Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #6: Self-Selecting/A process that could change the world.

In the 4^th installment of this series I wrote this: A person who walks through the world holding the Identity of Divinity deep within changes the exterior experience of everyone else everywhere she or he steps, every room he or she enters, every space she or he occupies.

If our entire species walked through this world holding such an identity deep within, it would produce Heaven on Earth.

The question is, what could cause our entire species to do so?

In my last installment (#5), I spoke of what causes a person to become “enlightened.” That article was a precursor to what follows here. I would like to discuss now what could cause all enlightened humans to produce Heaven on Earth, to join in awakening our species and co-creating a new way of living together on this planet.

I believe that the answer is desire. But not desire for planetary transformation. Rather, desire for individual transmogrification.

My online dictionary says that to “transmogrify” means to alter or change in a surprising or magical manner. It offers this example: “The cucumbers were ultimately transmogrified into pickles.”

So in my vernacular, to “transmogrify” is one level above to “transform.” To “transform,” in my world, means to change significantly. To “transmogrify” means to change not just significantly, but magically and surprisingly.

For me, this means becoming my Universal (or Big) Self in fullest expression, replacing my Local (or Little) Self. This is a shift into my God-created identity and out of my self-created identity. Or, if you will, into my True Identity and out of my False and Limited Identity.

When I develop, nurture, and place into physical expression the deepest desire to expand my notion of Who I Am, I automatically become a “change agent” on my planet — without that being my primary purpose or intention.

By virtue of the simple difference in how I present myself to the world, the world to which I present myself changes. It cannot help but do so, because the change that occurs within people who self-select to reach, in this lifetime, the highest stage of evolution possible is such that it touches other people in a profound way, showing them the highest possibilities of who they are, and engendering within them the desire to experience this as well.

It is a fact that a great deal of human behavior — a huge amount of it, actually — emerges from emulation. We begin our lives by emulating our parents (whether we, or they, know it or not). Then we emulate our childhood heroes and idols. Finally, as we move into adulthood, we emulate the behaviors that our society has told us lead to success, personal popularity, true happiness, and the good things in life.

It is when we cross paths with someone, when we encounter someone in our lives, who has created a new and remarkable way to define “the good things in life” that we almost immediately seek to emulate their behavior, because we realize they have found something that we have not been able to find (all of our prior emulations notwithstanding).

They have found peace.
And inner joy.
And true prosperity (having nothing to do with money).
And love. Real love. Unconditional love. For life, for themselves, for all others — and yes, for God.

Of equal importance and apparency, they have released any and all holding of fear, feeling of resentment, needing to forgive, desiring to defeat or defend, craving for revenge, inclination to judge, yearning to punish, or enthusiasm for righteousness.

When we meet and interact with such a person, we want what they’ve got. By seeing that it’s possible within the human journey, we want our journey to take us there. That’s just what happens with people who find themselves around people who wrap themselves around principles that produce behaviors and out-picturings of their highest inner decisions regarding Who They Really Are.

So what it would take to change the world is for the number of people who choose to change themselves to reach critical mass.

We are talking about people who self-select — that is, who choose themselves — to be among those who commit to moving forward their own individual and personal evolution by embracing and demonstrating behaviors that serve to awaken the species to who and what human beings really are (Individuations of Divinity), and how that may be made manifest in human experience.

The idea of “self-selecting” centers around an invitation to step into life in a new way, for the largest reason and the grandest purpose: To evolve to the next level, and ultimately to the highest level, in the expression of Who We Really Are. In other words, to evince the Divine.

That brings up a fascinating question. What does it take to change the Self? What is required to transmogrify? Does it take a long, long time? Years and years of study, effort, and practice? Was Malcolm Gladwell right in his 2008 book, Outliers, in which he hypothesized that it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery at anything? Could this include reaching mastery at Mastery?

That will be the subject of our next installment.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #5: What causes transformation?

Much has been made in the New Thought Movement of the word “transformation.” It has been said repeatedly in New Age circles that personal transformation is the ultimate goal in life. Yet what is “personal transformation,” and how does one achieve it?

This is not always addressed in specific terms within the community of New Spirituality authors, teachers, and messengers — who tend to speak in broad general terms, such as “higher consciousness,” or “awareness.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare that in my own inner world — which has largely been created by the Conversations with God experience — the term “personal transformation” means the changing of one’s identity, or the embracing of a “new thought” about oneself, seeing oneself from this moment on as One with, and an expression of, God.

It is in this context that I have called myself, and every human being, a Singularization of The Singularity, or an Individuation of Divinity.

I have held the thought that a person who walks through the world holding the Identity of Divinity deep within changes the exterior experience of everyone else everywhere she or he steps, every room he or she enters, every space she or he occupies.

In my last entry here I said that if our entire species walked through this world holding such an identity deep within, it would produce Heaven on Earth.

The question is, what could cause our entire species to do so? Perhaps more to the point, what does it take to be “transformed” — or, as some have labeled it, “enlightened”?

So let’s look at that here. Let’s discuss this elusive magical mystical experience for which so many seem to be searching.

