May, 2013
The Greatest Wealth is Health – Virgil
Having a conversation with God just makes sense when facing any challenge, and health challenges are no different. Given that most of the human race die from preventable chronic illnesses, what if anything might we wish to look at and potentially change in our lives to circumvent us becoming another statistic?
God has much to say on health and healing, and the Conversations with God Foundation is hosting an event to address recovery through holistic health. This conversation will be powerful yet practical, providing a new way to look at yourself and your life that could change everything. It will also look at common sense solutions to everyday living problems, like all good Conversations with God do.
You need not wait until symptoms appear to benefit from recreating yourself and your health anew. For example, were you aware that heart disease manifests itself for 10 to 30 years before its first symptom appears? And unfortunately, the first symptom is a heart attack! The really bad news is that 50 percent do not survive the heart attack to make the changes that would have changed everything.
Waiting for symptoms to appear makes no sense as the example above demonstrates. So what to do about it?
First, here is the top ten list from the CDC of the leading causes of death in 2012:
You will notice that all but 2 are diseases and preventable ones at that!
Heart disease: 597,689
Cancer: 574,743
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859
Alzheimer’s disease: 83,494
Diabetes: 69,071
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476
Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364
Hold on though, this list is not accurate. There is one missing! A new number 3!
Every year tobacco kills more Americans than World War II did — more than AIDS, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, vehicular accidents, homicide and suicide combined!
Approximately 440,000 people die from their own smoking each year, and about 50,000 die from second-hand smoke annually!
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22,073 people died of alcohol, 12,113 died of AIDS, 43,664 died of car accidents, 38,396 died of drug use — legal and illegal — 18,573 died of murder and 33,300 died of suicide. That brings us to a total of 168,119 deaths, far less than the 440,000 that die from smoking annually.”
While untimely deaths of any kind are sad, those related to lifestyle choices – like smoking, poor eating, and drinking or other drug use – are especially tragic!
“Three decades ago, public outrage ended a popular American automobile model – The Ford Pinto – whose design defects allegedly caused 59 deaths, yet close to 500,000 people a year die from smoking alone. Where is the outrage? Or better yet, the common sense to change our minds about what we are doing to ourselves every day.
Is it just a lack of knowledge? Or could it be that the way we look at certain issues that cause them to remain in place? Could a shift in perspective hold the keys to seeing solutions to problems that have been left unresolved in our life?
A shift in perspective always creates a new point of view, a view that sheds light on things once unseen. And the seeing of this new view presents new solutions that could change everything. (and will change everything if you use them).
Is it time for you to take another look?
Here is a place where making an assumption is actually a good thing. Assuming that you have one or more of the top 10 chronic illnesses developing within you right now is prudent, as the only real defense is prevention. Will you?
On June 23rd, I, along with a host of other holistic healers, will shed light on how to create wellness in the face of any health challenge…or better yet, as a way of life to prevent them.
Sounds like a tall order, but in truth the understanding and solutions are not that complicated. It is often as simple as taking another point of view, another way of looking at the current problem, a new view that would change everything.
While we call it a Recovery Retreat, and many who have signed up are dealing with the chronic illness known as addiction, we will show you how the same or similar protocols for dealing with addictive and compulsive disorders can also create a new path to healing for the other top causes of death on the planet today.
We will take a holistic point of view as we walk down the path of recovery from dis-ease, that is, look from the perspective of the whole being and our connection to all of life. In fact, we will show you why so many remain stuck in illness and how to begin to shift out of that immediately.
When you apply the wisdom shared at this event, you will set in motion the power of your beingness to heal the imbalances causing the problems that create the symptoms of dis-ease, which as you have seen about are currently causing so many to die prematurely.
Will that be you? Or will you answer the call within to recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held of who you are.
We have a seat for you. It is waiting and you already know if you are suppose to be here.
CwG on RECOVERY
A Path to Peace
June 23 – 26 Medford Oregon
REGISTER NOW AND SAVE $100
Regular price $395
EARLY BIRD PRICE: $295 if registered before May 26
SPECIAL OFFER
The “CwG Recovery Retreat” ends right before Neale Donald Walsch’s next “CwG Spiritual Renewal retreat” held June 26 – 30. Why not consider participating in both? Come spend a life transforming week with us!
Sign up by May 26th and you can do both retreats for only $492.
