Life provides us all with an interesting path. But to where?, we wonder. To where are we going?

Our religions and our philosophies have tried to answer that question. They have not done well. No answer seems to suffice for all of the people asking. Some people accept one answer, others accept another, and still others say there is no answer at all — that every answer anyone has come up with from the beginning of time has been nothing but pure conjecture. This last group is right, of course. There is no way to know the answer to life’s biggest question for sure. We can decide that the answer we have found (by whatever means) is “the” answer, but that doesn’t make it the answer, that merely makes it our personal conjecture.

This is, of course, the position that I have taken from the beginning regarding my conversations with God. Do I believe that I have had interactions, directly, with The Divine? I truly do. Is it my lived experience? It surely is. And I can tell you why I believe it so firmly.

One of the reasons (and by far, not the only one) is that I was told things in my conversations with God that I had never heard from any source before in my life…that I had never even thought of or imagined prior to this dialogue…but that nevertheless offered great wisdom, powerful insight, and some of the most logical and probable conclusions.  Things that, much to my surprise, other people told me later, after reading CWG, that they found in the writings and articulations of both ancient and contemporary spiritual teachers from many traditions — teachers whose works I had never read (or, often, ever heard of).

Does that mean I could not have come up with thoughts in my mind that, by sheer coincidence or happenstance, unwittingly duplicated the pronouncements of others from, in some cases, many centuries earlier? No, of course not. I could very well have done exactly that, pulling ideas and notions from the stream of the collective unconscious, or the field of morphic resonance (see Carl Jung/Rupert Sheldrake, et al). It is not my experience that I did. It is my experience that I had a simple and direct conversation with God — and that all people everywhere are having the same experience all the time, and simply calling it something else. But even the CWG dialogue itself clearly advises readers not to “believe” a word of it. Compare its message to your own experience, the dialogue says, and embrace what that process tells you is true for you.

So maybe we’re not “going” anywhere at all. Maybe this is not a “journey” in any sense of the word. Maybe life is simply and merely an experience; something we are undergoing while we are undergoing it, taking us nowhere and getting us no place. An experience without purpose or intent, meaning or reason. Something that begins without our assent, and ends in most cases seemingly equally arbitrarily.

Just. Something. That. Is. Happening.

Yet if that is all that it is, what shall be our guideline regarding how it is happening? Do we even have any control over that? If only in our individual lives, do we have even the slightest control over that? Is life happening TO us, or is it happening THROUGH us? Are we at any non-physical level at cause in the matter? Can we be?

Is there anything at all to this idea that, as people think, so will it be done unto them? And there’s a larger question lurking behind this one. Even if so-called “positive thinking” does nothing more than affect one’s mind and body chemistry in a good way, would that in itself not be enough to make the process of affirmative declaration valuable as a tool?

Inquiring minds want to know.

There has been quite a conversation ongoing here in recent days about the place of beliefs within the human experience.

There are those who say that the holding of any belief whatsoever is the problem with the human species, and is what renders us so dysfunctional. Every conclusion human beings come to should be based on observable and hopefully replicable evidence, they suggest, or should be rejected out of hand as inadmissible in any serious discussion or decision.

I find this a fascinating point of view — and I see much merit in personally and privately insisting within ourselves that some form of evidence be present with regard to the things we that say are so before we make a definite assertion about it.

On the other hand, I sincerely wonder if taking such a position with dogmatic rigidity and without exception eliminates from genuine consideration in our lives a good deal of what could turn out to be highly useful and extremely beneficial information — to say nothing of greatly reducing the possibility of wondrous experiences.

I think of First Love, for example. When someone says “I love you” to us, I assume that in most cases we have at least a little background and/or evidence upon which to make a judgment as to whether it is true. But what about the person who says it to us for the first time? Do we respond by saying: “Prove it”— ? Or do we accept it on face value because we “believe” it to be true?

Yet on what basis do we foundation our belief? Could it be, heaven forbid, that we “have faith” in what we’ve heard, and accept it without a shred of evidence? I want to suggest that more than a few wonderful life partnerships have been inspired and initiated by such a “belief.”

So I wonder: Is it possible that we can “know” things that we have no evidence to support, and that we can actually turn out to be “right” about that? Can we intuit things? Can we simply “feel” that something is true — and can that feeling reveal a validity that only later is found to be supported by “evidence”? Or, for that matter, that is never supported by any evidence, save one’s internal experience?

Is there any value at all in taking anything on faith? I ask this question sincerely, not as a smarmy inquiry meant to presuppose a “right” answer. I ask sincerely: Where does Evidence-Free Internal Experience fit into the Protocol or Convention of those who say that Only That Which is Factually Supported and Physically Provable is a Legitimate Entry into the ledger of Beneficial Human Encounter?

Is there no spiritual solution, can there by no effective and impacting spiritual response to the events in our world today? Whether it’s the breakdown of the cease fire in Syria or the rioting, burning, pillaging and looting in the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, or the openly public testing of rockets and nuclear weapons by North Korea, everywhere we look today we find death, anger, suffering, threats, agitation, deep and bitter unrest and unending turmoil.

How is the human race to take care of itself? Can we not even find a way to simply get along with each other? Are our differences so great that we cannot resolve them except by killing? And where is the spiritual leadership in all of this?

Annette Albright, a woman who attended one of the protests on Charlotte’s streets, was quoted in a report on CNN saying that persons in the protesting group who were misbehaving need direction.

“We don’t have leadership that this crowd can relate to,” CNN reported that Albright said. “We know how to protest and have our voices heard in a civilized way, but who is going to teach the younger crowd? Church leaders need to get out there and tell these kids that this is not the right way.”

The Charlotte protests arose following the shooting of a black man, Keith Lamont Scott, by police. The chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, Kerr Putney, said Mr. Scott was approached while sitting in his vehicle in an apartment complex. Police were there to serve a warrant on another individual, but saw Mr. Scott in the vehicle, allegedly holding a handgun. Chief Putney told reporters that police repeatedly told Mr. Scott to put the gun down, but Mr. Scott did not obey the order. That is when he was shot, the police chief, who is also black, said. The officer who shot Mr. Scott is white, and Mr. Scott’s death caused the city to erupt into racial protests and violence.

