September, 2015
EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.
The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong. I believe this book (published by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.
The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species. For example, the statement that…God is on our side.
One of the most common ideas about God is that God is on our side. God is in our corner. God grants us favors because we are in God’s favor.
We have told ourselves that when we go to war, God is on our side. When we kill thousands of people in acts of terrorism, God is on our side. When we struggle to make our religion the dominant religion across the face of the earth, God is on our side. When we create a new country, God is on our side. When we attempt to tear apart an old country, God is on our side. When we launch a social, political, or economic revolution, God is on our side.
And especially when we seek to defend ourselves, God is on our side—which is why all attack is called a defense. Have you ever noticed that? Nobody ever says they are attacking anybody. All attacks are called defensive, and are thusly justified.
God is on our side in positive matters, too. We’ve told ourselves that we were successful in an election campaign because God is on our side. We landed that huge contract because God is on our side. We got to the wedding on time, even though there was a huge traffic jam, because God is on our side.
Wait, it gets even more trivial than that. We kicked the winning goal in the World Cup because God is on our side. We hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth because God is on our side.
(We round first and head to second pointing a victorious index finger to the sky to let everyone know that God is responsible for the feat. We drop to one knee and make the Sign of the Cross after catching a touchdown pass to make it clear that we praise and thank God for our success.)
God cares who wins the game. That’s the message, loud and clear. God cares.
God cares whether the pass in the end zone is complete or incomplete. God cares whether you hit a home run or strike out. God cares whether you get the most votes or do not. God is on your side, not the other side. If God were on the other side, they would win. If God were on everyone’s side, it would be a draw. Every game would end a tie. Every effort would be a stalemate.
Fortunately, it isn’t that way. God wants your side to win the war. God wants your idea to make thousands of dollars. God wants your parking space to be there waiting for you.
Yes, the message is clear. And each of us can say it without seeing any contradiction. God is on our side.
Now comes The Great What If . . .
What if God is not on anybody’s “side”? What if God does not care who “wins,” who “loses,” who’s “right,” who’s “wrong.” who “succeeds,” who “fails,” or who does or does not do anything at all?
Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?
Yes, obviously it would. Right now, billions of people are sure that God is on their side—and there could be no more dangerous thought than that.
This idea has given rise to more actions that have caused more misery for more people than almost any other single notion. The spiritual arrogance of the idea is ignored by most, who seem to want to sidestep the obvious conclusion that if God is on their side, then God, in fact, must not be on the other side. This sets God up as a Deity who chooses winners and losers, declares ideas worthy or unworthy, labels decisions fair or unfair, pronounces countries good or evil, designates religions right or wrong, calls people saved or condemned, and holds all manner of preferences and priorities, proclivities and predilections, penchants and partialities.
And, of course, if God is on our side, then God’s preferences and priorities, proclivities and predilections, penchants and partialities all agree with ours.
God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God being on our side is plainly and simply inaccurate.
It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.
It is important to understand that God was not made in the image and likeness of man. It is the other way around. Man is made in the image and likeness of God.
It would be wonderful if this could be placed on billboards around the world:
God was not made in the image and likeness of Man. It is the other way around.
This means that human beings are divine, each having all the qualities of divinity within them. What it does not mean is that God has human qualities. So God does not like the Los Angeles Dodgers better than the Atlanta Braves. And God doesn’t want your country to win the World Cup more than God wants another country to win it.
God is not hoping that your nation is victorious in the war rather than the nation you are fighting. And God does not support the world’s revolutionaries more than God supports the world’s governments. And God does not align with the values of the Republican Party more than God aligns with the values of the Democratic Party.
It’s time for human beings to let go of their need to believe in a God of preferences. First, we had to let go of our God of the brand name, now we add to that list our God of preferences.
Derailing some really fundamental ideas embraced by many people, it is time to accept the fact that God does not hold the thought that women should never be priests or members of the clergy, that gays should never be allowed to be married, or that non-Christians should never be allowed into heaven.
Difficult as it may be for some people to imagine, God does not, we repeat here for emphasis, prefer Baptists over Hindus, Catholics over Jews, Muslims over Mormons, or any religion over any other religion. God does not even prefer those who believe in God over those who do not believe in God.
