November, 2012
A series of horrible crimes has hit the golden city of Sarasota, Florida, according to news reports, and the city government itself has had to marshal all of its forces — from the city manager to the police department to the depart of public works — to forestall a complete collapse of civility and safety, law and order there.
First to be arrested in a crime sweep last Sunday was 28-year-old Darren Kersey, a homeless man, who was charged with charging. He did not charge the officer who arrested him on the charge of charging, and because he was homeless he could not charge on a credit card the $500 bail required to be released on the charging charge, so the charge of charging landed him in jail for the night, where the police were put in charge of him.
To explain further, Mr. Kersey was charged with charging his cell phone at a public electric outlet in a picnic shelter in the city’s Gillespie Park. The arresting officer was not a mere patrolman, but a sergeant on the city’s police force, Anthony Frangioni, who wrote in his arrest report that he told Mr. Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy,” according to a news report in The Sarasota Herald Tribune which may be found here…
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121112/ARTICLE/121119888
Sgt. Frangioni, as a 14-year-veteran of the police force, knew a serious crime when he saw one, and took immediate action to protect the citizens of what in 2006 was labeled the “meanest city” in the nation by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless.
The charge of charging against Mr. Kersey, standing alone, might be considered a minor offense — if an offense at all — but his crime is part of a larger and escalating problem at Gillespie Park, according to news reports. Apparently, more than a few homeless people use the electrical outlet there to charge their cell phones. They carry the phones, they say, so that they are able to call 911 should they ever need to. They also try to stay in touch with whatever friends or family they have left, the Herald Tribune story said.
Residents living near the park have started complaining, not only about the charging of cell phones, but the escalating situation when a homeless woman in an electric wheelchair stopped to charge her chair. And the crime spree goes further, the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association says. According to the Herald Tribune report, the association president said in a letter to city officials that the stealing of electricity was not the only crime being committed at the location by the homeless. They were also burning wood in the park’s grills to keep warm, sleeping in the park overnight, and smoking and drinking in the park, her letter said.
To stop at least the first of these rampant crimes from continuing, the municipality recently sent a crew from the city, accompanied by a police captain, to the park to shut down all electric power at the location.
This left the homeless lady, identified as Maura “Cookie” Wood, with only an hour’s power left in her wheelchair, but it did stop the electricity theft crime wave. At least for an hour. Sixty minutes later that the park’s power was turned back on, with the city manager calling the shut-off a misunderstanding. Or, as he termed it in his own words, an “oops,” according to a follow-up Herald Tribune story, found here:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121113/ARTICLE/121119842?p=4&tc=pg
Meanwhile Mr. Kersey, the criminal originally arrested for the flagrant broad-daylight theft of the city’s electricity, said when he was interviewed later by the newspaper, that he wondered if perhaps his arrest on the charging charge might have been motivated by police Sgt. Frangioni being angry at him for walking over to the sergeant’s patrol car and snapping a picture of the car’s license plate after Mr. Kersey observed the officer arresting another homeless man for smoking in the park. Police officers have been known to react with anger when citizens try to make a record of their actions when seeking to put a stop to major offenses such as people smoking in a public park.
Such lawlessness cannot and will not be allowed in Sarasota, if press reports are to be believed. A major crackdown will apparently be required to keep the members of the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association safe.
Oh…a final note: The charging charge against Mr. Kersey was dropped when he appeared in court as ordered the morning after he spent the night in jail. Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out — but not quite soon enough. When Mr. Kersey reported for work at his new job as a laborer at a flower shop, a position he had just landed days before his arrest, he was fired for not showing up because he was in jail that morning, awaiting his arraignment in court.
But justice had been done in Sarasota, where the citizens can be proud of their police force and their city manager.
The Conversations with God cosmology covers 3,000+ pages spanning nine books — which has led to many, many requests from people to find a way to condense the insights in these texts to those that might be considered the Most Important. In response to those many requests, I have done this.
Below are the 25 Core Messages of Conversations with God. I invite your reflections, reactions, response and commentary of these foundational principles of The New Spirituality.
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THE 25 CORE MESSAGES OF
CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD
1. God talks to everyone, all the time. The question is not, to whom does God talk? The question is: Who listens?
2. We are all one. All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing There Is.
3. There’s enough. It is not necessary to compete for, much less fight over, the “stuff of which there is enough.” Simply learn to share it.