The problem, of course, is that this is not an isolated incident. Nor is the unrelenting death and suffering in Syria. Nor is the sword-rattling by North Korea. The whole planet seems to be losing its bearings, and no one — not one national leader, not one global religious or spiritual figure — has so far stepped forward with an appeal or a response that appears capable of touching people’s hearts sufficiently to drive an effort forward that could bring to an end an entire species’ apparent headlong fall into self-destruction.

I wrote about this in the days after 9-11 in 2001 — and what I wrote then is every bit as relevant today, and could just as easily be applied to the events and circumstances making headlines in this moment. These events cause every thinking person to stop their daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a message the human race has largely ignored.

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

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

Being right.

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

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

Can this be sound advice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all one.

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

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

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

The following inquiries, made in the depth of our own soul, and used by us to invite others into their own soul searching, could change the world.

The Three Persistent Questions

1. How is it possible that 6.9 billion people can all claim to want the same thing (peace, security, opportunity, prosperity, happiness, and love) and be singularly unable to get it?
2. Is it possible that there is something we do not fully understand about life, the understanding of which would change everything?
3. Is it possible that there is something we do not fully understand about ourselves, about our own life and its purpose, the understanding of which would shift our reality and alter our experience for the better, forever?

These are powerful questions. They deserve answers. They at least deserve being asked. Yet are great numbers of people asking them? Are politicians? No. Presidents and prime ministers, kings and heads of state? No. Religious figures? No. Educators? Not many. Military generals and admirals? No. Leaders of business and industry? No. Ordinary people at their dinner table? Well, yes, possibly. Beginning now. Perhaps. Beginning now.

Ordinary people like you and I will now be asking these questions all over the planet. And when we finish asking the first three, we’ll then move to…

The Four Fundamental Questions Of Life

1. Who am I?
2. Where am I?
3. Why am I where I am?
4. What do I intend to do about that?

I do not believe that one can ignore these questions and rapidly evolve. None of us can. We must end any personal confusion we may have around these questions (there are many other questions in life, but these are foundational), or we will go through our days and nights having no idea what we’re doing or why we’re doing it.

This is the situation with most people on the earth today. And that is the reason why the world is in the condition that it’s in.

I did not move forward in my life until I answered the Four Fundamental Questions of Life. (And by the way, I answer them daily. Sometimes during the day as events transpire. Used in this way, these questions are not only informative, they are transformative.)

And the first of these four is the real key. It unlocks everything. It invites us to look deeply at the biggest mystery, the mystery of our own identity. By that I don’t mean, of course, our name. I mean our identity in the cosmos.

There is no “right answer” to this question, there is only the answer you give.

The second question seems simple, but its answer may not be. Where am I?

Where do you conceive of yourself as being? That is, what is this place in which we experience our existence? How do you conceive of it? How do you hold it in your reality?

I am speaking here of how you hold it conceptually, yes? I’m not talking about your physical description of this place (“I live on planet Earth. It is the third rock from the sun…,” etc.), I am referring to your conceptual understanding of this space. Is it a place of learning, a school?

Do you experience it as a place of testing, an examination room? Is it a place of proving or contesting or competing, like a giant racetrack or an athletic field, where some are winners and some are losers?

Do you have no conceptual reference point for this space, and truly conceive of it only as a physical location in a larger system of planets whizzing around a star?

What is this place in which we find ourselves? The mind begs to know…Where am I?

Again, there is no “right” answer to this question. Yet until I gave it some answer, I had no conceptual framework within which to hold my life’s experience. And absent such a framework, those experiences themselves felt essentially meaningless. No different from those of a fly or an ant. I felt that I was simply a more sophisticated life form. I had a life expectancy and, barring unforeseen circumstances, I knew I would be here for x amount of time, but what is this place?

And then, the next question looms: Why?

Why am I where I am? Why am I not somewhere else? Is there a “somewhere else”? What is the purpose of my being in this time and place? Is there a purpose? Who would give it one?

I don’t know how a person advances in their evolution without giving some thought—and eventually, some sort of answer—to these questions.

Many people respond to these questions with a curt “I don’t know” and let it go at that. I couldn’t do that. And I don’t encourage any true students of life to do that. If they truly don’t have an answer, I encourage them to create one. That is, decide what their answer is, out of pure intention. In this way they live their life from Intention rather than living their life by default.

A life lived by default is a life lived according to the Default Responses of the majority of people on the earth. I hope that none of you ever again chooses to live your life like that. Most of us have lived at least portions of our lives in this way, but we never have to again if we do not want to.

The last inquiry

This leads to the final question. Not just the final question in this series of seven, but what could be, metaphorically, The Final Important Question of Life: Having given your answers to all the other questions, you are invited to decide, What do you intend to do about that?

This is always the final question in life. In every situation, in every circumstance, in every moment that our experience presents, the question always and forever is: What do I intend to do about that?

Life proceeds out of your intentions for it. This is the fuel that drives the engine of creation in your life.

It is important to understand that life is nothing but energy. It is energy organized. And who does the organizing? We do. Surprisingly, the answer is…us.

Life is pure energy that circles back into itself. That is, life is a self-fuelling, self-sustaining, self-determining, and self-creating process. It depends on itself, relies on itself, and looks to itself to tell itself what the next expression of itself shall be.

This is true universally, it is true globally, it is true nationally, it is true locally, and it is true individually. It is merely a matter of proportion. And so we see the Universe deciding about itself in this way, our planet deciding about itself in this way, our nation deciding about itself in this way, our own city or community deciding about itself in this way, and our own person deciding about itself in this way. Life informs Life about Life through the process of Life Itself.

Why am I where I am? Why am I not somewhere else? Is there a “somewhere else”? What is the purpose of my being in this time and place? Is there a purpose? Who would give it one?

Life’s information creates life in formation. At the most personal level, your information creates you, in formation. You are constantly forming and reforming yourself, shaping and reshaping yourself, creating and re-creating yourself anew. Indeed, the function of life is to re-create yourself anew in each golden moment of Now, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.

