The discussions here have become quite lively, and I have enjoyed them very much. Glad to have you all on board, and spending your time engaging your Mind, whatever you believe. I happen to believe that what I believe creates my reality. I could be wrong about that, but my experience over a lifetime has proven the opposite to me. So I’m going to stick with my current beliefs unless and until proven otherwise to me.

I believe in God, and what I believe about God has become the central focus of a life that without this belief would feel meaningless. I choose not to believe in a life of meaninglessness.

I was offered this observation by Conversations with God: “Nothing has any meaning, save the meaning you give it.” That has been my on-the-ground experience for sure. I hope that all of you are served mightily and lovingly by the meaning you have given to the experiences in your life. I hope you take care of yourself in this way.

Now with this entry I want to talk about beingism.

I am coining this term, I am using this made-up word, to describe a way of moving through the world. It is a giving up of how you think you should be, or would like to be, or imagine how others are expecting you to be, in any given situation. It is a surrendering to what I believe to be your True Nature, a giving in to what I believe to be your Highest Self. And it is something you do most often without thinking.

That is the whole point of it. The point is to stop Thinking and start Being.

When you are Thinking, you are caught in the Mind. When you are Being, you are freely expressing the Soul. When you are expressing your Soul you are experiencing Who You Really Are. When you are caught in your Mind you are experiencing who you imagine yourself to be — or to have to be in order to meet the expectations of others.

I was in a hospital years ago visiting my father. There was a guy in the next room. This man was calling out and moaning. He was obviously in pain. The nurse was not coming fast enough. He was in distress. He was moaning, “Oh God, oh, my God, I can’t take it.” My dad was nowhere near that. He was just laying there feeling perfectly fine.

I said “Hey, I have got to go over there. I have got to go see what’s going on next door.” He said no. He said, Son, leave it alone, leave it to the nurses. I said “No, I’ve got to go. I can’t let that guy just lie there.”

Instantly when I went in there, compassion was called forth. Now listen very carefully to what I just said. I didn’t say, “Compassion was called for.” I said, “Compassion was called forth.” This “calling forth” is a process in which the Mind, analyzing a situation, opens an immediate pathway to the Soul. The soul pours forth its Essence—the true Essence of its Being—and that Essence expresses through you, as you. This manifests without effort because it is, in fact, who you really are.

We have all been in situations similar to that, whatever the circumstance, where compassion is called forth. Or patience is called forth. Or kindness, or understanding, or immense generosity, or just plain love…is called forth. This particular version of our Essence just bubbles up. It just comes up in us. We do not think about it. We do not decide, I think I will be compassionate here. The highest callings are sent out automatically. It is merely a question of whether we will respond to them.

I went in and talked to the guy. I rubbed his forehead. I held his hand. He was an older man, about 80 or 85. He was having a terrible time. His meds had run out. His pain had come back. I do not know what was going on with him, but I just talked to him quietly. He did not even care who I was. He did not even care. I could have been a doctor. I could have been a nurse who hadn’t put his scrubs on yet. I could have been a psychiatrist who’d been called down from the seventh floor. He had no idea who I was and he did not care. Someone was a witness to his life. That made it all a little easier. Someone was bearing witness…

Years later I experienced myself feeling these words as my innermost reality: “Your victories are my victories, your travails are my travails. Your risings are my risings, your fallings are my fallings. You have not experienced a part of you that I have not experienced as a part of me. I stand as not only a witness to your life, but as a liver of it, through my Oneness with you. Inwardly I celebrate your joys, and inwardly I share your burdens. And I will have it no other way…because We Are All One, and I will not turn from you in this hour. For what I do for you, I do for me. And what I fail to do for you, I fail to do for me. I shall not separate myself from you when just the opposite is called for, if I am truly here to heal the world by healing my Self of any false thoughts I ever held about Who I Really Am. First I must see Who You Really Are — and this I choose to do now, in this self-same moment.”

I didn’t tell that story to make myself look good. I told it to illustrate something. As I said, we’ve all had moments like this. We’ve all experienced “showing up” in life in a very big way, in a very wonderful way. We may not even have seen it as that, but it was that, I can tell you, in the life of another.

This is what I mean when I talk about beingism as a tool for an individual. This is what I mean when I speak of beingism as an engine for an entire society. Imagine what a world we would have if we all simply decided to be “compassion.” Or to be “understanding.” Or—dare I suggest it?—to be “holy.”

To be “holy” is to be One With Another. It is to be One With ALL Others. To be “holy” is to be Whole.

Amen, and amen.

Can we really know whether anything is true? Does truth itself even exist as an Absolute? For that matter, what is truth?Is it simply a point of view held by a sufficient number of people to be widely accepted as what is so? And even in this context, does it exist only in relative terms?

The history of our species has shown us that many things we thought were undeniable and irrefutable truths have been, over the course of time, revealed to not be true at all. And I am not referring only to ancient and understandably misunderstood matters (the Earth is flat, the Sun revolves around the Earth, the idea that life could suddenly emerge from inanimate objects [spontaneous generation], the theory that light emanates from the eye, rather than being received by it [emission theory] — all of which concepts were held as true for thousands of years). I’m also referring to many contemporary notions as well (homosexuality is a deliberately chosen lifestyle having nothing to do with one’s biochemistry; modern vaccine theory is correct; jobs are a requirement for income; climate change is not real; punishment, as opposed to rehabilitation, of offenders is the highest choice of an evolved society).

All of this notwithstanding, can it serve us at some level to agree with ourselves and with each other that certain things are true? Without wanting to seem overly simplistic, I think it can. I think that is apparent. Any group or cluster of people hoping to live together in peace and harmony is going to find benefit in agreeing that certain things are true.

They may be making it all up, but Truth By Agreement — first , with oneself, then with others — can and does serve a purpose. It helps society to organize itself, it gives newcomers to that society (children growing into adults, arrivals from one culture or country entering another) a set of principles on which a particular society bases its day-to-day interactions, which those newcomers may use to their benefit in integrating into that group or cluster.

Truth By Agreement with oneself can also, in many cases, produce enormous good in an individual’s moment-to-moment experience, whether in a group or cluster or not.

All of which brings me to the idea of God.

I have observed (and personally experienced) that Truth By Agreement with oneself regarding the existence of God — to say nothing of the nature, the purpose, the function, and the desire of God — can and does have an immense impact on people’s lives.

This observation, in turn, has opened me to consider whether a theory need to have been proven — or even be provable — for it to have practical and powerful benefit. For me, the answer is no. I have therefore not limited my mind to embracing only those propositions that have been validated by scientific or clinical evidence.

Nowhere is this more useful to me than in the matter of whether or not there is a Higher Power in this Universe. I believe there is, even though there is apparently no scientific or clinical proof of it. Yet I see evidence of it every day in my life — and I have learned in my 72 years that evidence and proof are not the same thing.

I mention this here because, in the very welcome interactions I have read in the Comment String below my various columns here on the subject of God and what I perceive to be God’s message to the world, I have seen some responses that have articulated — in often wonderfully clear and imminently logical terms — an idea other than mine. The idea that there is no such thing as God.

I very much enjoy the back-and-forth on this. But I would like to invite a slight switch in focus now, away from the question of whether God exists, and to the question of whether a belief in God can be hugely transformative in an individual’s life, and in the collective experience of humans on this planet.

The answer to that question is, of course, yes. Simple observation makes that virtually inarguable. Equally inarguable is the fact that what a person or a group believes about God can be hugely detrimental to an individual’s well-being — and to the well-being of an entire species.

So, clearly, it is important what one holds as one’s truth regarding what I believe I can call — judging from my observation of global and individual outcomes — this critical topic.

Proving whether there is or is not a God is not nearly as intriguing to me as demonstrating that what a person, or a group or cluster of people, believes about God is critical to the happiness, joy, peace, and continuing higher evolution of our species.

I believe and observe that it is critical — and that’s why I’ve produced a string of books on the subject.

Now it could be argued by others that precisely because our beliefs about God are so critical, it is important that the concept of the existence of such a Supreme Being be challenged, if not debunked.

But I think that at this juncture in human history, what people believe ABOUT God is having far more of an impact on our day-to-day lives than whether people belief IN God — so this is where my priority lies.

I believe in God. The evidence of my life has convinced me of this. And I am intrigued by what a discussion of what people believe about God might produce in the Comment String below.

What if there is no “heaven”? What if there is no “hell”? What if there is no “God”? What if there is no “life” in the “hereafter”? What if there is no “hereafter” at all — no Life After Death, no one and nothing on The Other Side, no “other side” of any kind, and nothing after life on Earth but darkness, emptiness — and not even an awareness of that?

Is it the promise of “something more” after we’re “done” here on Earth that keeps many of us going? And if we think there is nothing “more,” does that affect our choices, actions, and decisions while we’re “alive”? For that matter, what does being “alive” really mean? Does it mean that we are actively functioning in the physical world? Or does it mean we are actively functioning, period — in the physical world or in another?

Are these even important questions? Does any of it matter?

I think it does. I think that what a person believes about All Of Life — what it’s about, why it exists, how it works, what (if anything) it leads to — matters enormously. Or it certainly can matter, depending upon what those beliefs are.

I could be wrong about this, of course. But I think that the decision about what we believe regarding the Meaning, the Purpose, the Function, and the Result of Life On Earth could, and does, have a powerful impact on how (and for that matter, why) we move through our days and nights.

