I want you to remember this name:
Charles Chatman.
I’ll tell you why in a minute.
In all of my workshops and retreats (they are produced throughout the year in various locations, and all are based firmly in the messages of Conversations with God, seeking to show how to apply those messages to every day life), I am constantly telling people who are dealing with deep injuries, disappointments, and sadnesses from their past that the fastest way to heal them is to use them as jump-off points in the healing of others.
For instance, to a lady who had been sexually abused as a child I offered that she might begin presenting a class for women who have moved through the same experience. The experience, I suggested, could be redemptive for her — and wonderfully healing for those others who have not yet closed their own wounds and moved forward with their life. In this way, I suggested, she could turn a negative experience into a true gift, both to others as well as herself.
To a man who had lost his wife to cancer only one year after his marriage to the “woman of my dreams” I offered that he might begin giving talks or presenting classes on grief resolution and the bereavement process, perhaps focused particularly on widowers. Providing such a program just for men could go far, I told him, in healing his own grief.
Always in my retreats, when I encounter people who have suffered much and can’t make any sense out of it, I offer an invitation to turn what they have endured into an opportunity and a learning and a message of hope for others. In this way tragic events in some way can make sense, and tragedy can turn into healing
All of which brings us back to Charles Chatman.
About 27 years ago Mr. Chatman was sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. A black man, he was accused of raping a white woman who lived nearby. She had picked him out of a lineup in Dallas County, Texas. This is a county, you might want to know, with an unmatched number of wrongly convicted inmates — and he became one of them.
Over the years he appeared before parole board hoping for an early release — but each time, at his appearance, board members would try to get him to admit that he had done the crime. They asked him repeatedly about details, about his remorse. He showed none and he could tell them of none because, he insisted quietly, he never did anything wrong and knows nothing about the crime.
It should be mentioned here that Charles Chatman had a perfect alibi. He was at work at the time of the assault, and his employer so testified. Unfortunately for Mr.Chatman, he was working for his sister at the time, and her testimony was dismissed by the jury…a Texas jury in a Texas county not known for going slow in convicting a black man for raping a white woman.
(“It is time we stop kidding ourselves in believing that what happened in Dallas is somehow unique,” Jeff Blackburn, the founder of the Innocence Project of Texas, was quoted in a copyrighted report on this story from the Associated Press. “What happened in Dallas is common. This is Texas.”)
Now, thanks to DNA evidence analyzed for the first time with new scientific methods, it has been made clear that Mr. Chatman was telling the truth all along. He had nothing to do with the woman’s rape. The other day, they let him out of jail. And now, what is Charles Chatman going to do?
The AP report says “Chatman said he wants to work with the Innocence Project of Texas to support other people exonerated or wrongly convicted.” The AP report quotes Chatman as saying…
“I believe that there are hundreds, and I know of two or three personally that very well could be sitting in this seat if they had the support and they had the backing that I have. My No. 1 interest is trying to help people who have been in the situation I am in.”
Wow. That’s all I have to say to that.
Wow.
That’s straight out of Conversations with God…whether Mr. Chatman knows it or not. Actually, it’s straight out of any religious or spiritual tradition. And it’s wonderfully inspiring and uplifting to hear this kind and gentle man move past his own bitterness to a place where he chooses to use his terrible experience as a gift to others.
Wow.
Beliefnet
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posted January 8, 2008 at 7:18 am
I agree that we should use our pain to help others. I in the past 3 years have signed myself into a mental hospital 2 times for depression and stress related nervous breakdowns. I see myself working with with people in the mental health area in the future. I have found that most people in mental hospitals are really just looking for someone who can relate to talk too. I am slowly working my mental being into a better perpective. I realize now that it may not have been as much as a nervous breakdown but an awakening spirituality. So many things have changed with my life that i want to share. I am no longer depressed and strongly have a will to live although I still have to fight with my mind that I am worth everything as is everyone.
