I've run across a book that could change your life from the time you open to the first chapter to the moment you close the last. I want to tell you about it, because I believe that you will be very, very glad that I did.

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Friday is Book & Movie Day on the blog, when we take a look at texts and films – old and new -- that I highly recommend you not miss. This week’s recommendation: The Untethered Soul, by Michael A. Singer
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Long have we heard that our thoughts have an enormous impact on our day-to-day lives. And this is not just a "new age" idea. As traditional a Christian minister as you could get wrote that extraordinary book The Power of Positive Thinking (Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale). Now comes a text that discusses the role that our thoughts play in our moment-to-moment experience in a way that is so clear, so understandable, that no one who reads it can ever again say they don't understand what people are talking about when they say: Your thoughts create your reality.

Its author, Michael A. Singer, was working toward his doctorate in economics in the 1970s when he had what he describes as a "deep inner awakening." From that experience has emerged two books previous to this: The Search for Truth and Three Essays on Universal Law: Karma, Will and Love. The books seek to integrate Eastern and Western philosophy.

The book here recommended, The Untethered Soul, is a journey of exploration of "self." It offers a fascinating, riveting discussion of the way the mind works, of the nature of thought and the role it plays in our lives, and of the nature of the THINKER of our thoughts...

"When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating," Singer writes. "That is why meditation in the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simplest awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. Its really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was.

"It's like you've been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you're back to the awareness that you're sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing has changed. You've simply stopped projecting your sense of self on that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are."

I found myself absorbed in this text from first word to last. Others have as well. Yogi Amrit Desai calls it "a priceless gift to all who have futilely searched and yearned for a richer, more meaningful, creative life." He describes it as a "seminal book that is, quite frankly, in a class by itself."

Yes, it is that in my opinion as well. Every thoughtful spiritual seeker will enjoy it. All, I believe, will benefit from it immensely. Singer here shows us how to work with our thoughts, how to step outside of our "story" that they create, and how to detach sufficiently from our drama to lead a peaceful, joyous life.

-- NDW

Many human beings have come to think about life is a way that has nothing to do with what us actually true. Unless the work together to change our cultural story, we will find ourselves heading down the path to our own demise.

I do not mean that humanity itself is going to be destroyed (although there always is that possibility), but I do mean that humanity's way of life could be irrevocably altered -- and not for the better.

What is wrong with our present cultural story? (A cultural story is a story that human beings tell themselves about themselves. It is passed on from generation to generation.) What is "wrong"is that it is wildly inaccurate. Here is the story that we are currently passing along to our young ones. We've been telling each other this story on the earth for a great many years...

“We are born into a hostile world, run by a God who has things He wants us to do and things He wants us not to do, and will punish us with everlasting torture if we don’t get the two right.

“Our first experience in life is separation from our mother, the source of our life. This sets the tone and creates the context for our entire reality, which we experience to be one of separation from the source of all life.

“We are not only separate from all life, but from everything else in life. Everything that exists exists separate from us, and we are separate from everything else that exists. We do not want it this way, but this is the way it is. We wish it were otherwise, and, indeed, we strive for it to be otherwise.

“We seek to experience Oneness again with all things, and especially with each other. We may not know why, exactly, yet it seems almost instinctual. It feels like the natural thing to do. The only problem is, there does not seem to be enough of The Other to satisfy us. No matter what the Other Thing is that we want, we cannot seem to get enough of it.

“We cannot get enough love, we cannot get enough time, we cannot get money, we cannot get enough of whatever it is we think we need in order to be happy and fulfilled. The moment we think that we have enough, we decide that we want more.

“Since there is ‘not enough’ of whatever it is we think we need to be happy, we must ‘do stuff’ to get as much as we can get. Things are required of us to get everything, from God’s love to the natural bounty of Life. Simply ‘being alive’ is not enough. Therefore WE, like all of life, are not enough.

“Because just ‘being’ isn’t sufficient, there’s stuff that we have to do. The ones who do the ‘right stuff’ get to have the things that they need to be happy. If you don’t do the right stuff in the right way, you don’t get to ‘win’. Thus, the competition begins. There’s ‘not enough’ out there, and so, we have to compete for it.

“We have to compete for everything, including God.

