Please Don't Protect Me...I'll Rely On God

Are We still burying non gun owners who are being killed because either gun owners failed to properly secure their legal guns, or they live with mentally unstable people and they don't see it? The kids have access to them...and the list goes on. Excuses, excuses that's what gun owners give the loved ones to bury their dead.
Fear is what fills their minds. Fear that they have created. Sadly We live in a country where people could have chosen freedom but became certain that fear was worth holding on to.

National Gun Ownership34 %

Sex
Male37 %
Female31 %

Race
White37 %
Non White32 %
Black33 %

Age
18 – 29 31 %
30 – 49 40 %
50 – 64 45 %
50 +42 %
65+38 %

Education
College Post Graduate30 %
College Graduate37 %
Some College41 %
High School Graduate or Less42 %

Income
$75,00047 %
$50,00049 %
$30,00044 %

Region
East22 %
Midwest39 %
South50 %
West37 %

And Then These Facts and Statistics...

10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down

Fact-checking some of the gun lobby's favorite arguments shows they're full of holes.

—By Dave Gilson

| Thu Jan. 31, 2013 7:01 AM EST

By cutting off federal funding for research and stymieing data collection and sharing, the National Rifle Association has tried to do to the study of gun violence what climate deniers have done to the science of global warming. No wonder: When it comes to hard numbers, some of the gun lobby's favorite arguments are full of holes.

Myth #1: They're coming for your guns.
Fact-check: No one knows the exact number of guns in America, but it's clear there's no practical way to round them all up (never mind that no one in Washington is proposing this). Yet if you fantasize about rifle-toting citizens facing down the government, you'll rest easy knowing that America's roughly 80 million gun owners already have the feds and cops outgunned by a factor of around 79 to 1.

Sources: Congressional Research Service (PDF), Small Arms Survey

Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people.
Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Gun death rates are generally lower in states with restrictions such as assault-weapons bans or safe-storage requirements.Update: A recent study looking at 30 years of homicide data in all 50 states found that for every one percent increase in a state's gun ownership rate, there is a nearly one percent increase in its firearm homicide rate.

Sources: Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Myth #3: An armed society is a polite society.
Fact-check: Drivers who carry guns are 44% more likely than unarmed drivers to make obscene gestures at other motorists, and 77% more likely to follow them aggressively.
• Among Texans convicted of serious crimes, those with concealed-handgun licenses were sentenced for threatening someone with a firearm 4.8 times more than those without.
• In states with Stand Your Ground and other laws making it easier to shoot in self-defense, those policies have been linked to a 7 to 10% increase in homicides.

• This Is How the NRA Lies to Gun Owners About Obama's Agenda
• NRA's School Security Plan Cites Phony Shooting
• This Collection of NRA Ads Reveals Its Descent Into Crazy
• The NRA Myth of Gun-Free Zones
• Gunmakers and the NRA Bet Big on Silencers. What Could Go Wrong?
• Investigators Discover NRA Materials in Newtown Killer's House
• EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA's Inner Circle
• Meet the NRA's Board of Directors
• The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys
• How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Myth #4: More good guys with guns can stop rampaging bad guys.
Fact-check: Mass shootings stopped by armed civilians in the past 30 years: 0
• Chances that a shooting at an ER involves guns taken from guards: 1 in 5

Myth #5: Keeping a gun at home makes you safer.
Fact-check: Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.
• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.
• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Myth #6: Carrying a gun for self-defense makes you safer.
Fact-check: In 2011, nearly 10 times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime.
• In one survey, nearly 1% of Americans reported using guns to defend themselves or their property. However, a closer look at their claims found that more than 50%involved using guns in an aggressive manner, such as escalating an argument.
• A Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

Myth #7: Guns make women safer.
Fact-check: In 2010, nearly 6 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers.
• A woman's chances of being killed by her abuser increase more than 5 times if he has access to a gun.
• One study found that women in states with higher gun ownership rates were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun than women in states with lower gun ownership rates.

Myth #8: "Vicious, violent video games" deserve more blame than guns.
Fact-check: So said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre after Newtown. So what's up with Japan?