These are not God’s ideas. These are the ideas of human beings who think that these are God’s ideas.
We said it before and we’ll say it again: God is not a male human being writ large. God is the Supreme Intelligence and the Primal Energy underlying the universe . . . an intelligence and an energy without specific identity.
Is it really conceivable that God has a favorite color or a favorite number, a favorite team or a favorite player, a favorite nation or a favorite religion, a favorite gender or a favorite race?
Does it feel realistic that God holds particular political views, or economic views, or social views, or spiritual views? And if so, which ones?
Wait. We don’t have to ask that. The people who hold particular views will tell you which ones. Theirs, of course.
Well . . . while this disrupts the whole story line of people and political parties and nations and religions wanting to insist that they are the lone upholders of moral values and the last bastions of spiritual rectitude on the earth, it is important that humanity come to clarity on the true nature of divinity and the factual aspects of Ultimate Reality.
None of the above means that life is against us. God is not on our side in the sense that God favors you over someone else, but life is always prepared to give us what we most fervently and feelingly believe we are going to receive.
Life proceeds out of your intentions for it. We have been told, “As you believe, so will it be done unto you,” and that is true. Belief is a strong and very powerful energy. It is a magnet. It attracts to us what we firmly expect it to. Yet this is not because “God is on our side”; this is because God has given us, as described earlier, a mechanism with which to manipulate and affect the raw energy that is All of Life.
Life affects life through the process of life itself. The Essential Essence is an energy that has an impact upon Itself.
One who learns how to use this energy in a positive fashion through thought, word, and action has stepped onto the road to mastery in living.
Yet never “pray” or use the power of thought, word, and action to bring you something to the detriment of another. Always remember, there is only One of Us.
If, therefore, you seek something for yourself to the detriment of another, you “win” with the right hand and “lose” with the left. Even if you seem to have “won” in one instance, the experience of how you “lost” will visit you in the next.
When in any sort of situation where your desires are juxtaposed with another’s, say a prayer, or hold the thought, that the outcome that is produced will be the one that is best for all concerned.
This is true spiritual mastery, for it requires and demands nothing, but holds every outcome and experience as perfect. In this awareness is found both freedom and peace.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.
The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong. I believe this book (published by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.
The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species. For example, the statement that…God sometimes answers our prayers and sometimes does not.
Much of the world believes in a God who hears our prayers and sometimes gives us what we ask for and sometimes does not.
This conception of Deity holds that God has reasons for granting or denying our wishes on any particular occasion.
Sometimes (so it is said) what we want for ourselves is not what God knows is “good for us,” so we don’t get it.
Sometimes (so it is said) we have sinned so much that God does not find us “deserving” of having a prayer answered.
Sometimes (so we are told) God gives us all that we have asked for and more—presumably because it is good for us and we are deserving.
Now comes The Great What If . . .
What if God does not grant or deny the prayers of anyone? What if a hoped-for event or condition manifests in our life for another reason entirely?
Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?
Yes. This would, in fact, offer an opportunity for the biggest breakthrough in human history. We could at last discover, as a global species, the Process of Creation and the alchemy of the universe (a seemingly magical method of transformation or creation).
If we thought there was another reason that one particular outcome rather than another manifests in our lives—a reason having nothing whatsoever to do with our worthiness or the worthiness of our request—it would end our seemingly endless and far too often ruthless drive to please God so that He will answer our prayers. As well, it would launch a worldwide effort to discover what that reason is.
Why do hoped-for events or conditions manifest in our lives if it’s not God’s “mood” that determines whether our wishes are granted? How do miracles happen? What makes dreams come true? And what is at cause when they do not?
If humans thought that God does not grant or deny the prayers of anyone, but that God has simply and lovingly put into place a process for manifestation that does not rely on us being in God’s “good graces” or our request being “good for us,” many humans would no doubt stop praying.
What would be the point of it, they might think, if asking God for what we want and need is not a way to produce it? And so this would be a second reason humanity would put an end to Supplication Theology, replacing it with ApplicationTheology—applying the power of God in our lives, rather than supplicating for it to be applied in our lives.
