charging charge might have been motivated by police Sgt. Frangioni being angry at him for walking over to the sergeant’s patrol car and snapping a picture of the car’s license plate after Mr. Kersey observed the officer arresting another homeless man for smoking in the park. Police officers have been known to react with anger when citizens try to make a record of their actions when seeking to put a stop to major offenses such as people smoking in a public park.
Such lawlessness cannot and will not be allowed in Sarasota, if press reports are to be believed. A major crackdown will apparently be required to keep the members of the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association safe.
Oh…a final note: The charging charge against Mr. Kersey was dropped when he appeared in court as ordered the morning after he spent the night in jail. Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out — but not quite soon enough. When Mr. Kersey reported for work at his new job as a laborer at a flower shop, a position he had just landed days before his arrest, he was fired for not showing up because he was in jail that morning, awaiting his arraignment in court.
But justice had been done in Sarasota, where the citizens can be proud of their police force and their city manager.
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From a spiritual point of view, what is your reaction and response to the General Petraeus/Paula Broadwell affair and the General’s resignation as head of the CIA? And what of Holly, his wife, and Scott, her husband, in all of this?
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The true purpose of romantic relationships
GOD: Let Me address Myself specifically, and at length, to human love relationships—these things which continue to give you such trouble!
When human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason.
(“Wrong,” of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that which is “right” —whatever that is! It would be more accurate in your language to say “relationships fail—change—most often when they are entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival.”)
Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them.
The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you’d like to see “show up,” not what part of another you can capture and hold.
There can be only one purpose for relationships—and for all of life: to be and to decide Who You Really Are.
It is very romantic to say that you were “nothing” until that special other came along, but it is not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not.
Not wanting to “let you down,” they try very hard to be and do these things until they cannot anymore. They can no longer complete your picture of them. They can no longer fill the roles to which they have been assigned. Resentment builds. Anger follows.
Finally, in order to save themselves (and the relationship), these special others begin to reclaim their real selves, acting more in accordance with Who They Really Are. It is about this time that you say they’ve “really changed.”
It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.
Here is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a particular other in order for you to experience, fully, Who You Are, and. . .without another, you are nothing.
This is both the mystery and the wonder, the frustration and the joy of the human experience. It requires deep understanding and total willingness to live within this paradox in a way which makes sense. I observe that very few people do.
Most of you enter your relationship-forming years ripe with anticipation, full of sexual energy, a wide open heart, and a joyful, if eager, soul.
Somewhere between 40 and 60 (and for most it is sooner rather than later) you’ve given up on your grandest dream, set aside your highest hope, and settled for your lowest expectation—or nothing at all.
The problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood: your grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self. The test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours.
Relationships are sacred because they provide life’s grandest opportunity—indeed, its only opportunity—to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of Self. Relationships fail when you see them as life’s grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of another.
Let each person in relationship worry about Self—what Self is being, doing, and having; what Self is wanting, asking, giving; what Self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationships would magnificently serve their purpose—and their participants!
Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, only about Self.
This seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form of relationship, one worries only about the other. Yet I tell you this: your focus upon the other—your obsession with the other—is what causes relationships to fail.
What is the other being? What is the other doing? What is the other having? What is the other saying? Wanting? Demanding? What is the other thinking? Expecting? Planning?
The Master understands that it doesn’t matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn’t matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that.
The most loving person is the person who is Self-centered.
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Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the bottom of the ancillary copy below.
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 1.
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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 matter of weeks. So I invite you 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 beginning his now-famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching the lives of millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day living.
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.
Neale grew into an insatiably curious child whose comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom beyond his years, and often caused relatives and family friends to ask, “Where does he come up with this stuff?” While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum.
Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer the difficult questions that he didn’t wish to address in front of the rest of the class. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum in which Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality—and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.
Joyless spirituality is observed.
Is rigidity and anger sometimes produced by religion?By the age of 15, Neale’s involvement with spiritually based teachings led him to observe that when people got involved in religion they too often seemed less joyful and more rigid, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice, separateness, and even anger. Neale concluded that for many people the collective experience of theology was not positive.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold him and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in 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 reporter and, ultimately, 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 life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.