	United States	Japan
Per capita spending on video games	$44	$55
Civilian firearms per 100 people	88	0.6
Gun homicides in 2008	11,030	11

Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Small Arms Survey (PDF), UN Office on Drugs and Crime

Myth #9: More and more Americans are becoming gun owners. 
Fact-check: More guns are being sold, but they're owned by a shrinking portion of the population.
• About 50% of Americans said they had a gun in their homes in 1973. Today, about45% say they do. Overall, 35% of Americans personally own a gun.
• Around 80% of gun owners are men. On average they own 7.9 guns each.

Myth #10: We don't need more gun laws—we just need to enforce the ones we have.
Fact-check: Weak laws and loopholes backed by the gun lobby make it easier to get guns illegally.
• Around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don't require background checks. 40% of prison inmates who used guns in their crimes got them this way.
• An investigation found 62% of online gun sellers were willing to sell to buyers who said they couldn't pass a background check.
• 20% of licensed California gun dealers agreed to sell handguns to researchers posing as illegal "straw" buyers.
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives did not have apermanent director for 7 years, due to an NRA-backed requirement that the Senate approve nominees.

A 3-year-old, a 6-year-old, cops and robbers and a gun ...then tragedy

The 3-year-old boy who was one of two people killed in city shootings since Saturday night was accidentally shot by his 6-year-old brother while the two were playing cops and robbers, according to police.
The boy, whom authorities identified as Eian Santiago, was at a residence at about 9:05 p.m. in the 1000 block of North Francisco Avenue in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side when his 6-year-old brother got hold of a revolver and shot him in the head.
According to Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the two had been playing "cops and robbers" when the 6-year-old saw the handgun atop a refrigerator, took it and fired it in the direction of his brother. Guglielmi could not further describe the weapon other than saying it was a handgun.
The boys' father, 25-year-old Michael Santiago, was charged with felony child endangerment in connection with the shooting. He kept a loaded gun on top of a refrigerator, according to police. He is expected to appear in bond court Sunday.
Guglielmi said that Michael Santiago told police he was a former member of the Spanish Cobras gang and that he had purchased the gun from another gang member for protection. Guglielmi said police are in the process of tracing the weapon.
After the shooting, the boy's family members took him to Norwegian American Hospital. He later was transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital, where family members gathered as word of the shooting spread.
As word of the shooting spread, people walked up to the ambulance bay at Mount Sinai in groups of two or three. By 11:20 p.m., about two dozen people were waiting in the cold, including a young woman who had been wailing almost nonstop for half an hour.
"Why can't I go in?" she asked someone inside, sobbing.
A few minutes later, she screamed in the same direction.
"What do you mean, he's dead?" she screamed. "What do you mean, we can't go in?"
"No, no, no, no," said one man as he walked up to the hospital. He came to the wall and sank into a crouch.
"Oh, God, why," he said, his voice ragged.
In other shootings:
At about 2 a.m., a man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Rosemoor, said Chicago Police spokesman Officer Hector Alfaro said.
They were pulling away from a curb in a vehicle in the 10600 block of South Prairie Avenue when people walked up and fired shots.
The driver, a 22-year-old man, was shot in the upper back and pronounced dead on the scene. A 19-year-old man was shot in the knee and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center. His condition was stabilized.
At 10:10 p.m., a 37-year-old man was shot in West Chatham, Alfaro said.
He was discovered on the sidewalk in the 7900 block of South Lafayette Avenue with a gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition.
At 9:15 p.m., a 36-year-old man was shot in Cragin, Alfaro said.
He was in the 5500 block of West Altgeld Street when he was shot in the calf. He was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in good condition. No information was available about the man's exact age or the circumstances of the shooting.
At about 9 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the Washington Park neighborhood, police said.
He was in a vehicle that was stopped at an intersection in the 5300 block of South Michigan Avenue when a car pulled up alongside and someone inside began shooting, Alfaro said. He was hit in the leg and taken to Stroger Hospital. His condition was stabilized.
About 8:45 p.m., a 26-year-old man was shot in the Fifth City neighborhood on the West Side, Alfaro said.
He was in the 0-100 block of South Homan Avenue when he was robbed and shot in the leg, Alfaro said. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital, and his condition was stabilized.
Police initially said the person was a juvenile who had been shot in the 3300 block of West Monroe Street.
At 8:40 p.m., a 35-year-old man was shot in Woodlawn, Alfaro said.
He was in a parked car in the 6100 block of South Ellis Avenue when another car pulled up alongside and someone inside fired shots. The man was shot in the head and taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition was stabilized. A law enforcement source said the man was conscious and talking.
Police initially said the shooting happened in the 6400 block of South Ellis Avenue.
About 2:30, a 40-year-old man was shot in the Scottsdale neighborhood, police said.
He was in the 8500 block of South Pulaski Road when he was shot in the hip. He drove himself to Advocate Christ Medical Center and his condition was stabilized.
The Chicago Tribune's Deanese Williams-Harris contributed.