If our species decided en masse that God does not personally grant or deny prayers, but, rather, has given all of us a mechanism by which all of our desires may be made manifest, religions themselves would be dramatically affected. Some might even disappear. Those that remained would see their missions significantly altered. They would still present themselves as pathways to peace, joy, and paradise, but they would provide insight into how such experiences may be called forth rather than called for. (The latter is a request, the former is a requisition. There is a huge difference.)
Yet if prayers of supplication were to disappear, something would have to come along to replace them as a tool with which to generate hoped-for results as humans faced the day-to-day challenges of life on the earth. And something would come along.
The truth.
God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God personally granting or denying the prayers of individual human beings is plainly and simply inaccurate.
It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.
God’s role in our lives need not be reduced, however. Indeed, it would be well to increase it. Yet if God does not personally say “yes” or “no” to our prayers, why bother increasing God’s role in our lives?
Because it is God’s power, not God’s disposition that produces the manifestation of a human being’s desires.
That sentence is important enough to qualify as one to be highlighted.
It is God’s power, not God’s disposition, that produces the manifestation of a human being’s desires.
What this means is that it is not whether we are in God’s favor, or whether or not God thinks that granting a particular request would be “good” for us, that determines the outcome of our prayer. It is not God’s mood, it is God’s love which produces the astonishing circumstance of all of our prayers being granted all of the time.
The problem is not that God sometimes says yes and sometimes says no to our prayers, the problem is that we don’t know what “prayer” is.
If someone had told us when we were little children what prayer is, we would find that all of our prayers are answered all the time.
Prayer is an application, not a supplication . . . and most of us think it is the other way around.
Prayer is nothing more than God’s energy, focused. Of course, if you don’t believe in God, it could be psychologically more difficult to focus God’s energy. That is why it was said earlier that you may want to make God more a part of your life—even as you make prayer, in the old style of supplication, less.
God’s energy is not made available to us only under certain conditions (as when God agrees with our prayer, or when we are in God’s “good graces”). God’s energy lives in us, as us, and manifests through us every hour of every day, whether we know it or not—and whether we want it to or not.
We don’t have any choice about this, because God’s energy—which is the power behind creation—is not turn-on-able and turn-off-able. It is always on, every single moment. It is, in fact, Who We Are.
We are, each of us, a manifestation of God’s energy, and how we use the energy that we are determines how we experience the life that we live.
All of this will begin to come together if we continue to revisit this statement: Life itself is nothing more than energy, vibrating at particular and various frequencies. Energy vibrating at certain frequencies produces physical manifestations in the form of objects, situations, circumstances, and events. This occurs because energy attracts energy. Energy impacts upon energy. Two energies produce a third energy. And so it goes, throughout all of life.
Remember always . . .
We are a manifestation of God’s energy, and how we use the energy that we are determines how we experience the life that we live.
Let me offer here what I explained in a passage from the book Happier Than God. The attracting aspect of energy responds not only to what we desire, but also to what we fear. Not only to what we wish to draw to us, but also to what we wish to push away. Not only to what we consciously choose, but also to what we unconsciously select.
“Selecting” from what my friend Deepak Chopra calls “the Field of Infinite Possibilities” is a delicate procedure. It is a matter of what we focus on, whether we want to or not, whether we do it consciously or not.
For instance, if your mind is focused on doubling your income within the next year, but if you have a later thought, the next hour or the next day, that it will be almost impossible for you to do this—if you say to yourself, “Oh, come on, be practical! Pick a goal that you can at least reach”—then you have selected the latest idea, whether you originally wanted to or not, because the switch on your power is always ON; personal creation is always working.
It not only works with your most recent thought or idea, but also with the one to which you give the most frequency and focus and emotional energy.
This explains why some people who seek to use the so-called Law of Attraction or traditional forms of prayer to get something they desperately want often meet up with what they call failure. Then they say, “See? This stuff doesn’t work!” Actually, the process is working perfectly. If you experience yourself wanting something desperately, and if you keep saying to yourself I want that!, you are announcing to the universe that you do not now have it.