And I think this is true even if — and perhaps especially if — we have no particular beliefs about any of that at all.

Along with countless others through the ages, I am intrigued by this. Not so much about what I believe (or think I should believe, or feel I want to believe, or hope I can believe), but by what others believe. I am curious about where I fall on the spectrum of things.

So if it feels interesting for you to do so, please share with me your beliefs about all of this — or whether you have any beliefs at all — in the Comment section below. I’m anxious to hear from you on this.

Lovingly………neale.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this book (published by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God is on our side.

One of the most common ideas about God is that God is on our side. God is in our corner. God grants us favors because we are in God’s favor.

We have told ourselves that when we go to war, God is on our side. When we kill thousands of people in acts of terrorism, God is on our side. When we struggle to make our religion the dominant religion across the face of the earth, God is on our side. When we create a new country, God is on our side. When we attempt to tear apart an old country, God is on our side. When we launch a social, political, or economic revolution, God is on our side.

And especially when we seek to defend ourselves, God is on our side—which is why all attack is called a defense. Have you ever noticed that? Nobody ever says they are attacking anybody. All attacks are called defensive, and are thusly justified.

God is on our side in positive matters, too. We’ve told ourselves that we were successful in an election campaign because God is on our side. We landed that huge contract because God is on our side. We got to the wedding on time, even though there was a huge traffic jam, because God is on our side.

Wait, it gets even more trivial than that. We kicked the winning goal in the World Cup because God is on our side. We hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth because God is on our side.

(We round first and head to second pointing a victorious index finger to the sky to let everyone know that God is responsible for the feat. We drop to one knee and make the Sign of the Cross after catching a touchdown pass to make it clear that we praise and thank God for our success.)

God cares who wins the game. That’s the message, loud and clear. God cares.

God cares whether the pass in the end zone is complete or incomplete. God cares whether you hit a home run or strike out. God cares whether you get the most votes or do not. God is on your side, not the other side. If God were on the other side, they would win. If God were on everyone’s side, it would be a draw. Every game would end a tie. Every effort would be a stalemate.

Fortunately, it isn’t that way. God wants your side to win the war. God wants your idea to make thousands of dollars. God wants your parking space to be there waiting for you.

Yes, the message is clear. And each of us can say it without seeing any contradiction. God is on our side.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God is not on anybody’s “side”? What if God does not care who “wins,” who “loses,” who’s “right,” who’s “wrong.” who “succeeds,” who “fails,” or who does or does not do anything at all?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes, obviously it would. Right now, billions of people are sure that God is on their side—and there could be no more dangerous thought than that.

This idea has given rise to more actions that have caused more misery for more people than almost any other single notion. The spiritual arrogance of the idea is ignored by most, who seem to want to sidestep the obvious conclusion that if God is on their side, then God, in fact, must not be on the other side. This sets God up as a Deity who chooses winners and losers, declares ideas worthy or unworthy, labels decisions fair or unfair, pronounces countries good or evil, designates religions right or wrong, calls people saved or condemned, and holds all manner of preferences and priorities, proclivities and predilections, penchants and partialities.

And, of course, if God is on our side, then God’s preferences and priorities, proclivities and predilections, penchants and partialities all agree with ours.

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God being on our side is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

It is important to understand that God was not made in the image and likeness of man. It is the other way around. Man is made in the image and likeness of God.

It would be wonderful if this could be placed on billboards around the world:

God was not made in the image and likeness of Man. It is the other way around.

This means that human beings are divine, each having all the qualities of divinity within them. What it does not mean is that God has human qualities. So God does not like the Los Angeles Dodgers better than the Atlanta Braves. And God doesn’t want your country to win the World Cup more than God wants another country to win it.

God is not hoping that your nation is victorious in the war rather than the nation you are fighting. And God does not support the world’s revolutionaries more than God supports the world’s governments. And God does not align with the values of the Republican Party more than God aligns with the values of the Democratic Party.

It’s time for human beings to let go of their need to believe in a God of preferences. First, we had to let go of our God of the brand name, now we add to that list our God of preferences.

Derailing some really fundamental ideas embraced by many people, it is time to accept the fact that God does not hold the thought that women should never be priests or members of the clergy, that gays should never be allowed to be married, or that non-Christians should never be allowed into heaven.

Difficult as it may be for some people to imagine, God does not, we repeat here for emphasis, prefer Baptists over Hindus, Catholics over Jews, Muslims over Mormons, or any religion over any other religion. God does not even prefer those who believe in God over those who do not believe in God.

These are not God’s ideas. These are the ideas of human beings who think that these are God’s ideas.

We said it before and we’ll say it again: God is not a male human being writ large. God is the Supreme Intelligence and the Primal Energy underlying the universe . . . an intelligence and an energy without specific identity.

Is it really conceivable that God has a favorite color or a favorite number, a favorite team or a favorite player, a favorite nation or a favorite religion, a favorite gender or a favorite race?

Does it feel realistic that God holds particular political views, or economic views, or social views, or spiritual views? And if so, which ones?

Wait. We don’t have to ask that. The people who hold particular views will tell you which ones. Theirs, of course.

Well . . . while this disrupts the whole story line of people and political parties and nations and religions wanting to insist that they are the lone upholders of moral values and the last bastions of spiritual rectitude on the earth, it is important that humanity come to clarity on the true nature of divinity and the factual aspects of Ultimate Reality.

None of the above means that life is against us. God is not on our side in the sense that God favors you over someone else, but life is always prepared to give us what we most fervently and feelingly believe we are going to receive.

Life proceeds out of your intentions for it. We have been told, “As you believe, so will it be done unto you,” and that is true. Belief is a strong and very powerful energy. It is a magnet. It attracts to us what we firmly expect it to. Yet this is not because “God is on our side”; this is because God has given us, as described earlier, a mechanism with which to manipulate and affect the raw energy that is All of Life.

Life affects life through the process of life itself. The Essential Essence is an energy that has an impact upon Itself.

One who learns how to use this energy in a positive fashion through thought, word, and action has stepped onto the road to mastery in living.

Yet never “pray” or use the power of thought, word, and action to bring you something to the detriment of another. Always remember, there is only One of Us.

If, therefore, you seek something for yourself to the detriment of another, you “win” with the right hand and “lose” with the left. Even if you seem to have “won” in one instance, the experience of how you “lost” will visit you in the next.

When in any sort of situation where your desires are juxtaposed with another’s, say a prayer, or hold the thought, that the outcome that is produced will be the one that is best for all concerned.

This is true spiritual mastery, for it requires and demands nothing, but holds every outcome and experience as perfect. In this awareness is found both freedom and peace.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this book (published by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God sometimes answers our prayers and sometimes does not.

Much of the world believes in a God who hears our prayers and sometimes gives us what we ask for and sometimes does not.

This conception of Deity holds that God has reasons for granting or denying our wishes on any particular occasion.

Sometimes (so it is said) what we want for ourselves is not what God knows is “good for us,” so we don’t get it.

Sometimes (so it is said) we have sinned so much that God does not find us “deserving” of having a prayer answered.

Sometimes (so we are told) God gives us all that we have asked for and more—presumably because it is good for us and we are deserving.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God does not grant or deny the prayers of anyone? What if a hoped-for event or condition manifests in our life for another reason entirely?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. This would, in fact, offer an opportunity for the biggest breakthrough in human history. We could at last discover, as a global species, the Process of Creation and the alchemy of the universe (a seemingly magical method of transformation or creation).

If we thought there was another reason that one particular outcome rather than another manifests in our lives—a reason having nothing whatsoever to do with our worthiness or the worthiness of our request—it would end our seemingly endless and far too often ruthless drive to please God so that He will answer our prayers. As well, it would launch a worldwide effort to discover what that reason is.

Why do hoped-for events or conditions manifest in our lives if it’s not God’s “mood” that determines whether our wishes are granted? How do miracles happen? What makes dreams come true? And what is at cause when they do not?

If humans thought that God does not grant or deny the prayers of anyone, but that God has simply and lovingly put into place a process for manifestation that does not rely on us being in God’s “good graces” or our request being “good for us,” many humans would no doubt stop praying.

What would be the point of it, they might think, if asking God for what we want and need is not a way to produce it? And so this would be a second reason humanity would put an end to Supplication Theology, replacing it with ApplicationTheology—applying the power of God in our lives, rather than supplicating for it to be applied in our lives.

If our species decided en masse that God does not personally grant or deny prayers, but, rather, has given all of us a mechanism by which all of our desires may be made manifest, religions themselves would be dramatically affected. Some might even disappear. Those that remained would see their missions significantly altered. They would still present themselves as pathways to peace, joy, and paradise, but they would provide insight into how such experiences may be called forth rather than called for. (The latter is a request, the former is a requisition. There is a huge difference.)

Yet if prayers of supplication were to disappear, something would have to come along to replace them as a tool with which to generate hoped-for results as humans faced the day-to-day challenges of life on the earth. And something would come along.

The truth.

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God personally granting or denying the prayers of individual human beings is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

God’s role in our lives need not be reduced, however. Indeed, it would be well to increase it. Yet if God does not personally say “yes” or “no” to our prayers, why bother increasing God’s role in our lives?

Because it is God’s power, not God’s disposition that produces the manifestation of a human being’s desires.

That sentence is important enough to qualify as one to be highlighted.

It is God’s power, not God’s disposition, that produces the manifestation of a human being’s desires.

