Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series ofobservations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #8: What is the Self?

In our last entry here I said that for me, “mastery” is defined as “the fullest expression of the fullness of my being.” That is, the total expression of the totality of my Self.

Yet in order for me to know and to recognize that I have had such an experience, I would have to know (and be able to explain to my Mind) what my “Self” is.

What is the Self that I am seeking to express in fullness? Let’s look at that now.

The thoughts that follow are not my own, but rather, the understandings that I was given in my Conversations with God. It is not necessary for anyone to believe that I have actually had conversations with God for us to discuss this.

While my own conversations with God made it clear to me that we are all having conversations with God all the time and simply calling them something else (we’re calling them moments of “inspiration.” Or “women’s intuition.” Or a “psyhic hit.” Or a “bright idea.” Or a “deep insight.” Or an “epiphany.” We call the results of such encounters “serendipity” or “coincidence” or “chance.”), we can deny them altogether and still look at some of the ideas in the CWG series of books. That’s what we’re doing here…so try not to get caught up in the question or the quarrel of whether I actually spoke with The Divine, and simply take a look at what I claim to have learned from my experience, whatever you think it was.

I understand myself to be an individuation of Divinity, an expression of God, a singularization of The Singularity. There is no separation between me and God, nor is there any difference, except as to proportion. Put simply, God and I are one.

This brings up an interesting question. Am I rightly accused of heresy? Are people who believe that they are divine nothing but raving lunatics? Are they, worse yet, apostates?

I wondered. So I did a little research. I wanted to find out what religious and spiritual sources had to say on the subject. Here’s some of what I found…

Isaiah 41:23—“Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold together.”

Psalm 82:6—“I have said, ‘Gods ye are, And sons of the Most High—all of you’.”

John 10:34—“Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods’?”

The Indian philosopher Adi Shankara (788 CE—820 CE), the one largely responsible for the initial expounding and consolidation of Advaita Vedanta, wrote in his famous work, Vivekachudamant: “Brahman is the only Truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately Brahman and individual self.”

Sri Swami Krishnananda Saraswati Maharaj (April 25, 1922—November 23, 2001), a contemporary Hindu saint: “God exists; there is only one God; the essence of man is God.”

According to Buddhism, there ultimately is no such thing as a “self” independent from the rest of the universe (the doctrine of anatta). Also, if I understand certain Buddhist schools of thought correctly, humans return to Earth in subsequent lifetimes in one of six forms, the last of which are called Devas…which is variously translated as Gods or Deities.

Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese discipline of Taoism speaks of embodiment and pragmatism, engaging practice to actualize the Natural Order within themselves. Taoists believe that man is a microcosm for the universe.

Hermeticism is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs or gnosis based primarily upon the Hellenistic Egyptian pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermeticism teaches that there is a transcendent God, The All, or one “Cause,” of which we, and the entire universe, participate.

The concept was first laid out in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the famous words: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One thing.”

And in Sufism, an esoteric form of Islam, the teaching “there is no God but God” was long ago changed to there is nothing but God. Which would make me…well…God.

So the idea that I am One with God is not new—and, of course, the CWG dialogue never said it was. But I wanted to check with other sources just to see if I was unknowingly “making stuff up.” It turns out that if I am, I’m in some pretty good company.

So for me, this answers one of what I have come to call the Four Fundamental Questions of Life: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I where I am? What do I intend to do about that?

I have observed that many people go through their entire lives and never ask themselves these questions. I did not intend to do that. For better or for worse, I did not intend to do that. So in our next installment here, I will share with you, from the For What It’s Worth Dept., my answer to the second question.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #6: Self-Selecting/A process that could change the world.

In the 4^th installment of this series I wrote this: A person who walks through the world holding the Identity of Divinity deep within changes the exterior experience of everyone else everywhere she or he steps, every room he or she enters, every space she or he occupies.

If our entire species walked through this world holding such an identity deep within, it would produce Heaven on Earth.

The question is, what could cause our entire species to do so?

In my last installment (#5), I spoke of what causes a person to become “enlightened.” That article was a precursor to what follows here. I would like to discuss now what could cause all enlightened humans to produce Heaven on Earth, to join in awakening our species and co-creating a new way of living together on this planet.