(Unless you are simply using the word “want” as a figure of speech. Most people are not. When most people say that they “want” something, they are very clear that it is because they experience that they do not now have it.)
As long as you hold such a thought, you cannot have it, because you cannot experience on the one hand what you are confirming on the other that you do not.
To use one example, the statement, “I want more money” may not draw money to you, but may actually push it away.
This is because the universe has only one response in its vocabulary: “Yes.”
It responds to your energy. It listens most of all to what you are feeling.
If you constantly say, “I want more money!”, God will say, “Yes, you do!” If you think, “I want more love in my life!”, God will say “Yes, you do!”
The universe “feels your energy” around the question of money or love, or anything else for that matter, and if it is a feeling of lack, this is what the universe will respond to. And it will produce more of that. The universe is a big copying machine. It duplicates what’s put into it.
We are talking about power here. We are talking about the power of prayer. But prayer is more than simply what we ask for. Prayer is our every thought, word, and deed. In fact, asking for something is actually the weakest path toward getting it, because asking for something is an affirmation that you do not now have it.
Putting all this another way, your energy has the power of a magnet. Remember that even feeling (actually, especially feeling) is energy, and in the matter of energy, Like Attracts Like.
The idea is to step into the application of the power of God, not a supplication to God that the power be used. God’s invitation is to utilize the confirmative power of prayer. How? How is this done? Well, here’s an example: “Thank you God for sending me my perfect mate.” Here’s another example: “All the money I need is coming to me now.” And here’s my favorite prayer: “Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.”
This shift from supplication to application can be miraculous. These are not affirmations. These are confirmations. There is a huge difference. An affirmation seeks to produce an outcome or an experience. A confirmation announces that the outcome has already been produced.
On the very day that I was putting together this chapter I received the following email in my box in response to an article I had written on this subject.
“Dear Neale,” the letter said, “I have a difficult time believing that God/my soul is so literal regarding ‘wanting.’ Doesn’t God/ my soul know what I really mean/intend? God bless, Gerry.”
I wrote back:
Dear Gerry . . . It is not a question of God, or your soul, being so “literal” regarding “wanting.” It is a question of how the Mechanism of Creation works. This is a mechanism we are talking about here, not a Being in the sky who takes you literally or does not. This is a machine that runs based on the fuel that is put into it. It is a copying machine, and it has no preference as to what it duplicates. Nor does it try to interpret what its owner wants to make copies of. It simply duplicates the energy that is put into it. In this sense, it is like a computer. You’ve heard this acronym, I’m sure: GIGO. That stands for: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
One of the great misunderstandings that humans hold about God is that God has a preference in the matter of how life is experienced by each of us. God loves us, for sure, but God has no such preference—any more than you have a preference as to whether your children pay “tag” or “hide-and-seek” when they go out to the backyard. All you want them to know is that you are there if they need you. And so it is with God.
There are seven billion sentient beings on this planet—and this planet is one of seventy trillion-billion planets in the cosmos. To functionalize this breathtakingly expansive life God has put into place a spectacular apparatus, and its workings have nothing to do with Deity’s personal preference. They have to do with Deity’s genius.
The genius of the system is that it is Pure Energy, reacting to Energy by reproducing in physical form what is put into it by all sentient beings in the form of their thoughts, words, and actions—which, in turn, are based on what humans call “feelings” . . . which, in turn, are simply other forms of energy.
Do you get the picture?
God does not answer some prayers and fail to answer others. God answers all prayers, sending to The Collective the Energy that duplicates what The Collective is thinking/saying/doing/feeling. God does so, as well, on an individual basis with each source of energy output. (That is, with every human being, and every sentient creature in the universe.) Is this quite remarkable? Yes. Is it the result of God’s personal preference in the matter of what is manifest moment-to-moment in the cosmos? No.
In using God’s Energy, the word “I” is the ignition key of creation. What follows the word “I” turns the key and starts the engine of manifestation.
Thus, when it “looks as if ” Personal Creation is not working it is only because the Primal Energy has brought you what you inadvertently selected rather than what you thought you chose.
