How in a world of illusions how do we get out and face reality?
Monday, December 19, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Why Rick Perry is wrong about Social Security
Why Rick Perry is wrong about Social Security
Read this wonderful article once again pointing out Rick Perry Is An Ass
Read this wonderful article once again pointing out Rick Perry Is An Ass
Saturday, August 20, 2011
My Revision Of The 23rd Pslam
The Lord is my best friend, I shall not want for any of my needs.
He makes me lie down in green pastures to picnic in nature and allow us to talk;
he leads me beside still waters and shows me the beauty of his work;
he restores my soul so that it sings with joy.
He leads me in right paths for his name's sake which one he does not mind.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no thing that I can imagine;
for you are with me and I know you are me;
Our rod and your staff--they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of the many who walketh with you;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the Spirit of the Lord
forever.
aay
He makes me lie down in green pastures to picnic in nature and allow us to talk;
he leads me beside still waters and shows me the beauty of his work;
he restores my soul so that it sings with joy.
He leads me in right paths for his name's sake which one he does not mind.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no thing that I can imagine;
for you are with me and I know you are me;
Our rod and your staff--they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of the many who walketh with you;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the Spirit of the Lord
forever.
aay
Thursday, July 28, 2011
One Entity
“Consider the lowly caterpillar. It is self-evident that the caterpillar and the butterfly live in entirely different worlds, and no one would say that a caterpillar is a butterfly or that a butterfly is a caterpillar. And yet we know that the caterpillar and the butterfly are simply different levels of expression of one entity. The caterpillar can fly, but not as a caterpillar—only as a butterfly. He has the potential, but something has to happen to him. You can do the things Jesus did, but not as the man you now are. Only when you are ‘born anew’ into a higher state of consciousness.”
Who's in hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate
Who's in hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate
By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Tom Breen, Associated Press – Thu Mar 24, 6:10 am ET
Associated Press DURHAM, N.C. – When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.
The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.
Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.
"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."
The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.
Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.
He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."
"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.
In the book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell.
"This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear," he writes in the book.
For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism — a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God. And that, they argue, dangerously misleads people about the reality of the Christian faith.
"I just felt like on every page he's trying to say 'It's OK,'" said Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler at a forum last week on Bell's book held at the Louisville institution. "And there's a sense in which we desperately want to say that. But the question becomes, on what basis can we say that?"
Bell argues that hell has assumed an outsize importance in Christian teaching, considering the word itself only appears in the New Testament about 12 times, by his count.
"For a 1st-century Jewish rabbi, where you go when you die wasn't the most pressing question," Bell told The Associated Press. "The question was how can you enter into the shalom and peace of God right now, this day."
Bell denies he's a universalist, and his exact beliefs on what happens to people after death are hard to pin down, but he argues that such speculation distracts people from an urgent point. In his telling, hell is something freely chosen that already exists on earth, in everything from war to abusive relationships.
The near-relish with which some Christians stress the torments of hell, Bell argues, keep many believers needlessly afraid of a loving God, and repel potential Christians who might otherwise be curious about the faith's teachings.
"The heart of the Christian story is that God is love," he said. "But when you hear the word 'Christian,' you don't necessarily think 'Oh, sure, those are the people who don't stop talking about God's love.' Some other things would come to mind."
About the only thing everyone agrees on is that this is not a new debate in Christianity. It stretches to antiquity, when Christianity was a persecuted sect in the Roman Empire, and the third century theologian Origen developed a theory that contemporary critics charged would mean that everyone, even the devil himself, would ultimately be saved. Church leaders eventually condemned ideas they attributed to Origen, but he has had a lasting influence across the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions.
Those traditions often disagree, even internally, on what awaits souls after death. The Catholic Church, which has a formal process for identifying souls in heaven through canonization, pointedly refrains from saying that anyone is without a doubt in hell. Protestants reject the concept of purgatory, in which sins can be atoned for after death, but disagree on other questions. The lack of consensus is enabled partly by ambiguities in the Bible.
Evangelical opposition to Bell is exemplified in a succinct tweet from prominent evangelical pastor John Piper: "Farewell, Rob Bell."
Page Brooks, a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks Bell errs in a conception of a loving God that leaves out the divine attributes of justice and holiness.
"It's love, but it's a just love," Brooks said. "God is love, but you have to understand you're a sinner and the only way to get around that is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross."
Making his new belief public is both liberating and a little frightening for Holtz, even though his doubts about traditional doctrines on damnation began long before he heard about Rob Bell's book.
A married Navy veteran with five children, Holtz spent years trying to reconcile his belief that Jesus Christ's death on the cross redeemed the entire world with the idea that millions of people — including millions who had never even heard of Jesus — were suffering forever in hell.
"We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in," he said. "But confronting my own sinfulness, that's when things started to topple for me. Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren't?"
Gray Southern, United Methodist district superintendent for the part of North Carolina that includes Henderson, declined to discuss Holtz's departure in detail, but said there was more to it than the online post about Rob Bell's book.
"That's between the church and him," Southern said.
Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.
"So long as we believe there's a dividing point in eternity, we're going to think in terms of us and them," he said. "But when you believe God has saved everyone, the point is, you're saved. Live like it."
By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Tom Breen, Associated Press – Thu Mar 24, 6:10 am ET
Associated Press DURHAM, N.C. – When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.
The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.
Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.
"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."
The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.
Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.
He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."
"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.
In the book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell.
"This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear," he writes in the book.
