The Global Conversation

Category: Headline

  • BEYOND SURVIVAL

    That fabled year — 2012 — is behind us, with just a few hours of it left, and now comes the real task.

    The world was supposed to “end,” of course, on Dec. 21, but we notice that this did not happen. So now the question becomes, was the Mayan calendar indicating not the end of the world, but simply the end of an epoch, of a cycle? Of course it was. And the question now is: What happens Beyond Survival?

    Will life be any different? Will anything change at all? Do we even want or need anything to change in the way we “do life” on this planet? I can’t imagine that humanity is satisfied with the way things are. Surely there must be a desire, deep within the largest number of us, to seek a newer world, as Robert Kennedy challenged and invited us to do. All of which leads us to the thought:

    If we are going to make any kind of difference in our world in 2013 and beyond, we are going to have to do two things. (1) Enter the conversation about what needs to be accomplished and how to accomplish it; (2) Get about the business of creating change in the way we think, not in the things we do.

    There also needs to be a mechanism in place that make both the Proposing and the Implementation of change possible — and that, importantly, frames change within the only context that can give it impact, and make it last.

    That mechanism does exist. It is called Humanity’s Team. Its primary focus is spiritual, but in a practical way, with meaningful real-world application. And in days and weeks ahead, we will explore the opportunities that this global organization places before us for real and worthwhile action within an exciting context.

    That context is the Spiritual Aspect of our earthly experience. Human history has shown (not surprisingly) that any decision or choice made from a place that does not include (to say nothing of being totally outside of) the Spiritual Aspect of our lives will be either not implementable or not sustainable.

    In simple terms, if we don’t believe in it, we’re not going to do it. Belief is the bedrock of change. When we truly believe in something at the core of our being, embracing and implementing what we believe and turning into action becomes a fairly simple matter.

    And if our belief — the things we hold to be sacred and true — is foundationed in spirituality (that is, a sense of who and what we are that transcends what is physically or visibly apparent), that belief holds the highest place in our internal value system, history has also shown.

    THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES:
    LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR TOMORROW

    So the question going into 2013 is: What is the state of humanity’s spirituality? Is the portion of our sense of who and what we are that transcends physicality alive and healthy, vibrant, awake, and aware? Or is it dormant, inert, quiescent, barely alive within us?

    Those of us who believe that Who We Are is more than simply a body, more than merely a chemical biological being, have much work to do if we wish to lay the groundwork for the building of a New Human in the days and weeks, months and years ahead. This is a first of a continuing series of articles on that subject. We invite you to join in commenting, or even writing a Guest Column of your own, as we march into 2013.

    The question again: Where is humanity with its spirituality? We have we been, where are we now, and where do we wish to go in our future?

    Is this an idle inquiry? We don’t think so. We think that it deserves humanity’s highest attention. We think it should be part of The Conversation of the Century.

  • WHAT IS CHRISTMAS ALL ABOUT?

    A few years ago I shared the following message at the annual Christmas Eve service that the Conversations with God Foundation has presented in Ashland, Oregon for the past 12 years…

    I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up from 2 until 6, having another one of my Conversations with God.

    “Tell me about Christmas,” I said. “What is it really all about?” And I heard, “What do you mean, what is it really all about? I’ve told you a million times what it’s all about.” So I said, “Tell me again. I think I may have missed it.”

    And suddenly my head was filled with a Christmas Carol – one of the happiest and most triumphant of all the melodies of Christmas. “Joy to the world,” the song began, “the Lord has come.” But I couldn’t get into it. I kept wondering, what is joyful about the coming of someone who is going to be a lord over us?

    God! I said…I don’t understand this! And God replied, “You’re right. You don’t.”

    Then God said, “But at least you’re asking a question. And that’s good. It’s really hard to understand something if you think there are no more questions to ask. You can’t be given an answer if you think you already have the only answer there is.”

    “Well, I don’t have the answer,” I admitted. “So what’s the answer?” And God said, “The answer is that the Lord….who has come….is not a lord over you, but in you.”

    These words came to me at 2:57 this morning, and I pondered them in my heart.

    “Then,” I ventured, “the Christmas season is not just a remembering of the birth of a Babe. This is also a celebration of the birth of the Christed one in all of us.”

    And God answered softly, “yes.”

    And then I wondered what all the songs, and all the messages, and all the feelings of Christmas would mean if I accepted this truth. If I really understood that the message of this season is not about one blesséd being, but about all beings, being blesséd.

    Not about someone else, but about us. About me. But oh my gosh, did that sound bad. I mean, it actually sounded like blasphemy. How could Christmas be about me? Of all the self-centered, ego-maniacal thoughts! This is about the coming of the Lord! This is about the Gift of the Magi!

    But, my heart insisted, what if the gift was me? And what if the Lord HAS come to be in me, not over me?

    I know that I can find a place for him over me, but can I find a place for him within me?

    And what would it mean for me to do that? What would it mean for me to be not only a person who has been blessed, but a person who is blesséd? And for me to think of you in the same way? What if I saw you as blesséd? Would I act differently toward you?

    I’d like to think I would. I’d like to think that I would be more kind to you. More gentle with my words, more caring with my actions, more compassionate in my thoughts, more honest in my dealings, more patient and generous and…and more aware of the wonder of you.