“This competition is tough. This is about our very survival. In this contest, only the fittest survive. Only to the victor go the spoils. If you are a loser, you live a hell on Earth, and after you die, if you are a loser in the competition for God, you experience hell again— this time forever.

“Death was actually created by God because our forebears made the wrong choices. Adam and Eve had everlasting life in the Garden of Eden, but then, Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she and Adam were driven from the garden by an angry God, who sentenced them, and all their progeny forevermore, to death as The First Punishment. Henceforth, life in the body would be limited, and no longer everlasting, and so would the stuff of life.

“Yet God will give us back our everlasting life if we never again break His rules. God’s love is unconditional; it is only God’s rewards which are not. God loves us even as He condemns us to everlasting damnation. It hurts Him more than it hurts us, because He really wants us to return home, but He can’t do anything about it if we misbehave. The choice is ours.

“The trick is, therefore, to not misbehave. We need to live a good life. We must strive to do so. In order to do so, we have to know the truth about what God wants and does not want from us. We cannot please God, we cannot avoid offending Him, if we do not know Right from Wrong. So we have to know the Truth about that.

“The Truth is simple to understand and easy to know. All we have to do is listen to the prophets, the teachers, the sages, and the source and founder of our religion. If there is more than one religion, and therefore, more than one source and founder, then we have to make sure to pick the Right One. Picking the Wrong One could result is us being a Loser.

“When we pick the Right One, we are superior, we are better than our peers, because we have The Truth on our side. This state of being “better” allows us to claim most of the other prizes in the contest without actually contesting them. We get to declare ourselves the Winner in the competition before the competition begins. It is out of this awareness that we give ourselves all the advantages, and write the Rules of Life in such a way that certain others find it nearly impossible to win the really big prizes.

“We do not do this out of meanness, but simply in order to ensure that our victory is guaranteed—as rightly it should be, since it is those of our religion, of our nationality, of our race, of our gender, of our political persuasion, who know The Truth, and therefore deserve to be Winners.

“Because we deserve to win, we have a right to threaten others, to fight with them, and to kill them if necessary, in order to produce this result.

“There may be another way to live, another thing that God has in mind, another, larger Truth, but if there is, we don’t know it. In fact, it is not clear whether we are even supposed to know it. It is possible that we are not supposed to even try to know it, much less to truly know and understand God. To try is to be presumptuous, and to declare that you have actually done so is to blaspheme.

“God is the Unknown Knower, the Ummoved Mover, the Great Unseen. Therefore, we cannot know the truth that we are required to know in order to meet the conditions that we are required to meet in order to receive the love that we are required to receive in order to avoid the condemnation that we are seeking to avoid in order to have the everlasting life that we had before any of this started.

“Our ignorance is unfortunate, but should not be problematical. All we need do is take what we think we DO know—our cultural story—on faith, and proceed accordingly. This we have tried to do, each according to his or her own beliefs, out of which we have produced the life that we are now living, and the reality on Earth that we are creating.

“This is how most of the human race has it constructed. You each have your minor variations, but this is, in essence, how you live your lives, justify your choices, and rationalize your outcomes.

“Some of you do not accept all of this, yet all of you accept some of it. And you accept these statements as the Operating Reality not because they reflect your innermost wisdom, but because someone else has told you that they are true.

“At some level, you have had to make yourself believe them.

“This is called Make Believe.”

None of this is real.

(More on this in upcoming blogs.)

If there is something you desire in life that you don't have, how can you give it away to others? That is an interesting question -- yet giving to others what you, yourself, desire is the fastest way to experience having it, says Conversations with God.

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Question: Dear Neale... I’m finding myself “drifting” from my “spiritual” path. Any suggestions? Debi, Medford, MA.

Neale's Response: Dear Debi, CWG speaks very directly to this question. Asked how we can remain on the spiritual path, or, for that matter, experience anything that we desire in this life, God says “What you chose for yourself, give to another.” The reason this works, Debi, is that there is no one out there but you. Therefore, what you provide for another, you provide for yourself. You may not think this makes sense, but try it. You will soon discover that it is a “magic formula.” It is why all masters have taught some variation of “do unto others as you would have it done unto you.”

