Right And Wrong...Does It Exist?

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God determines what is Right and Wrong.

We have already said that when it comes to deciding what is “good” and “evil,” millions of people—indeed, entire societies and cultures—have used as their basis an understanding of what the God in whom they believe is said to have announced, declared, commanded, and demanded.

This is also true of the larger and more nuanced labels of right and wrong. In the end, most of the world’s people have taken it on faith that God is the defining and deciding authority regarding appropriate and inappropriate human behavior. Indeed, the civil laws of many countries and jurisdictions are rooted in this view.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if concepts such as right and wrong do not even exist in the Mind of God? What if there are no such delineations or definitions in Ultimate Reality?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. And let us be clear. This goes past the simple, gross motor-movement definitions of “good” and “evil.” This gets down to the most delicate shadings of human thought, words, and behavior.

Billions of the world’s people would suddenly be rudderless on what they have created to be a stormy sea of human experience without what they presume to be God’s guidelines on what is right and wrong in many subtle areas. We pretty much know about “good” and “evil.” But is, for instance, falling in love with the “wrong” person at the “wrong” time intrinsically “good” or “evil”? Is cheating on one’s income tax “good” or “evil” if one believes that the government is using it for “bad” things?

People around the world now base much of their individual behavior, as well as the decisions and actions of their clan, group, or tribe, on the Prominent Public Pronouncements of their particular faith tradition about not just the gross motor movements (killing, stealing, etc.) but the more subtle, finer maneuverings of the body human (the little white lie, the discreet affair that presumably hurts no one, etc.).

For Jews and many Christians this Prominent Public Pronouncement is the Ten Commandments. For Muslims, it is the Five Pillars of Islam. For Buddhists, the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts. For Hindus, the Doctrine of the Fourfold End of Life. For those practicing Kemeticism (a reconstruction of ancient Egyptian religion) there are the 11 Laws. Members of the Bahá’í Faith follow the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the book of laws of Bahá’u’lláh). Sikhism has the Reht Maryada.

This list goes on.

If suddenly it was made clear that God has no laws—that divinity’s pronouncements and Deity’s revelations contain no commandments, requirements, regulations, rules, instructions, guidelines, precepts, principles, criteria, or behavioral do’s and don’ts of any kind—the rug would be pulled from under most of traditional theology, and not a small amount of global jurisprudence.

If standards for human conduct are not to be based on the demands of our Creator (for the reason that our Creator has made no demands), then our species will have to come up with a new rationale for declaring a certain action, choice, or decision “right,” and another one “wrong.”

If we take “morals”—i.e., the values arising out of our understanding of God’s commands or desires—out of the picture, then the question arises: What shall be the Gold Standard for the deportment of our species?

One thing appears certain about our present standard: the arbitrary labeling of choices and actions as “right” and “wrong” based on seemingly capricious, often varying, and too frequently contradictory interpretations of God’s Law has done more harm than good in far too many instances around the world for that standard to any longer be considered reasonable, or even useful, within an enlightened society.

Once again I refer to the 2014 sentencing of a person to death for her religious choices, as substantiated in Chapter Six, as a striking and immensely sad illustration of this. Yet the search for, and the creation of, a new behavioral standard could lead to massive upheaval in humanity’s social and spiritual communities—which is no doubt why ancient standards are clung to.

Nobody wants to rock the boat. Not even when the boat is sinking. Nobody wants to question the Prior Assumption.

Here, now, is God’s message to the World:

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about right and wrong is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

In Ultimate Reality there is no such thing as right and wrong. These concepts are human constructions based on a massive misunderstanding of what God wants, and a total lack of comprehension regarding both the reason for, and the purpose of, life itself.

The reason that judgments about right and wrong are not present in the mind of God is that the concepts themselves are based on the condition or the experience of benefit and damage—neither of which exist in Ultimate Reality.

Nothing can be of benefit to That Which Is The Source Of All Benefit. Imagining that something benefits God is like imagining that a penny benefits a billionaire.

Nothing can damage That Which Is The Source Of All That Is. Imagining that something damages God is like imagining that an action story about a little boy who hurt himself and then got better is damaging to the author who wrote it.

Because God cannot be benefited or damaged in any way, the idea of something being right or wrong does not exist in the mind of God.

This idea will not exist in the mind of humans, either, when human beings come to understand that they, also, cannot be benefited or damaged in any way. This is so because human beings are not separate from God.

It is very possible for human beings to experience the illusion of benefit or damage during their physical experience upon the earth, yet this is but the result of their idea about what is occurring.

William Shakespeare put this another way: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

In other words, we are making it all up. We are defining and deciding what is “good” or “bad,” “right” and “wrong,” depending upon our mood of the moment, given the situation, time, and place.