4. There’s nothing you have to do. There is much you will do, but nothing that you are required to do. This is because God wants nothing and needs nothing.
5. There are Three Basic Principles of Life: Functionality, Adaptability, and Sustainability.
6. There is no such thing as Right and Wrong, there is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is that you are trying to do. What it is that you are trying to do, and what you will do, shall determine who you are and how you evolve as a species.
7. Every act is an act of self-definition.
8. Love is all there is.
9. You are the creator of your own reality.
10. The Three Tools of Creation are: Thought, Word, and Action.
11. Your life has nothing to do with you. It is about everyone whose life you touch, and how you touch it.
12. You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. You are the unique combination of all three, which comprises the Totality Of You. You are an individuation and an aspect of Divinity; an expression of God on earth.
13. The purpose of your life is to recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.
14. There is no such thing as Time and Space, there is only Here and Now.
15. There is no such place as hell, and eternal damnation does not exist.
16. Death does not exist. What you call “death” is simply a process of Re-Identification, and no one concludes their present experience of physical life at a time or in a way that is not of their choosing.
17. There are no victims and no villains. The moment you declare anything, everything unlike it will come into the space, not because you are a victim, but because of The Law of Opposites, which produces a Contextual Field within which what you wish to express may be experienced.
18. There is no such thing as Absolute Truth. All truth is subjective. Within this framework there are five levels of truth telling: Tell your truth to yourself about yourself; Tell your truth to yourself about another; Tell your truth about yourself to another; Tell your truth about another to another; Tell your truth to everyone about everything.
19. The human race has created a precise set of illusions. The Ten Illusions of Humans are: Need Exists, Failure Exists, Disunity Exists, Insufficiency Exists, Requirement Exists, Judgment Exists, Condemnation Exists, Conditionality Exists, Superiority Exists, Ignorance Exists. These illusions serve humanity when it knows how to use them.
20. The Three Core Concepts of Holistic Living are Honesty, Awareness, and Responsibility. Live according to these precepts and self-anger will disappear from your life.
21. Life functions within a Be-Do-Have paradigm. Most people have this backward,imagining that first one must “have” things in order to “do” things, thus to “be” what they wish to be. Reversing this process is the fastest way to experience mastery in living.
22. There are Three Levels of Awareness: Hope, Faith, and Knowing. Spiritual mastery is about living from the third level.
23. There are Five Fallacies about God that create crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that God needs something. Second, the idea that God can fail to get what He needs. Third, the idea that God has separated you from Him because you have not given Him what He needs. Fourth, the idea that God still needs what He needs so badly that God now requires you, from your separated position, to give it to Him. Fifth, the idea that God will destroy you if you do not meet His requirements.
24. There are also Five Fallacies About Life that likewise produce crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that human beings are separate from each other. Second, the idea that there is not enough of what human beings need to be happy. Third, the idea that in order to get the stuff of which there is not enough, human beings must compete with each other. Fourth, the idea that some human beings are better than other human beings. Fifth, the idea that it is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all the other fallacies by killing each other.
25. Your experience of yourself and your world will change overnight if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:
Permit yourself to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
Explore the possibility that there is something you do not fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything.
Announce that you are willing for new understandings of God and Life to now be brought forth, understandings that could produce a new way of life on this planet.
Courageously examine these new understandings and, if they align with your personal inner truth and knowing, enlarge your belief system to include them.
Express your life as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.
From a spiritual point of view, what is your reaction and response to the General Petraeus/Paula Broadwell affair and the General’s resignation as head of the CIA? And what of Holly, his wife, and Scott, her husband, in all of this?
Dear Editor…My son is falling into a group that uses drugs on a regular basis. This is not just youthful “experimentation,” this is serious drug abuse, as far as I am concerned. I have talked with him about it, but he keeps telling me not to worry, that he can take care of himself, and has no intention of becoming “addicted” to drugs. What can I do here? Are there any “spiritual truths” that might help me in this situation — or help him? I suppose I should tell you, he is 22 years old…but that doesn’t make him feel any less my worry or my concern.
— Priscilla
Dear Priscilla,
The greatest gift a parent can give their children, and the hardest one for the parent to give, is letting them live their own lives. Especially when it is going in a direction that, to us, is clearly not the journey that we would want them to take. At 22, he is certainly on his own journey.
