The Global Conversation

Month: December 2012

  • The five levels of truth-telling

    The first time I read about this concept, it resonated deeply within my soul.  But I must admit, I was a bit fearful that it would not be easy to apply on an everyday basis.

    Sure, in my years as a patient, and then as a therapist, I had learned the value of truth and did my best to honor it both in my professional and personal life…most of the time.

    So what was still keeping me from being truthful in certain situations?

    Well, I told myself it was in order not to hurt others – to protect them, you might say.  But in reality, as it is for most of us, I was paralyzed by the thought that if I tell my truth, I may lose the interest, love, and appreciation of others. I was the one scared of being hurt.

    Of course, Life, benevolent and loving as it is, heard my interrogation and was already working at creating the perfect circumstances for me to experience the power of truth-telling.

    It started with a conference call with Neale Donald Walsch (being a spiritual helper on WECCE, I am so very fortunate to participate in those).

    On that particular call, a helper asked Neale – given his extensive life experience and wisdom – what piece of advice he would give to a young person starting in life. Neale did not have to think over it twice.

    “To tell the truth all the time” was his first and foremost answer.  He went on to add that even though it wasn’t easy, it was one of the soul’s highest goals, and that truth should be told in a peaceful, respectful way.

    So there it was again, taunting me to look at myself squarely and stop hiding behind false pretense.

    I went back to the 5 Levels of Truth and started applying them to the situations in my life where I felt difficulty or conflicts. Sure enough, I was not being totally transparent in those exchanges.

    It all starts with:

    Telling the Truth to Yourself About Yourself

    This one may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s really not. Often we tell ourselves what we tell others: nice little fibs. We are afraid of the truth itself.  We imagine awful consequences to our revelations and use them as pretexts to stay in an uncomfortable “comfort zone.”

    Still, I felt pretty sure I knew my truth. In my present situation, it had to do with a very close friend who was making jokes and comments which conflicted with my values.

    So I moved on to the second level of truth-telling:

    Tell the Truth to Yourself About Another

    This one had me pondering. I mean, obviously we have a hard time staying neutral about others, but shouldn’t this be a goal?

    I was forgetting an essential truth:  Seeing is not judging.  Judging is forming an opinion based not on our feelings but on our thoughts; whereas seeing is simply observing from the soul’s point of view.  This was pretty subtle, but I could see where this was taking me.

    It was taking me beyond my pride and prejudices.  Suddenly I could see what was at stake – namely, not my opinions on defensive humor and criticism, but the reality behind it:  my friend’s psychological and spiritual well-being.

    The next level was:

    Tell the Truth About Yourself to Others

    I thought I could do that and started having conversations with him around this subject. Yes, around…not totally addressing it. Once again, this is something we all do at one point or another (especially if you’re a woman and have been taught you should not hurt/make waves/contradict others for the last 2,000 years).

    A bit taken aback by the lack of result my endeavors were having, I moved on to the fourth level of truth-telling:

    Tell Your Truth About Another to the Other

    This left me feeling sad and at loss, because I tried and tried and tried again, but he would not take my advice on consulting a therapist, nor reading books that might provide with some guidance.  In fact, this only served to separate us more.  I thought our friendship was just coming to an end and I had to accept it.

    Still, I moved on to the last level of truth-telling:

    Tell Your Truth to Everyone About Everything 

    That sounded impossible and yet it jerked me awake.  I realized that I had been so entrenched in my own little drama (the fear of losing my friend, the fear I wasn’t providing efficient help) that I still had not told my initial truth.

    Not telling this very same truth had separated us a first time many years ago. It was now poisoning the relationship, like every secret, every lie always does.

    So I decided to follow Neale’s advice to a “T.”  I worked on ways to convey my truth in a peaceful, non-judging way, and then asked to see him.

    Neale had been right, it wasn’t easy.  It took some courage, some guts even.  And then all hell broke loose, the relationship ended…and not nicely.

    Still, I felt liberated.  I knew I had demonstrated to myself and to my friend respect by putting words on my feelings.  Whatever pain or sadness I encountered in the following months over this ending, there wasn’t a trace of regret in me about telling my truth.

    In fact, this prompted me to honor my truth more and more, in every aspect of my life, making my relationships happier and easier.  Now, I won’t lie to you, sometimes I lose sight of my truth, I feel uncomfortable about something and it takes me some time to identify what it is and then some more to convey it in a proper way.

    But you know what? The Soul leaves no stone unturned.  Lies and half-truths will come back to haunt you until you set the truth free.  And once you do, not only does this works, it ripples…

    A month ago, my friend came back. He had started seeing a therapist and was starting to feel much better.  One of the things that had strongly prompted this change was our conversation and the ensuing break-up.

