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  • So ‘God’ is a ‘collective’?

    GOD: There is only One Soul, One Being, One Essence. Some of you call this “God.” This Single Essence “individuates” Itself as Everything In The Universe—in other words, All That Is. This includes all the sentient beings, or what you have chosen to call souls.

    Neale: So “God” is every soul that “is”?

    GOD: Every soul that is now, ever was, and ever will be.

    Neale: So God is a “collective?”

    GOD: That’s the word I chose, because it comes closest in your language to describing how things are.

    Neale: Not a single awesome being, but a collective?

    GOD:  It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Think “outside the box”!

    Neale: God is both? A single Awesome Being which is a collective of individualized parts?

    GOD: Good! Very good!

    Neale:  And why did the collective come to Earth?

    GOD: To express itself in physicality. To know itself in its own experience. To be God. As I’ve already explained in detail in Book 1.

    Neale:  You created us to be You?

    GOD: We did, indeed. That is exactly why you were created.

    Neale:  And humans were created by a collective?

    GOD: Your own Bible said, “Let Us create man in Our image, and after Our likeness” before the translation was changed.

    Life is the process through which God creates Itself, and then experiences the creation. This process of creation is ongoing and eternal. It is happening all the “time.” Relativity and physicality are the tools with which God works. Pure energy (what you call spirit) is What God Is. This Essence is truly the Holy Spirit.

    By a process through which energy becomes matter, spirit is embodied in physicality. This is done by the energy literally slowing itself down—changing its oscillation, or what you would call vibration.

    That Which Is All does this in parts. That is, parts of the whole do this. These individuations of spirit are what you have chosen to call souls.

    In truth, there is only One Soul, reshaping and reforming Itself. This might be called The Reformation. You are all Gods In Formation. (God’s information! )

    That is your contribution, and it is sufficient unto itself.

    To put this simply, by taking physical form you have already done enough. I want, I need, nothing more. You have contributed to the common good. You have made it possible for that which is common—the One Common Element—to experience that which is good. Even you have written that God created the heavens and the Earth, and the animals who walk upon the land, and the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and it was very good.

    “Good” does not—cannot—exist experientially without its opposite. Therefore have you also created evil, which is the backward motion, or opposite direction, of good. It is the opposite of life—and so have you created what you call death.

    Yet death does not exist in ultimate reality, but is merely a concoction, an invention, an imagined experience, through which life becomes more valued by you. Thus, “evil” is “live” spelled backward! So clever you are with language. You fold into it secret wisdoms that you do not even know are there.

    Now when you understand this entire cosmology, you comprehend the great truth. You could then never demand of another being that it give you something in return for your sharing the resources and necessities of physical life.

    Neale: As beautiful as that is, there are still some people who would call it communism.

    GOD: If they wish to do so, then so be it. Yet I tell you this: Until your community of beings knows about being in community, you will never experience Holy Communion, and cannot know Who I Am.

    The highly evolved cultures of the universe understand deeply all that I have explained here. In those cultures it would not be possible to fail to share. Nor would it be possible to think of “charging” increasingly exorbitant “prices” the more rare a necessity became. Only extremely primitive societies would do this. Only very primitive beings would see scarcity of that which is commonly needed as an opportunity for greater profits. “Supply and demand” does not drive the system of Highly Evolved Beings.

    This is part of a system that humans claim contributes to their quality of life and to the common good. Yet, from the vantage point of a Highly Evolved Being, your system violates the common good, for it does not allow that which is good to be experienced in common.

    Another distinguishing and fascinating feature of Highly Evolved Cultures is that within them there is no word or sound for, nor any way to communicate the meaning of, the concept of “yours” and “mine.” Personal possessives do not exist in their language, and, if one were to speak in earthly tongues, one could only use articles to describe things. Employing that convention, “my car” becomes “the car I am now with.” “My partner” or “my children” becomes “the partner” or “the children I am now with.”

    The term “now with,” or “in the presence of,” is as close as your languages can come to describing what you would call “ownership,” or “possession.”

    That which you are “in the presence of” becomes the Gift. These are the true “presents” of life.

    Thus, in the language of highly evolved cultures, one could not even speak in terms of “my life,” but could only communicate “the life I am in the presence of.”

    This is something akin to your speaking of being “in the presence of God.”

    When you are in the presence of God (which you are, any time you are in the presence of each other), you would never think of keeping from God that which is God’s—meaning, any part of That Which Is. You would naturally share, and share equally, that which is God’s with any part of that which is God.

    This is the spiritual understanding which undergirds the entire social, political, economic, and religious structures of all highly evolved cultures. This is the cosmology of all of life, and it is merely failure to observe this cosmology, to understand it and to live within it, which creates all of the discord of your experience on Earth.

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    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the end of the blue, ancillary copy that appears just below, which has been placed here for First Time Readers…

    If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life.

    One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from Conversations with God-Book 3.