People are getting shot by toddlers on a weekly basis this year

© The Washington Post

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: a little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.
But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I've found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.
In August, for instance, a 21-month-old in the St. Louis area found a loaded handgun at his grandmother's house and shot himself in the torso. His mother took him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Earlier in the year a Michigan 3-year-old found a loaded .40-caliber handgun in a closet while his dad and brother were outside. He shot himself in the head and died before rescue workers arrived.
[This is what one year of gun deaths in America looks like]
The stories go on and on like this: Roughly once a week this year, on average, a small child has found a gun, pointed it at himself or someone else, and pulled the trigger. Boys are disproportionately likely to do this: I could find only three cases where a girl under the age of 4 wounded someone with a gun. In 13 of the 43 total incidents, a child's self-inflicted injuries were fatal. In two other cases, another person died after being shot by a toddler: a father in Alabama, and a 1-year-old in Ohio.
In one instance, a 3-year-old managed to wound both of his parents with a single gunshot at an Albuquerque motel.
Shootings by toddlers have happened in 24 states so far this year. Missouri has seen the most, with five separate incidents. Florida has had four. Texas, three. Due to the low number of total cases and the isolated nature of these incidents I'd caution against drawing broad conclusions from the map above. But it is worth noting that the shootings don't necessarily follow broader population trends. California, the most populous state in the nation, hasn't had any. Nobody has been shot by a toddler in New England or the Upper Midwest.
These numbers are probably an undercount. There are likely instances of toddlers shooting people that result in minor injuries and no media coverage. And there are probably many more cases where a little kid inadvertently shoots a gun and doesn't hit anyone, resulting in little more than a scared kid and (hopefully) chastened parents.
Notably, these numbers don't include cases where toddlers are shot, intentionally or otherwise, by older children or adults. Dozens of preschoolers are killed in acts of homicide each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But I haven't included those figures here.
[How often do children in the U.S. unintentionally shoot and kill people? We don’t know.]
These cases are invariably referred to as "accidents" in media reports. But as Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, argues, many incidents like this are preventable. In a study of accidental shootings by children of all ages (not just toddlers), they estimate that "more than two-thirds of these tragedies could be avoided if gun owners stored their guns responsibly and prevented children from accessing them."
There are policy and technical responses to preventable childhood gun deaths as well. States and localities could require guns to be locked up at home, a policy supported by 67 percent of Americans. Various types of smart gun technology, which prevent anyone other than their owners from firing a given gun, exist as well. But gun lock requirements and smart guns have been vehemently opposed by the National Rifle Association and its allies.
Instead, the NRA continues to promote a response that seeks to solve gun problems with more guns, and aims to broaden the saturation of firearms in nearly every sphere of public and private life, from homes to schools to churches to bars to airports and beyond. In a country with more guns than people, it's only natural that a certain number of small children are going get their hands on an unsecured firearm, with tragic consequences.
[Guns in America: For every criminal killed in self-defense, 34 innocent people die]
Depending on where you stand on gun policy, you may feel that 13 dead toddlers in 10 months is too many. Or, you might reason that stuff happens, and that this is part of the price we must pay to protect our gun rights.
I've included my tally of toddler shootings below. News sources are linked in the City column. Know of any this year that I missed? Drop me a line.