For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism — a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God. And that, they argue, dangerously misleads people about the reality of the Christian faith.
"I just felt like on every page he's trying to say 'It's OK,'" said Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler at a forum last week on Bell's book held at the Louisville institution. "And there's a sense in which we desperately want to say that. But the question becomes, on what basis can we say that?"
Bell argues that hell has assumed an outsize importance in Christian teaching, considering the word itself only appears in the New Testament about 12 times, by his count.
"For a 1st-century Jewish rabbi, where you go when you die wasn't the most pressing question," Bell told The Associated Press. "The question was how can you enter into the shalom and peace of God right now, this day."
Bell denies he's a universalist, and his exact beliefs on what happens to people after death are hard to pin down, but he argues that such speculation distracts people from an urgent point. In his telling, hell is something freely chosen that already exists on earth, in everything from war to abusive relationships.
The near-relish with which some Christians stress the torments of hell, Bell argues, keep many believers needlessly afraid of a loving God, and repel potential Christians who might otherwise be curious about the faith's teachings.
"The heart of the Christian story is that God is love," he said. "But when you hear the word 'Christian,' you don't necessarily think 'Oh, sure, those are the people who don't stop talking about God's love.' Some other things would come to mind."
About the only thing everyone agrees on is that this is not a new debate in Christianity. It stretches to antiquity, when Christianity was a persecuted sect in the Roman Empire, and the third century theologian Origen developed a theory that contemporary critics charged would mean that everyone, even the devil himself, would ultimately be saved. Church leaders eventually condemned ideas they attributed to Origen, but he has had a lasting influence across the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions.
Those traditions often disagree, even internally, on what awaits souls after death. The Catholic Church, which has a formal process for identifying souls in heaven through canonization, pointedly refrains from saying that anyone is without a doubt in hell. Protestants reject the concept of purgatory, in which sins can be atoned for after death, but disagree on other questions. The lack of consensus is enabled partly by ambiguities in the Bible.
Evangelical opposition to Bell is exemplified in a succinct tweet from prominent evangelical pastor John Piper: "Farewell, Rob Bell."
Page Brooks, a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks Bell errs in a conception of a loving God that leaves out the divine attributes of justice and holiness.
"It's love, but it's a just love," Brooks said. "God is love, but you have to understand you're a sinner and the only way to get around that is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross."
Making his new belief public is both liberating and a little frightening for Holtz, even though his doubts about traditional doctrines on damnation began long before he heard about Rob Bell's book.
A married Navy veteran with five children, Holtz spent years trying to reconcile his belief that Jesus Christ's death on the cross redeemed the entire world with the idea that millions of people — including millions who had never even heard of Jesus — were suffering forever in hell.
"We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in," he said. "But confronting my own sinfulness, that's when things started to topple for me. Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren't?"
Gray Southern, United Methodist district superintendent for the part of North Carolina that includes Henderson, declined to discuss Holtz's departure in detail, but said there was more to it than the online post about Rob Bell's book.
"That's between the church and him," Southern said.
Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.
"So long as we believe there's a dividing point in eternity, we're going to think in terms of us and them," he said. "But when you believe God has saved everyone, the point is, you're saved. Live like it."
WHAT WOULD LOVE DO NOW
NealeDWalsch:
What would Love do now? This is a marvelous question. It washes away all doubt. It bathes the mind with the wisdom of the soul.
Making a decision from the standpoint of Love means I am looking at everything through the eyes of God.
For God is Love and Love Is All There Is.
What would Love do now? This is a marvelous question. It washes away all doubt. It bathes the mind with the wisdom of the soul.
Making a decision from the standpoint of Love means I am looking at everything through the eyes of God.
For God is Love and Love Is All There Is.
I Have Received
If you have faith when you pray, you will be given whatever you ask for Mat 21:22
I use to beileve that these words were false...I came to understand not only were my desires manifested but, they were abundantly given. The key to understanding this scriptural passage is to focus in faith on the outcome of prayer being realized.
It is in this state that all of our dreams can become our reality.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
There comes a time when all that's left is God...
Welcome Message From Neale
There comes a time when all that's left is God...
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
There comes a time when all that's left is God...
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
Alway's
@DeepakChopra: #CosmicConsciousness No matter what the situation there is a choice Shared via TweetCaster
There Is Never Time I don't have a choice...
There Is Never Time I don't have a choice...
I Am All
@_NealeDWalsch: You are without needs. There is nothing that you need in order to be perfectly happy. You only think that there is. Shared via TweetCaster
God has given me everything I just have to acknowledge Truth....
God has given me everything I just have to acknowledge Truth....
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Just What Is It That GOD Is Saying?
@FamousWomen: Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. -Diana Robinson
God has not been hiding...God Is All. We don't hear because we choose not to. It really is that simple, for all we ask God Always say's Yes. That bears repeating...For all our requests God say's Yes. Only when we walk as One do we see it.
For when we assume to be seperate from each other we are actually trying to seperate from God...and that my dear children is impossible. Guidance on Our Journey brings us to one another and then the answer is the same...What Would Love Do Next?
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Love Truly Is All There Is
On 7-17-77 A journey began that will never end for Love is Eternal.
When we are in the daily remembrance of life's journey we sometimes don't notice the perfection of each moment. In reflection of those times I receive comfort.
Throughout our life together we experienced many emotions, joys and sadness...yet love never waned. That is the experience we take on Our Eternal Journey.
I have many,many loving wonderful memories and experiences of Our life together...I also have this very moment of Patricia's presence to know that she has found the wonderment of life after life.