I believe that the answer is desire. But not desire for planetary transformation. Rather, desire for individual transmogrification.

My online dictionary says that to “transmogrify” means to alter or change in a surprising or magical manner. It offers this example: “The cucumbers were ultimately transmogrified into pickles.”

So in my vernacular, to “transmogrify” is one level above to “transform.” To “transform,” in my world, means to change significantly. To “transmogrify” means to change not just significantly, but magically and surprisingly.

For me, this means becoming my Universal (or Big) Self in fullest expression, replacing my Local (or Little) Self. This is a shift into my God-created identity and out of my self-created identity. Or, if you will, into my True Identity and out of my False and Limited Identity.

When I develop, nurture, and place into physical expression the deepest desire to expand my notion of Who I Am, I automatically become a “change agent” on my planet — without that being my primary purpose or intention.

By virtue of the simple difference in how I present myself to the world, the world to which I present myself changes. It cannot help but do so, because the change that occurs within people who self-select to reach, in this lifetime, the highest stage of evolution possible is such that it touches other people in a profound way, showing them the highest possibilities of who they are, and engendering within them the desire to experience this as well.

It is a fact that a great deal of human behavior — a huge amount of it, actually — emerges from emulation. We begin our lives by emulating our parents (whether we, or they, know it or not). Then we emulate our childhood heroes and idols. Finally, as we move into adulthood, we emulate the behaviors that our society has told us lead to success, personal popularity, true happiness, and the good things in life.

It is when we cross paths with someone, when we encounter someone in our lives, who has created a new and remarkable way to define “the good things in life” that we almost immediately seek to emulate their behavior, because we realize they have found something that we have not been able to find (all of our prior emulations notwithstanding).

They have found peace.
And inner joy.
And true prosperity (having nothing to do with money).
And love. Real love. Unconditional love. For life, for themselves, for all others — and yes, for God.

Of equal importance and apparency, they have released any and all holding of fear, feeling of resentment, needing to forgive, desiring to defeat or defend, craving for revenge, inclination to judge, yearning to punish, or enthusiasm for righteousness.

When we meet and interact with such a person, we want what they’ve got. By seeing that it’s possible within the human journey, we want our journey to take us there. That’s just what happens with people who find themselves around people who wrap themselves around principles that produce behaviors and out-picturings of their highest inner decisions regarding Who They Really Are.

So what it would take to change the world is for the number of people who choose to change themselves to reach critical mass.

We are talking about people who self-select — that is, who choose themselves — to be among those who commit to moving forward their own individual and personal evolution by embracing and demonstrating behaviors that serve to awaken the species to who and what human beings really are (Individuations of Divinity), and how that may be made manifest in human experience.

The idea of “self-selecting” centers around an invitation to step into life in a new way, for the largest reason and the grandest purpose: To evolve to the next level, and ultimately to the highest level, in the expression of Who We Really Are. In other words, to evince the Divine.

That brings up a fascinating question. What does it take to change the Self? What is required to transmogrify? Does it take a long, long time? Years and years of study, effort, and practice? Was Malcolm Gladwell right in his 2008 book, Outliers, in which he hypothesized that it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery at anything? Could this include reaching mastery at Mastery?

That will be the subject of our next installment.

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore — one-by-one — the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #5: What causes transformation?

Much has been made in the New Thought Movement of the word “transformation.” It has been said repeatedly in New Age circles that personal transformation is the ultimate goal in life. Yet what is “personal transformation,” and how does one achieve it?

This is not always addressed in specific terms within the community of New Spirituality authors, teachers, and messengers — who tend to speak in broad general terms, such as “higher consciousness,” or “awareness.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare that in my own inner world — which has largely been created by the Conversations with God experience — the term “personal transformation” means the changing of one’s identity, or the embracing of a “new thought” about oneself, seeing oneself from this moment on as One with, and an expression of, God.

It is in this context that I have called myself, and every human being, a Singularization of The Singularity, or an Individuation of Divinity.

I have held the thought that a person who walks through the world holding the Identity of Divinity deep within changes the exterior experience of everyone else everywhere she or he steps, every room he or she enters, every space she or he occupies.

