This is the second in a 4-part series of commentaries on the Connecticut events, and the larger implications of them.
(WARNING: This is not a small subject. Therefore, it may take you as long as 5 minutes to read this full commentary, and perhaps another few moments to offer your own Comment on it, should you choose to offer one (and we hope that you do). In our 120-character, read-it-in-7-seconds Twitter World, only you can decide if this is a worthwhile use of your Mind’s time.)
As I said in Part One of this 4-part series of commentaries, the horrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14 leaves every sensitive, caring, compassionate human being who describes herself or himself as “spiritual” with deep sadness and searing, penetrating, urgent questions.
What is true about God? What is true about Life? What is true about who we are as creatures on the earth calling ourselves sentient beings? Is there a purpose and a meaning to all of this?
I believe that yes, there is a meaning and a purpose to it all that is going on during this time of turmoil on our planet. Conversations with God had caused me to believe there is a reason and a purpose to all of life, exactly as it is occurring. I’d like to explain that…but first, a word to the grieving and to those left wondering about the big questions of life in the aftermath of the school massacre at Newtown…
What is true about God is that God is real, God exists, and God is both the source and the essence of all the compassion, love, understanding, and wisdom in the Universe.
What God is not is what may be even more meaningful. My clarity and my understanding is that God is not what many — so very many — have said that God is. God is not a despot. God is not a punisher. God is not a vengeful, angry Super Being who needs certain things to occur in the Universe in order to be pleased.
God is not angry with us, and God does not become “angry.”
God is the essence of Life Itself, the Original Energy, the Prime Source, the Creator and the Created. God has bestowed upon everything God created the gift of Free Will. This means that there can be no punishment for anyone or anything, otherwise the idea of “free will” would be a sham, a fraud, a counterfeit notion. What “will” is “free” if it can and must only do what God wants or it will fry in hell in eternal damnation? That is not “free will,” that is “choice by coercion.” That is “decision by intimidation.” Under the legal system of most countries such “free will” would be called “duress.”
So we know that God is an all-loving, non-judgmental, non-avenging Deity. What, then, is true about Life? Is there no justice? Is there no system of Right and Wrong? Do people such as mass murderers simply go unpunished? And what is the point of Life Itself? Why are we here, and how are we expected to know how to act, how to behave with one another, if there is no moral law, no code of ethics — and no punishment even if there was one?
Okay, one thing at a time.
What is true about Life is that it is an ongoing, never-ending process, not a one-time experience. It is an expression of the Essential Essence, or, if you please, an out-picturing of God in physical form.
The point of Life is to give That Which Is (an energy or essence that I call “God” and that others call, variously, 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, or Yahweh, depending on their culture, background, belief or religion) a means by which to experience Itself in fullness.
Because there is no end to life, and no revenge or punishment (Who would That Which Is punish? Itself? There is nothing else in existence but Itself.), there is no such thing as Right and Wrong. There is only what works and what does not work, given what it is one is trying to do. There is no judgment in this matter, there is only the individual assessment of every sentient being as to whether a particular activity, choice, decision, or behavior is producing what that sentient being (or, it the case of Earth, our species) intends and chooses to create.
Having said all of that, I think it is important at this time of national mourning and global self-reflection not to fill the air with too many articulations of fine print regarding the esoterics of life. So I will stop with this for now, and say simply that God may be called on in this moment to bring all of us wisdom and clarity, understanding and compassion, healing and even an eventual return to joy.
I have been told in the dialogue published under the title HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends that no death is ever in vain. Every life and every death has an impact upon, and a deep meaning for, every person who has come to know of it. That is why they have come to know of it.
It turns out that Life is a process that informs Life about Life through the process of Life Itself. And so, everything that happens, happens for a reason, for a purpose. Its purpose is to inform All That Lives about how that living is being done — and then to give All That Lives another chance, another opportunity in an eternity of opportunities, to change that; to make whatever alterations in Its experience of Itself that All That Lives may decide is desirable.
It is for this reason that no part or aspect or individuation of All That Lives would or ever could be punished for doing what it has done, or for playing the role it has played, in the larger process of Life informing Life about Life through the process of Life Itself. Life will not punish Itself for telling Itself about Itself through the expression of Itself. That would be Self-defeating.
It is for this reason that Conversations with God observed that even Hitler went to heaven. First, there is no place but “heaven,” since everything and everywhere is the “Kingdom of God.” Second, there would be no reason to punish Hitler or anyone else for behaving in a way that told us about ourselves collectively, such that we made alterations in the way that we continue to express Life in us, through us, and as us. (Unless we do not. Whether we change our behaviors based on past behaviors is up to us. Will we do so now, in the aftermath of Connecticut? That is the question, isn’t it. Will we, for instance, do something about taking assault rifles off the streets, and big-load ammunition clips out of the hands of people who simply don’t need them?)
Some Souls take on the task of teaching us about ourselves and about where our individual and collective behaviors are leading us. They do so in ways that we call both horrible and heroic. Hitler was such a Soul, and we called him horrible. The children of Connecticut and the courageous adults who died trying to save them were such Souls, and we shall call them heroes.
There have been others, both positive and negative (as humans would label them). The same is true of events, in the abstract. There are both positive and negative events, and all are designed to teach us about ourselves. Or, more accurately, to remind us of who we really are, and to produce a contextual field within which we can express and experience that — and then, enlarge that by recreating ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
Within this context, in the eyes of God all Souls are sacred and all Souls are what we would call “heroes,” for the very act of entering into, and living within, the Realm of the Physical is an act of faith and courage — qualities of Divinity that life in physical form will call upon us to call forth and to demonstrate again and again, in ways large and small, throughout our experience on Earth.
Physical life is also a great joy, and thus, an unspeakable blessing. Yet here is a great secret: It takes bravery to experience joy. And the greatest joy, which is the experience of Divinity Fully Expressed in you — requires the greatest courage.
We see then that all Souls are acting at all times in service to The Whole. We each receive the invitation to carry for humanity the totality of its experience. Its pains, its sorrows, and the burdens of unknowing; its joys, its wonders; and the glories of knowing its Divinity. For it is the purpose of The Whole — that is, of Every Soul in Community — to know Itself, to experience Itself, and to be Itself through the expression of Itself in every conceivable form.
I know that it is expected and perhaps even trite to say that the Souls who left physicality on Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School did not die in vain — but it is profoundly true. Their death is intended to awaken us, to show us many things about ourselves, so that we may decide many things about ourselves, thus to expand our experience of many things about ourselves. We fall to our knees not in sadness, then, but in honoring and in gratitude, as we see that the Souls of Sandy Hook celebrated their Continuation Day through the highest demonstration that physical life can offer of the meaning of love. For greater love hath no Soul than to give up a physical life that another may have theirs in greater knowing, abundance and expression.
And so now, may you know and experience Divinity Expressed, with God’s Blessings flowing to you and through you all the days of your life, in tribute to those who have given all of humanity this opportunity.
With love and caring eternal…Neale.
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