I’ll begin by observing that there is a pitfall here, and even a danger. The danger is two-fold. The first danger is thinking that there is something specific that you have to do in order to be Enlightened, and that if you don’t do it, you can’t be it. The second danger is thinking that there is only one best way.

Werner Erhard created Erhard Seminar Trainings (est) about 25 years ago or so, and the people who were involved in it were absolutely convinced that this was the fastest way to enlightenment. They began recruiting people to take est, and it was almost an urgent matter with them. And if you didn’t get the urgency, they would look at you and say, “You just don’t get it.”

I enrolled in the est program and I “got it.” In fact, I became so enlightened that I realized I did not need est to be enlightened – which really upset the est people, because they wanted me to take the next level and the next level of the training.

est was a program with multitudinous levels. Once you got into the program you had to almost extract yourself from it. And if you did get out of it, you were made to feel by those who were still inside it that you had done something desperately sad. Not wrong, just very sad. Because you just didn’t get it.

Many years ago Paramahansa Yogananda came to America with a technique for “self-realization,” which was his phrase meaning “enlightenment.” When you realize the Self, he said, you are more aware. You are more at peace with the world. You are internally serene, content, and able to experience Divine Presence in you, as you.

Now I want you to understand that I am not putting this down or belittling any of this. This is all very real, and that is why every person who has ever achieved mastery has wanted to share it with others. Human beings who are truly enlightened, truly aware (and there are many of them), experience at a deep level that most of us are operating from a place of pain, extreme suffering, emotional turmoil, physical dis-ease, and are, as a result, creating an entire world like that. Yet Masters know that none of this is necessary. You can overcome it, create yourself and your world in a new way. But first, you have to know Who You Are.

Paramahansa Yogananda knew who he was. He described himself as being enlightened. And he was enlightened. He was enlightened because he said he was.

Yes, I hate to break the spell, but to be enlightened is to say that you are. It is as simple as that.

A fascinating man named Maharishi surfaced a few of decades ago and he announced yet another path to enlightenment. His path was called Transcendental Meditation or, for short, TM.

Now, I learned a little about Transcendental Meditation and I learned it from students who learned it from other students who learned it from other students who learned it from the Master. And there is some sense of quiet urgency with some people in the transcendental meditation movement, because they will tell you that TM is a tool that can bring you to enlightenment in a very short period of time – and they want that for you.

There are many other programs as well. Many approaches, many paths, developed by many Masters. There is Dahn Hak and there is the Avatar Training and there is Lifespring and the list goes on and on. Which path, then, should we take?

God says, “No one calls to Me who is not answered.” The promise here is that each of us will be answered in the way that most effectively responds to the vibration we hold and create and carry in the center of our being.

Many people are inspired to this day by the man known as Buddha, and so have become Buddhists. It is, perhaps, good to tell the whole story of Buddha.

His name was Siddhartha Gautama. His father was the ruler of a large area who wanted to protect Siddhartha from any knowledge of the outside world. Siddhartha was kept on the grounds of the family compound, but one day he ventured beyond the walls because he wished to learn more of life. He gave up his riches and his whole family, left his wife and children and disappeared, to embark on his search for what was true.

Immediately he encountered people who were enduring much suffering. There was poverty. There was disease. There was cruelty. Siddhartha was stunned, and he knew, he just knew, that life was not meant to be like that. But what, then, was the truth? What was the path?

“What can I do?” he asked himself, and he underwent a series of extreme physical and mental disciplines of every imaginable sort, including fasting and prostration and self-denial. This went on for years. He sought out Masters and did as they told him. Yet nothing brought him the experience of enlightenment. It only brought him an arduous life and an emaciated body.

One day Siddhartha Gautama said, “I’ve tried everything. I’ve done all the physical disciplines, all the trainings, all the exercise, all the starvation, all the diets, all the fasting, and all the meditation. Now I’m just going to sit here beneath this tree and I’m not getting up until I’m enlightened.”

And there he sat, doing nothing. No exercises, no meditations, no fasting, no nothing. Now that is hard for many of us to do, because we think there is something we are suppose to be doing in order to be enlightened.

Suddenly Siddhartha said with a start: “I’m enlightened.” And people came to him and cried out, “What did you do? What did you do? Teach us, Master! You have become the Buddha, the Enlightened One. What is the secret? What did you do?”

And the Buddha said something quite extraordinary: “There is nothing that you have to be, do, or have.”

Imagine. After all that time. After the life he had lived and all that he did and saw. After all the luxury and then all the self-denial, after wearing a silk shirt and then a hair-shirt, after thoroughly satisfying his body and then starving his body, after no spiritual or physical discipline and then tons of discipline…after all that time, he realized it was not about doing or having anything and it was not about not doing or having anything. It was about the middle way.

It was about just living life, non-attached to anything in particular. Not attached to your luxuries and joys, and not attached to your poverty and tragedies. It was not about any of that. It can be if you want it to be. It can be if that is what suits you. It can be if that is your path, but it is not necessary to be, do, or have anything in particular.

The Buddha said, in effect, “I’m enlightened because I have realized that enlightenment is knowing that there is nothing you have to do to be enlightened.”

Isn’t that interesting? Think of all the effort that people are putting in, with years-long programs and trainings, only to find out that enlightenment requires nothing at all!  You were “enlightened” when you came here, because you were Who You Were.