    Tell your truth and expect miracles…both inside and around you.

    (Sophie Lise Fargue is a therapist working with energy, animating workshops and giving seminars on Personal Development in Paris, France. She also volunteers as a Spiritual Helper at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. You may connect with her at www.revenirasoi.com or slfargue@gmail.com.)

  • Missing the feeling of Unity I once had

    I have had the experience of knowing that I am one with everyone. It was a time in my life that I will never forget and would love to feel that again. I do not know if it feels better to have had this experience for a couple of years or to not have had it at all.  I feel like I am striving to “get there” again, but I understand that what you resists persists. I have to accept where I am at now and let it all flow as it will. I feel like I should be reading, having quiet time (meditation), and focusing on more positive thinking more often. I try to do this as often as I can, but sometimes it feels difficult to do this consistently because of the demands of my 3 little children. I am struggling to feel this sense of “we are all one” on a daily basis… Kim

    Dear Kim… You are incredibly blessed to have had a direct experience of Unity with everyone for two years! You have the consciousness of that now, which will make it easier to manifest again. This is true of anything you’ve had in your life. Once you’ve experienced something, you have the consciousness of it and can more easily create it again. This is why we see millionaires who lose it all only to make it all again!

    I can imagine that three wee ones are very time-consuming, but if you can carve out even fifteen minutes a day to get in touch deeply with your soul, it will help make the rest of your day feel more peaceful. “Stopping meditation” also works for busy moms on the go. Every so often, just stop what you’re doing for ten or fifteen seconds, close your eyes, and touch base with your soul. This is very refreshing! Before you know it, you’ll start to feel that connectedness again.

    (Annie Sims is the Global Director of CWG Advanced Programs, is a Conversations With God Coach and author/instructor of the CWG Online School. To connect with Annie, please email her at Annie@TheGlobalConversation.com.

    (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.)

  • Bridging the gap between ‘that’ God
    and ‘no’ God

    I recently stumbled upon a Facebook page titled “Grief Beyond Belief.”  It is a support page, whose members exceed 6,000, created for the specific purpose of being a gathering space for people who are experiencing grief as a result of loss in their life.  The common denominator, however, for this unique website is that those who subscribe to the “Grief Beyond Belief” updates are not simply people who are suffering grief and loss, but these are people who do not believe in God.  

    As I perused through the comments on this Facebook page, I read post after post from people struggling with unanswered questions and trying to make sense of some type of loss, whether that was showing up in the form of a relationship ending or the death of a loved one, or even the loss of a beloved pet.  The pattern was quick to see, people seeking and searching, yearning for comfort, but unwilling to adopt any ideology or concept that invites them to consider anything larger than what simply lies before them – many of them so disenfranchised by the “in your face” religious zealots that they have elected to believe in not believing.

    It is interesting how this particular page showed up for me today as I recently put my own belief system “to the test” while visiting the website of Sam Harris, a well-known critic of religion and one of the “four horsemen” — together with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens — in the “New Atheism” movement.  A wonderful quote taken from his writings on stem cell research led me to his website, where I watched several hours of him debating the existence of God with religious and spiritual leaders from around the world.  And while I understand that his pushback is more particularly directed at organized religions, namely Christianity and Islam, for a brief period of time, I allowed myself to imagine a life without God.

    I imagined how it would feel to not know, or even consider the possibility, that I am connected to all of life in some significant way.

    I imagined how different my life would be without a higher purpose for any of my thoughts, any of my expressions, and any of my choices.

    I imagined for a moment that this was it, that my life was reduced to the 60, 70, 80, or 90ish years that I may randomly and singularly experience and how I could possibly “make the best” of them…or what that would even mean.

    I imagined for a moment that my relationships were circumstantial – and, for that matter, that everything that happened in my life was circumstantial, arbitrary, and spiritually meaningless.  What would now be the purpose for my relationships?

    I imagined the day my son was born and how that would have been an entirely different experience.  In the absence of God, the overwhelming sense of divine perfection and soul connection would have been diminished to a matter-of-fact scientific explanation involving sperm and eggs.

    There were times in my life where it felt scary and lonely to imagine a God who punishes and judges, a God who condemns, a God who is separate from me.  But imagining that God did not even exist allowed me to experience aloneness and fear on a whole new level.   The fundamental question of “Who am I?” suddenly meant so little as it could no longer produce an answer that expanded beyond physicality, thereby limiting my entire human experience to simply a body made up of cells, blood, tissue, organs, veins, etc.