    Now, may we tell you about a very easy way that you can share these wonderful messages with others? Please keep reading…

    =====================

    About Book-On-A-Bench…

    If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.

    Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.

    If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a very short period of time.  So you are invited to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

    ABOUT the author of Conversations with God…

    Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before experiencing his now famous conversation with God. His Conversations with God series of books has been translated into 37 languages, touching millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

    Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.

    A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.

    By his late teens Neale’s involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin dipping into a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people became involved in organized religion they sometimes seemed less joyful and more angry, occasionally exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that humanity’s collective experience of theology was not as positive as it was meant to be. It seemed to him that there was something missing in standard theological teachings; that they might contain very good lessons, he concluded, but that they might not be complete.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.

    Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director, a newspaper managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

    He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

    Over a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him two weeks shy of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found a modest part-time job, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time broadcasting, eventual landing a spot as a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

    He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside that he could not define, and the daily difficulties that everyone faces continued.

    In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take to make life work?” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad. “And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?”

    What followed has been well chronicled and widely discussed around the world. Neale says his questioning letter received a Divine answer. He tells us that he heard a voice just over his right shoulder—soft and warm, kind and loving, as he describes it—that offered a reply. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled the response onto a yellow legal pad he’d found on a coffee table before him.

    More questions came, and as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed to have moved inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue.

    He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad. Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue that was created in this way was published without alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.

    In addition to producing the With God series of books, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than 7.5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CWG is one of the most widely distributed hand-to-hand books ever published, with estimates that, on average, at least two people have read every copy purchased — meaning that something more than 15 million people worldwide have read the CWG messages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale has created several global outreach projects dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love revolving around their core messages.

    The projects include: (1) the Conversations with God Foundation, an adult education outreach; (2) Humanity’s Team, a global spiritual activist outreach; (3) CWG for Parents, an outreach providing resources to those who wish to bring their children the messages of CWG; (4) the Changing Change Network, a CWG helping outreach to persons facing major life challenges; (5) The Global Conversation, an internet newspaper outreach relating the spiritual messages of CWG to the news of the day; and (6) CWG Connect, a multi-media communications outreach creating a worldwide CWG community featuring Video and Audio On-Demand services, together with ongoing personal interaction with the author of CWG. Access to all of these programs will be found at the gateway internet site: www.CWGPortal.com

    Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.

    Neale’s latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, was published in October, 2012. He lives in Ashland, Oregon and is married to the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).

  • If there was one thing that could change the self-destructive direction in which our world is moving, what do you think it would be?

  • OUR WORLD MUST COME TO
    AN END THIS MONTH

    We have gone as far as we can go. We can’t go any further. I know that nobody wants to hear this (it’s been said over and over again now for 25 years), but the way we are living — what we are doing spiritually, politically, economically, environmentally, educationally, and socially — is totally and utterly unsustainable.

    In every one of those areas, it is unsustainable. The world as we are running it must end. Now. That is what the whole “2012 Phenomenon” is all about. It is not about the end of the world, it is about the end of the world as we know it. It is about re-birthing ourselves. The question is not whether something needs to be done about the way humanity has been living, the question is: What?

    The answer is not a mystery. We must change. But what must we change, specifically? And how do we change it? Those become the operational questions. Those become the functional inquiries. Those become the central issues of our time.

    We have the answer here.

    We must change our Cultural Story. We must rewrite it, from the very first chapter. We must launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a virulent, violent, and vindictive God.

    Why? Why bring our beliefs about God into this? Because the beliefs held about God by billions of people — including the belief that there is no God — is what creates the belief of billions of people about themselves, about each other, and about the purpose and function of Life Itself. And that is what creates the world around us. The unsustainable world around us.

    We can no longer survive as a species by holding the beliefs that we hold. This is not an answer that I just made up. This is the answer that has been given to us by God.

    In the book The New Revelations (2002) the following dialogue with God appears. Have you ever read it? More important, what are you willing to do about it?

    Tell you what. Decide, after you read this interaction with God. I dare you to do it. Read it all the way to the end. Right now. Dare you.

    I understand that our world now lives in a 120-word sound-bite mentality, but I put this opening dialogue before you nonetheless. Is it worth ten minutes of your time to find out what’s really going on here? What appears below are the first few words in a dialogue with God that occurred at this time of year ten years ago…

     

    God, please be here. We need help.

    I am here.

    We need help.

    I know.

    Right now.

    I understand.

    The world is on the brink of disaster. And I’m not talking about natural disaster; I’m talking about man-made calamity.

    I know. And you’re right.

    I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars—which are bad enough—but to the end of civilization as we know it.

    That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.

    You understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.

    Which is?

    The level of belief.

    The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.

    Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.

    You keep trying to solve the world’s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem.  And that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.

    Then help us.

    I am.

    How?

    In many ways.

    Name one.

    This book.