You were, are,  always have been, and always will be, Divinity Expressed. You are Divine, and you simply don’t know it. Or don’t believe it. Or have forgotten it. Enlightenment is about remembering, declaring, expressing and experiencing Who You Really Are. That’s all that any spiritual master has ever done. Think of any spiritual master you wish to think of. That’s all that any one of them has ever done.

So if you think there is a Path to Enlightenment that is the only path, the best path, the fastest path, you may suddenly find yourself feeling pressure, stress, a false urgency, even upset, and your ego may become deeply involved in convincing as many people as you can that the path you have found is the path they just have to experience.

Suddenly you will start acting not like a master at all, but like someone who is under a terrific amount of pressure and stress, because it will suddenly matter to you whether I “get” what you are trying to tell me.

If you are not careful, you even start having quotas or goals. You’ll have to get a certain number of other people to agree with you every week, or every month, or every year. And if you don’t meet those goals you will think that you have not done a good job.

And yet enlightenment, when it is all said and done, has nothing to do with what you do with your Body or your Mind. It has to do with what you do with your Soul. If you learn to love yourself and everyone else, and life itself, unconditionally, you will be “aware,” you will have reached “higher consciousness,” you will be “enlightened.”

In short, you will be transformed. You will be acting as The Divine. Because Divinity, in a word, is Love. Love without restriction, love without limitation, love without condition.

So this moment is the moment of your liberation. You can be liberated from your life-long search for enlightenment. You can be released from any thought that it has to look like this…no, no, it has to look like that…no, no, you have to get to it by this path, by that program, by the other process or activity.

You may still do those things if you choose to, but if you feel stressed about them, if you feel pressured by them, then how could they be a path to enlightenment?

So set yourself free today. Stop working so hard on yourself that you don’t even enjoy life anymore. Do what works for you, but make sure it brings you joy and harms neither yourself nor another. Enlightenment is enJOYment. It is the pouring of joy into Life.

Now here is one thing that I know will bring you joy. Spend the rest of your life giving people back to themselves, that they might love themselves, and know that there is nothing they are lacking, nothing they are missing, nothing they need, nothing they are not.

A sure way for you to experience that you are enlightened is to cause others to know that they are. That is the message and that will be the teaching of the New Spirituality. That is why Namaste’ has become such a powerful, such a meaningful and special, exchange of energy:

“The God in me sees the God in you.”

There’s nothing more to be done if we really mean that. Of course, if we are saying it because it sounds good, then there is a great deal more to be done. But if, when we say this, we really mean it…then the struggle is finished, the search is over, and enlightenment, transformation, is ours at last.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #4: The three opening messages
The Conversations with God dialogue opens with a statement of singular importance. That statement: We are all One.

“All things are One Thing,” we are told. “There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing there is.”

We have spent considerable time exploring in this space the idea that Separation of anything from anything does not exist in the universe. Nevertheless, the idea that it does continues to persist.

I believe that this notion that we are Separate from each other and Separate from, or “other than,” the Essential Essence and the Foundational Energy of the cosmos (which some of us call God) creates the most “drag” on humanity’s evolutionary process. In other words, it slows down our forward movement toward becoming a civilized species more than any other single idea.

Right now we are not a “civilized” civilization. We are more advanced than we were several hundred or several thousand years ago, but we are not yet civilized.

No species that allows over 650 of its offspring to die every hour of starvation, and cannot find a way to stop it, can claim to be civilized.

No species that allows 20.9 million women and children to be bought and sold into commercial sexual servitude every year and cannot find a way to stop it can claim to be civilized.

No species that allows over 3 billion of its members to live on less than $2.50 a day, and billions to have no access to health care (some 19,000 children die each day from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia) and cannot find a way to change this can claim to be civilized.

No species that allows 1.7 billion of its members to live without any access to clean water, 1.6 billion (a quarter of humanity) to live without electricity, or 2.6 billion to exist without basic sanitation, and cannot find a way to improve these conditions — even after twenty centuries of trying — can claim to be civilized.

Evidence suggests that there must be something we do not fully understand here about Life — the understanding of which could change everything.

The first three messages of the Conversations with God dialogues offer us some suggestions along those lines. I believe they are, in fact, all that we need to create the life for which we all yearn. Following the initial message that we are all One are these two additional noticements:

— There’s enough.
— There’s nothing that you have to do.

The first of these points to the fact that there is a sufficiency on this planet of everything humanity needs for every member of the species to live a wonderful and joyful life. All we have to do is simply share. Yet it is our idea that there isn’t enough of what we all feel we need to be happy, and so we have created a global society that competes with itself and struggles against itself.

The second of these two points offers a new way of looking at the solution to our problems. It suggests that we end our emphasis on “doing” and place our emphasis on “being.”

When what we are doing in our world emerges from a new, from an expanded, from a higher, state of being, we will find ourselves meeting the challenges of physical life automatically — without us “having” (that is, being “required”) to do anything in particular.