    If there is no God…then who am I?

    And why would it even matter why I was here and where I was going?

    The atheism movement is growing at a surprisingly impressive rate, presenting a robust resistance to religious fundamentalism and righteousness.  This secular segment of our world is made up of people who are no longer buying into the story which casts as its leading man an angry, needy, and vengeful God; yet this same group of people have likewise abandoned any concept of connectedness, divine design, higher purpose, and eternal life.

    And this is why the New Spirituality movement is vital, a collective consciousness that does not support the “man on a cloud” theology, yet embraces divinity and oneness.  The New Spirituality is a space that gives hope and cultivates purpose and bridges the gap between “no God” and “that God.”  The New Spirituality does not teach people what to think, but rather that they can think;  it does not tell you  how to live your life, but rather how to create your life.

    (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.) 

  • An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…

    We can all agree that without health, little else matters. If I look to my experience of how I have helped myself and others to create wellness, it always comes back to the simple principle that the whole being must be considered and addressed. Holistic Health is taking the approach that all areas of life affect the living force of a human being; that is, every choice matters. Wellness is created in everything we choose: what we think, what we eat, what we do.  Every thought, decision and action we make affects the whole of us. You can be as fit as a fiddle, for example, but if you are carrying around wounds from the past or unexpressed and unresolved emotions, your health can become just as compromised as any other unhealthy behavior.

    As important as what we think and feel, eating the right kinds of food is crucial. Our intake of nutrition is the primary and fundamental means that sets us on a course that either heals or harms us. Eating alkaline foods and balancing pH is essential and perhaps the most powerful means of healing and balancing the physical body.

    Second only to breathing and sustaining our heartbeat, the most important metabolic function that our bodies perform is maintaining an ideal pH level.  pH stands for “potential” of “Hydrogen.”  The pH level is a measure of acidity or alkalinity, on a scale of zero to fourteen, with zero being most acid, fourteen being most alkaline and seven being mid-range. The pH level is one of the most important balance systems of the body, and the most important pH level that the body must regulate is the blood’s pH level. The body’s blood pH level must be maintained at 7.4 or slightly alkaline.

    Unfortunately, in today’s environment of high stress, on-the-run lifestyles, eating to much junk or fast foods, poor or not enough sleep, and a greater exposure to toxins that surround us, most people are operating in an unhealthy acidic environment internally. Many doctors believe this to be a major contributing factor to increased illness and dis-ease.

    When your body is too acidic, it will try to balance itself by utilizing existing alkaline minerals. If your diet doesn’t contain sufficient balancing alkaline minerals, it will either build a more acidic environment or pull nutrients from other important areas like calcium from your bones which can lead to diseases like osteoporosis. Not at all what we want to create.

    Diet is probably the most important change we can make to balance our natural pH. What’s important is not so much the pH of the food as it goes into our bodies, but the pH level once the food is broken down. Considering whether a food is acid–forming or alkaline–forming is key. For example, even though we think of citrus as acidic, fruits like lemons are alkalizing, because when they’re consumed, they break down and provide alkaline mineral salts. Similarly, foods we might normally think of as good for us may have a negative impact on us as they are actually acid-forming…things like grains and pasturized milk are two such examples.

    When we have an acid state, the body, in its own protective wisdom, will create a chemical process to protect itself from being harmed by the acids. This buffering process requires the use of many nutrients from the body, including electrolyte minerals. In order to maintain the blood’s critical pH balance, the body will compromise other “less” important functions. Once the electrolyte reserves become depleted, the body begins to steal these electrolytes from other various organs and systems of the body to maintain the blood’s pH level. This is where the imbalance begins.

    To maintain good health, we need to eat at least 75 to 80 percent alkaline-forming foods. The bad news is the average American diet consists of about 80% acid-forming foods, which puts us on the wrong side of the health scale. As we talked about a few weeks back in the column “Get out of that box,” processed and refined foods are extremely acidic to our systems and promote dis-ease, not health.

    A proper, slightly alkaline diet suggests taking in at least 80% of alkalizing foods, like green vegetables, and never more than 20% of neutral and acidifying foods, acid-forming foods like meat, dairy products, bread, and all kinds of other yeast products, alcohol, carbonated drinks and coffee. Try to avoid the acid-forming foods, and instead consume as much alkaline-forming foods as possible, like vegetables, greens, sprouts, and most kinds of seeds. Eating alkaline foods transforms your body pH from the dangers of acidic to alkaline or slightly above neutral.