That’s all of it, in a nutshell. That’s what’s going on here. All of humanity is engaged in this process. We are doing it politically, we are doing it economically, we are doing it culturally, we are doing it racially, we are doing it socially, we are doing it sexually, we are doing it spiritually. This is all we are doing and we’re not doing anything else.

This is what God is doing. God is re-creating Itself anew in the single and only moment called Now—and life is God, doing this. Life is God, expressing Itself in an endless multiplicity of forms. You are one of the forms of God. You are, all of you, God’s information. And thus, Gods… in formation.

Note: Work with Neale Donald Walsch in London, England on October 22 2016.  Click this link:

http://www.hayhouse.co.uk/lectures-events/event-tours/neale-donald-walsch-london-2

I am intrigued and impressed with the fascinating explorations and observations posted on this site recently by Mewabe regarding the future of our civilization on this planet.

Among other things, Mewabe has offered the idea that humanity is heading for a collective disaster the likes of which we have never known because “we are destroying this divine creation, looking for God, love and enlightenment in all the wrong places, such as in religions that define nature to be fallen, while science, the other ruling god of our world, also defines nature to be of no spiritual value.”

Mewabe adds: “This is why this global civilization is doomed, because it is out of touch with spiritual reality, from life, the world now being populated by human creatures who are disconnected from themselves and from all life, and literally lost in their minds.”

I must say that to a large degree I agree. Some of these ideas and conclusions, articulated in my own way, will be found in my book The Storm Before the Calm, which is posted in its entirety on this website. My point in making that statement: I think many of us are seeing the same thing. Specifically, the end of life “as we know it” on the Earth.

The question is, how much misery are we as a species going to have to endure before those remaining in future generations can get on with the business of continuing to live on this “third rock from the sun,” and evolve the species sufficiently to continue its existence?

The second question is, what will it take for us to do so? I can tell you that my own thought about it is that it will have nothing to do with political interventions around the world, nor with military actions, nor with social engineering, nor with technological achievements or medical miracles or scientific advances. None of these things are going to “save the day” for humanity.

There is only one thing that will, in my view, and that is a resurgence of individual spiritual transformation, through an expansion of consciousness that heightens our awareness of who we are, where we are, why we are here, and what we have the opportunity to do about that.

By spiritual transformation I mean to suggest a shifting of the very way in which we hold ourselves in our own perception. If we continue to see ourselves as not much more than mammals living upon a planet of diminishing resources, we will live an “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die” existence, turning our future into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If, on the other hand, we are startlingly awakened by the upheaval of events sufficiently to admit, finally and at long last, that there is something we have not understood about Who We Are and what we are doing here on Earth, we stand a chance to survive as a species — albeit, as Mewabe suggests, in an entirely different way, living an entirely different kind of life, for entirely different purposes and with entirely different objectives, producing entirely different experiences and realities.

There is another way to produce this outcome, however. We could make this shift in understanding in advance of any self-created upheaval, side-stepping it at least in part, and thus reducing the amount of death, suffering and anxiety we have to go through in order to evolve our species.

I do not see this, though, as a group effort. That is, no religion, no social movement, no political party, no organization espousing particular objectives and supporting those who agree, is going to produce this expanded understanding and turn it into our jointly held experience. This is going to have to be an individual effort. It will have to be done on a one-by-one basis. At the very least, at the outset. There may be some “snowball rolling downhill” effect later on, but humanity’s present inertia will only be broken by individual after individual after individual reaching a level of spiritual clarity such as to finally and ultimately produce critical mass.

That means the work is up to you and me. We can stop looking to political leaders (as the recent election campaign in the U.S. is demonstrating clearly), we can forget about being inspired by religious figures (who are moving entirely too slowly to keep up with the speedily advancing need for spiritual enlightenment), and we can release any hope that we’ll find our opening through the work of social activists (who are focused on an entirely misplaced set of objectives).

If the generation of our children and our children’s children is to find itself living in, and joyfully co-creating the expansion of, the world of humanity’s highest potential, it will only be because enough of us did the lonely work of personal transformation. Side by side, if we are amazingly lucky, with a collaborative life partner or beloved personal friend accompanying us in this undertaking, but very few others available to diminish our sense of isolation. We are going to have to rely on the God of our understanding as our primary source of companionship on the journey.

Indeed, it will be our conversations with God that will have to supply us with our encouragement and our enlightenment. I observe that no currently existing group or collective is even close to being able to do so.

And the purpose of our individual spiritual work will not be to change the world, but to bring our own unique experience of being human to the level of the Divine, that we may complete the Agenda of our Soul, and fulfill its purpose for bringing us here. This, and only this, can produce, almost as a side effect, the experience of humanity’s collective transformation.

It is my everlasting hope that your own conversations with God will invite you to this encounter and open you to its successful conclusion: the uniting of your Human and Divine self, bringing you peace, joy, comfort, tranquility, wisdom, and everlastingly unconditional love at last as part of your life itself, realized in moment-to-moment expression.

I have just returned from Bulgaria and Italy, where I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to hundreds of people about the foremost challenge facing our species today. That challenge is to solve this continuing riddle:

How is it possible that 8 billion members of a single species could all say they want the same thing — survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love — and be utterly unable to produce it…even after trying for thousands of years?

Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about about Life, the understanding of which would change everything? Could there be something we do not fully understand about ourselves, and about each other, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

If we do not solve this mystery, we run the risk of bringing a sad ending to The Human Experiment on this planet within the next half century — or sooner. We will absolutely end our adventure here if we simply refuse to even acknowledge that the questions exist, much less that it is fair to ask them and vital to answer them.

I have written the following in the Introduction to my next book, Understanding Humanity/Demonstrating Divinity (to be published in 2017):

The problem is, most human beings do not know who they are. There is enormous confusion about our True Nature and our Real Identity.

Actually, there’s more than confusion. There’s denial. Innocent, but widespread, denial.

Put confusion and denial together and you’ve got the perfect recipe for making big mistakes. Or, to put it another way, decision-making in life on Earth.

We’ve made some progress, yes. Apologists will point out how far humanity has advanced as a civilization. And they are accurate in pointing out that things are not as bad as they used to be. But is that it? Is that the most we can say about our global experience? Can we at least also say that our civilization has at last become civilized?

You be the judge.