In Peoria, Illinois prostitution is “wrong.” In Amsterdam, The Netherlands it is a legitimate business, licensed and regulated by the government, and not a small source of tax revenue.

In 1914, living together out of wedlock was considered “wrong.” In 2014 it is considered a good idea before entering into the long-term commitment of marriage, or for older folks seeking companionship in their later years without the legal entanglements of matrimony.

We are making things up as we go along, and we are changing our minds as we go along—yet we get caught up in any given moment imaging that, in this particular moment, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong.

God has nothing to do with these delineations. They are entirely a product of humanity’s constructions. If God were defining right and wrong, those definitions would remain constant. What is true in Peoria would be true in Amsterdam. What was true in 1914 would be true in 2014. Right and wrong would not be determined by map or calendar.

The question before humanity, then, is not whether God declares something to be right or wrong, but what is it that makes a human being do so?

The observable answer is that human beings have already decided (although few wish to admit it) that they are going to judge every one of their prospective choices or actions as being right or wrong based on whether they believe it will be effective in achieving their goals.

Thus, humans can sanction the state killing someone intentionally, even as humans declare that killing someone intentionally is wrong.

Thus, humans can cheer a Robin Hood tale of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, even as humans assert that stealing is wrong.

Thus, humans can convince themselves that a sexual encounter with another’s mistreated and ignored spouse in the name of love is romantic and understandable, even as humans maintain that adultery is wrong.

In human interactions it turns out that nothing is considered right or wrong absolutely, but that these judgments are made within a particular context.

This is the truth of it on the earth. It would serve us to openly admit this, and then to decisively declare that our new Human Code of Conduct shall be based not on “morals,” or what we have arbitrarily decided that God wants and commands, but rather, on what works and what does not work, given what it is we are trying to do.

If you are trying to win the motorcar race at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway, it would not be “wrong” to drive 175 miles an hour. If you are trying to get to the grocery store in your neighborhood without endangering yourself or others, you may not want to drive that fast. It simply does not work, given what it is you are trying to do. Indeed, there are no doubt traffic signs where you live making it clear that such behavior is prohibited.

There is difficulty and challenge in openly acknowledging and utilizing such a practical measure as the Gold Standard for human behavior, however. (Again, it must be made clear that we already use this standard—it’s actually built into our laws—but we simply don’t freely admit it.) The difficulty is that humanity would then have to admit to itself that our “ Gold Standard” is all over the place, and thus, not a “standard” at all, because we, as a collective, are profoundly unclear about what we are trying to do.

(Example: It’s not okay to “shoot first and ask questions later.” Unless you call it a preemptive strike, using weapons of mass destruction to defend against another nation’s weapons of mass destruction that, it turns out, were not even there. Or “stand your ground,” in which case the thought that you might be in danger—even from having a bag of popcorn or a cell phone thrown in your face in a movie theatre (where, according to “the rules,” you should not even be carrying a gun)—is sufficient defense in a Florida court of law for shooting and killing a man.)

This entire concept of moral “right” and moral “wrong” will be explored in crisp terms later in this text. Stay tuned for that. For now, know that our standards of behavior are all over the place because most of the members of our species are completely confused about Who We Are (our true identity as sentient beings) and Why We Are Here (the real reason for life, and the purpose of individual and collective experience).

And this is because humanity is totally mistaken about the reality, function, purpose, and nature of God.

Listening For Your Experience

In this time of ever increasing turmoil on our planet, people everywhere are turning to God, begging, hoping, praying to hear God’s message for themselves and for our world. In their supplications, the earnestly seek to know: Can one even have a conversation with God?
God herself tell us yes. His words to humanity are clear:
“I talk to everyone all the time. The question is not to whom does God talk. The question is, who listens?”
Early in Conversations with God-Book One we are told that God communicates with us most often through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul.
“If you want to know what’s true for you about something,” God said, “look to how you’re feeling about it. Feelings are sometimes difficult to discover, and often even more difficult to acknowledge. Yet hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.”
God also communicates with thought, and often uses images and pictures to do so, which makes thoughts more effective than mere words as tools of communication.
In addition to feelings and thought, God also uses the vehicle of experience as a grand communicator.
When feelings, thought and experience all fail, God uses words to communicate. Words are the least effective communicator; they are most open to misinterpretation because they are merely utterances – noises that stand for feelings, thoughts and experience. They are symbols, signs, insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing.
Words may help you to understand something. Experience allows you to know. Yet there are some things you cannot experience, so God has given you other tools of knowing (i.e., feelings and thoughts).
“Ironically, you have placed so much importance on the Word of God, and so little on the experience,” God said. “In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what you experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be the other way around.”
Your experience and your feelings about a thing represent what you factually and intuitively know about that thing. Words can only seek to symbolize what you know, and can often confuse what you know.
Many words have been uttered by others in God’s name, and many thoughts and feelings have been sponsored by causes not of God’s direct creation, and many experiences result from these. So, the challenge is one of discernment – the difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources.
Here, in God’s own words, is a basic rule: God’s message is always your Highest Thought (that thought which contains joy), your Clearest Word (words which contain truth), your Grandest Feeling (that feeling you call love). Anything less is from another source.
The next question is whether God’s messages will be heeded. Most are not. Some because they are too good to be true; others because they seem too difficult to follow; many because they are simply misunderstood; and most because they are not received. God’s most powerful messenger is experience, and even this you ignore.
Your world would not be in its present condition were you to have simply listened to your experience. The result of your not listening is that you keep re-living it, over and over again. For God’s purpose will not be thwarted, nor will God’s will be ignored. You will get the message, sooner or later. God will not force or coerce you, however, for She has given you free will — the power to do as you choose — and He will never take that away from you.