    Eat more green food and alkalize your body pH today. An alkaline way of life is the perfect start to restore and maintain your overall health. By transforming your nutrition into an alkalizing pH diet, by eating vegetables, and perhaps adding green food nutritional supplements, the body’s pH level will gradually begin to balance. When the nutrients of alkaline foods get into your bloodstream, the cells in your body will begin to be regenerated. An alkaline diet thus helps to boost your energy levels, improve skin, reduce allergies,  and enhance mental clarity. Above that, when pH balance is achieved and maintained, the body instinctively drops to its ideal, healthy weight. As soon as the acidic environment is eliminated, there will be no need for new fat cells to form, and the remaining fat in your body is no longer needed to store acid wastes, and therefore simply melts away.  An alkaline way of life will restore good health; you will not only see, but also feel the difference.

    Nature has provided us the perfect packages filled with all of the elements we need to have this state of health.  All we have to do is make these good choices for our body to benefit. Begin by eating more alkaline and cut out or greatly limit refined and processed foods and sugars. Avoid things with corn syrup, agave, maltose, or aspartame in it. Instead start your morning with, say, cucumber and lemon in spring water or one of my green smoothies.  Add JR’s Lemonade mix to the mix… 4 lemons squeezed to 1/2 gallon of fresh spring or filtered water with 4 squirts of liquid stevia. Liquid stevia is an ideal sweetener. Fresh, raw, organic cucumber is massively hydrating and alkalizing, so are lemons. Get creative, because eating healthy does’t have to be a drag.

    Here are some more examples of foods to include and avoid:

    High Alkaline Foods – Include: String Beans, Banana, Dandelion greens, Dates, Figs, Prunes, Raisins, Swiss Chard, Almonds, Avocado, Beets, Blackberries, Carrots, Chives, Cranberries, Endive, Grapes, Kale, Peaches, Persimmons, Pomegranate, Plums, Raspberries, Spinach.

    Neutral Oils – Include: Cold Pressed, Expeller Pressed, Almond, Avocado, Coconut, Canola, Cottonseed, Linseed, Olive, Safflower, Sesame, Soy, Sunflower, Walnut.

    Alkaline – Include: Agar, Alfalfa, Apple & Fresh Apple Cider, Apricots, Artichokes, Bamboo shoots, Beans sprouted, most Berries, Blueberries, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cantaloupe, Cauliflower, Celery, Cherries, Chestnuts, Chicory, Coconut Milk, Collards, Corn fresh and sweet, Cucumbers, Daikon, Eggplant, Escarole, Garlic, Ginger root, Gooseberry, Grapefruit, Guava, Horseradish fresh and raw, Kelp, Kohlrabi, Leek, Lemon and Peel, Lettuce, Lime, Loganberry, Mango, Melons, raw Milk, Acidophilus Yogurt, Whey.

    Acid – avoid or limit: Alcohol, Bread, Caffeine, Coffee, Corn, Custards, Drugs, Flour, Grain, Soy, Bread, noodles, Pasta, Sugar, Tobacco, Egg yolk, Fruit Jellies (Jams Canned, Sulphured, Sugared, Dried), Pasteurized Milk Products, 

Acid Fats, Butter, Cream, Margarine, Lard.

    To live in a state of health and wellness is to develop and adhere to a daily holistic health plan that makes sense for you and prevents dis-ease and promotes health. Along with proper thought, emotional healing, and understanding the divine nature of all things, the power to experience health becomes self-evident when we shift the food choices we make, because what passes our lips doesn’t just end up on our hips! Begin today by limiting the acid-forming foods and replace them with alkalizing ones. Go green and get colorful organic foods, and you will feel the benefits that a balance pH lifestyle provides. As always, to your health! – JR

    (J.R. Westen, D.D. is a Holistic Health & Spiritual Counselor who has worked and presented side-by-side with Neale Donald Walsch for over a decade. He is passionate about helping individuals move beyond their emotional and spiritual challenges, transforming breakdowns into breakthroughs. His coaching provides practical wisdom and guidance that can be immediately incorporated to shift one’s experience of life. As is true for most impactful teachers, J.R.’s own struggles and triumphs inspired him to find powerful ways of helping others. Sober since June 1, 1986, J.R.’s passion for helping individuals move through intense life challenges drove him to also specialize in Addiction and Grief Recovery. J.R. currently shares his gift of counseling & coaching with individuals from around the world through the Wellness Center, Simply Vibrant, located on Long Island N.Y.  In addition, he works with Escondido Sobering Services and serves on the Board of Directors for the Conversations with God Foundation. He can be contacted at JR@theglobalconversation.com, or to book an appointment, write support@simplyvibrant.com.)

