This is an announcement that as of January 1, 2018, The Global Conversation internet platform will cease to function as it has in the past — and that, in the second quarter of the upcoming year, it will be closed down altogether, with its function supported by other CWG platforms now online.

This change is the result of our team refining our mission and our vision, as our digital presence has evolved to new levels of sophistication. That transformation has produced a change in my own personal priorities, allowing me to spend more time with more people online than this platform allows me the opportunity to do.

Presently — as one regular visitor here called to my attention in a recent post — a very small number of visitors come to this site. I find that my outreach efforts are not being utilized here in an energy-efficient way.

The purpose of The Global Conversation has been to create a place where people could discuss topics of the day as presented in headline articles revolving around the messages of Conversations with God, trade ideas back and forth, pose and respond to questions among themselves, and, in general, produce an ongoing conversation at the intersection of spiritual and temporal matters.

The site served that purpose, with a fair number of people participating, in its earlier years. In more recent times, participation has plummeted, to a place where now, on an active day, perhaps 12 or 13 people may come to the site.

In the meantime, a worldwide internet platform called CWG Connect now lists nearly 6,000 members, with the number growing daily. That is understandable, as the Connect site offers a highly sophisticated and vast array of resources — video, audio, and written — for persons wishing to delve deeply into topics that arise around the CWG messages.

The Global Conversation has essentially evolved into the Community Forum, which is part of The CWG Village at CWG Connect — and that is just one facet of a multi-level site that includes a wonderful list of written articles of interest, an Ask Neale column for people wanting to question me, specifically, about the meaning and interpretation of the messages in CWG, a daily excerpt from one of the most powerful texts in the CWG body of work, with a place for reader comments and interactions, a Weekly Reader focusing in-depth on a major element of spiritual interest, CWG Radio, with its archive of fascinating programs and interviews, regular contributions from CWG Voices (a group of messengers and mentors steeped in how to apply the material in everyday life), and many other resources, features, and opportunities for spiritual expansion.

As well, for people looking for global spiritual involvement that reaches into the business and social leadership community, the wonderful work of Humanity’s Team (www.HumanitysTeam.org) has grown into a stunning resource. And if it is spiritual activism one is looking for, there is www.EvolutionRevolution.net.

I contribute commentary on each of these platforms, as well as at my own Facebook page, which has close to half a million followers. Within that context, it may be understandable that my participation here at The Global Conversation, with its dozen or so regular visitors, might not be considered the highest and best use of my personal energy at the age of 74.

We will, therefore, be keeping the Comment Section of this platform open beginning January 1 for anyone wishing to continue their “chat room experience” here, and, as we move into the second quarter of the year, we will forward The Global Conversation link to www.CWGConnect.com, with its huge collection of resources, and its Community Forum in the CWG Village.

Several of the “regulars” visiting here have already joined in the ongoing conversations there, and I hope that all of you who have enjoyed visiting here will find it equally stimulating to join in the exchanges there.

Meanwhile, as we approach these changes, I send you my very best wishes for a happy Holiday Season! May God’s blessings flow to you and through you in the days and weeks ahead.

We can do this one person at a time — undertaking humanity’s huge course correction by pointing singularly to every allegedly offending individual we can find, bringing that person down with career-ending and life-ruining accusations — or we can do it en masse by just admitting that our species has been divided into the Oppressors and the Oppressed for thousands of years. We can confess that we have been getting it all wrong all along.

We have a problem on this planet that transcends the current outrage over sexual assault, harassment, and misbehavior — as legitimate and important a development as that is. (And it is.) Yet we should not allow our outrage and our social course correction to stop there.

We can continue by acknowledging that it is not just women who deserve to be placed on the Finally Being Believed List. People of color, citizens with special needs, persons who identify as gay, members of particular religions, people who are poor, those who are homeless, and more than one or two other subgroups within our society have also been begging to be heard and crying out for justice for a very long time.

The problem here is systemic. The problem is cultural. The problem is massive and widespread in areas sexual, social, racial, political, economical, and spiritual, and it will not be solved by asking those few who actually get caught (or who are alleged to have gotten caught) to alone pay the price for the ongoing, centuries-long dysfunctions of an entire species called humankind. And before that statement is mis-characterized, this is not a call to excuse any specific behaviors – sexual misconduct or others – but just the opposite. We must all pay the price, because humankind has NOT been kind, but has been behaving like barbarians. We must pay the price beginning now, by increasing the cost, at once and all across human society, to people and groups who would oppress other people and groups ever again. And I believe we would do well to see if we can find a way to forgive those who have offended in the past, to look within our hearts to see if there is a place of compassion and mercy sufficient to allow us not to overlook their offenses, but to overcome them, even as we have allowed many of the very worst among us to be pardoned, and to attempt to reclaim their lives and make things right with their Soul and their God (if they believe in either).

There is a story told about a custom purported to part of the culture of a certain tribe in South Africa. According to the story, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe, regardless of age, begins to talk out loud to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime.

Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. No one is pemitted to fabricate, exaggerate or be facetious about his accomplishments or the positive aspects of his personality.

The tribal ceremony does not cease until everyone is drained of every positive comment he can muster about the person in question. At the end, the tribal circle is broken and a joyous celebration takes place, with the person symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.

The story is told in at least two books. Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit after the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, by Alice Walker, and Contact: The first four minutes, by Leonard Zunin, MD

Ms.Walker said in her book: “I am convinced the only punishment that will ever work is love.”

It should be reported that some have said the story has been completely fabricated, and has no basis in fact. I love it whether it is true or not, because I think it give us a wonderful model of how we may heal both ourselves, if we have been hurt or offended by another, as well as the perpetrator of the offense. And, of course, Conversations with God offers us the insight that forgiveness is not part of God’s response to the mistakes made by human beings. As we are told in the CWG cosmology, “Understanding replaces Forgiveness in the mind of the Master.” And God understands that humanity’s weaknesses derive from humanity’s immaturity as a species.

It is that immaturity that has caused our entire species to have never stopped oppressing each other. We’ve never allowed ourselves as a species to experience “power with” – only “power over.” THIS has been the blind spot of humanity. This has been the weakness of our civilization. This has been the core issue from the beginning. And until we resolve this issue, there will always be the Oppressors and the Oppressed.

We are like animals. Like insects. Like every life form that exemplifies and demonstrates behaviors establishing Survival of the Fittest as the highest and best measure of effective and efficient conduct. And the difficulty with trying to change all of this one social issue or one offender at a time is that it will take decades to even make a dent in the number of individuals who we’ve alleged to have been oppressors, and by doing so to change collective behaviors. And we don’t have that kind of time.

Our society is unraveling. Our world is on the brink of nuclear war. Our environment is degrading. Our political frameworks are crumbling. Our economic structures are collapsing. Our spiritual communities are colliding. Our global systems, ladies and gentlemen, are falling apart.

We are seeing that our civilization is not civilized. We are seeing that all lives matter, that all grievances need now to be given fair hearing, and that all of us can play a role in not allowing assault, harassment, and misconduct to continue in ANY area of life without the course correction that our intelligence as a species is telling us is so long overdue.

What is the solution here? Is it really to focus on one issue at a time and all the individual offenders we can find? Or is it to undertake an overhaul of the entire human experience by challenging and changing the fundamental beliefs of our species, and the group behaviors that emerge from them?