Date	City	State	Child's age	Child's gender
1/8/15	High Rock Lake	NC	3	male
1/21/15	East Lake	FL	2	male
1/21/15	Benton Harbor	MI	3	male
1/24/15	Las Vegas	NV	3	male
1/31/15	Albuquerque	NM	3	male
2/3/15	Davie	FL	3	male
2/9/15	LeBleu Settlement	LA	3	female
2/23/15	Florissant	MO	3	male
2/27/15	Houston	TX	3	male
3/3/15	Hillsboro	TN	3	male
3/8/15	Green River	UT	3	male
3/19/15	Chatsworth	GA	2	female
3/26/15	Montoursville	PA	2	male
3/30/15	Jefferson	GA	3	male
4/3/15	Raleigh	NC	2	male
4/12/15	Cleveland	OH	3	male
4/30/15	Peoria	AZ	2	male
5/9/15	Louisville	KY	2	male
5/9/15	San Antonio	TX	3	male
5/15/15	Oklahoma City	OK	2	male
5/17/15	Venice	FL	3	male
5/19/15	Snowville	UT	3	male
5/23/15	Jackson	MS	3	male
5/25/15	Lunenburg	VA	2	male
5/30/15	Myrtle Beach	SC	3	male
6/12/15	Jeffersonville	IN	2	male
6/12/15	Cincinnati	OH	3	male
6/15/15	York	PA	3	male
6/26/15	Pontiac	MI	3	male
6/29/15	Franklin Township	MI	3	male
7/2/15	Shreveport	LA	3	male
7/6/15	Spring	TX	3	male
7/14/15	Conway	SC	3	male
7/15/15	Kansas City	MO	3	female
7/18/15	Columbia	MO	3	male
7/21/15	St. Louis	MO	3	male
8/4/15	Miami	FL	3	male
8/5/15	South Anchorage	AK	3	male
8/18/15	Hoover	AL	2	male
8/25/15	Hanley Hills	MO	1	male
9/22/15	Lake Placid	NY	3	male
9/22/15	Dallas	OR	2	male
10/12/15	Rock Hill	SC	2	male

More on guns and gun policy:
There are now more guns than people in the United States
So far in 2015, we’ve had 274 days and 294 mass shootings
This photo captures America's relationship with guns
You have to see how many more people are killed by guns in America to actually believe it

Billions in Change Official Trailer (2015) - Manoj Bhargava

President Obama speaks a mountain of the Truth

Check out @WhiteHouse's Tweet: https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/645422150568964096?s=09

DOES GOD HAVE A PLAN FOR US?

The big question…

DOES GOD HAVE A PLAN FOR US?

by Neale Donald Walsch

August 23, 2015

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

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 has a plan for us.

Much of the world believes in a God who has a particular plan in mind for every human being. This is a God who is said to have handed out to each of us specific talents and attributes, equipping each of us to undertake particular missions, perform discrete functions, and fulfill distinct and disjunctive purposes over the course of our lives.

Our job is to figure out what that plan is, and then to follow that plan as well as we can. Or, at best, to “go with the plan” as it makes itself obvious through the events of our days and nights.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God has no specific plan for any of us? What if God has no preference in the matter of how we live our lives, or what we do, in the specific sense, with our days from birth to death?

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. First, it would relieve us of the burden of having to figure out what we are “supposed” to be doing here, and how. We could end our search, stop our pursuit, quit our quest, and conclude what we have constructed in our reality as our sacred seeking for God’s sacred assignment.

Then, we could begin at last, in full awareness and in earnest, the journey upon which we really came to the earth to embark. This is not God’s “plan,” this is the soul’s desire. And this always has to do with what we are being, not what we are doing in and with our lives.

If we thought that God did not have a specific agenda in mind for us, we could pay attention to what our life has to offer us in terms of beingness opportunities, rather than what we think God has planned on our behalf (either for beingness or doingness). And we would stop seeing certain occurrences, coincidences, and confluences as “a sign from God” that we can now move forward with “God’s plan.”

As well, if we thought there was no such thing as God’s plan for us, we could drop many of the notions of religion, all the ideas of pre-destiny, and every imagining that a hidden agenda for us exists in divine mind, which God is simply not making obvious and clear to us (for reasons that are not evident).

We could also stop killing each other out of an idea that it is “God’s plan” that a nation of “God’s people” who believe in God and practice God’s will in a particular way must exist upon the earth—even if it requires the killing of thousands of other people to create it.

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 God having a plan for us 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.

If God had a particular plan for every human being on the earth—or, for that matter, for the human race as a collective—God would have made it known to us long ago.

God would have no reason not to tell you in crystal clear, specific, and direct terms what God’s Plan for you is. Why would God devise a particular course of action for every single individual on the earth and then not reveal it to any of them?