The statement “There’s nothing that you have to do” does not mean that there is nothing that you will do as you live your life. It means that there is nothing that is demanded, commanded, or required of you. It invites a deeper exploration of the concept of allowing one’s personal “doingness” to proceed from one’s personal decision regarding how one chooses to “be” in the world, rather than the other way around.

Presently, many human beings “do” things because they think these are the “right things to do” if they wish to “be” kind, or “be” caring, or “be” loving. They do something in order to feel a certain way…rather than feeling a certain way before they do anything, and allowing what they do to emerge from that.

This may seem like nothing more than a play on words, but the messages of Conversations with God assure us that there is more here than meets the eye.

When we embody a particular and specific State of Being ahead of time — not in response to, but in creation of, an experience of Self — we generate outcomes in our life virtually without effort…and, most noticeably, nothing is left undone that would eliminate suffering in the life of any other member of our species.

The State of Being that CWG suggests that every human being embody is what it has called “divinity.” In other words, our highest selves, our grandest love, our greatest wisdom, our deepest compassion, and the embracing within us of all the other most wondrous aspects of our True Identity.

(No species that is being Divine and demonstrating Divinity by being compassionate, caring, and loving could allow the conditions noted above to exist for another 24 hours…much less another century.)

A person who walks through the world holding the Identity of Divinity deep within changes the exterior experience of everyone else everywhere she or he steps, every room he or she enters, every space she or he occupies.

If our entire species walked through this world holding such an identity deep within, it would produce Heaven on Earth.

The question is, what could cause our entire species to do so? And that will be the topic of our next entry here. Until then, Merry Christmas everyone! Have a wonderful holiday week, and Happy New Year!

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #3: What IS CWG, actually?

Since the publication of the Conversations with God dialogues people have wanted to label them. It is our nature to give names to things. All things, really. Not just physical objects, but events, circumstances, experiences…you name it.

Literally, you name it.

Without a name, we have no way of talking about things, no way of referring to things, no way of entering into a deeper exploration of things. So we give things names, and then we can discuss them.

People have given a variety of names to the Conversations with God texts. Some (mainly those who disagree with its contents) have called it a religion. Some (mainly those who disagree with its contents) have called it blasphemy, heresy, apostasy. Some (mainly those who disagree with its contents) have called it foolishness, fantasy, wishful thinking, or misinformation.

Some people (mainly those who agree with its contents) have referred to CWG as dialogues with Deity, Divine revelations, inspired messages, metaphysical insights, guidelines for living, and even a New Spirituality.

No one, however, has spoken to me so far about Conversations with God in words that describe the material as I have felt it in my soul. So let me tell you what I experience CWG to be.

An invitation.

An invitation in three parts.

An invitation which, if accepted by large numbers of people across the globe, I feel could make our planet a more wonderful place on which to live, virtually overnight.

Here is that three-tiered invitation:
Change the world’s mind about God.
Give people back to themselves.
Awaken the species.

There you have it. Fourteen words that I believe could change the world if we took them in as God’s invitation to humanity; if each of us, individually, embraced them as God’s invitation to us, personally, and acted on them every day in every way.

You might find it interesting to note that these fourteen words, acted on, summarize the life of virtually every person that our world has recognized through the centuries as a spiritual master.

Whether we’re talking about Lao Tzu or Buddha, Moses or Jesus, Mohammed or Vasugupta, Mother Mary or Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa or Teresa of Avila, Beatrice of Nazareth or Hildegard of Bingen, all of the Great Masters, male or female, ancient and contemporary, have moved through the world in a way that demonstrated their decision to accept God’s invitation to humanity: Change the world’s mind about God, give people back to themselves, awaken the species.

As we inch our way toward the third decade of the Twenty-First Century, this tri-part invitation is being extended to each of us. No longer is it intended to be sent to, or received by, only one-in-a-million. Now it is being sent to all of humanity’s billions — and those who are ready and willing to accept it already know who they are. By virtue of the fact that they have heard the invitation…actually, felt it at an energetic level…they have already self-selected to be among those who now choose to move through the world in a way that demonstrates their decision to accept the invitation.

This process of self-selection — of people choosing themselves, rather than waiting to be or to feel “chosen” — is what marks this day and age as different from times long past.

In the earlier days of our species’ evolution, people did not embrace what we might call a “heavenly assignment” unless or until they felt “called” or “anointed” — usually as a result of a personal epiphany or spiritual transformation of some kind.

Today people are transforming themselves. No longer content to wait for some outside influence or exterior energy to shift their ground of being, people are expanding their consciousness, elevating their awareness, and expressing their grandest selves because they choose to — not because they feel they have been chosen to.

Such self-selection marks the beginning of a new era, the onset of a new epic in humanity’s long evolutionary process. It is the next stage of growth for the species, signaling the emergence from spiritual infancy to metaphysical maturation. Humans are claiming their True Identity, embracing their Actual Nature, and expressing their Divine Essence without waiting any longer to be ordained or consecrated through some external experience or authority outside of themselves.

This is as it would most naturally be; as it was intended to be; as it is, in fact, with all highly evolved sentient beings in the universe.