    And if I thought that I was a blesséd person, would I act differently toward me?

    I think I would. I think I’d be more kind to myself. More gentle with my words, more caring with my actions. I think I’d be more compassionate with myself, more patient and generous and…and more aware of the wonder of ME.

    But is it possible that we are all blesséd?

    This I asked in the middle of the night, and the answer came back, stunningly, simply: “Yes.”

    Soooo, I mused… this is the meaning of Christmas. That… that which is Christed is born in all of us. Lives in all of us. Is all of us. We simply do not remember this. And so, Christmas was created to remind us.

    Christmas, it turns out, is not about a particular religion, but about all religions. It is not about a particular person, but about all persons. It does not matter whether you are Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew, Baptist or Buddhist. Or none of the above.

    When you give birth to the lord within you, you give life to a wonder and a majesty and a wisdom and a love that can flow from you to all the world, and change the world forever.

    Isn’t this the Christmas Story?

    And when we live this story as our story, are our lives not renewed, with our separated selves made whole?

    Indeed. Our souls are stirred, our hearts are filled. And then it is we who bring…joy to the world.

    The gift of Christmas is us, fully expressed and fully realized. It is us — completely willing and totally ready — to love without condition, to give without restriction, to share without limitation, to create without fear, to celebrate ourselves without shame or embarrassment.

    It is us, choosing to forgive without hesitation, to help without being asked, to rush in where angels fear to tread. Indeed, to lead the way for angels.

    Ah, to lead the way for angels. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’ve come to the Earth. To be a herald!

    Hark! The herald, angels sing. Glory to the newborn king.

    At this moment we can give birth to the royalty within us…the royalty that we are in God’s eyes.

    You know, someone once said…if you saw you as God sees you, you would smile a lot. Well, this moment, this Christmas Moment, is a time for smiles. For in this moment, if we really try, we can almost see ourselves as God see us. We can feel it.

    You can feel it right now, in your heart. That feeling is called love. Your love for life, and all those you love in this life. And God’s love for you.

    The Magic of Christmas is that it gives us permission to take that feeling, to take that love, and share it with all those whose lives we touch.

    With friend, and with stranger. With those who agree with us, and with those who disagree. With those who look and act like us, and with those who do not.

    We are invited in this moment to feel this love, and to give it permanent place within our heart. To be the source of peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men and women everywhere.

    We are invited in this moment to walk the Earth not only as one who is blessed, but as one who is blesséd. Not only as the Lord of the manner, but in the manner of the Lord. For that is what we are. We are the lord of our inner kingdom, and thus, of the outer one as well. And when we understand that, everything changes. We begin to experience the world, and to affect the world, in a new way.

    That is the Christmas invitation. We are invited to begin that experience in this moment. On this, and on every, silent night. And if we do, we will make every one of them a holy night. And we will begin to create a world in which all is calm. All is bright.

    Joy to the world! The Lord has come. Let Earth receive her King. Let every heart…prepare him room. And heaven, and nature, sing!

     

    Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy, happy holidays!

  • COULD OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD
    BE AN UNEXPECTED CAUSE OF OUR VIOLENCE?

    This is the last in a 4-part series of commentaries on the Connecticut events, and the larger implications of them.

    In Part III of this series, I called upon all of us to join together in launching what I have called a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul as an antidote to the slow poisoning of human society that has created the environment within which something as horrific as the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School could take place.

    As I have observed in the past, I believe we make a mistake if we view the Connecticut event as only and just the tragic playing out of the twisted thoughts of an unstable mind. It is that, for sure, but it is not only that.

    Many people seem to limit it to that. One comment entered by a reader of my blog on this topic at Huffington Post appeared to be typical of this group: “Wow! Talk about a writer being out of touch with reality. I can answer his question as to how the Newtown Massacre happened. A woman who had a mentally ill son that was obviously also out of touch with reality had weapons in her house that never should have been there.”

    But it is not — it just is not — as simple as that. That is the outcome, but more than one input produced that outcome.

    I believe the event at Sandy Hook Elementary School, as well as all the gun violence (and, for that matter, all the violence of any kind committed in this world) is the outgrowth of a society in which there has come to be an inordinate and consistent focus on, and portrayal of, Violence as Solution. This portrayal is seen in all the ways that we tell stories about our species to our species; in the myriad ways that we tell each other about each other.

    I know that many are beating this drum now, but I am not opposed to getting on a bandwagon simply because others are on it.  So I will agree with many others who say: it is true that everything from movies to television programs to pictured story books unfortunately called “comic” books (although there is nothing comical about them) to electronic video products for children regrettably called “games” (although killing others should never be thought of as a game) tell our culture about our culture in such a dramatic way that it cannot help but create more of that culture.

    We did not tell stories around our campfires in the earliest days of our existence simply as a means of entertainment. We told stories around the campfire as a means of informing ourselves about ourselves. Stories have a larger impact than passing time. They pass the baton to a new generation. To suggest that they have nothing to do with any of this is disingenuous at best.