  • How Can I Manifest a Baby?

    My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for over a year now, and I feel like we have tried literally everything, even IVF – needless to say nothing has worked.  I’m at my wits end with this process.  I want a child so badly, yet I can’t continue this cycle of disappointment, it’s making me miserable and is even beginning to affect my relationship with my husband.  Medically, chances of us conceiving are very low, but not impossible.  However, I am one who believes that anything is possible and I don’t want to give into the odds!  But what can I do?  Where is my baby?  Feeling very desperate at this point, don’t know if you can help but I follow CWG books closely and thought I’d give it a try.

    ~ Jeannie, Arkansas

     

    Jeannie my heart just aches for you.  I feel the pain in your words, and your frustration is palpable.  I so admire your strength, courage and perseverance, it speaks volumes to who you are as a person.  I wish I could wave my magic wand and make it happen for you.

    But since I can’t, I will offer you my intuition on your situation.  When we want something so badly in life that it consumes all of our attention and creates a boatload of negative feelings in us, the resistance that we feel around the whole subject actually begins pushing it away from us further.  Conversations with God describes the using of the words, “I want” as a declaration of lack, of the thing you want not being there right now, and the Universe responds to this and gives you more of the experience of wanting.  To take that even deeper, it isn’t the actual words “I want” that produce more of the wanting, it’s the vibration you are offering when you speak them (or, the Sponsoring Thought – the thought behind the thought).  For example, when a child sees a commercial about a cool new toy and exclaims in excitement, “I want that!”, he isn’t coming from a place of lack, he is coming from a place of desire and joy at the thought of having that toy.  But when a person living paycheck to paycheck declares in frustration, “I just want more money!”, they are all too aware and consumed by their lack of money.

    I’m describing the above to you, Jeannie, for two reasons: 1) You’ve created a lot of resistance (quite understandably, I might add) around becoming pregnant and 2) you’re speaking and thinking about it from the vibration of lack.  I know that may sound harsh, and I assure you that I am not implying that you caused any of these “problems” in the first place, I am simply pointing out how you can approach this energetically and spiritually, as I too, am a believer that anything is possible.  So, then, let’s look at what you can do about it.

    Declare your intention from a place of desire.  In other words, what can you say about this that actually feels good to say?  An example might be, “I look forward with joy and gratitude to the day when we conceive.”  Do you enjoy praying or communicating with your guides/angels?  Then by all means pray for it, but offer up a prayer of gratitude.  The gratitude acknowledges that it is already there, or is at least on its way.  One of my favorite prayers of gratitude from CWG is “thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.”  See how much better that feels?

    Next, back off from it.  Move from this state of resistance to a state of allowing.  You see, our only job here is to be clear on what we want and decide that it’s coming, and you only need to do this once – it’s the Universe’s job to figure out “the how”.  It doesn’t mean stop trying to have a baby, it means let go of the resistance around it, and take action from a good-feeling place.  So what might that look like?  It could look like diving into a fun project, getting artistic and creating something, practicing daily gratitude, taking up a hobby and inviting more fun and lightness into your life.  It could look like going out on dates with your husband and appreciating the free time the two of you have right now, making love simply to express how you feel for one another.

    In short, you know you are in a state of allowing when you feel good, you feel light.  Let it go for now.  Let the Universe do its job and give yourself a break.  Your faith and belief are so strong, Jeannie, I can feel that about you.  Backing off and giving yourself permission to feel good about life is your way of exercising that faith, and wonderful things come of it.

    Sending you lots of love throughout this process,

    Nova

     

    (Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling.  She can be reached at Nova@theglobalconversation.com. )

    (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.)

  • I Only Intended to Make the Front Page!

    While reading the headlines, an interesting news story flashed across my computer screen: “Woman Accused of Robbing Bank and Bragging About It on YouTube.”  I clicked on the link, and then followed the eccentric story of 19-year-old Hannah Sabata, who decided that simply robbing a bank at gunpoint and stealing a car right after wasn’t enough of a victory for her. To completely call her escapade a success, Sabata decided that she needed to post a video on YouTube that flaunted her stolen $6,000 and her newfound abilities as a thief. Needless to say, the video became circulated wide enough to reach the police headquarters, and they were able to easily link the video and the incident together, and Sabata faces a December 26th date with court.