On any given moment she is with all of us...And that there is the beauty of Love. Our journey together never ever ends...I Love You My Lady With The Moon & Stars In Your Eyes...I always called you that and it will never end...Just Like OUR LOVE.
When we are in the daily remembrance of life's journey we sometimes don't notice the perfection of each moment. In reflection of those times I receive comfort.
Throughout our life together we experienced many emotions, joys and sadness...yet love never waned. That is the experience we take on Our Eternal Journey.
I have many,many loving wonderful memories and experiences of Our life together...I also have this very moment of Patricia's presence to know that she has found the wonderment of life after life.
On any given moment she is with all of us...And that there is the beauty of Love. Our journey together never ever ends...I Love You My Lady With The Moon & Stars In Your Eyes...I always called you that and it will never end...Just Like OUR LOVE.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Please Let's Live This Way
The Color Of Friendship
Author Unknown
Once upon a time the colors of the world started to quarrel. All claimed that they were the best. The most important. The most useful. The favorite.
Green said:
"Clearly I am the most important. I am the sign of life and of hope. I was chosen for grass, trees and leaves. Without me, all animals would die. Look over the countryside and you will see that I am in the majority."
Blue interrupted:
"You only think about the earth, but consider the sky and the sea. It is the water that is the basis of life and drawn up by the clouds from the deep sea. The sky gives space and peace and serenity. Without my peace, you would all be nothing."
Yellow chuckled:
"You are all so serious. I bring laughter, gaiety, and warmth into the world. The sun is yellow, the moon is yellow, the stars are yellow. Every time you look at a sunflower, the whole world starts to smile. Without me there would be no fun."
Orange started next to blow her trumpet:
"I am the color of health and strength. I may be scarce, but I am precious for I serve the needs of human life. I carry the most important vitamins. Think of carrots, pumpkins, oranges, mangoes, and papayas. I don't hang around all the time, but when I fill the sky at sunrise or sunset, my beauty is so striking that no one gives another thought to any of you."
Red could stand it no longer he shouted out:
"I am the ruler of all of you. I am blood - life's blood! I am the color of danger and of bravery. I am willing to fight for a cause. I bring fire into the blood. Without me, the earth would be as empty as the moon. I am the color of passion and of love, the red rose, the poinsettia and the poppy."
Purple rose up to his full height:
He was very tall and spoke with great pomp: "I am the color of royalty and power. Kings, chiefs, and bishops have always chosen me for I am the sign of authority and wisdom. People do not question me! They listen and obey."
Indigo spoke, more quietly than others, but with determination:
"Think of me. I am the color of silence. You hardly notice me, but without me you all become superficial. I represent thought and reflection, twilight and deep water. You need me for balance and contrast, for prayer and inner peace."
And so the colors went on boasting, each convinced of his or her own superiority. Their quarreling became louder and louder. Suddenly there was a startling flash of bright lightening thunder rolled and boomed. Rain started to pour down relentlessly. The colors crouched down in fear, drawing close to one another for comfort.
In the midst of the clamor, God began to speak:
"You foolish colors, fighting amongst yourselves, each trying to dominate the rest. Don't you know that you were each made for a special purpose, unique and different? Join hands with one another and come to me."
Doing as they were told, the colors united and joined hands.
God continued:
"From now on, when it rains, each of you will stretch across the sky in a great bow of color as a reminder that you can all live in peace. The Rainbow is a sign of hope for tomorrow." And so, whenever a good rain washes the world, and a Rainbow appears in the sky, let us remember to appreciate one another.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
It Start's In The Heart
"I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words"
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)
True unity, brotherhood and sisterhood happens one (1) heart at a time...each time we see each other as one we take a step closer to true unity.,And unity is all there is. For we were never meant to be seperate. The goal was alway's for us to be together and to love all there is. Experience unity and then you experience Oneness with All There Is.
SagesScientists Chopra Foundation
by DeepakChopra
Your heart is a spiritual center where the sense of "I am" resides. This is the seed of inspiration from which all possibilities flow.
I am unity I am peace therefore I am
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)
True unity, brotherhood and sisterhood happens one (1) heart at a time...each time we see each other as one we take a step closer to true unity.,And unity is all there is. For we were never meant to be seperate. The goal was alway's for us to be together and to love all there is. Experience unity and then you experience Oneness with All There Is.
SagesScientists Chopra Foundation
by DeepakChopra
Your heart is a spiritual center where the sense of "I am" resides. This is the seed of inspiration from which all possibilities flow.
I am unity I am peace therefore I am
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Peace Is The Only Answer
"Everyone who hopes for peace must be peacful otherwise it is not truly their goal." aay
World peace is created through changing human consciousness.Spiritpeace prize
Every year we will give a peace prize to a single person, group or organization that has distinguished itself through using spiritual awareness and consciousness for making the world a more harmonic and peaceful place.
The peace prize is 50 000,- nkr.
The first winner of this award is Neale Donald Walsch, author of all the books in the “Conversations with God”- series, and a renowned speaker all over the world. The prize was given to him in Bergen, Norway on September 18th 2009 in front of 600 people (pictures).