More than 1.5 billion people do not have electricity on this planet in this, the 21^st Century. A higher number, over 1.6 billion, have no access to clean water. A much higher number still, over 2.5 billion, do not have basic sanitation. That’s right, in the first quarter of the 21^st century over a quarter of the world’s people are without toilets.

But these are simply inconveniences. Some 19,000 children die each day on this planet from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Wait. We’re not done. Over 650 children die every hour on Earth of starvation.

In the meantime, 85 of the world’s richest people hold more wealth than 3.5 billion…that’s half the planet’s population…combined. And the value system of millions insists there’s nothing wrong with this, and that this final statistic has nothing to do with the earlier ones.

So what do you think? Are we a civilized species?

We’re still creating and threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction as our only defense in a global community that has found it impossible to create a way to simply get along. Is this civilized?

We’re still killing human beings intentionally as a means of teaching human beings that killing humans beings intentionally is not okay—and we fail to see the contradiction. Does this make sense?

We’re still claiming that a loving God does not want people who cherish each other to marry each other if they are the same gender as each other—or even if they are not the same gender, but are of different races, religions, tribes or cultures. Is this our definition of love?

We’re still brutally killing and eating the flesh of other intelligent animals, pretending that they’re not intelligent enough to know that they are suffering from how they are raised and how they are slaughtered—or that it doesn’t matter even if they do experience suffering. Is this how we measure what we label that which is humane?

We’re still smoking and ingesting known carcinogens, ignoring how huge numbers of us are suffering from what we are doing to ourselves, and we’re still abusing alcohol and drugs, pretending that these are substances we can handle—all the while we’re not handling them at all. Is this a measure of our intelligence?

And it’s not just each of our individual behaviors that raise the question of whether we’re civilized. Today even a casual observer can see that not one of the collaboratively created systems, institutions and devices that our civilization has put into place to help us become civilized is doing anything of the sort.

It’s worse than that. They’re actually doing exactly the opposite.

Our political systems are creating nothing but disagreement and disarray. Our economic systems are actually increasing poverty and the divide between those who have more than enough and those who have not nearly enough. Our social systems are actually increasing disparity, prejudice, injustice and despair.

And perhaps most dysfunctional of all, our spiritual systems are producing not a deeper sense of godliness and goodwill, unity and oneness among Earth’s people, but, instead, the kind of intolerance, anger, cruelty, hatred, and righteousness that leads not just to holier-than-thou separation, but to holier-than-thou killing.

What gives here? What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see what it’s doing to itself? Where is humanity’s blind spot?

Might it be time to ask those questions above? I’ve asked them before, in other writings, in television interviews, and in workshops, seminars, and lectures across the globe. But the questions keeps arising, now more insistently than ever, leading us to ask another question:

Is there any hope? Are we really nothing more than a species of immature beings run amok, blowing up H-bombs under the ground to prove our invincibility while dismantling our planet’s under-layer in the process—then wondering why we’re seeing such an increase is earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes?

Have we so lost our collective mind as to think that the way to stop terrorism and killing on our streets and in our schools is for everybody in the world to carry a gun, reverting back to America’s Wild West when the most important question was, “Who is quickest on the draw?”

Have we so lost our collective will as to simply throw up our hands in frustration as wars and battles for supremacy create refugee crises rendering millions homeless?

Have we so lowered our collective standards as to find it actually preferable for divisiveness, rudeness, insults and tasteless verbal bullying to become the hallmark of political leadership?

Is this what we have come to? Gun-toting, fist-pumping, verbal-bashing, jaw-jutting, loud-mouthed intimidators and strong-armed tyrants daring anyone to stand up for what is gentle, peaceful, compassionate, understanding, forgiving, and—God forbid—loving?

If we can’t even agree on how to disagree, can we possibly agree on how to be agreeable? Can we ever become experientially aware that there is such a thing as Divinity—much less be Divinely inspired, Divinely motivated, Divinely activated, Divinely expressed, and Divinely realized in our daily lives?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

But what the world needs now is a different approach to explaining our gentle, loving Deity, replacing our fearful, righteous and condemning way of warning each other about what so many have claimed for so long to be a fearful, righteous, and condemning God.

We need a sweet, kind, and tender way of exploring how we may all know and experience our highest self and express our True Nature. And that starts with understanding.

We’re being invited by the increasingly challenging events of Life Itself to move to a new level of comprehension regarding who we really are, why we are really here, and what we are really able, and choosing, to express and experience.

We’ve solved scientific mysteries, we’ve performed medical miracles, we’ve created technological marvels, but we have failed to solve the most fundamental problem: How to simply get along. We have also failed to understand the one thing we would most benefit from understanding: Ourselves.

For our species, understanding Humanity and its relationship to Divinity must be the next most worthy goal, the next most important objective, the next most urgent undertaking if we are to collectively create a life that allows our species to move forward, not backward, on its evolutionary path, and if we are to each live a life that makes sense to our soul.

Understanding Humanity will equip us to eliminate our human-made problems, and will give us the tools to meet many of the challenges that we have claimed and declared to be presented by Nature as well (ignoring, in the past, the fact that human choices, decisions, and actions have produced so many of them).

Understanding Humanity thus is—for our entire species and for you, individually—the Most Urgent Exploration. Everything else pales in importance by comparison. So then, shall we get on with it?

In Part III of this series I said that in Part IV we would explore the civilizations of Highly Evolved Beings, and the model we can use on Earth, should we choose to change humanity’s current trajectory from self-destruction to self-recreation and self-realization.

I have turned to the third book in the Conversations with God series for my information about this. In its description of Highly Evolved Beings (there are many such species, we are told, living on other planets in our vast Universe) we see that there are major differences between how “HEBs” (as they are called in the dialogue) organize and live their lives, and how humans do.

As one example: In highly evolved cultures, children don’t raise children. Offspring are given to Elders to raise.

This doesn’t mean that new offspring are torn from those who gave them life, taken from their arms and given to virtual strangers to raise. It is nothing like that. In these cultures, Elders live closely with the young ones. They are not shuffled off to live by themselves. They are not ignored, and left to work out their own final destinies. They are paid homage and held close, as part of a loving, caring, vibrant community.