God's Good News

CAUSE OF ALL THE WORLD’S WARS AND KILLING IS REVEALED
by Neale Donald Walsch
May 20, 2015

The cause of all of the terrorism and warring between people during this tumultuous time has at last been identified. In just a few short paragraphs offered to humanity in the book The New Revelations, God made it clear that the problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.
“Your ideas about spirituality are killing you,” She said. The challenge, God made clear, is that humans keep trying to solve the world’s problems as if it were a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. “It is a spiritual problem,” God repeated, “and that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.”
Expanding on this observation, He said: “You keep saying that your Holy Book (your cultures have many different ones) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing. You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.
“The basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same,” God then reminded us. What is different, She said, is how human beings have been interpreting them. There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations, God made it clear. But, He added, “what may not benefit you is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences. This is what you are now doing. It is what you have been doing for quite some time.”
We humans are going to have to let go of this tendency if we ever want to see peace on the earth, our Deity said. But such a shift would require our species to dramatically shift its highest priority.
“There is only one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything,” God said in this remarkable book. “They will give up love, peace, health, harmony, happiness, safety, security, and even their sanity for this one thing.”
Asked what they one thing was, God replied, “Being right. You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be ‘right’.”
Yet there is a way to get past all of the mixed up beliefs of humanity that make us believe that we are “right” about everything, we are told in this dialogue with Deity, and that is to transcend those beliefs.
“Transcending means to go beyond, to move past,” God said. “It does not mean to completely reject or totally destroy. You do not have to destroy a thing in order to move past it. You would not want to destroy your old belief system in any event, because there is too much of it that you will wish to retain. ‘Transcending’ does not mean always being ‘other than.’ It means always being ‘larger than.’ Your new, larger belief system will no doubt retain some of the old – that part of the old belief system that you experience as still serving you – and so it will be a combination of the new and the old, not a rejection of the old from top to bottom.”
The reason humans have hung so tenaciously to their old beliefs is that they do not want to dishonor those beliefs by rejecting them completely, out of hand, we are told here. We think that this is the choice we have: Reject the old or accept the old, totally. Yet that is not the only choice we have, God has made it clear. We can review the old and see what parts of the old no longer work. We can expand the old to make some parts of the old work better. We can add to the old to make some parts of our belief system new.
“Rejecting completely your present beliefs would be to discredit so much of what has been taught, so much of what has been understood, so much of what has been done – and so much of what has been good. It would make too much of the world feel ‘wrong.’ It would make ancestors ‘wrong.’ It would make entire scriptures ‘wrong.’ It would make present-day lives ‘wrong.’ People would have to admit that all of the spiritual aspects of the human experience have been a mistake, a misunderstanding. This is more than most people can acknowledge,” God explained.
Actually, She added, “it is more than they should acknowledge, because it is not true. In fact, you don’t have to declare that you were “wrong” about anything, because you weren’t. You simply didn’t have a complete understanding. You needed more information. Transcending current beliefs is not an outright rejection of them; it is an ‘adding to’ them.”
Humanity has learned a great deal about life and about our Deity, God concluded. “Now that you have more information that you can add to what you presently believe,” He said, “you can enlarge your beliefs – not completely reject them, enlarge them – and move on with your lives in a new way. A way that works.”
The question now is whether humanity will do that. That is, God said, up to us.

Who Has To Change

“ God has never stopped communications directly with humans. God has been communicating with, and through human beings from the beginning of time. God does so today. ”
- The New Revelations-First New Revelation p 80

Bulletin #649

June 12, 2015

Why don’t we take care of ourselves?

A Note from Neale...

My Dear Friends,

We are not paying enough attention to our health. Not as individuals, and certainly not as a planet. This is the single most important factor in our physical lives, and most of us are simply not paying enough attention to it.