There are no wrong paths, Priscilla, and I would like to suggest to you that your son is taking this path for two reasons. First, because this is the way he is experiencing what he chose, on a soul level, to experience. Secondly, so that you, and others, could choose your own experience through what he is doing right now.
I am not saying that, Priscilla, from a flippant space. I have someone very special to me who is a recovering addict. For him, it took many years and many hard roads, including prison. We had a talk about his path recently, and he said that there was nothing I could have done that would have stopped him…until he was ready to stop. What he did say, that was most interesting to me, was that every word of advice that my husband and I gave him was heard! He said that he couldn’t truly hear them until he was sober, but then they became powerful.
You haven’t indicated that your son is an addict, and I don’t want to suggest that he is, but the advice I would give you is the same. Talk to him. Don’t talk to him from your judgment, talk to him from your love. It is okay to tell him you are worried about him, it is not okay to tell him you think he is bad. Tell him you love him.
If he knew who he really was, he wouldn’t be doing what he is doing. To help him know this, you might give him a copy of “Conversations With God” Book 1, but just give it to him gently and let him know it is okay if he doesn’t read it until he is ready to. Priscilla, you may also wish to have personal support, and if you feel so drawn, you might consider going to www.ChangingChange.net where you can share your journey and get practical and spiritual suggestions. The site is based on the book, “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”, and it is available, in total, to read on the site. There are, of course, many other resources available to both of you.
Then let him have his own journey. It may never be one you understand, but, Pricilla, it will never be a “wrong” journey. This life is not the end of the experience as individuations of Divinity. Your task is to have your own journey, that, hopefully, includes finding a way to communicate to your son that his journey is the more difficult one, and that there is a way that works better. My journey included telling my special someone that I would no longer witness his self destruction. I told him that I understood that no one would consciously choose this road, and that I loved him, but staying on the road with him was not helping him, and was harming me, and others that I loved.
Priscilla, communicate your fears, but don’t let judgment enter the conversation. Suggest, but don’t dictate. Let your son know your love. Then, no matter how long or short the journey through drugs he must take, be there when he comes out the other side. Then tell him you will always be his mother. I know that the seeds of love that I sowed took 15 years, but they grew into a magnificent man!
Therese
(If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)
(Therese Wilson is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net, which offers spiritual assistance from a team of Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less, and offers insight, suggestions, and companionship during moments of unbidden, unexpected, unwelcome change on the journey of life. She may be contacted at Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Whether you are a new parent or a “seasoned” parent, you know that parenting is a full-time job. It requires patience, understanding, endless energy, emotional endurance. And the list goes on. However, what I’ve found to be true is that what our children require most is Love — and the rest will fall into place naturally and effortlessly.
I know this may sound like a patently obvious, if not naive, statement; but after raising two boys who are now 15 and 24, I want to share with you what I have learned, and continue to learn, about Love “in action” and what that awareness has taught me.
An experience which greatly impacted and influenced my parenting approach, and one which further deepened my understanding of the Conversations with God principles, happened when my mother passed away. My youngest son was six years old. Only a short time into my mom’s memorial service, my son started to leave his seat. While his father and his grandmother attempted to keep him quiet and make him sit still due to their understandable uneasiness, I asked myself the question, “What would love do now?” I realized that this beautiful child would not act in a way that disrupted the service, knowing the love my son had for my mother and the powerful connection they shared. So I let go of control. And what happened next was stunning.
Without saying a word, my six-year-old son moved from person to person — from my mother’s caregiver, to my mother’s best friend, to my own best friend, and then on to my brother. He simply sat next to each of them, working his way through the room, letting others know that he felt the same way they did: Sad. I sensed that he knew what was best for him, and apparently so did he. He felt moved to both give and to receive comfort.
After the service, each of those individuals came up to me and shared how he had profoundly shifted their sadness to love. I realized that day that my parenting could be more effortless if I would genuinely love and embrace and trust what was showing up, allowing myself to be guided by Love rather than by Fear and all of the Dos and Don’ts of parenting that I’d been taught. Perhaps it was just that easy.
Love is a feeling. It is a reflection. It is a connection of energy that readily resides within a parent and a child. It is the key to unlocking effortless communication. Listening and being fully present to what our children are expressing, whether in words or actions, allows us to become more of a guide than a parent. When we understand that our children come here with a specific soul agenda, and each thought, each expression, and each action is fulfilling that agenda perfectly, we can let go of beliefs that our children will choose the “wrong” choice and, rather, trust that they will make the “right” choice…the one that feels most in alignment with Who They Are.