When a new offspring arrives, they are not expected to learn about the basics of life from beings who are still learning about the basics of life themselves. In HEB societies, offspring always know who their “parents” are (the closest term in their language would be “Life Givers”) — and they love, honor, and revere their Life Givers — but it is the Elders who organize and supervise the learning process, as well as housing, feeding, and caring for the children. Offspring are raised in an environment of wisdom and love, great, great patience, and deep understanding.

The Young Procreators within the species are usually off somewhere, meeting the challenges and experiencing the joys of their own just-beginning adult lives. They may spend as much time with their offspring as they choose. They may even live in the dwelling of the Elders with the children. But it is the Elders who do the raising, who take the responsibility for the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual development of the progeny.

It is all a very unified, integrated experience. And it is an honor for the Elders, for upon them is placed the responsibility for the future of the entire species. In HEB societies it is recognized that this is more than should be asked of Young Procreators.

And this is just one of the differences between the societies and cultures of Highly Evolved Beings and of Human Beings. Here’s another: Highly Evolved Beings don’t compete. They realize that when one loses, everyone loses.

Highly Evolved Beings, therefore, do not create sports and games that teach children (and perpetuate in adults) the extraordinary thought that someone “winning” while another is “losing” is entertainment.

Highly Evolved Beings also share everything. When another is in need, they would never dream of keeping or hoarding something they had, simply because it was in scarce supply. On the contrary, that would be their very reason for sharing it. In Human society, the price goes up for that which is rare, if humans share it at all. In this way humans ensure that, if they are going to share something they “possess,” at least they’ll be enriched by doing it.

Highly Evolved Beings are also enriched by sharing rare things. The only thing that is different between HEBs and Humans is how HEBs define “being enriched.” A HEB feels “enriched” by sharing everything freely, without needing to “profit” beyond the feeling and the full experiencing of their True Identity.

Not all human beings feel they need to profit from sharing, of course. Still, as a global culture, this is the predominant behavior.

It is for precisely this reason that over 650 children die every hour — every hour — of starvation on a planet where there is more than enough food for everyone. It is for precisely this reason that 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, and that billions have no access to health care. (Some 19,000 children die each day from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.)

It is for precisely this reason that 1.7 billion people lack clean water, that 2.6 billion live without basic sanitation, and that 1.6 billion people have no electricity.

It was in 1752 that Benjamin Franklin conducted his experiments on electricity. The English scientist William Gilbert was working on better understanding and describing the phenomenon in 1600. And today, 400 years later, a quarter of humanity still has not experienced the benefits of it.

There is a way to change all this, and that is for us to change our thinking. About just about everything. About Who we are and Where we are and Why we are where we are, and finally, about What we are invited to do about that.

Just exactly what is the experience we’re having on Earth right now? It is what I have called the overhaul of humanity. It is what I have called The Storm Before the Calm. An entire book has been produced about this, and it is printed in its entirety right here on this website. Have you read it? It offers solutions to the challenges and problems facing our species right now. And it doesn’t even cost anything to read it. It’s offered right here, for free.

The series of commentaries of which this is the final entry was meant to open up a larger exploration, a larger discussion; to ignite a deeper desire; to stimulate an immediate determination not to solve the world’s problems, but to solve our own. Not to meet the world’s challenges, but to meet our own. Not to overcome the world’s obstacles, but to overcome our own.

For until more of us overcome our individual obstacles, whatever they are, to embracing, expressing, and experiencing our True Identity; until more of us understand our Real Nature and commit to demonstrating and exemplifying it; until more of us on this planet become clear that the most important objective in every moment is not survival, but REvival of our Forgotten Selves and our Only Reason for being, we will change nothing in our collective experience, but only repeat it.

Our evolutionary invitation is to advance from residing in and functioning from our reptilian brain to our mammalian brain to our human brain to our supernal brain. Our evolutionary opportunity is to graduate from a tribal culture to a global culture to a universal culture. Our evolution process is to raise the vibratory frequency of our love from philia to eros to agape.

There are ways to do this, and it starts in the human heart, in the human mind, in the human soul. And in the individual human heart, mind, and soul.

In other words, it starts with you.

It seems that these days, perhaps more than ever before, the tide of events in human lives — both globally and individually — is turning against us. War and unspeakable violence plagues the planet. Fires rage across the landscape, ravaging hundreds of miles and displacing thousands. Verbal bullies and insulting demagogues run for office and find the support of cheering millions, leading others to wonder: Is this what we’ve come to?

Are we really nothing more than a species of sentient beings run amok, blowing up H-bombs under the ground to prove our invincibility, ending people’s lives by injection to demonstrate our righteousness, allowing hundreds of children to die of starvation every hour as we defend a global economy that benefits one-tenth of the planet’s population?

Have we so lost our collective mind as to think that the way to stop gun violence is for everybody in the world to carry a gun? Have we so lost our collective will as to find no way to stop the aggression that creates refugee crises rendering millions homeless? Have we so lost our collective morals as to find it actually preferable for divisiveness, rudeness, insults and tasteless verbal bullying to become the hallmark of political leadership?

Is this, really and truly, what we have come to? Gun-toting, fist-pumping, verbal-bashing, jaw-jutting, loud-mouthed intimidators and strong-armed tyrants daring anyone to stand up for what is gentle, peaceful, and loving?

Those who have read Conversations with God know what God has said in that dialogue: “The good news is, you don’t have to go through hell to get to Heaven.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can’t prove it by me,” some of us may be tempted to say. But it’s true. And there are those among us who have proven it.

We can be among those. That is the promise of The Divine.

Those are the words I used to end Part II of this extended series of commentaries. Now I would like to explore this: If there really are those among us who have proven that life does not have to be a hellish experience, how are they doing it? What is their secret?

Of equal urgency, is there any way to apply their secret to the affairs of the world at large, so to change the seemingly impossible-to-end collective experience of violent conflict between humans and utter disregard for the caring of humanity’s home planet?

The answer to the second question is yes, but what it will take is a shift in global consciousness. That’s so obvious that I’m almost tired of hearing myself say it. It seems so trite that it’s almost embarrassing to speak it. It sounds, even to my ears, utterly simplistic. Yet it remains immutably and undeniably true.