If the power were not always ON, if the process was not always working, you could have a single very positive thought about something and that outcome would be made manifest in your reality without fail. But the process works all the time, not just part of the time, and is fed by that which you feel most deeply, most consistently. So a single very positive thought in a whirlwind of not-so-positive ideas and projections is not likely to produce the desired result.
The trick is to stay positive in a sea of negativity. The trick is to know that the process is working even when it looks as if it is not. The trick is to “judge not by appearances.” The trick is to stay in the space of gratitude for everyone outcome and experience, every circumstance and situation.
Gratitude eliminates negativity, disappointment, resentment, and anger. And when those emotions disappear, room is made for the energy of love for God, for life, and for yourself to reappear—now more fully than ever.
What a God we have! What a Deity is ours, to have created such a foolproof, magnificent, miraculous process, allowing each of us to announce and declare, express and fulfill, experience and become Who We Really Are.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.
The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong. I believe this book (published by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.
The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species. For example, the statement that…God honors self-sacrifice, long-suffering (preferably in silence), and martyrdom.
There is an idea about God, shared by many, many people in the world, that God is pleased when human beings make a personal sacrifice—and that the bigger the sacrifice, the more pleased God is.
God’s pleasure, we are told, comes from knowing that we are “putting others first,” even in the face of great personal emotional, physical, or financial loss.
In addition, God is said to reward the long-suffering— particularly when we suffer in silence. Complaining about some circumstance or condition besmirches and lessens the value that has been gained through the suffering itself. So to gain optimal value in heaven, keep your suffering to yourself. That’s been the basic message.
When I was a child, the nuns in our parochial school told us, if we fell and got hurt, to “offer it up to God.”
Martyrdom in any form was, we were taught, the highest form of suffering, for which we were accorded a special place in heaven. And martyrdom for God was the highest of the highest, garnering the greatest reward: sainthood.
I am not the only person to have gotten these messages. They have lived long, primarily (but not exclusively) in the Christian tradition. Now comes The Great What If . . .
What if God does not offer a special reward in heaven for any particular behavior—and, in fact, wants us to know that self-sacrifice and suffering do not have to be part of the human experience?
Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?
Yes, it surely would. Billions of people across the globe would stop seeing self-sacrifice and long-suffering as qualifications for the highest honors in heaven.
This shift in understanding would eliminate an enormous amount of human sadness and loss produced by self-induced behaviors generated by people who think that they are pleas- ing God by displeasing themselves.
In addition, invalidating “martyrdom for God” as “automatic passage” into heaven would mean that ending one’s life in order to kill scores of innocent people would lose its spiritual credentials—making it impossible for the trainers of terrorists to promise young male suicide bombers that they will be rewarded with everlasting joy and twenty-two black-eyed virgins in paradise if they will just go out and blow themselves up in public places.
The biggest change that would occur if humans were certain that self-sacrifice, long-suffering, and martyrdom not only brought no special reward from God, but that God says that none of this even needs to be part of the human experience, is that people would begin to ask, “Why, then, is it so normal?”
The answer to that question is so huge that, if it were shared and lived widely, it would transform life for our species forever.
God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God according higher honors to the soul for self-sacrifice, long-suffering, and martyrdom is plainly and simply inaccurate.
It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.
Self-sacrifice is never necessary, suffering need not be a common part of human life, and martyrdom “for God” does not earn anyone a special place or the highest honors in paradise.
What is called “self-sacrifice” is the result of an assessment by a human being that something they are choosing to do is producing loss or self-injury in some way.
What is called “suffering” is the direct result of an assessment by a human being that something they are experiencing they should not be experiencing.
What is called “martyrdom for God” is the result of an assessment by a human being that something they are doing that is producing enormous self-injury (perhaps even death) pleases God because of this, and will therefore generate rewards in heaven proportionate to, and in recompense for, the injury experienced on the earth.
All of these assessments are inaccurate.
Looking at these concepts one by one, we see that it may be perfectly normal within our present human understanding to think that when one is doing something for another at great inconvenience, and especially at great emotional, physical, or financial loss, one is “sacrificing the self for another.” Yet such a mental holding is both inaccurate and self-serving.