When we listen and when we are fully present, providing a palpable experience of what our Love is, we shift the parenting dynamic and create a more natural dovetailing of instincts, allowing our children to express Who They Really Are while we do the same! Parents and children have a natural rhythm of feeling each other’s intentions, even when personalities may sometimes seem at odds, understanding that, no matter what, the Soul’s agenda, the purpose for which it came here, is still being fulfilled.
Of course, we will have days that do not seem so effortless regardless of our best intentions. It’s a messy and wonderful process. And although some might argue that this perspective lacks discipline, I believe that gifting our children the freedom to choose their path provides them the opportunity to determine his or her own course and to develop their own sense of inner guidance and self-discipline.
What would it be like if we lived in a world where both parents and children asked more often, “What would Love do now?”
(Laurie Lankins Farley has worked with Neale Donald Walsch for approximately 10 years. She is the Executive Director of his non-profit The School of the New Spirituality and creative co-director of CwGforParents.com. Laurie has published an inspirational children’s book “The Positive Little Soul.” She can be contacted at Parenting@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
7-year-old Maggie gently picks up her brand new baby doll and swaddles her tightly in a warm, fuzzy polka-dot blanket. She tenderly kisses her baby’s tiny forehead and serenades her with a sweet lullaby. Continuing to affectionately tend to the comfort of her make-believe newborn, Maggie lovingly removes the infant doll’s soiled diaper and replaces it with a fresh clean one and proceeds to her miniature rocking chair, where she patiently and tenderly attempts to comfort her baby doll. Realizing that her brand-new baby must be hungry, Maggie carefully lifts her baby to her specially designed halter top, which has nipples covered by petal appliqués and sewn-in sensors to simulate suckling sounds, and begins to “breastfeed” her infant doll.
Maggie’s new doll, The Breast Milk Baby, is creating quite the controversy and has received intense criticism since its introduction into the U.S. market. Many retailers are refusing to place the Spanish toy company’s product on their shelves even more than a year after its initial release. Critics claim that the doll “over-sexualizes” young girls and “forces them to grow up too quickly.” Bill O’Reilly declared on his show, The O’Reilly Factor, “I just want the kids to be kids. And this kind of stuff. We don’t need this.”
Berjaun Toys’ US representative, Dennis Lewis, says, “We’ve had a lot of support from lots of breastfeeding organizations, lots of mothers, lots of educators. There also has been a lot of blowback from people who maybe haven’t thought to think about really why the doll is there and what its purpose is. Usually they are people that either have problems with breastfeeding in general, or they see it as something sexual.”
Is The Breast Milk Baby an inappropriately precocious toy for our young daughters to be playing with? Or is the backlash swirling around this particular baby doll grossly misunderstood and just another symptom of how far off track we have ventured in relation to who we really are? We walk past a mother cat nursing her kittens and smile at its sweetness; yet we exile new mothers to their cars, we usher them into private rooms, out of the public eye, covered up, to breastfeed their newborn infants in an effort to avoid offending others around her.
Is it heartwarming to stand witness to a young female, 7 years old, emulating one of the most beloved relationships of all, a mother and her baby, a nurturing Maternal Being providing life-sustaining nourishment to a tiny new life, and appreciating her body’s remarkable ability to be the source of that? Or is it premature and inappropriate to draw attention to our daughters’ bodies so boldly and unreservedly, encouraging them to express this aspect of their physicality so freely and perhaps in a manner that is too provocative or too sensual?
If it is the avoidance of “over-sexualization” of our children that we, as a society, are leveraging for, then why are the scantily clad Bratz dolls flying off the shelves and landing in the homes of so many young girls? If given the choice to purchase a Fashionista Barbie or The Breast Milk Baby for your daughter, which would you choose? And why?
The answers to those questions invite a conversation to begin around the issues we are not talking about (sex, intimacy, and love), affording ourselves an opportunity to take a closer look at what it is we are really afraid of and how those fears may be distorting our thoughts and influencing our choices.