posted January 8, 2008 at 8:05 am
how sadnes and hurd hes life,of MR,Chataman,
and also godt hes com out from de jail
GOD bless hem ,he have a raeson to helf de
other, am rely sure so meny people have
depreicion to day,but not me enymore,
love and paece,
posted January 8, 2008 at 9:36 am
How profoundly true. I’ve been reading “The wisdom of no escape” this morning & this book also speaks of experiencing with compassion our own suffering in order that we may use our pain to help others. This simple truth frightens me because i have allways believed “enlightenment” was an escape from pain. It’s not. Enlightenment is holding our pain & loving it away, then it’s holding the pain of others and loving them as they are, as their pain hurts you.Pain is life’s gift to us that allows us to develop compassion & love.
posted January 8, 2008 at 10:49 am
Wow!
Thank you again Neale, you continue to inspire me beyond words.
I have been contemplating this very same issue, only my pain deals with postpartum depression! I have been teetering on the edge of writing about my experience in the hopes of helping other women going through the same issues.
I suppose I now have my answer.
Namaste,
Angie
posted January 8, 2008 at 10:49 am
God has given me an open heart that I express from openly. When in healing groups I express whatever God has come up for healing and this helps others to feel comfortable to express themselves openly as well.
Bless you Neal
posted January 8, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Wow, indeed wow. Neale, it is a wonderful posting and Mr. Chatman is an breathtaking Angel. It is a very beautiful and important posting this here.
I live with my to sons and I work full day, I don’t have any kind of help and I can’t afford to hire someone to help with the house. I know what it means to go on when you are tired to death and when you simply have to go on. I know what it means to have debts and the stress related to it. Now, with the CwG material I am learning to move away from fear as soon as it arises, I am learning by the rules you brought to all of us. Thinking and knowing that in each moment I decide who and what I am as really changed my life. It is so beautiful and exiting to learn to re-create ourselves step by step. I would love to assist other women who live similar experience, it has always been my wish to help others. Suffering knows suffering as love knows love, and so, often just only the fact that another human being really listens to us, that we can feel being cared for and understood is a big help. The most difficult and terrible thing is when we think that we are totally alone with our suffering and problems.
Thanks to all here for the beautiful sharings !
Love
Berit
posted January 8, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I recall reading that AP story and thinking what powerful, transformative and healing thing Mr. Chatman was doing for his soul. His spirit reminded me of Nelson Mandela. Here is a man who truly understands the nature of God. Perhaps he read CwG. I know it transformed my life, my thinking and my understanding of God and Life, when my best friend excitedly gave me a copy more than a decade ago. Perhaps, like you, he was gifted with divine insight, divine Truth. However it came to him, I know that he’d be an embittered, angry and vengeful man if he believed many of the heinous and hurtful things that God has been accused of. Instead, Charles Chatman knows that he is the “Light of the World”. My, how it shows!
posted January 8, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Best cure for all difficulties, that we are expiriencing in our life is, that we find jewel in them, which after sharpen it, becomes clear for us and for others!
Helping others is sharpening a jewel – this is our act of faith – faith, that we can move through all mud in our lives and find our happines again and again! That it is possible being one/whole all the time! That nothing can take away our true love!
Having faith in Love and going through mud again and again is becoming stronger and stronger! Through life we are proving to ourselfs, that we can remain on way of life, of light all the time!
Hmmm, depression, pains, suffering…
Who knows, maybee being in depression is a good thing! Maybee sometning new is opening in our lives and that state of mind is just letting us know that there is a new jewel, that is already waiting for us, but we haven’t recognize it jet!
The way is to accept our own change, becose, all in our lives is changing, just love remains the same!