    After I read this, I was incredibly confused. Why would anyone lack that much foresight about their consequences? Why did she consciously decide to not only commit such a crime, but also let it be so publicly known? Why would she confess herself to the world, and allow her actions to so quickly face the harsh light of justice? Though still a teenager myself, I was incredibly confused, shocked, and quite disturbed that someone in my generation would be that mindless to link these two events. As the question of Why? Why? Why? kept spinning around in my mind, a moment of epiphany stuck my mind: this was the intention of Hannah Sabata. Her intention was not to go off free from these crimes, but be recognized and emblazoned as their perpetrator. Hanna Sabata intended to be known for her offense.

    So, is this really the society we live in? Is this really the message that our generation of teenagers has learned, that the fulfillment of our intentions can only be achieved by showcasing our dangerous behavior to generate enough “likes”, “followers”, and simple “attention”? Our intention for attention – pushed to the extreme by easy access to billions of others across the globe – has led us to forget about our much higher intentions. Do we really want to continue to be the culture that is driven by fame, by fortune, that does things purely for the roaring response of the people, to reach some undefined level of success through “popularity”? Is that really the message we want to send out about humanity itself?

    We can determine whether or not we will continue to have our intentions driven by our newly intensely cravings for attentions. We can choose to have different intentions – ones that are based on purpose, compassion, and understanding – that will have a far greater impact than the 15 minutes of fame that might, on culture’s whims, given you for completely changing the definition of Who You Are. By simply being aligned with higher intentions, you WILL gain far more attention that WILL make the world more aware and more conscious of its own miraculous journey. Instead of merely the front page of the Friday newspaper, you can find yourself with an entire book of your experiences to share with the world. With the very root of every thought, word, and deed stemming from sources of love, guidance, and joy, our own journey transforms itself from a burdened daily struggle into a magnificent adventure with wonder and awe around every corner. If this is the way we INTEND for life to be, then it CAN be that way.

    Teens, we have the choice to make. Will we change or continue our current intentions? We will make this decision, and we must also make sure we share this decision. Whether it be right here in the Global Conversation community or even in your own community, share your intentions, and let others be transformed as well. Let yourself be known, and so you face no difficulties expressing your new intentions. The higher they are, the stronger they be.

    (Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • So ‘God’ is a ‘collective’?

    GOD: There is only One Soul, One Being, One Essence. Some of you call this “God.” This Single Essence “individuates” Itself as Everything In The Universe—in other words, All That Is. This includes all the sentient beings, or what you have chosen to call souls.

    Neale: So “God” is every soul that “is”?

    GOD: Every soul that is now, ever was, and ever will be.

    Neale: So God is a “collective?”

    GOD: That’s the word I chose, because it comes closest in your language to describing how things are.

    Neale: Not a single awesome being, but a collective?

    GOD:  It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Think “outside the box”!

    Neale: God is both? A single Awesome Being which is a collective of individualized parts?

    GOD: Good! Very good!

    Neale:  And why did the collective come to Earth?

    GOD: To express itself in physicality. To know itself in its own experience. To be God. As I’ve already explained in detail in Book 1.

    Neale:  You created us to be You?

    GOD: We did, indeed. That is exactly why you were created.

    Neale:  And humans were created by a collective?

    GOD: Your own Bible said, “Let Us create man in Our image, and after Our likeness” before the translation was changed.

    Life is the process through which God creates Itself, and then experiences the creation. This process of creation is ongoing and eternal. It is happening all the “time.” Relativity and physicality are the tools with which God works. Pure energy (what you call spirit) is What God Is. This Essence is truly the Holy Spirit.

    By a process through which energy becomes matter, spirit is embodied in physicality. This is done by the energy literally slowing itself down—changing its oscillation, or what you would call vibration.

    That Which Is All does this in parts. That is, parts of the whole do this. These individuations of spirit are what you have chosen to call souls.

    In truth, there is only One Soul, reshaping and reforming Itself. This might be called The Reformation. You are all Gods In Formation. (God’s information! )

    That is your contribution, and it is sufficient unto itself.

    To put this simply, by taking physical form you have already done enough. I want, I need, nothing more. You have contributed to the common good. You have made it possible for that which is common—the One Common Element—to experience that which is good. Even you have written that God created the heavens and the Earth, and the animals who walk upon the land, and the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and it was very good.

    “Good” does not—cannot—exist experientially without its opposite. Therefore have you also created evil, which is the backward motion, or opposite direction, of good. It is the opposite of life—and so have you created what you call death.

    Yet death does not exist in ultimate reality, but is merely a concoction, an invention, an imagined experience, through which life becomes more valued by you. Thus, “evil” is “live” spelled backward! So clever you are with language. You fold into it secret wisdoms that you do not even know are there.