Why do we fear our children learning about, talking about, and embracing their bodies, and understanding the purpose for which they were created? Why are we attaching the same thick layers of shame and stigma to something so natural and meaningful as breastfeeding that we’ve sadly used to suffocate our own sexuality?
Dysfunction thrives in an environment of restrictions and conditions, where the essence of who we are is stifled, unexpressed, forgotten. Love unexpressed mutates into a “conditioned” version of love. Sexuality ignored mutates into shame and confusion, rendering ourselves unable to appreciate and celebrate each aspect of our divinity fully, blurring the lines between who we think we should be and who we actually are…and what we imagine is happening and what is really going on.
What will YOU do if this particular toy finds its way to your child’s Christmas or birthday “wish list”?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
With Colorado’s voters passing the historic Amendment 64, is this further proof that the country is going down the drain? Or have we just begun to realize that our power lies within the freedom to make our own choices?
Marijuana has long been considered the gateway drug, meaning that it leads to harder drugs and a life of crime and dereliction. This point has been argued by many, with little progress in proving or disproving its validity. I could, from my own experience, argue it either way. What I have realized on my own spiritual journey of recovery is that all choices lead us to a higher place, eventually.
The legalization of pot for adults over the age of 21 is vital to point out here. My first experience with pot was when I was 12 years old. I believe that for most people with addictive personalities the first experience with pot comes well before they are of legal age. What is not common knowledge is that an addictive personality exists long before the drug ever is introduced. The disease of addiction is a genetic condition passed down from generation to generation. I do not use the term “genetic defect” as some would because I do not believe it is a defect. In my case, it has been my greatest asset. God would not create a being with a defect, nor would the soul make a mistake.
Do I believe that the smoking of pot unleashed my craving to be high? No, I do not. My first drug was attention, the getting of people’s attention any way I could. I had the strongest desire to be the center of attention in my family from my earliest recollection, and if I didn’t succeed in doing so, I would quickly try another method of achieving my goal. Failing to achieve the attention only gave my addictive personality reason to act out, seeking louder and more brazen behaviors. By the time my first drug (cigarettes) entered the picture, I was merely nine years old. I first began using them to seek the approval of my peers, while at the same time unconsciously still looking to be noticed by my family. Negative attention is better than no attention in the mind of a person with addictive traits.
What happens now in these states that have decided to legalize marijuana? Do we care if someone drives high? How do we administer drug tests when accidents have occurred? Is there going to be a legal limit? What about contact highs? Although I do not fear the occasional smell of pot sending me spiraling back into the darkness of active addiction, it certainly wouldn’t be advised that any recovering addict be exposed high concentrations of secondhand pot smoke. It took going to one indoor concert to realize that was no place for me to be.
What about employers? Will they be cited for discrimination by not hiring someone or firing someone who openly smokes pot? How will society deal with the open use of marijuana? Imagine yourself sitting at the beach with your family and all of the sudden you are surrounded by a group of people who choose to get high. Do we want that as a society?
The list of issues that will need to be addressed will keep the lawmakers busy for quite some time. The personal effect cannot be determined until some time has passed to see what other consequences may pop up.
I do believe that pot use is less harmful than alcohol, and statistics certainly back that up. It is almost unconscionable that society makes legal alcohol consumption. The damage that alcohol costs society is mind-boggling and the personal destruction that can occur in families from drinking is beyond pandemic. Yet the past tells us that it is easier to accept the consequences rather than stand for what is in our best interest. Yes, denial is alive and well in the human species.
So let’s hear what you think about this. Take this time to be open about your thoughts and feelings regarding the legalization of drugs. Should they all be legal? Do we allow people to make choices that we see as unhealthy and let them learn from their mistakes? Does legislation make a difference?
Conversations with God states, “Obedience is not creation, and thus can never produce salvation.” It would seem obvious to me that this statement is proven to be true over and over throughout the course of history. What say you?
(Kevin McCormack is a “Conversations with God” Life Coach, a Spiritual Helper on www.changingchange.net, and an Addictions Recovery Advisor. To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@theglobalconversation.com)
GOD: Let Me address Myself specifically, and at length, to human love relationships—these things which continue to give you such trouble!
When human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason.
(“Wrong,” of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that which is “right” —whatever that is! It would be more accurate in your language to say “relationships fail—change—most often when they are entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival.”)
Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them.
The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you’d like to see “show up,” not what part of another you can capture and hold.
