December 2008 Archives

On the final day of this year, as the calendar page changes, let us talk more about how we can use spiritual principles to deal with changes in our life.

Yesterday we explored part one of a three-part Change Process derived from the messages in Conversations with God. Today: Part Two.

This second part puts you firmly in command of your experience. You may not have changed anything in your outward reality, but remember, it is the experience of it that we are out to change.

You, and you alone, decide what anything means to you. You, and you alone, get to choose what matters and doesn't matter, what is "good" and what is "bad," what is "okay" and what is "not okay." You, and you alone, get to determine whether you are going to react positively about something or negatively about something--or, interestingly, have no reaction at all. Your emotions are entirely under your control. Your feelings are what you want them to be.

"That's not true!" you may protest. "I don't want to feel bad, I just do." Yet this is not so--and the sooner you understand this, the sooner you will move to mastery in your daily living. You do want to feel bad or you wouldn't. The trick is to look deeply into the moment to see why you want to feel bad. The answer to that question unlocks everything.

To reiterate, you decide, and you alone decide, what something means to you, and how you are going to respond to it. Yet this is a decision that most people make based upon past feelings, experiences, understandings and desires, or future fears, apprehensions, wishes or desires.

None of this has anything to do with what is going on right here, right now.

The idea, as Eckhart Tolle made so brilliantly clear in The Power of NOW, is to stay in the moment. I have come to see the real power in this in my own life.

When I "come from yesterday," I frequently overlay meanings on things that are happening right now that are not in those things inherently, but that I have placed there as a result of a previous thought about them--or about something similar to them--from my past. (Going to the dentist might be a good example.)

When I "come from tomorrow," I overlay an idea about some imagined future (and usually some imagined fear) on the events of today. These future realities may never come to pass (in fact, my life has shown that they rarely do), but what they often do is ruin any chance I had to maximally profit from the experience of the moment.

Only when I get out of my past and stay away from my future can I genuinely experience what's happening right here, right now, within the context of just that: what's actually occurring in the present moment. And--free from the interpretations of the Past and the Future--I can give that occurrence any interpretation I desire.

This was the greatest liberating lesson of my life. When I learned this, I understood at last that my experience of everything that is going on, is going on in my mind. I can stare into the face of events and I can choose to be whatever I wish to be with regard to them. I can be "okay" or I can choose to be "not okay." I can be "happy" or I can choose to be "unhappy," I can be "optimistic" or "fearful," "powerful" or "powerless," "complete" or "incomplete," "destroyed" or "reignited".

The decision is all mine. The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it.

Tomorrow, New Year's Day, I'm off. You take the day off, too! And we'll meet here again on Friday! Oh, and...HAPPY NEW YEAR!

There are many ways to deal with the extraordinary changes that are occurring in people's lives these days. Here is one of them...

It is called The Change Process, and I began to talk about this in this space yesterday. (See yesterday's blog for introductory comments.) I promised that today I would get into this more deeply. So, here goes.

The Change Process is a three-part approach to dealing with change from a spiritual point of view. It emerges from the messages in Conversations with God. Here is Step I...

When facing any life experience there is a formula through which every person may move toward mastery. Simply make the following statements:

1. Nothing in this world is real.
2. The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it.
3. I am who I say I am, and my experience is what I say it is.

This is how to work with the Illusions of Life.

The first statement in the Triad Formula is, for many people, the most difficult to embrace. It proclaims that everything we look at, everything we experience, is unreal. Nothing is actually what we imagine it to be.

This does not mean that it is not there. What it does mean is that it is not "real." That is, it is not "really" what it "looks like." It is not what we assume it to be.

For greater insight into this phenomenon, I suggest reading The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot. This extraordinary book brings us insight, from a scientific point of view, into the make-believe world in which we live.

The statement "Nothing in this world is real" is based in quantum physics - yet it is more than a scientist observation. It is a psychological and spiritual truth as well (a deeply spiritual perspective on this idea will be found in A Course in Miracles, which states: "Nothing I see is real."). Awareness of this truth can be very healing--particularly in times of great trouble or great stress.

If you think that what you are experiencing during times of difficulty is real, you will quite literally make it real in terms of the effect that it has in your life. If, on the other hand, you know that it is unreal and that its effect is simply something you are making up, having no sum or substance whatsoever, you can disappear that effect in a single moment.

Conversations with God says that what you resist persists, and what you look at disappears. That is, it ceases to have its illusory form.

Now if you are thinking that this is very much along the lines of the message of the science fiction movie The Matrix, you are absolutely right. You will remember that, in that film, the characters were depicted as living in a make-believe world, created by their thoughts, and that the lead character, Neo, became a sort of "god" among men by simply training his mind to resist the appearance of things (such as bullets coming at him) and deny their reality.

By literally denying the reality of anything that is now happening to you that you do not wish to have happening, you are, at the very least, going to reduce its negative effects. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a popular Christian minister in the 1940's and 50's, pointed this out in his extraordinary book of fifty years ago, The Power of Positive Thinking. So did author James Allen in his classic, As a Man Thinketh.

Of course, the master teacher Jesus said it directly and perfectly when he declared, "As you believe, so will it be done unto you."

So the first step in The Triad Formula is one of denying the reality of the internal effect on you of anything. This means the so-called "good" as well as the so-called "evil." Now, what is the point of denying the so-called "good" effects?, you may ask.