    Now when you understand this entire cosmology, you comprehend the great truth. You could then never demand of another being that it give you something in return for your sharing the resources and necessities of physical life.

    Neale: As beautiful as that is, there are still some people who would call it communism.

    GOD: If they wish to do so, then so be it. Yet I tell you this: Until your community of beings knows about being in community, you will never experience Holy Communion, and cannot know Who I Am.

    The highly evolved cultures of the universe understand deeply all that I have explained here. In those cultures it would not be possible to fail to share. Nor would it be possible to think of “charging” increasingly exorbitant “prices” the more rare a necessity became. Only extremely primitive societies would do this. Only very primitive beings would see scarcity of that which is commonly needed as an opportunity for greater profits. “Supply and demand” does not drive the system of Highly Evolved Beings.

    This is part of a system that humans claim contributes to their quality of life and to the common good. Yet, from the vantage point of a Highly Evolved Being, your system violates the common good, for it does not allow that which is good to be experienced in common.

    Another distinguishing and fascinating feature of Highly Evolved Cultures is that within them there is no word or sound for, nor any way to communicate the meaning of, the concept of “yours” and “mine.” Personal possessives do not exist in their language, and, if one were to speak in earthly tongues, one could only use articles to describe things. Employing that convention, “my car” becomes “the car I am now with.” “My partner” or “my children” becomes “the partner” or “the children I am now with.”

    The term “now with,” or “in the presence of,” is as close as your languages can come to describing what you would call “ownership,” or “possession.”

    That which you are “in the presence of” becomes the Gift. These are the true “presents” of life.

    Thus, in the language of highly evolved cultures, one could not even speak in terms of “my life,” but could only communicate “the life I am in the presence of.”

    This is something akin to your speaking of being “in the presence of God.”

    When you are in the presence of God (which you are, any time you are in the presence of each other), you would never think of keeping from God that which is God’s—meaning, any part of That Which Is. You would naturally share, and share equally, that which is God’s with any part of that which is God.

    This is the spiritual understanding which undergirds the entire social, political, economic, and religious structures of all highly evolved cultures. This is the cosmology of all of life, and it is merely failure to observe this cosmology, to understand it and to live within it, which creates all of the discord of your experience on Earth.

    ========================================

    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the end of the blue, ancillary copy that appears just below, which has been placed here for First Time Readers…

    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 3.

    Now, may we tell you about a very easy way that you can share these wonderful messages with others? Please keep reading…

    =====================

    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 very short period of time.  So you are invited to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

    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 experiencing his now famous conversation with God. His Conversations with God series of books has been translated into 37 languages, touching millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

    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.

    By his late teens Neale’s involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin dipping into a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people became involved in organized religion they sometimes seemed less joyful and more angry, occasionally exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that humanity’s collective experience of theology was not as positive as it was meant to be. It seemed to him that there was something missing in standard theological teachings; that they might contain very good lessons, he concluded, but that they might not be complete.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio 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 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 relationship life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

    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.

    Over 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 two weeks shy of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found a modest part-time job, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time broadcasting, eventual landing a spot as a nationally 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 that he could not define, and the daily difficulties that everyone faces continued.

    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 to make life work?” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad. “And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?”

    What followed has been well chronicled and widely discussed around the world. Neale says his questioning letter received a Divine answer. He tells us that he heard a voice just over his right shoulder—soft and warm, kind and loving, as he describes it—that offered a reply. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled the response onto a yellow legal pad he’d found on a coffee table before him.

    More questions came, and as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed to have moved 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 the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue that was created in this way was published without 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 With God series of books, 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 7.5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CWG is one of the most widely distributed hand-to-hand books ever published, with estimates that, on average, at least two people have read every copy purchased — meaning that something more than 15 million people worldwide have read the CWG messages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale has created several global outreach projects dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love revolving around their core messages.

    The projects include: (1) the Conversations with God Foundation, an adult education outreach; (2) Humanity’s Team, a global spiritual activist outreach; (3) CWG for Parents, an outreach providing resources to those who wish to bring their children the messages of CWG; (4) the Changing Change Network, a CWG helping outreach to persons facing major life challenges; (5) The Global Conversation, an internet newspaper outreach relating the spiritual messages of CWG to the news of the day; and (6) CWG Connect, a multi-media communications outreach creating a worldwide CWG community featuring Video and Audio On-Demand services, together with ongoing personal interaction with the author of CWG. Access to all of these programs will be found at the gateway internet site: www.CWGPortal.com

    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’s latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, was published in October, 2012. He lives in Ashland, Oregon and is married to the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).

