May 2008 Archives

It's great to have our spiritual beliefs inform our politics, but what if those spiritual beliefs are ancient understandings that cannot possibly be applied to our modern world? How do the rules of Yesterday's God apply to humanity today?

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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 Em Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Silent Sacred Holy Deeply: Heart.

For this week's prose we offer...a continuing excerpt (see last Saturday's blog) from Tomorrow's God about politics...
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So, you’re saying that our present cultural values and sacred beliefs are infecting, rather than enhancing, our political system.

Yes. Not only in the United States but around the world, your politics have been adversely affected by your spiritual beliefs.

It’s happening because your beliefs are based on your understanding of Yesterday’s God. They make up the Old Spirituality, which is a spirituality of separation and superiority, vengeance and violence.

In the days of Tomorrow's God all of this will change. Bringing the New Spirituality into politics is what will help.

Well, it doesn’t really matter much in America, because we keep this spiritual stuff pretty much out of politics. I know, I know, you said that we don’t, but I have to disagree with you. This is not Saudi Arabia or Iran, where our spiritual beliefs are practically law.

If you think that in the United States your cultural values and most sacred beliefs are not being reflected in your political system, you are either lying to yourself or you are blind.

You mean “religions” in your country do not have anything to do with your cultural values and your most sacred beliefs?

Well, then, you’ve just contradicted yourself.

If you’ve really kept religion out of politics in the United States, then your politics do not reflect your cultural values and sacred beliefs. On the other hand, if your politics do reflect your cultural values and most sacred beliefs, then you have not keep religion out of politics.

You can’t have it both ways.

Wait a minute. When I say “cultural values” I am not talking about theological constructs dealing with God and the nature of Ultimate Reality and the Path to Salvation, or whatever. That’s the purview of “religion.” And when I talk about our most “sacred beliefs,” I am not talking about belief in heaven and hell, or the power of prayer, or the sanctity of marriage, or any of those things.

That, too, is the purview of religion. I am talking about cultural values, not religious values. American values, not Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Hindu values. I am talking about national beliefs, not religious beliefs. Do you see the difference?

Give me an “American” value.

I have told you in this dialogue that the word “freedom” and the word “God” are interchangeable.

Well, yes, you have. But no major religion teaches that.

Do not your major religions teach that God is all powerful, all creative, all knowing, unlimited and everywhere present?

Yes, I believe they do.

And are these not the characteristics of one who is the essence of freedom itself?

Well, isn’t someone who is all powerful, all creative, all knowing, unlimited and everywhere present, essentially totally free?

Yes, I suppose so.

Would not such a person be free to do whatever he or she wants, when he or she wants, where he or she wants, and have complete liberty to do so how he or she wants, and why he or she wants?

And isn’t that, basically, your definition of God?

Yes, it is.

Then the way you have defined God is the way you wish to define yourselves. And in the future, you will simply admit that, rather than trying to hide it.

In the days of The New Spirituality the idea of using politics to define yourselves as you have defined God will be widely accepted.

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If you experience that you received benefit from this excerpt from Tomorrow's God you are going to love Happier Than God, the newest book in the CwG cosmology. Described as "a Master's Guide to Spiritual Awakening," this extraordinary new work has just been released and is available now. Click on the Happier Than God icon at the right of this blog page for more info, and embrace one of the most empowering books you will ever read.

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This week's gift of poetry
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While You were out,
many things transpired.
A sky was born.
Love & Laughter married.
Ten Thousand suns were birthed.
I awoke, a Butterfly.
My wings burst into song.
And I even changed my name,
While You were out.

Planets began to dance, my Love,
And all colors traded hues.
Stars turned themselves into ocean bottoms;
Grasshoppers, into Gazelles,
And I left the earth
and returned

Courageous

All, while You were out.

(While You Were Out - Em Claire - copyright 2007 - all rights reserved)

For more of the work of this new poetic voice you are invited to visit www.mclairepoet.com.

There are some things in life I just don't understand. For instance, I just don't understand a regime such as the one in Myanmar that would wait one minute, much less days and days and days, to accept international assistance in dealing with a nationwide calamity such as the cyclone that hit there.