Conversations with God observes that our planet is populated by sentient beings of a rather primitive nature, and that what separates primitive beings from the highly evolved beings of the Universe is a particular behavior of highly evolved beings.

Says CwG: “They observe what is so, and they do what works."

We do not.

We observe what is so and do not see it, or, worse yet, pretend that it isn’t so. Or we observe what is so, and do not do “what works,” because we simply don’t care what is so. Or we observe what is so, and we say that we care, but we do nothing to demonstrate that we care.

This is particularly true when it comes to how we manage our own health. Most of us don’t create our health, we react to it. Recent studies show that 50 percent of all deaths and 70 percent of all illness in America are self-inflicted. Read that “self-inflicted,” meaning those illnesses could have been avoided; meaning death did not have to occur due to those causes.

And just what are those causes? They could all be lumped into one major (and embarrassing) category: lack of self-discipline. Specifically, improper diets, inadequate exercise, use of tobacco, and alcohol abuse. Also, personal living habits that create stress.

Recently, I presented a two-day seminar on the messages in CwG. The room was filled with what I felt to be very conscious people, yet I was amazed at the number of them (nearly half) who, on their breaks, went outside to have a smoke. I observed an even greater number who ate red meat at every meal.

And when we talked about living habits in the group discussion, I could see that many in the room (most, actually) were still creating lifestyles filled with deadlines, pressure, and lack of career or personal fulfillment. All of this leads to stress.

Scientists and doctors report that stress is the number one cause of chronic illness in America today, that 40 percent of our citizens (that’s over 100 million people) now suffer from some form of chronic disorder, and that those numbers are predicted to only get worse.

Chronic disease is described as a disease for which modern medicine says there is no cure. These include heart disease, asthma, arthritis, migraines, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s—terrible diseases that last for years, many of them causing recurring pain. Fully 69 percent of all hospital admissions are for treatment of chronic illness.

Sadly, all that hospitals can offer is palliative care. Few providers offer treatment approaches that address the cause of all this illness, although all of them know the cause—just as do the people who are experiencing the chronic illness.

In America today we do not have a health care system, we have a disease care system. It seeks to take care of people with diseases. It does nothing to take care of people with good health, to allow them to keep their good health, yet this is the single most effective means of improving the overall health of our nation and cutting medical care costs in this country. All of the evidence to that effect notwithstanding, our priority in America is treatment of disease, with less than 1 percent of our trillion-dollar annual health budget earmarked for prevention.

What is needed here is education... and persuasion... and, in my view, a spiritual conversion. Too many of the people who call themselves “spiritual” are not spiritual enough to want to take optimum care of their own bodies. And I’m afraid that I’ve been included in that very group. Yet, if we really want to evolve as a species, we may benefit from taking the first and most elementary step in the evolutionary process: keeping ourselves alive, and doing it longer.

There are signs that we are beginning. For the first time in history, more Americans are going to alternative health care providers than to allopathic physicians. That points to a trend that has begun as a result of greater public awareness of the availability of those alternative approaches, and of their effectiveness.

What is needed now, if we truly choose for the human race to evolve to the next level, is all-out commitment. That means you and me.

If you’re smoking, you may now want to stop.

If you’re drinking alcohol, you may want to limit yourself to a very occasional sip.

If you’re eating red meat every day, you may want to cut back.

If you’re not engaged in a program of regular exercise, you may want to start one.

If you’re feeling worried, pressured, and stressed out much of the time, you may want to try a little meditation now and then. (Like, daily.)

All of these are preventative measures. They will help you stay outside of that group of four in ten Americans (if you are an American), with chronic illnesses. And speaking of prevention, do a little chiropractic every now and then, not just when you’re in pain. Treat yourself to a full-body massage once in a while. And ask the boss if it could be worked out for a massage therapist to come to the office once or twice a week to give those neat little 15-minute hand, back, and neck massages. Watch the stress go way down, and the production go way up.

Find out about acupressure and acupuncture. Visit an aroma therapist. Check out a local reflexologist. And make regular visits to your naturopathic physician.

And straighten out your diet. You’ve been promising to do it for a long time.

There’s a great deal more you can do. You can begin to do as highly evolved beings do. Observe “what’s so” (smoking causes cancer, starches make you fat, a constant diet of red meat is bad for you, etc.), then do “what works.”

Decide that you really care for yourself. Or, if you can’t go there, decide that you really care about your loved ones—who do not want you to leave your body for a very long time.

Here’s to better health, and better health habits, for all of us.

With Love,
NEALE

Can You Hear Me...

The 12 Year Old Girl Who Silenced the World for 6 Minutes -

There Is Only Experience

You weren't created to be a failure.,In fact there is no failure and once you know this your life will be free.