In my last entry here I said that if our entire species walked through this world holding such an identity deep within, it would produce Heaven on Earth.

The question is, what could cause our entire species to do so? Perhaps more to the point, what does it take to be “transformed” — or, as some have labeled it, “enlightened”?

So let’s look at that here. Let’s discuss this elusive magical mystical experience for which so many seem to be searching.

I’ll begin by observing that there is a pitfall here, and even a danger. The danger is two-fold. The first danger is thinking that there is something specific that you have to do in order to be Enlightened, and that if you don’t do it, you can’t be it. The second danger is thinking that there is only one best way.

Werner Erhard created Erhard Seminar Trainings (est) about 25 years ago or so, and the people who were involved in it were absolutely convinced that this was the fastest way to enlightenment. They began recruiting people to take est, and it was almost an urgent matter with them. And if you didn’t get the urgency, they would look at you and say, “You just don’t get it.”

I enrolled in the est program and I “got it.” In fact, I became so enlightened that I realized I did not need est to be enlightened – which really upset the est people, because they wanted me to take the next level and the next level of the training.

est was a program with multitudinous levels. Once you got into the program you had to almost extract yourself from it. And if you did get out of it, you were made to feel by those who were still inside it that you had done something desperately sad. Not wrong, just very sad. Because you just didn’t get it.

Many years ago Paramahansa Yogananda came to America with a technique for “self-realization,” which was his phrase meaning “enlightenment.” When you realize the Self, he said, you are more aware. You are more at peace with the world. You are internally serene, content, and able to experience Divine Presence in you, as you.

Now I want you to understand that I am not putting this down or belittling any of this. This is all very real, and that is why every person who has ever achieved mastery has wanted to share it with others. Human beings who are truly enlightened, truly aware (and there are many of them), experience at a deep level that most of us are operating from a place of pain, extreme suffering, emotional turmoil, physical dis-ease, and are, as a result, creating an entire world like that. Yet Masters know that none of this is necessary. You can overcome it, create yourself and your world in a new way. But first, you have to know Who You Are.

Paramahansa Yogananda knew who he was. He described himself as being enlightened. And he was enlightened. He was enlightened because he said he was.

Yes, I hate to break the spell, but to be enlightened is to say that you are. It is as simple as that.

A fascinating man named Maharishi surfaced a few of decades ago and he announced yet another path to enlightenment. His path was called Transcendental Meditation or, for short, TM.

Now, I learned a little about Transcendental Meditation and I learned it from students who learned it from other students who learned it from other students who learned it from the Master. And there is some sense of quiet urgency with some people in the transcendental meditation movement, because they will tell you that TM is a tool that can bring you to enlightenment in a very short period of time – and they want that for you.

There are many other programs as well. Many approaches, many paths, developed by many Masters. There is Dahn Hak and there is the Avatar Training and there is Lifespring and the list goes on and on. Which path, then, should we take?

God says, “No one calls to Me who is not answered.” The promise here is that each of us will be answered in the way that most effectively responds to the vibration we hold and create and carry in the center of our being.

Many people are inspired to this day by the man known as Buddha, and so have become Buddhists. It is, perhaps, good to tell the whole story of Buddha.

His name was Siddhartha Gautama. His father was the ruler of a large area who wanted to protect Siddhartha from any knowledge of the outside world. Siddhartha was kept on the grounds of the family compound, but one day he ventured beyond the walls because he wished to learn more of life. He gave up his riches and his whole family, left his wife and children and disappeared, to embark on his search for what was true.

Immediately he encountered people who were enduring much suffering. There was poverty. There was disease. There was cruelty. Siddhartha was stunned, and he knew, he just knew, that life was not meant to be like that. But what, then, was the truth? What was the path?

“What can I do?” he asked himself, and he underwent a series of extreme physical and mental disciplines of every imaginable sort, including fasting and prostration and self-denial. This went on for years. He sought out Masters and did as they told him. Yet nothing brought him the experience of enlightenment. It only brought him an arduous life and an emaciated body.