There can be only one purpose for relationships—and for all of life: to be and to decide Who You Really Are.
It is very romantic to say that you were “nothing” until that special other came along, but it is not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not.
Not wanting to “let you down,” they try very hard to be and do these things until they cannot anymore. They can no longer complete your picture of them. They can no longer fill the roles to which they have been assigned. Resentment builds. Anger follows.
Finally, in order to save themselves (and the relationship), these special others begin to reclaim their real selves, acting more in accordance with Who They Really Are. It is about this time that you say they’ve “really changed.”
It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.
Here is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a particular other in order for you to experience, fully, Who You Are, and. . .without another, you are nothing.
This is both the mystery and the wonder, the frustration and the joy of the human experience. It requires deep understanding and total willingness to live within this paradox in a way which makes sense. I observe that very few people do.
Most of you enter your relationship-forming years ripe with anticipation, full of sexual energy, a wide open heart, and a joyful, if eager, soul.
Somewhere between 40 and 60 (and for most it is sooner rather than later) you’ve given up on your grandest dream, set aside your highest hope, and settled for your lowest expectation—or nothing at all.
The problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood: your grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self. The test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours.
Relationships are sacred because they provide life’s grandest opportunity—indeed, its only opportunity—to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of Self. Relationships fail when you see them as life’s grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of another.
Let each person in relationship worry about Self—what Self is being, doing, and having; what Self is wanting, asking, giving; what Self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationships would magnificently serve their purpose—and their participants!
Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, only about Self.
This seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form of relationship, one worries only about the other. Yet I tell you this: your focus upon the other—your obsession with the other—is what causes relationships to fail.
What is the other being? What is the other doing? What is the other having? What is the other saying? Wanting? Demanding? What is the other thinking? Expecting? Planning?
The Master understands that it doesn’t matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn’t matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that.
The most loving person is the person who is Self-centered.
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Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the bottom of the ancillary copy below.
If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life. One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from Conversations with God-Book 1.
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About Book-On-A-Bench…
If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.
Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.
If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a matter of weeks. So I invite you to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.
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ABOUT the author of Conversations with God…
Neale Donald Walsch is a modern-day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now-famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching the lives of millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day living.
Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.
A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.
Neale grew into an insatiably curious child whose comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom beyond his years, and often caused relatives and family friends to ask, “Where does he come up with this stuff?” While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum.
Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer the difficult questions that he didn’t wish to address in front of the rest of the class. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum in which Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality—and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.
Joyless spirituality is observed.
Is rigidity and anger sometimes produced by religion?
By the age of 15, Neale’s involvement with spiritually based teachings led him to observe that when people got involved in religion they too often seemed less joyful and more rigid, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice, separateness, and even anger. Neale concluded that for many people the collective experience of theology was not positive.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold him and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.
Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director; a newspaper reporter and, ultimately, managing editor; public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems; and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.
A life-changing accident.
A desperate questioning that touches the world.
He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.
More than a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part-time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a syndicated radio talk show host.
He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside. In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take,” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, “to make life work?”
The books that began a spiritual revolution.
The words that opened doors again.
Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a divine answer. Neale tells us that he heard a “voiceless” voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.
More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed placed inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way, on-paper dialogue. He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad.
Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says that the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue created in this way was published without significant alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.
In addition to producing the renowned With God series, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.
The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms across the planet. In order to deal with the enormous global response to his writings, Neale formed the Conversations with God Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.
The work expands.
A movement begins.
Neale founded the School of the New Spirituality and its CWG for Parents program to bring parents the tools to share new spirituality principles of a loving, non-condemning God with their children. He also founded Humanity’s Team, with branches in over 30 countries, now promoting the concept of the Oneness of all people and of all of life.
What Neale calls his “final creation” is The Global Conversation, an Internet Newspaper dedicated to exploring day-to-day events on our planet within the context of The New Spirituality, and offering people across the globe the opportunity to not only witness the playing out of humanity’s Cultural Story in the news, but participate in re-writing that Story, through their contributions and posted comments on the newspaper’s site.
Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.
(Neale Donald Walsch lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife, the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).)
There is hope. Today there is a little hope. Not as much as we might have liked, but a little more than we might have expected. And that’s a better sign than it is a worse one. That’s an Up arrow, and not a Down.