    The complete desensitizing of human minds  — stable minds and unstable minds alike — produced by the unending onslaught of vivid, ugly, bloody, gory violence everywhere we look cannot help but produce a society in which the playing out of those storylines in minds that are not stable leads to the acting out of those stories in real life.

    And that, as much as the instability of one person’s mind, is what produces, ever more frequently, events of unimaginably tragic consequence such as the Sandy Hook shooting. Especially when one has easy access to assault weapons designed for rapid-fire killing.

    Now what I am going to say next may feel like a bit of a stretch, but follow me here for just a bit and see if in the end you can agree with me. I begin with a question.

    How do you think it has come to pass that we have found our way to a place where we find depictions of overt violence perfectly okay?

    I believe it is because we have equated Violence In The Name Of Justice with Righteousness under Moral Law.

    Movie audiences cheer when the Good Guys (the ones who have “Right” on their side) end the lives of the Bad Guys in the most graphic, revolting, violent ways. Video game players pump their fists in self-congratulations when the Good Guys (the ones who have “Right” on their side) blow the Bad Guys to pieces, literally — their body parts exploding all over the screen. Television viewers give higher and higher ratings to programs in which shooting and killing by the Good Guys (the ones who have “Right” on their side) bring an end to the lives of the Bad Guys in the most horrific ways.

    What is it within our culture that allows us to cheer violence — to actually crave it in the name of “justice” —  as we do, for instance, in countries (America perhaps most rampant among them) that continue to tolerate the Death Penalty?

    I believe these are all the behaviors that might be expected from a species that has been raised to believe that indescribable, horrific, and painful punishment is entirely appropriate as a response to what has been judged to be “bad.” Especially when this idea comes to us from the most authoritative source of which our human society has conceived: God.

    From the time of our youth we have been told of a God who judges, condemns, and punishes in the most gruesome, ghastly ways as payback for (or, if you wish a more gracious label, as the consequence of) the deeds of humans that God determines to be unacceptable.

    The Bible — to cite just one powerful cultural source of this Gory Story — tells us of over one million people who have been killed at the hand or the command of God. (You can take out a calculator and do the counting. It’s right there in black and white.) And if that isn’t evidence enough, notice that we have heard, over and over again: “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord.”

    This is the God in whom we believe.

    And even those who do not believe in this God at all live in a society in which the vast majority of people do — and have created a social milieu in which justifiable violence is reflected in both the entertainment industry and the justice system, to say nothing of international politics.

    It is this deeply engrained Cultural Story about God from which emerges our idea that violence is fine when it is used as payback on behalf of that which is Good. This is what has led us to a Content Code for our motion pictures in which depictions of graphic violence are totally and completely acceptable — while depictions of, say,  passionate or romantic sexual love are not.

    (Humans do not, you see, imagine or think of God as romantic and passionately sexual, but we do imagine and think of God as punishing and violently vengeful. Therefore, in our culture, publicly making war is more acceptable than publicly making love.)

    Small wonder, then, that unstable minds use violence of a means by which the perceived injustices in their own lives are paid back through vengeance.

    I believe that the next evolutionary edge for Earth’s people is the creation and the embracing of what I have called a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, vengeful, and vindictive God.

    Humanity’s Team has created just such a movement. It focuses on the same thing that Martin Luther King Jr. sought to produce for blacks, that Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan sought to produce for women, and that Harvey Milk sought to produce for gays. In a word: freedom. Freedom from the impulse to use violence as our means of punishing what we perceive to be evil, even as we cite God as our moral authority for doing so.

    The Civil Rights Movement for the Soul specifically invites members of all religious, spiritual, political, economic, and cultural groups to join together, to dialogue together, to explore together, and to examine together, with sincerity and honesty, the question: Are our present beliefs about God and about Life working? Are they producing the outcomes for which we have yearned — and for which they were intended?

    Some of the activities we can pursue as part of the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul…

    1. Engage all levels of media — including Internet media and websites, as well as brick-and-mortar media…newspapers, magazines, television and radio programs and networks…and, of course, today’s pervasive social media (Facebook, My Space, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) — in platforming the driving message of The Civil Rights Movement for the Soul…which is that humanity now needs to be freed at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, vengeful and vindictive God, and from its slavery to a dogma of separation from Divinity and punishment by Divinity that has divided the world for thousands of years.

    One idea is that we form a Special Project Team to be engaged in writing articles, news stories, press releases, and interviews and sending them to all media, challenging humanity to release our species from a global doctrine that creates separation and competition, and replace it with an ethos of unity and compassion.

    2. I would like, further, to encourage people all over the world to form Spiritual Discussion Groups, on-the-ground as well as on the Internet, inviting close examination in every community of the beliefs we have been holding about God, about Life, and about Each Other, and to honestly ask ourselves, “Have our beliefs been working? Are they producing the results for which we have yearned?”

    3. I would invite local HT groups to join in spiritual activism at the local level in other ways as well, in addition to regular weekly or bi-weekly meetings discussing and sharing the New Spirituality. These other ways could include sending Letters to the Editor of local and regional publications, posting the Five Steps to Peace (mentioned in Part I of this 4-part series of commentaries) on community bulletin boards, natural food co-op boards, new age bookstore notice boards, etc. throughout their region, all on a given day (Oneness Day?) around the world….so, suddenly, the Five Steps to Peace “show up” everywhere, simultaneously!