What this means is that it is not whether we are in God’s favor, or whether or not God thinks that granting a particular request would be “good” for us, that determines the outcome of our prayer. It is not God’s mood, it is God’s love which produces the astonishing circumstance of all of our prayers being granted all of the time.

The problem is not that God sometimes says yes and sometimes says no to our prayers, the problem is that we don’t know what “prayer” is.

If someone had told us when we were little children what prayer is, we would find that all of our prayers are answered all the time.

Prayer is an application, not a supplication . . . and most of us think it is the other way around.

Prayer is nothing more than God’s energy, focused. Of course, if you don’t believe in God, it could be psychologically more difficult to focus God’s energy. That is why it was said earlier that you may want to make God more a part of your life—even as you make prayer, in the old style of supplication, less.

God’s energy is not made available to us only under certain conditions (as when God agrees with our prayer, or when we are in God’s “good graces”). God’s energy lives in us, as us, and manifests through us every hour of every day, whether we know it or not—and whether we want it to or not.

We don’t have any choice about this, because God’s energy—which is the power behind creation—is not turn-on-able and turn-off-able. It is always on, every single moment. It is, in fact, Who We Are.

We are, each of us, a manifestation of God’s energy, and how we use the energy that we are determines how we experience the life that we live.

All of this will begin to come together if we continue to revisit this statement: Life itself is nothing more than energy, vibrating at particular and various frequencies. Energy vibrating at certain frequencies produces physical manifestations in the form of objects, situations, circumstances, and events. This occurs because energy attracts energy. Energy impacts upon energy. Two energies produce a third energy. And so it goes, throughout all of life.

Remember always . . .

We are a manifestation of God’s energy, and how we use the energy that we are determines how we experience the life that we live.

Let me offer here what I explained in a passage from the book Happier Than God. The attracting aspect of energy responds not only to what we desire, but also to what we fear. Not only to what we wish to draw to us, but also to what we wish to push away. Not only to what we consciously choose, but also to what we unconsciously select.

“Selecting” from what my friend Deepak Chopra calls “the Field of Infinite Possibilities” is a delicate procedure. It is a matter of what we focus on, whether we want to or not, whether we do it consciously or not.

For instance, if your mind is focused on doubling your income within the next year, but if you have a later thought, the next hour or the next day, that it will be almost impossible for you to do this—if you say to yourself, “Oh, come on, be practical! Pick a goal that you can at least reach”—then you have selected the latest idea, whether you originally wanted to or not, because the switch on your power is always ON; personal creation is always working.

It not only works with your most recent thought or idea, but also with the one to which you give the most frequency and focus and emotional energy.

This explains why some people who seek to use the so-called Law of Attraction or traditional forms of prayer to get something they desperately want often meet up with what they call failure. Then they say, “See? This stuff doesn’t work!” Actually, the process is working perfectly. If you experience yourself wanting something desperately, and if you keep saying to yourself I want that!, you are announcing to the universe that you do not now have it.

(Unless you are simply using the word “want” as a figure of speech. Most people are not. When most people say that they “want” something, they are very clear that it is because they experience that they do not now have it.)

As long as you hold such a thought, you cannot have it, because you cannot experience on the one hand what you are confirming on the other that you do not.

To use one example, the statement, “I want more money” may not draw money to you, but may actually push it away.

This is because the universe has only one response in its vocabulary: “Yes.”

It responds to your energy. It listens most of all to what you are feeling.

If you constantly say, “I want more money!”,  God will say, “Yes, you do!” If you think, “I want more love in my life!”,  God will say “Yes, you do!”

The universe “feels your energy” around the question of money or love, or anything else for that matter, and if it is a feeling of lack, this is what the universe will respond to. And it will produce more of that. The universe is a big copying machine. It duplicates what’s put into it.

We are talking about power here. We are talking about the power of prayer. But prayer is more than simply what we ask for. Prayer is our every thought, word, and deed. In fact, asking for something is actually the weakest path toward getting it, because asking for something is an affirmation that you do not now have it.

Putting all this another way, your energy has the power of a magnet. Remember that even feeling (actually, especially feeling) is energy, and in the matter of energy, Like Attracts Like.

The idea is to step into the application of the power of God, not a supplication to God that the power be used. God’s invitation is to utilize the confirmative power of prayer. How? How is this done? Well, here’s an example: “Thank you God for sending me my perfect mate.” Here’s another example: “All the money I need is coming to me now.” And here’s my favorite prayer: “Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.”

This shift from supplication to application can be miraculous. These are not affirmations. These are confirmations. There is a huge difference. An affirmation seeks to produce an outcome or an experience. A confirmation announces that the outcome has already been produced.

On the very day that I was putting together this chapter I received the following email in my box in response to an article I had written on this subject.

“Dear Neale,” the letter said, “I have a difficult time believing that God/my soul is so literal regarding ‘wanting.’ Doesn’t God/ my soul know what I really mean/intend? God bless, Gerry.”

I wrote back:

Dear Gerry . . . It is not a question of God, or your soul, being so “literal” regarding “wanting.” It is a question of how the Mechanism of Creation works. This is a mechanism we are talking about here, not a Being in the sky who takes you literally or does not. This is a machine that runs based on the fuel that is put into it. It is a copying machine, and it has no preference as to what it duplicates. Nor does it try to interpret what its owner wants to make copies of. It simply duplicates the energy that is put into it. In this sense, it is like a computer. You’ve heard this acronym, I’m sure: GIGO. That stands for: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

One of the great misunderstandings that humans hold about God is that God has a preference in the matter of how life is experienced by each of us. God loves us, for sure, but God has no such preference—any more than you have a preference as to whether your children pay “tag” or “hide-and-seek” when they go out to the backyard. All you want them to know is that you are there if they need you. And so it is with God.

There are seven billion sentient beings on this planet—and this planet is one of seventy trillion-billion planets in the cosmos. To functionalize this breathtakingly expansive life God has put into place a spectacular apparatus, and its workings have nothing to do with Deity’s personal preference. They have to do with Deity’s genius.

The genius of the system is that it is Pure Energy, reacting to Energy by reproducing in physical form what is put into it by all sentient beings in the form of their thoughts, words, and actions—which, in turn, are based on what humans call “feelings” . . . which, in turn, are simply other forms of energy.

Do you get the picture?

God does not answer some prayers and fail to answer others. God answers all prayers, sending to The Collective the Energy that duplicates what The Collective is thinking/saying/doing/feeling. God does so, as well, on an individual basis with each source of energy output. (That is, with every human being, and every sentient creature in the universe.) Is this quite remarkable? Yes. Is it the result of God’s personal preference in the matter of what is manifest moment-to-moment in the cosmos? No.

In using God’s Energy, the word “I” is the ignition key of creation. What follows the word “I” turns the key and starts the engine of manifestation.

Thus, when it “looks as if ” Personal Creation is not working it is only because the Primal Energy has brought you what you inadvertently selected rather than what you thought you chose.

If the power were not always ON, if the process was not always working, you could have a single very positive thought about something and that outcome would be made manifest in your reality without fail. But the process works all the time, not just part of the time, and is fed by that which you feel most deeply, most consistently. So a single very positive thought in a whirlwind of not-so-positive ideas and projections is not likely to produce the desired result.

The trick is to stay positive in a sea of negativity. The trick is to know that the process is working even when it looks as if it is not. The trick is to “judge not by appearances.” The trick is to stay in the space of gratitude for everyone outcome and experience, every circumstance and situation.

Gratitude eliminates negativity, disappointment, resentment, and anger. And when those emotions disappear, room is made for the energy of love for God, for life, and for yourself to reappear—now more fully than ever.

What a God we have! What a Deity is ours, to have created such a foolproof, magnificent, miraculous process, allowing each of us to announce and declare, express and fulfill, experience and become Who We Really Are.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God has a plan for us.

Much of the world believes in a God who has a particular plan in mind for every human being. This is a God who is said to have handed out to each of us specific talents and attributes, equipping each of us to undertake particular missions, perform discrete functions, and fulfill distinct and disjunctive purposes over the course of our lives.

Our job is to figure out what that plan is, and then to follow that plan as well as we can. Or, at best, to “go with the plan” as it makes itself obvious through the events of our days and nights.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God has no specific plan for any of us? What if God has no preference in the matter of how we live our lives, or what we do, in the specific sense, with our days from birth to death?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. First, it would relieve us of the burden of having to figure out what we are “supposed” to be doing here, and how. We could end our search, stop our pursuit, quit our quest, and conclude what we have constructed in our reality as our sacred seeking for God’s sacred assignment.

Then, we could begin at last, in full awareness and in earnest, the journey upon which we really came to the earth to embark. This is not God’s “plan,” this is the soul’s desire. And this always has to do with what we are being, not what we are doing in and with our lives.

If we thought that God did not have a specific agenda in mind for us, we could pay attention to what our life has to offer us in terms of beingness opportunities, rather than what we think God has planned on our behalf (either for beingness or doingness). And we would stop seeing certain occurrences, coincidences, and confluences as “a sign from God” that we can now move forward with “God’s plan.”

As well, if we thought there was no such thing as God’s plan for us, we could drop many of the notions of religion, all the ideas of pre-destiny, and every imagining that a hidden agenda for us exists in divine mind, which God is simply not making obvious and clear to us (for reasons that are not evident).

We could also stop killing each other out of an idea that it is “God’s plan” that a nation of “God’s people” who believe in God and practice God’s will in a particular way must exist upon the earth—even if it requires the killing of thousands of other people to create it.