On Friday the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (who is to members of the Anglican Communion something of what the Pope is to Roman Catholics — although outside of England more in a titular sense ) promised to bring “a passion for reconciliation” to his new job.
The 105th spiritual leader of the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Church is having to deal with what all of today’s global leaders — spiritual leaders, political leaders, business leaders, environmental leaders, or educational leaders — are these days encountering: an open and widening schism between “conservatives” and “liberals” in each of their fields, across the planet.
The newest global spiritual leader, Rt. Rev. Bishop Justin Welby, hopes to resolve continuing discontent within his global congregation surrounding gay marriage and women bishops. Most conservatives within the Anglican church resoundingly oppose both. The Rev. Mr. Welby says he supports “the Church of England’s opposition to same-sex marriage,” although he has stated that he is “always averse to the language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us.” The new Archbishop of Canterbury does, on the other hand, support the consecration of female bishops. So he is halfway to where a spiritual leader offering a new direction for our world might wish to place himself.
What spiritual reason there could be to oppose the uniting of loving couples who wish to commit their lives to each other, or to oppose the elevation of female clergy to top level church leadership, in each case simply on the basis of the shape of their body parts, is incomprehensible. Yet there are billions of people across the earth who apparently believe that their views in opposition are God’s views. The new Archbishop of Canterbury can, if he now chooses to, show them that God holds no such views at all. But to do this, he will have to bridge an enormous gap.
The widening schism in the ideas people hold with regard to “what God wants” was predicted in the Conversations with God books, which said that as the world moved toward the embracing of A New Spirituality, the population of Earth would essentially divide itself into those who wish to cling to the ways of the past and those who wish to adopt the ways of the future (described as more progressive and far less dogmatic).
The next 30 years will see the final struggle of this dying culture to hold on to its fading ideas, CWG predicts, but will fail to do so — with wonderful results as an outcome in the social, political, spiritual, economical, educational, and environmental arenas. This transformation to a new breed of human will not be without rising and massive opposition, however, because new and untried ideas are almost always considered by humans to be less desirable than old ideas — even old ideas that clearly do not work. At least they are known, at least they are familiar, and so, at least they are comfortable.
And while Conversations with God observes that “life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone,” it says there will be many persons, glued to Old School thought, who remain stuck, refusing to be pried from what they view not as “ideas that no longer work,” but as their most sacred principles.
An erstwhile candidate for the U.S. Senate in the State of Indiana, Richard Mourdock, perhaps exemplified this personality type when he spoke to supporters following his loss in the recent American election. In his concession speech in a race that he was widely predicted just a week ago to easily win, Mourdock said, “As I will look back on this night over the weeks, the months, the years ahead…I will look back knowing that I was attacked for standing for my principles.”
And the “principle” on which he stood? The idea that a pregnancy which results from a rape is something “that God intended,” and for that reason abortion should be opposed and outlawed — even in cases of rape or incest.
The first half of his thought is actually so radical that it could easily have come from the messages of The New Spirituality. Conversations with God says that all outcomes in life are “what God intended,” or they could not have occurred. CWG does not envision a universe in which God is somehow out of control and relegated to standing by and watching things happen that God did not want to have happen.
On the contrary, CWG says, everything that occurs — everything — happens for a reason. Everything that occurs is collaboratively created by Life itself, and by all Souls, in order to produce a Contextual Field within which, on Earth, each Individuation of Divinity (that is, each human being) may announce and declare, create and express, become and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are.
And so, Mr. Mourdock was accurate, according to The New Spirituality, in his remark. It was, according to these new spiritual messages, his conclusion that was off the mark. And it was this conclusion that pushed Indiana voters away from him in droves.
Mr. Mourdock’s conclusion was that because a pregnancy resulting from vicious and violent assault upon a woman was something God intended, the woman should not be allowed by law to have (and, in his view, should not even request or seek) an abortion. Or even the option to have an abortion.
Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who would never choose to bring life into the world that was conceived against her will and in violence on her person. Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who chooses not to endure and experience the unwanted outcome of an undeserved and brutal physical attack. Never mind if the woman wants to have the baby. She is supposed to have the baby because having the baby is what God wants, or she wouldn’t have become pregnant.
That is such convoluted thinking that it defies description. It is equaled in its astonishing lack of intelligence only by the remark by another losing Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said during his campaign that a woman’s biology automatically prevents her from conceiving an unwanted child in cases of “legitimate rape.” A female’s physiology “shuts that down,” he said — but, presumably, not in the case of illegitimate rape.