    4. Local Humanity’s Team Speakers Bureaus could be established, making persons available to give short talks before Kiwanis Clubs, Rotary Clubs, Lion’s Clubs, Exchange Clubs, etc. throughout the year (these clubs generally meet once a week and are always looking for speakers and topics to fill their calendar), as well as longer Thursday Night Lectures offered within the community, on the topic A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.

    5. Bumper stickers could be made and distributed, saying:
    JOIN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FOR THE SOUL
    and
    ARE YOU A MEMBER OF HUMANITY’S TEAM?

    6. The Spiritual Activist Project of Humanity’s Team could send members every Saturday to local shopping centers, flea markets, sidewalk shows and galleries, etc. to hand out booklets titled: Humanity’s Team and the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul The booklets would alert people to the amazing opportunity now within the grasp of all of us to recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are. It would talk about the Five Fallacies About God and the Five Fallacies About Life that stop us from doing that (also highlighted in Part I of this series of commentaries), and it would then list the Five Steps to Peace and invite people to embrace them — and to join and support Humanity’s Team in its work.

    There is much more that could be done as well, as the project team gets rolling and moves deeper into the year, leading up to Oneness Day 2013. These are just some beginning thoughts and some opening ideas.

    If you have an interest in joining the project team, simply write to me and tell me what you are moved to offer in terms of assistance. My address for this project is: neale.walsch@HumanitysTeam.org

    All of this is part of what I hope will be a constructive, healing response to the event in Newtown, Connecticut — and to violence all of the world. I send you all at this very special time of year my personal wishes for a special holiday season.

    Love and blessings…Neale.

  • NRA SAYS THAT WHAT WE
    NEED ARE MORE GUNS

    This is the third in a 4-part series of commentaries on the Connecticut events, and the larger implications of them.

    In Part II of this series I made the statement that there is no end to life, and no revenge or punishment (Who would That Which Is punish? Itself? There is nothing else in existence but Itself). There is also no such thing as Right and Wrong, and for the same reason. That Which Is is always That Which Is, and there is nothing else except That Which Is. In other words, nothing stands outside of The All. Nothing stands outside of God.

    Because this is true, in Ultimate Reality the conditions of “rightness” and “wrongness” do not exist. There is only what works and what does not work, given what it is that any individual aspect of The One is trying to do. There is no judgment in this matter, there is only the individual assessment of every sentient being as to whether a particular activity, choice, decision, or behavior is producing what that sentient being (or species) intends, wishes and chooses to create.

    Applied to the event at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and the shooting events that have occurred since then (there have been 117 gun deaths in the week following the shooting in Connecticut, according to the Twitter feed @GunDeaths) — we see that our present social system is not working.

    Actually, nothing is working. Not one of our systems. Not our political systems, not our economic systems, not our ecological systems, not our educational systems, not our social systems, and not our spiritual systems. None of them have produced the outcomes for which we have been yearning. In fact, it’s worse. They have all produced exactly the opposite.

    This tells me that the problem in our world today is systemic. It has to do with more than simply our actions. The problem in the world today is not a behavioral problem, it’s a spiritual problem.

    One’s behavior and one’s spirituality are not the same thing, of course. The first — hopefully — springs from the second. So if we reflect deeply on the school shooting in Connecticut we see that there is something amiss here that has to do with much more than just the unstable, imbalanced mind of a single individual.

    After something as horrific as Sandy Hook, many (especially the NRA) want to say: “Terrible as it is, it is just the out-picturing of one twisted, distorted individual. There’s nothing you can do about that — expect maybe, arm everyone else in the country.”

    The National Rifle Association actually has just released a statement at a press conference in Washington saying that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and calling for an armed guard to be stationed at every school in America. This, it says, is the solution to gun violence in schools.

    The NRA spokesperson said nothing about the solution to gun violence in America away from schools; about gun violence in general. It is too bad he did not, because, as reported by the Internet site Gawker, “While the NRA Was on TV Talking About the Need for More Guns Some Guy Was Walking Up and Down a Road in Pennsylvania Shooting People.”

    It’s true. According to a report in the Altoona Mirror: Four people are dead—including the shooter—and three state troopers were injured this morning in a shooting incident in Frankstown Township, Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio said. The gunman and two other men and a woman are all dead, Consiglio said.

    And so we are faced with the supreme irony: National Rifle Association CEO and executive VP Wayne LaPierre is telling us more guns are needed out there, not less, just moments after —  unbeknownst to him — more innocent people two states away were shot by a man running around with a gun.

    The challenge here: We just don’t get it. We just don’t get that the problem is not guns. And the problem is not violence. And the problem is not our mental health system. The problem is not a physical problem, it is a spiritual problem. It has to do with what we hold to be true, about ourselves and our world.

    Let me give you another example. The online news source Common Dreams reported on Dec. 21 that “We just passed the 333rd consecutive month of global temperatures above the 20th-century average. Climate scientists now say it’s growing worse faster than any of them predicted even a few years ago.”

    How is it possible that such a thing is occurring, and nobody in the corridors of real power on this planet is doing anything about it? Further, how is it possible that millions of regular people living their regular lives in the world are not making those in the corridors of power do something about it?

