My Dear Sisters and Brothers on this Journey of the Soul…

Recent days have seen two headlines in the news that once again invite us all to deeply consider who we are as a species — and who we choose to be.

One headline focuses on just released official U.S. Government documents that reveal that this nation was, past the middle of the last century, seriously considering a proposal to establish a manned military base on the moon that could be used for global intelligence gathering purposes — with the possibility of exploding a nuclear device on our Earth’s satellite.

The second story involves the two-hour death by lethal injection of Joseph Wood in an Arizona execution chamber.

According to the first story, at CNN.com, “The purpose of a nuclear detonation near or on the moon would be for show, a document said. Its ‘foremost intent was to impress the world with the prowess of the United States’.”

The CNN story opened with these words: “The U.S. military races to the moon to build a base — to beat the Russians to the punch. Maybe test a nuclear weapon on the surface. Consider a lunar-based bombing system to target earthbound foes. That was the plan in the 1960s, according to declassified national security documents released this week — some of them stamped as ‘SECRET’.”

While the idea of a lunar military outpost never got off the ground (so to speak), this was not because anyone in any official position wrote about the moral or spiritual implications of such a plan. It was apparently shelved because it was consider too risky, the CNN report said.

This says something about the human mindset that we all may wish to ponder.

The second headline involved the two-hour-long death by lethal injection of convicted murdered Joseph Wood in an Arizona prison on July 23.

According to this story at NBCnews.com, Mr. Wood is described as gasping something like 600 times by an approximate count of witnesses, seeming to be reaching for air as his execution took two hours to kill him.

Reporters who have seen executions before wrote in the Arizona press that in the past executions by injection took ten minutes to produce death. Any suggestion that Mr. Wood may have suffered cruel and unusual punishment was, however, dismissed by relatives of the two people Mr. Wood was convicted of murdering in 1989.

Asked about the possibility that Mr. Wood experienced an excruciating death, Jeanne Brown was quoted is this report by ABC News as having said: “You don’t know what excruciating is. Excruciating is seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying there in a pool of blood. That’s excruciating. This man deserved it.”

Ms. Brown is the sister of the woman and the daughter of the man that Joseph Wood was found guilty of shooting 25 years ago. Her husband, Andrew Brown, was quoted in the above ABC News story as saying “Everybody is worried about the drug. These people that do this, they deserve to suffer a little bit.”

“I saw the life go out of my sister-in-law’s eye as he shot her to death,” ABC News said he added. “I’m so sick of you guys (referring to the media) blowing this drug stuff out of proportion.”

Without commenting on the merits of the sentiments expressed by Mr. and Mrs. Brown, I am moved to wonder: Is the death penalty the way a society can best teach its members that killing people is wrong?

Does an advanced civilization use killing to end killing, violence to end violence, hatred and anger to bring an end to hatred and anger?

And what if it is not about a deterrent? What if it is just about what some people call simple justice? Is it a demonstration of a high level of evolution for a race of sentient beings to embrace a philosophy of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”? Is that the grandest notion that evolution brings?

My Dear Brothers and Sisters on the Journey…I ask these questions in the spirit of gentle but important inquiry.

Pope Francis is really making headlines these days, “telling it like it is” in many areas of life seldom, if ever, commented on by anybody in the Vicar’s chair in Rome.

I am encouraged and impressed to know that a global spiritual leader is saying things that have needed to be said for a very long time.

Describing the rapid deforestation of the Earth as one of humanity’s biggest offenses, the pontiff s said that “one of the greatest challenges of our time,” is to “convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation.”

“When I look at America, also my own homeland, so many forests, all cut, that have become land … that can longer give life. This is our sin, exploiting the Earth and not allowing her to her give us what she has within her,” the Argentine pope is reported to have told students in an address at the University of Molise, in southern Italy.

Francis’ remarks were reported on the alJazeeraAmerica internet news site.