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God having a plan for us is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

If God had a particular plan for every human being on the earth—or, for that matter, for the human race as a collective—God would have made it known to us long ago.

God would have no reason not to tell you in crystal clear, specific, and direct terms what God’s Plan for you is. Why would God devise a particular course of action for every single individual on the earth and then not reveal it to any of them?

And to those who say, “God does tell us what it is. We are just not paying attention,” is this an assertion that God is talking directly to each human being, and that we are simply not listening?

And there are larger questions as well. Why would God have a specific plan for every individual in the world in the first place? What divine purpose would this serve?

Would it not serve a greater divine purpose for God to simply supply the power and to provide the mechanism with which all sentient beings might decide, declare, express, and experience for themselves who they wish to be, instead of having to follow a plan set in place for each of them ahead of time?

There is a divine purpose being served by life. But a purpose is not a plan. A purpose is the reason we’re going to do things. A plan is an outline of the things we’re going to do.

This experience we are all having on the earth is not just a happenstance, not merely the latest in a million-year-old sequence of biological events. There is more going on here than simply the living out of physical life for no reason whatsoever except to complete a process that began for us without our involvement or agreement. And that purpose is much larger in scope than the mere encountering and living through a series of pre-planned occurrences.

The agenda of God is that all life forms in the physical realm express divinity. Each soul, as an Individuation of Divinity, has an eternity in which to do this, and an infinite number of ways to accomplish it.

The soul willfully and intentionally uses life in the physical as a means with which to express and experience all the aspects of divinity that it is possible to experience. These aspects are limitless, thus, life itself would have to be without end in order to experience them. And so it is.

Each separate physical expression of a soul’s infinite life offers it an opportunity to select and express any aspect or aspects of its divine nature that it chooses. Thus, the soul comes to each lifetime with an agenda, but not with a plan. The soul’s agenda may be to express and experience compassion, for instance, or patience and understanding. But the soul does not come to physical life with a predestined decision to do so by becoming a nurse, or by writing a book on human psychology.

To reiterate then, an agenda is the underlying intention or motive of a particular person or group. An agenda has to do with purpose. A plan has to do with process. It is a specific way to achieve a purpose, to follow through on intention. God and the soul have an agenda, but neither God nor the soul dictates or plans how a particular person should, or is going to, fulfill that agenda.

Thus, it is not “God’s Plan” for a particular person to be in a car accident as a child, or experience the divorce of parents, or marry three times, or have no children, or have four children, or contract leukemia, or move to Nebraska, or become a famous painter, or meet just the right person at just the right time to move their career forward.

It is not “God’s Plan” for one particular person to be a minister rather than a professional football player, or another to be the dynamic leader of a country rather than a dynamic country music star.

It is God’s agenda, carried into the realm of the physical by the soul, for that soul to experience states of Being—the sum total of which equal the All that we call God. Or, as it was said just above: The agenda of God is that all life forms in the Physical Realm of the Spiritual express Divinity. Each Soul, as an Individuation of Divinity, has an eternity in which to do this, and an infinite number of ways in which it may be accomplished.

What are these states of being that represent the many parts or aspects of God? With this as our soul’s agenda, life invites us to be many things.

• Creative, for instance. Or compassionate.
• Understanding, for instance. Or patient.
• Helpful, for instance. Or generous.
• Loving, for instance. Or healing.

All of these are states of being. And these, plus many more, may be experienced in any moment of Evernow, individually or simultaneously.

Now you may think, “Is that it? It that all that life is about? I was hoping to actually do something. Something that really mattered. Something that made a difference. Something that contributed to others and to the world at large. Something that allowed me to feel fulfilled.”

Yet that is precisely what the agenda of expressing and experiencing states of being is all about. When we examine life closely we realize that everything and anything we could do with our life is nothing more than an approach, a method, a process, an impulse that leads us into a state of being. Every thought, word, and action creates beingness. That is their only purpose. As Conversations with God says: Every act is an act of self-definition.

As to how you can know what beingness your soul has chosen, simply look to see what brings you the most joy. What impulse calls you? What feeling magnetizes you more than any other?

When you truly internalize this, your whole life can change. And the next step following such a realization is the awareness that what you hoped you would be able to be by doing a particular thing in a particular way, you can be in any number of ways.

And that becomes life’s greatest freedom. The freedom from living as if a specific and particular kind of doing is required of you in your life in order for you to be what your soul deeply desires to be.

Now the road ahead is wide open. Now the path is yours to choose. Because you can be what you’ve chosen to be by doing anything—or by not doing anything at all. You can also decide to change what you choose to be, by simply changing your mind about that. And as you take the path that brings you the greatest joy, you can at last make a life rather than a living.

It is true that sometimes things seem to fall into place so perfectly in our lives that we are tempted to exclaim, “It’s God’s plan!” Or things may not work out the way we had hoped or imagined they would, and we may say, “God had other plans for me.”

Such figures of speech reveal to us just how deeply the notion that God has specific ideas for each of our lives has seeped into our culture. It would be beneficial, however, not to let those figures of speech turn into actual, factual conclusions about “how things are.” Otherwise, we will indeed be tempted to spend a huge amount of our time “trying to figure out how to figure out what God has figured out for us.”

We’ll measure every nuance, every energy, every event against whether we feel this is what God has in mind for us—all the while God has nothing in mind for us at all. Not in the sense of us being a “butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.”

Only in the sense of us using life to experience the highest and most joyful aspects of Who We Really Are and How We Choose to Be.

Indeed, the purpose of life everywhere, in every form, is to express divinity—physicality being the vehicle through which God experiences Itself as all that It knows Itself to be.

This is done through God differentiating Itself, then giving its multitudinous and magnificent parts the wherewithal to express life variously—but without specific instructions, directions, requirements, or plans of any kind for every individual expression.

Life forms in the cosmos have been imbued with varying levels of consciousness, or what might be called self-awareness. This inbuilt ability to know oneself as an Individuation of Divinity is present in all sentient beings, and is increasingly experienced by each such being through the process called evolution.

The evolving into the full experience and demonstration of Who We Are is the journey upon which every soul has embarked, and the completion of that journey is achieved in every moment in which our highest notion of divinity is expressed.

The process of life (as opposed to “the plan”) is that we all simply do this, in whatever way we freely and spontaneously choose, given the possibilities to which we are daily opened by the collaborative creation of all the souls co-creating with us.

Completion of the soul’s journey is, therefore, not something that is experienced once, but over and over again throughout the ongoing manifestation that is life itself—now and eternally.

 There can be what seems like a down side to this for many people. Humans feel more comfortable when they feel guided.

They like to be instructed, directed, told what to do. As an emerging species, this is their proclivity. Like children, they feel safe when clear boundaries are drawn, and specific commands or orders are given. Then all they have to do is meet the requirements and they’re home free. This accounts for the immense popularity of religion. It allows humans to follow their deep inner impulse toward The Divine without having to figure out how to do it.

It is therefore a disappointment to some people to learn that God has no plan for us, no instructions to give us, no guidelines we must follow, and no commands to heed. It can be at once both freeing and frightening to realize that God’s agenda is for us to decide who we wish to be and how we wish to demonstrate that, not spend our life trying to figure out how to figure out what God has figured out for us.

Yet God is like the master teacher in an art class. The best art teachers do not tell budding artists, “Here is your canvas. Use this next hour to create. Oh, but make sure that there is maroon and a big splotch of orange in the picture, and be certain to place the orange in the upper right-hand corner. Also, I need to see a three-dimensional effect, and there have to be children in the foreground and a telephone somewhere.”

The master teacher knows that the purpose of education is not to put something into the student, but to draw something out; not to instruct, but to extract. And so the master teacher simply places before the student all the implements—all the crayons, sketch pencils, brushes, oil paints, watercolors, and dyes—needed to work in any medium, then says with a smile, “Joyously create!”

“But what if I don’t get it right?” the timid pupil cries.

“There’s no way not to get it ‘right’,” the master teacher assures. “This is art!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God’s forgiveness is required for us to get into heaven.

Having used the criterion described in the last installment here (namely, that God decides what is “right” and “wrong”) as a measure of whether an action or choice is right or wrong, but not wanting to admit that they have used it—and, worse yet, having no idea of what they are actually trying to do during their time upon the earth—many human beings are understandably worried about how God will judge them in light of what they are certain is a long list of transgressions.

Billions of humans find comfort, however, in the assurance of many religions that God will forgive even the worst offenses. A notable notion in the Jewish tradition is teshuva: the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. In Catholic doctrine, we are told about the sacrament of Confession. Other religions, as well, teach that God will forgive us.

Under certain conditions.

The trick is to know what the conditions are . . . and then, of course, to meet them.

Humans have turned to religion to tell them what those conditions are, yet what makes this tricky is that the conditions appear to shift from religion to religion. It has therefore become a matter of extreme importance and no little urgency to billions of people that they discover and belong to the right religion.

A mistake here could be monumentally hellish.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God will never forgive us for anything? What if God considers the whole concept of forgiveness unnecessary?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. Of course it would. Forgiveness is one of the lynchpins of all faith traditions—and thus, of the moral code of most of human society. If forgiveness is out of place in human affairs (to say nothing of the affairs of God), then how can human beings ever expect to evolve beyond resentment and revenge?