    This book will help us?

    It can.

    What do we have to do?

    Read it.

    And then what?

    Heed it.

    That’s what they all say. “It’s all in The Book,” they say. “Read it and heed it. That’s all you have to do.” The problem is, they all hold up a different book.

    I know.

    And every book says something else.

    I know.

    So now we should “read and heed” this book?

    It’s not a question of what you should do.
    It’s a question of what you may do if you choose to.
    It is an invitation, not a requirement.

    Why would I want to read this book when I’ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books—the books that they are telling me to heed?

    Because you have not heeded them.

    Yes, we have. We believe that we have.

    That’s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.

    You keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.

    You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.

    But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!

    No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.

    What does that mean?

    It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.

    There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.

    This is what you are now doing.

    It is what you have been doing for quite some time.

    You cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.

    You argue among yourselves about what the Qur’an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean.  You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says…

    And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?

    Okay, we get the point.

    No, actually, you don’t. And that’s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.

    It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.

    Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your way.

    This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more—and caused other people to suffer more—over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.

    You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.

    That’s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?

    Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.

    They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.

    What?

    Being right.

    You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be “right.”

    Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

     

    (End of this excerpt. Next in this space: take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.)

     

     

  • WHO and WHAT is ‘God’?

    Who and what is God?

    The day has long past when we imagined that God is a huge man in the sky, sitting on a throne in robes with a long white beard. Today we know better that that, right?

    Right?

    So then, who and what IS ‘God’? Is there even such a thing? And if so, what is it? And what is its purpose for existence? And what does it want from us? What does it need humanity to be, do, or have?

    All of these questions are answered in Conversations with God. Yet the answers are, for many (indeed, for most of the people on Earth who profess a belief in God) heretical.

    The CWG message is considered blasphemy. Yet is it? George Bernard Shaw famously said, “All great truths begin as blasphemy.” Could this be the case with Conversations with God?

    Setting aside these books for a moment, what are your answers to the questions above? Is there a ‘God’? If so, who and what is God? Why does God exist? What is God’s purpose? And, most important of all, what does God want? And why?

    Let the discussion begin…

  • I am in need of such help right now.

    I am reading WECCE, and I am in need of such help right now. I am full of anxiety, fear, and loneliness for the first time in my life. During the past 2 months, my best friend moved away, my boyfriend, who I loved dearly, broke things off.  Then last week my dog was killed.  I know in my heart and soul that I am supposed to be going through these changes, but I’m having such a hard time letting things go. I built my life for two 1/2 years around my boyfriend.  I have lived alone in several cities with job transfers, etc. And I LOVE where I am living now, and I thought I had met someone with so many interests. I had some of the best times in my life with this person, but he could not give me the spiritual support and move on to build a future with me.  I completely lost and disliked myself.  I KNOW of all this, so why is my heart just clinging to everything?  Why can’t I feel ANY joy in anything I do or see?  I try and try to see the beauty in my home, in nature, in ALL things that brought me such great joy. I just want to let everything go..let go of the pain, let go of the wondering of how I manifested this all. I never imagined I would feel such loneliness – ever.  

    I know my pain will heal and I will feel (and eat) normally again. I will continue to pray and meditate to love myself more. Here it comes…BUT…loving yourself when you are BY yourself is pretty easy (I think), as I have lived alone quite a bit in my life.  The big test comes when you are joined with someone else. I have been emotionally unavailable and feared intimacy ALL my life – hence why I have attracted men that are the same. I want to do everything in my power to change that. How do I know when I’m really ready?  And to really know that my subconscious is going to attract someone that will be good for me?  Do I trust my feeling?  How do I lose the fear? I would appreciate any help….

    C.D.

    Dear C.D.,

    WECCE is about how to embrace Change (another word for God/Evolution), and how to choose how we live in that change.  Part of that process involves looking at our current Truth.  What version of that truth are we living?  Most of us are living in distorted truth.  We can, however, move pretty easily to apparent Truth by simply reframing it with no judgment.  For instance, “My boyfriend broke things off” could merely be “My boyfriend is not with me anymore. ”  “I completely lost and disliked myself” could be “I was not being who I really am in the relationship.”  Even “I can’t feel any joy” could be transformed with “I am experiencing a lack of joy right now,” which would easily allow you to experience the lack of joy with Gratitude, because you know it is only what you are feeling right now, not something that has to go on forever…unless you choose to let it go on forever.

    For every negative thought, there is the opposite positive one.  Look for these opposites, C.D., as you re-train yourself.  It takes practice!  If you are even reaching out, it means that you are beginning to do just that…practice being good to yourself!  Negativity is definitely not good for you or anyone else.