Yes, rather than self-sacrificing, it is self-serving.
The truth is that no one does anything they don’t want to do. It sometimes serves us, however, to do exactly what we want to do, and then to tell ourselves (and others) that we “had no choice,” or that we did it “at great personal sacrifice.” In this way, we can feel self-satisfied and victimized at the same time.
Everything that human beings do willfully they do at their own choice, of their own volition. It is true that some people feel that certain things have to be done, or that there really is no choice when one is under duress—and within the context of humanity’s extremely limited comprehension, such a view might be understandable. But in reality, even “duress” is just a fancy word meaning “a situation in which I am confronted with a condition I do not consciously desire, or an outcome that—for my own good reasons— I seek to avoid.”
Yet when you consciously sidestep a condition you do not desire, you are serving yourself. And if you seek to avoid something for your own good reasons, then when you avoid it you are once again clearly serving yourself. This does not mean that your reasons are not good, it merely means that the goodness of your reasons does not make them less self-serving. Indeed, just the opposite is true.
(The better is your reason for doing or not doing something, the more self-serving it is—obviously.)
Yet we have been trained to think that anything that is self-serving is “bad,” and so we would much rather say that we “had no choice” than to say that we indeed had a choice, and took the option that we chose because it felt best to us—and thus, served us.
Even the decision to do something for another at great personal inconvenience or loss falls into that category, or you can be assured that it wouldn’t be done. There is some reason that a person makes the decision to do something extraordinary for another, even at their own expense or risk.
Perhaps the reason is that it makes them feel good. Perhaps the reason is that it brings them a direct experience of the kind of person they see themselves being, or wish to be. Perhaps the reason is that it allows them to feel true to a life principle they’ve committed to live by, or to an obligation they genuinely feel, or to a promise they have made.
All of these reasons, and many more that one could come up with, serve the ultimate interest of the self. And there is nothing wrong with this. What is not beneficial is serving the self, then telling oneself (and others) that one is not doing so.
We see, then, that true self-sacrifice is not possible, but faux self-sacrifice is, within the limited framework of most human understanding. Yet our larger awareness—the awareness of the Soul—tells us exactly why we do everything . . . and the reason always serves the agenda of the doer, thus is always self-serving. Further, it ought to be. It is intended to be. For the purpose of life itself is to allow us to “show up” in every moment as the grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
When we become clear about this we eliminate the possibility of harboring anger or resentment toward anyone else regarding anything we have ever done for them, may now be doing, or may think that we “have to do.”
We can no longer feel victimized by another, nor even by our own choices, but are invited to claim our place as the powerful sentient being that we are, clearly seeing all the options and outcomes before us in any given moment, and clearly choosing the ones that we see serving us in the best way.
What we may be missing here—an insight that would turn everything around for us if we saw it clearly—is that all self-service is service to the whole. It may take a deeper level of thinking for all members of a species to “get” this, but all members of all species eventually do. Ultimately, at a certain point in the evolutionary development of a species, this becomes crystal clear:
All self-service is service to the whole.
There are multiple reasons this is true, as will become apparent before this narrative is concluded. The lens of humanity’s understanding is clouded, at best, and totally obscured in our worst moments, due to the extraordinarily young age of our species. Our immaturity is revealed and demonstrated when, upon encountering severe physical or emotional pain, we feel that “this should not be happening,” and that its occurrence is somehow a “violation” of the human contract. A reversal of this single assessment can eliminate “suffering” from the human experience.
While such a change of mind does not erase the pain, it transmutes it, turning it into something that can be encountered with a higher degree of even peaceful acceptance, and certainly with a great deal less—if any—objection or opposition.
It is objection or opposition that creates the brittle rigidity that produces suffering—and prolongs it. For it is as Conversations with God tells us: What you resist, persists, and what you look at, disappears. That is, it ceases to have its illusory form.
A classic example of this can be a woman in childbirth. She is in pain, but if she relinquishes any opposition to it, she can reduce—and often completely eliminate—”suffering.” She can even, by this device, reduce the pain itself.
There are those who understand this very well, and who see pain as a natural part of every birthing process. Not just the birthing of a baby, but even the emerging of a new and greater aspect of the Self.