For information about Neale Donald Walsch you can visit his website:
http//www.nealedonaldwalsch.com
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
I Will Do My Part
What a bunch of boneheads...They can't decide what to do about 9 Billion Dollars. This is when I look at NFL rosters and see the colleges they attended and I wonder what skills from their education they are using...The answer NONE. Donate it to Japan They Need The Help the players know their time is limited and they are subject to life threatning injury and even death.,But those are the decisions you made out of college (fully educated of course) These guy's make more money in six (6) month's than many will make in a lifetime...And it's not just the NFL it's most of professional sport's...My decided action is to cut back on sporting event's even TV...boycott the advertiser's and write letter's to all sport's organization's and player's pointing out society need's in our world where their money can help...
Arrogance unnecessarily jeopardizes ’11 season
By Les Carpenter, Yahoo! Sports
Mar 11, 8:44 pm EST
The sad thing about the NFL Players Association’s decertification and the courtroom tempests that are sure to follow is there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the most lucrative sports league in the world.
Sure, NFL players don’t have guaranteed contracts, and the league and union have never done enough to provide for its former stars who took beatings on the field as the sport’s popularity blossomed. But these are not issues at the heart of the dispute between the NFL and the players’ union. The players have long ceded the hammer to the league on contract issues with their refusals to stick together on strikes. As one former player rep once told me 10 years ago: “I’ve got a family. If we had a strike I would seriously consider crossing [the picket line].”
The tradeoff was a general period of peace in which the bonuses paid to players steadily rose and the owners got richer too with sweetheart stadium deals and television contracts too fantastic to be true. Aside from the possible addition of a rookie wage scale that all of America probably believes should be implemented, there is little else in the negotiations that changes the way the NFL is run. Regardless of what comes out of court rulings in the next few months, the players will still get big bonuses without guaranteed contracts and the owners will continue to get rich.
In the end, the only reason to potentially blow up the season was hubris. Once more, the arrogance of the NFL’s owners rose with their refusal to completely open their books. And the union, which has always operated more like a big business than a benevolent representative of the players’ interests, walked away in a snit.
It is for this we might not have football this year.
Aside from the player safety issue surrounding the 18-game season discussion, there is no long-term structural good that was going to come from these labor negotiations. The primary issue was always how two parties could split $1 billion in particular of the overall $9 billion pie. And while $1 billion is an awful lot of money, the math should not have been difficult in a league where so many people are getting rich.
What’s going on in the NFL is nothing like what happened six years ago in the NHL where the union fought the creation of a salary cap or in Major League Baseball’s many strikes where the union repeatedly showed its resolve. In a few months the NBA will embark upon a labor dispute that will challenge the framework of the entire league. As one team executive recently said: “[NBA commissioner] David Stern is going to break the players and then when he’s broken them he’s going to break them some more.”
The NFL does not face such issues. The union long ago lost the war when it agreed to a hard salary cap – anything it does now is about proving to the players that it can keep delivering a few more dollars each season. And commissioner Roger Goodell has the respect of his owners, so he doesn’t need to prove himself the way Stern must to his uneasy constituency.
Again and again NFL executives have said in the past few months they would be shocked if a deal didn’t get done given the fact that the NFL is a league in which everyone is doing well financially. But in recent weeks it became clear that old turf was being protected for seemingly no good reason. After a time it appeared the NFLPA’s executive director DeMaurice Smith had made such a deal about seeing the owners’ financial information that anything which didn’t include a full combing of every team’s books would be a humiliating defeat for him.
Of course it is clear to see why the NFLPA would want to examine the teams’ records. As with all professional sports operations, there is certain to be decent cash flow to even the poorest of clubs and examples of the nepotism that is always so rife in such organizations. The release of several baseball teams’ books to the website Deadspin was devastating in its accounting of opulence even as those teams cried poverty.
Smith after the breaking off of Friday’s talks.
(Alex Brandon/AP Photo)
Still, there is little for NFL teams to lose in opening their records. A few years ago the owner of one of the league’s more financially-challenged teams told me “teams don’t generate that much revenue from year-to-year, you make your money when you sell your franchise.”
The owner begged his name not be used for the obvious reason of angering his brethren, but his point was clear: In the lucrative NFL, with its hard salary cap, every team – regardless of relative wealth – could be sold for something close to $1 billion (higher revenue-generating teams like the Redskins and Eagles for even more). And with movements looming at the end of this labor deal to get a team in Los Angeles and expand the game’s exposure internationally, the television deals are only going to get bigger and franchise values are only going to rise.
Ultimately, the harm of letting the union see each team’s books is smaller than the nuclear option everyone now faces, with the months of suits and counter suits and the threat of a work stoppage.
But that was never the issue here. They’re blowing everything up at a time when there’s still so much money to be made.
What else could it be?
Hubris.
And the season sits in jeopardy.
Arrogance unnecessarily jeopardizes ’11 season
By Les Carpenter, Yahoo! Sports
Mar 11, 8:44 pm EST
The sad thing about the NFL Players Association’s decertification and the courtroom tempests that are sure to follow is there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the most lucrative sports league in the world.
Sure, NFL players don’t have guaranteed contracts, and the league and union have never done enough to provide for its former stars who took beatings on the field as the sport’s popularity blossomed. But these are not issues at the heart of the dispute between the NFL and the players’ union. The players have long ceded the hammer to the league on contract issues with their refusals to stick together on strikes. As one former player rep once told me 10 years ago: “I’ve got a family. If we had a strike I would seriously consider crossing [the picket line].”
The tradeoff was a general period of peace in which the bonuses paid to players steadily rose and the owners got richer too with sweetheart stadium deals and television contracts too fantastic to be true. Aside from the possible addition of a rookie wage scale that all of America probably believes should be implemented, there is little else in the negotiations that changes the way the NFL is run. Regardless of what comes out of court rulings in the next few months, the players will still get big bonuses without guaranteed contracts and the owners will continue to get rich.