And to those who say, “God does tell us what it is. We are just not paying attention,” is this an assertion that God is talking directly to each human being, and that we are simply not listening?

And there are larger questions as well. Why would God have a specific plan for every individual in the world in the first place? What divine purpose would this serve?

Would it not serve a greater divine purpose for God to simply supply the power and to provide the mechanism with which all sentient beings might decide, declare, express, and experience for themselves who they wish to be, instead of having to follow a plan set in place for each of them ahead of time?

There is a divine purpose being served by life. But a purpose is not a plan. A purpose is the reason we’re going to do things. A plan is an outline of the things we’re going to do.

This experience we are all having on the earth is not just a happenstance, not merely the latest in a million-year-old sequence of biological events. There is more going on here than simply the living out of physical life for no reason whatsoever except to complete a process that began for us without our involvement or agreement. And that purpose is much larger in scope than the mere encountering and living through a series of pre-planned occurrences.

The agenda of God is that all life forms in the physical realm express divinity. Each soul, as an Individuation of Divinity, has an eternity in which to do this, and an infinite number of ways to accomplish it.

The soul willfully and intentionally uses life in the physical as a means with which to express and experience all the aspects of divinity that it is possible to experience. These aspects are limitless, thus, life itself would have to be without end in order to experience them. And so it is.

Each separate physical expression of a soul’s infinite life offers it an opportunity to select and express any aspect or aspects of its divine nature that it chooses. Thus, the soul comes to each lifetime with an agenda, but not with a plan. The soul’s agenda may be to express and experience compassion, for instance, or patience and understanding. But the soul does not come to physical life with a predestined decision to do so by becoming a nurse, or by writing a book on human psychology.

To reiterate then, an agenda is the underlying intention or motive of a particular person or group. An agenda has to do with purpose. A plan has to do with process. It is a specific way to achieve a purpose, to follow through on intention. God and the soul have an agenda, but neither God nor the soul dictates or plans how a particular person should, or is going to, fulfill that agenda.

Thus, it is not “God’s Plan” for a particular person to be in a car accident as a child, or experience the divorce of parents, or marry three times, or have no children, or have four children, or contract leukemia, or move to Nebraska, or become a famous painter, or meet just the right person at just the right time to move their career forward.

It is not “God’s Plan” for one particular person to be a minister rather than a professional football player, or another to be the dynamic leader of a country rather than a dynamic country music star.

It is God’s agenda, carried into the realm of the physical by the soul, for that soul to experience states of Being—the sum total of which equal the All that we call God. Or, as it was said just above: The agenda of God is that all life forms in the Physical Realm of the Spiritual express Divinity. Each Soul, as an Individuation of Divinity, has an eternity in which to do this, and an infinite number of ways in which it may be accomplished.

What are these states of being that represent the many parts or aspects of God? With this as our soul’s agenda, life invites us to be many things.

• Creative, for instance. Or compassionate.
• Understanding, for instance. Or patient.
• Helpful, for instance. Or generous.
• Loving, for instance. Or healing.

All of these are states of being. And these, plus many more, may be experienced in any moment of Evernow, individually or simultaneously.

Now you may think, “Is that it? It that all that life is about? I was hoping to actually do something. Something that really mattered. Something that made a difference. Something that contributed to others and to the world at large. Something that allowed me to feel fulfilled.”

Yet that is precisely what the agenda of expressing and experiencing states of being is all about. When we examine life closely we realize that everything and anything we could do with our life is nothing more than an approach, a method, a process, an impulse that leads us into a state of being. Every thought, word, and action creates beingness. That is their only purpose. As Conversations with God says: Every act is an act of self-definition.

As to how you can know what beingness your soul has chosen, simply look to see what brings you the most joy. What impulse calls you? What feeling magnetizes you more than any other?

When you truly internalize this, your whole life can change. And the next step following such a realization is the awareness that what you hoped you would be able to be by doing a particular thing in a particular way, you can be in any number of ways.

And that becomes life’s greatest freedom. The freedom from living as if a specific and particular kind of doing is required of you in your life in order for you to be what your soul deeply desires to be.

Now the road ahead is wide open. Now the path is yours to choose. Because you can be what you’ve chosen to be by doing anything—or by not doing anything at all. You can also decide to change what you choose to be, by simply changing your mind about that. And as you take the path that brings you the greatest joy, you can at last make a life rather than a living.