In children we often call these experiences “growing pains.” They are precisely the same in adults.
Fair enough, some may concede, but must these “growing pains” continue throughout one’s entire life? Is there to be no relief, ever, from this ongoing and ever-visited experience? Is the human journey to be an endless rush through tiny valleys of happiness to the next mountain of physical or emotional pain?
No. It does not need to be this way. Tiny valleys of happiness can turn into expansive plains of joy. The scales of life need not be heavily tipped toward emotional or physical discomfort—and even if certain physical pain is chronic, the abandonment or prohibition of joy is not a required accompaniment to that condition.
Many people who experience chronic physical pain have nevertheless found joy and happiness to be the prevalent circumstance of their life. Persons encountering ongoing emotional pain have likewise discovered that there are effective ways to ameliorate that condition and that they need not automatically forfeit delight, pleasure, and merriment in their lives.
It is quite amazing to observe the degree to which a non-combative, non-oppositional attitude toward pain can begin to immunize a person to the worst ravages of it. A person’s subjective, or inner, decision can and does affect a person’s objective, or outer, experience. There is not a psychologist in the world who would disagree with that.
Metaphysics goes one step further. It says that a person’s interior holding of an event can actually change the event itself. In other words, a positive attitude about any negative occurrence can actually transmogrify the occurrence itself—even as it is occurring.
How is this possible?
It is possible because everything in life is energy. And energy affects energy. It is a phenomenon that impacts upon itself. Science observes this through quantum physics, which posits that nothing that is observed in unaffected by the observer. This is pure science, not hocus-pocus.
So let’s highlight this intriguing statement once again here, so that you can get the full impact of it: A person’s subjective, or inner, decision can and does affect a person’s objective, or outer, experience.
It is within this context that the statement is made that long-suffering need not be part of the human condition. Not only does God not specifically reward it, God promises that it is not even necessary.
As well, it should be made clear that affecting one’s own happiness in an irreversible way—to say nothing of ending one’s life—through an act that is labeled “martyrdom for God” is not something for which God offers a special reward. The act of taking the lives of others along with one’s own as the very point of such “martyrdom” likewise will not, and will never, be rewarded with special honors or special treatment in paradise.
Persons who imagine that by killing themselves in an act of terrorism that kills others they will earn a unique, distinct, and exclusive “payoff ” in the afterlife will find that no such unique payoff is waiting.
Unlike on the earth, everyone is treated exactly alike in heaven. No one is raised higher, nor placed lower, than anyone else, no matter what they have or have not done during their physical life, and the wonders of the afterlife are not merit awards that are earned.
To put this simply: heaven is not a meritocracy. The joys of the spiritual realm—as with the joys of the physical realm—are the gifts of life itself, joyously created and freely given to all by God.
The doctrine of a God who parcels out rewards in heaven based on the quality and the content of one’s “performance” on the earth reduces the whole of life’s magnificent process to the monotonous mechanics of a mundane meritocracy.
As well, such a dogma makes a muddle of the concept of reincarnation, for if one’s particular status in heaven is a “reward” for exemplary behavior on the earth, that status would have to be revised with each succeeding incarnation—raising the almost silly question: Does one’s “standing” go up or down based on the “achievements” or “failures” of one’s most recent physicalization? No.
Heaven is not a meritocracy.
It is time to let go of our notion of a God who admires, honors, and rewards self-sacrifice more than self-service, long-suffering more than lifelong joy, and martyrdom more than merry-making.
We have lived long enough with our childish concept of a God who has gone so far as to say that even music and dancing is “bad,” that sex without the intention of procreation is lustful and bestial, that glorious self-celebration is worth less than continuous self-denial, and that the foregoing of some of the grandest joys of our oh-so-short life on the earth is what earns us the grandest joys of everlasting life in paradise.
We have lived long enough with our childish idea of a God who lays down “rules” for human behavior that dictate what we may or may not eat, may or may not wear, may or may not say, and may or may not believe. These jejune and puerile theological constructions have nothing to do with Ultimate Reality.
Or, as one observer wryly put it: “No more Jonah and the Whale.”