Speaking not only to students, but to “struggling farmers and laid-off workers” as well in the university’s hall, the Pope urgently “called for more respect for nature…branding the destruction of South America’s rain forests and other forms of environmental exploitation a sin of modern times, the alJazeeraAmerica story said. The full report is found found here.

In a separate ajJazeeraAmerica news story last month, Pope Francis was quoted as criticizing the wealth made from financial speculation, calling it “intolerable” and saying that speculation on food was a “scandal” that compromised access by the poor.

“Addressing a seminar on ethical investing in the Vatican,” the Pope “said financial markets must serve the interests of the people and the common good of humanity,” the alJazeeraAmerica report said.

“It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences,” the network further quoted the Pontiff.

“Pope Francis added, ‘Speculation on food prices is a scandal which seriously compromises access to food on the part of the poorest members of our human family’,” alJazeeraAmerica’s report went on.

The network’s story also offers the Pope’s urgent call to the world’s governments, and his powerful suggestion to global investors on how they could wield their financial power for the common good, and explaining why it would be “logical” for them to do so.

Francis’ remarks on this subject may be found in full here.

It has been a long time since the exploiters of the world’s resources and the world’s people have been called to task so openly by so powerful a global figure — and by any spiritual leader at all.

This pope has made it clear that he intends to use his high profile to challenge the world’s elite to overlay its so-often vaunted spiritual principles on its so-often shameful behaviors.

The raising of his voice in such a manner has begun to raise concerns in some quarters that Francis is creating more and more enemies in more and more powerful places—and could be putting himself in danger.

At no time was this more frequently whispered than when the prelate took the breathtaking step a few weeks ago of actually excommunicating every member of the so-called Mafia family in Italy, describing one crime syndicate as “the adoration of evil.” That story, also from alJazeeraAmerica, is found here.

The question now before the house: is the global public ready now to launch a global Evolution Revolution, calling on a worldwide basis for the application of the highest spiritual principles to the day-to-day machinations of our species?

I do not personally agree with all of the pronouncements of Pope Francis. I was particularly dismayed when a few days ago he decreed that the Catholic Church formally recognized an organization of priests who perform exorcisms, thus adding new papal authority to the notion that Satan exists and continues to inhabit people.

Yet leadership, in any position, is about taking positions that risk disapproval and virtually guarantee backlash, and I give high marks to this Pope for fearlessly speaking his mind, and being willing to call the minds of other people to explore and examine their own truths on topics with which not every person agrees.

A true leader is not one who says “follow me,” but one who says “I’ll go first”…and this pope is the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in a very, very long time to say the kinds of things he has been saying — such as, when asked about gays: “Who am I to judge?”

I like this man. I really do. The whole world’s falling in love with him. Now if we could find such leaders in the halls of our globe’s governments, we might actually change some things…

Yet if the world’s politicians won’t turn the tide, it will, in fact, be left to us. I invite you to check out the link at the top right of the Front Page, and join the Evolution Revolution.

On Monday, June 23, 2014 Mormon judges excommunicated women’s ordination activist Kate Kelly,” a story posted on the Internet by ThinkProgress.org said.

In the ThinkProgress story, a statement released by Kelly’s group, Ordain Women, is quoted as saying that “judges within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) sent Kelly an email yesterday informing her that she has been ‘excommunicated for conduct contrary to the laws and order of the LDS Church’.”

Kelly, the ThinkProgress story said, “is reportedly no longer allowed to ‘take the sacrament, hold a Church calling, give a talk in Church, offer a public prayer in behalf of the class or congregation in a Church meeting, or vote in the sustaining of Church officers’.”

The international human rights lawyer said she was crying and sobbing so much that she “couldn’t really read all the words” of her excommunication notice. Kelly later told NBC News: “I guess I’m a delusional optimist, because to the end I thought they would do the right thing.”

Kelly is reported to have “gathered women by the hundreds to march up to the doors of a meeting of the all-male priesthood and demand entry (they were denied). Still, when her efforts were combined with what appeared to be concessions on the part of the church — including finally allowing a women to lead a prayer at one of their conferences — some concluded that the church might be shifting its traditionally hardline stance against women in church leadership,” the ThinkProgress story went on.