To me it is amazing that our global system of governance (each country governs itself, and no world body can intervene in the way any particular government -- democracy or autocracy or theocracy or outright dictatorship -- conducts its internal affairs. This is called the doctrine of the Sovereignty of States, and it holds that no nation or group of nations...not even an entire outraged world...can step in when a particular nation's government is acting insanely or cruelly or oppressively toward its people.

In other words, the people of the world are at the mercy of their rulers. And when their rulers have an absolute lock on power (North Korea comes to mind. And Zimbabwe. And, of course, Myanmar. Among others) that's the end of that. The people can be starving to death, or they can be obliterated by force (as in Darfur) and there is nothing that any international body can do about it. We all just stand by and watch. Tsk-tsking, shaking our heads, sadly commenting...but just watching nonetheless.

On a planet of sentient beings who called themselves evolved, would a new kind of governing ethic require intervention? What stops the people of the earth, do you think, from empowering such a global body to step in in situations such as these and stop the suffering and the oppression?

Conversations with God has much to say about this. It says that in cultures where Highly Evolved Beings co-exist, these kinds of situations would be unheard of. Do you know that over 400 children die every hour on the earth from starvation? Yes, yes, we hear these horrific statistics so often that we have become immune to them.

There is a lyric line in the old Broadway musical 1776 in which John Adams sings, "Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?" I played that role for two seasons on the outdoor stage at the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre. Every night when I would sing that song, I would almost come to tears. They said that I made the character of John Adams really come to life. But it wasn't John Adams I was thinking about. It was the state of the world. It was the nature of life as we are living it, as we are co-creating it.

I think of those lyrics to this day. That is why I have undertaken to begin a gentle but genuine spiritual revolution on the earth. I want to invite all of humanity to think of God in a new way. To think of life in a new way. To think of each other in a new way. I know that if we ever do so, despots will never again rule an oppressed people -- because despotism itself will become impossible. We will never again see on the news that a country's leaders have refused international aid at a time of nationwide disaster. We will never again read about a Food Crisis that is engulfing the world.

Things I don't understand: Why is it taking so long for humanity to see that how we are "doing life" is not working? When will we see that a simple, fundamental shift in our thinking is all that it would take to create a newer world -- a world of peace and harmony, happiness and joy for all?

Are we ready to change our thinking? And where is God in all of this? What is God's role? And what does God want? We'll explore this in the days ahead. For now, make it a wonderful weekend. Extend your help to all those in need of whom you hear. And work in your own particular and wonderful way to make this a better world.

And speaking of working in your own wonderful way, I received a notice the other day that I want to pass along to you about the Love Tour 2008 about to get underway, created and sponsored by Humanity's Team. You can learn more about the tour and what it hopes to accomplish by going to www.HTLovetour2008.org

If, in your heart, you are in resonance with this idea and wish to support Humanity's Team, please go to the website and learn more about this activity. Below is the schedule of cities to be visited.

Humanity’s Team Love Tour 2008 Stops:

June 1 st. Atlanta, Georgia
June 4 th. Montgomery, Alabama
June 6 th. Greenville, Missisippi
June 8 th. Dallas, Texas
June 10 th. San Marcos, Texas
June 14 th. Chambers, Arizona
June 18 th. Sedona, Arizona
June 21 st. San Francisco, California
June 28 th. Eugene, Oregon
July 4 th. Clinton, Washington
July 6.th Vancouver, British Columbia
July 9 th. Boise, Idaho
July 13 th. Salt Lake City, Utah
July 19 th. Boulder, Colorado
July 26 th. Kansas City, Missouri
July 28 th. Atlanta, Georgia

The Phoenix has landed, and so we have another unmanned spacecraft on the planet Mars. And once again we are asking the question in very real terms, "Is there life out there?"

Mars is 171 million miles from Earth, and it took the Phoenix module 10 months to get there. Of course, it didn't go in a straight line. It had to travel 425 million miles to arrive at the Red Planet and soft land there on Sunday. Now the real work begins.

We want to learn as much about this close neighbor of ours as possible. Mostly, we want to know if there is (probably not) or ever was (probably so) water on the surface. Because that will tell us if there is (possibly so) or ever was (i am going to say, definitely so) life on this planet.

Can you imagine what kind of uproar it would create if we discovered life on Mars right now? Whoa. We're talking major upheaval here. I mean, what if it turns out that there is so-called "intelligent life" elsewhere in our solar system -- or elsewhere in our galaxy, at least. Or even, if you please, somewhere else in the Universe.