A life-changing accident.
A desperate questioning that touches the world.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.
More than 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 the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part-time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a 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. 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,” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, “to make life work?”
The books that began a spiritual revolution.
The words that opened doors again.Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a divine answer. Neale tells us that he heard a “voiceless” voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.
More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed placed 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 that the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue created in this way was published without significant 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 renowned With God series, 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 seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.
The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms across the planet. In order to deal with the enormous global response to his writings, Neale formed the Conversations with God Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.
The work expands.
A movement begins.Neale founded the School of the New Spirituality and its CWG for Parents program to bring parents the tools to share new spirituality principles of a loving, non-condemning God with their children. He also founded Humanity’s Team, with branches in over 30 countries, now promoting the concept of the Oneness of all people and of all of life.
What Neale calls his “final creation” is The Global Conversation, an Internet Newspaper dedicated to exploring day-to-day events on our planet within the context of The New Spirituality, and offering people across the globe the opportunity to not only witness the playing out of humanity’s Cultural Story in the news, but participate in re-writing that Story, through their contributions and posted comments on the newspaper’s site.
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 Donald Walsch lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife, the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).)
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RECONCILIATION WITH GAYS, WOMEN ON NEW SPIRITUAL LEADER’S AGENDA
There is hope. Today there is a little hope. Not as much as we might have liked, but a little more than we might have expected. And that’s a better sign than it is a worse one. That’s an Up arrow, and not a Down.
On Friday the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (who is to members of the Anglican Communion something of what the Pope is to Roman Catholics — although outside of England more in a titular sense ) promised to bring “a passion for reconciliation” to his new job.
The 105th spiritual leader of the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Church is having to deal with what all of today’s global leaders — spiritual leaders, political leaders, business leaders, environmental leaders, or educational leaders — are these days encountering: an open and widening schism between “conservatives” and “liberals” in each of their fields, across the planet.
The newest global spiritual leader, Rt. Rev. Bishop Justin Welby, hopes to resolve continuing discontent within his global congregation surrounding gay marriage and women bishops. Most conservatives within the Anglican church resoundingly oppose both. The Rev. Mr. Welby says he supports “the Church of England’s opposition to same-sex marriage,” although he has stated that he is “always averse to the language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us.” The new Archbishop of Canterbury does, on the other hand, support the consecration of female bishops. So he is halfway to where a spiritual leader offering a new direction for our world might wish to place himself.
What spiritual reason there could be to oppose the uniting of loving couples who wish to commit their lives to each other, or to oppose the elevation of female clergy to top level church leadership, in each case simply on the basis of the shape of their body parts, is incomprehensible. Yet there are billions of people across the earth who apparently believe that their views in opposition are God’s views. The new Archbishop of Canterbury can, if he now chooses to, show them that God holds no such views at all. But to do this, he will have to bridge an enormous gap.
The widening schism in the ideas people hold with regard to “what God wants” was predicted in the Conversations with God books, which said that as the world moved toward the embracing of A New Spirituality, the population of Earth would essentially divide itself into those who wish to cling to the ways of the past and those who wish to adopt the ways of the future (described as more progressive and far less dogmatic).
The next 30 years will see the final struggle of this dying culture to hold on to its fading ideas, CWG predicts, but will fail to do so — with wonderful results as an outcome in the social, political, spiritual, economical, educational, and environmental arenas. This transformation to a new breed of human will not be without rising and massive opposition, however, because new and untried ideas are almost always considered by humans to be less desirable than old ideas — even old ideas that clearly do not work. At least they are known, at least they are familiar, and so, at least they are comfortable.
And while Conversations with God observes that “life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone,” it says there will be many persons, glued to Old School thought, who remain stuck, refusing to be pried from what they view not as “ideas that no longer work,” but as their most sacred principles.
An erstwhile candidate for the U.S. Senate in the State of Indiana, Richard Mourdock, perhaps exemplified this personality type when he spoke to supporters following his loss in the recent American election. In his concession speech in a race that he was widely predicted just a week ago to easily win, Mourdock said, “As I will look back on this night over the weeks, the months, the years ahead…I will look back knowing that I was attacked for standing for my principles.”