In the end, the only reason to potentially blow up the season was hubris. Once more, the arrogance of the NFL’s owners rose with their refusal to completely open their books. And the union, which has always operated more like a big business than a benevolent representative of the players’ interests, walked away in a snit.
It is for this we might not have football this year.
Aside from the player safety issue surrounding the 18-game season discussion, there is no long-term structural good that was going to come from these labor negotiations. The primary issue was always how two parties could split $1 billion in particular of the overall $9 billion pie. And while $1 billion is an awful lot of money, the math should not have been difficult in a league where so many people are getting rich.
What’s going on in the NFL is nothing like what happened six years ago in the NHL where the union fought the creation of a salary cap or in Major League Baseball’s many strikes where the union repeatedly showed its resolve. In a few months the NBA will embark upon a labor dispute that will challenge the framework of the entire league. As one team executive recently said: “[NBA commissioner] David Stern is going to break the players and then when he’s broken them he’s going to break them some more.”
The NFL does not face such issues. The union long ago lost the war when it agreed to a hard salary cap – anything it does now is about proving to the players that it can keep delivering a few more dollars each season. And commissioner Roger Goodell has the respect of his owners, so he doesn’t need to prove himself the way Stern must to his uneasy constituency.
Again and again NFL executives have said in the past few months they would be shocked if a deal didn’t get done given the fact that the NFL is a league in which everyone is doing well financially. But in recent weeks it became clear that old turf was being protected for seemingly no good reason. After a time it appeared the NFLPA’s executive director DeMaurice Smith had made such a deal about seeing the owners’ financial information that anything which didn’t include a full combing of every team’s books would be a humiliating defeat for him.
Of course it is clear to see why the NFLPA would want to examine the teams’ records. As with all professional sports operations, there is certain to be decent cash flow to even the poorest of clubs and examples of the nepotism that is always so rife in such organizations. The release of several baseball teams’ books to the website Deadspin was devastating in its accounting of opulence even as those teams cried poverty.
Smith after the breaking off of Friday’s talks.
(Alex Brandon/AP Photo)
Still, there is little for NFL teams to lose in opening their records. A few years ago the owner of one of the league’s more financially-challenged teams told me “teams don’t generate that much revenue from year-to-year, you make your money when you sell your franchise.”
The owner begged his name not be used for the obvious reason of angering his brethren, but his point was clear: In the lucrative NFL, with its hard salary cap, every team – regardless of relative wealth – could be sold for something close to $1 billion (higher revenue-generating teams like the Redskins and Eagles for even more). And with movements looming at the end of this labor deal to get a team in Los Angeles and expand the game’s exposure internationally, the television deals are only going to get bigger and franchise values are only going to rise.
Ultimately, the harm of letting the union see each team’s books is smaller than the nuclear option everyone now faces, with the months of suits and counter suits and the threat of a work stoppage.
But that was never the issue here. They’re blowing everything up at a time when there’s still so much money to be made.
What else could it be?
Hubris.
And the season sits in jeopardy.
Monday, March 07, 2011
I Am What I Think
“ If you are being sad, and you think positive, joyful thoughts, you will very easily `think your way` to being happy. You can move to any state of being you wish at any moment, instantly, by simply knowing it to be so, and declaring it to be so. ”
- Friendship with God p 251
When I use my mind to explore the infinite possibilities of this world I am not a prisoner in any place or by anyone…For Love is Freedom unbound and limitless.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
We Leave No One Behind When We Die
We leave no one 'behind' when we die!
The good news and the incredible news is that we do not leave beloved ones behind. And so, there is no emotional pain involved in death for the Soul that has died. When we die, we meet our "still living" loved ones on the Other Side - where the largest part of them exists in the place of No Time/No Space.
A truth that religions do not teach us is this: We exist simultaneously on both sides of the veil that separates the Realm of the Physical from the Realm of the Spiritual. We divide ourselves in order to experience the Realm of the Physical, we do not leave the Spiritual Realm.
Leaving the Spiritual Realm is not necessary for us to experience ourselves as Who We Really Are. We simply send a Part of Ourselves into the physical world, collecting and coalescing a portion of our Soul Energy in a particular location of Here and Now, in order to identify as who we are to be in any given life.
What actually happens at the moment of death
When we do the thing called "die" we simply Dissipate Identifying Energies (DIE), flowing our Essence once again back into the Whole Soul and the One Identity that we are.
There, waiting for us on the Other Side when we pass, are the Whole Souls of all those we have loved - in this lifetime and in all lifetimes. These Whole Souls have the ability to coalesce themselves into any shape or form they wish...and they do so...assuming the shape of the beloved ones that we have just left in the Physical Realm.
We recognize these Souls at once, of course! And we laugh and dance with joy at the immediate knowing that we never left each other at all - and never will, for WE ARE All ONE, existing always and all ways in the eternal glory of the Singularization Of Unified life (S-O-U-L) that is God knowing Itself!
Love and Hugs,
The good news and the incredible news is that we do not leave beloved ones behind. And so, there is no emotional pain involved in death for the Soul that has died. When we die, we meet our "still living" loved ones on the Other Side - where the largest part of them exists in the place of No Time/No Space.
A truth that religions do not teach us is this: We exist simultaneously on both sides of the veil that separates the Realm of the Physical from the Realm of the Spiritual. We divide ourselves in order to experience the Realm of the Physical, we do not leave the Spiritual Realm.