As you read this you will know (just as you knew, immediately, when you first read the Conversations with God material) if the invitation to change the world’s mind about God, to give people back to themselves, and to awaken the species resonates with you. You will understand intuitively and at once that accepting this invitation has nothing to do with huge exterior accomplishments you are expected to achieve, but rather, with States of Being you have the opportunity to embrace, express, and experience.

That is, there is nothing you have to do, and only that which you are invited to be as you do whatever you do.

This is one of the opening messages in the Conversations with God dialogues — which we will explore in the next installment in this series.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the 3,000+ pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #2: The one idea that slows our evolution
I believe that the idea that everything in separate from everything else is the greatest obstacle to the rapid expansion of human potential and the rapid forward movement of human evolution.

Right now most people who believe in God — and that is by far the largest number of people on this planet — still embrace a Separation Theology. This is a way of looking at God which declares that we are “over here” and God is “over there.”

This would not matter if it began and ended there, but the problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces too often in too many people a Separation Cosmology. That is, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a point of view, but the problem is that a Separation Cosmology produces too often in too many people a Separation Psychology. That is, a psychological viewpoint that says that I am over here and you are over there.

This would also be something we could live with if that was all there was to it, but the problem is that a Separation Psychology produces too often in too many people a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages everyone within human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.

Now we’ve entered into truly dangerous territory, because a Separation Sociology envitably produces too often in too many people a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, engaged in individually and collectively, and producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands—evidenced everywhere on our planet throughout human history.

I believe that only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Oneness Theology will our pathology be healed. A Oneness Theology recognizes that we have been differentiated from God, but not separated from God, even as the fingers on our hand are differentiated but not separated from the hand itself.

We are being invited to understand that all of Life is One Thing. This is the first step. It is the jumping-off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story of Humanity.

It is my thought that oneness is not a characteristic of life. Life is a characteristic of oneness. I believe that this is what we have not understood about our existence on Earth, the understanding of which would change everything. Life is the expression of oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are one. You are a part of Life. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle. It cannot be broken.

I believe that when we begin acting in harmony with this truth, our entire experience of Life will be altered forever. There will, in fact, be war no more. Violence in all forms will disappear. Depravity and insufficiency will end. Abject suffering and poverty will vanish. Cruelty will become unthinkable, insufficiency insupportable, indignity unacceptable, starvation impossible, and intolerance intolerable. We will have civilized civilization at last.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the 3,000+ pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #1:

We begin at the beginning.

There is something more going on here than meets the eye.

We are living in a system far more complex, far more magnificent, far more organized, far more intricate, far more directed, and far more usable than most people on Earth imagine.

It is precisely because most people on Earth do not imagine this to be true that our species is living the way it is living, with the largest percentage of us suffering hardships and facing challenges that no Enlightened Species should or would ever have to encounter.

It is incomprehensible, for instance, for a race of sentient beings that considers itself to be “evolved” to allow over 650 of its own offspring to die every hour of starvation.

It is incomprehensible, for instance, for a race of sentient beings that considers itself to be “evolved” to allow 1.7 billion of its members to lack clean water, or for 2.6 billion to exist without basic sanitation, or for 1.6 billion to live without the benefits of a discovery turned into a tool for modern living over 150 years ago: electricity.

Think of that: After 150 years we have still not found a way to provide electricity for a quarter of the human race.

In other words, we have not even found a way for everyone on Earth to harness and utilize the power that is visible to us, provable with regard to its existence — to say nothing of harnessing and using power that is invisible and not provable as to its existence.

This is how backward we are as a species. This is how primitive we are. We are so barbarian and uncivilized that we cannot find a way to stop 650 of our children from starving to death every hour on our planet.

Given this low level of our sophistication, it is small wonder that we hold the extraordinarily limited ideas about Larger Realities that so many of us hold. We can’t even imagine or manifest the miniscule about of love it would take to stop ourselves from letting so many of our offspring die of insufficient food, much less can we imagine the enormous love it would take to create the Universe and empower all of its sentient beings to produce and experience their own reality as they choose.

We live in a world where we throw away more leftovers in the restaurants of Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles in an evening than would be needed to feed the children of an entire village for a week, and as we watch the children die we discuss it even while poisoning ourselves with smokes and liquor in serious after-dinner conversations that produce no solutions, but plenty of tsk-tsking.

What it would take to turn around this sad state of affairs is a new and larger understanding of Life Itself…its origin, its function, its process and its very purpose. Yet many of us have limited ourselves to that which can be proven as we seek to expand that which we say we “understand.”

We’ve taken an “if-it-can’t-be-proven-it-can’t-be-true” position on matters of enormous consequence — and it is possible that it is this, and this alone, which has so dramatically slowed and hugely hindered our growth.

I have discussed this before in this space. I have asked: When a person who we have come to truly and deeply admire turns to us and says for the first time, “I love you,” do we believe them? Or do we say, “Really? Prove it. I can’t take you at your word. I need proof.”

If we required everyone who tells us they love us to prove it, I want to suggest that we would live very limited and lonely lives. Yet many of us require “proof” of other equally impactful and important Life Data before we can accept it and use it to our benefit — not the least of which is the understanding that there is something more going on here than meets the eye, and that we are living in a system far more complex, far more magnificent, far more organized, far more intricate, far more directed, and far more usable than most people on Earth imagine.