LOCATION:
The retreat is held at the Rogue Regency Inn, 2300 Biddle Road, Medford, OR 97504. Hotel accommodations are not included in the price of the retreat registration. There are rooms available at the Rogue Regency at the discounted rate of $89/single or double. For reservations, please call 541-770-1234 or 800-535-5805 and request the “Conversations with God” group rate. Reservations must be made by May 25th, 2013.
The Rogue Regency features a full service restaurant offering vegetarian and non-vegetarian fare, beauty salon, barbershop, massage therapist, indoor heated pool, spa, terry bathrobes and feather pillows in all guest rooms, with optional two-room suites with hot tub and fireplace at a slightly higher price, plus free transportation to and from airport, five minutes away.
http://www.rogueregency.com/our_hotel.php
For more information contact: Will : 1-352-442-2244
or will@cwg.org
Join us in this most important conversation with God! I look forward to seeing you there. To your health! – JR
J.R. Westen, D.D., C.A.d. (J.R. 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 counseling and 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 operates “Change House” a place where people come to transform. He also works with Escondido Sobering Services and now serves as the Executive Director of the Conversations with God Foundation.)
Spiritual viewpoint on the Boston bombings: All attack is a cry for help. We are all ONE. Enough of the bloodshed. Let us call for a total paradigm shift.
We must learn to find a way to know that we are all brothers and sisters here on this earth, and that humanity is ONE race.
We must move into greater understanding, and have compassion for each other.
We cannot continue to seek to control the behaviour of each other through force, which never works. It is a low energy vibration. All spiritual masters have said this.
We must ask for greater transparency, and honesty, from our governments and leaders. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to ‘foreign policy’ which directly or indirectly suppresses whole nations because of our lust for power, and our need to maintain a status quo in which a great portion of the Earth’s people live in abject misery and squalor.
Although there is talk of catching the terrorists responsible, these words surely ring hollow for those who are dead or injured, and all the families affected.
Political rhetoric always comes to the fore at a time of crisis, and then our politicians and leaders soon go back to their old ways, oblivious to the world’s suffering.
If we recognise there is no “other” than us, then all of humanity’s problems will evaporate overnight. It can be no other way. A sense of urgency must be upon us all now to correct our deepest misperceptions.
“Consciousness is everything, and creates your experience. Group consciousness is powerful and produces outcomes of unspeakable beauty or ugliness. The choice is always yours. If you are not satisfied with the consciousness of your group, seek to change it.” ~ Conversations with God.
It is clear then: what is needed is a change in consciousness, not merely a change in policy.
(Jaime Tanna is the founder of Energy Therapy and an active Reiki Master and Spiritual Mentor, Healer and Teacher. Together with his wife Jennifer, their unifying vision is to empower others through spiritual education and energy-based healing treatments, to help them become aware of their true natures, and to live more joyfully and consciously. You can visit their website at www.energytherapy.biz)
(If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)
“You cannot be ill without at some level causing yourself to be, and you can be well again in a moment by simply deciding to be.” This is a great quote from Conversations With God, Book 1.
There are so many ways that we cause ourselves to be ill, but it seems that our diet is one of the worst. What we eat can give us conditions over time such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. You know that many of the foods you eat are not healthy, but what about some that you might not know as much about?
A huge problem in our diet is the type of grains that we are now eating. If we eat processed foods and commercially baked breads, we are most likely not eating whole grains. We are just eating the starchy part of the grain. Eating whole foods means eating whole grains. The whole grain has valuable vitamins and minerals that we need. It’s a huge problem that most grains are genetically engineered (GMO) unless they are certified organic. Your body may not recognize GMO foods and may not digest them properly – therefore making you sick, allergic, or fat!
Grains have three parts: the bran, germ, and endosperm. When wheat is made into flour, the outer brown part – the bran and germ are removed leaving the largest part – the endosperm. All of the vitamins and minerals were contained in the bran and germ. The bran and germ are then fed to cows. We eat the endosperm which is totally made of starch. The same process is followed when polishing rice. Healthy brown rice ends up being the starchy white rice that we see everywhere. There is no fiber left to slow down absorption so the result is similar to a sugar overload.
Replace your grains with organic whole grains. If you buy bread, make sure the label says “100% Whole Grain” on the front and in the ingredients. Better yet, get a breadmaker and bake your own whole grain bread on the weekend. It only takes a few minutes to make! Just dump all of the ingredients into the breadmaker and hit the button.You can also eat less bread and more plain grains. Eat brown and wild rice instead of white rice. Try quinoa. Quinoa is a seed that cooks quickly – you can use it anywhere you would normally use rice. The great thing about quinoa is that it is a complete protein.