The Mormon Church, of course, famously excluded black men from the priesthood throughout its long history as well, until 1976, when its leader announced that he had received “a revelation” from God that black males were henceforth to be considered eligible for be priests.

No such revelation has been made by God regarding women, however, judging from the pronouncements of Mormon Church leaders on this subject.

Mormon church teaching states that men and women have been assigned different, distinct but complementary roles in human life. Women are to support the men who are in power, because “the Lord has put it that way,” the church says.

So there you have it. God—who apparently has a penis—requires all of his priests in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and the Roman Catholic Church as well) to also have a penis. Priests, and even bishops, in the Episcopal Church may, however have vaginas (but only as of a few years ago, when God apparently changed His mind with regard to certain, but to all, of his Christian denominations.)

Female rabbis are allowed in the Jewish religion, and female ulamas are allowed in the Islamic tradition, and female ministers are allowed in most other Christian denominations, such as the Lutheran Church or the Presbyterian Church. The Baptist church is not too fond of the idea, and God appears to be very strict when it comes to both the Mormon and the Catholic Church.

So how does this work? Does God give different directions to different religious denominations? Or are some denominations violating the Law of God by allowing some of their leaders to have vaginas? Or is it the other way around? Are some denominations violating the Law of God by requiring all priests to have penises?

What do you think God wants with regard to all of this?

Here we go again. Another revolution. Not to make light of the fighting and the killing in any way, but is this the Revolution du jour? Must our civilization endure this process over and over and over again?

The news now is of the insurrection in Iraq by revolutionaries among Islamic militant fighters. CNN reports that “vast swaths of northern Iraq, including the cities of Mosul and Tal Afar, have fallen as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, advances toward Baghdad. The ISIS militants want to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the region, stretching from Iraq into northern Syria.”

What is going on here? I don’t mean, just in Iraq. I mean, on our planet. I mean, all over the place at one time or another, since the beginning of time.

The answer is found in the book The Storm Before the Calm, which can be found in its entirety on this website. That book tells us that a search on Wikipedia under the word “revolutions” brings up a virtually endless catalogue of uprisings.

It starts with the popular revolt in the Sumarian city of Lagash that deposed King Lugalanda and put the reformer Urukagina on the throne in 2380 B.C., and ends with the revolutions that overturned governments in the Arab world in 2011.

It encompasses, in between, hundreds of others, including the Fall of the Roman Empire, the First of the Wars of Scottish Independence, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolution in India, the Boer Revolt, revolutions all over South America, the European Revolutions of 1848, the revolutions in modern Hungary, in Yugoslavia, in Haiti, the dissolution of the Soviet Union by 1991, and…

…okay, just take my word for it. This is a tiny portion of a list that goes on and on and on…and ON. We’ve been “revolting” since the beginning of governance.

Will it ever end? Not until the human race launches The Last Revolution. What is needed to bring a stop to the killing and the fighting is not American intervention in Iraq (which some are now calling for), not more military might to oppose military might that seeks to overthrow military might; not more of the same to try to cure what it actually presents.

What is needed here is not a revolution on the ground, but a revolution in the mind. It is our thinking we must change—and it is my hope that, as a species we’re finally about to become clear about that.

In the past we kept trying to change conditions on the ground, when what we needed to change was the condition in our head. Even when we did manage to change conditions on the ground (once in a while, every so often, we found a band-aid that helped), the same old (age old) problems eventually re-emerged—because nothing had been altered in our mindset.

The solution is to change our beliefs, and not keep trying to change our behaviors. Beliefs create behaviors, so if our beliefs don’t change, our behaviors never will. In the short-term, maybe, but not in the long run.

As we moved into the New Millennium more than a decade ago, our species finally began to get that. More and more people began making a commitment to explore new ideas—ideas which might have been dismissed out of hand just a generation earlier—out of their clarity that humanity’s old ideas simply were no longer working. (It is arguable that they never worked.)