So, Debi, my advice is simple and concise. You want to keep from “drifting” from the “spiritual path”? Keep someone else from drifting from the path! As you give this gift of spiritual “steadiness” to another, you will discover that you have found it in yourself.

For here is a great secret: you cannot give away that which you do not have. And you will always have plenty of that which you choose to give to another. The universe always supports generosity.

Question: Dear Neale...I am somewhat of a loner, who only seeks out the help of God and not others. I am intelligent, strong, knowledgeable and have a very well established relationship with God, which has been very natural since my early childhood.

The details in CWG-1 only confirmed what I had already known to be the truth, long before I ever read it. I have tried and tried on my own to receive a specific miracle from God, and to date have yet to see it in my reality.

What advise can you give me? I really do need your help! I have felt in my heart for a very long time, that all I need to do is come to God for it. All my efforts have failed, but not my will to succeed. How do I call into my reality the thing I desire the most? Thanks, Johnny.

Neale's Response:Dear Johnny...The fastest way to receive anything from the universe is to give it away to someone else. The magic words in Conversations with God that speak directly to this issue and therefore to your letter are, be the source. With those three words, God has outlined to all of us a miracle formula that allows us to produce in our lives the miracles that we feel we cannot have any other way.

The reason that you have been unable to manifest the miracle that you have desired for so many years in your life is because at some deep level I suspect you feel unworthy of receiving that miracle, or you believe, perhaps, that it simply can’t happen. It is impossible, and therefore will not materialize.

These are common thoughts held by many people, I might even say most people, and it is for that reason that most people do not experience miracles in their lives. That is, in fact, precisely why those kinds of actions by God are called miracles, because they happen so infrequently in the lives of human beings. Not because God is infrequent in the graces that She bestows, but because people are very infrequently able to receive those graces openly.

However, because people have not found a way to easily receive the graces and miracles of God, God has devised a secondary plan, a “fallback,” if you will, and this secondary fallback plan allows us all, even those of us who cannot receive the miracles of God, to be miracles through which those same miracles can be bestowed upon others.

Therefore, here is all you have to do: I don’t know what it is you are asking for from God, but whatever it is, find someone else in this world who needs that right now, and be the source of that miracle for another. You will then discover that what flows through you is given to you. For that which you give to another, you would have given to yourself.

Do this consistently. Don’t stop with just one. Find 4 or 5 or 6 or 8 or 10 other people who need the thing, who desire the thing, who want desperately the thing that you say you want for yourself, and find a way to give it to them. This winds up utilizing The Multiplier Effect, discussed thoroughly in the latest book from the CwG cosmology, Happier Than God. In brief, when you use the Power of Personal Creation for more than one person (namely, yourself), you, in effect, multiply and magnify the energy that you are using, the energy that you are pulling through you and into the material world. This increases exponentially the power of the energy.

It is true that what you give to another you give to yourself for another reason, as well, and that is the most important reason of all, and the highest truth contained in the wisdom of Conversations with God. The truth is: there is only one of us. And so, as you give from your place of goodness that which you would receive, it will be given to you, because there is no one else to give to except yourself.

And finally, there is a very sound metaphysical principle and metaphysical reason why giving to another produces the result in your life. What you have not experienced is what I call the experience of "havingness”. Every cell in your body denies the truth that you already have what it is you wish to receive. Yet, in the moment that you give what you want to someone else who also desires it, in that self-same moment you experience that you have it. This is the only signal that the cells of your body need to begin to manifest in physical form in your life that which you would seek. Trust me, this works!

Another reason why you may not be able to experience what it is that you wish you could have has to do with the concept in CWG about it being impossible for us to have anything that we want. God will never give us anything that we want, because the very act of wanting a thing pushes it away from us. It pushes it away from us because the act of wanting something is a declaration to the universe that you do not now have it. And that, of course, is the opposite of what is true at the highest level.

(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale's personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Neale selects the questions that appear in this blog from those posted there.)

For all the accomplishments of human beings, there is one thing -- one simple thing -- that our species has not been able to do. Get along. Why is this, do you imagine? Think about this.

