Questions we might often explore:
PART III: JUST EXACTLY WHAT IS THE
EXPERIENCE WE’RE HAVING HERE?

It seems that these days, perhaps more than ever before, the tide of events in human lives — both globally and individually — is turning against us. War and unspeakable violence plagues the planet. Fires rage across the landscape, ravaging hundreds of miles and displacing thousands. Verbal bullies and insulting demagogues run for office and find the support of cheering millions, leading others to wonder: Is this what we’ve come to?

Are we really nothing more than a species of sentient beings run amok, blowing up H-bombs under the ground to prove our invincibility, ending people’s lives by injection to demonstrate our righteousness, allowing hundreds of children to die of starvation every hour as we defend a global economy that benefits one-tenth of the planet’s population?

Have we so lost our collective mind as to think that the way to stop gun violence is for everybody in the world to carry a gun? Have we so lost our collective will as to find no way to stop the aggression that creates refugee crises rendering millions homeless? Have we so lost our collective morals as to find it actually preferable for divisiveness, rudeness, insults and tasteless verbal bullying to become the hallmark of political leadership?

Is this, really and truly, what we have come to? Gun-toting, fist-pumping, verbal-bashing, jaw-jutting, loud-mouthed intimidators and strong-armed tyrants daring anyone to stand up for what is gentle, peaceful, and loving?

Those who have read Conversations with God know what God has said in that dialogue: “The good news is, you don’t have to go through hell to get to Heaven.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can’t prove it by me,” some of us may be tempted to say. But it’s true. And there are those among us who have proven it.

We can be among those. That is the promise of The Divine.

Those are the words I used to end Part II of this extended series of commentaries. Now I would like to explore this: If there really are those among us who have proven that life does not have to be a hellish experience, how are they doing it? What is their secret?

Of equal urgency, is there any way to apply their secret to the affairs of the world at large, so to change the seemingly impossible-to-end collective experience of violent conflict between humans and utter disregard for the caring of humanity’s home planet?

The answer to the second question is yes, but what it will take is a shift in global consciousness. That’s so obvious that I’m almost tired of hearing myself say it. It seems so trite that it’s almost embarrassing to speak it. It sounds, even to my ears, utterly simplistic. Yet it remains immutably and undeniably true.

But how to achieve this? That’s the question. Or perhaps more to the point: Is it even achievable — soon enough to do the world any good?

Do we have to destroy our entire way of life, and hope that the few who survive our human-made global calamites will see, finally, at long last, what we have done to ourselves, admit that we have done it by our abject stubbornness in refusing to accept our role in it all, and raise our collective awareness sufficiently to determine that it is our individual and collective consciousness that must be changed before our collectively created outcomes can be?

Evolution may take care of things in the long run, but do we have to wait another 5,000 years before we “get” what we need to “get” in order to create what we say we want to create as a way of life on this planet? The question is urgent, because, of course, there are scientists and sociologists who tell us we may not have as much as 50 more years, much less 5,000, before our present way of living brings an end to our present way of living — if not to living at all — on this earth.

So what is the trick here? What do those who have found a way to take the hell out of their lives know that we do not know; what do they do that we do not do?

The answer: They know how to live as Highly Evolved Beings. They no longer choose to live as children. They have spiritually matured.

Spiritual maturation is not a process that requires time. It requires commitment. It can occur instantaneously with a deep commitment to Remembering. A Highly Evolved Being simply remembers what is already known, but has been forgotten.

The tree outside the window has had to learn nothing to become a mighty oak. All that it needs was encoded in the seed from which it emerged. And if God so loved the world as to encode in this way the seed of a tree, would God not all the more encode you?

Indeed. In this way, and even more. For what God encoded in all sentient beings is Consciousness. That is, the ability to know — and to know that they know, through remembering — all that is encoded in the seed itself. Thus are sentient beings able to experience their Totally Remembered Identity instantly, through the process of Spontaneous Demonstration.