    Take a good look, and you will see your post is all about the past!  This has nothing to do, ultimately, with now…unless you allow it to be.  In reading WECCE, you will have read that this is all past data.  This past data came from many sources, all of which thought that they were protecting you in some way…and all of which were subconscious, and controlled by the ego.  The ego is the part of you that defines you as human, as an individual human, but, nonetheless, is also the part of us that operates out of fear.  This fear is designed to keep us in the familiar and actually stop us from moving into what is truly our better selves.  Fear holds us in place in the now, not in the manner of being present, but from the place of looking back and avoiding looking and moving forward.

    Life, as they say, begins at the edge of your comfort zone…and your comfort zone is fear.  Why do you wish to live your life in fear?  It is serving you in some way?   Since all we do serves us.  Do you get to define yourself as the person who is emotionally unavailable?  or the person who is fearful of intimacy?  In some way, this has served you, but do you wish it to continue to serve you?  Yes, we can choose to love what the past has shown us (in this case you know intimately what fear and unavailable feel like and how you are when you embrace them) and actually choose to be the opposite of that!  This is a world of context, of opposites, and if you know one thing, you are now very well able to know the other…if you choose to remember.

    I would take the “gut” test when you have a thought.  Your tummy will tell you if you are coming from fear or love.  Ask yourself why you even feel you have to have someone in your life right now.  How does the answer feel?  Look in the mirror and look into your eyes and very quietly tell yourself you love you…and keep doing it.

    The first time I read in CWG the part about saying out loud, “I love sex or money or…” and then it asked me to say loudly, “I love me!” I found it amazing that I was unable to say that without hesitation.   Wow!   And I am a pretty self-confident person, so I knew if it was difficult for me, it must be almost impossible for others.  I was okay with all of it, but not the unabashed loving of myself!

    C.D., not only can you tell yourself you love yourself, I would like to tell you something else…you are love!  Just by being here, you have demonstrated that you are love!  By writing this note, you have shown you can overcome fear, which is a supreme act of self love.  How wonderful is that?

    Be gentle with yourself and be proactive…choose!   You are choosing Change right now, actively, because passivity has not served you well.  Way to go!

    Therese

    (Therese Wilson is a published poet, and is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net, which offers spiritual assistance from a team of Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less, and offers insight, suggestions, and companionship during moments of unbidden, unexpected, unwelcome change on the journey of life. She may be contacted at Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

    (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

     

  • I see you…even when you are not ‘here’

    As we transition into the first week of December, the radio stations are also transitioning into their holiday musical line-up and beginning to play Christmas tunes, some stations devoting their entire program exclusively to “sounds of the season” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the way up to Christmas Day.  So during my early-morning commute today, I was not surprised to hear Elvis Presley crooning “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You” and Jon Bon Jovi belting out “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Mariah Carey sorrowfully singing “I Miss You Most at Christmastime.”

    I’ve heard these particular songs hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.  But today these three melancholy tunes caught my attention in a new way, one which invited me to think about how many people, myself included, are physically separated from their loved ones not only at Christmas, but for prolonged periods of time, whether that separation is as a result of children growing up and moving on to the next chapter in their lives, or due to a special friendship parting ways, or perhaps a loved one who has left this earthly realm to continue on in their eternal spiritual journey.

    These physical separations have the potential to stir up a wealth of emotions and confusion, especially when the way we desire our relationships to be experienced is entirely different than the way in which they are actually physically showing up – or not showing up – in our lives.

    But are we as separated from our loved ones as we imagine ourselves to be?

    Is there a way to actually experience the presence of those who no longer share a physical proximity with us?  Not only at Christmas, but all the time?

    If we limit our definition of “relationship” to include only that which we experience in physicality, our answer to that question may cause us to miss a most extraordinary spiritual opportunity.

    Have you ever experienced the essence of someone you love without them being physically in the room with you?  Have you actually felt the wonder and intimacy of a Beloved Other even in the absence of their physical being beside you?  Has a particular aroma or unique sound or distinct taste triggered an opportunity to actually relive, in a palpable way, a moment with somebody who is no longer physically here?

    We are provided infinite opportunities to experience our loved ones through the path of our consciousness.  For me personally, the smell of roses delivers to me an experience of being a very young child, cuddling on my mother’s lap after she bathed and luxuriated herself in Rose Milk Body Lotion, instantaneously drawing into my consciousness my mother and an opportunity to be with her in a way that transcends physicality.  The gentle sound of an acoustic guitar gifts me with an opportunity to linger within the essence of my 18-year-old son and his music, who now resides on the other side of the country.   A large percentage of the people in my life with whom I share an intimate or especially meaningful relationship live nowhere near me, yet their presence is significant and certain.

    And this is because what we choose to focus on and what we choose to see will determine What we experience and Who we experience and How we experience.  Life calls upon us to do and be many different things.  And as a result, we may find ourselves physically separated from what we have come to know as our most important and cherished relationships.  Yet day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime people manage to move through these transitions and changes, most often to experience an even deeper level of love and a more profound level of awareness.  And this is because we truly are never separate from each other.