With all that humans have been taught through their myths, in their cultural stories, and by their religions—with all that humans have been told about God and about Life by their ancestors and their elders and their ministers and their priests and their rabbis and their mullahs—how is it that, in the collective experience of a huge portion of humanity, it hasn’t done any more good?

"But it has done a lot of good," you may say. "The world is a better place than it was before. People do not act as they did in primitive times. They live in peace in most places, and they are not violent."

No, they are not. Most people are not. We can agree on that. But can we agree on this? Collectively, humanity is unceasingly and increasingly violent with its own kind.

Allowing people to go hungry is a form of violence.

Placing life-saving drugs and the finest medical care out of reach of millions is a form of violence.
Underpaying laborers while taking huge front office profits is a form of violence.

Mistreating, underpaying, denying promotions to, and mutilating females is a form of violence.

Racial prejudice is a form of violence.

Child abuse, child labor, child slavery, child prostitution, child trafficking, and child soldiering is a form of violence.

The death penalty is a form of violence.

Denying civil rights to people because of their sexual preference or their religion or their ethnicity is a form of violence.

Creating and maintaining a worldwide society in which exploitation, oppression, and injustice are commonplace is a form of violence.

Ignoring suffering is as much a form of violence as inducing it.

In 2004 humanity watched 50,000 people die and over 1.5 million forced from their homes during ethnic fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan. The world stalled and stumbled and did little or nothing for many months as this went on.

That is the mark of an extraordinarily primitive society, too timid, too weak, too stultified, or, worse yet, too self-involved to be able to put a quick stop even to genocide.

Are you growing a little impatient with the narrative here? I don’t blame you. It’s tough to look at how things are, at how they really are, in our world. We’d like to stay...

Ideas -- fresh, new, exciting, innovative ideas -- have always been the lifeblood of any evolving society. Yet in the area of religion, new ideas are almost always discouraged. No new ideas, please. No new thoughts.

I am familiar with this opposition to new ideas in theology because, as the author of the nine-book Conversations with God series, I have come face to face with it all over the world.

I was thinking about this the other day while I was flying back from Chicago, where I delivered an evening address for the Infinity Foundation, and offered a one-day seminar the following day. I was thinking that unless humanity is willing to embrace new ideas -- ideas about God, about Life, about who we are in relationship to each other -- our species may very well be doomed. Not doomed to extinction (although that is possible if we don't do something about the environmental crisis), but doomed to altering irrevocably (and for the worse) the way we live our lives on this planet.

We need new ideas about who and what God is, about what God wants, and about what it means to be fully human. We need new ideas about how we can live together in peace and harmony -- something we have been trying to do for thousands of years, to no avail.

Will we have the courage to consider new thoughts about these things? Or will be insist on hanging onto our old concepts and our ancient understandings, even when many of them are demonstrably no longer valid and no longer serving us---?

The is a passage in HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends about this topic of "new ideas" that I love to turn to whenever I am challenged to embrace, or to offer, revolutionary new ideas about the most sacred aspects of my life. That passage reads...

Play with ideas. Play with them. Never let them become work. Play with them. And play with life. And play with each other, while you are at it. Learn to play well.

I have sent you to the Garden of the Gods and offered you the whole world in which to play. I have provided sufficient bounty to make certain that there is enough for everyone. No one should go hungry, least of all die of hunger. No one need be without clothing to keep warm, nor should anyone be without shelter from the storm. There is enough for everyone.

Beyond that, nothing is needed to play well. Nothing more is required in order to have a glorious experience of Who You Are. You have imagined that there is so much you need in order to be happy, and even to survive. You have made this all up.

As you approach your death you will realize how little any of this matters. Any of this. At the moment of your departure from physical life you will know that you have struggled for nothing. And then your long struggle will be over.

You may arrive at this awareness at any time, and end your struggle in any moment. This opportunity and this experience is not held in reserve for only the moment of your death. If you watch closely you will see that each day of your life is crowded with “little deaths.” You may use any one of them as a platform for this realization.

I am taking a look now in my own life at what really matters, and what does not. I have some new ideas about that...and about life itself, and my place in it. Perhaps we can discuss those here in the weeks ahead.

How about you? What do you think we are here for? What is our purpose? Who is God? What does God want? What are your ideas about these things? Are they new? Are the old? Think about this. I mean, think about what you think about these things.