New choices seemed to be in order. Our prior decisions, based on old beliefs, had gotten us nowhere.

It is not a coincidence that all this is going on now, as we move into the second half of the first quarter of the 21^st Century. This truly is The Storm Before The Calm. It was predicted, it was expected, and it is here. And…

…we are going to weather this storm, you and I. We’re going to give our children, and theirs, a wonderful world in which to live. We’re about to turn a page in human history.

If you’d like to know more, read The Storm Before the Calm right here on this website. I encourage you to. I invite you to. I dare you to.

Then join the Evolution Revolution by clicking on the Blue Box on the home page.

There is something you—we—can do. The question is not whether there is something we can do, the question is, will we do it…?

If you are a regular visitor here you have no doubt noticed that The Global Conversation has changed its format. Eliminated from this page are the several individual columns that once appeared, thus creating a finer focus on the primary discussion that was the original intent of this website.

As you may know, this online newspaper is an outgrowth of the book The Storm Before the Calm. We very much hope to do two things here:

(1) Continue the explorations that began in that book (which exploration can be done in the Comment Section beneath the posting of that entire text, just below), and…

(2) Extend those explorations from there, looking in our headline stories at current news items, personal events in our day-to-day world, and the spiritual experiences of our readers as they encounter those events.

We want to see how the messages in all the Conversations with God books apply as a practical matter on-the-ground in a Mon-Fri, 9-5 world. We want to prod our readers by asking questions—and we want our readers to prod us by asking questions as well. We want to generate back-and-forth conversation about practical spirituality. And yes, we hope to ignite a global Evolution Revolution (see blue box at lower right).

As a perfect example of the kind of exchange we hope to generate, let us present in this first edition of our newly-designed newspaper a comment placed here very recently by a reader posting as “Blake.” Here is what he had to say…

Neale…You are frantically repeating yourself over what God wants. What’s up with that? Do you actually believe in that Revelation nonsense that was pounded in your head since you were a kid?

The world looks bad if your filters are set to only look at the bad. Set your filters to see love and then relax. If we fail again as a species, we will die and rise again as another life form.

All this save the world stuff isn’t getting you any brownie points with the religious peoples in the world. I learned that there are three ways to be touched by God. The first is religion, the second is spirituality and the third is connection; connection is the highest form of mastery.

Which are you Neale?

 

First let me say, my friend, that I am not trying to “earn any brownie points with the religious people in the world.” If I were, I would hardly have offered the world a book of my personal conversations with God.

Second, and most important, I want to respond to your suggestion to me. You have said: “Set your filters to see love and then relax.” My response is a series of questions: Is this what Moses did? Is this what Jesus did? Is this what Muhammad did?

As Mewabe pointed to in his own response to your posted Commnet,  is this what you would have had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. do? After all, he was a man of the cloth, a minister. What business did he have poking his nose into the politics of his day?

And what about Saint Elizabeth of Portugal? Was she “setting her filters to see love, and then relaxing” when twice in the 14^th Century she placed herself in the middle of a battlefield between opposing armies, both times stopping a war and causing terms of peace to be arranged?

Is this the kind of “relaxing” you have in mind, Blake? Or is there a place in the lives of Spiritual Messengers to be spiritual activists such as those above? Can those with a deeply spiritual inclination see the perfection of all the conditions around them—as a perfect Contextual Field in which to seek to create the next highest version of Perfection, inviting everyone to a new level in the expression of Divinity?

It is true that, as you say, “The world looks bad if your filters are set to only look at the bad.” But what if you see a circumstance as neither “good” or “bad,” but simply “what is” — and then merely choose to change “what is” so that it more closely represents Who You Are now? Is that not the whole purpose of life, and the entire Agenda of the Soul? If not, what is?

If we pass by an alley in which we see a person being attacked and crying for help, should we simply walk on as we “set our filters to see love, and relax?”