Conversations with God begins with a premise that cannot be proven. Therefore, if Proof of Premise is the yardstick by which one measures viability and usability of data, our exploration of CWG’s many potentially wonderfully beneficial messages needs must end here.

Its messages must be dismissed out of hand, for they emanate from what I have come to call the Undeniable Unprovable. It cannot be denied that it cannot be proven, and its very unprovability is what, to me, renders it undeniable.

Humanity has demonstrated that everything that can be proven is subject to denial. Global warming offers us a perfect example. A Chinese hoax? Really?

So I’ve taken to assuming that if is can’t be proven, there’s a good chance that it’s true. Like the fact that the first time my wife said “I love you” to me, she meant it. And like the fact that there’s something more going on here than meets the eye in the Universe.

Like the fact, for instance, that there is a Prime Source, an Originating Energy, an Essential Essence that some of us call “God” that exists, and that can be used with predictable and consistent results. An Essence that we are part of. That we are made of. From which we cannot be separated, because we are the manifestation of That Which It Is.

The first message of Conversations with God — contained on Page 5 of over 3,000 pages of dialogue — is this: We Are All One.

We are told: “All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing there is.”

This cannot be proven. What can be proven, according to Earthly science and Earthly standards and Earthly understandings, is that everything is separate from everything else. We live in a Separation Cosmology.

I believe this single idea is the greatest obstacle to the rapid expansion of human potential and the rapid forward movement of human evolution.

And we will explore that thought in Installment #2 of this series.

I think it is time to make something clear here. It is something I have made clear over and over again in all of my writing and at all of my public appearances — and I will continue to make it clear until it is understood by everyone.

I have stated time and time again that everything in the Conversations with God material could be wrong. I have never equivocated about that. Never once. In fact, just the opposite. I have said it over and over again.

Indeed, the books themselves make the same point. Do not believe what is written here, they say. If you choose, as an experiment, simply live their messages and see if they feel good and true and workable to you. If they do not, throw them away, toss them out, discard them and move on with your life in the way that feels good and workable and true for you.

I am open to a deep discussion of the CWG material with anyone, and this Global Conversation website is as good a place to have that discussion as anywhere on the Internet, so I welcome the engagement here. Let’s explore, item by item, what CWG says, what I believe it means, and how I believe it can be beneficially applied in every day life. It is not necessary to profess a belief in God in order for us to have this conversation.

I am not clear what has caused our regular visitor Patrick Gannon to state that I have made “earlier comments in times gone by that denigrated atheists and agnostics.” My memory must be fading, because I cannot recall ever having made such comments. So Patrick, if you could help me by citing what you considered to be such comments, I would be happy to either explain or retract them.

Patrick and the person posting as A True Friend have also recently asked here why I didn’t fix my own heart. But, in fact, I did. It is, apparently, how I did it that Patrick and ATF disagree with, and/or wish to use as evidence that the God in whom I believe, and the process of self-healing, is not real.

A True Friend also has posted this comment here: “I’m also kinda repulsed on how the CwG community like any other religious community follows their leader blindly.”

Well, my true friend, I am sure and very certain that anyone who knows me personally would tell you that I, as well, do not wish anyone to follow me blindly. First, the worldwide readership of Conversations with God could not in any accurate way be described as being “like any other religious community,” as CWG is not a religion in any sense of the word. Second, if some people have formed a community of interest around the CWG material, I am not “their leader.” Not in the sense of wanting, needing, asking, or hoping that anyone will “follow me.”

Again, evidence suggests it is quite to the contrary. I invite people — actively and continuously — NOT to “follow me” (I would be among the worst examples anyone could think of, of a so-called “religious”or “spiritual” leader), but to follow, always and in every case, their own innermost guidance.

I appreciate that both Patrick and ATF are, presumably, doing just that in their lives, as evidenced by their entries in the Comment section here. And I invite any and all discussions and explorations of the CWG messages in which anyone wishes to engage in this space. Indeed, that is the purpose of the space itself…so I invite the discussions to continue.

Looking in a serious way at the topics raised in the CWG material can only produce benefit for everyone, whatever their point of view, if the only outcome is that the discussions make more clear than ever to everyone what their point of view is.

It feels to me that emerging from one’s own highest personal understanding and greatest truth can only be a wonderful and beneficial way to live. I hope I have never denigrated anyone for doing that. But let’s not call a spiritual point of view a “religion” when it is not — especially when it declares, itself, that it is not.

I consider CWG to be a theology, not a religion. My dictionary defines “theology” as “the study of the nature of God and religious belief.” CWG surely is that, but it could not fairly be called a religion. And I am surely not fairly called the “leader” of a religion.

So let’s discuss Conversations with God fairly. It is a series of books, offering a commentary on God and Life. The books declare themselves to be a conversation between a human being and God. That is the belief of the author. I neither need nor ask nor expect anyone else to accept or embrace my belief. I simply invite people to consider the messages that have been shared in the material. Millions seem to have found something of value in them, if the number of people who have obtained and read the books, and passed them on to others, is any indication.