    Our relationships never end, as we imagine or perceive they do.  The existence or magnitude of a relationship cannot be measured in terms of physical distance or closeness.  Relationships simply change the form in which you experience them, and a physical “separation” may be just the thing that allows us to know and experience not only who we are in relation to each other but who we are in relation to our Self.

    Perhaps this holiday season will provide you an opportunity to create a new experience, one which celebrates the presence of a loved one in an extraordinary yet familiar way.  Maybe the warm embrace of a loved one will be experienced through the surrogacy of a child’s tender hug or seen in a stranger’s smiling eyes or warmly felt through the gentle touch of an unknown passerby.

    Maybe, just maybe, you truly are as close as your next thought.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

     

  • Embracing the awakening process

    As someone who has been on a spiritual path, I see a great need in this world for the process of awakening to be recognized. Humanity will not be mature until we not only cease legal discrimination and protect ecosystems; but also until we recognize each person’s birthright to live his/her life to the absolute fullest, to be true to his/her path to maturity however conventional or unconventional it seems, to have an unmediated relationship with God, and to express his/her timeless inner wisdom whenever it comes through. Each of us belongs here. Each of us is here not because society or anyone approves of who we are or how we live, but because Spirit wants to experience this lifetime. Each of us, whether aware of it or not, is contributing to life becoming fully conscious of itself through the play of manifestation. Each of us has a role that no one else can take on in this great play of life.

    In this article, I focus specifically on the situations of those of us who have had experiences of awakening, or glimpses of the depths of reality. These can come not only through prayer, formal meditation, or situations involving death and dying, but in virtually any circumstance. When we awaken, we experience ourselves as the timeless One Life or Spirit. Our reference point of “I” shifts from being an little individual temporary person to being God expressing Godself through a form, though we might have completely different ways of communicating this or have no clue how to talk about it. We come to know our nature as vast, whole, peaceful, wise, intelligent, open-hearted, unconditionally loving, eternal, infinite, pure, formless, spacious, fully alive, completely present, and/or one and the same as the Source and destiny of everything that ever was and ever will be. We see that life is truly beyond anything that even the most brilliant and most creative language or manifestation can capture.

    This shift does not care who we are or where we come from as people. It can happen whether we are young or old; cool or uncool; rich or poor; liberal or conservative; indigenous, traditional, or modern; urban or rural; male or female or gender-non-conforming; straight or gay; monogamous or not; sexually active or not; religious or atheist; saints or sinners; or highly regarded or infamous. It does not regard successes or failures. It does not regard race, current values and beliefs, past personal history, cultural background, geographical location, language, roles, personality, relationships, physical appearance, health, stability of livelihood, abilities and talents, educational attainment, level of familiarity with spiritual materials, or the presence or absence of a spiritual teacher in human form. Indeed, awakening can be said to be the most democratic of all things in the universe.

    In my case, I as a person am a 23-year-old woman from Indiana who dropped out of college after a major awakening at age 20, during my third year as a biology student. The event that triggered it was the death of a friend; at her funeral, I experienced a total acceptance of the temporary nature of all manifested forms and bodies. I was at peace with my own mortality and knew that life is meant to be lived to the absolute fullest. It is not meant to be taken for granted. After two days of experiencing this deep peace, I returned to school and felt as if I had been dropped there from another world. Nothing felt rigid or absolute anymore. Over the next two months, I experienced acute sensitivity to the energies of spaces and people and much disorientation. There was a period of intense self-examination during which I pulled apart every thought, perception, action, and reaction I could and saw it for what it was and where it came from.

    What followed was a profound conscious glimpse of the Source that made it even clearer that there is no “I” apart from life and that life is everything and everyone. Indeed, life is literally infinite. In this hole created in the realm of time and experience, I saw that all possibilities and everything we commonly perceive as separate are One. I knew that life (God) creates the realm of differentiation, time, and experience in order to know and express itself through it. I knew that every struggle, tragedy, mistake, and shortcoming without exception is destined to be transformed into a greater strength as life evolves through form. We humans are a species through which life can fully come to know and see itself. What I have just described is absolutely beyond words.

    After this, I entered a long period of adjustment. I left school. I traveled and explored many forms of spirituality and other resources. The disorientation and sensitivity continued and frequently prevented me from functioning. I often felt like I became everyone and everything I encountered and lost myself in a pattern that wanted to identify with and grasp something—anything—lest it be annihilated. There have been many hardships and challenges as well as insights that deepened the initial realizations.

    We are living in a time when more and more of us are having spiritual awakenings. There is a greater need than ever for widespread awareness of this phenomenon and the adjustment process that usually follows. It is easy for these to be misunderstood and for the experiencers to be subject to much unneeded struggle, rejection, mistreatment, and pain. The following points highlight some common changes experienced in daily life and areas where mindfulness is especially needed:

    The experiencer becomes less preoccupied with past and future and lives for the present moment. External circumstances become preferences, not absolute needs.