What say ye, Blake?

Let’s pretend just for the moment that it’s true that God wants nothing from humanity. If that is so, then virtually all of life’s apple carts are upended. Ancient myths are upended. Cultural stories are upended. Ethnic customs are upended. Familial traditions are upended. Religious doctrines are upended. Legal systems and educational systems are upended. Political, economic, and social constructions of every kind are upended.

Could this be the reason that the idea of a God who wants something has been perpetuated?

Think about this.

Why would God want anything? What is it that God could possibly want or need? What would cause God to want or need anything? What could cause God to become unhappy if He did not get it?

Now think about this…

What could cause God to make humans responsible for His getting what He wants? Would you make your children responsible for your happiness?

We have been told of a God who wants humans to love Him, to worship Him, to adore Him, to surrender to Him, to be grateful to Him, and to pay Him homage. Why? Why would God want this? Why would God care?

We have been told of a God who wants humans to keep His commandments, and if they do not, and if they fail to seek and obtain forgiveness in the proper and prescribed manner, He then wants them to go to hell, there to suffer intolerable anguish. But think about this. Why would God punish humans so horribly for their confusion and weakness?

If we wanted someone to understand us better and to obey us always and in everything, and if we just could not get them to do it, would we make it their fault?

(Well, of course, we would and we do. But who can blame us? We are using God as our model. Yet what if our model is based on faulty assumptions?)

We have been told of a God whose justice is perfect. Yet why would a God who is vulnerable to nothing and cannot be hurt or damaged in any way need to punish anyone for anything, much less sentence them to torture?

We have been told of a God who wants and invites humans to go to battle for Him, to kill others for Him, just as He has been recorded in the Scriptures as having killed thousands who incurred His wrath. But why? Why would God kill anybody, or ask others to kill in His name?

Does God really want humans to massacre others while fighting for His Cause? What is His Cause, anyway?

What is God up to? What is “God’s Cause”?

Is it to get everybody on earth to join a single religion? Is that it? Is that What God Wants?

Why? Why would God want that? Why would God care?

Does it really matter to God whether you are a Muslim or a Jew, a Hindu or a Christian, a Buddhist or a Bahai’i? What if you are a good person, a kind, caring, compassionate and loving individual, but are a member of no organized religion at all?

What if you actually speak out against organized religions and their extremes? Does that make you an apostate? Does that mean you are doomed? Does that make you an infidel and render you eligible to be killed by a True Believer? Is this What God Wants?

Why? Why does it matter? Who told you that it mattered? Was it the organized religion that wants you to be its member?

Think about this.

Is this the purpose of religion on the earth? Is this the Cause of God?

What happens to all of this, what becomes of this entire thought system, if it’s declared that God wants nothing, nothing at all, from human beings?

Can you believe in a God who wants nothing? Is it possible to hold such a thought in your reality?

Can you even imagine it?

I believe that if you can, you have imagined the beginning of the end of a world of violence, anguish, and suffering as created by many people who believe that God demands and commands many things — all articulated by the religion to which they belong.

We can now let go of those beliefs. We can launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God.

If you would like to become part of this movement, wherever you are in the world, click on the blue box in the right hand column back on the Front Page of this newspaper, and learn about the Evolution Revolution.

(NOTE: Our extended series of headline articles ends with this entry. If you have found this series of interest, you may wish to obtain the book from which these installments have been excerpted. The book, titled What God Wants, may be obtained here.)

In the last installment of the headline series of articles here humanity was given the answer to the most important question in human history.

What does God want?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

Please think about this. What does God want? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

How does that feel to you? How does that thought feel when you try it on?

Does it produce an empty feeling? Does it produce anger? Does it produce simple agreement, as in “ho-hum, nothing new”? Does it confuse you? Does it make you happy?

How do you think the world at large would react if it turned out to be true? What, if anything, do you think would change?

Can there be any kind of meaningful theology if we have a God who wants nothing?