Still, for all the emphasis placed by religion on forgiveness as a tool of healing and restoration, such evolutionary advancement has not been grandly evidenced. Indeed, in some respects our species seems to have devolved, not evolved. Resentment and revenge seem to mar the collective human experience today more than ever. Often, in fact, they dominate it.

Day after day, week after week, month after month the world’s headlines are filled with stories of war, revolt, violent government crackdowns, individual hate crimes, shocking mass murders, jealous rages, vengeful lawsuits, vitriolic politics, hurtful break-ups, heartless cruelty, rancorous outbursts, and bitter behavior.

It seems clear that simple forgiveness is not stemming the tide. Something else, something more powerful, is going to be needed to halt the growing use of violence as a tool in the resolution of grievances and the curbing of the apparently insatiable human appetite for retribution.

Yet how can we be expected to rein in our desire for retribution and revenge when we are surrounded by religions whose very creed declares: Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord . . . ? Are we to restrain ourselves in ways that God Himself does not?

Would humanity’s penchant for holding resentment and seeking revenge change if we were told that God never forgives us for anything, because God sees no need for forgiveness—and if it was explained why?

I think the answer to that question is obvious.

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about forgiveness is simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

As we explore what has been revealed about this, we begin to see several previous elements of the total narrative offered on these pages creating a logic line that helps us to understand why God would send humanity the five-word message on the cover of this book: “You’ve got me all wrong.”

We are invited now to notice that while forgiveness can be a wonderful tool during the time that one is residing at normally experienced human levels of consciousness, it can actually be an obstacle to one’s spiritual development.

As soon as one wishes to rise above the most commonly experienced human levels of consciousness to a place of higher consciousness or grander awareness, the idea of “forgiveness” as a tool of growth and healing falls away almost at once. “Understanding” becomes the most effective and powerful tool.

God has told us: Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the Master.

Our soul knows—and it has reminded us here—that we are each an Aspect and an Individuation of Divinity. Because this is true, our soul cannot be, and has never been, hurt, damaged, or injured in any way. So, we never have to forgive anyone for anything, as each experience in our life has done nothing but move us forward on our soul’s evolutionary journey. Thus, every experience is a cause for gratitude and celebration.

And there is another reason that forgiveness is unnecessary.

Since we are all collaborators in the producing of our outward experience, none of us can be a victim, in the spiritual sense, in the story we are collectively co-creating. It may seem, in the human sense, that we are, but as our mind embraces the wisdom of our soul, we realize that we are no more the victim of our particular crucifixion than Christ was of his.

In the moment that we accept that we are, each of us, individuated expressions of The Divine, we realize as well that nothing can happen to us, and that everything must be happening through us.

We see that the whole of our experience on the earth is being co-created by the lot of us, in a collaborative process that serves the agenda of the Whole through the expression and the experience of its individuated parts.

We understand fully, as did Christ, why anything and everything has happened in our lives, out of our total comprehension of Who We Are, where we are, and why we are here on the earth, experiencing the realm of physicality.

We suddenly know the reason that others have entered our lives in particular ways—ways that we formerly might never have forgiven—because now we are no longer “looking through a glass darkly,” but observing with the eyes of the soul.

We know, at last, the soul’s logic and the heavenly purpose in co-creating all that has occurred, is occurring, and ever will be occurring in our lives.

To make this clear: our lifetime will provide us with the experiences, events, people, situations, and circumstances ideally and collaboratively created for us by us as pathways to self-realization.

In the moment that the mind embraces the soul’s knowing, we will see with startling, stunning clarity that all that has happened—every.single.thing.—has happened not always with our conscious collaborative agreement, but always at our mutual spiritual behest, in order that we might collectively create and encounter conditions allowing us to announce and declare, express and fulfill, experience and become Who We Really Are.

It is in these moments that God is “made flesh, and dwells among us.”

There is even a third reason that forgiveness is out of place in the experience of those who understand—a reason to which we alluded earlier.

I asked before and I ask again: When that sweet little one knocks over the milk reaching in eagerness for the chocolate cake, or when that older brother tries to “cheat” his younger sibling out of an equal share of the cake, do we subject them to endless punishment? Of course not. We understand that children are just exactly that—children, incapable of fully comprehending their actions (or, often, even controlling them).

Once again, so that you will not forget: This is how God understands our minds, and it is how we are all invited to understand each other. Not just the children among us, but all of God’s children, whatever their age.

Many people continue to insist that God is simply not forgiving of certain transgressions, and it is based on this intractability that we justify our own. Yet Is God not at least as compassionate and understanding with us as we are of our children? And does an eternal God, existing across billions and billions of years, not understand that human beings, with a history that covers not half a breath in the life of the cosmos, truly are children of the universe?

Surely, even if there is a need for divine justice in Heaven (as many religions insist), God would take this into account as God calls us to account, no? Even human courts of law declare a person “innocent” by reason of diminished capacity. Is this too high a standard for our God?

So now we ask, with regard to forgiveness: Could it really be possible that we’ve simply gotten God all wrong?

What if it is true that there is nothing in the first instance that our species is “supposed” to do or not do, no matter what its “age” in the universe? What if it is true that God is an all powerful being—in fact, the Source of all power—who needs and requires nothing from human beings?

What if the last thing God needs is to seek some sort of retribution or impose some sort of punishment?

What if God desires only for us to be totally happy, fully expressed, and abundantly joyful in the experience of life?

And what if God understands that, given our immaturity as a species, we are going to do things along the way that we are going to label mistakes—some of them, egregious mistakes?

Or, to put it simply: Could it be that God is at least as kind and caring, compassionate and loving, generous and understanding as our own grandparents?

Perhaps it would serve us all to hold this as our truth: Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master.

The new spiritual outlook of our awakening species invites us to ask: What if we were not children of a Lesser God, but, in fact, children of the Most Gracious, Wonderful, Wise, Generous, and Unconditionally Loving God of our imagining?

This is the truth of it. This is the Ultimate Reality. Everything else is a story we have made up. God’s forgiveness is not necessary, because God understands all of us—and all of our behaviors—perfectly. And God sees each of us and each of our behaviors as manifestations and demonstrations of life’s evolutionary process.

There is nothing to forgive when a full understanding replaces a limited awareness of the process of evolution itself, and when that understanding arises from the deep comprehension that the unity of all life evolving in every form is the ultimate expression of divinity.

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NEALE RESPONDS TO KRISTEN COMMENTS…

NOTE: Please forgive me for placing this here, but the software here apparently will not allow me to post a response that i just wrote to “Kristen” underneath her Comment below. So I am putting my response to Kristen here, and invite anyone reading this to find her Comment below, first, then read this reply…

Dear Kristen…I have a bit more time now, so would like to “dialogue” with you here on the messages you have kindly taken the time to send to me. I will publish here, again, your recent comment to me, with replies from me along the way, so that we can have a kind of on-screen “conversation.”

Here we go! …

KRISTEN: Thank you for replying Neale, and for understanding I am not being vindictive.

NEALE: You are very welcome. No one who honestly and sincerely expresses their point of view here, without rancor, will be, or has ever been, considered by me to be vindictive.

KRISTEN: I am grateful to you, and for you, that you choose to point these matters out, primarily that YOU cannot confirm you channel the one we all identify as God.

NEALE: That is a kind thing to say, and I would like to elaborate a bit on that point, Kristen. Not only have I made it very clear that I did and do not “channel” God, I have been equally clear that every human being on the face of the earth has a “direct line” to God. That is, all of us are having a conversation with God every day of our lives. We are simply calling it something else. God is talking to all of us, in a hundred different ways across a thousand moments during all the years of our life. So, yes, I can confirm unequivocally that I do not “channel” the one we all identify as God. What I do is called “inspired writing.” It is the same process by which Mozart was inspired to create his music, Michelangelo was inspired to produce his art, Shakespeare was inspired to write his extraordinarily insightful plays, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was inspired to say to the world “I have a dream today,” igniting a shift in consciousness among millions of people. No, I am not a “channel” for God.

KRISTEN: I saw you say this on Oprah many years ago, so I have always known that, as you did with Matt (Lauer on the Today Show), but feel your followers need a reminder of this, especially your new ‘groupies’.

NEALE: Thank you for the suggestion, Kristen, and rest assured that I will continue to let people know that I am not in any way claiming to be a person who “channels” the one that we call God, but rather, that I feel inspired by God to share what I have shared with the world.

KRISTEN: Look at the titles of your books, and the clear implications in here that you ARE speaking with the one we identify as God, and the chosen God of our countries, our Governments and National Anthems…oops you are American… yours is all about ego! Couldn’t resist, sorry, you are an odd bunch!

NEALE: Ha! I enjoy your humor, Kristen! But on a serious note, let me say this: I do believe that I am––to use your words ––“speaking with the one we identify as God.” There is not a single doubt or question in my mind that I am speaking with God. I do this in many ways. Through prayer. Through meditation. Through quiet contemplation. All of us on this planet are speaking
with God everyday of our lives. We are simply calling it something else. This is because we have been culturalizd away from daring to claim that we are having a direct conversation with God. People who say they have been talking to God are called blasphemers, apostates, heretics, and worse. They have been told that they are delusional. They have been told that they are crazy. Yet there is nothing delusional or crazy about God’s greatest promised to humanity: “I am with you always, even unto the end of time.” Nor is there anything delusional or crazy about people who say they have been inspired by God to think, say, or do a particular thing. This is exactly what I have claimed has occurred in my life. Nothing more, and nothing less.