Experiment with new organic whole grains such as rolled or steel-cut oats, wheat berries, amaranth, or barley. One cup of dry grain will be enough for 2 – 4 people. Make sure you soak the grains for a few hours (20 minutes for quinoa) before cooking to soften. This makes them more digestible and eliminates phytic acid. If you have problems with digestion, soak them for up to 8 hours.
Limiting your grain intake to organic whole grain and experimenting with new grains is a huge step in deciding to be well!
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspotin Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.She is a speaker and also presents workshops on health and nutrition topics. Beth offers in-person and phone consultations – contact her through Facebook or email for more information. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)
(This week’s Addiction & Recovery column is hosting a guest article written and contributed by Mary Warner.)
If only the symptoms of a disease are treated, the victim may feel better for a while, but the symptoms will eventually return because the disease was not cured.
One cannot cure the dis-ease of illegal drug use by trying to eliminate drugs. The cause must be found and eliminated. “The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so bored, so unfulfilled that they are willing to drink, snort, inject, or inhale any substance that might blot out reality and give them a bit of temporary relief?” (Ann Landers, syndicated columnist)
The cause can be discovered by talking respectfully and nonjudgmentally to drug users and listening to how they feel (perceiving the feelings behind the words) and to what they believe.
The cause and cure can be discovered by caring and by putting ourself in another’s place, imagining what we would do if we had the same experiences, the same educational background, and the same beliefs as the illegal drug user and then treating others as we would want to be treated if we were in someone else’ shoes.
Drug abuse by young people could be eliminated by respecting our children, paying attention to them, treating them the way we want them to treat us, and educating them about using drugs – telling them what to expect, letting them know the consequences of their actions (aside from being punished) and trusting them to make the right decision, and by setting the example that we want them to follow.
Children learn the right way to live by watching the behavior of the older people whom they respect and look up to and following the example that is set for them. If they see these people using cold medicine, painkillers, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, diet pills, alcohol, and tobacco, they learn that using drugs is the right thing to do.
If children are not trusted to think for themselves, after having been told what to expect, the consequences of their actions, and after observing the right example set for them by their respected elders, they feel powerless. They may deliberately use something that they know will harm them. They might think that if they do, then at least they will feel powerful and accepted for a moment, or they won’t care, or they will hope that someone will understand how they feel and make their life all right for them.
A feeling of powerlessness often leads people to rebel and deliberately choose the very thing they have been told to not choose (at best) or it leads to violence. It has been said that over half of the murders committed in this country are committed by people between the ages of 14 and 21.
The cause of the dis-ease of selling drugs is the mistaken belief that money and material things will bring power, happiness, and satisfaction. This belief is the result of an education that is lacking in spiritual values, such as the kind of education that is forced upon children in public schools. The belief is further fed by advertisements and TV commercials.
Making it illegal to sell drugs is not a cure, obviously. It makes the problem worse, just as it did with alcohol prohibition, by creating the opportunity for criminal hangs to make huge profits. Then gangsters kill each other (and many innocent bystanders) to protect their territories/markets and pay police and judges to not prosecute them. They adulterate their drugs in order to make more money, consequently causing injury and death to the users who will not protect themselves or get help because they know they are breaking the law and are afraid of punishment.
Putting people in prison for using drugs is not a cure, obviously. According to an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, drugs are readily available in prisons.
Punishing people for trying to make it in life the best way they know how – trying to pursue happiness – is against the Declaration of Independence and is inhumane. “If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion, not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users would be dramatic.” (Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, Economics) Today’s illegal drugs were legal before 1914. Cocaine was in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. Drugs were not a problem. Addiction was treated as a health issue and not a crime.
(Mary Warner is an aging (or perhaps “aged”) flower child/”hippie.” She lives with her husband in a 420-square-foot cabin in the woods with a black and white fur-ball and a black lab where she is creating a garden paradise.)
A couple days ago, in my daily course of business, I found myself walking behind a lovely couple on a busy sidewalk. The gentleman was having a good time, laughing, dancing, immersed in his own personal space and thoughts, oblivious to the bustling world around him – in what many people call “the zone.” I was quietly enjoying being in the moment of witnessing his free-spiritedness. It was then when his companion said, “Honey, this lady behind us is trying to get by us,” to which he replied bluntly, “I don’t care.”