If we say that God wants nothing, are we as much as saying that there is no God at all? If we all agree that there is a God, but that there is nothing God wants, then what is God up to? What is God’s purpose and function? Why believe in God? Who needs one?

Some people have come to these questions and walked away shrugging their shoulders, saying, “There is no reason to believe in God. We don’t need one.”

I would argue strenuously that the first of those above two statements is false, and the second is true. There is a reason—and a very good one—to believe in God, and…we don’t need God.

The reason to believe in God is that this belief opens us to the possibility of God’s power playing a role in our lives. You can’t use the power of God if you can’t believe in the existence of that power.

Yet why would we care about using the power of God if we don’t need God? Fair question. The very fact that we can use the power of God is why we don’t need God. The answer is circular.

If a rich man writes you into his will in which he says he has given you all of his money, placing it is a safe deposit box for you, then you don’t need that man. Yet if you don’t believe the man ever existed, you will not even go to the safe deposit box to get the money. You won’t believe the money is there. You’ll think it’s all a ruse, a farce. You’ll be rich and won’t know it.

This is Part IX of an extended series of headline articles in The Global Conversation.

God made us “in the image and likeness of God.” This is a truth. This is not just a nice statement, it is what is so. It is as the Scriptures tell us: “Have I not said, Ye are gods?”

The idea that we need God is an illusion. It is an act of forgetfulness. It is what we imagine is true when we forget who we really are, rejecting our inheritance. If our belief in God is based on the idea that we need God for some reason, then most of our interactions with God will be dysfunctional. And, of course, they are. That’s the point here.

The very best reason to believe in God is that we don’t need God. God has made us capable enough to get along just fine, as any good parent would. Thus, we can be open to just loving God—and just loving God is the most powerful thing any of us could ever do. That’s because love unleashes the power of who we are, and when that power is unleashed, there is nothing we cannot do. Which is, of course, what God intended.

God did not intend for us to be dependent on Him. God intended for us to be independent. Free. And not only free, but fully capable. Of what? Of producing, of creating, of experiencing what we have long desired.

But just loving God means, of course, that we would stop fearing God—and that could only happen if we thought we did not need God. So long as we imagine that we need God for something, we invite fear, because, of course, we believe that there is always a chance that God will not give us what we need.

Most of humanity’s interactions with God aredysfunctional precisely because most of humanity has created a need-based relationship with God. This relationship not only assumes that we need something from God but, perhaps of more profound implication, that God needs something from us.

The relationship with God that so many people on earth have established falls apart if it is true that God wants nothing at all from human beings. Yet because the relationship falls apart does not mean the relationship is ended. Sometimes things need to fall apart for things to truly fall together for the first time. It does not always serve us to shy away from ideas that may cause things to fall apart. So let’s look again, and now more deeply, at this idea:

What does God want?

Absolutely nothing at all.

Please think about it. Even if you disagree with it vehemently, think about it. Especially if you disagree, please think about it deeply.

What makes you disagree?

Who told you that this statement could not be true?

What makes them right?

How do you know that they know what is true? Because they read it in a book? Fair enough. But then, what makes the book right? Because God said it was right? Which God? Which book?

Think about this deeply if only for the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual exercise.

(Our exploration of this topic continues in Part X, the final installment of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)

In the last entry of this extended series of headline articles here in The Global Conversation online newspaper it was promised that today’s installment would reveal to humanity, at last, What God Wants.

Human beings have been wanting to know and understand this for millennia. As we have said before in this series, many humans have thought they already understand it. So sure have they been in their beliefs about this that they have killed other people — many, many thousands of other people through the years — in defense of those beliefs…or to get others to embrace those beliefs.

That killing goes on even to this day. Yet those who have done and are now doing this killing in God’s name have not been accurate in their knowledge and their understanding of What God Wants.

Indeed, the world’s religions have been dramatically and vastly misleading in this regard. Each has sought to tell us what it is that our Deity commands and demands, wants and requires from us in order for us to rejoin Him in heaven after we die. But each has told us things that are simply not true.