Now I know that any ideas that capture the attention of millions tend to be threatening to those who don’t embrace or agree with those ideas. But that is no reason to mislabel those ideas, or the person offering them. CWG is not a religion, and I am not a religious or spiritual leader. And everything in CWG could be wrong. I have made that clear repeatedly.

So let’s continue the discussions and explorations here by playing fair.

Good idea?

My dear and wonderful friends…

I am learning that few events or circumstances have thrown me into deeper questioning or more urgent exploration of life’s largest mysteries than having someone crack your rib cage right down the middle, split your chest wide open, and surgically substitute arteries harvested from other parts of your body for the main arteries serving your heart.

Such deep invasion at the core of your being produces – – or has produced, in my case at least — massive introspection and endless examination of one’s truths, values, understandings, life choices, spiritual realities, and personal intentions.

25 years ago I made a decision to spend the rest of my life collecting, articulating, sharing, and explaining the messages I had received in my conversations with God. I became very clear that nothing could be more important than the rapid dissemination of this astonishing and spiritually revolutionary material. I knew that it could change people’s lives and, without stretch or imagination, truly raise the quality of life on this planet for every one of its inhabitants.

I also knew that such a task could not be accomplished alone, but that I would need the help of every and any person I could find who agreed with me that these messages could be utterly salvific for the entire human race.

From the time that I was told that I needed open heart surgery to the moment of my writing this letter, in a hospital bed set up in my home to move me through my months-long recovery period, I have asked myself: “How important is this, really? Am I contriving the urgency of this? Is it all a figment of my imagination?”

The answer for me is that it is of utmost importance, and that answer emerges from my clear and present observation that millions of people’s lives have been changed for the better as a result of their interaction with the material in Conversations with God.

The importance and urgency of moving this message further and deeper into the marketplace of ideas was made very clear to me on November 8, 2016 — precisely one week after my operation – – when the citizens of the United States elected a new president. This event marked more than a simple new political beginning.

It signified a huge shift in political energy. And Conversations with God has told me that politics are our spirituality, demonstrated. The way has therefore been open for a massive shift of spiritual energy as well – – – not only in the United States, but around the world. For the World Entire has been, and will continue to be for years to come, impacted and affected by this historical political event.

Our deepest human values, choices, understandings, and decisions are reflected in our political machinations. If they are not, our politics are bankrupt. Our job as spiritual messengers on this planet – – – our assignment as one of those who has chosen to accept the invitation to assist in awakening the species- – -is to bring our highest spiritual awareness to our everyday activities.

The work before us right now is to offer humanity a strikingly different and remarkably fresh set of ideas – – – one might call them, revolutionary spiritual principles – – – that, when applied to one’s individual life and to our collective experience, can produce that for which every human being yearns: true transformation and real forward progress on our evolutionary  journey.

I am hoping you agree with what I have written here and that your agreement can and will manifest itself in the form of very real, present, and significant assistance in moving forward part of what may be your own life’s work: to awaken the species to a new way of being human…and to do so not by proselytizing, not by pointing to one particular message or path, religion or doctrine…but by simply living and modeling your innermost truth about the goodness of life, the fundamental kindness of the human heart, and the reality of God as an ever-present source of guidance, strength, wisdom, and hope as we move together on our evolutionary journey.

I know that not all of you believe in God, or in the existence of a Higher Power or a Prime Source that is consciously engaged in the expression of Life throughout the cosmos — yet you, too, I know, believe in your own fundamental goodness, in the kindness of your every intention, and in the love that you seek to express in every way that is genuine and true. Demonstrating this at every moment of your life with every person in your life is all that it will take to help change our world, and to move you forward in your own evolution.

Thank you for renewing that highest commitment, however it is felt by you.

Lovingly shared………neale.

My dear, dear companions on this journey…

The time has come for me to make a closing statement about Conversations with God — this wonderful experience that has touched my life and, amazingly, the lives of millions of others around the world.

By “closing statement” I do not necessarily mean “final” statement. I may very well have more things to say about CWG before I die (and after I die, for that matter, as I am sure there will be writings released after my departure). So by “closing statement” I mean to say that the words here are intended to bring a close to any speculation about how I feel about, how I personally hold, the Conversations with God experience — and how I wish and hope that anyone who is, or becomes, aware of it will feel also.

I want to put to rest any thought, idea, notion, or claim that may lead to a misunderstanding that any person or group may have about me, and about the body of work that has filled over 30 books and consumed the last 25 years of my life.

I am aware, of course, that some people and groups have called me a blasphemer, a heretic, an apostate, and, in the extreme, an instrument of the devil. I understand how they could have come to that, for many of the ideas I have placed into the world directly confront and specifically contradict their most sacred beliefs.

Because of this, I am very okay with them calling me these names. I am okay with it because I admire and encourage the active and energetic defense of one’s own most sacred beliefs, so long as that defense does not involve or include the inflicting of emotional or physical violence. (No, not even to protect — much less, to extend) — those beliefs.) For in my heart’s deepest experience and my mind’s highest understanding, sacred beliefs lose the quality which rendered them “sacred” if they are demonstrated in a way that deeply or irrevocably damages another.