His words, at first blush, were coarse and stinging. And they lingered in my thoughts for quite a while as I contemplated the feelings and energy behind this abrupt declaration: I don’t care. And as with all the events in my life, it served as an opportunity for me to really think and reflect upon what this meant to me. And what I kept circling around in my thoughts was, do people actually ever truly not care? Is it possible for us to not care? And if we really do care, why do we say we don’t?
Maybe it has become easier to simply not care – or at least pretend we don’t — to bury our heads in the sand and willingly go where the winds of change happen to take us. Kind of like we do when our car pulls up to the red traffic light right next to the man or woman holding up a sign that says “Please help. Anything is appreciated.” Do we really not care when we look the other way in an effort to avoid eye contact? Do we really not care when we choose to not give him or her a buck or two?
We seem to care when tragedy strikes, like the tornado in Oklahoma, the explosions in Boston, Hurricane Sandy, or the Newtown shootings. Facebook walls fill up with posts of inspiration and hope, and the masses rally together to bring aide to those in need. In these types of situations, the level of care being expressed is tangibly felt. But what happens to us the rest of the time? What happens to Humanity in the day-to-day of our lives in the way we interact with each other, the way we listen to each other, the way we honor each other?
Do we only care when what is happening is “about us”?
What makes us care?
What would make us not care?
Money?
Competition?
Recognition?
Worthiness?
Pain?
Suffering?
Love?
I realize in my own life how often on a daily basis I say “I don’t care.” Sure, it might be as benign as “What would you like to have for dinner?” I don’t care. “What movie would you like to see?” I don’t care. Or perhaps it carries with it a heavier negative energy like “Honey, this lady behind us is trying to get by us.” I don’t care.
Might we be well-served to consider abandoning this three-word statement altogether as part of our announcement to the universe that, yes, we do actually care? And not only do we care, but that we are consciously demonstrating a level of care that reflects our highest truth, even when our truth may differ from that of another. When we are no longer afraid to express our own truth, we will no longer desire to hide behind the mask of not caring. And when we no longer hide behind the removable mask of “not caring,” we will see the illusion, we will understand it, and we will then experience our own Divinity.
(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.)
Should major pharmaceutical firms be asked to offer drugs to the poorest countries at prices that cover only their costs, and provide no profit?
BACKGROUND: The New York Times reports that “two companies that make vaccines against cervical cancer announced Thursday that they would cut their prices to the world’s poorest countries below $5 per dose, eventually making it possible for millions of girls to be protected against a major deadly cancer.” See the full report here.
The vaccines typically costs about $130 per dose in the United States, the Times reports.
I was talking with a dear friend the other day and the subject of life’s travails came up. “I understand all about how God uses life to experience Itself,” she said, “but why does it have to be so hard on us?”
We talked then about the many things that people on Earth are going through — from, in recent days, the Boston bombing to the Cleveland kidnapping to the carnage in Syria, to say nothing about the individual trials and tribulations to which we are all subject in our daily lives.
“Is God just playing with us?” my friend wanted to know. She then said she knew better, but was still at loose ends trying to explain to herself why it was necessary for truly horrible things to occur in peoples’ lives.
This one is difficult to explain. I have asked myself this same question many times. From the Conversations with God dialogue we come to know that it is not “necessary” for such things to occur. Communion with God tells us about The Ten Illusions of Humans, of which #5 is: Requirement Exists. Nothing is required of God, ever. Who would do the requiring? And since God and we are One, nothing is ever required of us, either. Who would do the requiring?
Everything we do, we do out of choice. In our physical life this is true, and it is true in our metaphysical, or spiritual, life as well. We may think that we are “forced” to do certain things in our physical life, but upon closer examination we realize that every choice or decision we’ve ever made has been the result of an examination of our options and of a cost/benefit analysis that we have rapidly performed.
This does not mean that nothing can ever happen to us in our physical life that we have not consciously chosen (the proverbial piano falling from the apartment building). Plenty of things happen to us that we did not consciously choose. But it does mean that every act of Will on our part derives from our singular choice or decision about it.
Speaking metaphysically, the same thing is true. The Whole of Us (that is, the Totality of All Souls) works in a collaborative way to create the right and perfect circumstance in every moment of Now, allowing every Soul involved to announce and declare, create and become, fulfill and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
We are doing this right now, collectively, on the Earth as a species of sentient beings.