    The ego of the experiencer dissolves as it is seen to be based in falsehood, sometimes not without major struggles for its survival or control in the process. Understanding naturally replaces fear in all areas where fear exists.

    Nothing internal or external is seen as a problem to be feared, despised, and fought. Rather, everything is as it is and has its nature. Nothing manifest is absolute. Effects arise out of causes, and all identifications, thoughts, emotions, and experiences have a fleeting nature.

    Identification with the body also diminishes, and the body comes to be seen as a vehicle instead of a self. Fear of death is lost as death is seen for what it is.

    Many mistakes are made. The experience of awakening and adjustment process are often not immediately understood for what they are. Old patterns can disguise themselves in new forms.

    Experiencers often become highly sensitive to energies and dynamics. Positive energy is felt as alive and nourishing, while negative energy is felt as toxic and degrading. The “how” of things becomes more important than the “what.” The thinking mind ceases to dominate, and the heart opens.

    The experiencers come to value honesty, ethics, humility, gratitude, openness, awareness, responsibility, diversity, equality, harmony, health, balance, cooperation, compassion, unconditional love, wisdom, genuineness, integrity, joy, peace, creativity, and respect for all life.

    Experiencers frequently manifest much more curiosity, creativity, and/or divergent, non-linear thinking than before. The nature of art, poetry, music, and scripture is understood. The nature of true intelligence is seen and valued. Profound creative insights and other forms of ingenuity can come in.

    Experiencers commonly express heightened intuition and/or various abilities we tend to call psychic. Synchronistic coincidences become common, and intentions and wishes are made manifest more quickly. If fully seen for what they are, these are regarded as completely natural to life and not personal.

    Those who have had awakenings often need to release energy, experience phases of disorientation or lowered ability to function, spend long periods of time alone doing “nothing”, meditate and read a lot, communicate from their place of perception, and/or not focus much on those things regarded as important in a “normal” human life.

    While it is essential for experiencers to learn to recognize all dysfunction so that they cease to identify with it altogether and are not affected by it, there are some phases in which they can be very vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed by others’ projected negativity. It is not always easy for the experiencers to remove themselves from negative people and spaces.

    Many people are so completely identified with their conditioning and sense of self that they miss the light wherever it appears. They are skeptical of the possibility living in peace, seeing human nature as pure and free, or seeing all problems as temporary by their very nature. They scoff and project negativity at anything they do not feel they understand with their minds, and they regard anything they fear as if it should not exist. If anything is Satan, it is this—a limited and temporary form pretending to be God, everything, absolute, or at the very least superior. It is unconscious, present to some degree in almost all of us, and not who anyone really is.

    It is easy, in some stages, for those who have had spiritual awakenings to think other people are more aware than they actually are. People are sometimes trusted when they cannot be.

    Relationships with partners, family, friends, roommates, classmates, coworkers, supervisors, and others in everyday life can be challenging. Those based on personal neediness and dysfunctional patterns can fall apart quickly if mutual honesty, respect, and genuineness are not brought in.

    Experiencers tend to become more and more oriented toward unconditional love. This love is not personal; it transcends the personal and is far stronger and deeper than anything personal. It is the love of God.

    In a society that emphasizes material success, values competition, judges people, neglects and stigmatizes the vulnerable, fears that which it does not understand, and is not very open to examining itself, it is not difficult to imagine the struggles faced by people who have had spiritual awakenings. There is still much that needs to be addressed before we truly express justice. It is still very easy for those who experience loss or change (as well as others who do not identify with common ways of thinking or conform to a status quo) to fall into poverty, debt, discrimination, victimization, illness, alienation, and rejection from opportunities to make a living. Humanity will not be mature until the least of us, the most extreme outsiders, and the most alienated are respected as full human beings with equal dignity to those who have the highest status. Justice, freedom, peace, and democracy will not come into this world until all embrace mindfulness and take responsibility for what they create and project. It serves animals to be controlled by self-centered survival instincts, but it does not serve humans.

    All of us, regardless of who or where we are, have the right to face our own challenges, know for ourselves how life works, mature on the human level, and grow spiritually however we feel genuinely moved to do these. Making mistakes and facing appropriate consequences for our actions must not be stigmatized if our lives are to be lived to their fullest potential. We must embrace struggle and at the same time stop creating needless hardship and suffering. Evolution accelerates greatly when it is conscious.

    We will be truly wise when we do not regard any individual, collective, or other form as infallible or absolute, and when we are able to approach everyone from Adolf Hitler to Jesus Christ with understanding, empathy, honesty, and compassion. Everyone and everything—no exception—is us, including and especially God. Both hatred and blind following are aspects of unconsciousness. They divide us internally and externally and prevent us from living our lives to the fullest. They are not of love, but of the ego. It is a sign of dysfunction when openness, unconditional love, and transcendence are not allowed. When these are present, the infinite unconditional love of Christ, God, and Buddha is brought out much more fully.