Give me some ideas, below. Let's have a discussion. This is called Beliefnet. So tell me what you believe.

MEANWHILE, ON THE ELECTION FRONT: I think we should adopt this strategy in the Democratic primaries that are remaining. Let's do whatever we can to embarrass Barack Obama, and let's say whatever we can to make race the point. Let's tell people outright and direct: Obama simply cannot win the white vote of working class Americans. He only gets the "uppidy" white vote...Americans with college degrees and higher incomes and college students, and oyu can't beat John McCain with that.

Let's make the point so loud and clear that the Democratic super delegates have no choice but to abandon Obama in his campaign for the presidency. Let's not even be graceful about this. Let's just say it right out loud, and dare people to make an issue of it.

OBAMA CAN'T WIN BECAUSE HE'S BLACK.

Yeah, that ought to work...okaaay.

Don't ask for anything from God. Ever. Don't ever do it. Asking God for anything is the surest way to make certain you never receive it.

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Sunday is Message Day on the blog. Monday through Friday we look at contemporary events and day-to-day occurrences at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality…but on Sunday, we reserve this space for a specific teaching derived from the material in Conversations with God

Through the years I have given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around this material. Every seven days we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of one of those presentations. We invite you to Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal collection of contemporary and uplifting spiritual thought which you may reference at any time. We hope you will find this a constant source of insight and inspiration.

This week’s offering: The third in a series of excerpts from an interview with Neale Donald Walsch first appearing in Spiritual Growth Monthly

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Matt: One of the things you say in your book is that the process of actually asking for something implies that you don’t already have it, and that this approach – the very act of requesting – in effect pushes the thing you want away…

Neale: Well, of course, that’s true. You don’t ask for something you already have. You don’t wish for something you already own.

You don’t ask for glasses to be on your face if you are already wearing glasses. People who wear glasses (there’s not a person I know who wears glasses who has not done this) have laughed at themselves when they catch themselves looking for their glasses while they have their glasses on.

You don’t ask for things you already have. So the very act of asking for something actually moves us away from manifesting it, because you are announcing to the universe, which listens very carefully to your thought about something, that you do not now have it. This becomes your reality, because the universe doesn’t know from “time.” What you say Now is what is true for you Now, and it will continue to be true for you until you say something else.

Do you see now how powerful you are? God says, quite literally, “Your word in My command.”

But there are many things we have that we don’t know that we have; that is, it’s not in our present experience. We’ve lost our keys, we can’t find our gloves, we have the love of another but we’re not sure of it. So we don’t know we have these things. We have them, but we don’t know. We go to that person and say, “Do you love me?” and they say, “Of course I love you. You know I love you, I’ve told you that a thousand times. Why don’t you know that?” And we say, “I don’t know why I don’t know it, I just keep wanting to ask you.” What’s true here is that we can’t believe what someone else is telling us. We can’t believe, inside of us, that we are lovable, so how could someone else love us?

So there are many things we have that we don’t know we have. That’s called the Cloud of Unknowing. It’s when our vision is clouded. We want the plane to take off, but visibility is limited. We want our lives to really take off, but visibility is limited.

Masters, on the other hand, are those who already know that they have everything they could ever hope for or wish to experience, right here, right now. They can see that, because they have infinite visibility. They know that it is merely a question of choosing what they desire and then calling it forth from the sea of infinite possibility. And that’s the process by which Masters make manifest, in physical reality, whatever it is they wish to experience.

Matt: You say that God told you that the “sponsoring thought” is more important than the secondary thought that’s issuing the request.

Neale: That’s what I’m saying here. If we have a sponsoring thought -- a deep-seated initial idea -- that we already have what it is that we are not now experiencing, then we can experience it much more rapidly.

For instance, in matters of love, if your sponsoring thought is: “Love is mine.
Not only do I have love, I am love,” you will have the experience of that very rapidly. You will have the experience as soon as you choose to notice that you already are that and have that.