KRISTEN: A brief explanation at the top of this site would be great to clarify this, and then I wouldn’t get sent, via intuition, in here to discuss this every time you start a thread that is very Anti God as Judge, or attempts to discredit Him.

NEALE: Dear Kristen… I do not feel that I am “Anti God” in any sense of the words. In fact, quite to the contrary. I am FOR God! I am God’s biggest booster. I am God’s biggest fan. I said that I do not believe that God has a reason to, or will ever, judge us for anything. God is the supreme being, the Creator and the Source of all power in the universe. God cannot be hurt, damaged, injured, angered, frustrated, or affected negatively in any way whatsoever. Is for this reason that God has never judged, condemned, or punished anyone. And She never will. He simply bestows upon us His unconditional love. And She invites us to use the power that He has given us to collaboratively create the reality of our species.

KRISTEN: I literally feel a grab on my arm and see the words Neale in the air! And it’s damn annoying,but my job, I work for God. Please listen to what I have said and take it seriously, I am on the side of all people, and like you, do wish they would stop self-harming and stepping on landmines they have made for themselves.

NEALE: I am listening, Kristen, and I take seriously everything that anyone shares with me when they are coming from such a place of pure conviction and honest belief. I did not take you lightly, nor do I “write you off.” Rather, I am grateful for every contribution you make here, as it helps all of us to open our minds and engage in a dialogue that is more than a one sided exposition.

KRISTEN: As you are probably aware, I am an Israelite (as you are)…

NEALE: I am not sure what this means, Kristen.

KRISTEN: …and a Kabbalist. That is, I study and work with Law, and have been on the Tree ofLife to immortality journey, and I have done my Christ Consciousness papers in Universal Law. These papers are over 500 pages, and if you want to read it, I am happy to send you a copy based on trust (its the Rosetta Stone…my retirement fund…I know what it is worth, especially to the Freemasons).

NEALE: Thank you for this kind offer. I am going to respectfully decline your invitation to read it, as I wish to remain purely within my own experience as an author who puts writings into the world. I would never want to inadvertently use another person’s writings or turns of phrase in anything I am producing. But I hope that you will one day make these writings available to the world, as I believe that humanity benefits enormously from considering all serious discussion and points of view about God and Life, so that each of us may come to our own conclusions and awareness about Who We Are, Why We Are Here, and Who and What this Thing Called ‘God” is!

KRISTEN: This is where I function from, The Void, the Place of Law, and a position of Chaos overseen by The Source and all the Higher Powers. A brief glimpse at a Tree of Life website, or Wiki will explain this chaos a bit. Its called the Void, and it is sure extra chaotic at the moment.

NEALE: Thanks. I’ll take a look over there and see what I can find out.

KRISTEN: I think, but do not believe, we are very close to a judgment day, hence my warnings.

NEALE: This sentence seems to send two messages, so I am not clear what you are wishing to communicate here. You “think” something, but you do not “believe” it? In my own belief system, there is no such thing as Judgment Day. God has no reason to judge us for anything. As I described above, God cannot be hurt or damaged or frustrated or upset in any way. And in God’s eyes, we are like children. We would not punish our children with everlasting damnation, and neither will God do this to her children. He is much more kind, much more loving, and much more understanding than that.

KRISTEN: Many, including you, are breaching many Universal Laws, but the main ones I am concerned about for you are the ones that determine no one is to get between any true God and their followers…

NEALE: I have always made it clear been I do not wish to “get between” any person and the God in which they believe. In fact, conversations with God makes this very clear when it says: “Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.” I encourage people to simply compare what they have been told by others with what they feel deep inside of their heart. If the books I have written help them to do that, I am happy––whether they believe what I have written or not.

KRISTEN: …deceiving people into thinking there are are no consequences imposed on us by the Higher Powers, including God and a judge…

NEALE: I think the difference between you and me, Kristen, is that you think people can be deceived, and I have more faith in the intelligence of the people who are reading my books. I could not “deceive” them if I wanted to. They are way too smart for that. I believe they are capable of reading what I have written, considering what I have offered, and coming to their own conclusions about the truth that resides deep within them concerning God and concerning life. I certainly cannot restrain myself from sharing my own thoughts about these things for fear that I may “deceive” someone else. Even as you share what is true for you, openly and passionately, without fear that you may “deceive” someone else, so do I.

KRISTEN: …lying about God (any God), and misleading children into believing non-truths.

NEALE: Sharing a thought or an opinion about God that is different from the views of others is not the same as “lying” about God. As for “misleading children,” I would hope that all parents would exercise their own personal judgment about what they place before their children. If they belief in my material is “misleading,” they should not allow their children to have access to it. No author in the world could publish a book ever, anywhere, if they had to worry about children being misled by what they have written.

KRISTEN: God is a punishing God. It is unfair and deceptive to teach people otherwise, this can lead them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t, even when they know in their heart it is wrong (wrong is also defined Universally, as is evil).

NEALE: I know that you sincerely believe that God is a punishing God, so I see that we do not share the same understanding about our Deity. However, it is not “unfair” and “deceptive” to talk with people about a different kind of God. And my experience has been that people who do not believe in a punishing God do not do things that they would otherwise refrain from doing. My experience is quite to the contrary. People who do not believe in a punishing God tend to be kinder, gentler, less judgmental, more tolerant, and more unconditionally loving them people who hold rigid beliefs about a God who punishes us if we simply think––much less share with others––nontraditional ideas about the Higher Power of this universe. The universe is not a Dictatorship, nor is it a game of Domination.

KRISTEN: This is Satan’s main trick, done via the Mass Mind of Humanity, by normalizing ‘wrongs.’ Don’t play his stupid pathetic games in his 7,000 year tantrum.

NEALE: I would feel very served by you, Kristen, if you would explain to me who this being called Satan is. Is it a male? Is it a female? Is it a strange creature without gender? What gave it birth? From what source did this creature emerge? Where did the number 7,000 come from? Was that just “made up,” or is it a factual calculation? In your understanding, what is Satan trying to do? In your understanding, does God allow Satan to do whatever Satan wants? If so, why would God allow such a thing? I think all of our readers here would be wonderfully served if you would offer your response to these questions.

KRISTEN: By eating humble pie, what I would like to see is “I, Neale, acknowledge that I have been wrong, and that what I and my so called God state or believe in may well be wrong and incorrect information. It is not my place, nor anyone’s, to tear someone’s religion apart and attempt to question everything, and turn people away from their God, nor show such huge disrespect to God and the Higher Powers!”.

NEALE: Well, I cannot issue such a statement, but I can come close to it. How about this…? “I, Neale, acknowledge––as I have been doing for 20 years––I could be wrong about all that I have written regarding God. It could very well be incorrect information, and I will allow each person who encounters my writing to judge for themselves whether it resonates with their innermost truth. It is not my place, nor anyone’s, to tear someone’s religion apart, but I will never feel it is wrong to question everything, and I will never stop doing so. And I will never stop encouraging others to do so. It is never my hope, my intention, or my desire to turn anyone away from their God, but rather, to bring them closer to their God through the deep exploration of Humanity’s current understandings about our Deity. I am clear that even if a person totally and completely disagrees with what I have said about God, even that will have served the purpose of bringing them closer to God. There is no greater service that my writing could perform. The purpose of my writing is never to show disrespect to God, but just the opposite. And—blasphemy of blasphemies—I think that God understands this perfectly well.”

I note with interest, Kristen, that you keep referring to “God and the Higher Powers” as if they were not the same thing. Can you explain this to us?

KRISTEN: But that aside, anyone who has a basic understanding of psychology will be able to tell you that humble or even normal people, do not ‘give talks’ nor even consider the concept that people would want to pay to see them or hear them speak…

NEALE: I find this to be an interesting observation, Kristen, as even Jesus thought that it was quite okay to deliver his Sermon on the Mount, and to speak to people in groups large and small throughout his entire lifetime. And, as far as people paying to hear someone speak, the wonderful Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh speaks at workshops and events all over the world where the payment of an admission fee is required. So do many other teachers and messengers, theology professors, and others. You seem to think that if someone pays to hear another offer a talk, that this somehow invalidates the speaker and their message. I join 90% of the people in the world in disagreeing with this assessment.

KRISTEN: …and that the lengthening of a name to include a middle name or initial is an attempt to ‘make themself bigger’ much like driving a bigger car than others, having a bigger house or even going to the gym to bulk up to be bigger…

NEALE: In that case, the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the famous Catholic nun Francesca Xavier Cabrini, the late Gordon Bitner Hinckley (president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science), Bishop Rowan Douglas Williams (of the Anglican Church), Sathya Sai Baba, Chimoy Kumar Ghose, and many, many other spiritual teachers, messengers, and writers were likewise attempting to “make themselves bigger” by using a middle name. I don’t believe that for a minute, and it feels to me that your indictment is simplistic in the extreme.

KRISTEN: …actively seeking followers, students or groupies is self-serving and ego based, and communicating with them is a desire to retain them whilst using an exchange of money, selective information and treating them as special is a form of needing to keep your power position above the general population.