Sure some things may not have worked out and there have been some disappointments. But all these things helped guide you in a direction that was meant for you. Your life has purpose and significance. Try to be patient if it isn't all crystal clear just yet. For nowYou just know you weren't created to fail. You are Love and Love always.

We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For

All abundance comes from within, as consciousness precedes matter. Our economic policy should be this: to teach and remind every American of his or her inestimable value and potential, to create the contexts in which those gifts are most easily mined, and then strictly adhere to the ethical standards by which each person is held accountable for what he or she does and does not do. Banks should not be at the center of our economic policy. The stock market should not be at the center of our economic policy. WE should be at the center of our economic policy: our education, our welfare, our creativity, and our potential for genius." --- Healing the Soul of America www.sistergiant.com (via Marianne

New Day, New Way

My dear friends...

And so we begin a new year. A new beginning of a new cycle in the new business of creating a new way to be human.

This needs to be, truly, a New Beginning. We can scarcely afford to continue the way we have been on this planet. Just about everyone knows that. The question is, what way shall be the new way? Or have we decided that the New Way needs to be the Old Way?

In America a new Congress takes over this month — a Congress, just having been elected, with a heavily Republican (read that: conservative) majority. In Syria and Iraq the self-labeled Islamic State has taken over the major cities of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Mosul, and much of the land mass in between, imposing its interpretation of strict Islamic (read that: conservative) law. In eastern portions of Ukraine, a large portion of the local population apparently loyal to Russia — which has already taken complete control of the Crimean Peninsula, which Ukraine says is its territory — agitates to stop Ukraine’s apparently imminent move to membership in the more politically liberal NATO Alliance and retain the country’s more historic (read that: conservative) ties with Russia.

Everywhere we turn we see the same strain and struggle: the push-pull between liberal and conservative agendas and values, with conservatives in many places apparently winning the moment — either by utilizing physical force, or by the force of their ideas.

Does this seem like a time of New Beginnings birthing a New Tomorrow, or a time of Old Hanging-On’s, seeking an entrenchment in Yesterday? And this question, in turn, invites an examination and an honest exploration of the Question Behind the Question: How have Yesterday’s Values been working?

Well, um…not very well, thank you. I make the point in my latest book that none of the systems we have put into place to create a better life for all of us on this planet have produced the outcome for which they were designed.

It’s worse than that. They’ve actually produced exactly the opposite.

Our political systems — created to produce safety and security for the world’s people – have produced nothing but disagreement and disarray.

Our economic systems — created to produce opportunity and sufficiency for all — have produced increasing poverty and massive economic inequality, with 85 of the world’s richest people holding more wealth than 3.5 billion…that’s half the planet’s population…combined.

Our ecological systems — created to help us produce a sustainable lifestyle — have been abused so much that they are now generating environmental disasters right and left.

Our educational systems — created to lift higher and higher the knowledge base of the planet’s population — have produced a drop in global awareness and sensitivity that each year sinks our intellectual common denominator lower and lower. We can’t even remember our own telephone numbers anymore.

Our health care systems — created in hopes of producing a good and long life for an increasingly higher percentage of people — are doing little to eliminate inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services, thus actually providing top level medical services each year to a lower and lower percentage.

Our social systems — created to produce the joy of community and harmony among a divergent population — more and more generate and even encourage discordance, disparity, prejudice, and despair…to say nothing of rampant injustice.

And, most devastating of all, our spiritual systems — created to produce a greater closeness to God, and so, to each other — have produced bitter righteousness, shocking intolerance, widespread anger, deep-seated hatred, and self-justified violence.

What gives here? What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see itself even as it looks at itself? Where is humanity’s blind spot?

Might it be time to ask: “Could there be something we don’t fully understand here about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?”

Why we are so bent, in such large numbers, on returning to the Ways of the Past when we can see with the slightest glance that those methods, and the values which sponsored them, have produced nothing but failure after failure?

We are hell-bent on repeating our past for the simple reason that at least it’s familiar. Our fear of the Unknown is greater than our fear of repeating what we already know to be dysfunctional.

And so, those who would invite us to finally abandon our Old Values by putting their failures right in front of our face have forever been marginalized — and even demonized. And so we have ridiculed, ostracized, and even killed everyone and anyone who would dare tell us that the Emperor is wearing no clothes. We will not have anyone ripping us from our illusions about how wonderful our Old Values were and are.

So we killed Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Harvey Milk and virtually every revolutionary who chided us and invited us to look at ourselves and to admit, finally, that what we were doing, and how we were living, was simply, by any reasonable set of moral values, not right.

Just as we can now see that it is not right that 842 million people (one in eight in the world) will not have enough to eat today. It is not right that over 650 children die of starvation every hour on this planet. It is not right that 20.9 million women and children are bought and sold into commercial sexual servitude every year.