What do you think about this? Do you think it might be so? And what are the implications of this? Have you thought about it? For instance, what would this say about our belief in God? Would our ideas about God suddenly have to get larger? Could we still believe in a God who (to use one example) we think forbids us to marry inter-racially? Or who, we imagine, condemns homosexuality? Or who, we announce, wants us never to use artificial birth control? Or conduct stem cell research? Or who condemns us to everlasting damnation if we are Jewish? Or Muslim? Or Buddhist? Or even Mormon?

If it suddenly becomes clear that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, what do you think that Life Form could tell us if it could ever find a way to communicate with us?

Make a list here of the Ten Things Intelligent Beings From Outer Space Will Tell Us If And When They Arrive and Make Themselves Known Upon the Earth. I'm anxious to see what you come up with. Then I'll comment on your comments. We'll have some fun here...

There is hardly a more controversial subject than God's view of sexuality. What is it, anyway? What does God think of all this? What does God want?

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Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog...a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here's this week's entry...
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Question: Dear Neale: There was one part of CWG where I saw red flags going up, and those were the things said about “going out and enjoying your play thing.” When you look at society and the sad state of affairs that using sex without deep love and commitment has manifested in heartache, violence, and despair, it was hard to figure the reasoning there.

I was a pregnant teenager at seventeen, at eighteen a mother. This fall, that child’s father and I will have been married fifty years. We are among the blessed. The story could have turned out to be another American tragedy. The poor souls who come to earth via the one-night stand and grow up bitter and hungry for a home and love, have changed their outlook on life completely.

Can you comment on this subject? M., Astoria, OR.

Neale's Response: Dear Marian, I do not believe that CWG in any way indicates that sex should be used without a sense of responsibility. It merely states that it should also not be used without a sense of celebration and joy and, yes, playfulness, as life itself is best approached with a good bit of healthy playfulness.

Marian, the point I see the book making is that so many people are embarrassed or ashamed about the experience of sex, and there is no need to be either. I thought God made a telling point when She observed that we think nothing of putting raw violence and wanton killing on our movie and TV screens, but become ardently self-righteous at the appearance of joyful sex. In this we may very well have our priorities a little backwards. It is when we allow society to think better of making love than of making war that we will have at last evolved as a species.

God’s invitation in CwG to celebrate our sexuality is, I think, a wonderful idea. I think we should enjoy the hell out of sex. And I mean that literally. I think we should enjoy the "hell" right out of it.

And speaking of questions, every human being has asked, at one time in his or her life…Why am I here? What is the purpose of all this? What is my function, beyond survival? What happens when this is over? Is it possible for me to happy – truly happy – while I am here? What could make that happen?

Now, in a most unusual program in a most unusual setting (8 days and 7 nights aboard the magnificent cruise ship Oosterdam), your most persistent questions about life and God, the soul’s purpose and about eternity itself, will be explored.

This will not be a lecture or a stand up talk. This will be a quiet, gentle conversation, including some highly focused interchanges with those in the room. The point of this extraordinary dialogue will be to open you to your own highest wisdom and innermost truth, clearing away, at last, any final internal confusion you may have about your reason for being with a body, and connecting you in a profoundly powerful and deeply personal way with the God of your understanding.

I invite you to grab one of the final staterooms available for The Alaskan Conversations with God program, when I will share with you what I consider to be the most significant messages and life-changing revelations of my 10-year conversation with God.

Just follow this link for more info...

http://nealedonaldwalsch.com/cruise.cfm

(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale's personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there and publishes it in this blog.)

NOW, FOR TODAY'S POLITICAL COMMENTARY...

Conversations with God says "politics is your spirituality, demonstrated." Because I know that to be true, I see nothing -- absolutely nothing -- inconsistent in my functioning as a spiritual messenger (we are all that, by the way -- sending a message TO life ABOUT life through the way that we LIVE our life!)...I see nothing inconsistent in my functioning as a spiritual messenger and a political commentator. I know that there are those among my readers who think that one should preclude the other, but I don't agree with them.

Yesterday a nice lady named Phyllis posted this entry in the COMMENTS section of this blogsite...