Children spontaneously demonstrate their knowledge of who they are — until they’re talked out of it. The challenge before the adults of our species is to talk themselves back into what they knew at the beginning, before they were persuaded to deny, sublimate, or simply forget it.

Remembering what they knew at the beginning, and demonstrating it, was the process and the product of Lao Tzu. It was the process and the product of Buddha. It was the process and the product of Moses. This was the process and the product of Mother Mary. This was the process and the product of Jesus. (Remember how, at the age of 12, he taught the Pharisees at the Temple, who asked, marveling: “How does this child come to know these things?”)

This was the process and the product of Beatrice of Nazareth. This was the process and the product of Catherine of Genoa. This was the process and the product of Muhammed. This was the process and the product of Hildegard of Bingen This was the process and the product of Bahá’u’lláh.

This was the process and the product of all the Great Masters, male or female, ancient or contemporary, who moved through the world, and who do so today, in such a way as to make it unnecessary for them to “go through hell” in order to experience Heaven within.

When whole groups of people do this at once, they create an entire society of Highly Evolved Beings. We are told in Conversations with God that such civilizations exist in our Universe, and our species on this planet can turn itself into such a cosmic society also.

Having said all of that, the key question has still not been answered. What could cause, what will it take to create, a shift in global consciousness? The answer is: Observation. Individual, and group, observation. That is the commitment for which we must push.

We must push each member of our species to commit to engaging in continuous, quiet, fully attentive Observation. Some spiritual traditions call this “Presence” or “Mindfulness” or “Awareness.” CWG uses a new word in this context — observation — to bring freshness to its description of this way of being.

The differences between human cultures and highly evolved cultures, CWG says, is that Highly Evolved Beings:

1 Observe fully
2 Communicate truthfully

When you observe fully, you see things plainly. When you communicate truthfully, you say things plainly. You see and say things like this:

If your objective is to live a life of peace, joy, and love, it is observable that violence does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to live a life of good health and great longevity, it is observable that consuming dead flesh, smoking known carcinogens, and drinking volumes of nerve-deadening, brain-frying liquids does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to raise offspring free of violence and rage, it is observable that putting them directly in front of vivid depictions of violence and rage for years does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to care for Earth, and wisely husband her resources, it is observable that acting as if those resources are limitless does not work. This has already been demonstrated.

If your objective is to discover and cultivate a relationship with a loving God, so that religion can make a difference in the affairs of humans, it is observable that teaching of a god of punishment and terrible retribution does not work. This, too, has already been demonstrated.

All you have to do is be keen in what you observe, and then tell the truth about it. Observation is First Cause in changing Consciousness, and Observation is First Cause in changing Behavior. Observation is what changes both.

There are these who say that Behavior is changed as a result of changes in Consciousness. Others suggest that Consciousness is changed as a result of changes in Behavior. This produces a variation of the age-old inquiry: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

If Behavior is changed as a result of changes in Consciousness, what caused the changes in Consciousness? Conversely, if Consciousness is changed as a result of changes in Behavior, what caused those changes in Behavior?

Startlingly, the answer is the same for both questions: Observation.
Yet what causes Observation? What makes us observe one thing and not the other? The answer is, desire. We desire to look at what we need to see in order to do what we are trying to do.

If what you are trying to do is get across a busy interaction unscathed, you only need to look at what is coming your way from all sides, front, and back. You needn’t look at what birds are in the sky or how many buildings are nearby. You’ve quickly learned to know what to look for when you know what you are seeking to do. And if what you are seeking to do is “survive,” your observational skills can be quite acute.

Yet what if Survival is not your main objective? What if survival is not even being considered, but only what brings you pleasure, only what gets you what you want, only what serves your momentary needs? Well then, you’ve got a mess, because you’ve done no long-term thinking about the outcomes of your short-term actions.