But how to achieve this? That’s the question. Or perhaps more to the point: Is it even achievable — soon enough to do the world any good?

Do we have to destroy our entire way of life, and hope that the few who survive our human-made global calamites will see, finally, at long last, what we have done to ourselves, admit that we have done it by our abject stubbornness in refusing to accept our role in it all, and raise our collective awareness sufficiently to determine that it is our individual and collective consciousness that must be changed before our collectively created outcomes can be?

Evolution may take care of things in the long run, but do we have to wait another 5,000 years before we “get” what we need to “get” in order to create what we say we want to create as a way of life on this planet? The question is urgent, because, of course, there are scientists and sociologists who tell us we may not have as much as 50 more years, much less 5,000, before our present way of living brings an end to our present way of living — if not to living at all — on this earth.

So what is the trick here? What do those who have found a way to take the hell out of their lives know that we do not know; what do they do that we do not do?

The answer: They know how to live as Highly Evolved Beings. They no longer choose to live as children. They have spiritually matured.

Spiritual maturation is not a process that requires time. It requires commitment. It can occur instantaneously with a deep commitment to Remembering. A Highly Evolved Being simply remembers what is already known, but has been forgotten.

The tree outside the window has had to learn nothing to become a mighty oak. All that it needs was encoded in the seed from which it emerged. And if God so loved the world as to encode in this way the seed of a tree, would God not all the more encode you?

Indeed. In this way, and even more. For what God encoded in all sentient beings is Consciousness. That is, the ability to know — and to know that they know, through remembering — all that is encoded in the seed itself. Thus are sentient beings able to experience their Totally Remembered Identity instantly, through the process of Spontaneous Demonstration.

Children spontaneously demonstrate their knowledge of who they are — until they’re talked out of it. The challenge before the adults of our species is to talk themselves back into what they knew at the beginning, before they were persuaded to deny, sublimate, or simply forget it.

Remembering what they knew at the beginning, and demonstrating it, was the process and the product of Lao Tzu. It was the process and the product of Buddha. It was the process and the product of Moses. This was the process and the product of Mother Mary. This was the process and the product of Jesus. (Remember how, at the age of 12, he taught the Pharisees at the Temple, who asked, marveling: “How does this child come to know these things?”)

This was the process and the product of Beatrice of Nazareth. This was the process and the product of Catherine of Genoa. This was the process and the product of Muhammed. This was the process and the product of Hildegard of Bingen This was the process and the product of Bahá’u’lláh.

This was the process and the product of all the Great Masters, male or female, ancient or contemporary, who moved through the world, and who do so today, in such a way as to make it unnecessary for them to “go through hell” in order to experience Heaven within.

When whole groups of people do this at once, they create an entire society of Highly Evolved Beings. We are told in Conversations with God that such civilizations exist in our Universe, and our species on this planet can turn itself into such a cosmic society also.

Having said all of that, the key question has still not been answered. What could cause, what will it take to create, a shift in global consciousness? The answer is: Observation. Individual, and group, observation. That is the commitment for which we must push.

We must push each member of our species to commit to engaging in continuous, quiet, fully attentive Observation. Some spiritual traditions call this “Presence” or “Mindfulness” or “Awareness.” CWG uses a new word in this context — observation — to bring freshness to its description of this way of being.

The differences between human cultures and highly evolved cultures, CWG says, is that Highly Evolved Beings:

1 Observe fully
2 Communicate truthfully

When you observe fully, you see things plainly. When you communicate truthfully, you say things plainly. You see and say things like this:

If your objective is to live a life of peace, joy, and love, it is observable that violence does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to live a life of good health and great longevity, it is observable that consuming dead flesh, smoking known carcinogens, and drinking volumes of nerve-deadening, brain-frying liquids does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to raise offspring free of violence and rage, it is observable that putting them directly in front of vivid depictions of violence and rage for years does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to care for Earth, and wisely husband her resources, it is observable that acting as if those resources are limitless does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to discover and cultivate a relationship with a loving God, so that religion can make a difference in the affairs of humans, it is observable that teaching of a god of punishment and terrible retribution does not work. This, too, has already been demonstrated.

All you have to do is be keen in what you observe, and then tell the truth about it. Observation is First Cause in changing Consciousness, and Observation is First Cause in changing Behavior. Observation is what changes both.

There are these who say that Behavior is changed as a result of changes in Consciousness. Others suggest that Consciousness is changed as a result of changes in Behavior. This produces a variation of the age-old inquiry: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

If Behavior is changed as a result of changes in Consciousness, what caused the changes in Consciousness? Conversely, if Consciousness is changed as a result of changes in Behavior, what caused those changes in Behavior?

Startlingly, the answer is the same for both questions: Observation.
Yet what causes Observation? What makes us observe one thing and not the other? The answer is, desire. We desire to look at what we need to see in order to do what we are trying to do.

If what you are trying to do is get across a busy interaction unscathed, you only need to look at what is coming your way from all sides, front, and back. You needn’t look at what birds are in the sky or how many buildings are nearby. You’ve quickly learned to know what to look for when you know what you are seeking to do. And if what you are seeking to do is “survive,” your observational skills can be quite acute.

Yet what if Survival is not your main objective? What if survival is not even being considered, but only what brings you pleasure, only what gets you what you want, only what serves your momentary needs? Well then, you’ve got a mess, because you’ve done no long-term thinking about the outcomes of your short-term actions.

Yet only children do that. Or a very, very young species that cannot see — or simply refuses to look — beyond the end of its nose.

That’s us right now on the Earth. Yet long-term thinking about the long-range impact of short-term choices is not the only way to reverse this headlong dive into the abyss. A complete and total change in thinking — that is, a new way of thinking, a different kind of thinking — could also produce a global transformation and stop the young species on this marvelous planet from obliterating itself.

What if you believe that your survival is guaranteed, that you will and can never “die,” and that what you are seeking to do has nothing to do with survival at all, but everything to do with knowing, through demonstration, your True Identity and your Actual Self?

What if you’ve discovered that the “basic instinct” is not “survival” after all, but rather, the impulse to embody, express, and experience Divinity? Could it be that this is the reason why are here? Could it be that this is the purpose of all of life, everywhere present, in whatever form it manifests?