CWG tells us that, both collectively and individually, every act is an act of Self-Definition. Example: on the day that I wrote this, the House in Minnesota voted to legalize gay marriage. The State Senate was expected to follow suit, making it the 17th state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. This is one example of human beings collectively self-defining. Another example in the U.S. might be the failure of its Congress in Washington to approve any kind — even the most limited kind — of gun control, such as background checks on gun buyers.
All over the world humanity observes itself defining itself. We are doing so in Syria, we are doing so in North Korea, we are doing so in Israel, we are doing so in the United States and in every nation on earth. We are also collectively creating the conditions in which individuals define themselves through their separate choices and decisions.
All of this is what I said to my friend in our discussion. Life on earth does not have to be so hard, I said, and it would not be nearly as challenging for nearly as many people if our species collectively began making other kinds of decisions.
Today even a casual observer can see that not one of the systems, institutions and devices that our species has put into place to create a better life for all is functioning in a way that generates this outcome.
Our political systems clearly are not working. Our economic systems clearly are not working. Our ecological systems clearly are not working. Our health care systems clearly are not working. Our educational systems clearly are not working. Our social systems clearly are not working. Our spiritual systems clearly are not working.
Nothing that we have created is producing the outcomes that were intended.
It is worse than that. They are producing exactly the opposite.
Our political systems are producing too much disarray. Our economic systems are producing too much poverty. Our ecological systems are producing too much environmental degradation. Our health care systems are producing too much inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services. Our educational systems are producing too much incomprehension. Our social systems are producing too much disparity and injustice. And, perhaps saddest of all, our spiritual systems are producing far, far too much intolerance, anger, hatred, and violence.
And this article has only just begun to lay out the case. I will tell you this: We would eliminate 95% of the human-made problems facing people every day if the human race simply adopted and embraced the 15-word New Gospel offered to us in Friendship with God:
We are all one.
Ours is not a better way,
ours is merely another way.
Would that have stopped, specifically, the Boston bombing, the Cleveland kidnapping, or the carnage in Syria? Perhaps not. But would it make incidents such as these far, far less prevalent in the human experience? Absolutely. I am convinced it would, absolutely. Because a global mindset that embraced the truth and the concept of our Oneness with everyone else and with all of life could not result in anything but a reduction in the kinds of mental aberrations that produce such events. And the idea that our way is no better than any other way would virtually eliminate all the justification behind our wars and our terrorist bombings and many of the rest of the negative ways that human beings behave with each other.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a dreamer. But I’m not the only one…
It was a miracle that three young women in Cleveland escaped from the home in which they were kept imprisoned and were physically abused for years, allegedly by a man named Ariel Castro.
Today we are left wondering how any person could do a such a thing.
News reports now have it that Ariel Castro had apparently written a suicide note in 2004 questioning himself on exactly that, and making references to wanting to die.
In the note — which reporter Scott Taylor of Cleveland’s WOIO-TV “19 Action News” says police found in Castro’s home, and of which Taylor says he obtained a copy — Castro allegedly wrote: “I am a sexual predator. I need help.”
The sadness is that he did not call for help outside of his own mind. TV journalist Taylor also reports that Castro’s note goes on to question why he grabbed a third young lady off the streets in 2004: “I don’t know why I kept looking for another. I already had 2 in my possession,” the note allegedly said.
He also supposedly writes about wanting to kill himself and “give all the money I saved to my victims.” Castro is also said to have written that he was surprised by how young one of his victims was (14 at the time of the kidnapping). The note he allegedly wrote he says he thought she was a lot older.
According to the online news source Slate, another media outlet, CBS News, “reports that Castro wrote about his whole life in the letter, at one point ‘saying that he was abused by his parents as a child and that he was raped by an uncle’.”
If this is true, it becomes a little easier to understand how a man could have perpetrated such crimes. None of this, we are all clear, excuses anything that Mr. Castro is charged with. It could, however, help explain it. It could open a window onto the life history of the accused, and his state of mind.
Conversations with God invites us to ask a remarkable question of people who would do things such as Mr. Castro is accused of doing. The question: “What hurts you so bad that you feel you have to hurt others in order to heal it?” I am deeply, deeply sorry that these terrible events occurred in the lives of those young women and their families. I am also terribly sorry that any human being could hurt so bad as to hurt others in this reprehensible way. I pray for the day when all members of our human society treat all other members with honor and respect, with caring and compassion, with pure and good and undistorted love.