Bye (Love & wisdom to all here!),
Teja
posted January 8, 2008 at 11:41 pm
for every case where a person in “pain” triumphantly uses that pain for the greater good, there are 1000 other cases where that is NOT the case. it would have been better for THESE people if that pain never existed. will neale ever address THAT aspect of things? or will he deflect the question by asking “how do we know their misery does not help us?” though there is nothing wrong with asking that, it inspires ME to ask: would charles chatman’s life have been LESS satisfying if he was NOT incarcerated for something he did not do? HOW DO WE KNOW?
maybe we could all be honest and admit that we do NOT know- it is not humanly knowable.
i remain unhappy with the CWG doctrine on suffering, even though there is really no other way to treat this bitter subject; when it comes to suffering we must either blame god or blame ourselves. CWG predictably places the blame on us, for not using the “tools” god has given us to put a STOP to suffering. and god, presumably, is absolutely without any liability whatsoever no matter how wretched or atrocious the suffering in question is…. is this all theology is capable of?
sadly, yes.
posted January 9, 2008 at 3:25 am
Maybe we gonna get a lady as president of America.
posted January 9, 2008 at 6:01 am
“i remain unhappy with the CWG doctrine on suffering…”
Forget the CwG material for now. Try the KJV of the Bible, the 91st Psalm.
It talks a great deal about suffering, and how it’s alleviated. Directed there by the “voice within,” a month-long suffering from an auto accident ceased to exist when I followed the voice’s instructions.
I understand your dilemma with suffering. I, too, have asked whether or not it could have been different. Obviously not, since it exists. It is what it is. Yet, I believe that suffering exists because there’s something we don’t understand about its nature.
I would suggest that you take a look at the verse I’ve referenced here, and go in and ask God yourself about the subject.
That’s what I do.
posted January 9, 2008 at 6:26 am
What specific events happen to you is not always a conscious choice. But how you choose to react to these events is. Suffering is a conscious choice. Chatman could have chosen, upon release, to dwell in negativity, isolation, and distrust of God and all of humanity, but instead he held the experience in his hands, embraced it, and finally, used it to reach out to help others experiencing the same hardships he experienced.
What a beautiful example for all of us.
love and peace,
michelle
posted January 9, 2008 at 6:30 am
when it comes to suffering we must either blame god or blame ourselves.
…or we could accept it, see into it, turn it inward, and watch it dissolve.
“how do we know their misery does not help us?”
Excuse me, can I ask a question? How do you even know they are miserable? On who’s authority do you stand in judgment of huge numbers of humans and their distant personal situations?
The trap of spirituality is to turn it outward and blame spirituality itself, along with all sorts of people, for not fixing the existence of anOther. Neale loves to play at this.
The only slight little silly, futile thing about that is that Other does not exist.
In the beginning was the Self…
**
Anyone who actually has the story of how the Great Self started this mess by creating the Great Other, please fill me in. I have never heard a story where the Self created anything outside itSelf.
(Except the ones that have Self killing Self in huge numbers in the middle east – don’t fill me in on those stories – they’re very childish)
on the web at timeoverthrown dot blogspot dot com
Apparently there is a darn good story about how real Other is, for millions of well intended folks are trying to fix the plight of Other. Millions of folks are waiting for someone to tell them how to fix up the world of Other, and the existence of Other.
Which seems silly when leaders like neale always start with stories of Oneness, Unity, the Great Self, and so on.
We are so glad neale keeps this game going. Are you?
posted January 9, 2008 at 6:49 am
I make mine, Michelle’s words.
Love, love, love
MyzPax
posted January 9, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Myzpax, You are a sweetie. And, I make yours mine.
Love and Peace,
Michelle
posted January 10, 2008 at 3:48 pm
EACH TO HIS OWN, WITHOUT JUDGMENT, THAT IS THE MOTTO!
NDW quote
What a powerful message! I am a metaphsics student & Mr Walsh is my favourite author. His work has made a profound change in my life & I never tire of studying his work.
posted January 12, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Love is a very powerful force. Mr. Chatman was surrounded by the love of his family which helped him to stand fast against the darkness of injustice. And now he wants to share his truth with those who have been silenced. I believe that the most compassionate word any human being can offer another is, “I understand.” Than you Neale