If this is your deep inner knowing, if this is your awareness, what you observe will change. And as what you observe changes, your Consciousness and your Behavior will change — and not necessarily in that order. If fact, they may both change simultaneously. Spontaneously.

This is what I call Spiritual Maturation Acceleration. It is when you remember instantaneously what you’ve always known, what you were encoded to understand, what you’re capable of doing and demonstrating when operating at maximum capacity.

An example of this on a physical level is the person who does not know how to swim, but who instantly “remembers” how when spontaneously jumping out of a boat to save the baby who’s fallen into the water. Or the child who has never had a piano lesson and sits down to play a piano concerto — perfectly. Such instantaneous remembering can occur spiritually as well — and does for many people.

The question is, what can cause us to remain in that State of Remembering? And the answer is, remaining in the State of Knowing what we are actually trying to do here during our life on Earth. Then, remaining in the State of Observation that is sponsored by that knowing.

Everything arises out of what you are trying to do; what you understand your species to be trying to accomplish. Motive is everything. Objectives determine outcomes. Life proceeds out of your intention. Your true intention is revealed in your actions, and your actions are determined by your true intention. As with everything in life (and life itself), it is a circle.

Highly Evolved Beings see the circle. Humans do not. Highly Evolved Beings respond to what is so; humans ignore it. Highly Evolved Beings tell the truth, always. Humans too often lie, to themselves as well as others. Highly Evolved Beings say one thing, and do what they say. Humans say one thing and do another.

This is what the members of a society created by Highly Evolved Beings do. In Part IV of this series we will look deeply at Highly Evolved Beings, how they live and how they love, how they function and how they fulfill their greatest desire — and how we can do the same. We will explore the civilizations of Highly Evolved Beings, and the model we can use on Earth, should we choose to change humanity’s current trajectory from self-destruction to self-recreation and self-realization.

For now, consider what I call the Burning Building Moment. Imagine that a man is walking down the street and sees a burning building, flames shooting out of the upper windows and through the roof. And imagine that in one of the lower windows he suddenly notices a woman holding an infant and crying out, “Please, please, help us!” The man immediately rushes into the building, races up two flights of stairs, finds the woman and child and leads them back down and out before the flames reach them.

By now the fire trucks are on the scene, along with the news media. They are calling the man a hero, but as the TV stations interview him, he denies it. “No,” he says, “I did what anyone would do.” And he’s right. Ninety per cent of the people would do exactly what he did. They wouldn’t even stop to think of their own survival, because their first instinct is not survival, but the impulse of Divine Love, which thinks not of itself at all. Humanity’s fundamental urge is to demonstrate Divinity, and all we have to do to change the world overnight is to think of every moment as a Burning Building Moment.

This is, in a sense, how Highly Evolved Beings think. They think not of themselves first, but of the Other. Always, of the Other, and of the Collective. In this, they are thinking of themselves first. They simply have a much larger definition of Self.

All of this is described in wonderfully illuminating detail in the final four chapters (18 through 21) of Conversations with God – Book 3, in case you want to peek at what’s ahead in the coming installment of this series.

Many of the mornings on many of the days in the lives of many of the people on this planet, it’s not very easy to find a very good reason to throw back the covers and get out of bed.

Life feels like a struggle mentally, physically, and emotionally from morning to night, with no letup in sight, no relief on the way, no abatement on the horizon. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another…and the challenges don’t seem to be getting smaller, but just the opposite.

What’s the point of it all?, we ask…and it’s a fair question. It all ends in death? That’s it? We’ve gone through all of this for nothing?

We might as well make the best of it while we’re here, because there’s nothing more to it than that? The entirety of our Journey is the experience we’re having right here, right now — added to the experience we’ve had from our birth to this point, and that we’re going to have from this point until our death?

None of it has any implication or reason, purpose or function, consequence or ramification beyond that, and none of it has any significance or meaning except that which we, ourselves, invent (or what we allow our culture to convince us is “true”)?

Really?

I mean, really…?

Well, let’s see here. We’re told by many, many people that this is not the way it is. Our lives are more than meaningless meanderings through days and nights of aimless moments and purposeless existence, they say. There is a reason we are here, there is a point to it all, and that is what gives us the motivation to throw back the covers in the morning and lumber out of slumber to venture into The Adventure once more.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…

I love Shakespeare, because he was more than one of the world’s most prolific, powerful, and poetic writers. He was a metaphysician of the first rank. He deeply understood the deeper aspects or the deepest reality we call Life. So I quote Shakespeare often, and sometimes, with a fond knowing that I have his total blessing, I may paraphrase or even ever so slightly alter his words to reflect my application of their present-day meaning.

Shakespeare wrote those words in Henry V, Act III, Scene I. The king was encouraging his soldiers before attacking an enemy. And while these are words before going to war, I know that Shakespeare meant them as more. As with all of his writing, they were replete with multiple meaning. Thus, this passage has been quoted for centuries as it may apply to each of our own “inner wars” — the internal struggle in which every human being engages as we rise up with courage each morn to face whatever onslaught the day may bring.

And so here is my own offering, with some abbreviation and tiny modification, when I quote this passage in the context of our daily battle with the human mind’s greatest enemy: a misunderstanding of what is occurring, why it is occurring, and what this entire life is really about:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…
…in peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
as modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of life’s struggles blows in our ears,
then imitate the action of the tiger. . .
…now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
to its full height. On, on, you Noblest One…!
…Show us here the mettle of your pasture; let us swear
that you are worth your breeding;
for there is none of you so mean and base,
that hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
straining upon the start. The game’s afoot;
follow your spirit…!

Ah, yes, my lovelies…the game’s afoot. But what, exactly, is the game? That becomes the question of the day.

It has been the question from Day One. And now comes the answer, yet one more time, from one more source, in terms so clear, and words so simple and direct, that it cannot be misunderstood anymore.

We have heard the answer before, for sure. But from so many places and in so many ways, we no longer know what to believe.

Our more traditional religions tell us that the “game” is getting back to Heaven; returning to God; finding our way to Paradise; obtaining our Eternal Reward.