    Simple. The “regular people” are not yet affected by it. At least, not enough of them. It is projected that in 20-30 years half the world’s people will be suffering a water shortage. Then there will be some voices raised. Yet what good will that do? Voices are being raised right now about half the world’s people suffering a food shortage. Over 400 children die of starvation every day on Earth. Is the power elite doing anything about it?

    Does it matter that there was another killing of a group of innocent people just before that NRA press conference? Or that there have been 117 gun deaths across America since Sandy Hook? Will those in the corridors of power do anything about that?

    Not likely. Not unless and until there is a huge shift in our collective consciousness, a huge altering of our collective spiritual reality. Presently, most of the humans on Earth do not believe the first message of Conversations with God, a four-word announcement that, if embraced and placed into social, political, and economic policy, would change the world overnight. That message: We Are All One.

    If we implemented this policy this very day, much of what is predicted to become part of our dire future will never happen. If this idea were adopted and embraced as a functioning reality by humanity, much of what is going on right now would never occur again.

    But until enough people “get” that what is happening to anyone is happening to everyone, there will never be sufficient energy behind any effort to reform our way of being and our way of living on this planet such that Life Itself suddenly (and at last) begins to make sense.

    That’s why I founded Humanity’s Team, a global spiritual activist organization devoted to placing one message before the world — We Are All One — and producing one outcome in our collective experience: a life worthy of a highly evolved species.

    There is a way to bring an end to not just the violence in our schools, but the violence in our homes, on our streets, in our politics, the violence that we perpetrate through our global economics, and yes, the psychological, emotional, and even physical violence that too often emerge from those practicing our religions.

    We don’t even have to search for that way. We don’t even have to try to figure it out. One way, at least, has been given to us, articulated for us, spelled out as clearly as can be, in the Conversations with God series of books. This may not be the only way. It may not even be a better way. But it is one way that we know can be no worse than what we are doing now (to position it as safely as possible), and that certainly stands a chance of proving itself to be very effective at uplifting our collective life experience.

    It is important, I think, that we begin to at least open discussions about this. We need to have conversations ABOUT conversations WITH God. Each of us can engage in this process, creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a vengeful, violent, and vindictive God, and releasing our species from a global doctrine that creates separation and vicious competition, replacing it, finally, with an ethos of unity and cooperation, understanding and compassion, generosity and love.

    This is what it will take to shake the corridors of power. Words are more powerful than any weapon. It was Victor Hugo who famously said: All the armies of the world cannot stop an idea whose time has come. Let’s do what it will take. Join me in this project of Humanity’s Team. In the final installment of this series, I will explain more of what that could “look like.” Stay tuned.

  • DO ALL SOULS ACT IN
    SERVICE TO THE WHOLE?

    This is the second in a 4-part series of commentaries on the Connecticut  events, and the larger implications of them.

    (WARNING: This is not a small subject. Therefore, it may take you as long as 5 minutes to read this full commentary, and perhaps another few moments to offer your own Comment on it, should you choose to offer one (and we hope that you do). In our 120-character, read-it-in-7-seconds Twitter World, only you can decide if this is a worthwhile use of your Mind’s time.)

    As I said in Part One of this 4-part series of commentaries, the horrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14 leaves every sensitive, caring, compassionate human being who describes herself or himself as “spiritual” with deep sadness and searing, penetrating, urgent questions.

    What is true about God? What is true about Life? What is true about who we are as creatures on the earth calling ourselves sentient beings? Is there a purpose and a meaning to all of this?

    I believe that yes, there is a meaning and a purpose to it all that is going on during this time of turmoil on our planet. Conversations with God had caused me to believe there is a reason and a purpose to all of life, exactly as it is occurring. I’d like to explain that…but first, a word to the grieving and to those left wondering about the big questions of life in the aftermath of the school massacre at Newtown…

    What is true about God is that God is real, God exists, and God is both the source and the essence of all the compassion, love, understanding, and wisdom in the Universe.

    What God is not is what may be even more meaningful. My clarity and my understanding is that God is not what many — so very many — have said that God is. God is not a despot. God is not a punisher. God is not a vengeful, angry Super Being who needs certain things to occur in the Universe in order to be pleased.

    God is not angry with us, and God does not become “angry.”

    God is the essence of Life Itself, the Original Energy, the Prime Source, the Creator and the Created. God has bestowed upon everything God created the gift of Free Will. This means that there can be no punishment for anyone or anything, otherwise the idea of “free will” would be a sham, a fraud, a counterfeit notion. What “will” is “free” if it can and must only do what God wants or it will fry in hell in eternal damnation? That is not “free will,” that is “choice by coercion.” That is “decision by intimidation.” Under the legal system of most countries such “free will” would be called “duress.”

    So we know that God is an all-loving, non-judgmental, non-avenging Deity. What, then, is true about Life? Is there no justice? Is there no system of Right and Wrong? Do people such as mass murderers simply go unpunished? And what is the point of Life Itself? Why are we here, and how are we expected to know how to act, how to behave with one another, if there is no moral law, no code of ethics — and no punishment even if there was one?

    Okay, one thing at a time.