The question now, however, is this: Can humanity believe what is true? We are now about to see. Following, immediately below, as promised in our last installment, is a full description, articulation, and explanation of exactly What God Wants.

This is Part VIII of an extended series of headline articles in The Global Conversation.

 

(The space between that announcement and this parenthetical paragraph contains the full and complete information about What God Wants, commands and demands of human beings. And our exploration of this topic continues in Part IX of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)

In this installment of our continuing series of articles on What God Wants, let me ask you a question. In your opinion, have our earthly theologies provided humanity with effective guidance in how to live together in peace and harmony?

Here’s my opinion: No. In fact, far too often they have produced just the opposite result.

Today 400 children die of starvation every hour. Every hour. Yet it would be possible to feed all the starving children on the planet, to protect them from dying of preventable diseases, and to make basic education accessible to all, with no more than five per cent of the overall annual sales of arms in the world.

Five per cent.

Can this be possible?

Yes. It’s possible and it’s true.

How is this evidence of a failure of religions and theologies? Neglect of its own offspring to the point of starvation could only occur in a society whose people see themselves as separate from God and separate from each other, having little to do with each other, and this is what is taught by our religions. Only such a cultural story could justify a world in which the income of the richest 225 people is equal to the income of three billion poor people.

You may have missed the real impact of that, so let me say it again. We have created a world in which the income of the richest 225 people is equal to the income of three billion poor people.

Three billion.                               

That’s half the world’s population.

What’s so wrenchingly sad about all of this is not only that the situation exists, but that so many people think it’s okay that it exists. You tell them that the income of the richest 225 people is equal to the income of three billion poor people and they say, “Uh-huh. Okay. So what’s the problem?”

This is Part VII of an extended series of headline articles in The Global Conversation.

Want to know why there’s so much unrest and violence in the world today? Open your eyes.

Perhaps you already have. Perhaps you already know. Perhaps you understand. Yet it will take more of us understanding, and then deciding to do something about what we understand, for anything to change.

If only more of us could open our eyes to the world around us! If only more of us could see our world as an expression of our oneness. If only our theologies could help more of us do more of this more of the time. But in fact it is our theologies that keep us from experiencing the reality of our oneness, and teach us of separation. And it is our ideas of separation that allow such conditions to continue to exist.

If theology was a physical science—biology, say, or physics—I believe that its data would long ago have been judged unreliable in producing consistent results, even after thousands of years. At the very least, that data would now be questioned.

Does humanity have the courage to question its own data about life and about God? Are humans brave enough to ponder the unaskable What if?

What if something very important that humans think they know about God is simply inaccurate? Would that change anything?

How much more will people allow themselves to endure before they begin looking for the underlying reason that the world is the way it is? And, of those people who say that a belief in God is powerful enough to be the cure for the world’s ills, how many are able to see that an inaccurate belief could be powerful enough to be the cause?

How about you? Where are you with all of this? Given the state of the world today, do you think this may be a good moment to consider some new thoughts about God, about life, and about each other?

How is your own life going? Are things just fine? Or are you meeting more challenges than, frankly, you’d like to be encountering in your relationships, in your career, in your day-to-day movement through life?

As you look at your life and as you look at the world around you, do you think you are seeing a reflection of What God Wants? If not, what do you think that God does want?

Yes, well, I suppose that’s why you have kept reading this series of articles, isn’t it…?

I mean, you’ve kept reading to see what it had to say on this subject, yes? So now it’s time to say it. Now it’s time to reveal the great truth about What God Wants. This could well be the most important information ever placed before the human race.

It has been placed there in the past, more than once, but the human race has not seemed to understand it. It is now going to be revealed so clearly, so plainly, in such a new and accessible way, that there can be no possibility of future misunderstanding.

Because this information is so vital to humanity’s future, the entire next installment has been devoted to it. Do not miss this installment.

(Our exploration of this topic continues in Part VIII of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)