The answer is that, by looking straight into the face of your greatest joy and calling it what it is--an illusion--you fail to become deeply attached to it. You may continue to enjoy it, but you literally "enjoy the hell out of it." That is, you remove the hell of becoming addicted to your enjoyment of life in one particular form.

It is addiction--to people, to places, and to things--that creates agitation where once there was peace, misery where once there was joy, pain where once there was pleasure, sorrow where once there was happiness. This has never been more clearly described than in the deeply insightful book by Ken Keyes Jr., A Handbook to Higher Consciousness. That book--written by a paraplegic who spent his days in a wheelchair--changed my life forever. It says that you can tell that you are addicted to a person, place, or experience if the absence of that person, place, or experience causes you to lose your happiness.

Published some years ago, A Handbook to Higher Consciousness is still available today. It teaches how to elevate "addictions" to "preferences," and I consider it one of the most extraordinarily insightful books ever written on the subject of human happiness.

It is important to note that by denying the ultimate reality of everything we think, say, and see, we are not necessarily sending it away from us. We are merely re-contextualizing our experience of it, causing ourselves to notice that what we are looking at is an illusion. Only then can we empower ourselves to either (a) allow the illusion to continue, or (b) create the illusion as coming to an end.

So long as we think that what we are experiencing is real, we will imagine ourselves to have no such power to change its effect on us. We will see ourselves as powerless in Life itself, simply moving through the experience and constantly being at the Effect of it.

Denying the ultimate reality of all that we see is, therefore, an extremely powerful and important tool in the Process of Personal Creation.

Now we are ready for part 2. If nothing I see is real, then what does anything mean? That's another very good and fair question, and the answer is: The meaning of everything is the meaning you give it.

And we'll explore more of this tomorrow...

During these days between Christmas and New Year's I would like to share with you an approach to dealing with the many changes that are occurring in our lives during these tumultuous times.

I have developed a way of using the freedom-giving messages in the Conversations with God books, and can be learned very easily.

I have created a tool that I have called The Change Process. It invites you to change your present experience of life by changing your present perspective about life. Nothing in your exterior reality may change, but much in your interior reality will. The Process invites you to consider life-altering new ideas about yourself, about your purpose and the purpose of life in general, about how life functions, and --- perhaps most impacting --- about the reason that things happen and have happened in your life.

Through this simple yet profound shift, you can turn...

- Judgment into Observation
- Reaction into Response
- Fear into Adventure
- Worry into Wonder
- Boredom into Excitement
- Expectation into Anticipation
- Resistance into Acceptance
- Disappointment into Detachment
- Enragement into Engagement
- Addiction into Preference
- Requirement into Contentment
- Lack into Abundance
- Illness into Health
- Loneliness into Connectedness
- Emptiness into Fullness
- Hopelessness into Hopefulness
- Grief into Joy
- Guilt into Innocence
- Failure into Success
- Depression into Appreciation
- Sadness into Happiness
- Shame into Pride

Most wonderful of all, I have seen this process change tears into laughter in 7 minutes.

This become possible because The Change Process opens you to understanding who you are and what is happening around you, all in a new way. And it is about ending any thought you may hold that any negative feelings you are experiencing can only be changed by altering your exterior circumstances. That is simply not true. There is another way.

We'll explore this "other way" here tomorrow. Stay tuned.

In a December 28, 2008 post to his blog, author Neale Donald Walsch posted an essay under his byline that had actually been written by another writer, Candy Chand.

As a result, Mr. Walsch has decided to remove himself from Beliefnet's blogging roster, a decision we support in order to protect the mission and integrity of our site and community. As a faith-based web portal, Beliefnet will continue to hold ourselves and our writers to the highest standards of trust.

And so the holiday is over...and so is Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, such as it was. Two days after Christmas comes news that Israel today struck the Gaza Strip with an attack that has killed at least 170 people--and so, the Terrorists have won again.

The attack was in response to repeated rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, the Israeli military said. It added that the attacks would continue for "as long as it takes." It did not say it takes to do what.

Meanwhile, the militant group Hamas, which controls the government in Gaza, vowed to retaliate for the retaliation, CNN said. And then, no doubt, Israel will retaliate for the retaliation for the retaliation. And then Hamas will retaliate for the retaliation for the retaliation for the retaliation. And so will it go until the global community says "Stop it! For GOD SAKE, STOP IT!!!!!"

Even then it won't stop but for a little while. Hatred, you see, has a long life. Yet one day we will all learn that retaliation is not the answer. Reconciliation is.

Reconciliation, not retaliation, is the only thing that can bring the world to peace. We must reconcile our differences. And we must hear the grievances of those next to us. We must ask, "What hurts you so bad that you feel you need to hurt me in order to heal it?"

This is the question that no -- no one on either side -- wants to ask. Not in Israel or Palestine. Not in India or Pakistan. Not in Los Angeles, where a man dressed as Santa Claus killed eight people on Christmas Eve...

I'm sorry to be getting right back into "stuff" here today...but unless we confront the stuff that is creating the "stuff" we are seeing all around us, we are going to be seeing a great deal more of it. I am so sorry that Israel did not choose to heed the urgent call of President Bush for calm. The Israeli military felt it had to do what all militaries everywhere are trained and poised and funded to do: protect through the use of violence; attack if necessary to protect.

Yet all attack is called Self Defense. That is true in every instance. Every instance. And no attack brings an end to anything--unless that attack is so devasting that it leaves the other side utterly and completely destroyed. Such was the result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Are we headed in the same direction now? Will this next nuclear attack be the beginning of the War to End All Wars?

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