    What is true about Life is that it is an ongoing, never-ending process, not a one-time experience. It is an expression of the Essential Essence, or, if you please, an out-picturing of God in physical form.

    The point of Life is to give That Which Is (an energy or essence that I call “God” and that others call, variously, Adonai, Akshar, Allah, Brahman, Brahma, Deus, Divinity, Divine Mother, Ekankar, Elohim, God, Hari, Indra, Jehovah, Krishna, Lord, Mahesh, Manitou, Ormuzd, Parameshwar, Purush, Purushottam, Radha Soami, Ram, Rama, Theos, Thor, Varuna, Vishnu, or Yahweh, depending on their culture, background, belief or religion) a means by which to experience Itself in fullness.

    Because there is no end to life, and no revenge or punishment (Who would That Which Is punish? Itself? There is nothing else in existence but Itself.), there is no such thing as Right and Wrong. There is only what works and what does not work, given what it is one is trying to do. There is no judgment in this matter, there is only the individual assessment of every sentient being as to whether a particular activity, choice, decision, or behavior is producing what that sentient being (or, it the case of Earth, our species) intends and chooses to create.

    Having said all of that, I think it is important at this time of national mourning and global self-reflection not to fill the air with too many articulations of fine print regarding the esoterics of life. So I will stop with this for now, and say simply that God may be called on in this moment to bring all of us wisdom and clarity, understanding and compassion, healing and even an eventual return to joy.

    I have been told in the dialogue published under the title HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends that no death is ever in vain. Every life and every death has an impact upon, and a deep meaning for, every person who has come to know of it. That is why they have come to know of it.

    It turns out that Life is a process that informs Life about Life through the process of Life Itself. And so, everything that happens, happens for a reason, for a purpose. Its purpose is to inform All That Lives about how that living is being done — and then to give All That Lives another chance, another opportunity in an eternity of opportunities, to change that; to make whatever alterations in Its experience of Itself that All That Lives may decide is desirable.

    It is for this reason that no part or aspect or individuation of All That Lives would or ever could be punished for doing what it has done, or for playing the role it has played, in the larger process of Life informing Life about Life through the process of Life Itself. Life will not punish Itself for telling Itself about Itself through the expression of Itself. That would be Self-defeating.

    It is for this reason that Conversations with God observed that even Hitler went to heaven. First, there is no place but “heaven,” since everything and everywhere is the “Kingdom of God.” Second, there would be no reason to punish Hitler or anyone else for behaving in a way that told us about ourselves collectively, such that we made alterations in the way that we continue to express Life in us, through us, and as us. (Unless we do not. Whether we change our behaviors based on past behaviors is up to us. Will we do so now, in the aftermath of Connecticut? That is the question, isn’t it. Will we, for instance, do something about taking assault rifles off the streets, and big-load ammunition clips out of the hands of people who simply don’t need them?)

    Some Souls take on the task of teaching us about ourselves and about where our individual and collective behaviors are leading us. They do so in ways that we call both horrible and heroic. Hitler was such a Soul, and we called him horrible. The children of Connecticut and the courageous adults who died trying to save them were such Souls, and we shall call them heroes.

    There have been others, both positive and negative (as humans would label them). The same is true of events, in the abstract. There are both positive and negative events, and all are designed to teach us about ourselves. Or, more accurately, to remind us of who we really are, and to produce a contextual field within which we can express and experience that — and then, enlarge that by recreating ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.

    Within this context, in the eyes of God all Souls are sacred and all Souls are what we would call “heroes,” for the very act of entering into, and living within, the Realm of the Physical is an act of faith and courage — qualities of Divinity that life in physical form will call upon us to call forth and to demonstrate again and again, in ways large and small, throughout our experience on Earth.

    Physical life is also a great joy, and thus, an unspeakable blessing. Yet here is a great secret: It takes bravery to experience joy. And the greatest joy, which is the experience of Divinity Fully Expressed in you — requires the greatest courage.

    We see then that all Souls are acting at all times in service to The Whole. We each receive the invitation to carry for humanity the totality of its experience. Its pains, its sorrows, and the burdens of unknowing; its joys, its wonders; and the glories of knowing its Divinity. For it is the purpose of The Whole — that is, of Every Soul in Community — to know Itself, to experience Itself, and to be Itself through the expression of Itself in every conceivable form.

    I know that it is expected and perhaps even trite to say that the Souls who left physicality on Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School did not die in vain — but it is profoundly true. Their death is intended to awaken us, to show us many things about ourselves, so that we may decide many things about ourselves, thus to expand our experience of many things about ourselves. We fall to our knees not in sadness, then, but in honoring and in gratitude, as we see that the Souls of Sandy Hook celebrated their Continuation Day through the highest demonstration that physical life can offer of the meaning of love. For greater love hath no Soul than to give up a physical life that another may have theirs in greater knowing, abundance and expression.

    And so now, may you know and experience Divinity Expressed, with God’s Blessings flowing to you and through you all the days of your life, in tribute to those who have given all of humanity this opportunity.

    With love and caring eternal…Neale.

     

     

  • WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT GOD?
    WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT LIFE?