So it’s a matter of creating a sponsoring thought that produces the outcomes we wish to experience in our relative reality, relatively soon. Sponsoring thoughts – that is, deep-seated ideas about something – are usually your first thoughts about anything…but they do not have to be the last word on the subject. You can’t change a sponsoring thought, but you can add a new one. That’s where it becomes useful to say, “On second thought…”

When your first thought comes up for you and it is a sponsoring thought that you are not lovable, or that you are not abundant, or – and here’s a typical one – you are “never that lucky”, just say to your Self, “On second thought…”, and then have a new thought about it. You’ll find that you can get out of that stagnant place and really move some energy around if you’ll let yourself seriously entertain that new thought. That’s why this is called the New Thought Movement.

So if you think that you can’t have something that you really want, or that the world will never change, or that life is just what it is and isn’t going to get much better…well, think again. Create a new sponsoring thought. Thoughts sponsor reality, so create a new sponsoring thought.

Matt: And you say that there are two kinds of sponsoring thoughts – fear and love – is that correct?

Neale: Yes. Basically all thought reduces itself to fear or love, and all reality arises from one of those two very basic and fundamental vibrations. There are only two basic vibrations, and those are the two. Everything else is a variation on the theme.

Matt: Well, if God is love, then there’s the question of why did He create something bad, like fear?

Neale: God created a relative experience, a relative world. He created the realm of relativity, in which all things exist in relationship to themselves, across a grand scale.
It’s like saying if God created warm, then why did he create cold? He didn’t create cold. In a sense, he didn’t create warm either. He just created the thing called Temperature. That’s what God created. God created a reality in which everything exists in varying degrees. It is we who have called those things ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

If we can agree that God did not create warm, but rather, temperature, which is the first level of creation, then we simple look at: What temperature is it? Is it 90 degrees outside? Is it 30 degrees Celsius? What temperature is it? Or is it very cold? And is that ‘good’ or ‘bad’? And those are judgments that we will make.

I am using a simple example here, to make a point. ‘Temperature’ is the elementary essence, to use this simple example, of the things that are. And so, too, it is on the Scale of Good and Evil. God did not create ‘good’ and God did not create ‘evil’. Those are human inventions and human definitions. God simply created That Which Is, and it is we who have created ‘good’ and ‘evil’ by calling it that.

By the way, we change that creation from time to time. That is, we call things evil that were not evil years ago. We call things good that we did not call good years ago. So even our scale changes and shifts from time to time. We are, in fact, the creators of our own reality, and we are calling things exactly what we choose for them to be.

Shakespeare put it perfectly: “Nothing is evil lest thinking make it so.”

We say that we build our lives on our most sacred beliefs. But is it possible that some of our beliefs about God and life are actually self-destructive? Humanity had better look at this...and soon.

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NOTE: Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Silent Sacred Holy Deeply: Heart.

For this week's prose we offer...the third in a series of excerpts from The New Revelations...
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Last Saturday the dialogue left off with a statement from God that "Beliefs create behaviors." We pick up that dialogue here...

All behaviors are created by beliefs?

All behaviors.

Even those reactions are based on what you believe is occurring, is about to occur, or could occur.
All behaviors are sponsored by beliefs.

You cannot make a long-term change in behaviors without addressing the beliefs that underlie them.

I’m going to repeat that, because the brevity of the statement belies its importance.

I said:

You cannot make a long-term change in behaviors without addressing the beliefs that underlie them.

Exactly. And this is precisely where most of your societies have not been focusing—except those societies that are now causing, and have historically caused, the most upheaval.

—Listen to me. I am telling you something very important here.

What I just said was….those societies that are now causing, and that have historically caused, the most upheaval in your world are those societies which have focused on beliefs.

Most humans try to change things by focusing on behaviors. They keep thinking they can make things better by doing something. So, everyone is running around trying to figure out what they can do. The focus is on doing something, rather than on believing something.

But radical forces within your societies have always sought to change things by using the power of thought, not action, for they know that thought produces action. Get a person thinking a certain way and you can get a person to act a certain way. It is not easily done the other way around.

Take killing, for example. You can rarely get a person to go out and kill another person simply by telling him to do so. You have to give him a reason. And “reason” exists only in thought. And thought is always...

What is the meaning of life? What is its purpose? How might be live our lives to get the most out of them, and to give the most to them? Those are pretty big questions for a movie to try to answer...and I'm not sure that any movie that I know of does that. But some movies make the questions a little more present in our minds, a little more pertinent, and little more poignant.

