(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
* Is spirituality a legitimate excuse to not get involved in life?
* Can God and politics mix?
* Taking responsibility for our own global creation
* The Trap of Being and Doing

I have been having some extraordinary interactions recently in the continuing dialogue that occurs on my personal website. In those exchanges we have been exploring the crossroads of politics and spirituality. Is there a place in politics for the spiritual seeker? Is it even an “appropriate” activity for spiritual students to undertake? Isn’t it more of an enlightened path to simple remain in “beingness”, embracing love and sending our light out into the world, rather than focusing our energy on the negative aspects of our collective reality — and, according to some, thereby increasing them?
A few days ago a man I do not know who signs on simply as “Paul” posted an entry in the Forum that knocked my socks off. His observations more perfectly state my own feelings — and what I believe to be the messages of Conversations with God — than anything I have ever received from a reader on this subject. I’ve taken the liberty of bringing that posting over here, to the Beliefnet audience, because I would like all of you to consider it — and to benefit from what I believe to be some extraordinary insight. Here is the posting, just as it was placed on my personal website recently…
I have been reading Neale’s posts here and the comments for many weeks without really giving myself an opportunity to add my own responses. I have been waiting patiently to really allow myself the opportunity to comprehend deeply the spiritual yearning within myself that has led me into a new life of activism.
With that said, it seems to me that…

…most here seem to miss the very point of what Neale reiterates here on an almost daily basis. What I see is that we are using “spirituality” as an excuse not to be involved in encouraging the continuing evolution of our society, our species, and our planet. I find this rationalization of apathy to be antithetical to what spirituality is about.
The deeper I have gone within myself, the more I discover that the outside of myself (i.e. the world at large) is not representative of my highest ideas about myself and about Life. Spirituality is about taking responsibility for all that I see as my creation, which includes the epidemic negativity in the world in the form of genocides, greed, starvation, domination, etc. These are all the manifestations of our own darkest thoughts, words, and deeds. Most, if not all, of you know that creation takes place at all three levels, and what I am hearing from many of us on this forum is that now that we have all emitted these lower negative energies into the world prior to our discovery of a spirituality that resonates with our souls – what I am hearing subsequent to this discovery is that now we do not feel like doing the “deeds” to begin reversing the trend of negativity that we created together.

This is absurd. We sit here and think and talk as though we are spiritual, as though we are making all the difference in the healing of the planet by simply hoarding this Love we have been blessed enough to receive, when in reality, I see us mired in a deceptive game of the ego excusing itself (and us) from participation in creating the grandest version of Life our souls can fathom in the moment.
Let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about some of the spiritual insights that have spread into this world, and look at how many are interpreting these insights. There is an idea that, even if it is not necessarily new, is still revolutionary because so few of us have actually adopted its practice into our lives. This is the idea that there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose. To give a much too brief breakdown of this concept, what is attempting to be conveyed with this statement is that doing is never required to produce being.
Hmmm. How does this affect the answer to the question, “What is the point of doing anything when no one listens or cares, when people will only use my truth to hurt me, when I can just sit here and be happy and content even while doing nothing to raise awareness in others who are suffering through this life?” I have fallen into this trap, my friends. I have told myself that I do not have to do anything to get involved in making the world a more peaceful and loving experience for all. This statement is true. However, if I am truly being Love or Happy or Peaceful, I have seen for myself that I will choose to do activities that come from these states of being in order to promote more of that beingness in this world.
There is a world of difference between choosing to do something and having to do something.
But before we go there, let me move back just a bit. The trap with regard to being and doing that I referred to above has to do with the fact that most of us have spent our lives doing in order to be something. We do the thing called work hard in order to be abundant. We do the thing called buying a house in order to be secure. We do the thing called tucking in the children in order to be relaxed (that last one is for all us parents out there – lol). Then, we hear a revolutionary concept like there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose, and it becomes such a relief to the worn out senses (from all the incessant doing we inflict on ourselves) to hear this that you get sucked into a spiritual apathy as you take a deep breath and essentially decide to ignore all the pain and suffering surrounding you because you are being, man, and that’s all you have to do. Right on, brother, give me some skin with yo’ funky being self.
This is the trap, and oh is it a deep one. While I say I am being content and peaceful, I watch the world fall apart around me, and I feel something tugging at me about this – something perhaps asking me to act (or do) from my being state of contentment and peace, but now I have a rationalization for why I do not have to listen to this guidance. Now I feel more justified in not letting my voice be heard because not only does nobody listen, but I do not have to do anything.
This spiritual rationalization is a fool’s gold, I tell you. It is another lie of the ego that has snuck in to your spiritual life and called itself your being. This movement from being forced to do something to realizing that you are at choice in anything you do is not an excuse to withdraw from the world; rather, it is an invitation to truly create a new world altogether. Understanding this choice means that now you will make the choice to be happy, peaceful, wise, etc., and that you will then do things that come from those states of being. No longer will you be tied to what you are doing in order to produce any state of being, which makes what you are doing that much more powerful, that much more loving.
There are well-documented cases of this. Jesus and Buddha both found the truth that being always precedes doing, but that did not mean that they quit doing. It just meant that what they were doing became invested with the compassion and grace of True Love. Why? Because they did not have to do anything to reveal to others what they had found, but they chose to do something anyway. There are, of course, many others throughout the history of humanity and even in our contemporary society who have reversed this perspective of doing in order to achieve some state of being. In fact, we all have the opportunity to do just that, right now.
I am not judging or condemning those of us who continue to assert our spirituality while at the same time using that very spirituality as an excuse to withdraw from the illnesses we have inflicted upon our planet. I do, however, ask that each of us take the time to re-evaluate our own spirituality in order to determine if each of us are now leaning upon it as an excuse of the ego. We sit on this forum pontificating almost pretentiously about our higher understandings of Life and God while the world around us is falling apart due to our apathy.
Let’s stop quibbling over words and language and all that nonsense. Observe what is so (i.e. we have collectively created a world of our darkest nightmares, or, perhaps you feel we have created a wonderful world already, in which case, you will be content to leave things as they are, which is your choice), take responsibility for it, and then take action from the Love that we all profess to have faith in. Our forms of activism may look different from one another’s, but I can assure you from my own experience that the Soul guides us to insert It into the world through us, and we do this only partially – or even not at all – when we withdraw solely into our thoughts and words about the Soul and never give It expression through deeds. It is this simple and this complex.
Now Choose.
Love,
Paul
(Neale’s personal website may be accessed at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. He interacts directly with CwG readers there in the Messengers’ Circle.)