Leaving the Spiritual Realm is not necessary for us to experience ourselves as Who We Really Are. We simply send a Part of Ourselves into the physical world, collecting and coalescing a portion of our Soul Energy in a particular location of Here and Now, in order to identify as who we are to be in any given life.
What actually happens at the moment of death
When we do the thing called "die" we simply Dissipate Identifying Energies (DIE), flowing our Essence once again back into the Whole Soul and the One Identity that we are.
There, waiting for us on the Other Side when we pass, are the Whole Souls of all those we have loved - in this lifetime and in all lifetimes. These Whole Souls have the ability to coalesce themselves into any shape or form they wish...and they do so...assuming the shape of the beloved ones that we have just left in the Physical Realm.
We recognize these Souls at once, of course! And we laugh and dance with joy at the immediate knowing that we never left each other at all - and never will, for WE ARE All ONE, existing always and all ways in the eternal glory of the Singularization Of Unified life (S-O-U-L) that is God knowing Itself!
Love and Hugs,
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Indian 10 Commandments
Such a simplistic outlook on our world will restore us to the self sustaining planet that God created for us to live in.
Treat the Earth and all that dwell therein with respect
Remain close to the Great Spirit
Show great respect for your fellow beings
Work together for the benefit of all Mankind
Give assistance and kindness wherever needed
Do what you know to be right
Look after the well-being of Mind and Body
Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater Good
Be truthful and honest at all times
Take full responsibility for your actions
Treat the Earth and all that dwell therein with respect
Remain close to the Great Spirit
Show great respect for your fellow beings
Work together for the benefit of all Mankind
Give assistance and kindness wherever needed
Do what you know to be right
Look after the well-being of Mind and Body
Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater Good
Be truthful and honest at all times
Take full responsibility for your actions
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Quotes
They become soundbites…people say oh yeah that’s inspiring.,But they are statements about life…life in the here and now. Practical bit’s of wisdom that can change you and the outcome of lives that you touch…
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
From The Paradoxical Commandments, by Dr. Kent M. Keith. Mother Teresa quoted this often.
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
From The Paradoxical Commandments, by Dr. Kent M. Keith. Mother Teresa quoted this often.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Welcome Message From Neale - My Mentor
There comes a time when all that's left is God...
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
^ Top
Neale's Story
Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.
Neale began his journey in the most ordinary way. Overstressed and overextended by modern day life when the options ran out and frustration reached its peak, he turned to God. Desperate questions scratched on a legal pad in the middle of a long, sleepless night, began a precious dialogue which changed Neale's life forever and eventually changed the lives of millions. This process began over 10 years ago and became the much loved Conversations with God Series.
Today the books have been translated into 37 languages, and Book One remains to this day in the 100 top selling spiritual books on Amazon.com.
In addition to bring through the extraordinary With God series, Neale has authored 16 other works, as well as a number of video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, each of the first five CwG dialogue books has made the New York Times Bestseller list, Conversations with God-Book 1 occupying that list for over two and half years.
The With God Series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale joined with loved ones and friends to create the ReCreation Foundation, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.
Neale's work has taken him from the steps of Macchu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter's Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in China. And everywhere he has gone-from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul, Neale has found a hunger among people to create a way to live, at last, in peace and harmony. He has sought to bring men and women in every culture a new understanding of God and of Life which would allow them to experience that.
Neale was born into a Roman Catholic family living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His first spiritual teacher was his mother, who taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the Divine. She taught Neale to do the same. A non-traditional believer, Neale's mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale, "I don't have to go to church-God comes to me. He's with me and around me wherever I am." This view of God in his childhood would open Neale fully as an adult to transcend the traditional views of organized religion and bring to the world the message found in Conversations with God.
An insatiably curious child, Neale's comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom far beyond his years, and caused relatives and family friends to often ask, "where does he come up with this stuff?" While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in Catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum. Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer questions. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum where Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality-and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.
By the age of 15, Neale's involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin reading a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people got involved in religion they seemed less joyful and more angry, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that the collective experience of theology was not positive.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.
Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director, a newspaper reporter and, ultimately, managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation's largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil and his health was going rapidly downhill.
He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scene strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of scene. It produced a change in his entire life. A car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path, Neale emerging from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.
Over a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn't keep even the small apartment he'd rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a syndicated radio talk show host.
He had seen the bottom of life, living in the weather, gathering beer and soda cans in the park to collect the return deposit-but now he seemed to be on a roll again. Yet, once more Neale felt an emptiness in his life. In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. "What does it take," he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, "to make life work?"
Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a Divine answer. Neale says that he heard a voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.
More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same soft voice, which now seemed placed inside his head. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue. He continued this first "conversation" for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad. Neale's handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says the process was "exactly like taking dictation," and that the dialogue created in this way was published without alteration or editing.
In July, 2005 Neale completed the final CwG dialogue book, HOME WITH GOD in a Life that Never Ends. The book covers areas never before discussed in any of the previous CwG texts, of which there are nine, including Conversations with God-Book 1, Conversations with God-Book 2, Conversations with God-Book 3, Friendship with God, Communion with God, The New Revelations, Tomorrow's God, and What God Wants.