  • If there was one thing that could change the self-destructive direction in which our world is moving, what do you think it would be?

  • OUR WORLD MUST COME TO
    AN END THIS MONTH

    We have gone as far as we can go. We can’t go any further. I know that nobody wants to hear this (it’s been said over and over again now for 25 years), but the way we are living — what we are doing spiritually, politically, economically, environmentally, educationally, and socially — is totally and utterly unsustainable.

    In every one of those areas, it is unsustainable. The world as we are running it must end. Now. That is what the whole “2012 Phenomenon” is all about. It is not about the end of the world, it is about the end of the world as we know it. It is about re-birthing ourselves. The question is not whether something needs to be done about the way humanity has been living, the question is: What?

    The answer is not a mystery. We must change. But what must we change, specifically? And how do we change it? Those become the operational questions. Those become the functional inquiries. Those become the central issues of our time.

    We have the answer here.

    We must change our Cultural Story. We must rewrite it, from the very first chapter. We must launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a virulent, violent, and vindictive God.

    Why? Why bring our beliefs about God into this? Because the beliefs held about God by billions of people — including the belief that there is no God — is what creates the belief of billions of people about themselves, about each other, and about the purpose and function of Life Itself. And that is what creates the world around us. The unsustainable world around us.

    We can no longer survive as a species by holding the beliefs that we hold. This is not an answer that I just made up. This is the answer that has been given to us by God.

    In the book The New Revelations (2002) the following dialogue with God appears. Have you ever read it? More important, what are you willing to do about it?

    Tell you what. Decide, after you read this interaction with God. I dare you to do it. Read it all the way to the end. Right now. Dare you.

    I understand that our world now lives in a 120-word sound-bite mentality, but I put this opening dialogue before you nonetheless. Is it worth ten minutes of your time to find out what’s really going on here? What appears below are the first few words in a dialogue with God that occurred at this time of year ten years ago…

     

    God, please be here. We need help.

    I am here.

    We need help.

    I know.

    Right now.

    I understand.

    The world is on the brink of disaster. And I’m not talking about natural disaster; I’m talking about man-made calamity.

    I know. And you’re right.

    I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars—which are bad enough—but to the end of civilization as we know it.

    That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.

    You understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.

    Which is?

    The level of belief.

    The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.

    Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.

    You keep trying to solve the world’s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem.  And that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.

    Then help us.

    I am.

    How?

    In many ways.

    Name one.

    This book.

    This book will help us?

    It can.

    What do we have to do?

    Read it.

    And then what?

    Heed it.

    That’s what they all say. “It’s all in The Book,” they say. “Read it and heed it. That’s all you have to do.” The problem is, they all hold up a different book.

    I know.

    And every book says something else.

    I know.

    So now we should “read and heed” this book?

    It’s not a question of what you should do.
    It’s a question of what you may do if you choose to.
    It is an invitation, not a requirement.

    Why would I want to read this book when I’ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books—the books that they are telling me to heed?

    Because you have not heeded them.

    Yes, we have. We believe that we have.

    That’s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.

    You keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.

    You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.

    But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!

    No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.

    What does that mean?

    It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.

    There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.

    This is what you are now doing.

    It is what you have been doing for quite some time.

    You cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.

    You argue among yourselves about what the Qur’an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean.  You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says…

    And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?

    Okay, we get the point.

    No, actually, you don’t. And that’s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.

    It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.

    Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your way.

    This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more—and caused other people to suffer more—over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.

    You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.

    That’s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?

    Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.

    They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.

    What?

    Being right.

    You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be “right.”

    Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

     

    (End of this excerpt. Next in this space: take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.)

     

     

  • WHO and WHAT is ‘God’?

    Who and what is God?

    The day has long past when we imagined that God is a huge man in the sky, sitting on a throne in robes with a long white beard. Today we know better that that, right?

    Right?

    So then, who and what IS ‘God’? Is there even such a thing? And if so, what is it? And what is its purpose for existence? And what does it want from us? What does it need humanity to be, do, or have?

    All of these questions are answered in Conversations with God. Yet the answers are, for many (indeed, for most of the people on Earth who profess a belief in God) heretical.

    The CWG message is considered blasphemy. Yet is it? George Bernard Shaw famously said, “All great truths begin as blasphemy.” Could this be the case with Conversations with God?

    Setting aside these books for a moment, what are your answers to the questions above? Is there a ‘God’? If so, who and what is God? Why does God exist? What is God’s purpose? And, most important of all, what does God want? And why?

    Let the discussion begin…