Yet only children do that. Or a very, very young species that cannot see — or simply refuses to look — beyond the end of its nose.

That’s us right now on the Earth. Yet long-term thinking about the long-range impact of short-term choices is not the only way to reverse this headlong dive into the abyss. A complete and total change in thinking — that is, a new way of thinking, a different kind of thinking — could also produce a global transformation and stop the young species on this marvelous planet from obliterating itself.

What if you believe that your survival is guaranteed, that you will and can never “die,” and that what you are seeking to do has nothing to do with survival at all, but everything to do with knowing, through demonstration, your True Identity and your Actual Self?

What if you’ve discovered that the “basic instinct” is not “survival” after all, but rather, the impulse to embody, express, and experience Divinity? Could it be that this is the reason why are here? Could it be that this is the purpose of all of life, everywhere present, in whatever form it manifests?

If this is your deep inner knowing, if this is your awareness, what you observe will change. And as what you observe changes, your Consciousness and your Behavior will change — and not necessarily in that order. If fact, they may both change simultaneously. Spontaneously.

This is what I call Spiritual Maturation Acceleration. It is when you remember instantaneously what you’ve always known, what you were encoded to understand, what you’re capable of doing and demonstrating when operating at maximum capacity.

An example of this on a physical level is the person who does not know how to swim, but who instantly “remembers” how when spontaneously jumping out of a boat to save the baby who’s fallen into the water. Or the child who has never had a piano lesson and sits down to play a piano concerto — perfectly. Such instantaneous remembering can occur spiritually as well — and does for many people.

The question is, what can cause us to remain in that State of Remembering? And the answer is, remaining in the State of Knowing what we are actually trying to do here during our life on Earth. Then, remaining in the State of Observation that is sponsored by that knowing.

Everything arises out of what you are trying to do; what you understand your species to be trying to accomplish. Motive is everything. Objectives determine outcomes. Life proceeds out of your intention. Your true intention is revealed in your actions, and your actions are determined by your true intention. As with everything in life (and life itself), it is a circle.

Highly Evolved Beings see the circle. Humans do not. Highly Evolved Beings respond to what is so; humans ignore it. Highly Evolved Beings tell the truth, always. Humans too often lie, to themselves as well as others. Highly Evolved Beings say one thing, and do what they say. Humans say one thing and do another.

This is what the members of a society created by Highly Evolved Beings do. In Part IV of this series we will look deeply at Highly Evolved Beings, how they live and how they love, how they function and how they fulfill their greatest desire — and how we can do the same. We will explore the civilizations of Highly Evolved Beings, and the model we can use on Earth, should we choose to change humanity’s current trajectory from self-destruction to self-recreation and self-realization.

For now, consider what I call the Burning Building Moment. Imagine that a man is walking down the street and sees a burning building, flames shooting out of the upper windows and through the roof. And imagine that in one of the lower windows he suddenly notices a woman holding an infant and crying out, “Please, please, help us!” The man immediately rushes into the building, races up two flights of stairs, finds the woman and child and leads them back down and out before the flames reach them.

By now the fire trucks are on the scene, along with the news media. They are calling the man a hero, but as the TV stations interview him, he denies it. “No,” he says, “I did what anyone would do.” And he’s right. Ninety per cent of the people would do exactly what he did. They wouldn’t even stop to think of their own survival, because their first instinct is not survival, but the impulse of Divine Love, which thinks not of itself at all. Humanity’s fundamental urge is to demonstrate Divinity, and all we have to do to change the world overnight is to think of every moment as a Burning Building Moment.

This is, in a sense, how Highly Evolved Beings think. They think not of themselves first, but of the Other. Always, of the Other, and of the Collective. In this, they are thinking of themselves first. They simply have a much larger definition of Self.

All of this is described in wonderfully illuminating detail in the final four chapters (18 through 21) of Conversations with God – Book 3, in case you want to peek at what’s ahead in the coming installment of this series.