In 2008 he published Happier Than God, a spiritual, God-centered answer to The Secret, a movie-and-book that spoke of how humans have the power to create their own reality...but said virtually nothing about God's role in that process. In 2009 Neale released his groundbreaking work, When Everything Changes, Change Everything, which integrates modern psychology with contemporary spirituality in a new mix offering never-before available tools for emotional healing and spiritual growth, including the Mechanics of the Mind and the System of the Soul. He called this the WECCE Technology.
In 2001 Neale founded Humanity's Team, which he has described as a worldwide civil rights movement for a soul (HumanitysTeam.com). In 2005 he began work on making available throughout the world an education program for young children, creating The School of the New Spirituality (SchoolOfTheNewSpirituality.com).
Neale now offers three private programs of personal interaction with those who have read Conversations with God and would like to delve further into the material: The Messenger Tutoring Program (which helps people become teachers of this material), The Spiritual Mentoring Program (which seeks to assist people in finishing their Unfinished Business so that they can get on with their lives in a joyful and spiritually enriching way), and The Homecoming, where just 12 people remain in residence with Neale in his own home for five days and talk about everything they've ever wanted to know about CwG, the experience and the message. Information of this and more may be found at Neale's personal website: NealeDonaldWalsch.com.
^ Top
It happens in most people's lives more than once. It is that moment when you feel totally and completely isolated. It's that time when you feel, not that no one is hearing you, but that there is no one to hear you. You are really all alone. There is no one else, even when there is someone else in the room. There is nothing more, even when there is plenty more all around. There is only you, even when the world surrounds you. Perhaps especially when the world surrounds you, there is only you.
Yes, there comes a time when all that's left is God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else calls to you, magnetizes you, demands your attention---or is even worthy of it.
This time comes, it seems to me, either when you have nothing or when you have everything. This moment arrives when everything else has been taken from you and there is nothing left, or when everything has been given to you and there is nothing more you could possibly want.
When this moment arrives, it is a great relief. It is a release, a letting go. And yet, for many of us, there is still a tiny part of our being that yearns for the single thing that so many of us have never had: complete acceptance and unconditional love.
Somebody love me just the way I am.
We have not been able to find that in another. We thought we could find it in another, we hoped that we could find it in another, but we cannot. We cannot even find it in ourselves. And because we cannot find it in ourselves, we cannot give it to another-and that is why we cannot find it there. For we cannot find anywhere what we have not placed anywhere, and we have not placed complete acceptance and unconditional love anywhere. We cannot even be okay with the weather, for goodness sake. We can find something to complain about around everything.
And so, we seek what is not there, for everything we seek to find in life must have been placed there by us. If we have not placed it, we cannot find it. What we do not place into life, we do not find, because we are the Only Source There Is.
If we cannot find forgiveness in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find compassion in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find tolerance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find mercy in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find peace in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. If we cannot find acceptance in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there. And if we cannot find love in our lives, it is because we have not placed it there.
All these things we must place into Life. First, into our own life, then into the life of another. Or, for some, it is the other way around. I want to say for most of us it is the other way around. For most of us, it is nearly impossible to give ourselves what we most want to receive: forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love.
Most of us cannot give these things to ourselves because we know too much about ourselves. We think ourselves to be unworthy of these things. We imagine ourselves to be something other than what we really are. We cannot see the Divinity that Divinity Itself has placed in us. We cannot see the Innocence. We cannot see the Perfection in our imperfection.
Because we cannot see these things in ourselves, we cannot give ourselves what we most want to receive. Yet, because we are not totally blind to what is good and worthy in the world, we are often able to see these things in others. We can often see Divinity in others. We can often see Innocence in others. We can often even see Perfection in the imperfection of others. And so we can give others forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We can, but the question is, will we?
Too often, we do not. Because of our own wounds, we cannot heal the wounds of others. And so we deny our world the things our world needs the most. We deny our world forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. And when we deny these to our world, we deny these to ourselves---for what we have not placed into the world, we cannot receive from the world. Again, let the New Golden Rule be repeated:
What we have not placed into the world,
we cannot receive from the world.
There comes a time when we realize that we are the Only Source There Is. No one is going to give to us or to the world what we are unable to get to the world, and thus to ourselves. Not for very long.
The first place we find this out is in relationship with another. What we are unable or unwilling to give to another, we will not receive from the other. Not for very long. If we cannot give the person across the room forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love... we cannot look to the person across the room to give these things to us. For they only have to give what we have given them.
We imagine in relationship that the other person has what we do not have, and therefore, that they can supply it to us. This is the great illusion. This is a great mistake. This is the great misunderstanding. And this is the reason why so many relationships fail. We imagine that the other is going to supply us with forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. We imagine that the other is going to supply us what we cannot supply to them, and what we cannot even give to ourselves. And then we become angry with the other. And then we become angry with ourselves. And then...
... we realize that there's nothing left but God. We turn, then, to God. Please God, give me forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, mercy, peace, acceptance, and love. Please give it to me, so that I may give it to others.
The world is rapidly approaching this turning point. We are coming to understand that God is the Only and Original Source. Now all that we need to do is understand, as well, that there is no separation between God and us. When we grasp at last this foundational understanding, when we embrace, finally, this basic truth, we will change ourselves, change our relationships, and change the world.
Until then, we will not. And we will wait for that moment when we realize....that there's nothing left but God. Hopefully, we will arrive at that moment before we create it...in the most crude of ways possible: by destroying everything else until there is nothing left. By destroying our relationship until there is nothing left. By destroying our world until there is nothing left. By destroying ourselves until there is nothing left.
