A voice in the wilderness
STEP #1 IN HAVING YOUR OWN
CONVERSATION WITH GOD

Okay, time now to get on with our series of entries here in How to Have Your Own Conversation with God.

Now, some of these steps are going to seem pretty obvious to you, or rather simplistic. Please forgive me, because each of them is important. I have to start, then, at the beginning.

The first step to having your conversation with God is that you must believe there is a God. I know that sounds like, oh, Neale, come on. That’s so elementary. But is it really?

Do you really and truly or merely intellectually believe that there is a thing called God? And if you do believe that there is a thing called God, what is the nature of this thing that you believe in that you call God? Is it a larger‑than‑life human? A larger‑than‑life being of some other kind? Is it an energy? A detached totally non‑personified energy? What is this God that you believe in, if, in fact, you believe in it?

So what I want to tell you is that step 1, as elementary as it may seem, is a profound, sincere, deeply held conviction and belief that there is such a thing called God, that God exists in the universe and that God is ‑‑ if nothing else, if we can’t figure out how to describe God, at least we would say that God is the center and the source of Supreme Intelligence.

That is, that God is completely and utterly intelligent and aware and, therefore, has the ability to formulate thoughts, what you and I would consider thoughts, and to communicate. I am saying here that this is a God with whom we can communicate.

Again, please, forgive me for belaboring the point, but a lot of people who believe in God believe that God is some kind of disembodied energy, just a non‑personified energy, the energy that we call Life perhaps, but that this energy may not be “interact-able with,” if I could coin a phrase. That is, it’s not something you can interact with intellectually. You can’t have a conversation. You can use the energy, like you use electricity, but you wouldn’t have a conversation with electricity.

And it’s amazing how many people feel this way about God. I’m not making them wrong, by the way. I’m just saying that a large number of people feel that God is a disembodied energy, not unlike electricity, and you don’t have conversations with it.

So step number 1 then, obvious as it may seem, is that you hold as absolutely true that, A, God exists, and, B, God exists in the form with which two-way communication is possible.

I was asked recently over at CWGConnect.com about how we could have a personal God with whom we can communicate if God is really nothing more than raw energy. The answer I gave is that God is much more than raw energy. God is both the source and the expression of the highest consciousness, the greatest wisdom, and the grandest love in existence. God has made it clear to me that divinity will manifest itself in the life of every sentient being in the way that every sentient being is most capable of understanding and embracing the manifestation.

Thus, God will appear in the lives of some people as nothing more than raw energy. Life itself, if you please. In the lives of others, God will appear to be an Essential Essence, with personality. Divinity may therefore evidence itself as a protective Father, a nurturing Mother, a wise and gentle Friend, an Always Ready Helper in time of need, or in any other way, shape, manner, or form that suits the moment at hand.

In my own world, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the All-in-All, the Totality of All That Is. The beginning and the end of it, the here and the there of it, the before and the after of it, the up and down of it, the fast and slow of it, the dark and light of it, the left and right of it, the big and the small of it, the male and the female of it.

That’s just my thought. But you have to hold some idea that an Essence exists with whom you can experience a two-way interaction—and you can’t have any doubt about that. At least, not any continuing, persistent doubt that would more accurately be described as denial.

Now it is clear to me that acceptance of and embracing of the reality of God may be the most challenging of all the steps in the process of having one’s one conversation with God. It is certainly not a given. How one comes to this acceptance and embracing is a matter of another series of columns altogether, and is not something we are attempting to explore here. If you believe in God, you do. And if you don’t, you don’t. And that’s where we’re starting this series of entries. As stated in our last post, we’re not going to get into a debate about God’s existence here. People have been occupying themselves with such debates for millennia, may God bless ’em. Or, if you please, may Nothing bless ’em.