    (Please note: This is a lengthy commentary, because this is not a small topic. The topic has to do with more than one incident, as horrible as what happened in Connecticut was. This is the first of a four-part series. It may take you up to five or six minutes to read this first article. Only you will know whether it feels worth it to you to invest that kind of time in today’s 120-character Twitter World.)

    The horrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14 leaves every sensitive, caring, compassionate human being who describes herself or himself as “spiritual” with deep sadness and searing, penetrating, urgent questions.

    What is true about God? What is true about Life? What is true about who we are as creatures on the earth calling ourselves sentient beings?

    Is there a purpose and a meaning to all of this? Not just to the ever more frequent incidents of random mass shootings (there have been seven in the U.S. in 2012 alone, 62 since 1982), but to the violence actually organized by governments all over the world, or rallied by revolutionaries?

    What is happening to us as a species? And where is God in all of this? Sitting by, sadly shaking His head? Watching it all, but doing nothing?

    Do the messages in Conversations with God offer us any insights into any of this? Yes. Many. But before I get to that, I’d like to look first at remarks made by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), who said on Fox News: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

    Mr. Huckabee has made a similar point before. Last summer, after the mass shooting at a movie theatre is Aurora, Colorado, he said: “We don’t have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem.”

    The former GOP presidential candidate added: “And since we’ve ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn’t act so surprised … when all hell breaks loose.”

    I want to say right here that on Mr. Huckabee’s main point, I agree. We would benefit enormously as a society from bringing a discussion of God back into our schools, our communities, the military and into public conversations. You are right, Mike.

    But with respect, Governor, I disagree with you on the cause of all the violence we’ve been seeing, and the kind of God we should be talking about. I am not sure that the concept of “sin” as it is classically taught by the world’s religions has been helpful in bringing us closer to God, and so I would define the problem facing us today a bit differently from you. I would say: “We don’t have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a beliefs problem. It is what we believe to be true about ourselves and about our God that is causing all hell to break loose.”

    I believe that what would most benefit humankind right now would be an expansion of our understandings of, and our interactions with, God. I deeply believe that we benefit from having God in our lives. I mean really in our lives, not just as a concept, but as a function of our living.

    Yet I am talking about Tomorrow’s God, as opposed to Yesterday’s God. I believe that the God of Our Fathers has not been fully understood. And I believe that what has not been completely comprehended about Divinity, and our relationship to it, is in very large part At Cause in the matter of how we are continuing to create life on Earth.

    Conversations with God made this very clear when, in the seventh installment of the nine-book series (a volume titled The New Revelations), it offered this remarkable observation:

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

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

    We think that we are being terrorized by other people, but in truth we are being terrorized by our own beliefs.

    I was also told in The New Revelations:

    Your experience of yourself and your world will shift dramatically if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:

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

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

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

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

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

     ###

    This leaves us with a critical question. Precisely what is it that we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?

    Conversations with God says that what we don’t fully understand is who we are and where we are and why we are where we are. We are living a Case of Mistaken Identity and we have no idea what we’re doing here.

    What does any of this have to do with the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut? What does it have to do with the shooting in Aurora, Colorado? What does it have to do with the shootings in Columbine, at Virginia Tech, in Tucson and in Wisconsin, or at the mall near Portland last week?

    (Did you know that a man emptied 50-rounds of ammunition just outside a Macy’s store at a shopping center in Newport Beach, California on Saturday, the day after the Connecticut  school massacre? No one was hurt. He shot his gun into the air — for reasons not yet entirely clear. Was it a protest? Was it a means of drawing attention to how easy it is to shoot multiple rounds of ammunition in a public place in America? We don’t know. The man is in custody and is now being questioned.)

    What does this stuff about God and who and where we are have to do with any of that?

    Everything. Because if those shooters understood who we are, where we are, and why we are here — that is, if they had been taught in their earliest years (or even heard later in life from our society’s most highly valued sources) that who we are is an Individuation of Divinity, that We Are All One (including One With God), and that we are in the Physical Realm in order to express and experience Divinity Itself — they would and could never have pulled triggers on guns that fire 30 shots in 30 seconds, as Jared Loughner did in Arizona, in an effort to kill as many people as possible.
    (From the bench in Federal District Court, Judge Larry A. Burns said he was not going to make “political statements,” that he was just “a single federal judge” who had “no intention to change the law.” Still, he questioned the wisdom of allowing the unrestricted sale of high-capacity magazines, like the one Mr. Loughner used to carry out his crimes.

    “I don’t understand the social utility of allowing citizens to have magazines with 30 bullets in them,” Judge Burns said.

    Neither do I, judge. Neither do I.)

    And as part of that Big Discussion we need to ask ourselves with pure motive and honest evaluation: Is what we have believed in the past about ourselves and about God working? (That goes for those who don’t believe in God at all, by the way.) Are our fundamental and most sacred and fervently held beliefs about God, about life, and about each other producing the results we had hoped for? Or are they, in fact, producing exactly the opposite results?

    I believe the second assessment is patently and obviously true. And so I invite people everywhere to engage — softly and with reverence, gently and with patience, kindly and with tolerance — in a global conversation (I call it the Conversation of the Century) as part of a worldwide movement aimed not at rejecting God or eliminating God, but at expanding God in our lives.

