An Open Letter to Our World:
THERE IS A WAY TO END ALL THE VIOLENCE, TERRORISM & STRIFE
There is a way to end war and violence by the species known as Humanity that has arisen and established itself upon the Earth, but it has not yet found a pathway into the Common Culture of the colony of sentient beings that populates this planet.
The way to end war and violence on the globe is for the species that is “us” to grapple with and struggle with and finally come to terms with a foundational truth of all of Life that humanity has simply found it impossible to even begin to comprehend, much less actually adopt, embrace, and apply in its daily dealings.
We have not found this impossible because we as a race have insufficient intelligence. We have, after all, put a man on the moon, found a cure for many diseases, and unraveled the human genome. We’ve even cloned sheep and cats and other animals…and are presumably but a generation or less from cloning humans.
No, the problem is not basic intelligence. The problem is spiritual, social, and emotional immaturity. In short, right now we are like children — very intelligent children, for certain, but children nonetheless — and we are playing with matches.
The way to bring an end to violence on the Earth (and I am not talking just about violence between people, but the violence that we are inflicting upon the planet itself…and the biggest form of violence of all: The Violence of Indifference) is to bring an end to the Cultural Story that has informed our every choice and decision for thousands of years among the largest number of our world’s inhabitants. We must write a New Cultural Story, and we must do so now. Then we must share this new Cultural Story (the “story” about Who We Are and Why We Are Here) with every adult we can reach on this planet, then teach it to our children, so that we can change our collaboratively created experience of life on the Earth in one generation.
The story we must end is our Story of Separation. It is a story that began with our earliest theologies — which in turn emerged from our earliest understandings of human life, and of what is going on here.
What we now call “self-consciousness” arose when we began to see or know ourselves individually. Perhaps it was seeing our reflection in a caveside pool that sparked this perception. We raised a hand to scratch our head and saw the “man in the pool” doing the same thing…and soon we began to conceive of “The Self.”
The next step in producing the perception of separation came, perhaps, as we sat around the campfire of our clan and found ourselves startled by a sudden flash of lightning in the night sky, followed by a booming clap of thunder. We looked anxiously around the campfire and asked, with whatever facial and verbal expressions we’d developed, “Did you do that?” When everyone in the clan shook their head in a panicked “No!,” we came to a startling awareness: There is something Other Than Us.
This Something Other also seemed, as subsequent events appeared to prove, far more powerful than us. It could cause wind and rain and violent storms; heat and dry spells that lasted, it seemed, forever; a frightening shaking and even an opening of the very ground on which we walked. It could even start fires in the woods all by Itself.
It became clear to us that we needed to find a way to control this Something Other, or our lives would forever be at Its mercy. Yet we could not conceive of or imagine a way that we could do this. We tried everything. We knew we had to find a way to appease the gods.
We didn’t call the elements of life “gods,” of course. That word came along at a much later time. But we did think of this Something Other as an aspect of our existence that was both powerful and uncontrollable.
We knew some members of our own clan in exactly the same way. The biggest and the strongest and the most brutish ran rampant through the collective life of the clan, and efforts were continually made to appease them. They were brought offerings of every kind, from nubile virgins to plentiful food to beautiful things from the richness of the earth.
Once, when the most brutish became more sullen and angry than usual because of an unending drought and the sacrifices it imposed on them and the whole clan, we joined others in our small group to do whatever we could think of to calm them, lest they take out their anger on us—which they had done before.
We threw a campside “party” for them, sang and did dances for them. Someone in the group tore a dying branch from a nearby tree and shook it as part of his dance, its dry leaves making a rhythmic sound matching his gyrations as he twirled around the fire.
As it happened, at that exact moment the skies opened up, and a sudden hard rain drenched the site. Everyone was shocked! And, given the limited intellectual development of the clan at that time, the Dance With The Branch was credited with having produced the water from the sky.
A way had been found to please and appease Something Other! A way had been found to get that Something Other to do what we had been hoping for! All of us were so excited! The “rain man” was elevated to a position of highest status. Ritual, and a class within the clan of Those Who Performed It, was created.
The clan believed that the Dance of the Branch by the Rain Man created rain, and so it did in the future more often than not. And this was not by coincidence. Metaphysics being was it is, the formula worked. For the metaphysical process—whether modern or ancient—produces in physicality whatever it is fervently believed it will produce.
In that first instance, it was no doubt the ongoing, fervent hope, the deeply earnest wish, of the clan that the drought would end that generated the result. But the coincidence of the rain falling at the exact moment the noisy dance was performed could not be ignored.
The narrative above is, of course, all of my imagining. It was an insight—call it an inspiration, if you choose—that I received at the time of my Conversations with God. The entire story could be inaccurate…but I believe that either this, or something very similar to this, is what occurred in the early life of human beings, and what produced our sense of separation, our sense of Something Other, and our sense that there might be, after all, a way of controlling—or at least influencing—that Something Other.
Earliest humans were dealing with the alchemy of the universe, without knowing it. Thus was born what later became known as Religion.
As Man became more sophisticated in his understandings, the species sought a more sophisticated way of seeking to “appease the gods”…and, later, the single God that humans ultimately decided must surely exist.
We were right about that.
There is the thing we now call God. Yet our idea about God—that it is “Something Other”—is what has been inaccurate. This idea is a carryover from the earliest story we told ourselves about The Power Greater Than Us. That first idea is what created what I have called our Separation Theology.
Right now most people who believe in God—and that is by far the largest number of people on this planet—still embrace a Separation Theology. This is a way of looking at God that declares that we are “over here” and God is “over there.”
This would not matter if it began and ended there, but the problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology. That is, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a point of view, but the problem is that a Separation Cosmology produces a Separation Psychology. That is, a psychological viewpoint that says that I am over here and you are over there.
This would also be something we could live with if that was all there was to it, but the problem is that a Separation Psychology produces a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages everyone within human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.
Now we’ve entered into truly dangerous territory, because a Separation Sociology inevitably produces a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, engaged in individually and collectively, and producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands—evidenced everywhere on our planet throughout human history.
Only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Oneness Theology will our pathology be healed. A Oneness Theology recognizes that we have been differentiated from God, but not separated from God, even as the fingers on our hand are differentiated but not separated from the hand itself.
We are being invited to understand that all of Life is One Thing. This is the first step. It is the jumping-off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story of Humanity.
Oneness is not a characteristic of life. Life is a characteristic of oneness. This is what we have not understood about our existence on Earth, the understanding of which would change everything. Life is the expression of oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are one. You are a part of Life. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle. It cannot be broken.
When we begin acting in harmony with this truth, our entire experience of Life will be altered forever. There will, in fact, be war no more. Violence in all forms will disappear. Depravity and insufficiency will end. Abject suffering and poverty will vanish. We will have civilized civilization at last.
All of this has been predicted. You may recall this particularly poignant passage from the Old Testament:
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they learn war anymore.
– Isaiah 2:4
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Would you like to be a major “player” in bringing the world to a new place, to a new understanding, and to a new and grander way of experiencing itself? I know it doesn’t seem like it, but there is a way you can be that. On March 12, 2015 people around the world are going to rise up with One Voice in a global expression of social/spiritual activism such as will capture the attention of the entire planet. This is Movement #1 of The Evolution Revolution. If you see yourself as part of this worldwide event, click on the Evolution Revolution icon found on this website’s Home Page.
Love, Neale Donald Walsch