I don't know if you can hear me on this one. I know you are passionate about electing Senator Barack Obama, but if you could leave the hurtful/hateful comments and accusations about other candidates to the TRULY political bloggers/haters it would be great. I don't know if it's possible.

I would love to know, Phyllis, just exactly what "hurtful/hateful" comments and accusations you are talking about. I have not published a single commentary that would fall into that category -- and, with gentleness and respect, I would challenge you to post here which one or ones you are talking about...

...unless, of course, you mean any commentary that is critical of one candidate or the other. I do not recall writing a single thing that could be considered hurtful, and certainly not hateful, but I sure have said some things that were critical. And now I am going to say another...

Former President Bill Clinton on Monday was talking about his wife's campaign for the Democratic nomination, and he was complaining about the way, to paraphrase him, his wife was being pushed out of the race before it is over. Then he said something that she, herself, has said as well. What's the big rush? Or, as Hillary put it a few days earlier...

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it."

I want and need to point out now that, once again, Hillary & Co. ignore all the facts, and tell only half the story. The REASON that so many top Democrats have been urging Hillary to end this thing already is because the campaign has been going ON for so LONG -- much LONGER than those two other races that Hillary keeps mentioning as having gone into June.

Look at this: Washington Post opinion columnist Eugene Robinson points out...

In 1968, the Democratic race kicked off with the New Hampshire primary on March 12; when Robert Kennedy was killed, the campaign was not quite three months old. In 1992, the first contest was the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 10; by the beginning of June, candidates had been battling for about 3 1/2 months -- and it was clear that Bill Clinton would be the nominee, though he hadn't technically wrapped it up.

This year, the Iowa caucuses were held on Jan. 3, the earliest date ever. Other states scrambled to move their contests up in the calendar as well. When June arrives, the candidates will have been slogging through primaries and caucuses for five full months -- a good deal longer than in those earlier campaign cycles.

And THAT'S the point, Hillary. Comparing this year to those other two years without mentioning that this year's campaign has run on months longer is more than simply disingenuous. It is outright misleading. It is like signing an AGREEMENT that the votes in Michigan and Florida will not count...and then insisting that they SHOULD count, in the name of "true democracy" -- when the truth is, you were ready to dismiss them completely when you thought you were going to have the entire race wrapped up on Super Tuesday...

It was Hillary -- not Barack Obama, but Hillary Clinton -- who told New Hampshire Public Radio last Fall...

"It's clear this election [that Michigan is] having is not going to count for anything. I personally did not think it made any difference whether or not my name was on the ballot."

Now, you be the judge. Is it "hurtful" and "hateful" to publish such stuff? Or is it fair to point out when a person is being hypocritical when it serves their own needs?

As an ABC News commentator put it: "It is as if Barack Obama is on the 99-yard line and in the final moments of the game Clinton wants the football field extended from 100 to 120 yards."

Yes, this is called cheating.

Sorry, that's what it's called. It's called "forget about what I said last Fall. Forget about the Agreement that I signed. None of that serves me now. I want this nomination, and I'll change any words I previously spoke, and demand to change any rule that I previously agreed to, in order to do it!"

That's what this is called. And I am still waiting for a Hillary supporter -- indeed, I am challenging any Hillary supporter -- to tell me in the Comment Section below why Hillary should not be called on her duplicity and her change-the-rules-in-the-middle-of-the-competition demands here.

And Hillary, tell it like IT IS....your husband had the nomination wrapped up three and a half months after the primary campaigning season officially started. Given that we started THIS year's campaign in early January, that would mean you should have gotten out of the race some time in April. Or surely in mid-May. Compare apples and apples, Hillary. I know it hurts, but make a fair comparison. Don't rely on your hope and wish that people will not remember that those earlier campaigns you keep referring to started many weeks later.

People will remember, Hillary...and you will look, once again, like a manipulative person who deliberately misleads. We all know, of course, that you are not that. So why listen to your advisers and allow yourself to look that way...?

The journey of the soul is an endless one, with peace and joy and love as the destination--and with an ability to reach that destination in any moment.

Life goes on around us, and the temptation is to make it all very real. Yet the trick is to be "in this world, but not of it." Observe it, and comment upon it, and even affect it if you choose, but do not believe in it as if it were Ultimate Reality, because it is not.