Mr. Akin’s comment is equaled in its conservative, hang-onto-the-dogma-of-the-past-no-matter-what attitude only by the remark offered by incumbent (also losing) Republican Congressional Candidate Joe Walsh in his own 2012 campaign, who said that abortion should not be allowed even to save the life of the mother because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother.
Faced with an avalanche of protest — not just from “liberals” but from the usually very conservative medical community — Mr. Walsh amended his foolish remark later by saying that “in rare instances” such a procedure might possibly be needed, but it was too late. His soon-to-be-former constituents could, apparently, only in rare instance embrace this level of mentality. He did not receive enough votes to remain in the U.S. Congress.
The list of far right wing conservatives who have made statements bordering on the absurd goes on, and typifies the pronouncements of those who insist on clinging to Old School dogma even in the face of clear and obvious evidence that their views are not simply outdated, but flatly and factually inaccurate.
But inaccuracy is not the greatest offense against the future committed by the “I’m-stuck-and-glued-to-this-place” conservatives around the world. Obstructionism is.
The Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, famously and loudly declared just weeks after the first election of Barack Obama in 2008 that the sole and only agenda of Republicans in the U.S. Congress over the ensuing four years would be to stop Mr. Obama from winning a second term.
From that day on he preached nothing to his GOP colleagues in Washington but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct — even (and especially) it the President’s idea happened to be a good one. The idea was to deny Mr. Obama credit for anything, so that the country would have to eject him from the White House.
Mr. Mourdock likewise sent a message to his constituents in a television interview months ago, just hours after he won his party’s nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” he said. “The highlight of politics,” he said, “is to inflict my opinion on someone else.” He later claimed that his remarks were either meant as a joke or where taken out of context.
It didn’t matter. The voters in Indiana found them not at all funny, rejecting Mr. Mourdock in a shocking defeat for the Republicans, who had previously called his election a sure bet.
Senator McConnell seems equally determined to completely ignore the fact that his tactics over the preceding 48 months had produced utter failure (Mr. Obama was victorious in eight of nine so-called “swing states” and won the popular vote by a margin of more than two million). Within days of Mr. Obama having been re-elected, Mr. McConnell was at it again, issuing what news reports on Politico.com called “a stark warning to Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama who see their election victories as a clear mandate to raise taxes on the rich: He won’t let it happen.”
And so, America seems to be in for another four years of Republican obstructionism, in which the value of anyone’s ideas is deemed less important than the source of them. If they come from Democrats, they must be labeled bad, and they must be defeated, no matter what. No matter who suffers. Even if it is your own country.
But what we are seeing is not just about a particular political party. It is about “conservatism” versus “liberalism” all over the world. It is about, in some very large ways, “yesterday” versus “tomorrow.”
In spirituality it is about Yesterday’s God vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God. In economics it is about Yesterday’s Commerce vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Commerce. In the environment it is about Yesterday’s Ecology vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God Ecology. In politics it is about Yesterday’s Solutions vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Solutions. In the culture and society it is about Yesterday’s Cultural Mores vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Cultural Mores.
(For instance, several states in the U.S. voted to legalize same sex marriage last week; as well, some states voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Both stances were considered impossible to consider just one or two elections ago.)
Soon, these issues — just as the issue of whether the government should have any say, much less be able to intervene, in a woman’s decision on abortion — will be considered Resolved Questions. The American electorate will be ready to move on. On to other cultural/social issues, such as Gun Control, and the Death Penalty.
Soon, the obvious and painfully hypocritical position of conservatives that an unborn fetus may not be aborted in the name of “life” — not even in the name of saving the life of the mother — but a fully grown adult may be killed in the name of “justice,” will be called out for what it is: another astonishingly unintelligent idea to be thrown on the trash heap of yesterday.
It is as a reader on this website commented just recently, regarding the American election:
Comment by Pat on November 9, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Small steps. We’re still divided, but we did send a message. Some think the message was intended for our leaders and representatives. I think the message is one we sent to ourselves. Some of us realize now that we are not alone – that there are other people who share our desire to get away from the current religious and cultural foundation that is based on ‘hostility to the other.’ The tide is changing, and as always the old and broken will be swept away in due course…