One day Siddhartha Gautama said, “I’ve tried everything. I’ve done all the physical disciplines, all the trainings, all the exercise, all the starvation, all the diets, all the fasting, and all the meditation. Now I’m just going to sit here beneath this tree and I’m not getting up until I’m enlightened.”

And there he sat, doing nothing. No exercises, no meditations, no fasting, no nothing. Now that is hard for many of us to do, because we think there is something we are suppose to be doing in order to be enlightened.

Suddenly Siddhartha said with a start: “I’m enlightened.” And people came to him and cried out, “What did you do? What did you do? Teach us, Master! You have become the Buddha, the Enlightened One. What is the secret? What did you do?”

And the Buddha said something quite extraordinary: “There is nothing that you have to be, do, or have.”

Imagine. After all that time. After the life he had lived and all that he did and saw. After all the luxury and then all the self-denial, after wearing a silk shirt and then a hair-shirt, after thoroughly satisfying his body and then starving his body, after no spiritual or physical discipline and then tons of discipline…after all that time, he realized it was not about doing or having anything and it was not about not doing or having anything. It was about the middle way.

It was about just living life, non-attached to anything in particular. Not attached to your luxuries and joys, and not attached to your poverty and tragedies. It was not about any of that. It can be if you want it to be. It can be if that is what suits you. It can be if that is your path, but it is not necessary to be, do, or have anything in particular.

The Buddha said, in effect, “I’m enlightened because I have realized that enlightenment is knowing that there is nothing you have to do to be enlightened.”

Isn’t that interesting? Think of all the effort that people are putting in, with years-long programs and trainings, only to find out that enlightenment requires nothing at all!  You were “enlightened” when you came here, because you were Who You Were.

You were, are,  always have been, and always will be, Divinity Expressed. You are Divine, and you simply don’t know it. Or don’t believe it. Or have forgotten it. Enlightenment is about remembering, declaring, expressing and experiencing Who You Really Are. That’s all that any spiritual master has ever done. Think of any spiritual master you wish to think of. That’s all that any one of them has ever done.

So if you think there is a Path to Enlightenment that is the only path, the best path, the fastest path, you may suddenly find yourself feeling pressure, stress, a false urgency, even upset, and your ego may become deeply involved in convincing as many people as you can that the path you have found is the path they just have to experience.

Suddenly you will start acting not like a master at all, but like someone who is under a terrific amount of pressure and stress, because it will suddenly matter to you whether I “get” what you are trying to tell me.

If you are not careful, you even start having quotas or goals. You’ll have to get a certain number of other people to agree with you every week, or every month, or every year. And if you don’t meet those goals you will think that you have not done a good job.

And yet enlightenment, when it is all said and done, has nothing to do with what you do with your Body or your Mind. It has to do with what you do with your Soul. If you learn to love yourself and everyone else, and life itself, unconditionally, you will be “aware,” you will have reached “higher consciousness,” you will be “enlightened.”

In short, you will be transformed. You will be acting as The Divine. Because Divinity, in a word, is Love. Love without restriction, love without limitation, love without condition.

So this moment is the moment of your liberation. You can be liberated from your life-long search for enlightenment. You can be released from any thought that it has to look like this…no, no, it has to look like that…no, no, you have to get to it by this path, by that program, by the other process or activity.

You may still do those things if you choose to, but if you feel stressed about them, if you feel pressured by them, then how could they be a path to enlightenment?

So set yourself free today. Stop working so hard on yourself that you don’t even enjoy life anymore. Do what works for you, but make sure it brings you joy and harms neither yourself nor another. Enlightenment is enJOYment. It is the pouring of joy into Life.

Now here is one thing that I know will bring you joy. Spend the rest of your life giving people back to themselves, that they might love themselves, and know that there is nothing they are lacking, nothing they are missing, nothing they need, nothing they are not.

A sure way for you to experience that you are enlightened is to cause others to know that they are. That is the message and that will be the teaching of the New Spirituality. That is why Namaste’ has become such a powerful, such a meaningful and special, exchange of energy:

“The God in me sees the God in you.”

There’s nothing more to be done if we really mean that. Of course, if we are saying it because it sounds good, then there is a great deal more to be done. But if, when we say this, we really mean it…then the struggle is finished, the search is over, and enlightenment, transformation, is ours at last.