    Although awakening is not personal, each individual experiences it in a unique way. There is no right or wrong way to awaken or right or wrong experiences to have after awakening. Not everyone is ready to awaken in this lifetime. No experience is superior or inferior to its alternatives—each of us is given exactly what we need in our situation. No emerging pattern or experience after awakening, however unconscious or sinful, negates what has been seen or changes the fact that the God/life/Spirit is everyone and everything, contains everyone and everything, and is the Source and destiny of everyone and everything.

    (Phoebe Lackawanna is a gifted artist whose work is divinely inspired.  Her art gallery can be viewed at Phoebe’s Art Gallery.  Phoebe currently resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. To contact her, please e-mail  Peaceloveandart89@gmail.com.)

  • How can I help the homeless find shelter?

    My wife called me crying because of a couple she found in a laundromat. I found out later they were homeless but chose to live their lives in the streets. My wife wanted to help them so we bought them food and gave them blankets and pillows. (I had tried to get them a room in nearby motels, but they were well-known and had created such a mess and “smell” before that the motels had to throw everything away.) Other people had paid cash for a room and then put the homeless couple in there without the manager being aware. In other words, there was “no room in the inn.”

    Because of my background in law enforcement I found some police officers and spoke to them about a homeless shelter. There are none in the city and there are up to 25 “couples” they are aware of living in wooded areas within the city limits. 

    I now feel I would like to help with love, money, and time, to help these people but do not have a clue where to start. Any suggestions?… Mickey

    Dear Mickey… How about soliciting help from the churches in your area? Perhaps you can put together a meeting with area church leaders asking them to help you implement a program called “Room In the Inn.”

    The homeless people can sleep in the church’s fellowship halls, taking turns on different nights so that it wouldn’t be overwhelming to any one church. If you can get 7 churches to commit, each church would have one night per week. If you can get 14 churches to help, that’s just one night every two weeks.

    The members can volunteer their time helping with meals and clean-up and have a couple of men from the church designated to stay overnight. The ladies can bring in potluck dinners and breakfasts.

    How’s that sound? Think how great you’ll feel if you get this going! And your sweet wife won’t have to cry anymore.

    (Annie Sims is the Global Director of CWG Advanced Programs, is a Conversations With God Coach and author/instructor of the CWG Online School. To connect with Annie, please email her at Annie@TheGlobalConversation.com.

    (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to:  Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

  • N.Y. COP GIVES HOMELESS
    MAN THE BOOT IN TIMES SQUARE

    A New York policeman has given the boot — two boots, actually — to a homeless man who was doing nothing but sitting peacefully on the sidewalk on a recent frigid night.

    Police officer Larry DePrimo, of New York’s City’s Sixth Precinct, has drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users as a result of his actions. He was away from his usual precinct, assigned to patrol Times Square a few nights ago.

    Officer DePrimo saw the homeless man sitting on the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue near Forty-Fourth Street, with bare feet. No shoes, no socks. So he gave him the boot. First, he bent down beside the man and said, “Hey, what’s up? Where are your shoes and socks?” The man replied simply, “I never had a pair of shoes.”

    “All I remember.” the cop told the press later, “is that it as extremely cold outside, and all I wanted to do was help this gentleman.”

    The policeman went to a nearby shoe store and said, “Look, this gentleman has no shoes and no socks. I need to get something for him. Something that will last. I don’t care what it cost.” He then spent $100 of his own money to buy a pair of thermal socks and insulated winter boots. The store clerk used his employee discount to cut the price in half.

    The officer then knelt down next to the homeless man and put the socks and boots on him. A passerby from Arizona snapped a picture of the kind act and posted it on Facebook. It went viral within minutes. Soon, the officer was the subject of massive media coverage. He was brought before a press conference. He was on the morning talk shows. He was honored by the NYPD, personally presented special cufflinks by the city’s police commissioner.

    “I feel very humbled,” he said, to be on the same force and in the same company “with all the officers who are real heroes,” who’ve put their life on the line in extreme situations. What he did, he told the press, with “nothing. I was just doing my job. But I just want to say that all cops really aren’t bad….and this is just something we do every day.”

    All of us know this is true. For every rare instance where police have behaved poorly, there are thousands of moments such as this. We all know that. It is good to be made aware of it again with such heart-warming evidence.

    To see the snapshot of Officer Larry DePrimo kneeling down to help the homeless man (who thanked the policeman profusely and then quietly walked away), click here.

  • It’s no joke – laughter is the best medicine

    Perhaps the greatest gift bestowed upon me was and is my sense of humor. I love to laugh and I absolutely love to make others laugh too. Yet these days I haven’t had much to laugh about. Life has presented me with some very painful and unwanted changes this year, and while it hasn’t always been easy, the ability to make light of my situation lives at the top of my go-to-list of favorite ways to make it through these tough times. When you get to the place where you can laugh, you know you are going to survive.

    Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. – Mark Twain

    Laughter, it’s said, is the best medicine. And there is plenty of evidence to back that statement up, though I’m sure few would argue the point. Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and even conflict. Nothing works faster or more dependably to provide balance than a good laugh. Humor lightens the load, releases burdens, inspires hopes, reconnects you to others, and keeps you grounded and balanced.

    Humor is infectious. The sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, cold, sniffle, or sneeze. When people are in a group and they hear someone laughing, they often join in spontaneously. Laughing with other people helps us deepen our connection with them. I dare you not to smile while watching someone having a really good laugh. You may be thinking right now of that last time you had one of those gut-busters yourself. You know the kind where your face hurts and you’re begging them to stop, no more, please, squeezing your cheeks, tears of joy flooding your eyes. Those are the best.

    I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry. – Cat Stevens

    Laughter can help restore us to a positive mental and emotional place, even while in the midst of deep grief. Laughter also triggers healthy physical conditions in the body, so it is essential to every health-and-wellness program. Humor and laughter strengthen your immune system, boost your energy, diminish pain, and helps to protect you from the damaging effects of stress. Stress hormones are decreased as laughter reduces stress in ways like nothing else can.

    Laughter can reduce chronic pain too. Medical studies have shown that just a few minutes of laughter can diminish chronic pain for up to a couple of hours. It allows us to tolerate discomfort more readily. Other studies have shown that laughter can increase energy while reducing stress and boost your immune system. Infection-fighting antibodies are released when you laugh. It also reduces blood sugar levels, increasing glucose tolerance in diabetics. Is there any condition not benefited by laughter? I think not. Best of all, this medicine is free and easy to use. All you have to do is tickle that funny bone.

    A day without laughter is a day wasted – Charlie Chaplin

    If you have ever been to a Conversations with God retreat, you know we open our first night by getting to know who is in the room. We ask our participants to not only share who they are and what brought them to us, but also we invite them to tell a joke. It is a great way of easing us into the space, reducing the natural tension we all feel in those kinds of situations. It also helps set the stage for the deep emotional and spiritual work we come to do. The work is about enlightenment, which means, to lighten up.

    Often the work we do can cause the room to become ‘heavy,’ especially when the sharing takes us to some of those very painful places. The challenges that are brought to the room by our participants are no joke, yet we notice every time that in the right moment laughter can provide an access to healing like nothing else can. It does so by creating the condition for us to see the other side of our life situations…the “lighter side.”  Without a doubt, that, as much as anything, can create the space to heal even the most painful of situations we face as humans. I know this all to well right now.   And as I said at the top of the article, humor has been one of my greatest tools and assets on my journey.

    There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. – Erma Bombeck

    So this week let’s all help each other enjoy the benefits that laughter has to offer. Share your experience of how laughter has helped you through the tough times. Or maybe just share a joke or two (keep ’em clean). I am certain that I am not the only one that could use a good laugh right now. I will kick us off with the following silliness. 🙂

    Four Catholic men and a Catholic woman were having coffee in St. Peters Square.

    The first Catholic man tells his friends, “My son is a priest.  When he walks into a room, everyone calls him ‘Father’.”

    The second Catholic man chirps, “My son is a Bishop. When he walks into a room, people call him ‘Your Grace’.”

    The third Catholic gent says, “My son is a Cardinal. When he enters a room, everyone bows their head and says ‘Your Eminence’.”

    The fourth Catholic man says very proudly, “My son is the Pope. When he walks into a room, people call him ‘Your Holiness’.”

    Since the lone Catholic woman was sipping her coffee in silence, the four men give her a subtle, “Well ………?”

    She proudly replies, “I have a daughter, slim, tall, 38″ DD bust, 24″ waist and 34” hips. When she walks into a room, everybody says, “Oh, My God.”

    (J.R. Westen, D.D. is a Holistic Health & Spiritual Counselor who has worked and presented side-by-side with Neale Donald Walsch for over a decade. He is passionate about helping individuals move beyond their emotional and spiritual challenges, transforming breakdowns into breakthroughs. His coaching provides practical wisdom and guidance that can be immediately incorporated to shift one’s experience of life. As is true for most impactful teachers, J.R.’s own struggles and triumphs inspired him to find powerful ways of helping others. Sober since June 1, 1986, J.R.’s passion for helping individuals move through intense life challenges drove him to also specialize in Addiction and Grief Recovery. J.R. currently shares his gift of counseling & coaching with individuals from around the world through the Wellness Center, Simply Vibrant, located on Long Island N.Y.  In addition, he works with Escondido Sobering Services and serves on the Board of Directors for the Conversations with God Foundation. He can be contacted at JR@theglobalconversation.com, or to book an appointment, write support@simplyvibrant.com.)