It is true that sometimes things seem to fall into place so perfectly in our lives that we are tempted to exclaim, “It’s God’s plan!” Or things may not work out the way we had hoped or imagined they would, and we may say, “God had other plans for me.”

Such figures of speech reveal to us just how deeply the notion that God has specific ideas for each of our lives has seeped into our culture. It would be beneficial, however, not to let those figures of speech turn into actual, factual conclusions about “how things are.” Otherwise, we will indeed be tempted to spend a huge amount of our time “trying to figure out how to figure out what God has figured out for us.”

We’ll measure every nuance, every energy, every event against whether we feel this is what God has in mind for us—all the while God has nothing in mind for us at all. Not in the sense of us being a “butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.”

Only in the sense of us using life to experience the highest and most joyful aspects of Who We Really Are and How We Choose to Be.

Indeed, the purpose of life everywhere, in every form, is to express divinity—physicality being the vehicle through which God experiences Itself as all that It knows Itself to be.

This is done through God differentiating Itself, then giving its multitudinous and magnificent parts the wherewithal to express life variously—but without specific instructions, directions, requirements, or plans of any kind for every individual expression.

Life forms in the cosmos have been imbued with varying levels of consciousness, or what might be called self-awareness. This inbuilt ability to know oneself as an Individuation of Divinity is present in all sentient beings, and is increasingly experienced by each such being through the process called evolution.

The evolving into the full experience and demonstration of Who We Are is the journey upon which every soul has embarked, and the completion of that journey is achieved in every moment in which our highest notion of divinity is expressed.

The process of life (as opposed to “the plan”) is that we all simply do this, in whatever way we freely and spontaneously choose, given the possibilities to which we are daily opened by the collaborative creation of all the souls co-creating with us.

Completion of the soul’s journey is, therefore, not something that is experienced once, but over and over again throughout the ongoing manifestation that is life itself—now and eternally.

 There can be what seems like a down side to this for many people. Humans feel more comfortable when they feel guided.

They like to be instructed, directed, told what to do. As an emerging species, this is their proclivity. Like children, they feel safe when clear boundaries are drawn, and specific commands or orders are given. Then all they have to do is meet the requirements and they’re home free. This accounts for the immense popularity of religion. It allows humans to follow their deep inner impulse toward The Divine without having to figure out how to do it.

It is therefore a disappointment to some people to learn that God has no plan for us, no instructions to give us, no guidelines we must follow, and no commands to heed. It can be at once both freeing and frightening to realize that God’s agenda is for us to decide who we wish to be and how we wish to demonstrate that, not spend our life trying to figure out how to figure out what God has figured out for us.

Yet God is like the master teacher in an art class. The best art teachers do not tell budding artists, “Here is your canvas. Use this next hour to create. Oh, but make sure that there is maroon and a big splotch of orange in the picture, and be certain to place the orange in the upper right-hand corner. Also, I need to see a three-dimensional effect, and there have to be children in the foreground and a telephone somewhere.”

The master teacher knows that the purpose of education is not to put something into the student, but to draw something out; not to instruct, but to extract. And so the master teacher simply places before the student all the implements—all the crayons, sketch pencils, brushes, oil paints, watercolors, and dyes—needed to work in any medium, then says with a smile, “Joyously create!”

“But what if I don’t get it right?” the timid pupil cries.

“There’s no way not to get it ‘right’,” the master teacher assures. “This is art!”

There Is No Love But Gods

Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergence's and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

Love's meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. He does not see that changing love must be impossible. And thus he thinks that he can love at times, and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one, and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it. If it could make such distinctions, it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God's, and all of love is His. There is no other principle that rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.

No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference in what you really are and what love is. Love's meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.

No law the world obeys can help you grasp love's meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love's meaning, and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well.

Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's Voice. Today we practice making free your mind of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes that you think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single step this course requests in your advance towards its established goal.

If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release. Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this.

For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world that seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the gift of God replace them all.

Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this. And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love's meaning to your clean and open mind. And He will bless the lesson with His Love.

Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, nevermore to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute.

The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in health and strength, to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free, along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love.

We will remember them throughout the day, because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our Self. At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:

I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would
share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that
there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's.

An excerpt from ACIM Lesson 127

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 -