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This is Book & Movie Day on the blog, when we take a look at texts and films – old and new -- that I highly recommend you not miss. This week’s recommendation: The Bucket List

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I saw a movie on the airplane on the way home from Chicago the other day, and it stopped me in my tracks. I didn't expect it to be so good. The trailer for the film was horrible, and gave no indication at all of what was coming; it offered not even a glimpse of what was in store...

For this reason, we ignored the film -- my beloved and I -- when we saw it on the menu of the in-room movies offered at our hotel the night before. We watched that trailer and it gave us the impression that it was a silly, slapstick comedy about nothing, going nowhere...just a make-money-quick vehicle for its stars.

Then, on the airplane, here comes the film again. It was a four-and-a-half-hour flight, so we thought, what the heck...put on our headsets and watched.

Wow.

Don't miss this film.

First, it is directed by Rob Reiner, and I guess we should have known it was going to be good just from that. Then, it starred Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, two of my favorite actors in the world, and two of the very best in Hollywood. All of this should have recommended it, really, but I'm not kidding about that trailer. It made it look like one of those silly films that you'd just rather not even watch. I mean, give me a good book any time.

But we watched it on the plane. Don't ask me why we opted for it. We both actually had good books. But the pictures flashed on the overhead screens and I guess we just got caught up in the images, which start out in a hospital...so we put on those headsets and boy, are we glad we did.

The Bucket List is just one of the nicest movies I've seen in a long, loooong time. It is simply wonderful. The acting in it is beyond superb, with Freeman and Nicholson coming off so naturally, it's hard, in places, to think of this as a movie. It's like watching real people live real life, in many of the not-so-far-out scenes. The dialogue is terrific, too. The film boasts a truly wonderfully crafted screen play. Many of the lines made me laugh and cry at the same time.

And Reiner's direction is right on the mark. He has a light touch with his actors (with these two, very little dramatic direction must be needed, I would think), and his choice of shots and angles is wonderful. His pacing of the film is also perfect. Slow-fast, then slow, then fast -- funny-serious, then funny, then serious again. I felt like Messrs. Reiner, Nicholson, and Freeman were pulling me all over the emotional map. And I was happy to make the journey.

You may have heard about this movie. It's the story of two older men, occupying the same hospital room, both of whom have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. They've each been given months to live. They make a list of the things they've always wanted to do -- and now really want to do before they "kick the bucket."

Nicholson's character has been made insanely rich, to facilitate the plot line. In other words, the two men actually can do the things on their list -- including journey all over the world, seeing the pyramids, driving race cars on tracks that have been opened just for them, etc. But it turns out in the end that these adventures, while fun and spectacular, have nothing to do with what the heart and soul seek to achieve before departing the body...

An example of the excellent and clever writing: Nicholson (playing the part of "Edward" to Freeman's "Carter") puts on The Bucket List that one of the things he wants to do before he dies is "kiss the most beautiful girl in the world." The dialogue that follows:

Carter: (chuckling when he sees this on the list) And just how do you think you've going to accomplish that?

Edward: (with a wink and a old man's smile...) Volume.

He actually achieves this goal, and how he does it is the sweetest moment in the film, and one of the sweetest moments in any film anywhere.

When the two men are sitting on a brick wall overlooking the Great Pyramids there is more wonderful dialogue...

Carter: The Egyptian Ancients said that just at the gates of paradise you are asked two questions. They said that your answer to the questions determines whether you get admitted.

Edward: (After a short pause) Okay, I'll bite. What are they?

Carter: Did you find joy in your life?

Edward doesn't say anything.

Carter: Well, answer it.

Edward: You want me to answer that?

Carter: Yeah, answer it.

Edward: (After an obvious and questioning mental review of his life) ....Yes. Yes, I did.

Carter: Okay, now the second question. Did your life bring joy to others?

Edward: (Again thinking about it, this time with discomfort) ...

Well, actually, I'll let you watch the movie and hear how this dialogue plays out...and how its playing out affects the movie itself.

Listen, this is a film with a little bit of insight, a little bit of spirituality, and yes, a little bit of schmaltz...but you're going to love it. You've going to love it because it's a heart-opener, and we all love to feel our hearts opening.