For the past 18 years, wherever I have gone, I have been besieged with questions about God and Life and the purpose and function of our existence on Earth. This has been understandable, of course, and not unexpected in the aftermath of the worldwide publication of Conversations with God, which attracted millions of readers in more than 35 languages.
Also understandably, I hear the same questions over and over again from different people in different places and times. So repetitive have been my exchanges that I realized recently that I can now recite them from memory. And that gave me an idea. Why not do exactly that? Why not produce a written summary of the questions I usually receive and the answers I have given, post it on the Internet, and then refer people to this resource if they wish to have a lasting record of the answers for future reference?
So here you are. I invite you to visit this corner of our global Internet newspaper’s front page often. I will post new material in this ongoing “Dialogue from Memory” on a regular basis here. And, of course, you will always be able to check into the Archive should you miss a particular posting. When we are finished here, I hope you will know a great deal more about what I have called The New Spirituality, based on the messages in Conversations with God. Welcome to…
CONVERSATIONS WITH HUMANITY
Installment #1
Q. Is there a God?
A. Yes. The New Spirituality holds that there is a Central Essence, a Creative Force, a Dynamic Energy within the Universe that fills the role of what has been called by many names, including Adonai, Akshar, Allah, Brahman, Brahma, Deus, Divinity, Divine Mother, Ekankar, Elohim, God, Hari, Indra, Jehovah, Krishna, Lord, Mahesh, Manitou, Ormuzd, Parameshwar, Purush, Purushottam, Radha Soami, Ram, Rama, Theos, Thor, Varuna, Vishnu, Yahweh, among others.
Q. What is God? A “person”…a single, grander-than-grand Being? An “energy”? What, precisely, is God?
A. The more productive question is, “What is God not?” The answer to the first question is so sweeping, it would take all the pages of all the encyclopedias on the Internet to offer just a beginning description. Yet the answer to the second question can be given in one word: Nothing. There is nothing that God is not. For God is the Essential Essence that comprises everything—both seen and unseen—in existence.
This means that God is the All-In-All, the Alpha & the Omega, the Beginning & the End; the Up & the Down of it, the Big & the Small of It, the Fast and the Slow of It, the Here & the There of It, the Now & the Then of It. It means that nothing stands outside of God. That Which IS is God…and God is That Which IS.
Q. I find that sad, because if that’s true, then we no longer have a personal God…someone we can pray to, someone we can ask favors of, someone we can go to for help.
A. It would be sad if that were true, but Conversations with God tells us that the Sum Total of Everything has—as might be expected—unlimited intelligence and unlimited creative capacity. The Essential Essence may, therefore, form and shape Itself in an endless number of configurations. Indeed, physical life itself is nothing more than a collection of those configurations.
This means that God can—and will—reconfigure Itself in any form or shape that suits the believer. Divinity can therefore be thought of as your Spiritual Father, as a Sacred Mother, as a Best Friendship with God, or in any guise or image that best helps us to relate and communicate with it.
IN OUR NEXT INSTALLMENT: Since you say there is a God, what is God’s “job”? What is its function? What does God do and what does God not do?
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Installment #2
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Q. Since you say there is a God, what is God’s “job”?
A. I can tell you what it is not. It is not to “grant us wishes.” Nor is it to watch us from afar, judge us by our actions, and reward or punish us after “death.”
Q. Okay, so what is God’s job?
God’s “job” (I prefer to refer to this as the basic function of the Essential Energy) is to empower Life in all of its physical forms and manifestations with the ability to create, impact, and direct their experience at a level commensurate with the Self Consciousness with which each of those manifestations has been imbued.
As it relates to humans, God’s “job” is to provide us with the ability to create our own reality. This includes our collective Exterior Events and our individual Inner Experience. To do this, we have been given the Tools of Creation. Specifically: Thought, Word, and Deed.
Q. So we get to experience whatever we want to experience?
The Collective known as Humanity does, yes — and our world as it now presents itself is evidence of that. It is the Cultural Story of humanity that produces the Exterior Events of humanity’s history and present adventure. If we want to change our collective Exteior Events, all we have to do is change our Cultural Story. That is, what we think of ourselves; what we tell ourselves about ourselves.