Conversations with God contains a startling statement. It is something I've never forgotten. God said, "It is not necessary to go through hell in order to get to heaven." I invite us all to remember that on this day. I invite us all to embrace a new notion about ourselves and about life: not that there's nothing left but God, but that there's nothing but God.
When we see God in every other person and in every other thing, then we will have dropped our illusions, we will have stepped aside from our childish imaginings, and we will treat everything and everyone as if it, she, or he is Divine. And if you don't think that will change your life and your world, think again.
Neale Donald Walsch
^ Top
Neale's Story
Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.
Neale began his journey in the most ordinary way. Overstressed and overextended by modern day life when the options ran out and frustration reached its peak, he turned to God. Desperate questions scratched on a legal pad in the middle of a long, sleepless night, began a precious dialogue which changed Neale's life forever and eventually changed the lives of millions. This process began over 10 years ago and became the much loved Conversations with God Series.
Today the books have been translated into 37 languages, and Book One remains to this day in the 100 top selling spiritual books on Amazon.com.
In addition to bring through the extraordinary With God series, Neale has authored 16 other works, as well as a number of video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, each of the first five CwG dialogue books has made the New York Times Bestseller list, Conversations with God-Book 1 occupying that list for over two and half years.
The With God Series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale joined with loved ones and friends to create the ReCreation Foundation, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.
Neale's work has taken him from the steps of Macchu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter's Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in China. And everywhere he has gone-from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul, Neale has found a hunger among people to create a way to live, at last, in peace and harmony. He has sought to bring men and women in every culture a new understanding of God and of Life which would allow them to experience that.
Neale was born into a Roman Catholic family living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His first spiritual teacher was his mother, who taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the Divine. She taught Neale to do the same. A non-traditional believer, Neale's mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale, "I don't have to go to church-God comes to me. He's with me and around me wherever I am." This view of God in his childhood would open Neale fully as an adult to transcend the traditional views of organized religion and bring to the world the message found in Conversations with God.
An insatiably curious child, Neale's comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom far beyond his years, and caused relatives and family friends to often ask, "where does he come up with this stuff?" While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in Catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum. Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer questions. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum where Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality-and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.
By the age of 15, Neale's involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin reading a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people got involved in religion they seemed less joyful and more angry, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that the collective experience of theology was not positive.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.
Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director, a newspaper reporter and, ultimately, managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation's largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil and his health was going rapidly downhill.
He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scene strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of scene. It produced a change in his entire life. A car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path, Neale emerging from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.
Over a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn't keep even the small apartment he'd rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a syndicated radio talk show host.
He had seen the bottom of life, living in the weather, gathering beer and soda cans in the park to collect the return deposit-but now he seemed to be on a roll again. Yet, once more Neale felt an emptiness in his life. In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. "What does it take," he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, "to make life work?"
Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a Divine answer. Neale says that he heard a voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.
More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same soft voice, which now seemed placed inside his head. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue. He continued this first "conversation" for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad. Neale's handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says the process was "exactly like taking dictation," and that the dialogue created in this way was published without alteration or editing.
In July, 2005 Neale completed the final CwG dialogue book, HOME WITH GOD in a Life that Never Ends. The book covers areas never before discussed in any of the previous CwG texts, of which there are nine, including Conversations with God-Book 1, Conversations with God-Book 2, Conversations with God-Book 3, Friendship with God, Communion with God, The New Revelations, Tomorrow's God, and What God Wants.
In 2008 he published Happier Than God, a spiritual, God-centered answer to The Secret, a movie-and-book that spoke of how humans have the power to create their own reality...but said virtually nothing about God's role in that process. In 2009 Neale released his groundbreaking work, When Everything Changes, Change Everything, which integrates modern psychology with contemporary spirituality in a new mix offering never-before available tools for emotional healing and spiritual growth, including the Mechanics of the Mind and the System of the Soul. He called this the WECCE Technology.
In 2001 Neale founded Humanity's Team, which he has described as a worldwide civil rights movement for a soul (HumanitysTeam.com). In 2005 he began work on making available throughout the world an education program for young children, creating The School of the New Spirituality (SchoolOfTheNewSpirituality.com).
Neale now offers three private programs of personal interaction with those who have read Conversations with God and would like to delve further into the material: The Messenger Tutoring Program (which helps people become teachers of this material), The Spiritual Mentoring Program (which seeks to assist people in finishing their Unfinished Business so that they can get on with their lives in a joyful and spiritually enriching way), and The Homecoming, where just 12 people remain in residence with Neale in his own home for five days and talk about everything they've ever wanted to know about CwG, the experience and the message. Information of this and more may be found at Neale's personal website: NealeDonaldWalsch.com.
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Wednesday, February 09, 2011
What A. Life...
Difficult is all I can say about my physical and spiritual life here lately...action's showing where I need work and others seem so lacking yet, In many way's I breathe the truth.
"Grief is a natural emotion. It's that part of you which allows you to say goodbye when you don't want to say goodbye; to express - push out - propel the sadness within you at the experience of any kind of loss. "
- Conversations With God Book 3
I hardly realize how much I miss you Patty since you are still with me in many way's...no one may realize how much we truly love one another., But the reality is that we travel soul to soul even now.
"Grief is a natural emotion. It's that part of you which allows you to say goodbye when you don't want to say goodbye; to express - push out - propel the sadness within you at the experience of any kind of loss. "
- Conversations With God Book 3
I hardly realize how much I miss you Patty since you are still with me in many way's...no one may realize how much we truly love one another., But the reality is that we travel soul to soul even now.
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