And the “principle” on which he stood? The idea that a pregnancy which results from a rape is something “that God intended,” and for that reason abortion should be opposed and outlawed — even in cases of rape or incest.
The first half of his thought is actually so radical that it could easily have come from the messages of The New Spirituality. Conversations with God says that all outcomes in life are “what God intended,” or they could not have occurred. CWG does not envision a universe in which God is somehow out of control and relegated to standing by and watching things happen that God did not want to have happen.
On the contrary, CWG says, everything that occurs — everything — happens for a reason. Everything that occurs is collaboratively created by Life itself, and by all Souls, in order to produce a Contextual Field within which, on Earth, each Individuation of Divinity (that is, each human being) may announce and declare, create and express, become and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are.
And so, Mr. Mourdock was accurate, according to The New Spirituality, in his remark. It was, according to these new spiritual messages, his conclusion that was off the mark. And it was this conclusion that pushed Indiana voters away from him in droves.
Mr. Mourdock’s conclusion was that because a pregnancy resulting from vicious and violent assault upon a woman was something God intended, the woman should not be allowed by law to have (and, in his view, should not even request or seek) an abortion. Or even the option to have an abortion.
Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who would never choose to bring life into the world that was conceived against her will and in violence on her person. Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who chooses not to endure and experience the unwanted outcome of an undeserved and brutal physical attack. Never mind if the woman wants to have the baby. She is supposed to have the baby because having the baby is what God wants, or she wouldn’t have become pregnant.
That is such convoluted thinking that it defies description. It is equaled in its astonishing lack of intelligence only by the remark by another losing Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said during his campaign that a woman’s biology automatically prevents her from conceiving an unwanted child in cases of “legitimate rape.” A female’s physiology “shuts that down,” he said — but, presumably, not in the case of illegitimate rape.
Mr. Akin’s comment is equaled in its conservative, hang-onto-the-dogma-of-the-past-no-matter-what attitude only by the remark offered by incumbent (also losing) Republican Congressional Candidate Joe Walsh in his own 2012 campaign, who said that abortion should not be allowed even to save the life of the mother because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother.
Faced with an avalanche of protest — not just from “liberals” but from the usually very conservative medical community — Mr. Walsh amended his foolish remark later by saying that “in rare instances” such a procedure might possibly be needed, but it was too late. His soon-to-be-former constituents could, apparently, only in rare instance embrace this level of mentality. He did not receive enough votes to remain in the U.S. Congress.
The list of far right wing conservatives who have made statements bordering on the absurd goes on, and typifies the pronouncements of those who insist on clinging to Old School dogma even in the face of clear and obvious evidence that their views are not simply outdated, but flatly and factually inaccurate.
But inaccuracy is not the greatest offense against the future committed by the “I’m-stuck-and-glued-to-this-place” conservatives around the world. Obstructionism is.
The Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, famously and loudly declared just weeks after the first election of Barack Obama in 2008 that the sole and only agenda of Republicans in the U.S. Congress over the ensuing four years would be to stop Mr. Obama from winning a second term.
From that day on he preached nothing to his GOP colleagues in Washington but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct — even (and especially) it the President’s idea happened to be a good one. The idea was to deny Mr. Obama credit for anything, so that the country would have to eject him from the White House.
Mr. Mourdock likewise sent a message to his constituents in a television interview months ago, just hours after he won his party’s nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” he said. “The highlight of politics,” he said, “is to inflict my opinion on someone else.” He later claimed that his remarks were either meant as a joke or where taken out of context.
It didn’t matter. The voters in Indiana found them not at all funny, rejecting Mr. Mourdock in a shocking defeat for the Republicans, who had previously called his election a sure bet.
Senator McConnell seems equally determined to completely ignore the fact that his tactics over the preceding 48 months had produced utter failure (Mr. Obama was victorious in eight of nine so-called “swing states” and won the popular vote by a margin of more than two million). Within days of Mr. Obama having been re-elected, Mr. McConnell was at it again, issuing what news reports on Politico.com called “a stark warning to Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama who see their election victories as a clear mandate to raise taxes on the rich: He won’t let it happen.”