The Individuation of Divinity known as a single human being also gets to experience what it wishes to experience. Everything is what we say it is. There is no direct connection between the Exterior Events of Life being co-created by the lot of us and the Interior Experience of those events, which is individually created by every human being.
The process by which Exterior Events are transformed and translated into Interior Experience is explained in wonderful detail in the book When Everything Changes Change Everything. It involves the Mechanics of the Mind and the System of the Soul, and the ideal is to use both, in perfect balance. That is what spiritual masters do, and have always done.
The trick is to know what Life itself is all about. Then we know what it is that we are trying to do!
Q. What does that mean? What are you saying here?
I am saying that most people do not understand exactly what it is they are seeking to do. That is, they are not keenly aware of the purpose of their lives—or of Life Itself. They do not understand why we are even here upon the Earth. They do not know who they are, where they are, or why they are where they are. So most people are simply wading through the ocean of life, trying to make the best of it, trying to keep their head above water, trying with all their might to simply stay afloat. But they have no idea how they got in this situation, what the situation actually is, where they are trying to go, much less how to really get into the swim of things. So they experience themselves swimming upstream, as it were. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way.
Q. Oh, really? Then what way can it be?
Ah, yes. That will be our next installment.
Recently I made the decision to switch careers and do what I really want to do, which is in speaking, consulting and writing, and I’m really happy about that. The problem is I’m not officially leaving my day job for another 3 months and I’m not sure I can make it that long! I have mentally checked out, all I want to do is work on stuff for my new business, but I know that I have to stay with my job for awhile longer for financial reasons and because I made a commitment to so I can train in the new employee. It’s also beginning to affect my personal life because I’m so busy trying to do both. It all makes sense on the outside but I’m miserable on the inside and the thought of feeling this way for the next 3 months is terrible. Do you have any advice on how I can manage during this limbo period?
David, Indiana
Hi David,
Being a firm believer in your external conditions not having to determine your happiness or internal conditions, yes, there are many ways to manage what you’re feeling and how you’re experiencing this limbo period. However, this could be less of an issue of “managing during this limbo period” as it is of challenging your beliefs around this transition, and what you think it needs to look like. Since I don’t know the whole story, I’m going to give you a bit of direction around both and you can choose the one that feels best, sound good?
First of all, I want to invite you to remember that you are at the cause of your own experience. Maybe not all the events in your life, but definitely the experiences. So bring some loving consciousness and awareness into the situation by setting your intention each and every day. How do you want the day to go? What state of being would you like to be in? Sometimes that’s all it takes, because it reminds you that you are at the cause and not the effect of how your day goes. But to give your intentions even more support, engage in some daily practices that will support positive thought, words and actions throughout your day, such as daily gratitude, or meditation. I cannot stress enough how important the word daily is here. You see, it is not enough to occasionally engage in such practices or occasionally choose to have a positive outlook, in fact this is what sometimes causes people to find themselves in the this-positive-thinking-stuff-just-isn’t-working-for-me-trap. If you’re looking to feel good and be happy most of the time, then make a daily effort to make that happen. We are all more than capable of this.
Now for the beliefs approach. What is your current belief around this transitional period? Based on what you said I’m going to guess that your belief is something like this: “I made a commitment to stay for 3 months and they are all depending on me to train my replacement in and I don’t want to let them down. Plus, my business isn’t quite ready yet and I need the money coming in right now.” Is that close? I think we stay in situations that suck the life out of us largely because we hold at least one of 3 beliefs about it: we are obligated to stay, fear of the unknown, or we are responsible for the feelings of others. So I want you to ask yourself some big questions here, such as a)are you staying for the 3 months for one of the above reasons and b)if so, could there be another belief that might serve you better here? Take a look at some assumptions you’ve made based on your belief about this. For example, is it really necessary for me to train in my replacement for 3 months? Would they be okay if I only did 1 month, or gave the widely accepted two-week notice instead? Really, would the company collapse in my absence? My guess is probably not. They’d be just fine, and they are also at the cause of their own experience here; in other words, nobody’s happiness is dependent on you other than your own. As for the financial reasons, is the belief you have about this based in fear or love? What would love do here?
So, David, you’ve got some thinking, contemplating, deciding, and re-creating to do. But I encourage you to not be overwhelmed by this, but instead be over-joyed by it. Our ability to re-create ourselves anew in each and every moment, to be at the cause of our own experience, is an incredible gift. Challenging, yes of course, but incredibly and deeply fulfilling, too.
(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. )
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