So, if you're looking for a really good evening, a nice, nice weekend video rental...make some popcorn and sit down and enjoy...

The Bucket List

You may know that Pope Benedict XVI made an assertion last July that the Catholic Church was the only true church. Can this is correct? If so, what does this mean? Is every other path to God doomed to failure?

In a video just released, Steve Farrell, the worldwide coordinator director of a global grass roots citizen's movement called Humanity's Team, said that the Pope would serve humanity best if he renounced his earlier statement and now declared that no path to God was better than any other; that all paths lead to God.

Claiming one faith or tradition is better or truer than another not only goes against the concept of an unconditionally loving God, Farrell said, it also leads to judgmental division, which is the root cause of the world's discord and violent conflict.

Farrell called on the pope to prayerfully reconsider his statements and take a leadership role in reaching out to people of all spiritual and cultural understandings in a spirit of Oneness.

I agree with him completely. I founded Humanity's Team a number of years ago, and have since released it to its own creations, which have brought much good to our world. (You may wish to check this organization out at www.humanitysteam.com). In the book Communion with God humanity is gently reminded once again that there is no One and Only Path to God. (Everyone wants to say and to claim that there is, but there is not.)

As Steve Farrell points out, there is great danger is making such a claim. It tears the world apart, putting God-believer against God-believer in a psychological (and sometimes a physical) battle to see who is "right." Yet, dangerous and unhelpful or not, the Pope did indeed declare that the Roman Catholic Church was the only path to salvation.

Benedict approved a document released last July 11 that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches, and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation, according to the Associated Press news story released at that time.

The statement, the AP said, "brought swift criticism" from Protestant leaders. “It makes us question whether we are indeed...

There is a big spiritual lesson to be learned from yesterday's Democratic Primary election results: Tell the truth. All the time. About everything. The results in both North Carolina and Indiana showed that people want the truth, not political pandering.

By now you all know that Barack Obama won North Carolina massively -- by 14 percentage points -- and that Hillary Clinton won Indiana meagerly -- by something just over 1%, or less than 23,000 votes out if millions cast statewide. The Clinton campaign had hoped for a much larger margin of victory there, and was even talking in recent days about an upset in North Carolina -- or at least holding Obama to a victory spread less than double digits, "which is the standard they held us to in Pennsylvania," her strategists declared.

Well, actually, Clinton did not meet that standard, having won Pennsylvania, after all was said and done, by 9 percentage points (something that the Clinton campaign does not point out). And Obama did meet that standard in North Carolina.

The Sen. from New York centered her campaign over the past week or two around a populist appeal, using as her "hook" the fact that she supported the summer gas tax holiday proposed by Sen. John McCain, while Obama opposed it. Obama countered by telling the truth: The gas tax holiday would save the average American around 30-cents a day over three months, or something like $28 in total for the summer.

Obama said it was a sham and a shuck-and-jive shell game to impress voters with the appearance of some sort of solution to their economic woes, but without real substance. Typical political pandering, he declared. The kind of politics we are tired of and want to change. He said that not a single economist could be found who asserted that the gas tax holiday made economic sense. To which Hillary Clinton replied that she had no intention of listening to the opinion of economists, who she described as "elite" and out of touch with working class Americans

Well, working class Americans are not dumb. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina showed that on the gas tax holiday issue the vast majority of them (something near 70%) said that Clinton was simply using the idea as a political tool and that the gas tax holiday had no real economic value. Failure to gain any traction from the gas tax issue is why Clinton lost North Carolina massively and won Indiana meagerly. Nobody believed that her stance was a sincere effort to help people economically, but, rather, was simply politically motivated.

In fact, Hillary Clinton scores the lowest of all the candidates in just about every poll when it comes to "trustworthiness" and "honesty". Obama scores the highest.

And in his victory speech in North Carolina yesterday, he made it clear that he understood that. He said he got into the race for president because he wanted to end politics as usual -- which he called the politics of polarization and division and distraction. He added: "We will end it by telling the truth -- forcefully, repeatedly, confidently -- and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change."

Then he returned the compliment that he has received from the American people -- those folks who say on those surveys that he is the most trustworthy candidate. He said...