NEALE: I don’t know about groupies, but I do know that every organization from the Catholic Church to the National Organization for Women (NOW) and hundreds in between seek followers and students. So here again, Kristen, we have a massive oversimplification that seeks to tar and feather a person for simply sharing with others more than one at a time. But I have not actively sought what you call “followers”––in fact, I have discouraged anyone from allowing themselves to fall into that category. I have readers around the world, but I do not desire to have any “followers.” I happily acknowledge that many people around the world have self-identified as students of the CWG material, and I see nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage it. Any viewpoint that has intrigued millions of people across the globe should be studied carefully, it seems to me. It is important to know what people are talking about, and what is capturing their attention. And when thousands of people write letters to me and send me e-mails asking me to help them bettere understand the Conversations with God material, I do not take the position that I cannot respond to their requests for fear of being called “ego-based.” I want to gently suggest that your use of name-calling and labeling does not befit you.

KRISTEN: …as is creating a situation of co-dependency, and that anyone paying a professional to take their own photo is vain or ego based.

NEALE: there you go with name-calling and labeling again. There’s nothing at all unusual in publishers asking their authors for a professionally taken photograph to use on book jackets and in their media materials. The Pope, for Heaven sake, has had his picture taken by a professional photographer.

KRISTEN: I understanding many things are compensation for insecurities or people’s past where they have felt inadequate in a way they never want to again, BUT I’m sorry Neale, I would not put the word humble by your name.

NEALE: And I would never ask you to.

KRISTEN: I’ve studied psychology and reading people for many years. Ha-ha…nice try though! When I see you flying coach, without taggers on, or doing talks and appearances and being Neale the person rather than Neale Donald Walsch, I might believe you. Humble is normal.

NEALE: As it happens, I fly by myself to most of my speaking engagements. Once in a while my wonderful wife accompanies me, but if she’s not with me, I fly alone. There are no “taggers on,” as anyone who has ever met me on an airplane would tell you. You are correct in assuming that I do not fly coach on flights of more than two hours. Those who sponsor my appearances around the world are kind enough to offer me the comfort of Business Class seats on longer flights, and I am grateful to except their generosity and the comfort that it brings me at age 72, when I take speaking tours that have me on airplanes every third day for anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks running. I don’t feel I need to apologize for that and I am sorry that you feel that it is somehow inappropriate.

KRISTEN: I am really concerned for you,. You seem to have no idea of how hugely wrong your books and teachings are, like never seen before, and that the consequences are appropriately huge.

NEALE: It was George Bernard Shaw who offered the following observation: “All great truth begins as blasphemy.” I understand that you believe that my books are hugely wrong. It is also possible that they are not. I am willing to have them stand the test of time. And I see no injury in placing before the public books that simply question our prior assumptions about God, about life, about the purpose of our existence, and about each other. In fact, I think that such questioning is healthy, and is the sign of a species that is growing and expanding in it consciousness.

KRISTEN: It isn’t as simple as questioning things, Neale. Scripture teaches us to do exactly that. It is that you are publishing lies and destructive information, clearly implying it is from God, when it is all prophecised about as the one Christians call Satan/He of Lawlessness impersonating God, going blatantly against everything God states.

NEALE: I think what you mean to say is that my writing is going blatently against everything that someone ELSE says that God states. I find it intriguing to notice that everything we imagine that “God states” has been placed into the human experience by other human beings. What it is that makes the accuracy of those human beings go without question makes for an interesting discussion.

KRISTEN: I do just wish for you, that you would just call it quits, or I question if you are under duress to keep going. Consequences are far worse than any threats under duress could ever be.

NEALE: I am not under duress of any kind, Kristen, but I thank you for your concern. It would be instructive for me to know what these “consequences” that you continue to refer to might be. Would you be generous enough to enlighten me on this?

KRISTEN: The answer to your question regarding scriptures is much more complex. For me personally, I literally went through a few different ‘Bibles’, and wrote lists of yes that is God, no that is not God, or unsure. I was only able to do this last year, after many years studying, experience with God and knowing God… but all the Scriptures I quoted all indicate the same thing, and that is, many things in all the different books are not of God, but most are.

NEALE: interestingly, I have always said the same thing. In book after book, in speech after speech, I have made the statement that much of what our religions teach us, that much of what we find in humanity’s Holy Scriptures, is wonderfully beneficial, and no doubt has been inspired directly by God. It would be a mistake to assume that these Scriptures contain all there is to know about our Deity. The mistake that many human beings make is assuming that we now have all the answers about God and about life. This is like a child imagining that because he knows about addition and subtraction, he knows all there is to know about mathematics. Such an assumption would be shortsighted at least, and arrogant at worst. All I have done with my writing is to invite human beings to ask two simple questions: Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything? Is it possible that there is something we do now know about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

KRISTEN: In these quotes God is telling us that there are many untruths in Scriptures about Him, so to read and believe carefully. Examples are that I know God does not help those who help themselves as scripture states, but He does help those who serve Him like a normal employer, I know does pay staff their wages the day they work as in my 2nd job when I work for God I earn an extra $100 a day (but only like today when I work for Him…thanks Neale). I know God regrets making humans.

NEALE: Whoa. Hold it. I don’t know where you got that idea, but I believe that it is now you who are profoundly mistaken. God does not “regret” anything. God is incapable of making a “mistake.” Your suggestion that God regrets anything that God created infers that we are, indeed, “children of a lesser God.” I am sorry that you feel this way, and I would be fascinated to know where you got such an idea. Would you care to tell us?

KRISTEN: I know Abraham became the father of many nations, I know God still executes murderers, I know God HATES cross dressers, including females who dress butch…

NEALE: I must say that I am finding your views about God almost as interesting as some people find mine. I think the only thing I wonder is what makes you think that your ideas––some of which I find to be completely outlandish–––are any more accurate than my own.

KRISTEN…I know God executes sodomers, but is ok with gay in general, I know many curses and blessings in the OT are in place…

NEALE: I knew that if we talked long enough we would find at least one place where you at I agree about God. Conversations with God makes it clear that God is, as you put it, “okay with gay.” But what, pray tell, is “the OT”?

KRISTEN: I know God didn’t say every human thought is evil, nor husbands rule over their wives, nor that Rebekah had a hairy redhead baby, nor that He would have said to Moses “I have made you like God, to Pharoah,” as that goes against the Tree of Knowledge information in Genesis and lots of prophecies have not come true, including most of Yeshua’s.

I do think people will have to spend a lot of time under God, with no priests or churches involved in order to do this, but these papers on God are Tree of Life requirements and assignments when you are at that level. Again, Kabbalah.

Must trot…cats are hungry, sorry about the typos!

Take care,

K

Xx

NEALE: Thank you, Kristen, for your willingness to share your views and your understandings here. I observe that each of us–– all human beings––have our own thoughts, our own understandings, our own ideas, and our own beliefs about God. Conversations with God invites us to take no one’s word for
anything, but to go within and seek to find in the deepest part of us the truth that resonates at the heart of our being. We are invited to be our own authority in these matters––and I think that is very good advice, indeed.

I’ve enjoyed the dialogue, and hope you have too. Every good wish………Yours humbly, Neale.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God determines what is Right and Wrong.

We have already said that when it comes to deciding what is “good” and “evil,” millions of people—indeed, entire societies and cultures—have used as their basis an understanding of what the God in whom they believe is said to have announced, declared, commanded, and demanded.

This is also true of the larger and more nuanced labels of right and wrong. In the end, most of the world’s people have taken it on faith that God is the defining and deciding authority regarding appropriate and inappropriate human behavior. Indeed, the civil laws of many countries and jurisdictions are rooted in this view.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if concepts such as right and wrong do not even exist in the Mind of God? What if there are no such delineations or definitions in Ultimate Reality?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. And let us be clear. This goes past the simple, gross motor-movement definitions of “good” and “evil.” This gets down to the most delicate shadings of human thought, words, and behavior.

Billions of the world’s people would suddenly be rudderless on what they have created to be a stormy sea of human experience without what they presume to be God’s guidelines on what is right and wrong in many subtle areas. We pretty much know about “good” and “evil.” But is, for instance, falling in love with the “wrong” person at the “wrong” time intrinsically “good” or “evil”? Is cheating on one’s income tax “good” or “evil” if one believes that the government is using it for “bad” things?

People around the world now base much of their individual behavior, as well as the decisions and actions of their clan, group, or tribe, on the Prominent Public Pronouncements of their particular faith tradition about not just the gross motor movements (killing, stealing, etc.) but the more subtle, finer maneuverings of the body human (the little white lie, the discreet affair that presumably hurts no one, etc.).

For Jews and many Christians this Prominent Public Pronouncement is the Ten Commandments. For Muslims, it is the Five Pillars of Islam. For Buddhists, the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts. For Hindus, the Doctrine of the Fourfold End of Life. For those practicing Kemeticism (a reconstruction of ancient Egyptian religion) there are the 11 Laws. Members of the Bahá’í Faith follow the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the book of laws of Bahá’u’lláh). Sikhism has the Reht Maryada.

This list goes on.

If suddenly it was made clear that God has no laws—that divinity’s pronouncements and Deity’s revelations contain no commandments, requirements, regulations, rules, instructions, guidelines, precepts, principles, criteria, or behavioral do’s and don’ts of any kind—the rug would be pulled from under most of traditional theology, and not a small amount of global jurisprudence.

If standards for human conduct are not to be based on the demands of our Creator (for the reason that our Creator has made no demands), then our species will have to come up with a new rationale for declaring a certain action, choice, or decision “right,” and another one “wrong.”

If we take “morals”—i.e., the values arising out of our understanding of God’s commands or desires—out of the picture, then the question arises: What shall be the Gold Standard for the deportment of our species?