It is not right that over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, or that billions have no access to health care. (Some 19,000 children die each day from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia.) It is not right that 1.7 billion people lack clean water, or that 2.6 billion live without basic sanitation, or that 1.6 billion people—a quarter of humanity—do not even have electricity.

That’s correct. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, 2.6 billion people live without toilets, and 1.6 billion without electricity. How is this possible?, you might ask. In the first quarter of the 21st Century…in the beginning of what has been hailed as the New Millennium…how is this possible?

That is a very good question. It is an especially good question given that humanity imagines itself to be a “civilized” species. To the people in the above categories, the “civilization of Civilization” has not even begun.

Of course, we know from the messages in Conversations with God that there is no such thing as “right” and “wrong.” There is only “what works” and “what does not work,” given what it is that we are trying to do. So, by using the more commonly employed term “not right” in the above exploration, we are expressing the view that it is simply not working to continue living and operating under humanity’s Old Values if what we are trying to do is produce a better life for us all.

A planet where 5 percent of the population owns or controls 95 percent of the wealth and resources — and where most of that 5 percent think this is perfectly okay, even as unconscionable numbers languish in lack and suffering — would not seem to be a planet on which a great deal of humanitarian advancement has been achieved.

All of this is possible because of the collective values of those people who can do something about it. And where do those values come from? I suggest they derive in large part from the well-intentioned, but mistaken, Old Beliefs about Life and about God — and the Old Values that have sprung up because of them.

Clearly, somebody or something has to come along to challenge those Old Beliefs. Clearly, it is time for the Awakening of Humanity. Yet who will engage in, who will join in, that process? And why should anyone dare to do so?

The answer to the second question is this: There is a very good and very valuable and very powerful personal reason for joining in the movement to advance the evolution of our species. Such an activity produces the forward movement of each individual’s personal and spiritual evolution.

No one who seeks to assist in producing a greater experience of Life for another fails to create a greater experience of Life for themselves. This is true at every level: spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological. One produces the other, inevitably — and often it is unclear which comes first. More likely it is a circle, in which the effect of one action produces the effect of the other, and the effect of each generates the expression of both.

And so we encounter the beginning of a New Year…which we can each of us decide is the Time of New Beginnings for every one of us individually, and for all of us collectively. As always…the choice is ours.

I have collaborated with some friends around the world to create a wonderful way that you may join in a global movement to advance our species. It is called the Evolution Revolution, and you may learn more about this outreach, and about its major project, Awakening Day on March 12, by going to...

www.EvolutionRevolution.net

I invite you to be with us in this endeavor.

Love and hugs…

Neale

Are You Spiritually Conscious?

The Question Now Before Humanity:
HOW CAN SPIRITUALLY CONSCIOUS PEOPLE RESPOND TO OUR WORLD?

by Neale Donald Walsch
November 20, 2014

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a five-part series by Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch on the role of today’s Cultural Creatives in the evolutionary process now unfolding on the Earth with increasing intensity.)

I cannot remember a time during my half century of adulthood when the average human being on this planet found herself or himself looking directly into the face of more stressful events, circumstances, and situations than those now presenting themselves daily around the world.

In today’s 24-hour news cycle, hardly a moment goes by when something worrisome (if not something absolutely horrible) is not making a headline on the Internet’s news sources — which themselves have proliferated to the point where we almost can’t get away from incoming negative data if we wanted to.

In short, we are being bombarded with illustrations of the dark side of life at every turn. ISIS BEHEADINGS. RANDOM SHOOTINGS. EBOLA PANDEMIC. FERGUSON UNREST. UKRAINE CRISIS. GLOBAL WARMING. And all of this says nothing about the pressures building in just about every individual ’s personal life. Family finances. Job losses. Forced relocations. Relationship challenges. Dementia tragedies.

And we’re adding to that bombardment right here on this website, right now, through the simple act of noticing it. Which brings us to the point of this Internet story. What is the spiritually evolved response to this avalanche of stressful circumstances? If we wish to be “spiritually awakened,” should we simply ignore it? Is it the elevated way to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?” Should we “pay it no mind?” Give it no energy?

Is it best to just turn a blind eye to what’s happening around the world (sadly shrugging that we can’t do anything about it anyway), and to meet our personal challenges with a “tough it out” attitude that calls on us to summon inordinate courage and extraordinary stamina until the moment passes and we may mercifully be given a short break by Life before the next disaster or dilemma hits?

Should we not turn a blind eye, but look straight into the jaws of the lion and fearlessly embrace and exude all positive energies and outlooks? And should we take specific action?

This, of course, is not a new inquiry. Shakespeare put it this way, asking in the famous words of Hamlet “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them”…?