But so long as we create and maintain the space within which you can share and practice your beliefs and I can share and practice mine…and we can do so while loving each other purely, and admiring each other genuinely, for having the courage and the gumption and the willingness to do so without rage-filled hostility, without brutality, and surely without bloodshed…then we will have both venerated our beliefs and honored each other. And what better way can there be to reveal why our beliefs feel so valid to us?

It is true that in my writing and in my speaking I have offered critical commentary on certain beliefs held by and espoused by particular religions, but I placed each of those statements into the arena of ideas in the spirit of simple and honest disagreement — and I hope that I have always welcomed the spirited disagreement of others with a willingness for open engagement in ongoing and vibrant dialogue.

That said, I hope you will hear me when I offer, with as much clarity as I can muster, this “closing statement” on the messages of CWG: I could be wrong about all of this.

Don’t imagine for a second that I don’t think about that. I think about it all the time. Matt Lauer once asked me in an interview on The Today Show on NBC: “Neale, do you ever doubt that the experience you’ve had is what you say it is? Do you ever doubt the accuracy of the information you feel you’ve been given?”

My response was immediate, simple, and straightforward.

“Matt, the day I stop doubting is the day I become dangerous, and I have no intention of becoming dangerous.”

So I want to tell you to doubt as well. (I’m sure I don’t have to encourage this.) I want you to be clear that one of the most important messages of the Conversations with God dialogues is not to believe them.

Indeed, in the very first book of the nine texts we hear this in the voice of God:

“Believe nothing I say. Simply live it. Experience it. Then live whatever other paradigm you want to construct. Afterward, look to your experience to find your truth.”

We do well to remain our own authority in all matters regarding the Self and the Soul. No one can tell us what is True for us, and no one should try.

I will always be happy to tell you what is true for me. I became very clear about my truth when I read the recommendations and the suggestions on how I might live my own life found in the CWG dialogue. I couldn’t help but think: “I wish someone had told me these things fifty years ago. I can’t imagine a better way to live.”

 I hope that if and after you read and absorb the CWG material, you agree with me. I hold this hope because I truly believe its messages can profoundly change your individual life, and the world entire, for the better. But whatever your personal response to the 3,000+ pages of this dialogue, I think we can concur that this is a powerful subject we are talking about here, and it is good to proceed with care.

All of it is wrapped up in our relationship with The Divine—indeed, in the question of whether there even is a “God.” And that is not a small matter.

Our understanding of all of this is significant because most human beings need and seek and sooner or later deeply yearn to find some kind of meaning in life. Without that meaning, without some purpose for it all, many of us soon find ourselves simply trudging along with heaviness of heart, trying to make the best of something we haven’t even begun to understand, pushing through our days and nights engaged in what appear to be increasingly aimless, valueless, senseless activities that clarify nothing, produce little, and generate not much more than “things to do” while on our way to where, we don’t know, but an eventual end that we call death — the anticipation of which offers naught but a heightened sense of what feels like the almost bitterly laughable fruitlessness of it all.

And so we yearn, and we search. And giving it deeper thought as I write this, I arrive at a place of knowing that if we hold the notion that there is some sort of Higher Power in existence, our reaching clarity may very well be guaranteed.

Seek and ye shall find, God has said to all of us. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. We may very well be caused to remember that there is something greater going on here. Information may come our way that will make the “larger-ness” of all that is and all that occurs suddenly apparent.

But what is the larger reason for it? What is the greater purpose? What is the grander point? These are the questions we all ultimately ask about life. And this is what I believe only your own ongoing conversation with God can tell you. The ideas and the pronouncements of others can perhaps lead you closer to it, but only your own inner communion with The Divine can open your heart and mind to your deepest truth.

I hope, then, that you will allow yourself to experience such a communion, to have such a conversation, and to know . . . whatever your most sacred belief, whatever your religion, whatever your faith tradition, or if you have none at all . . . that you can experience your own first-person, one-on-one exchange with God.

For some it may come in the form of words. For others, as feelings, or a simple sense of “knowing.” For still others, pictures and thought forms and signs and signals may present themselves as life itself is being lived.

God’s “conversation” has no limits, no boundaries, no specifications in terms of “how” it may proceed and how its messages may be sent or received. But I do not believe that your interaction with The Divine was ever intended to be a one-way encounter. I believe it was intended to provide you with comfort, to produce for you wisdom and clarity and strength, and a goal worthy of your dedication, of your commitment, of your time and your effort.

And so, I encourage you to engage in your own conversation with God every day, in whatever way feels natural and good to you, based on your tradition or your innermost feeling. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it inspiration, call it whatever you wish. And if my exchanges with God have lead you to your own, my publishing the CWG books will have succeeded in its goal—which was not to open you to my truth, but to put you directly in touch with your own.

God has blessed you, and me, and all the world. And if we simply extend God’s blessings to everyone whose life we touch, through all the days of our lives, in each of the encounters that fill our hours upon the Earth, we will have unlocked the Secret of the Ages held within the folds of the most sacred doctrines of all of humanity’s spiritual belief systems: Love is the answer. Love is all there is. Love is who you are. And the experiencing and expressing of love is why you are here.

There you have it. The mysteries of life have been solved.

I could, of course, be wrong about all of this.
(But I don’t think so.)

;o)