Some philosophies tell us it has nothing to do with “eternal” anything, and that our life is about exactly what we are experiencing here and now, making the most of it by giving the most to it, and being satisfied with that — which can be more than enough in a life well lived.

Some spiritual movements say it need not be an Either/Or proposition, but can be Both/And…plus, possibly, a great deal more.

In the first view — that of most of the more traditional religions — we are spiritual entities having a body and a mind, and there are rules we have to follow, things we have to do, things we have to make sure we do not do, and particular and specific ways we must accomplish all of this, in order to get back to God’s Spiritual Kingdom, from which we are told we have emerged. We are told, as well, that if we do not follow these rules, do not do these things, do not avoid these other things, and do not accomplish all of this in a certain and particular way, we will not get to God’s Spiritual Kingdom, but will be sent to the everlasting fires of hell, there to languish forever and ever in unremitting pain and unfathomable suffering as payment for our earthly transgressions — one of the most serious of which may be to have simply belonged to the wrong religion.

In the second view — that of the non-religious philosophers — we are simply (while admittedly highly sophisticated and complex) physical life forms, moving through the biological process of the Cosmos in which we are born, we live, and we die, ceasing to exist in any conscious form whatsoever thereafter, but having the ability while we are alive to affect not only the lives around us, but of those members of our species who follow us, in ways that cause us to be long remembered — and thus to give our lives meaning beyond our here-and-now existence.

In the third view, an amalgam of the first two, we are more than our biological sum and substance — and more, as well, than spiritual entities who live as obey-me-or-else subjects of a cosmic monarch laying down the requirements for us to get back to a kingdom we can’t understand why we left in the first place.

The text we have been given in the 3,000+ pages of the Conversations with God dialogue addresses that word “more.”

If we are spiritual entities who never wanted to leave the Kingdom of God in the first place, then why did we leave? Is it possible that our Souls left that celestial location on purpose? Could we have done so not only willingly, but excitedly and joyfully?

CWG answers these questions and more, joining a long list of other sources, both ancient and contemporary, in telling us that there is a very special reason we are here, that our having been birthed was not a mere happenstance within a cosmic-wide biological process, that our lives have a purpose that stretches far beyond the end of our present-form physical/chemical expression, and that the very essence and energy of which we are comprised is identical to, and an extension of, the Essential Essence and Purest Energy of the Universe Itself, parts both seen and unseen — or what some of us have called God.

The purpose of this massive and endless process that we have chosen to call “life” is for that Essential Essence and Purest Energy to express Itself in such a way that it would know Itself in its own experience, at the same time expanding the awareness of the knowing of Its individual aspects, elements, and individuations.

Put in somewhat simpler terms, every expression of life is an expression of its Source, experiencing, displaying, and demonstrating aspects of that Source in singular and individuated form.

This means that all that lives (and if we define “lives” as that which is in motion, this would include everything) is an expression of the Divine, and the goal of all sentient beings is to become aware at higher and higher levels of the unlimited aspects of Who They Are, so that Adonai, Allah, Brahma, Elohim, God, Jehovah, Krishna, Rama, Vishnu, Yahweh, or by whatever other name our various global cultures have used to refer to that Ineffable Essence we understand to be The Divine, may experience Itself in, as, and through those beings.

That is our reason for throwing back the covers and getting up in the morning.

Is the reason enough? Is God experiencing God reason enough for some of us to experience hell? (Or what we have called “hell”?) That depends on how we are engaging with the events and circumstances of our moment-to-moment encounters. Conversations with God tells us that “the good news is, you don’t have to go through hell to get to Heaven.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can’t prove it by me,” some of us may be tempted to say. But it’s true. And there are those among us who have proven it.

We can be among those. That is the promise of The Divine.

And we’ll look at this in Part III of this series.

Either we’re having a spiritual experience here or we’re not. Either what’s going on right now in our lives — and the whole of our life itself — is leading us to a Larger, Ongoing Expression after what we call our death, or it is not. If it is, life will invite us to have one kind of experience. If it is not, life will offer us another kind altogether.

If we’re going to make some sense of this physical, emotional, and psychological daily encounter, we’re going to have to decide: are we spiritual beings or are we not? If we are spiritual beings, what are we doing here on Earth? If we are not spiritual beings, but exist only at the level of physicality, what is our best response to the events of life?

There’s almost too much going on here for a simple physical being to deal with in any way that makes sense. Too much tragedy, too much sorrow, too much heartache, too much loss and pain and struggle and stress for the Mind and Body to absorb and just go on as if none of it happened — or as if all of it happened, but none of it mattered.

The aftershock of life’s events takes its toll on the mental and physical vehicle that we call Human Beings, and if there’s no other dimension to us than that, the mechanism is sooner or later going to break down.

In most cases, sooner.

Only if there’s some overriding factor, some Larger Process, some Grander Reason, something going on here that offers more than meets the eye, can anyone survive this life of trial and tribulation and turmoil in any way that allows or produces a settling into Joy.

Oh, we can experience moments of happiness, yes. Fleeting whiffs of bliss during the windstorms now and then, yes. But the balance of bliss versus blast is way out of whack, as we find ourselves hit over and over again with life’s barrage of challenge after challenge, loss after loss, wave after wave of grief after grief. One hates to sound childish, but in honest terms, it doesn’t seem fair. And it certainly doesn’t seem worth it.

So what’s the point? What’s the point of going on, of heading into more windstorms, of pushing onward only to meet up with more loss, more pain, more blasts and barrages? Is this the only thing there is to look forward to? Is this the best that life can do? Is this the destination that’s supposed to make us jump out of bed in the morning eager with anticipation of the day’s journey?

Where is the fun, the thrill, the excitement, the unbridled, bursting happiness of our youth? And if not that — if that is not for us, as adults, to have — where, at least, is the peace? The comfort? The restful security and surety and safety of knowing that one can, if nothing else, count on being loved through all of this? And what is the purpose of the exercise, anyway? Why are we having to go through this?

These are the questions that the Mind begs to have answered. We need, at least, some reason for throwing back the covers.

Is that too much to ask?

Is it too much to ask for a reason?

(Watch for Part II of this exploration, coming from the author of Conversations with God. In the meantime, feel open to offer whatever response to Part I you may feel arising.)