One thing appears certain about our present standard: the arbitrary labeling of choices and actions as “right” and “wrong” based on seemingly capricious, often varying, and too frequently contradictory interpretations of God’s Law has done more harm than good in far too many instances around the world for that standard to any longer be considered reasonable, or even useful, within an enlightened society.

Once again I refer to the 2014 sentencing of a person to death for her religious choices, as substantiated in Chapter Six, as a striking and immensely sad illustration of this. Yet the search for, and the creation of, a new behavioral standard could lead to massive upheaval in humanity’s social and spiritual communities—which is no doubt why ancient standards are clung to.

Nobody wants to rock the boat. Not even when the boat is sinking. Nobody wants to question the Prior Assumption.

Here, now, is God’s message to the World:

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about right and wrong is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

In Ultimate Reality there is no such thing as right and wrong. These concepts are human constructions based on a massive misunderstanding of what God wants, and a total lack of comprehension regarding both the reason for, and the purpose of, life itself.

The reason that judgments about right and wrong are not present in the mind of God is that the concepts themselves are based on the condition or the experience of benefit and damage—neither of which exist in Ultimate Reality.

Nothing can be of benefit to That Which Is The Source Of All Benefit. Imagining that something benefits God is like imagining that a penny benefits a billionaire.

Nothing can damage That Which Is The Source Of All That Is. Imagining that something damages God is like imagining that an action story about a little boy who hurt himself and then got better is damaging to the author who wrote it.

Because God cannot be benefited or damaged in any way, the idea of something being right or wrong does not exist in the mind of God.

This idea will not exist in the mind of humans, either, when human beings come to understand that they, also, cannot be benefited or damaged in any way. This is so because human beings are not separate from God.

It is very possible for human beings to experience the illusion of benefit or damage during their physical experience upon the earth, yet this is but the result of their idea about what is occurring.

William Shakespeare put this another way: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

In other words, we are making it all up. We are defining and deciding what is “good” or “bad,” “right” and “wrong,” depending upon our mood of the moment, given the situation, time, and place.

In Peoria, Illinois prostitution is “wrong.” In Amsterdam, The Netherlands it is a legitimate business, licensed and regulated by the government, and not a small source of tax revenue.

In 1914, living together out of wedlock was considered “wrong.” In 2014 it is considered a good idea before entering into the long-term commitment of marriage, or for older folks seeking companionship in their later years without the legal entanglements of matrimony.

We are making things up as we go along, and we are changing our minds as we go along—yet we get caught up in any given moment imaging that, in this particular moment, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong.

God has nothing to do with these delineations. They are entirely a product of humanity’s constructions. If God were defining right and wrong, those definitions would remain constant. What is true in Peoria would be true in Amsterdam. What was true in 1914 would be true in 2014. Right and wrong would not be determined by map or calendar.

The question before humanity, then, is not whether God declares something to be right or wrong, but what is it that makes a human being do so?

The observable answer is that human beings have already decided (although few wish to admit it) that they are going to judge every one of their prospective choices or actions as being right or wrong based on whether they believe it will be effective in achieving their goals.

Thus, humans can sanction the state killing someone intentionally, even as humans declare that killing someone intentionally is wrong.

Thus, humans can cheer a Robin Hood tale of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, even as humans assert that stealing is wrong.

Thus, humans can convince themselves that a sexual encounter with another’s mistreated and ignored spouse in the name of love is romantic and understandable, even as humans maintain that adultery is wrong.

In human interactions it turns out that nothing is considered right or wrong absolutely, but that these judgments are made within a particular context.

This is the truth of it on the earth. It would serve us to openly admit this, and then to decisively declare that our new Human Code of Conduct shall be based not on “morals,” or what we have arbitrarily decided that God wants and commands, but rather, on what works and what does not work, given what it is we are trying to do.

If you are trying to win the motorcar race at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway, it would not be “wrong” to drive 175 miles an hour. If you are trying to get to the grocery store in your neighborhood without endangering yourself or others, you may not want to drive that fast. It simply does not work, given what it is you are trying to do. Indeed, there are no doubt traffic signs where you live making it clear that such behavior is prohibited.

There is difficulty and challenge in openly acknowledging and utilizing such a practical measure as the Gold Standard for human behavior, however. (Again, it must be made clear that we already use this standard—it’s actually built into our laws—but we simply don’t freely admit it.) The difficulty is that humanity would then have to admit to itself that our “ Gold Standard” is all over the place, and thus, not a “standard” at all, because we, as a collective, are profoundly unclear about what we are trying to do.

(Example: It’s not okay to “shoot first and ask questions later.” Unless you call it a preemptive strike, using weapons of mass destruction to defend against another nation’s weapons of mass destruction that, it turns out, were not even there. Or “stand your ground,” in which case the thought that you might be in danger—even from having a bag of popcorn or a cell phone thrown in your face in a movie theatre (where, according to “the rules,” you should not even be carrying a gun)—is sufficient defense in a Florida court of law for shooting and killing a man.)

This entire concept of moral “right” and moral “wrong” will be explored in crisp terms later in this text. Stay tuned for that. For now, know that our standards of behavior are all over the place because most of the members of our species are completely confused about Who We Are (our true identity as sentient beings) and Why We Are Here (the real reason for life, and the purpose of individual and collective experience).

And this is because humanity is totally mistaken about the reality, function, purpose, and nature of God.

What is the truly spiritual response to the terrible event in South Carolina? Is it forgiveness, as so bravely extended to the young killer by the family members of those he murdered?

Yes, that is a wonderfully spiritually elevated first step, and the whole of humanity is inspired by those grieving family members in Charleston. Yet there is another step, a step beyond forgiveness, that I believe God offers to everyone of us—and invites each of us to embrace in our own lives as we move toward spiritual mastery.

That second step is understanding. And ultimately, it replaces the first. Ultimately it renders forgiveness unnecessary.

I have observed, in my own life and in the lives of many others, that this is one of the most challenging and difficult messages of the so-called New Spirituality as articulated in books such as Conversations with God. It is challenging because, on its surface, it seems to violate everything we have been taught about the most sublime, exalted way to behave—and about the way that God behaves.

What if it turned out that God does not forgives us for anything, and never will? Might this be the missing link? Might this be the data about God and Life that we have never allowed ourselves to consider?

I have been asking for years: Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?

I believe the answer is yes, and that the following is what we do not fully understand: God does not and will not offer forgiveness to anyone for anything, because forgiveness is unnecessary. It is replaced in the process of Divine Balance with a more searingly powerful energy: Understanding.

First, Divinity understands Who and What It Is, and so It is aware that God cannot possibly be hurt or damaged, injured or diminished in any way. This means that Divinity would not be disappointed or frustrated or annoyed or angry or vengeful for any reason. It simply has no reason. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is, I believe, the biggest spiritual untruth of all time.

Second, God understands that humans do not understand who and what they are. Thus, they imagine that they can be hurt and damaged, injured and diminished (and from a purely human perspective, this experience is very real). It is out of this misunderstanding of who they really are that all thoughts, words, and actions seemingly requiring forgiveness flow.

Humans do things they would never do if they understood their True Identity and embraced it fully. Understanding this, God has no need to forgive humans for what they do (even if God could somehow be “hurt”), any more than we have a need to “forgive” a two-year-old child for saying or doing something that some might call “bad.” Forgiveness is not part of the equation in our response. We simply understand how an 18-month or 24-month old child could do such a thing.

The idea that you need to forgive an adult is clearly based on the fact that you feel they should know better than to have done what they have done to offend, damage, or hurt you. Yet the Soul knows that nobody does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world. The Soul knows that everyone is doing the best they can at any given moment.

Just as we understand the child whose simple immaturity and confusion led to his actions, so, too, do we see, when we come from the place of the Deep Understanding of the Soul, that the exact same thing is true of the adults who act in ways that persons of greater awareness of their True Identity would never act.

The more we find out about the young man who perpetrated the mass church killing, the more we see how this applies. Ah, we say. Now we understand. We begin, as well, to understand the mass consciousness and the limited awareness of many aspects of the internet culture in which he found himself submerged, and the sources from which he gathered his data about life. As we learn more about this particular case, the mind catches up with what the Soul already knows.

Understanding thus replaces forgiveness in the mind of those who have expanded their consciousness to include this level of awareness. The invitation before humanity, then—if we truly wish to change and finally transform the human experience—is to change our model of the world. And how can we do this? By telling a new story, the true story, of who we really are, of why we are here on the Earth, of who and what this thing we call Divinity really is, and of what God wants.

Perhaps the most profound spiritual outcome of the mass killing at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston will be that it will lead the whole of humanity to this heightened awareness.

The families of those who died there have shown us our magnificence with breathtaking clarity. Let us allow their first step to take us to the next step: a compassionate understanding of how any human being (much less masses of human beings) could do the kinds of things we see being done every day in our world, and a deeper awareness of the truth of who we are in relationship to each other and to God, such that we begin living that truth at last, in every moment of our individual lives, erasing finally these horrific events from our collective experience.

There could be no more fitting tribute to the blessed souls who gave up their present physical life to bring each of us the opportunity to open to this awareness.

In the meantime we see, with gentle comprehension, that understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. We see, as well, that only understanding of our past and our present can change our future. Condemnation has never done it, and it never will.

This is not something that is lost on God.

Divinity, therefore, patiently and lovingly awaits our growth, even as we do with our children.