What is the “nobler” thing to do? What is the role that is ours to play in the ongoing drama of life?

Much depends, it seems to me, on whether we choose to play our role consciously or unconsciously. That is, whether we choose to be active or passive in the creation of our tomorrows (both individually and collectively). And that choice appears to me to depend on how each of us sees the experience of Life itself; on what we imagine to be its origin, its purpose, its function, and its process.

We will discuss that first then, here, in the next entry of this series. As we await that entry, you may wish to enter the discussion in the Comment space just below. What do you think is the origin, purpose, function, and process of Life? That is, in your view how did we get here, why does our Life exist, what is its basic task, assignment, or role in the overall scheme of things in the Universe, and what are the mechanics, what is the procedure or methodology, by which that function is completed?

Most people on our planet, even in this, the latter part of the first quarter of the 21^stCentury, have never thought about these things. At least, not in such specific terms. Not many (if any) political leaders are thinking in these terms. Not many (if any) religious leaders are thinking in these terms. Not many (if any) economic and industrial leaders are thinking in these terms. Not many (if any) educational leaders are thinking in these terms.

Yet it is in the answer to these questions that our best way to meet and beat the stress of our times — to say nothing of permanently and finally changing the conditions on the ground that produce the endless stress — may be revealed.

So…your answers are…?

Truly...Is there a Right & Wrong

What is “Right” and “Wrong” ?

A Note from Neale...

My dear friends...

We continue our series of messages under the title, “Getting to Know God.”

And today our topic covers the fascinating subject of “good” and “evil.” And just in time, too, because as we all know, he’s makin’ a list, and checking it twice, and gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. And then he’s comin’ to town.

So how do we know who’s naughty and nice . . . ? Well, millions of people—indeed, entire societies and cultures—have used as their basis an understanding of what the God in whom they believe is said to have announced, declared, commanded, and demanded.

It is God who is the defining and deciding authority regarding appropriate and inappropriate human behavior. Indeed, the civil laws of most countries and jurisdictions are rooted in this view.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if concepts such as “right” and “wrong” do not even exist in the Mind of God?

What if there are no such delineations or definitions in Ultimate Reality? Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Of course it would. Billions of the world’s people would suddenly be rudderless on what they have created to be a stormy sea of human experience with-out what they presume to be God’s guidelines on what is right and wrong in many subtle areas. For instance, is falling in love with the “wrong” person at the “wrong” time intrinsically “good” or “evil”? Is cheating on one’s income tax “good” or “evil” if one believes that the government is using its money for “bad” things?

People around the world now base much of their individual behaviors, as well as the decisions and actions of their clan, group or tribe, on the Prominent Public Pronouncements of their particular faith tradition. And not just about Big Sins ...(killing, stealing, etc.)...but also more subtle, finer maneuverings of the mind---(the little white lie, the discreet affair that presumably hurts no one, etc.).

For Jews and many Christians this Prominent Public Pronoun-cement is the Ten Command-ments. For Muslims, it is the Five Pillars of Islam. For Buddhists, the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts. For Hindus, the Doctrine of the Fourfold End of Life. For those practicing Kemeticism (a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian religion) there are the 11 Laws. Members of the Bahá’í Faith follow the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the book of laws of Bahá’u’lláh). Sikhism has the Reht Maryada.

This list goes on. But if suddenly it was made clear that God has no laws—that divinity’s pronouncements and Deity’s revelations contain no commandments, requirements, regulations, rules, instructions, guidelines, precepts, principles, criteria, or behavioral do’s and don’ts of any kind—the rug would be pulled from under most of traditional theology, and not a small amount of global jurisprudence. Yet if standards for human conduct are not to be based on the demands of our Creator (for the reason that our Creator has made no demands), then our species will have to come up with a new rationale for declaring a certain action, choice, or decision “right,” and another one “wrong.”

If we take “morals”—i.e., the values arising out of our understanding of God’s commands or desires—out of the picture, then what shall be the “Gold Standard” for the deportment of our species?

One thing appears certain about our present standard: the arbitrary labeling of choices and actions as “right” and “wrong” is based on capricious, often varying, and too frequently contradictory interpretations of God’s Law, and it has done more harm than good in far too many instances around the world for that standard to any longer be considered reasonable, or even useful, within an enlightened society.

Yet the search for, and the creation of, a new behavioral standard could lead to massive upheaval in humanity’s social and spiritual communities . . . which is no doubt why ancient standards are clung to.

Nobody wants to rock the boat. Not even when the boat is sinking.

Yet God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about right and wrong is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

In Ultimate Reality there is no such thing as right and wrong. These concepts are human constructions based on a misunderstanding of what God wants, and a total lack of comprehension regarding both the reason for, and the purpose of, life itself.