    I invite people to join a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a vengeful, violent, and vindictive God, and releasing our species from a global doctrine that creates separation and vicious competition, replacing it, finally, with an ethos of unity and cooperation, understanding and compassion, generosity and love.

    I will speak more about this in the days ahead. And in my next entry here, I will offer my answer, from Conversations with God, to the searing and penetrating questions with which this exploration began. We need to make some sense of what happened in Newtown last week, and about what’s happening all over the world on this very day. What is going on with our species — and why?

    The exploration here continues…

    And until next we meet here to move that exploration forward, I send you my deepest hope that you will experience God’s infinite caring and unconditional love, and that Divine Compassion will comfort you at this hour, even as It comforts those directly and immediately affected by all of the violence and dysfunction occurring on our planet.

    May God’s blessings come to you and move through you to everyone whose life you touch this day.

  • INTERNET FLOODS WITH PRAYERS
    AFTER CONNECTICUT SHOOTING

    Many prayers from many people have filled the Internet in the aftermath of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Three of these, in particular, caught my attention.

    The first is from my spiritual colleague Marianne Williamson, who posted:

    For those who bear tonight the unbearable burden
    of unimaginable grief,
    who in their agony yell at the forces of fate…
    For those who moan and those who faint,
    for those who rage and those who pray,
    we moan and pray along with you.
    For tonight, those were our children too.
    Dear God, May a legion of angels come upon these parents.
    Bring to them an otherworldly touch,
    an otherworldly comfort,

    an otherworldly sense that their children are well —
    that they are safe with God
    and shall be with them always.
    Give to those who grieve what no mortal can give…
    the touch of Your Hand upon their heart.
    May all touched by this darkness
    be Lit by Your grace.
    Please wipe away all tears, dear God.
    as only You can do.
    Amen

    — Marianne Williamson – www.marianne.com

    And this, from Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, Congregation Beth Israel, North Adams, Mass.:

    God, let me cry on Your shoulder.

    Rock me like a colicky baby.
    Promise me You won’t forget

    each of Your perfect reflections
    killed today. Promise me
    You won’t let me forget, either.

    I’m hollow, stricken like a bell.
    Make of my emptiness a channel
    for Your boundless compassion.

    Soothe the children who witnessed
    things no child should see,
    the teachers who tried to protect them

    but couldn’t, the parents
    who are torn apart with grief,
    who will never kiss their beloveds again.

    Strengthen the hands and hearts
    of Your servants tasked with caring
    for those wounded in body and spirit.

    Help us to find meaning
    in the tiny lights we kindle tonight.
    Help us to trust

    that our reserves of hope
    and healing are enough
    to carry us through.

    We are Your hands: put us to work.
    Ignite in us the unquenchable yearning
    to reshape our world

    so that violence against children
    never happens again, anywhere.
    We are Your grieving heart.

     

    And finaly, this from spiritual teacher Matt Kahn…

    May the tragedies faced today invite us deeper into a space of vulnerability, where we are able to help all of those affected by today’s events know how deeply they are loved in the wake of such an unimaginable series of losses. May we courageously pick up the pieces of shattered innocence and transform together as never before. There is no justification for what has occurred, and yet, it leaves us no other option but to step forward in our own evolution and dare to be as loving, considerate, and compassionate with others as we’d dare to be in the final moments of this precious lifetime.

    May we hold our children and loved ones close and invite all members in our cosmic family to join together and allow such a day to reignite a fire of eternal grace that illuminates the power of unity consciousness in every cell of our being. While there is no conceptual explanation for today, it cannot overshadow the insurmountable fact that love is the only answer to carry us through any unimaginable breakdown into every miraculous breakthrough.

    May we celebrate the lives of those who have passed, and find it within our hearts to cherish their soul’s journey that has abruptly reminded us to embrace every gift in our lives. As we continue to live, not knowing when the time will come to say goodbye, we offer ourselves the opportunity to allow our greatness to shine and to embrace each breath as if it’s our last. For those who have survived the unfolding of today, may we express the power of our absolute potential, and celebrate the fact that nothing from the past had the ability to destroy us. Meanwhile, every moment has somehow led us here to assist in the healing of those who are still finding their way home.

    Through our words, actions, prayers, and choices, may we surrender into full alignment with the light of love, and open our hearts for the well-being of all. May we embrace our highest values and offer them in service for the transformation of our planet. As the world looks on, may our choices from this moment forward inspire humanity to give generously and love without limits. Many of us have been preparing for a global shift and as it stands, it is the suppressed shadow within the human condition that has come to unite every heart and deliver this species into the bittersweet redemption of our long-awaited destiny. It is now time for a planet of intentional minds, fearless hearts, and conscious communities to emerge and deliver Earth into a Golden Age of higher consciousness that no amount of unresolved pain can ever prevent.

    No matter where our journey leads us from this moment forward, let us always remember what a day like this inspires us to be. May all souls be blessed.”

    – Matt Kahn — www.TrueDivineNature.com

    To which I say:  Amen, and amen.

  • A MOMENT FOR SHARING
    FEELINGS AND PRAYERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And your thoughts?

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

  • A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
    FOR THE SOUL IS IGNITED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Love is all there is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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