And so, America seems to be in for another four years of Republican obstructionism, in which the value of anyone’s ideas is deemed less important than the source of them. If they come from Democrats, they must be labeled bad, and they must be defeated, no matter what. No matter who suffers. Even if it is your own country.
But what we are seeing is not just about a particular political party. It is about “conservatism” versus “liberalism” all over the world. It is about, in some very large ways, “yesterday” versus “tomorrow.”
In spirituality it is about Yesterday’s God vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God. In economics it is about Yesterday’s Commerce vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Commerce. In the environment it is about Yesterday’s Ecology vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God Ecology. In politics it is about Yesterday’s Solutions vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Solutions. In the culture and society it is about Yesterday’s Cultural Mores vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Cultural Mores.
(For instance, several states in the U.S. voted to legalize same sex marriage last week; as well, some states voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Both stances were considered impossible to consider just one or two elections ago.)
Soon, these issues — just as the issue of whether the government should have any say, much less be able to intervene, in a woman’s decision on abortion — will be considered Resolved Questions. The American electorate will be ready to move on. On to other cultural/social issues, such as Gun Control, and the Death Penalty.
Soon, the obvious and painfully hypocritical position of conservatives that an unborn fetus may not be aborted in the name of “life” — not even in the name of saving the life of the mother — but a fully grown adult may be killed in the name of “justice,” will be called out for what it is: another astonishingly unintelligent idea to be thrown on the trash heap of yesterday.
It is as a reader on this website commented just recently, regarding the American election:
Comment by Pat on November 9, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Small steps. We’re still divided, but we did send a message. Some think the message was intended for our leaders and representatives. I think the message is one we sent to ourselves. Some of us realize now that we are not alone – that there are other people who share our desire to get away from the current religious and cultural foundation that is based on ‘hostility to the other.’ The tide is changing, and as always the old and broken will be swept away in due course…
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What is your honest, non-vitriolic, non-verbally-assaulting, simple, thoughtful, and contemplative reaction to the re-election of Barack Obama as President of the United States?
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Is agreement about God ‘boring’?
Is there something sad about the following posted comment by a recent visitor here, or is it just me…?
My last entry in this space had to do with Who and What God Is…and following what I wrote, this observation was offered by a reader…
Comment by Buzz on November 1, 2012 at 11:49 am…
Subject matter like this is boring because everyone is in complete agreement.So what I “get” from this is that unless I write something about which there is “disagreement,” what I am writing is “boring.” And the irony is that when I write something about which there is “disagreement” (such as my political stories in recent days), I get lambasted here and on Facebook (many fb followers read articles here and post their reactions there) for not sticking with my “mission” as a “spiritual teacher” and for “taking sides” on political or social issues.
What this comes down to is, “Heads you lose, tails you lose.” Of course, it is not really, in my mind, a game of “win or lose,” and I don’t hold it that way. I simply share what I feel within my authentic experience, and the “chips fall” where they may. But I do find it ironic nonetheless that whether I write things with which people are in agreement, or things with which people disagreement, I’m somehow “not doing it right.”
We’re an interesting species, are we not…?
And I personally find it a bit sad that because something I have written falls into the category of things with which people agree, it is labeled as “boring.” Which leads me to a question…
Is agreement boring?
Could this be the reason that human beings sometimes seem to actively seek disagreement and conflict? Yet isn’t “reaching agreement” supposedly the goal on important matters. Will it be “boring” if the Congress reaches agreement with President Obama on how to avoid the “fiscal cliff” that is now, with the election finally past us, the “talk of the town” on all the news shows and talk shows and in all the newspapers and news magazines this week?
I must say, I was just a bit surprised to see agreement about Who and What God Is described by an intelligent person as “boring.” How, if this is the way people think, are we ever to get excited about God, about Life, about The New Spirituality, and about a new way of being human? Only if we disagree about it? And how do we share with others that which is called “boring” and make it exciting, inspiring, and igniting?
Is Buzz’ reaction typical of the majority of humanity? What do you think? Does our species need to observe, if not produce, disagreement in order to retain interest in commentary, observations, and messages that we all might benefit from being shared?
What are your thoughts about that…?