The reason that judgments about right and wrong are not present in the Mind of God is that the concepts themselves are based on the condition or the experience of benefit and damage— . . . neither of which exist in Ultimate Reality.

Nothing can be of benefit to That Which Is The Source Of All Benefit. Imagining that some-thing benefits God is like imagin-ing that a penny benefits a billionaire. Likewise, nothing can damage That Which Is The Source Of All That Is. So again...because God cannot be benefited or damaged in any way, the idea of some-thing being right or wrong does not exist in the Mind of God.

This idea will not exist in the mind of humans either, when human beings come to understand that they, also, cannot be benefited or damaged in any way. It is very possible for human beings to experience the illusion of benefit or damage during their physical experience upon the earth, yet this is but the result of their idea about what is occurring.

William Shakespeare put it this way: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” In other words, we are making it all up. We are defining and deciding what is “good” or “bad,” “right” and “wrong,” depending upon our mood of the moment, given the situation, time, and place.

In Peoria, Illinois prostitution is “wrong.” In Amsterdam, The Netherlands it is a legitimate business, licensed and regulated by the government, and not a small source of municipal revenue.

In 1914, living together out of wedlock was considered “wrong.” In 2014 it is considered a good idea before entering into the long-term commitment of marriage, or for older folks seeking companionship in their later years without the legal entanglements of matrimony.

We are making things up as we go along, and we are changing our minds as we go along—yet we can get caught up in any given moment imaging that, in this particular moment, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong.

God has nothing to do with these delineations. They are entirely a product of humanity’s constructions. If God were defining right and wrong, those definitions would remain constant. What is true in Peoria would be true in Amsterdam. What was true in 1914 would be true in 2014. Right and wrong would not be determined by map or calendar.

The question before humanity, then, is not whether God declares something to be right or wrong, but what is it that makes a human being do so?

The observable answer is that human beings have already decided (although few wish to admit it) that they are going to judge every choice or action as being “right” or “wrong” based on whether they believe it will be effective in achieving their goals. Thus, humans can sanction the State killing someone intentionally, even as humans declare that killing someone intentionally is wrong.

Thus, humans can cheer a Robin Hood tale of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, even as humans assert that stealing is wrong.

Thus, humans can convince themselves that a romantic encounter with another’s mistreated and ignored spouse in the name of love is understandable, even as humans maintain that adultery is wrong.

In human interactions it turns out that nothing is considered right or wrong absolutely, but that these judgments are made within a particular context. This is the truth of it on the earth. It would serve us to openly admit this, and then to decisively declare that our new Human Code of Conduct shall be based not on “morals,” or what we have arbitrarily decided that God wants and commands, but rather, on what works and what does not work, given what it is we are trying to do.

If you are trying to win the motorcar race at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway, it would not be “wrong” to drive 175 miles an hour. If you are trying to get to the grocery store without endangering yourself or others, you may not want to drive that fast. It simply does not work, given what it is you are trying to do.

There is difficulty and challenge in openly acknowledging and utilizing such a practical measure as the Gold Standard for human behavior, however. The difficulty is that humanity would then have to admit to itself that its “ Gold Standard” is all over the place, and thus, not a “standard” at all. And why? Because we, as a collective, are profoundly unclear about what we are trying to do.

And THAT is because most of the members of our species are confused about Who We Are (our true identity as sentient beings), and Why We Are Here (the real reason for life, and the purpose of individual and collective experience). And this is because humanity is totally mistaken about the reality, function, purpose, and nature of God. Most of humanity, anyway. Those of us here are very clear about all this, aren’t we?

The function and purpose of God is to empower US to experience ourselves as Divine. God desires to know Itself experientially through the process of Life Itself.

That means, through US.

So today, in a world where there is so much confusion, I give thanks for people like you...who know what it is you are trying to do, and who go about it with peace, joy, and love in your heart. If there is to be a New Tomorrow, YOU will be the creators of it. God “universally” does not decide what us “good” and what is “evil.” The PART of God that is YOU decides.

It is as Ernest Holmes says, in his book, The Science of Mind, “Pure religion ...unifies with all humanity, and finds no great difference between saint and sinner. Such a religion as this, the world of today needs, for it is sick of pretense, and would like a practical demonstration of a belief in God, made manifest through good works.

And Dr. Holmes goes ON...”It could not be stated more plainly. Evil is man created, while God—the Eternal Goodness—knows nothing about it. He is too pure to behold evil. “Evil...” says Dr. Holmes, “has no reality behind it.”

I could not agree more. So let us go forth this Christmas season and prove Ernest Holmes right. Let us remove the illusion of “evil” from every aspect or part of life that we touch. Let this be our Christmas gift to others this year.

With love,