Yet why bother with it if it is all unreal? That is the question asked by every Student. The Master knows that it is in the Unreality that Reality may be experienced more fully than in Reality Itself--
just as in a darkened room, the light can be experienced more brilliantly. And so, the Unreality becomes a tool, a blessing, a gift from the Divine through which That Which Is Divine may experience Its Own Divinity.

We are encouraged, then, to interact with our world -- this world of our own devise, this circumstance and situation of our own creation -- in a way that allows us to express what we choose of Divinity to experience. We are invited to bring that experience through, in us, as us.

It is sometimes difficult, when you understand this, to become interested in the world, or engaged in it. If it all exists as a Contrasting Element -- much like tracing dye used by the radiologist -- then why get caught up in it at all? That is the same question asked earlier. Let me answer it a different way. The idea is to not get caught up in it. The idea is to move through the world creating, experiencing, and retaining your true identity -- using the world as a tool with which to do so.

The world we live in is an illusion. (For more on this fascinating idea, read The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot.) The idea is to live with the Illusion, but not within it. That is, to use the illusion, much as a magician uses tricks to produce particular outcomes.

What we are living here is a case of mistaken identity. We think we are human beings...but that is just what the physical part of us is. The largest part of us is non-physical. The physical part of us is the tiniest part of us. We take this teenie-tiny part of us and move it through the physical world (which is also, as it happens, the tiniest part of Ultimate Reality) in such a way that we provide for ourselves the Right and Perfect people, places, and circumstances allowing us to announce and declare, express and experience, become and fulfill Who We Really Are.

There is so much more to say on all this. There is so much more to say. For now, allow me to respond to a blog reader who made this entry in the Comments Section here yesterday...

This is my very first time reading your blog and as much as I love you, your books and this site, I am disappointed. I never expected politics. I'm tired of politics. I'm bored with politics. If I want politics there are TOO many places I can go for that. Why are you giving your thought energy to Hillary's behavior here? Like I said, love CWG, don't love politics. XO

Posted by: Linda | May 26, 2008 8:12 AM

Well, Linda, here is why I am offering commentaries on politics here: CwG says, "Politics is your spirituality, demonstrated." As long as we live with the illusion of life as we are co-creating it, we must not act as a magician who has forgotten his own tricks, but rather, as a magician who is making up new tricks as he goes along. In other words, we must create this illusory life as we wish it to be, if we wish it to be a reflection of our highest thoughts about who we are.

Politics is one way to do that. And, within the framework of our current illusion, this is a most important political year in the United States. Perhaps the most important ever. Certainly the most important in decades. The chance for us to create the experience that we call, in human terms, "happiness" for the largest number of people on the earth may well rest on how we play out the political game in the U.S. in the weeks and months ahead.

All any of us wants, when all is said and done, is happiness. That is our natural birthright, we feel, and we are right about that. The question is, within this Grand Illusion, what is the way to produce that? Politics is one way, for sure.

Having said all of that, I am enjoying the idea that the latest CwG book, Happier Than God, is bringing benefit to a great many people around the world. Published just two months ago, it has found a global audience, and the reviews of early readers have been spectacular. Here are three of them, posted recently at Amazon.com:

AWESOME!, May 8, 2008
By Michael Merritt "Redesigned" (United States)
I would recomend this book to everyone. I bought one for my friend and she turned her life around. It helped me a great deal. Buy this book. It is very easy to read and is full of information to help you with your journey in life.

Happier than God, May 20, 2008
By S. Montague (Idaho Falls, Idaho)
I thought it was beyond great. It answered so may question on the power of attraction. Not how it works but how the cycle works. If I am attracting the things I want and doing it right what happens after the thought. What does the universe send me. No more surprise or thinking I did it wrong or it does not work. Now that I know the cycle I can enjoy the process and flow with it.

Law of Attraction is only one Law operating in the Universe, May 11, 2008
By R. L. Farlam (Australia)
Walsch , in his effortlessly conversational style, clarifies confusion surounding all the hype about the law of Attraction from "The Secret" etc. Goes further to reveal & explain the other laws operating in the Universe & how by understanding these & working with them we can be open to embrace the happiness which is our birthright. Easy & enjoyable to read & truly enlightening.

I had to share those with you, because I am inspired and excited by them, and because I don't want you to miss this wonderful book! And I'll see you here tomorrow with a reader Q&A.